Jacopo Buongiorno has had a jam-packed schedule touring the world in the last couple of months. But Buongiorno is no pop star or blockbuster actor as one might expect. He’s a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT. He’s a different kind of famous—famous in the world of nuclear energy research and academia. He has drawn attention for a September 2018 MIT study he co-chaired called “The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World”. Since its publication, he has traveled to London, Paris, Brussels, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, and Canada where audiences are eager to learn about the study’s groundbreaking findings on nuclear energy.

To that end, Buongiorno has importantly embraced a strategy in which he sees himself not just as an educator, but as engaging the public. He recognizes that talking to the public is different from talking with the public; the latter results in more meaningful discussions and outcomes. Despite his epic world tour, Buongiorno doesn’t have an ounce of pretentiousness in him.

Buongiorno’s interests in nuclear energy go back to high school. He was compelled by the basic attributes of nuclear energy: it’s a carbon-free and dispatchable source of energy. That means it is sustainable and available whenever it’s needed. “With a small amount of uranium, you can power an entire city effectively for months at a time,” he says. “It’s mind-boggling.”

“The Future of Nuclear Energy” addresses the wide-ranging challenges for nuclear power, while arguing that it is essential in the fight against climate change. “There is no silver bullet for global warming. Solar and wind alone will not make it. Nuclear alone will not make it. And, of course, fossil fuels are part of the problem, not part of the solution,” Buongiorno explained. “So we asked ourselves what role can nuclear play?”

Buongiorno’s team focused on three topics in their research: power systems, costs of nuclear energy, and the government’s role. For the first topic, the researchers modeled power generation grids, or power systems, in different parts of the world. They found that in most regions of the world, attempts to decarbonize power sectors led to rapidly increasing electricity costs unless a low-carbon, dispatchable energy technology was included. Without such technologies, a power system would be forced to install huge amounts of solar and wind energy technology, which comes with another obstacle: storage. Energy storage is expensive and not yet available at the scale required for the grid. And without storage, the price of renewable energy goes down when generation of energy is greater than demand.

The mismatch between generation and demand with renewables has no easy solution. That makes the value of a dispatchable, low-carbon energy technology enormous. Bottom line: “you end up having a significant component of your generation mix being nuclear if you want to reach your decarbonization targets,” Buongiorno explains.

Buongiorno sees high costs and lack of government action as the two biggest challenges for nuclear. So, the study offered insight into what could help bring costs down. The cost of nuclear reactors has increased over time in the U.S. and Western Europe. Surprisingly, this trend wasn’t seen in China, Korea, or India. Why? The answer has nothing to do with the technology itself, but with the level of expertise of the companies that are building nuclear plants. In regions like the U.S. and Western Europe, nuclear plants have been built relatively inconsistently over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, in parts of Asia, building of plants has been ongoing and, as a result, construction expertise has not been lost. Therefore, those countries not only have a more experienced workforce, but a better supply chain as well.

To alleviate high construction costs, the report proposes innovations such as modular reconstruction, which involves building pieces of a nuclear power plant in a factory and then shipping them to the site for final assembly. The study also argues against using traditional reinforced concrete and suggests using concretes that require less time and costs to install instead.

Policy also matters. “The industry has to become better at building these plants and bringing down the costs,” Buongiorno explains. “But then there is, of course, the government role.” Current energy policies treat renewables and nuclear energy differently, even though both are emissions-free. Buongiorno expresses disappointment that most states have renewable energy portfolios, but not clean energy portfolios. The next question, then, is what kinds of policies would encourage the integration of a dispatchable, low-carbon energy technology like nuclear energy.

According to the study, a carbon tax would be most effective in supporting nuclear, but this approach is politically unpopular. The next best policy approach would be mandatory clean energy portfolios: “Instead of saying I want 20 percent solar and 15 percent wind, I say I want 40 percent clean energy. Then, let the industry decide what is the best mix of solar, wind, nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration, storage and whatever else.”

Development of new technologies is extremely costly, but the study suggests that the government can play a role here as well. The U.S. government has the lab infrastructure necessary for developing new nuclear technologies, and Buongiorno has first-hand experience. He worked at the Idaho National Laboratory early on in his career. He now thinks it’s time for his old lab to take on a “new wave” of demonstration projects.

Buongiorno tells me that the response to his “world tour” has been excellent. In fact, the day I met with him, he was invited to present his study in Stockholm. “Whether that’s going to translate into real impact—people will adopt the policies that we’re recommending, or will pursue the innovations that we’re recommending—remains to be seen.”

To achieve the “real impact” Buongiorno hopes for, public engagement will be essential. Contrast education with engagement. Buongiorno no longer uses the former term because of negative connotations attached to it. Namely, education implies a power imbalance between scientists and the people who are concerned with the introduction of unfamiliar technologies into their communities. Educating to Buongiorno looks something like “a smart MIT professor going to Nevada and saying, ‘Let me tell you it’s okay to have a [radioactive waste] repository here.’” Engagement is more about including the public in decision-making discussions from the beginning, instead of just telling people the decisions are set and they have to accept them because the science says it’s okay.

Buogiorno expresses frustration that people often go “head-to-head” on nuclear energy when it doesn’t have to be that way, but he contends that at least we are technologically well-equipped to take advantage of all it has to offer.