Dynamic Modelling of Flexible Dispatch in a Novel Nuclear-Solar

Integrated Energy System with Thermal Energy Storage

a,
Aidan Rigby *, Mike Wagner b , Ben Lindley a

a
Department of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1500 Engineering Drive, Madison, Wisconsin,
53706, United States
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1500 Engineering Drive, Madison,
Wisconsin, 53706, United States
* [email protected]

Abstract
High capacity of renewable generation on energy grids of the future will require improved flexibility of typical base-load
generators such as nuclear power stations. Integrated energy systems are a route to such flexibility with one option
being considered by nuclear reactor vendors being Nuclear-Solar hybrid systems. Integrating solar generated heat from
parabolic troughs into the feedwater line allows the plant to alleviate turbine bled steam and transiently power boost
above nominal power in Rankine cycles. This article presents a parametric study of the design of such a nuclear solar
hybrid thermal system for a nominal small modular reactor cycle and provides a full system dynamic model written in
DYMOLA with the Modelica language to analyse the dispatch in transient load following operation. The control of the
system is presented and the impact on key variables are analysed due to step changes in electricity demand given to
the plant. The parametric study investigates the trade off in design between improved degrees of power boosting and
system nominal efficiency. The work also suggests that higher final feedwater temperatures offer improved
opportunities for power boosting flexibility. The transient analysis of the system allows a simple method for sizing the
concrete storage and parabolic trough arrays under variable demand and solar insolation profiles and provides a viable
route to a digital twin of such a system.

Nomenclature power in response to rising demand is therefore a key eco-

nomic driver behind the rise of flexible fossil fuel plants
TES Thermal Energy Storage such as natural gas generation. The latter however comes
LCOE Levelised Cost of Electricity with associated carbon emissions and must be phased out
in order to meet the 1.5°C target from the Paris climate
CSP Concentrating Solar Power agreement [3].
The aim to flexibly load follow using nuclear, without
PWR Pressurised water reactor the need to over-build and curtail output, is economically
DNI Direct Normal Isolation desirable if additional components associated with the
improved capabilities can be sourced easily and do not need
SMR Small Modular Reactor to be reactor quality. One proposal to achieve load follow
in the balance of plant is feedwater heating offset using
LPT Low Pressure Turbine an external heat source of low temperature heat (<300°C).
LPT-BV Low Pressure Turbine Bypass Valve This article presents a design concept for parabolic trough
power boosting concept in nuclear power cycle. The nuclear
HPT High Pressure Turbine primary circuit (nuclear island) is coupled with a steam
Rankine in which feedwater heating from turbine bleeds can
IES Integrated Energy System be offset with heat supplied from a parallel configuration
TFR Throttled Flow Fraction of parabolic trough array and a concrete thermal energy
storage.
TCV Turbine Control Valve Whilst many configurations have been proposed for coal
Rankine cycles [4] [5] [6] the nuclear balance of plant re-
FWCP Feedwater Control Pump mains complex to integrate into due to the added difficulty
PI Proportional-Integral of strict restrictions from regulators on many variables that
are affected due to thermal integration. Coal plants also
have far more flexibility to vary balance of plant design
1. Motivation conditions whereas in the nuclear industry the balance of
plant is typically constrained by the choice and design of
As energy grids increase their capacities of generation
the nuclear island. Understanding the design parameters
assets based on variable renewable resources, traditional
for solar assisted feedwater heating in nuclear power plants
large scale generation plants such as nuclear power stations
is key, especially the relationships between steam generator
must adapt to respond to increasingly peaked electricity
inlet temperatures, the ability to power boost and the plant
demand [1]. Thermal load following operation of nuclear,
design efficiency.
while possible, does not make the best use of the expensive
While the steady-state (or quasi-steady-state) analysis
electricity generation assets and consequently is unfavor-
of the system is paramount to understand the potential
able from economic perspective [2]. The ability to increase

