Coriolis Seminar - Nuclear power in startup mode - What role can startups play in the design of new nuclear reactors?

The world of startups - small teams, private funding, accelerated development rates - is the antithesis of the way we perceive nuclear power today, with its very long timescales and high development costs. Unfortunately, these characteristics have been reflected in a number of recent projects in the French nuclear industry. In contrast to these projects, led by large teams scattered across several institutes (EDF, CEA, Framatome...), “startup mode” means supporting a large number of small, integrated teams (12 today in the 1st phase of the France 2030 “Innovative Reactors” call for projects).
This presentation will first explore the potential advantages of this mode of operation: exploring a greater number of avenues, avoiding having to “grow up too fast” and falling into a less efficient mode of operation, and not finding oneself “without a reactor” if a choice made at the start of a project turns out to be the wrong one. For these advantages to bear fruit, it is necessary to overcome the difficulties inherent in the nuclear environment, in particular the scale of the investments required and safety requirements: this is why the “startup” mode seems particularly well suited to the field of innovative reactors, in which the aim is to explore the space of possible designs to achieve a safer reactor at lower cost.