TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Bret Kugelmass [00:02:50] I'm here with Stefano Buono, who is the founder and CEO of an exciting new nuclear startup called newcleo. Stefano, welcome to the Titans of Nuclear.

Stefano Buono [00:03:00] Thank you.

Bret Kugelmass [00:03:02] Yes. So, we'd love to hear about you as an individual before we get to the company. So why don't you start us off with where you're from?

Stefano Buono [00:03:11] I'm from Italy. I've been studying physics in my life. But then I moved immediately to the European Central Nuclear Research. And it's '94 that I started my activity in nuclear energy.

Bret Kugelmass [00:03:26] Great. And what was that? What did you do for the research center?

Stefano Buono [00:03:29] Well, at the time, the Director General that is also a Nobel laureate, Carlo Rubbia, he had the idea to make new devices, let's call it, subcritical reactors driven by a particle accelerator. The team at the time was energy amplifier. Very nice; but later they called it accelerator driven systems. Meaning that you have a subcritical reactor that is driven by a particle accelerator. So, by a different kind of nuclear reaction. And that makes a very, very safe machine.

Stefano Buono [00:04:10] And in the '90s, it was very interesting to make safe nuclear reactors because Chernobyl just happened and the world was a little bit shocked. So, I was attracted to work on something that could change the world. And we started to work on that. It was in that period that I understood how nice it could be to use lead, liquid lead, as a coolant for a nuclear reactor. It was necessary because we needed lead to hit the lead with a particle beam and create neutrons to make the the reaction possible. But then I realized that lead was a very nice coolant for a reactor in general.

Bret Kugelmass [00:05:00] And why? What makes lead a nice coolant?

Stefano Buono [00:05:04] Because actually, you can make a faster reactor in a very safe way. Remember, those years, in the '90s, Superphenix closed in France. There was always concern about the operation of sodium-cooled reactors, and indeed there were not many problems. But the sodium is reactive, chemically reactive, with water and air, and gets fire. So, to control the safety of this reactor, you have to spend a lot of money, essentially. So, lead opened the possibility to use a liquid metal as a coolant, but you don't have all the safety, and so the burden, of the cost of a big sodium reactor.

Stefano Buono [00:05:55] So our Chief Scientific Officer, Luciano Cinotti, in Italian as well, he participated to the building and operation of Superphenix. And also, he tried to design cheaper sodium reactors like Superphenix 2. That was never built, of course. And then the European First Reactor was another European project that tried to make the cost of a sodium reactor lower. But all of these engineers that had a lot of experience with sodium managed to make a reactor that was 60% more expensive of the PWRs of that time in France. So essentially, sodium was closed because of the economy of those reactors.

Stefano Buono [00:06:48] But Luciano started to work on lead with me. And it was a very interesting time because in Russia, Russian scientists started to have interactions with European scientists and we discovered that they built 10 nuclear reactors using lead-bismuth, a eutectic of lead, and they powered submarines with these reactors. So, there were 10 led-bismuth reactors in the '60s and '70s running in the waters everywhere that were powered by lead reactors. So, there was a lot of experience.

Bret Kugelmass [00:07:25] And all of this starts off with the assumption that if you want to build a fast reactor, you're saying lead is a good coolant.

Stefano Buono [00:07:33] Yeah. And you know, it's very important, especially in Europe, to have fast reactors.

Bret Kugelmass [00:07:39] Why? Yeah, tell me.

Stefano Buono [00:07:40] Especially in France, because France, and in general Europe, wanted to close the fuel cycle. They wanted to outlaw multi-recycling of the fuel. You know that France today is the only country left where recycling of nuclear fuel, used fuel, is still done. And plutonium is extracted to make new fuel; that is MOX. But the idea was to recycle multiple times the MOX. Even when you use the MOX, you can recycle in some.

Bret Kugelmass [00:08:18] I see. You're starting with the assumption that the desired outcome is to close the fuel cycle. Which I personally disagree with, as that being a desired outcome, but I can see why other people like it. Then you're saying, "Okay, the best way to have a closed fuel cycle, given the recycling requirements of fuel, is to have a fast reactor. If you're going to have a fast reactor, then the coolant of choice is lead." That's the logic there. Okay, got it.

Stefano Buono [00:08:45] And we've learned that you can do completely passive safety systems as well. And that's also very important. And we will show that you can do very cheap reactors. I'll give you an example. Our 200 megawatt electric design is a vessel of six meters in diameter and six meters in height. This is very compact. This is four times more compact than the original Superphenix design and half of the size of a PWR.

Bret Kugelmass [00:09:22] Six meters in diameter, you said?

Stefano Buono [00:09:24] Yes. And this is 200 megawatt electric.

Bret Kugelmass [00:09:27] But normal PWRs are only... They aren't six meters in diameter. They're like four meters in diameter or something, right?

Stefano Buono [00:09:37] Very tall. If you put all of the steel that you need because of the pressurized vessel, then you have actually more or less of the double of the steel that you have in our reactor when you have the same power produced. In these are comparing with the bigger European reactors like the EPR or the pressurized water reactor of France. The old one, but still the one being operated in France.

Bret Kugelmass [00:10:15] Yeah. But not to push back too much because I do want to hear the whole story, but it's like, steel is cheap. Steel for any nuclear system, compared to the amount of steel that goes setting up solar panels or something, you're already a thousand fold less. It seems odd to me for that to be the the primary design parameter.