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for exergetic gains in performance, this paper argues that several proposed academic configurations. They define a
only a transient model that includes the nuclear island can separation between configurations of designs that produce
be used to understand in practice what may be achievable steam directly (DSGs) and those that use some closed
in load following operation. This is because the tempo- intermediary to transfer heat (HTFs). Suresh et al. [5]
ral distribution of parabolic trough generated heat and noted that using solar assisted feedwater heating in a coal
consumption of this heat in the balance of plant during Rankine had the greatest exergy efficiency when the HTF
power boost are not synchronous and vary each time step. configuration was employed.
The design uses a concrete storage to allow energy dis- Alotaibi et al. [13] and Zhong et al. [6] specifically
patchability and as such understanding how the concrete looked at using closed feedwater heating with heat pro-
storage’s temperature gradients and ability to dispatch duced from parabolic troughs from both a technical and
heat in complex load follow scenarios requires a transient economic perspective. The former found a significant (56%)
analysis. Beyond this, the variable operation required gives reduction in levelised electricity cost (LEC) over the 25
leads to large thermal transients that restrict aggressive year lifetime of the plant and the latter looked to optimise
load follow. the configuration of this feedwater heating based on min-
Whilst transient fluctuations in feedwater conditions imising this LEC. Zhong et al. [6] found that at high direct
cause issues in traditional fossil fuel driven Rankine cycles, normal insolation (DNI) (>350 W/m2 ) they could use a
they are significantly more of a problem in nuclear [7] due to high thermal integration temperature and achieve a lower
the sensitivity of the core to even small oscillations in input LEC. This corroborates the work by Popov [14] and Alam
conditions. Boosting power output using feedwater heating et al. [10] who showed the added cycle efficiency improve-
in nuclear introduces large changes in input conditions that ment potential of using solar assisted feedwater heating in
accompany the changing operating modes. Therefore, it the later (higher pressure) stages of the feedwater heating
is clear that the proposed system must be analyzed while chain as opposed to at lower temperatures.
accounting for transient effects to ensure conclusions on
their potential dispatch are correct[8]. 2.2. Transient Operation of Solar Assisted Feedwater Heat-
In this article, we discuss the conceptual design and ing
undertake key parametric studies in steady state to eval- As the above studies show, in steady state operation,
uate the design. We then present a transient dynamic the advantage to adding solar-assisted feedwater heating
model for the entire plant written in the Modelica lan- has been demonstrated clearly. However, it is a more
guage for DYMOLA to assess the plants capabilities to complex issue to maintain constant power plant operation
achieve load following. These studies aim to answer the under variable solar insolation over both short-term (min-
following research questions: utes to hours) and intermediate-term (daily) timescales.
Yan et al. [15] look at the impact on plant dynamic
• What is the power-boost capability such a solar as-
response of DNI changes for a solar assisted closed feedwa-
sisted feedwater heating configuration can achieve ter heating configuration without a thermal energy storage
given the required feedwater inlet conditions? system intermediary. They report significant transient
• What timescales are associated with the change in temperature fluctuations at the outlet of the solar-assisted
feedwater heating and their implications for reactor feedwater heater resulting from both step changes in the
safety? DNI profile and typical daily variation of solar insolation.
Pitz-Paal et al. investigate how solar-assisted direct
• What is the correct sizing of concrete storage to main- heating systems in waste recovery boilers are controlled
tain the ability to respond to temperature transients? while undergoing solar transients [16]. They note signifi-
cant technical challenges in controlling outlet temperatures
• What size of parabolic trough is required to maintain during solar transients. Eck and Hirsch use Modelica to
concrete temperatures for a given solar DNI profile?
analyse control of direct steam generation in parabolic
trough systems [17]. They show that short term irradia-
2. Literature Review tion disturbances due to cloud cover can cause large mass
flow rate disturbances in the parabolic troughs even with
2.1. Solar Assisted Feedwater Heating Configurations optimised control.
Solar parabolic troughs are a more mature alternative to Fossil-fuel-fired plants don’t necessarily require elimi-
large concentrating solar power towers [9]. Commercial oil nation of these medium-term transients when using solar-
troughs with molten salt storage operate up to about 390°C assisted feedwater heating. If their steam generators can
which allows these systems to provide heat for conventional structurally handle varying feedwater conditions, thermal
boilers including super-heat and reheat stages. However, input to the boiler can be increased to maintain desired
parabolic trough technology is well-suited for operating at electrical output in the event of reduced feedwater heating.
lower temperatures because of the lower flux concentration Unfortunately this does not apply to nuclear Rankine cycles
ratio and because the heat transfer fluid (whether oil or for which thermal power increases are typically not achiev-
steam) can accommodate lower temperatures than molten able if a reactor is operating at nominal power. Short term
salt can [4]. Hence, combined with traditional assets they electrical power increases above nominal electrical power
have the potential to offer higher efficiencies and offset any from the plant (transient overpower) is however desirable
associated carbon emissions.[10] [11] due to the ability to sell ramp-up capacity to the grid, an
Many studies have been performed on these parabolic auxiliary service, which will only grow more economically
trough solar hybrid configurations. A review by Behar et valuable as renewables play a large role on grids. Nuclear
al. [12] collected information on all existing plants and plants are also sensitive to variations in their feedwater

