The TES integration concept mentioned above addresses several of the issues inherent to nuclear power. To start, TES allows the nuclear reactors to operate at full power around the clock. This is because, with TES integration, the heat from the reactor is decoupled from the power output of the steam power plant. Instead, the full-power operating reactor consistently supplies large amounts of heat energy to be stored in the intermediate TES tanks. [4,5] To help quantify this, a study published in the Energy Policy Journal stated that the optimal TES addition alone can store 8-12 hours of thermal energy required for 150% reactor-rated power output. Furthermore, when supplemented by the constant reactor operations, this 150% ramped power output can be extended. This study suggests that a 100 MWe rated reactor, when coupled with a fully charged TES tank and a 150 MWe rated power plant, could produce maximum output for 16 hours without ever once changing the thermal output of the reactor. [5] Conversely, when electrical demand is low, larger amounts of the reactor's thermal energy can be stored in the TES system to use at a later time when electrical energy demand and profits are higher. These are the extremes, but the thermal energy stored in a TES-nuclear combined cycle can also be intermittently tapped to produce steam and electricity at varying outputs as the demand requires. This means that combining TES with nuclear power also enables the nuclear plant to load-follow without straining the reactor and avoiding the safety concerns associated with changing the reactor's output. A major drawback to current PWR nuclear power plant applications.
