Nuclear power plants will continue to be regulated by the Atomic Energy Control Board regardless of the design and operation of the electricity market or the ownership status of the facilities. It should be noted that approximately one-half the world s nuclear power plants are owned by private companies, not public owned, without any differences in safety or operational performance. Similarly, there are many successful nuclear generating plants operating in both regulated and unregulated electricity regimes. However, in a deregulated electricity industry, the threat of loss of external power can be expected to be larger given the anticipated lower transmission and distribution system reliability. Both load rejection and transmission system isolation events will be more common than has been customary thus far.
All power plants require a stable external power grid, and nuclear power plants are no exception.
In the event of a plant outage, a nuclear power plant must maintain internal power for its safety, control and main reactor coolant circulation systems, to name only the most important. In the event of a complete loss of external power, a shut down reactor relies on its backup diesel or gas turbine generators to supply internal power. At the very least, nuclear power plants will have to review and assess the reliability of their backup power supplies in an environment of increasing grid instability. The importance of this issue has recently been highlighted by the Atomic Energy Control Board, and will be a consideration in future licensing processes. Well performing large scale nuclear facilities producing relatively low cost, base load power could have an impact on the rate that competing generating sources enter the market.