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inlet conditions [7] and hence require transients in these using the solar with TES to provide steady state power
inlet conditions to be damped as strongly as possible. and efficiency improvements at lower LCOE.
The simplest way to dampen solar thermal power varia- A different configuration is proposed by Zhao et al.
tions and maintain dispatchability is to introduce a thermal [27] who use a solar power tower CSP plant and a SMR
energy storage medium as a buffer that interfaces between to heat directly a packed bed thermocline from which a
the solar collectors and feedwater heaters. Robust control power cycle can be dispatched independently. This allows
must also be implemented to reject thermal and mass flow total decoupling of power produced from both the nuclear
rate disturbances whilst attempting to track power demand reactor cycle and the solar power produced. The challenge
signal commands. of this concept is that it requires a significant size of CSP,
100 MWe, and a large thermal energy storage system, 14.8h,
2.3. Modelling transients in thermal energy storage coupled to operate and due to temperature limits of the TES often
with solar thermal generation requires curtailment of the CSP.
Hybridized fossil fuel plants are able to compensate for These prior works all look to integrate solar heating
solar variations and, consequently, typically favour direct at the higher temperatures found in the reheat stages of
solar coupling instead of incurring the additional cost of the Rankine cycles. The only work that suggests the lower
thermal storage. On the other hand solar-thermal-only temperature feedwater configuration is the Solar Assisted
plants must find a way to decouple their output from the Reactor (SOAR) concept proposed by Benenati and Pow-
fluctuating solar insolation to achieve dispatchability [18] ell [28], which is the the most relevant prior work. They
and most opt to achieve this by introducing thermal energy suggest that solar heat integrated into the feedwater heat-
storage between the receiver and any power cycle. ing system can improve flexibility of operation and reduce
Several informative transient analyses of such CSP the LEC. They are able to show that higher temperature
plants with TES designs exist with some good examples feedwater heating results in better power boosting and
given in the papers [19] [20] [21]. These simulations were total efficiency of the reactor. While exceptionally well-
able to show that use of TES was able to decouple the investigated at steady state, the work by Benenati and
solar transients from power production ensuring the power Powell does not consider in depth how solar transients
plants can be dispatched at all times, including during the interact with the system.
night.
Of particular interest to this work are studies that use 3. The Design Concept
the Modelica language to perform dynamic modelling of
solar hybrids. The transient analysis of a PT power plant From the learning generated in previous works described
with TES by Montanes et al. [22] used a molten salt two above, this paper proposes thermal integration of parabolic
tank energy storage model in modelica along with a simple trough heat into the late stages of the feedwater heating
power block design. They found good agreement of the chain. The aim, as was mentioned in Popov [14] and
dynamic modelica model with published data from the Alam et al. [10], is to benefit from the closer matching of
Andasol power plant. The work by Liu et al [23] focused temperatures between the feedwater line and 30 bar steam
on the control system development of a CSP with two generated in the parabolic troughs.
tank sensible storage using a Modelica plant model and The design is based upon a conventional steam Rankine
MATLAB/SIMULINK to analyse the control of the system. cycle connected to a steam generator from a nuclear island.
The paper suggests a comprehensive control methodology The nuclear island in the transient model is taken to be a
and state machine to control variables within the dynamic small modular pressurised water reactor with the NuScale
model. Li et al [24] similarly used Modelica to perform design taken as the reference cycle [29]. It’s parameters
dynamic simulation of a coupled open-air receiver and TES are summarised in Table 1.
system. They were able to validate their simulation against Table 1: Adopted Design Parameters
experimental data and saw good agreement with simple
use of PI controllers to provide model control. Variable Adopted Value
2.4. Solar Assisted Feedwater in Nuclear Reactor Module Power 160 MWth
Electrical Power 50 MWe
Whilst there is a wealth of literature for solar feedwater
Steam Mass Flow 67 kg/s
heating in Rankine cycles driven by conventional fossil
Turbine Inlet Pressure 35 bar
generation there is an opportunity to extend this research
Feedwater Inlet Temperature 148°C
to it’s application in nuclear energy production. For nuclear
Steam Outlet Temperature 300°C
energy the potential for offsetting carbon emissions and
Net Efficiency 31%
achieving fuel cost reductions by retrofitting solar thermal
Condenser Pressure 0.08 bar
heating is removed. However, the economic benefit from
improved flexibility of the nuclear island is significant.
The study by Popov and Borissova [25] proposed using The traditional steam Rankine cycle is altered with
a PT field and two tank storage to provide superheat the addition of a higher temperature secondary feedwa-
and reheating on the top end of a PWR driven Rankine ter heater such that feedwater can be both heated by
cycle. The two-tank molten salt storage was shown across high temperature steam bled off the turbine or from the
many differing scenarios to allow continuous operation, pressurised steam loop connected to a dual pipe concrete
and electrical conversion efficiency in the superheat cycle storage. This loop is used to boost the temperature of the
achieved high efficiencies of 52%. A similar concept is incoming feedwater up to the desired inlet condition of the
investigated by Wang et al. [26] with a focus again on steam generator in modes of operation where the primary

