Challenges to Implementing Microreactor Technologies in Rural and Tribal Communities

Microreactors are an emergent technology providing nuclear-powered energy production facilities that boast portability, modularity, robust operational capacity, and carbon-free baseload electricity generation. While the exact operational and maintenance requirements are currently unclear, most platforms aim to have similar features, such as minimal required operational staff, portability via standard shipping vectors, and high availability factors. Proposed areas for deployment include remote military installations, community disaster relief and recovery operations, and electricity resource supplementation in rural communities, among others. Successful deployment would secure critical, vulnerable infrastructures, and alleviate resource scarcity in historically disadvantaged communities. Rural and Tribal communities are uniquely poised to benefit due to increased vulnerability to—and disproportionately negative outcomes caused by—power disruptions, infrastructure gaps, and critical service disruptions. However, successful deployment to these areas will depend on the careful consideration of current barriers, opportunities, and unique impacts of energy transitions to the respective local communities; as such, implementation and technology must be considered jointly. As microreactors have not been widely studied in multiscale policy spheres, nor as a typical context for emergent technologies, this article will examine existing regulatory scope, energy infrastructure, ecological capacity, natural resource impacts, and community buy-in as a measure of a community’s adoption capability for this technology. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework introduced by Elinor Ostrom, we will provide a context for micro-and meso-scale adoption of this technology that is reliant on the nested federal political, social, economic, and regulatory climate surrounding the use of nuclear technology, microreactors, and their deployment to address climate change and its associated needs at the local scale. We will address municipal, county, state, and Tribal perspectives; current policies; and ongoing efforts, as well as ecological and social costs associated with transition to a carbon-free national energy position.