Modeling and integration of steam accumulators in nuclear steam supply systems

Nuclear power plants in deregulated markets need to leverage thermal energy storage to take advantage of peak demand pricing to improve their profitability in an increasingly competitive landscape. Substantial research has been conducted to integrate steam accumulators into concentrated solar power plants and they present a viable solution for the commercial nuclear fleet. Prior work in this field has concentrated mainly on the installation of separate turbine-generators to generate electricity from the stored thermal energy. This work demonstrates that the use of stored thermal energy to augment feedwater heaters and moisture separator reheaters, in lieu of using separate electrical generating equipment, can result in sizable increases in electrical power production for a signifcant period of time provided that a suitably sized main steam turbine, main generator, and support systems are present. Additionally, a model was constructed using prior work to reliably demonstrate the time response of an accumulator to charge and discharge operations.