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feedwater heating is configured to provide less heat to the
feedwater line than is sufficient to achieve this desired tem-
perature. An overall system diagram for understanding is
shown in Figure 1 with control mechanisms labelled for
discussion in section 6.1. A T-S diagram for the secondary
cycle is shown are shown in Figure 2 with the corresponding
state points and values shown in the schematic diagrams
in Figures 3 and 4 for nominal operation and power boost
mode respectively.

Figure 2: TS diagram of Power Boost Operation operation

to perform parametric assessments of design variables ef-

fecting the overall dynamic model. The model uses similar
design simplifications to the Modelica model described be-
low. However, particular focus was given to the off design
performance of the turbine system when exposed to vari-
Figure 1: A simplified schematic of the proposed integrated energy
system showing key modelled components and control scheme num- able mass flow rates. The model uses an effective off-design
bers as described in Table 2. isentropic efficiency correction taken from Bartlett et al.
[31]. This uses a cubic curve fit for a one-stage condensing
The primary feedwater heating is provided by steam turbine for the reduction in the isentropic efficiency for a
bled off an intermediate point between a high pressure given throttled mass flow rate fraction (TFR). The TFR
turbine (HPT) and a lower pressure turbine (LPT). This is the fraction of the maximum mass flow rate for which
intermediate bleed-off pressure — and consequently di- the turbine is specified. In this case, the TFR occurs at
verted flow fraction (f ) — is controlled with a low-pressure maximum power boost. The equation for the curve fit for
turbine bypass valve (LPT-BV). If the Rankine cycle is the reduction in efficiency (RIE) is taken to be:
configured in its nominal operation mode, the LPT-BV
opens fully and diverts steam to the primary closed feed- RIE = 22.5 − 62.8 TFR + 62.4 TFR2 − 22.1 TFR3 (1)
water heater which discharges to an open feedwater heater
and is shown in Figure 6.
drawing feedwater off the condenser.
In power boost mode, the LPT-BV is closed with all
steam at the intermediate point being directed through 5. Modelica Implementation
the LPT to produce power. The feedwater will hence leave
the primary feedwater heater below the desired steam 5.1. The Nuclear Island
generator inlet temperature and require heating in the The studied nuclear island in the transient analysis is a
secondary feedwater heater.. reference 160 MW thermal PWR with natural circulation
The energy used in the secondary feedwater is drawn in the primary nuclear loop (the loop incorporating the
from a dual pipe concrete storage which is in turn heated nuclear core). This design is a derivative of the NuScale
with a parabolic trough array. In this parallel loop dual model developed in the HYBRID library described by
pipe configuration, the parabolic-trough-to-concrete stor- Mikkelson and Frick [8]. The steam generator model is
age loop (denoted the “charge loop”) and the concrete- based on TRANSFORM’s [32] generic distributed shell
storage-to-secondary-feedwater-heater loop (denoted the and tube geometry heat exchanger.
“discharge loop”) are both driven by pressurised steam and
remain separate from each other. During periods of so- 5.2. The Balance of Plant
lar insolation, flow in the charge loop will be driven at The secondary side model of the nuclear reactor extends
a constant rate to heat the concrete storage. Further de-from the steam Rankine closed feedwater cycle model writ-
tail of the charge and discharge loops and their control is
ten in the HYBRID library as is used in the report by Saeed
discussed in Section 6.1. et al. [33]. It consists of two infinite-stage turbine models
from the TRANSFORM library for the HPT and the LPT,
4. Steady State Modelling both with a modelled isentropic efficiency of 90%. The two
turbines are interfaced with a moisture separator model
A steady state model of the design was generated using adapted from the TRANSFORM library. The moisture
Engineering Equation Solver [30]. This model was used separator’s liquid is mixed with the steam bled through

