A long time in the making: new paper by me!
"A Techno-Economic Evaluation of Microreactors for Off-Grid and Microgrid Applications"

Check it out:
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Tl;dr New microreactors have the potential to be cheaper and more reliable sources of power relative to a 100% renewable system, and they could be cost-competitive with diesel power in regions with high fuel costs.

I'm no Shellenberger (right?!?), but I will take the bait on your tweet about pro-nuclear folks not sharing this image... 🧵1/4

https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1565212499384930306

2/4 As a scientist, I find it really interesting that you consider the results in this chart to be a scientific fact, and not the conclusion of a complicated process that is very much political. E.g. what assumptions were made, what models were relied on, what was excluded, etc.

I am beyond thrilled to be sharing our paper in @PLOSONE "Land-use intensity of electricity production and tomorrow’s energy landscape" w/ co-authors @linusblomqvist, @MarianSwain, @TheHernandezLab
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… 1. Why did we do this study? We noticed in the land-use literature, most estimates relied on a small number of case studies or hypothetical/modeled power plants, rather than real-world data. We wanted to aggregate shit-loads of data on real power plants across technologies

🧵 Okay, a deeper dive on global uranium supply:
yes, you’re right! Russia does not produce that much uranium, just 6% of global production in 2020. Top producers in order were: Kazakhstan (41%), Australia (13%), Namibia (11%), Canada (7%)...everyone else (22%) But what about Kazakhstan? Largest producer of Uranium, yes, but also: about half of their uranium moves *through Russia* to get to market (the rest goes to China). They are an ally of Russia which raises concerns...

A little rant on those U.S. “energy” sanctions against Russia.
First, a rave: yes! Thank you, Biden!
BUT, the only significant energy source sanctioned is oil… of which the U.S. gets less than 2% of our annual consumption from Russia. What about coal and LNG? About 1% of U.S. annual coal consumption is imported, and most of that is from Colombia.
eia.gov/energyexplaine….

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday looking at global capacity of clean energy (nuclear+hydro+renewables). First up, I realized it's easy to calculate global capacity factors (what percentage of the year a power plant is running). In 2020, nuclear was 78%, geothermal 74% Interesting to see that hydro has been so stable, likely reflecting the seasonal availability of the resource, and it's secondary uses as energy&water storage, flood mitigation

In energy and climate discussion there's been a lot more focus recently on Environmental Justice, which is great and long overdue. We all know fossil plants tend to be located in marginalized communities, and I've had many people ask me lately if the same is true for nuclear... The answer: No for power plants, yes for fuel cycle. And it's complicated. This paper has great demographic analysis of areas around nuclear power plants: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

I made some graphics from their results....

In the past few weeks, I've given several talks on #advancednuclear with folks who are not very familiar with the technology. It's been great to hear questions from new audiences who are open to nuclear, but also have valid concerns. These resources address those concerns... For folks who aren't energy wonks, a common question regards proliferation and security concerns around new reactors, especially when exporting tech. This @PGSnuclear report evaluates advanced reactor concepts on security & safeguards metrics: globalnexusinitiative.org/wp-content/upl…

& similar questions to Adler et al. (2020), Jarvis et al. (2019) looked at the emissions and cost implications of Germany's nuclear phase-out, using a novel machine-learning framework to test existing narratives nber.org/papers/w26598.… Their method: "predicts which power plants increased their output in response to the nuclear plant closures... to empirically assess how a change in electricity production or consumption at one location propagates throughout the electricity trans- mission network."

1/ I know there are serious problems in the world, but bad data journalism can make them worse. I didn’t want to wade into #BernieBro discourse, but I can’t let bad analysis slide.
Specifically, this article: salon.com/2020/03/09/the…
Thread: 2/ I was surprised how many people I respect shared this article, considering the results of the analysis DO NOT support the headline. Perhaps people did not read the article too carefully, but I also worry when people share an article just for the headline. Read for yourself...

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