The Post-Industrial Midwest and Appalachia (PIMA) Nuclear Alliance

Led by the Pennsylvania State University a coalition of academia, national laboratories and industry have formed the Post-Industrial Midwest and Appalachia (PIMA) Nuclear Alliance to harness firm carbon-free energy from nuclear while educating and training the future energy workforce. The PIMA Nuclear Alliance will facilitate nuclear research, critical infrastructure, policy, community engagement, education, and workforce development to augment the country’s dependency on non-renewable energy resources to more resilient, sustainable, high-capacity sources of energy. Advanced nuclear technologies including microreactors (aka nuclear batteries), small modular reactors and fusion reactors are opening opportunities for non-carbon firm sources of energy that are dispatchable and versatile to meet difficult-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy. From the standpoint of sustainable economic development and a just clean energy transition, nuclear-based technologies offer safe, secure, and reliable energy while abating the impact of fossil fuels to our climate and local regional communities. The long-term vision of the PIMA Nuclear Alliance is the establishment of a technology corridor for manufacturing advanced nuclear microreactors at scale. The goal is to enable a future where 10’s to 100’s of thousands of reactors are manufactured in the region resulting in a “tera factory” (i.e. 100,000*10MWe = 1 TWe) transforming a high-tech supply chain for advanced reactors in the world. The PIMA Nuclear Alliance has a holistic approach with three primary aims: 1) to establish a research, develoment & deployment (RD&D) microreactor platform for end users and stakeholders to test energy conversion systems to their applications, 2) to engage communities and end users in participatory practices for the adoption of advanced nuclear technologies, and 3) to innovate enabling technologies (e.g. digital twin, advanced manufacturing, AIML, etc.), as well as regulatory and policy frameworks to accelerate and scale deployment of advanced reactors in the US and abroad.