Thread by @J_Lovering

to;dr (yeah, it’s 273 pages)
Main opportunity: decarbonization of power sector
Main challenge: cost of new designs
Main insight: there are many pathways to reduce costs
Main rec: gov support through smart policies can accel. innovation of adv. nuclear
energy.mit.edu/research/futur…

The study modeled future electricity mix and prices in six regions under varying carbon constraints. The results were clear, you don’t *need* nuclear if you keep emissions where they are, but forgoing nuclear with deep decarbonization has high costs

I’m sharing more great insights from this report today, MIT’s Future of Nuclear in a Carbon Constrained World. For the economist in you, here is the Opportunity Cost of forgoing nuclear.

Looking at new opportunities for nuclear beyond electricity, the report has a deep dive on process heat and industrial applications:

For even more decarbonization, how could Nuclear contribute to transportation?

Coming back to costs, while the over-budget First-of-a-kind builds get a lot of press, new builds of standardized designs are coming in on-budget and on-schedule

And why is everyone so excited about modular reactors and factory fabrication? Because construction is expensive. The MIT report cites a great McKinsey study on productivity across sectors. Manufacturing is getting more productive; construction is not. mckinsey.com/~/media/McKins…

Labor is a lot of nuclear’s cost, but commodities matter too, and not all reactors are created equal. (Note that if you put a wind turbine on here it would be off the chart!)

Okay, we got labor and commodities, but there are *a bunch* of other cool cross-cutting tech innovations that could cut costs for nuclear. One of those is energy storage! You normally think about storage wrt to renewables, but it could help nuclear just as much