Kind Atom Collab Vol 2
The second Kind Atom Collab session took place on the 9th of November 2022. There were 24 key experts from the nuclear and industrial fields – from Finland, Sweden and Estonia – exchanging views on how to accelerate SMR deployment.
We again utilized the Kind Atom Collab platform for a high-pace dialogue, to identify what are the key expectations for a new SMR project and its feasibility study in particular. For this, we used three perspectives representing the following key parties: (1) regulators and authorities; (2) SMR vendors and supply chains; and (3) owner’s management and organization.
Figure 1. Owner’s program view with five main work streams and five main stages.
We approached the topic by thinking about “Alice” who works for the owner’s organization and has got the task for leading the SMR feasibility study. In our session, the participants were playing the role of one key party at a time (e.g., the regulator) and stating their expectations to Alice primarily in the form of key questions that would determine the feasibility of an SMR project.
This approach lead to an even more intense session than the first collab session in September 2022. We also used AI to synthesize the hundreds of views expressed by the participants in our two-hour dialogue. In effect, the session was summarized by AI as the following top-level question:
1. What is the approach for doing the feasibility study to get the answers that we need and also to cover both the questions that we know of and those that we haven’t yet identified?
In addition to this somewhat philosophical question by AI, we identified the following key feasibility questions based on the discussions in our collab session:
Regulators and authorities:
2. How do you see your role as the owner and how are you going to build the team that knows how to execute the owner’s program?
3. Do your SMR technology options have approvals in other countries and do you have an idea how those evaluations could be utilized here?
4. What will be the impact on the local community and how do you plan to address that from the owner’s side?
SMR vendors and supply chains:
5. What is your experience from nuclear projects and how do you plan to do your share?
6. At what stage are you willing to choose and commit to the technology to be deployed?
7. How could we set up a win-win project where we work truly as a team to get the project well localized and completed?
Owner’s management and organization:
8. How does SMR deployment fit into our strategy and sustainability agenda?
9. Do we have a clear business plan and a strong team to execute the program?
10. How are we going to make sure that all key parties share the same expectations and targets?
We intend to keep the focus of the next four collab sessions still on the feasibility phase because in 2023, this is the main theme for so many projects to come. So, there will be four more feasibility-related sessions to come before June 2023.
The next Kind Atom Collab Vol3 event will take place on the 17th of January 2023 (09:00 – 11:00 CET) and it will focus on the technical feasibility.
You can express your interest for participating in our events at the event page. As we move on, we will try to find the event that will match your specific area of interest.