SPECIAL REPORT | NUCLEAR-RENEWABLES TIE IN
Nuclear with PV: benefits for both
Combining nuclear and solar PV offers a wealth of economic opportunities for new revenue streams to be derived from expansive nuclear sites. In addition though, deploying solar could actually make nuclear safer
By Janet Wood
ELECTRICITY GENERATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN to some extent a matter of combining the geography of resources with that of users. For example, coal-fired power stations were most often sited at the ‘mine mouth’, to minimise the transport of coal and instead transmit energy efficiently along high-voltage power lines. That also applies with the advent of large-scale renewables; getting the best out of wind and solar depends on siting plants where there is wind or solar resource. Nuclear was to some extent an exception to this rule, as
the energy in nuclear fuel is so large that the energy cost to transport it fades into insignificance, but that meant secondary resources, such as cooling water availability, came to the fore. Similarly, when a site meets renewables’ energy need – solar irradiation or high winds – it has a secondary resource need to meet: large areas of land. Again, nuclear’s huge energy resource means that it requires just a small footprint for power stations that export energy at very large scale. But in a twist of fate, many nuclear activities have been allocated extremely large land areas – whether that is for the more land-hungry activities associated with the fuel chain, for exclusion areas or simply as administrative areas around a power plant. These areas
are generally off limits for the general public and excluded from other activities such as farming. But increasingly, they are proving attractive areas for installing renewable energy generation and in particular solar PV. The relatively simple installation and management of PV panels – and the speed at which the cost of buying and installing panels has fallen – has given rise to a ‘solar everywhere’ mindset and nuclear sites are no exception. Solar offers nuclear the potential to increase income, reduce site costs or even help fulfil safety requirements.
Cleanup to Clean Energy The US has seen an initiative that would produce solar energy at gigawatt-scale from US Federally owned nuclear sites.
The initiative is known as ‘Cleanup to Clean Energy’
and it was announced in July 2023 as part of the Biden- Harris Administration’s attempt to leveraging federal properties to support utility-scale clean energy projects. It follows Executive Order 14057, signed by President Biden in December 2021, which calls on federal agencies to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2030 and directs them to authorise use of their real property assets, including land
Above: Nuclear plants often occupy vast sites that could be usefully used to deploy solar PV installations 16 | September 2024 |
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