Education and Training Series #46: Global Potential for Small and Micro Reactor Systems to Provide Electricity Access
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
Small and micro-scale modular reactors have received considerable attention for their potential to reduce costs, load follow and meet electricity needs in places where the size of conventional reactor technologies is unwarranted. This small scale is particularly relevant in the developing world where large centralized grids are uncommon and the need for electricity is considerable. More than 1 billion people globally are currently estimated to live without access to any electricity. The Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for reliable, affordable and clean energy for all people by 2030, creating an additional imperative for rapid low carbon technological deployment. This talk will present a novel market analysis of near-term energy demand. We use state-of-the-art satellite imagery to identify regions with no night-time light as a proxy for electricity poverty, and ambient population to determine the number of persons in these regions. GIS is used to create corresponding maps showing the capacity needed to provide this degree of electricity as a function of location if only micro and mini-grids are available. Additional considerations including resilience to natural hazards, siting considerations and competitive technologies are discussed.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Dr. Amy Schweikert is is a Research Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. She is a Fellow in the Payne Institute for Public Policy and co-appointed in the Nuclear Science Program. Her work focuses broadly in the areas of infrastructure resilience and development. This includes a focus on quantitative risk modeling for infrastructure related to climate change and hazard events. Additionally, her work looks at socio-technical options for energy expansion for underserved areas of the globe, including the role of nuclear energy as a component of the low-carbon energy technology portfolio. She is a graduate of the Santa Fe Institute’s Summer School on Complex Systems and hired as a coordinator for the 2019 and 2020 sessions. She has consulting experience with the United Nations, the World Bank and a number of public and private entities. She is a Colorado native and holds a Ph.D. in Civil Systems Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, a Masters of Science in Civil Systems Engineering and a certificate in Engineering for Developing Communities from University of Colorado Boulder and completed her undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Boston University.