Microreactor Salon: Tiny Nuclear vs. the Climate Crisis
This is the first ever Climate Week NYC event dedicated to nuclear microreactors.
This gathering encourages vigorous discussion and debate. Hosted by Roving Reactor, a nuclear-enthusiastic arts and theater collective, participants will be asked to discuss the societal impacts of microreactors through structured prompts and close-text analyses. We’ll bring up speculative futures: off-grid communities enabled by microreactors, decarbonizing shipping and heavy-industry, and the economics of factory-built nuclear. And we’re unafraid to talk about elephants in the room, like nuclear arms races affecting public perception of nuclear energy and historical corruption in the nuclear industry.
Light food and drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) will be provided, views of the High Line at sunset will be spectacular, and I hear there will be a fantastic microreactor cake (High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium not included).
In a rapidly expanding field, dozens of startups are raising hundreds of millions of dollars and working towards demonstrations of their first-of-a-kind microreactors. This salon brings together microreactor developers with activists, academics, artists, writers, investors, policy-makers, representatives from NGOs, and anyone with a curiosity about nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy remains the world’s leading source of carbon-free electricity. All scales of nuclear power can help mitigate carbon emissions from fossil fuels, but microreactors play a special role in the ecosystem of nuclear energy. Yes, they will help decarbonize mining and heavy-industry, and yes, their lower capital costs make them attractive to new entrants. But microreactors transcend science and economics. By emphasizing small-scale risk profiles and decentralized deployments, we can fashion a rhetorical common ground between nuclear-skeptical public figures and thinkers from within the nuclear bubble.
Please join us for the first ever Microreactor Salon!
“Microreactor Salon: Tiny Nuclear vs. the Climate Crisis” is presented by the Roving Reactor, a project by Steve Moore, and is co-hosted by Jared Hoffman, a NYC-based documentary filmmaker.