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 Figure 3: State Diagram of nominal operation

the LPT-BV which connects to the feedwater heaters as found in Section 6.2 and sizing of the parabolic trough
described above. Both feedwater heaters are modelled as array is performed in Section 7.2.
shell and tube heat exchangers with values of NTU = 6
for the primary feedwater heater and NTU = 15 for the
6. Transient Model Operation
secondary feedwater heater. The condenser is modelled as
an ideal condenser at a pressure of 0.08 bar. 6.1. Modelica Control Scheme
To employ the Modelica model in transient scenarios, a
5.3. The Concrete Storage Model control scheme is devised to hold desired variables constant
The concrete storage model is used from the HYBRID whilst switching between operation states. The control
library with the mathematical description of the model scheme acts on multiple components across over the vari-
detailed in the report by Mikkelson and Doster [34]. It is a ous loops but due to the thermal coupling of the integrated
dual-pipe concrete storage, meaning it can be both charged energy system (IES) the various controls must work to-
and discharged simultaneously with separate channels for gether to respond to the variable load demand and solar
hot and cold fluids. In this design, saturated steam is run isolation profile. An overview of all controlled variables
into the hot channel at 30 bar, and subcooled water is and control components for the IES is given in Table 2 with
discharged at 30 bar in the cold channel to the secondary the schematic in Figure 1 above visualising the location of
feedwater heating stage. Detail on the temperature pro- these components.
files in the concrete storage during transient operation is
provided in Section 6.2 below, The size of the concrete 6.1.1. The Nuclear Island
storage is selected to maintain it’s average temperature Mikkelson and Frick [8] perform a detailed description
under typical solar insolation profile and dispatch and is of the control scheme they use for their SMR primary side
discussed in Section 7.6. model reused in this work. The model written for the
analysis in this paper makes use of their Tave program to
5.4. The Parabolic Trough Array control the reactor module with an overview reproduced
The parabolic trough array model is taken from the here.
ThermoCycle Modelica library developed by Quolin et al. The control program is designed to mirror the control
[35]. It comprises a solar field model that takes DNI, wind scheme proposed for the NuScale design described in the
velocity, ambient temperature, and array angle as inputs. report for the NuScale certification application [29]. Re-
It performs a dynamic 1D radial energy balance with the activity control is primarily modelled through the use of
geometry modelled on Schott PTR70 collectors [36]. For control rods to maintain a fixed core average temperature.
simplicity, it was taken that ambient temperature and In our implementation we use a nominal inlet temperature
◦
wind velocity remained constant and the array tracking of 148 C and a desire an outlet temperature of 300◦ C thus
angle was taken from the system advisor model (SAM) setting the controlled temperature to 224◦ C. Reactivity
for a parabolic trough [37]. The parabolic troughs are fed influences from injected boron and excess reactivity are set
with inlet sub-cooled water at 30 bar with saturated steam to nominal values which can be altered to simulate earlier
produced at the outlet for high solar DNI. Once again or later stages in reactor lifetime. Pressure is held constant
further detail on the transient temperature drops can be in the primary at 127.6 bar through proportional control
on the pressuriser models heaters and sprays.

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 Figure 4: State Diagram of power boost operation

Figure 5: A Modelica implementation of the model with an exploded view of the balance of plant implementation.

Table 2: Transient Analysis control methods summary. Label numbers correspond to callouts in Figure 1.

Label Component Controlled Variable Variable Setpoint

1 Turbine Control Valve (TCV) Turbine Inlet Pressure 35 bar
2 LPT Bypass Valve (LPT-BV) Electrical Power Generated Set by load demand
3 Feedwater Control Pump (FWCP) Turbine Inlet Mass Flow 67 kg/s
4 Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) Pressure Overloads Release at 150 bar
5 Concrete Discharge Pump Feedwater Temperature 148°C
6 Pressure Control Valve (Discharge Loop) Pressure in Discharge Loop 30 bar
7 Concrete Charge Pump Charge Loop Mass Flow Rate 50 kg/s if DNI > 2 W/m2 ,
1 kg/s if DNI < 2 W/m2
8 Pressure Control Valve (Charge Loop) Pressure in Charge Loop 30 bar
9 Control Rod Reactivity Reactor Average Temperature 224°C
10 Pressurizer Sprays and Heater Primary Side Pressure 127.6 bar

