Status of energy storage options for electricity from nuclear power plants

Existing nuclear power plants benefit from high efficiency by operating at full capacity for generating electricity. However, the demand for electricity is an hourly variable and thus excess electricity is available at off-peak times on a given day. The price of this off-peak electricity is very low compared to the average price. Storing or utilizing this off-peak electricity for various processes will provide additional value to the electricity and will improve the overall economics of the nuclear power plant. This work looks at a few energy storage technologies suitable for large-scale electricity storage from base-load power plants such as nuclear power plants. A preliminary assessment of these technologies has been completed through a literature review. These technologies are categorized into three forms of energy: chemical, mechanical and hydrogen. Batteries are found to be too impractical for large-scale electricity storage until vast amounts of distributed battery storage is available through plugin electric vehicles. Pumped hydro storage is suitable in terms of energy storage capacity but not in terms of cost, construction time and location. Gaseous hydrogen storage in underground reservoirs is suitable at scale but not enough clean hydrogen production processes are ready for large-scale demonstration. Storing hydrogen in natural gas pipeline networks is promising in the short-term while deployment capabilities are being assessed by commercial companies.