Advanced Clean Energy and Production – Accelerating Energy Transitions Through Adaptive Clean Energy and Industrial Capacity

National and Global economies must rapidly transition to a clean energy footing across power, industries, and transportation. There is perhaps no better time to examine not only what sources of energy we will rely on, but also the fundamental energy production and delivery architectures, their related implications, and resulting opportunities. In many cases policy is focusing on replacing carbon-emitting energy generation (e.g. coal generation) with distributed zero-carbon sources (e.g. distributed wind, solar) with a concomitant buildout of electrical transmission systems and energy storage. Relying on such an evolutionary approach on an accelerated timeframe might well be possible, but most likely will create resilience issues and security concerns and require substantial overbuild of capacity to address those concerns. It is not unreasonable then to ask – is there a better, more efficient, higher certainty, and adaptable approach to augment this path to clean energy production and delivery systems?

One approach might be to imagine the deployment of advanced energy and production architectures based on numbers of very small nuclear reactors (10-100 MWt). The strategy is to power principally difficult to decarbonize, energy-intense industries by embedding small, scalable clean energy generators (micro-nuclear reactors) with modularized industrial and manufacturing processes in small increments, resulting in islanded clean energy and production centers. Such an approach effectively trades “efficiencies of scale” with “economies of number”. Although co-location of energy and industry/manufacturing is certainly not new, the strategy to a) incrementally provision (i.e. add blocks of energy generation and production, as feasible and required) and b) use factory-built, mass-produced, plug-and-play small nuclear reactors (referred to as “nuclear batteries” or “quantum batteries”) opens very different options and opportunities than prior approaches. Several related intriguing implications of such an approach might be considered, including how such a strategy might make more efficient use of scarce investment capital, implications for systems resilience and security, potential for enabling energy community transitions (e.g. coal community transitions), and enabling energy provisioning for rapidly growing communities with poorly developed infrastructures.

The presentation and discussion will examine basic elements of the “adaptive clean energy” (ACE) strategy built on embedded nuclear batteries and modular production and related implications including technology, business, economic, regulatory and policy gaps. (Buongiorno, Freda, Aumeier and Chilton, “A Strategy to Unlock the Potential of Nuclear Energy for a New and Resilient Global Energy-Industrial Paradigm”, The Bridge 51(2): 48-56)

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Aumeier serves as Senior Advisor for nuclear energy programs and strategy at Idaho National Laboratory. In this role, he is responsible for developing strategies, programs, initiatives, and partnerships to advance U.S. energy security and clean energy objectives. Over three decades of service in the national laboratory system, Dr. Aumeier has provided innovative leadership in a variety of business, management, and research roles spanning national and homeland security, clean energy and systems research, nuclear energy technology, and university research partnerships. He is a recognized expert and thought leader in technology, business, and clean energy strategies. He was named to his current post in 2016 after serving for 6 years as Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment and Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, where he designed and led strategic, technical, and business transformation and growth initiatives including major recruiting and reorganization campaigns, development of new laboratory facilities and research capabilities, and innovation in the management of 130 research laboratories and 350 employees. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Energy Systems and Technologies Division where he developed the concept for and led the development of a major new national program focused on integrated energy systems, was Director of the Laboratory’s Energy Security Initiative, and was Director of Nuclear Nonproliferation. Before joining INL, Dr. Aumeier served for 10 years (1995-2005) with Argonne National Laboratory where he served in various leadership positions in nuclear energy and national security research and management, including leading the development of new nondestructive assay and experiment design and analysis methods, developing new homeland security programs, and serving as Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Engineering Research. He also served a special assignment (2002-2003) with the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington DC as a technical advisor on counterterrorism issues where he helped establish national strategies to address radiological threats. He has served on or led numerous academic and regional leadership boards and committees including Idaho’s Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission and Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission, and Idaho Strategic Energy Alliance. Dr. Aumeier holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from The University of Michigan (1994) and an MBA from The University of Chicago (2002).