Technical and Economic Feasibility of Crushed Rock with Synthetic Oil Heat Storage Coupled to Light Water Reactors in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. The UAE is building four pressurized-water reactors and expanding solar generation. Large-scale addition of solar without storage results in excess capacity and inefficient dispatch during some periods of the year. Adding heat storage to the nuclear power plants was investigated to reduce electricity generation at times of excess solar generation and provide added electricity at times of no solar output while the reactors are operated at baseload. This results in full utilization of nuclear and higher utilization of solar while reducing carbon dioxide emission from fossil plants. A new low-cost heat storage is proposed to address the storage needs—the Crushed Rock Ultra-large Stored Heat (CRUSH) system. CRUSH enables low-cost 100-GWh of heat storage to address daily to weekday/weekend heat storage needs. The performance of the grid and the performance of CRUSH were analyzed to understand total system performance and explore the option space for the design.