Today's nuclear reactors run constantly because the fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the operations. They want to be selling kWh as much as possible because kWh is money. To convince nuclear operators to do backup, there would have to be some kind of market for their on-demand carbon-free characteristics. This would require market changes.
Of course, it's very possible for nuclear reactors to load follow from a physical point of view. Naval reactors load follow into battle mode quite impressively, and power stations could do the same, again if there were a market for it.
Even traditional reactors can couple to some kind of thermal energy storage system to allow them to stay mostly at 100% while the whole system load follows very nicely.
There are many exciting possibilities in on-demand, low-footprint, low-carbon energy with nuclear technology.
Nuclear is one of the few technologies that has a negative learning curve. As we improve designs, it seems to get more expensive rather than less.
There was a brief window in the 1970s where US nuclear construction projects were finishing on time. But the utility industry had planned for waaaaay too much new capacity. So when all the construction projects with poor execution, that struggled to complete and therefore came in way over budget, finally came online in the early 80s, they were financial disasters in a scale that nearly bankrupted several utilities.
Since then, utilities lost their appetite. And there's basically no way for us to replace the 400 or so reactors in the world that eMate nearing end of life.
However, I'm not sure we will need nuclear. With how cheap wind and solar are getting, far faster than anybody anticipated, we have finally found the technologies that may some day provide energy "too cheap to meter." However, like nuclear they are not dispatchable (except for some designs in France), so if we want to power a grid we either need to overbuild capacity by quite a bit, or use energy storage. There's a cost trade off for the two that depends on how cheap storage gets, and how cheap extra capacity is, and how cheap transmission is from an area with different weather that day. (For example, one can imagine building 2x of panel capacity over the amount of inverter capacity on a solar install, so that even on cloudy days you can chug along at near full energy output... it all depends on the cost trade offs.)
And as fast an solar is getting cheap, far beyond expectations, so is lithium ion storage. And there are many chemistries with high specific energies (and thus unsuitable for vehicles), that we are just now dipping our toes into.
Nuclear would be a nice tool to have, if it was competitive with other technologies, but it's going to be decades before it can prove itself and establish a positive track record for deployment. Utilities have been burned too many times by financial dumpster fires.
Today's nuclear reactors run constantly because the fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the operations. They want to be selling kWh as much as possible because kWh is money. To convince nuclear operators to do backup, there would have to be some kind of market for their on-demand carbon-free characteristics. This would require market changes.
Of course, it's very possible for nuclear reactors to load follow from a physical point of view. Naval reactors load follow into battle mode quite impressively, and power stations could do the same, again if there were a market for it.
Even traditional reactors can couple to some kind of thermal energy storage system to allow them to stay mostly at 100% while the whole system load follows very nicely.
There are many exciting possibilities in on-demand, low-footprint, low-carbon energy with nuclear technology.
Nuclear back up? Nuclear is good for base loads, not for peak loads.
Nuclear would be ridiculously uneconomical as a backup. You either run nuclear as baseload or you don't bother.
Damn shame we haven't been investing in nuclear over the past few decades. Now when we need it most, it's too late.
Nuclear is one of the few technologies that has a negative learning curve. As we improve designs, it seems to get more expensive rather than less.
There was a brief window in the 1970s where US nuclear construction projects were finishing on time. But the utility industry had planned for waaaaay too much new capacity. So when all the construction projects with poor execution, that struggled to complete and therefore came in way over budget, finally came online in the early 80s, they were financial disasters in a scale that nearly bankrupted several utilities.
Since then, utilities lost their appetite. And there's basically no way for us to replace the 400 or so reactors in the world that eMate nearing end of life.
However, I'm not sure we will need nuclear. With how cheap wind and solar are getting, far faster than anybody anticipated, we have finally found the technologies that may some day provide energy "too cheap to meter." However, like nuclear they are not dispatchable (except for some designs in France), so if we want to power a grid we either need to overbuild capacity by quite a bit, or use energy storage. There's a cost trade off for the two that depends on how cheap storage gets, and how cheap extra capacity is, and how cheap transmission is from an area with different weather that day. (For example, one can imagine building 2x of panel capacity over the amount of inverter capacity on a solar install, so that even on cloudy days you can chug along at near full energy output... it all depends on the cost trade offs.)
And as fast an solar is getting cheap, far beyond expectations, so is lithium ion storage. And there are many chemistries with high specific energies (and thus unsuitable for vehicles), that we are just now dipping our toes into.
Nuclear would be a nice tool to have, if it was competitive with other technologies, but it's going to be decades before it can prove itself and establish a positive track record for deployment. Utilities have been burned too many times by financial dumpster fires.