Category: News & Updates

Alva Energy acknowledged in DOE’s Nuclear Liftoff Report

Posted on December 17, 2024December 17, 2024 by bushwickadmin

Proud to announce that Alva Energy contributed to the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office’s landmark Nuclear Liftoff report, providing insight on cost modeling and financing frameworks for large and small modular nuclear facilities.

The updated report features data from our COSMIC software (Cost Optimized Simulator of Manufacturing, Installation and Construction). Originally pioneered by our CTO @Robbie Stewart at MIT under the name NCET, and expanded at Alva, COSMIC applies a consistent methodology across different reactor designs to reveal how specific design choices drive costs and schedules. Using advanced techniques like genetic algorithms for schedule optimization and Monte Carlo methods for uncertainty analysis, COSMIC provides stakeholders with robust, data-driven insights into how various design decisions impact the bottom line.

Our contributions also included analysis of nuclear project history and historical drivers of cost overruns, helping to identify key lessons learned and best practices for future projects. Our team’s expertise in nuclear project economics helped inform the report’s comprehensive analysis of financing pathways and cost structures – key elements in accelerating America’s clean energy transition through nuclear innovation.

Alva is committed to bringing practical, data-driven solutions to nuclear project development. We’re honored to work alongside the DOE LPO in advancing the future of nuclear energy, and it was a pleasure working with our colleagues at MIT, McKinsey, and other companies on this important initiative.

Read the full report here.

New SMR research: Smaller doesn’t mean more modular

Posted on December 16, 2024December 17, 2024 by bushwickadmin

Does “smaller” actually mean “more modular” in nuclear power? Our latest research exploring this question revealed some fascinating insights about the complex scaling relationships in nuclear plant design.

A core promise of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) is their ability to shift more work to factories and away from construction sites. However, our detailed analysis of reactor designs found that larger reactors have a higher ratio of offsite to onsite work than their smaller counterparts.

The insight emerged from water cooler conversations at Alva about a fundamental challenge in nuclear scaling: civil structures and site improvements don’t scale down proportionally with reactor size. For example, the BWRX-300’s reactor building is about 1/3 the size of the ABWR but outputs 1/4 or 1/5 the power. The AP1000 demonstrates this scaling benefit in reverse – it required only an 11% cost increase over the smaller AP600 but delivered almost 80% more power.

This creates an important dynamic: as reactors get smaller, certain aspects of construction – particularly civil works, foundations, and site improvements – remain predominantly onsite activities and don’t shrink linearly with reactor size. Some building dimensions are driven by human access requirements, seismic criteria, and shielding that don’t scale linearly with power output. This affects the balance between onsite and offsite work in complex ways that challenge conventional assumptions about modularity.