Stanford Energy Seminar | Understanding the Actual Economics of Nuclear Power: Benefits – including those often uncounted – exceed costs | Jeffrey Bohn & Guido Núñez-Mujica, Anthropocene Institute

The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more. 

About the talk

Nuclear energy is often labeled “too expensive.” This conclusion too often relies on incomplete and shallow analyses that rely on small samples and focus on a narrow set of benefits. This session examines the full economic picture of nuclear power: 1. Characterize overnight construction, financing, and operating costs for nuclear reactors in a larger sample of countries. This research shows the US is often an outlier in terms of exceptionally costly nuclear reactor builds. That is, many other countries can build nuclear power plants substantially faster and cheaper. 2. Discuss a wider set of benefits that are frequently excluded from standard economic analyses of different energy sources. Nuclear power plants, once built (including in the US) dramatically reduce operating costs of energy production. This direct benefit is typically the focus of comparative energy analyses. The wider set of benefits include zero carbon emissions, reduced pollution, and a range of indirect economic benefits. We will explore how these factors reshape the economics of nuclear energy in real-world systems—and why overlooking them can lead to distorted policy and investment decisions.

Takeaway: When a more comprehensive characterization of all costs and benefits are considered, nuclear power may look very different than its reputation suggests.

Speakers:

Dr. Jeffrey Bohn is a senior advisor, researcher, and investor focusing on data engineering, machine intelligence, climate resilience, and risk modeling for enterprise deployment at financial services and energy companies. Previous roles include Chief Research & Innovation Officer at Swiss Re in Zürich and Chief Science Officer at State Street Global Exchange in San Francisco. His academic affiliations include UC Berkeley, NYU, University of Tokyo, and EPFL. He received his Ph.D. in Finance from UC Berkeley. Dr. Bohn often conducts seminars on topics ranging from risk & portfolio management to machine learning. He has published widely in the area of credit risk. He co-authored with Roger Stein Active Credit Portfolio Management in Practice (Wiley, 2009). His recent research focuses on credit-risk modeling, clean energy (with a focus on nuclear), resilience modeling, ESG investing, socially responsible machine intelligence, causal inference to improve machine-learning interpretability, quantum computing, and machine-intelligence-enabled tools to assess company & urban resilience.

Guido Núñez-Mujica is a data scientist with an interdisciplinary background, experience in mathematical modeling, stochastic methods and analysis of complex systems. He is passionate about communicating science in understandable terms to general audiences. Guido is a former entrepreneur (founder of LavaAmp and In Situ Diagnostics), a TED Fellow, and a Cornell Alliance for Science Fellow.

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

• Attend live. The auditorium may change quarter by quarter, so check each seminar event to confirm the location. Explore the current quarter's schedule.
• Watch live in a browser livestream if available. Check each seminar event for its unique livestream URL.
• Watch recordings of past seminars 
  • Available on the Past Energy Seminars page and the Energy Seminars playlist of the Stanford Energy YouTube channel
• (For students) Take the seminar as a 1-unit class (CEE 301/ENERGY 301/MS&E 494)

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