ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NRC looks to leverage previous approvals for large LWRs
During this time of resurging interest in nuclear power, many conversations have centered on one fundamental problem: Electricity is needed now, but nuclear projects (in recent decades) have taken many years to get permitted and built.
In the past few years, a bevy of new strategies have been pursued to fix this problem. Workforce programs that seek to laterally transition skilled people from other industries, plans to reuse the transmission infrastructure at shuttered coal sites, efforts to restart plants like Palisades or Duane Arnold, new reactor designs that build on the legacy of research done in the early days of atomic power—all of these plans share a common throughline: leveraging work already done instead of starting over from square one to get new plants designed and built.
Charles Forsberg (MIT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 972-980
The electricity market is changing with decreasing markets for base-load electricity. Changes in nuclear power plants are required to match changes in markets. Nuclear energy produces heat that is then converted to electricity. Heat storage is cheaper than electricity storage (batteries, pumped storage, etc.). There is the option to incorporate heat storage into the power plant design to enable variable electricity output to maximize revenue while operating the reactor at base load to minimize costs.
We examine options for heat storage coupled to reactors with sodium or salt in the secondary heat transfer loop. The three classes of storage technologies are described: bulk hot salt or sodium storage, sensible heat storage (steel or other solid), and latent heat storage with another material.
Heat storage can enable the power plant to operate as a battery or pumped hydro station. At times of low electricity prices there is the option to divert heat from the reactor to heat storage while operating the power turbine at minimum load. Keeping the turbine on line allows rapid return to full electricity output to meet demand during high prices. The low-value electricity from the plant and added low-value electricity from the grid can be used to electrically resistance heat the heat storage media. When electricity prices increase, heat from the reactor and storage goes to the turbine for peak electricity production to maximize revenue.
