http://theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/2432234/benefits-of-flexible-nuclear-energy-operations-for-renewables
In truth they can't. PCIOMR
Quote from: TVA on May 02, 2018, 05:21
In truth they can't. PCIOMR
knot no wing pciomr acronym. butt, if mammory serves, eye think b.v. u1 wood dew swing loads inn the early 80s.
They are capable but they cant. In the 80s they busted fuel a lot and discovered pellet cladding interaction due to the stress the fuel puts on the cladding. Whoever wrote the article has no clue as to how a reactor really works
We load follow, mostly on the weekends during the spring melt off. In fact, we reduced power to 85% last weekend for "Economic Dispatch". Pretty easy for a boiler actually. Of course they don't curtail wind production....they ask "make" the Nuke to run at a reduced power instead.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx (https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx)
The argument about nuke's ability to swing is crazy (navy plants)... of course they can, but it requires different fuel loads than today when they try to base load. The crazy part is why would a utility swing the cheapest fuel cost plant in their system? Swing (down-power) the highest fuel cost plant first, and it probably ain't the nuke. The problem is being forced to buy the temporaries when available. And with big PWRs with B reactivity control, towards EOL swinging generates huge amounts of let-down waste chasing Xe. That waste processing cost has to be factored in. In a mostly nuke grid, like France, obviously some nukes are swinging... but those swing plants have fuel loaded to support it.
Exactly. It's nearly impossible to swing a PWR especially in the last 14 to 18 weeks of a cycle. I remember WBN was discussing lowering power for a weeping MSR Relief and pretty much they determined any lowering of power more than 5% would cause a xenon transient so bad they might as well just shutdown. BWR arent so bad but towards EOC the reactivity coefficients are so close to zero it isnt recommended. Plus PCIOMR is a bitch
One reason a utility would swing a plant is negative pricing, either for that plant or to get paid to take some other utilities excess wind/solar generation.