PYTHON · NUMPY

The fully burdened joule

Price energy where it is used rather than where it is made, and find the crossover against trucked fuel.

01Challenge

A remote site can be served by a diesel generator with a fuel convoy or by a container reactor amortised over five years. Find the point where they cross, and notice which input decides it.

Predict firstComparing a container reactor against a diesel generator over five years, which input most decides the answer?

02Model

A joule is cheap at a refinery and expensive at a forward site, and the difference is the whole argument for portable nuclear. Fuel delivered by convoy carries the convoy: vehicles, drivers, protection, and the risk they run. Published burdened figures for delivered fuel run to many multiples of pump price, and in contested settings to far more. Against that, a reactor pays almost everything up front — capital, licensing, security — and then runs for years with no fuel logistics at all. So the comparison is not a price per litre against a price per watt. It is a capital sum amortised over an unattended lifetime against a recurring cost that scales with distance and threat. And the number that decides it is rarely the reactor's capital cost. It is the burden multiplier on the fuel.

03Guided practice

Compute the five-year total for each option across a range of burden multipliers, and find where the lines cross.

04Feedback

PASS WHEN You found the crossover and saw which input moves it.

If your run fails, check:

The crossover sits at a burden multiplier around 8 on these figures. Below it diesel wins; above it the reactor does.
Notice the sensitivity: doubling reactor capex moves the crossover far less than doubling the burden multiplier, because the burden scales with every litre for five years.
Every figure here is modelled. Most published microreactor economics are models too, and should be labelled as such rather than quoted as measurements.

05Retrieve & space

What does the burden multiplier represent, and why does it dominate the comparison?
Which input would you most want measured rather than modelled, and why?
State the crossover in words a procurement officer could check.

06Mastery & project

Price a joule at the point of action with the delivery burden stated, and label every figure measured or modelled.

Find a published cost-per-kWh figure for any remote power system. Determine whether it includes delivery burden. Note what you cannot conclude if it does not.

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PYTHON · NUMPY

The fully burdened joule

A remote site, five years, two ways to power it. Find the crossover.

You read

the arrays and values already in scope

You change

the code you write in each cell

Fixed

the dataset and the checks that grade you