Ministers, senior government officials, CEOs and nuclear industry leaders discussed practical steps to address the challenges faced in new nuclear energy construction. The conference sessions explored key topics central to Terra Praxis mission, including:
Removing barriers to accessing public and private sources of financing;
Ensuring healthy and resilient supply chains;
Building a skilled and diverse nuclear workforce to support technological advancements and meet industry's evolving demands.
Co-chaired by OECD-NEA Director-General, William D Magwood IV and the Swedish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Energy, Business and Industry, Ebba Busch, this event marked a significant milestone in the global dialogue surrounding nuclear energy.
Kirsty chaired the session:
First movers for industrial applications: Outlook and timelines
First movers from various industries are poised to play a critical role in achieving economy-wide decarbonization. Early adopters of nuclear energy as a tool for industrial decarbonization will send an important demand signal to spark widespread deployment across multiple sectors –industrial applications including off-grid heat and power to replace diesel generators in remote regions for mining operations, high-temperature heat to replace fossil fuel co-generation in heavy industries such as chemicals processing and potash production for the fertilizer industry, marine propulsion and electricity for data centers. This discussion will highlight the impact of pioneering companies and explore strategies for incentivizing and supporting new markets and business models for nuclear energy in support of carbon emissions reductions across the industrial economy.
During the session she chaired, Kirsty reflected on the status of the clean energy transition for the hard-to-decarbonize industries and the readiness of the nuclear industry to step up for the challenge.
"We are halfway through this critical decade and large industrial energy users are figuring out how to meet commitments to decarbonize hundreds of gigawatts of business-critical energy services – starting in the 2030 timeframe - and many are concluding that nuclear energy would be the most practical option to substitute fossil fuels that currently supply the heat, power, and fuels that power their business critical energy services'.'
''The needed speed and scale of deployments will require radically new approaches to designing, licensing, and delivering nuclear energy services – and at Terra Praxis we have been working with our global REPOWER consortium – including governments and regulators - to understand these new markets and design strategies that can enable nuclear energy to meet these commercial requirements. This is a new market category, which demands new kinds of products.''