Nuclear power accompanies solar energy

Can nuclear power accompany of solar generation? This hot issue stems from the nuclear industry pushing for subsidies for older and uncompetitive plants. This question is still in the works for an answer which has ramifications for the future of technology.

Solar energy 101

Solar energy is flexiable, variable, and intermittent. Their output varies greatly while  electricity demands even more. Flexibility is essential for power systems to adapt to changes in demand from businesses and consumers alike. Although low-to-moderate amounts of solar decrease the peak demand for electricity, more adaptability is required on power systems that have very high levels solar. For instance, California  gets over 10% of its electricity from solar on an annual basis. Additional methods of generation is needed to supply 10 GW of electricity just to meet the increase in evening demand and the fall-off in solar production when the sun goes down.
 

Nuclear energy deployment

The nuclear industry notes that  deploying boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR), make up the nuclear fleet in the United States and most of Europe quickly. The ramping rate of 5% per minute between 50 – 100% of rated power.  As of now, no news of nuclear fleet worldwide is ramping up, so we evaluating the ramping up system will take time. And while ramping levels down to 20%, 25%, or 30% of rated power may be enough to provide moderate levels of renewable energy, for high levels of renewable energy, an entire fleet of nuclear plants running at 20 – 30% of rated output will  oversupply power when solar are at full output. Nuclear power plants can’t be turned off and back on again quickly and  plant designs the time to start back up and reach full load is one to two days. Plants can be run in hot standby mode despite the slow ramp up and down period. In this mode, its temporarily disconnected from the grid,  where they are not shut fully down but creating enough power to keep internal processes operating. In standby mode, the plant also doesn’t export power to the grid. Let’s see if the kinks of solar energy and nukes can coexist on the same grid. Significant progress has been made to assess yet have yet to answer this question.

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