Optimizing Reactor Sizes for Data Center Energy Demands: Balancing Economies of Scale, Mass Production, and Availability Requirements
This tool, motivated by the rising interest in nuclear energy for data centers and other applications with high service availability needs, assesses the trade-offs between economies of scale and mass production to identify optimal reactor sizes.
While some advocates argue that large plants are ideal for providing gigawatts of clean, firm energy, others support SMRs that can be deployed in large quantities and benefit from learning effects. The findings of this study suggest that identifying the optimal size for a reactor is likely more nuanced.
A framework is developed to determine the optimal reactor power sizes with minimum LCOE for data centers, considering factors like demand, availability requirements, whether the plant powers only the data center or also exports electricity, electricity price, and interest rate. It was also found that based on the demand, a mix of reactor sizes may be ideal.
This tool was used to produce the results published here
Citation: Hanna, B.N.; Abou-Jaoude, A.; Guaita, N.; Talbot, P.; Lohse, C. Navigating Economies of Scale and Multiples for Nuclear-Powered Data Centers and Other Applications with High Service Availability Needs. Energies 2024, 17, 5073. https://doi.org/10.3390/en17205073
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Results similar to the Energies paper can be reproduced by running the Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb files).