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Paper short abstract

This proposal studies how energy modelling communities are adapting to answer the growing political interest towards nuclear power. It shows that the willingness to be relevant for policy-making leads to negotiations and modification of the parameters, features and assumptions within the models.

Paper long abstract

As nuclear power has been attracting growing attention from policymakers, energy modelling communities are asked to produce long-term scenarios showing what role nuclear power could play. Modellers are striving to reconsider and improve the representation in their models of conventional options and new technologies, such as small modular reactors. But modelling nuclear power can prove to be challenging, as the data is scarce, technologies’ future difficult to assess and nuclear power not always considered an attractive option by models.

How to model a technology that is not always “desirable” (for cost-effectiveness, for instance) according to the models, but which benefits from strong political support? What technical and ethical choices are made to meet the political demand?

My communication will draw on an empirical investigation consisting of field ethnography, interviews with modelers and the analysis of grey literature. It will focus on the case of ETSAP (Energy Technology Systems Analysis Programme), a modelling community affiliated with the International Energy Agency, which organised a workshop dedicated to the role of nuclear power in models. The workshop’s goal was for modelers to share their data, assumptions and questions, and to draft a report on best modelling practices to inform decision-making.

I will show how the representation of nuclear power is subject to negotiations between different teams and external stakeholders (AIEA, national governments…), and how these negotiations lead to the modification of practices and choices of parameters in order for the models to participate to the legitimisation of the nuclear promise.