6.1.2. The Balance of Plant and Concrete Discharge tation is not optimised, and significant additional work is
The response of balance-of-plant controls are critical proposed by the authors to tune these controllers. Instead,
to smooth operation of the IES in transition from nominal here, the control PI values were chosen to be sufficient to
to overpower. The controls take the form of PI feedback analyse key long term transients in the system and demon-
controllers that act based on the error between a measured strate the effect of control on shorter-term transients.
state and a desired setpoint. This PI control implemen- The state switching is driven by the LPT-BV. This

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 a quantity refered to as aperture normal irradiation (ANI).
In order to maintain temperatures below safe operation
limits, mass flow is driven for all significant ANI values
with a nominal threshold for pumping set at 2 W/m2 .
This threshold can be raised to account for sensitivity of
detection equipment. The maximum mass flow rate to
the array is set to ensure sufficient steam output quality
at high ANI values. The resulting temperature profiles
in transient operation are discussed below. Pressure in
the charging loop is controlled in a similar fashion to the
discharge loop with a valve connected to an external high
pressure boundary.

6.2. Parabolic Trough and Concrete Storage Loop Temper-

atures
Temperature drops in the fluid over components are
Figure 6: Turbine off design performance of significant interest and must be modelled accurately
to properly simulate the flow of heat energy from the
parabolic troughs to the concrete storage and in turn to the
linear valve takes an input that is proportional to the feedwater line. These temperature drops vary significantly
difference between measured electrical output from the when the system is operated transiently with varying ANI
turbine and the desired level of overpower requested by an and desired length of time for reactor over nominal power
external “grid” demand. For an increase in power demand, operation. The size of the solar array and the concrete
the control signal closes the valve to force more steam over storage are primarily dictated by the need to maintain these
the LPT. The nominal opening corresponds to nominal temperature drops for typical solar and load scenarios.
power where the steam bled is sufficient to heat the entire Assuming correct sizing of these components (discussed
feedwater stream to the desired 148°C in the transient result section), we can choose setpoint
In transient overpower, the closing of the LPT-BV temperatures that the loops and concrete will vary about
causes the temperature of the feedwater at steam generator transiently. These conditions are chosen for the nuclear
inlet to reduce. This is compensated by an increase in island design modelled with a steam generator inlet con-
flow in the discharge loop carrying heat from the concrete dition of 148◦ C. We choose a parabolic trough array loop
storage to the secondary feedheater. A PI controller enacts pressure of 30 bar such that under an average typical clear
the mass flow rate through the concrete discharge pump sky DNI of around 320 W/m2 , the outlet temperatures
based on the error between the desired feedwater inlet of parallel parabolic trough loops will saturate at a tem-
temperature (148°C) and the measured value. Resulting perature of 233◦ C at the channel mass flow rate of 0.42
pressure changes in the discharge loop are counteracted by kg/s. For a ANI over the set threshold of 2 W/m2 the loop
the pressure control valve which acts as a pressuriser in the drives this flow through the parabolic troughs and into the
model with a connection to an external pressure boundary. concrete storage.
Small fluctuations are observed in the mass flow rate The concrete is ideally maintained at an average tem-
leaving the steam generator during this transient due to perature of 173◦ C but this may fluctuate significantly in
density changes in the feedwater. The fluctuations are com- transient operation depending on its sizing, solar profile
pensated for by the control of the feedwater control pump and load demand. The storage is a dual pipe configuration
(FWCP) speed based on the error between the specified allowing for continuous charge and discharge. The con-
mass flow (67 kg/s) and measured mass flow at turbine crete temperature varies significantly spatially in the block
inlet. with a typical unit cell temperature profile (taken at 4e5 s)
Pressure control in the steam generator in the secondary shown in Figure 7. The hot fluid enters from the parabolic
loop is achieved by throttling turbine inlet steam using trough at it’s saturation temperature in the upper left
the TCV. This works in conjunction with the FWCP to travelling down through the concrete. On the other side
dampen pressure and mass flow rate oscillations that occur cold fluid enters from a circulation pump also at 30 bar and
as a result of following power transients in the feedwater. travels up through the block leaving at around 175◦ C. The
The linear valve is PI-controlled based on the error from diagram is not shown to scale, with the axial nodes much
the set pressure (35 bar) and the measured pressure at longer than the lateral nodes. A detailed description of
turbine inlet. In addition to the fine pressure control from the geometry and equations used in this model is found in
the TCV, a pressure relief valve aids initialisation of the the paper detailing the model development by Mikkelson
model which allows slow discharge of over-pressurisation and Doster [34].
during start up. This heated fluid from the concrete block is circulated
through the secondary feedwater heaters shell with the
6.1.3. Concrete Charging mass flow rate controlled by the circulation pump depen-
Concrete Charging is controlled by mass flow in the dent on the desired heat transfer in this secondary.
parabolic trough array. This mass flow is altered by the
speed of the concrete charge pump and operates at two set
states depending on the product of DNI incident on the
parabolic trough array and the cosine efficiency in tracking,

