W. Robb Stewart
@nuclear_robb
CTO at Alva Energy Activate Fellow MIT PhD Nuclear Science & Engineering
Everyone says nuclear power is over-regulated. With word of the big nuclear EOs looming, I spent a few weeks talking to people in the nuclear industry to find out which reforms they thought would be most helpful, and which they were nervous about. Here are the top 12 (a🧵...)
Taking a closer look at this study shows that ~100 MWe is best, if you only plan to deploy 1000 MWe total. The DOE goal is 200 GWe, 2000X more! Same study shows at 10 GWe demand, large nuclear is best.
What is the ideal reactor size to power a 1 GW data center? Too big, and you don’t have enough redundancy to offer high availability. Too small, and you take too large of a hit on scale economies. 100 MW reactors could be the optimal longterm, according to this study (attached…