Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) represent great promise for the nuclear energy industry as the long-awaited solution to lower capital costs, ‘walk-away’ safe characteristics and easier siting decisions. But early November 2023, NuScale Power terminated their project to build the first pilot six-module SMR power plant near Idaho Falls in the USA. Is this the end of the nuclear renaissance? Do other lesser-known innovations in nuclear technology have the ultimate potential in an increasingly contested space for high energy security with zero emissions?
Join MIT Tepco chair and Director of the MIT Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, in conversation with Associate Professor Edward Obbard, Interim Director of the UNSW Nuclear Innovation Centre, to find out what this means for the future of nuclear energy worldwide.
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EVENT TIMINGS
4.30pm Registration opens and welcome reception
5.00pm In conversation
6.00pm Event ends
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TICKETS
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ON DEMAND RECORDING
This event will be recorded and available for on demand viewing. To receive a link to the recording, please register for an 'on demand rcording' ticket.
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VISITOR SAFETY INFORMATION
The health and safety of our patrons is our top priority. This event will abide by the Public Health Order prevailing at the time. Please follow our conditions of entry and check back here for updated information prior to the event. Do not attend the event if you feel unwell, have recently experienced any cold or flu-like symptoms or are awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test.
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CONTACT
For all enquiries, please email engineering.events@unsw.edu.au.
Jacopo Buongiorno is the TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES), and the Director of Science and Technology of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. He has published over 100 journal articles in the areas of reactor safety and design, two-phase flow and heat transfer, and nanofluid technology. For his research work and teaching he won several awards, among which recently the 2022 ANS Presidential Citation. Jacopo is a consultant for the nuclear industry in the area of reactor thermal-hydraulics, and a member of the Accrediting Board of the National Academy of Nuclear Training. He is also a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, a Fellow of the NUclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH) conference, a member of the ASME, past member of the Naval Studies Board (2017-2019), and a participant in the Defense Science Study Group (2014-2015).
Edward Obbard studied mechanical design and materials engineering at the University of Nottingham, UK, and later studied mandarin Chinese while working on his PhD research in biomedical alloys at the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Metal Research, in Shenyang, China. His experience of life in Shenyang, a developing industrial city of 8m people, about the same population as New South Wales, only with dark, -20C winters and powered almost entirely by coal, caused him to rethink the need for nuclear energy as an essential ingredient for development, environmental conservation and energy security for the 21st century. Thus redirecting his knowledge of materials science to focus on nuclear applications, he worked 2010-2015 at ANSTO designing and building new nuclear infrastructure for irradiated materials research; he now leads the growing and diverse nuclear engineering program at UNSW Sydney, which delivers education programs and research training in this critical sector for Australia, and the wider world.