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 Figure 7: Parabolic Trough and Concrete Thermal Storage Channel Temperature Analysis

7. Results and Discussion

7.1. Steady State Results

7.1.1. Parametric Study on Basic Model Parameters
The simplified steady state model was used to investi-
gate the effect of parameters on the overall system efficiency
which was defined to be the final generator power (with
pump power subtracted) divided by the reactor thermal
power. While it was found that the pressures in the feed-
water line had little effect on overall system efficiency, it
was discovered that turbine extraction pressure between
the LPT and HPT had a significant effect on system ef-
ficiency and ability to power boost. This effect is shown
in Figures 8 and 9. The higher the extraction pressure,
the lower the efficiency of the system due to the poor
matching of temperature differences in the primary heat
Figure 9: Power Boosting Change with turbine extraction pressure
exchanger. However, by lowering the extraction pressure, and bypass mass flow rate
the balance of work between what we model as the HPT
and LPT shifts towards greater work in the HPT. This
lowers the fractional power change due to bypassing mass 7.1.2. Effect of Nuclear Island Choices on Design
flow and consequently limits the ability of the system to Of interest in the overall implementation of such a
power boost. scheme is the effect the nuclear island characteristics have
on the ability of the overall system to power boost. Because
of the variety in nuclear islands, many different options for
feedwater inlet temperatures and pressures exist along with
various combinations of feedwater heating and reheating.
These conditions have a significant impact on the ability
of the plant to overproduce power by reducing steam bled
from the turbine. We chose to investigate the effect on our
simplified steady state model by increasing feedwater inlet
temperature from the 148°C in the reference model whilst
maintaining system pressure and outlet temperature. The
only other variable beyond feedwater inlet temperature
that had to change was the intermediate bleed off pressure
that had to be altered to ensure this bleed off temperature
remained above the desired final feedwater temperature.
The results of this analysis are shown in Figures 10,
11, 12. At high feedwater temperatures, significant power
boosting is achievable due to the increased mass flow rate
Figure 8: System Efficiency Change with turbine extraction pressure
and bypass mass flow rate of steam required to heat the feedwater in nominal state.
This allows for significant manipulation of the power by

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altering this steam flow. Figure 11 shows how the efficiency
of the plant in nominal operation is reduced by increasing
the feedwater inlet temperature primarily due to the high
bleed off pressure reducing the work in the HPT.
The two studies above present a trade-off. We can in-
crease power boost capabilities of the reactor by increasing
feedwater temperature and/or increasing bleed off pressure
between the HPT and LPT in the power plant. However,
these two effects are not independent of each other. Im-
proved power output comes at the cost of reducing the
plants system efficiency at nominal operation.
Many of these design parameters will often be set inde-
pendently from the balance of plant design. Most notable
is the feedwater inlet temperature which is largely a func-
tion of the nuclear islands design, so choice in extraction
pressure will typically follow from this parameter.
Figure 12: Share of total work taken by each turbine with change in
the feedwater inlet temperature

to simulate power ramping up and down between differ-

ent load demands. The aim of the transient model is to
assess how the sizing of components effects the ability to
maintain flexible operation and to investigate how tran-
sients in state switching propagate for the basic control
system introduced. As a result we use step changes in
power demand to look at worst-case scenarios for transient
deviations of key controlled variables for the demonstration
control scheme implemented.

7.3. Component Sizing

Perhaps the most useful result of the transient anal-
ysis is that it can inform component sizing for both the
parabolic trough array and the concrete storage. Figure
Figure 10: Power Boosting capability above nominal change with
Feedwater Inlet Temperature 13 shows the thermal power transferred to the steam cir-
culated through the parabolic trough array. The DNI and
Cosine efficiency of the collector data is taken from the
SAM weather library [37] for 5 approximately clear days
at the beginning of January in Phoenix, Arizona. We can
see the effect the heating from the parabolic trough and
the discharge (shown in Figure 20) has on the average
temperature of the concrete shown in Figure 14. With the
given DNI and dispatch profile, the model can maintain
the approximate concrete temperature with the number
of solar collectors used. If more collectors are used then
the concrete temperature and thermal losses will begin
to rise. To achieve this average temperature an array of
1320 Schott PTR70 collectors was used with 120 parallel
streams of 11 collectors in series. The Concrete storage
was sized to maintain its average temperature within 5°C
of the average temperature post startup. It was found this
was achievable with a total channel length of 1500 m with
6 passes in the concrete block. Reducing the size meant
Figure 11: System Efficiency when operated at max power boost that in the extreme cases of high solar input and low load
and in corresponding nominal operation change with Feedwater Inlet demand the concrete channel temperatures could spike
Temperature
leading to dry out in the channels and poor heat transfer.

