The report examines opportunities and challenges for policymakers, utilities, existing and startup energy companies, regulators, investors and other power-sector stakeholders, given advances in inherently safer technologies, a sharpened focus on the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the energy sector, and challenges faced by nuclear energy.
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This page provides access to all the information resources on the NICE Future website. Browse the entire catalogue below or select one or more topics and subtopics from the list at left to drill down through the collection.
This presentation depicts the market and geographic reach of the energy company Fortum. Its portfolio includes significant nuclear power holdings in northern Europe, including one in Loviisa, Finland, that provides district heating to the Helsinki metropolitan area.
This journal article describes a virtual power plant arrangement that combines intermittent offshore wind farm production with firming capacity generated by small to medium-sized reactors. The authors found that the combined system offered several advantages including improved economic performance, flexibility, and reliability.
The authors of this journal article propose a nuclear renewable energy integration (NREI) system that incorporates nuclear and wind energies in combination with high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) to yield hydrogen. The nuclear component is represented by a small modular gas-cooled reactor. The authors compare the economics of three cases: nuclear power plant, nuclear and wind-combined facility, and a nuclear-wind-hydrogen production facility, using wholesale electricity prices and market conditions from the PJM deregulated and the Mid-C regulated market hubs.
This report provides technical and economic analysis of nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems, building on the case studies—and modifying the scenarios—of previous analysis by the authors. In this analysis, the Texas-synthetic gasoline scenario provides the basis; however, the industrial process is removed. Instead, the N-R HES sells heat directly to an industrial customer. Also included are subsystems that convert electricity to heat, thus allowing the renewable energy subsystem to generate heat and benefit from that revenue stream.
This paper considers a generic thermal energy storage (TES) system as a retrofit to an existing nuclear power plant in the United States (Texas). The authors use a validated PLEXOS model of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas electric grid to simulate electricity market clearing in 2030. They use three scenarios of natural gas price forecasts with a coupled capacity expansion model to simulate the deployment of competing technologies.
This brief describes the gap in nuclear power plant deployments between developing and industrialized nations. The authors argues that assistance from industrial nuclear countries is a critical to the successful development of a nuclear power program, and they highlight specific cases to support their claim.
This journal article presents two hybrid energy system (HES) models. One, termed traditional, produces electricity only and consists of a primary heat generator, a steam turbine generator, a wind farm and a battery storage. The other, termed advanced, includes the components present in the traditional model but also a chemical plant complex to repurpose excess energy for non-electricity services, such as for producing chemical goods.
This journal article addresses heat storage coupled nuclear reactors, which can provide dispatchable electricity while operating at full power. Six classes of heat storage technologies couple to light-water reactors with steam cycles. Firebrick Resistance-Heated Energy Storage (FIRES) converts low-price electricity into high-temperature stored heat for industry or power. FIRES and brick recuperators coupled to nuclear Brayton power cycles may enable high-temperature reactors to buy electricity when prices are low and sell electricity at higher price, according to the authors.
This report from 1987 identifies nuclear power as the sole cost-effective clean energy source available at the time. The authors also identify constraints that developing countries might face in implementing a nuclear power program. They close by defining the role that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can play in executing programs in developing nations and identifying recommendations to enable these efforts.