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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Konor Frick, Alexander Duenas, Piyush Sabharwall, JunSoo Yoo, Su-Jong Yoon, Carl Stoots, James E. O’Brien, Thomas O’Brien (INL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1720-1729
Nuclear Renewable Hybrid Energy Systems (NR-HES) is an area of current research interest as wind and solar grid penetrations continue to increase. The goal of these systems is to enable nuclear plant operation at ~100% capacity and store excess energy, when available, for later use. Sensible heat Thermal Energy Storage (TES) systems have been shown to be an effective thermal load management strategy allowing nuclear reactor systems to operate at effectively 100% full power while storing excess thermal energy for recovery at a later time. Thermal storage has been modeled extensively around the world. However, little in the way of experimentation is being conducted. Experimentation is needed to verify the dynamics and control of TES systems. To complement the modeling and simulation efforts on nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is designing a Thermal Energy Delivery System (TEDS). The system will provide a means of distributing thermal energy to and from various co-located systems located in the INL Dynamic Energy Transport and Integration Laboratory (DETAIL). DETAIL will include a high-pressure high-temperature water flow loop simulating a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), a 25 kWe High-Temperature Steam Electrolysis (HTSE) unit (first potential heat user/customer) and a packed-bed Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system. The thermal energy transfer from TEDS can be used in a flexible, dynamic manner incorporating charging and discharging cycles from the TES system, to support test/demonstration operations for nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems (N-R HES) applications. This paper discusses the design, operation, instrumentation (sensors), and control strategies to enable the dynamic operation of TEDS.