3 ms·

> 15 MWe / min "load following" capability I know nothing of nuclear. What sets this rate? Is it some system level thermal gradient limitation? Or maybe the co

• jandrese 4y ago
  Mostly it is the half lives of the reaction products, sometimes the half lives of the decay products or intermediate products. Ramping up and down was historically somewhat difficult, famously one of the contributing factors to the Chernobyl accident was the reactor having been turned down to a very low level on the previous day. You have to be careful not to accidentally poison your reactor during the day when the solar farms are chugging out megawatts only to not be able to ramp up in the evening when the sun sets.
• Ekaros 4y ago
  Part of it is also that whole system have large amount of "inertia". We are talking about megawatts of power. First in heated water and then passed through a massive turbine. This whole process carries for a bit. And you want it to run the grid and not the other way around.
  • nomel 4y ago
    > And you want it to run the grid and not the other way around. As simple as it is, this really blew my mind. I never considered that all the plants need to work together, as a system, each with "inertia", but all without ringing/oscillations. Thanks, I'll need to dig into this deeper! I can only assume that having grid batteries can really clean things up.
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      The turbines have some perks in this. Batteries can supply power, but they are not as good in smoothing things out than actual large physical masses in thermal power plants and hydro plants. But it is kinda amazing to know that all of these generators run essentially in sync. If one slows down all of them slow done.