7.3.1. System Power and Efficiency

7.2. Transient Analysis Key reactor variables are shown against time in Figures
7.2.1. Transient Test Scenario 15 - 18. In Figure 15 we can see strong response of the
The test case for transient control operation is taken to control system to demand changes in electrical power of
be a load demand signal that randomly switches between the system. The demonstration control system acts quickly
power demand levels from max power boosting to nominal to achieve matching of the electrical power step demand
operation. The random changes take place every 10,000 s change for maximum state switching (nominal to max

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Figure 13: Parabolic Trough Generated Heat for Transient Test Case Figure 15: Generator Load Following Electrical Power Demand

Figure 14: Concrete Energy Storage Average Temperature for Tran- Figure 16: Short term response of generator output to full step of
sient Test Case power boost load demand.

power boost) within 20min as is shown in Figure 16. Figure

17 shows how this causes transient pulses in the reactor
power during the switching of power levels. Whilst these
fluctuations are limited by the control system we see up to
around 2.5 MW pulses in the reactor power for switching
between the two extremes of demanded power. These
power pulses are damped both by control rod operation
and thermal feedback in the core and would be suppressed
further by improved control implementation but could
cause short term fuel temperature increases and effect
reactivity balance in the core.
The fluctuations of system efficiency are shown in Fig-
ure 18 the time profile of which closely matches the power
boosting in the reactor.

7.3.2. Feedwater Heating Operation

Figure 19 shows how the mass flow rate of the steam Figure 17: Reactor Power Transient Analysis
bled through the LPT-BV changes in order to obtain the
additional power demand. The converse of this mass flow
7.3.3. Steam Generator Transients
rate change is the heat required to be transferred in the
secondary feedwater heater to achieve the desired final In switching states, the feedwater inlet temperature sees
feedwater temperature which is shown in the profile in perhaps the greatest proportional transient. Heat supplied
Figure 20. from the concrete storage takes time to catch up with the
reduced feedwater heating from turbine extraction. Figure
21 shows how this feedwater inlet temperature changes

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 Figure 18: Efficiency of System in the Transient Analysis Figure 21: Feedwater Inlet Temperature for Transient Test Case

Figure 19: Mass Flow in LPT-BV for Transient Test Case Figure 22: Steam Generator Pressure for Transient Test Case

Figure 20: Heat Transferred to Feedwater in Secondary Feedwater Figure 23: Turine Inlet Mass Flow Rate for Transient Test Case
Heater for Transient Test Case

icant deviations of the controlled variables during transient

under the variable load demand. Both the turbine control operation. Whilst these fluctuations are all relatively small,
valve and the feedwater control pump act in order to they are held for over 10 min and may cause adverse effects
stabilise the effect of variable feedwater temperatures on to system components especially in the steam generator
the pressure and mass flow rate in the steam generator, during prolonged operation.
respectively. The result is illustrated in Figures 22 and 23.
Large jumps in the power correspond to the most signif-

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8. Future Work 10. Acknowledgements

The transient analysis builds a firm simulation capabil- The authors would like to thank Cory Stansbury at
ity with which to perform future work. Improved system Westinghouse Electric Company who provided valuable ex-
control is necessary to eliminate large fluctuations in feed- pertise with regards to thermal energy storage and thermal
water inlet temperatures, reactor thermal power, steam integration in nuclear cycles.
pressure, and steam generator mass flow rate. Improved
control may decrease the response time to transients, thus
11. Funding
improving the economics of such a system by providing
the auxiliary service of fast dispatchable power for an en- This project was supported by funding received from
ergy grid. A future study of optimised control using this the DOE office of Nuclear Energy’s Nuclear Energy Uni-
transient model will help answer these questions. versity Research Program under contract number DE-
Beyond this, the techno-economics of adding such a sys- NE0008988
tem to an existing nuclear power plant should be analysed
to provide an economic case for the deployment of such a
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