Education and Training Series #55: Evaluating Changing Paradigms Across the Nuclear Industry
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
Dr. Lovering’s recent work focuses on microreactors (SMRs <10MWe), trying to understand the pathways to commercialization and economic competitiveness. To understand their potential, a techno-economic evaluation of microreactors for off-grid and community microgrid applications was first performed. The results indicate that microreactors can be cheaper and more reliable compared with 100% renewables systems, and they can also be cost-competitive with diesel where fuel costs are greater than $1/liter and the microreactor capital cost is less than $15,000/kW. However, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for microreactors is most sensitive to the initial capital cost, and whether this technology will ever move beyond niche markets will depend on the learning effects accrued through factory fabrication. Therefore, the hypothetical trade-offs between economies of scale and economies of volume for potential factory-fabricated microreactors are also examined. The breakeven volumes necessary for microreactors to become cost-competitive with large reactors and with fossil fuels, using parameters from historic nuclear builds and analogous energy technologies are calculated. Drawing from the literature on learning rates across energy technologies, potential learning rates for various sized microreactors based on historical relations are predicted.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Dr. Jessica Lovering is the co-founder of the Good Energy Collective, a new organization working on progressive nuclear policy. She recently completed her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her dissertation focused on how commercial nuclear trade affects international security standards and how very small nuclear reactors could be deployed at the community level. She is a Fellow with the Energy for Growth Hub, looking at how advanced nuclear can be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa. She was formerly the Director of the Energy Program at the Breakthrough Institute, a pioneering research institute changing how people think about energy and the environment. Her work at Breakthrough sought policies to spur innovation in nuclear power technologies to drive down costs and accelerate deployment as part of a solution to climate change and economic development. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics from the University of California Berkeley and a Master’s degree in Energy Policy from the University of Colorado.