ATLANTA — May 4, 2023 — At the Reuters SMR & Advanced Reactor 2023, Anthropocene Institute's colleagues at TerraPraxis discussed “Fast, Low Cost, Repeatable: Designing the Global Coal Repowering System.” Ingersoll and Gogan began by presenting the ambitious IPCC targets for halting climate change, as well as the growing need for energy, requiring installed nuclear capacity of 400 gigawatts by 2050. The speed and scale needed to achieve these goals is daunting, but nuclear energy will play a big role in electricity generation and in targeting the hardest to decarbonize sectors, including coal — the single largest source of global carbon emissions today.

“But it’s incredibly difficult, because people need the energy,” said Gogan, “…and communities depend on plants for jobs, socioeconomic benefits and to stabilize their grids.” She added that nuclear can decarbonize other parts of the economy such as industrial heat and alternative fuels to accelerate and scale the energy transition.

In seeking out the right level of speed and scale needed to address climate disruption, TerraPraxis examined products like airplanes, ships, cars, and iPhones, all produced in factories. While the nuclear industry has not been known for speed and scale in the past, Ingersoll provided the example of one conventional nuclear plant that achieved 560 megawatts per year and employed 5,000 workers on site — that’s 112 kilowatts per worker per year at a cost of $4,285 per watt. TerraPraxis seeks to take these types of achievements and convert successful nuclear technologies and capabilities into products that can be deployed quickly and at scale.