Throughout the five weeks, the student teams will work together and apply their acquired knowledge to formulate a deployment plan for utilizing either a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) or a Microreactor. Each group will showcase its deployment plan on the last day of the fifth week, aiming to win in the 2024 pitch competition. Each student group will pick a town or location to explore its growth plans. They will begin by identifying a key business sector of interest to the area (such as data centers, mining, tourism, or metals processing).
Following this, they will choose a reactor type and investigate why it is a viable option for the selected town, taking into account factors such as the public’s acceptability of nuclear energy, the connectivity of the town’s power grid or its absence, the appropriateness and availability of a site, logistical considerations in the supply chain, the necessity for process heat, the logistics of transporting nuclear materials through the area, and deciding between a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) or a Microreactor as the reactor type.
Teams are encouraged to consider “Edge of the Grid” communities as likely options for their projects.