Nuclear power plants are expected to make an important contribution to the decarbonisation of electricity supply alongside variable renewable generation, especially if their operational flexibility is enhanced by coupling them with thermal energy storage. This paper presents a system modelling approach to identifying configurations of flexible nuclear plants that minimise the investment and operation costs in a decarbonised energy system, effectively proposing a system-driven design of flexible nuclear technology. Case studies presented in the paper explore the impact of system features on plant configuration choices. The results suggest that cost-efficient flexible nuclear configurations should adapt to the system they are located in. In the main low-carbon scenarios and assuming standard-size nuclear power plants (1,610 MW_el), the lowest-cost system configuration included around 500 MW_el of additional secondary generation capacity coupled to the nuclear power plants, with 4.5 GWh_th of thermal storage capacity and a discharging duration of 2.2 h. Net system benefits per unit of flexible nuclear generation for the main scenarios were quantified at £29-33 m/yr for a wind-dominated system and £19-20 m/yr for a solar-dominated system.

预计核电厂将与可变可再生能源发电一起为电力供应的脱碳做出重要贡献，特别是如果通过将它们与热能存储相结合来提高其运行灵活性。本文提出了一种系统建模方法，用于识别灵活核电站的配置，最大限度地减少脱碳能源系统的投资和运营成本，有效地提出灵活核技术的系统驱动设计。本文中的案例研究探讨了系统特性对电厂配置选择的影响。结果表明，具有成本效益的灵活核配置应适应它们所在的系统。在主要的低碳情景和假设标准规模的核电站（1,610 MW _el )，成本最低的系统配置包括约 500  MW _el的附加二次发电容量与核电站耦合，具有 4.5  GWh _th的蓄热容量和 2.2 小时的放电持续时间。对于主要情景，每单位灵活核能发电的净系统收益被量化为风力主导系统每年 29-33 百万英镑，太阳能主导系统每年 19-20 百万英镑。