Stefano Buono [00:10:36] It's an example. We took out the first 10 systems from Superphenix.

Bret Kugelmass [00:10:41] Now that's special, taking out systems.

Stefano Buono [00:10:46] I was making an example with the...

Bret Kugelmass [00:10:49] Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. It sounds like you come from a highly-technical background with a lot of experience, other team members as well. What's the origin story of newcleo? How did you decide to create this company?

Stefano Buono [00:11:06] In the '90s, with Luciano in the southern Italian company, we made a first design of a lead reactor. But was not the right time to develop, especially in Europe, new reactors, but I think all over the world because of Chernobyl. But also because the price of the oil was $12 per barrel at the time. Nuclear was not competitive. Nobody cared about CO2. So, I took a patent that we had on lead that had an application in nuclear medicine. And I said, "I'm going to do a nuclear medicine company first and bring it to success, and then I will move into energy." And that is what I did. Actually, I founded a company that in 2018 was sold on from NASDAQ, so it was a public offering, to Novartis for $4 billion. And that was indeed the the biggest nuclear medicine company ever sold at that time. So, it was a great success.

Stefano Buono [00:12:19] So, that gave me some credibility as an entrepreneur. And I wanted to do the energy and actually the time changed very much because now the world wanted much more nuclear energy because of the decarbonization. And remember, of course, last year in Europe, the war struck Europe and people realized also that many European countries were depending on Russian gas and were dependant on outside resources. So, people in Europe want energy independence very much now. So two big boosters, and indeed I managed to raise $400 million in the first year of operation of the company and have more than 200 people already working for newcleo.

Bret Kugelmass [00:13:13] That's pretty incredible. Where did that $400 million come from?

Stefano Buono [00:13:17] Essentially, so far it's more or less family and friends in the sense that...

Bret Kugelmass [00:13:24] Right, because you're already very successful, already made billions of dollars, and so people trust you with a lot of money and know that you're going to...

Stefano Buono [00:13:33] Yeah, I made some other investments, I had investment partners, things went well. Just from this word, I got a lot of support. Of course, somebody already invested with... You know, there was a small pension fund. There were some VCs, but essentially all people that I knew.

Bret Kugelmass [00:13:57] Excellent. I mean, this is like the perfect story for a new nuclear entrepreneur. Someone who has domain expertise, business credibility and is willing to convince others to put their money on the line in a big way. It's the perfect story.

Stefano Buono [00:14:14] And to complete the perfect story, my previous partner, the person who was responsible for the project at the time, Luciano, became the Chief Scientific Officer. But Luciano never stopped working on lead reactors. He was the coordinator of the Generation for Innovation Forum on lead for many, many years. So, he saw all of the lead projects from all over the world, from Japan, from the U.S., from Europe, Belgium, Sweden, all of the these projects. And he thought about a very innovative design. And in the second part of the dance, he started to collaborate with an American investor actually, and that funded the research in Europe.

Stefano Buono [00:15:07] So this person, this wealthy American, founded the company in Europe and supported the work of this team. So, newcleo essentially was born also from buying this company because there were a number of patents that were taken in order to be able to publish the design on the International Atomic Energy Agency generation for books. So, we have two of these projects that generation is considered for. And to be able to publish those, we had to take some patents. Well, we didn't take all of them, but we are just now reproducing and enlarging the number of patents. But we started essentially from there.

Bret Kugelmass [00:16:01] Amazing, amazing. Okay, so tell me about the characteristics of your system a little bit more. All we know right now is that it's lead. What's the power output? What's the fuel type and enrichment? What else can you tell us about the system?

Stefano Buono [00:16:14] So, let's start from the fuel. Well, first you have to understand that it's a faster reactor and we do want to build a prototype as fast as possible. Our current plan is for 2030 in France to finish our first prototype. So, we had to make a decision that would allow us to have, let's say, more or less everything validated already. So, the fuel is essentially the same fuel that was used on Superphenix. We just use a different spacing but the same material for the rods, even the same dimension, even the same pellets. Because we want to actually burn even the fuel from the old Superphenix machine.

Bret Kugelmass [00:17:08] And what are the materials? What is the cladding made? Is it a UO2 ceramic? What are the pellets made of?

Stefano Buono [00:17:16] This is a MOX. And it MOX that is used with a 15% titanium steel that has been used in Superphenix for many years. So, it is essentially validated as a fuel with a fast neutron spectrum.

Bret Kugelmass [00:17:36] Sorry, just one quick question. They don't use stainless steel in normal PWRs anymore because the capture cross-section is too high. In a fast reactor, is that not the case? It just goes right through the stainless steel? Or, you're willing to accept a penalty because of the overall system performance?

Stefano Buono [00:17:55] Yeah, the overall system performances are very good with a fast reactor, so we don't have the same problem. Today, the MOX is made with a zirconium alloy like in every PWR.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:08] And is there any reason not to use zirconium?

Stefano Buono [00:18:11] Yes, because it has been validated with steel. So, we are using the Superphenix design.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:17] Smart, yeah. Fair enough.

Stefano Buono [00:18:20] And also, the corrosion of lead. We have tested the steel. Stainless steel is better resistant versus the corrosion of lead. So, we couldn't possibly use those zircon because of the corrosion.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:35] You're worried about the corrosion of lead in contact with zircaloy.

Stefano Buono [00:18:42] Exactly.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:43] And what is the corrosion mechanism or type of degradation that occurs? Is it a chemical bonding?

Stefano Buono [00:18:57] It's essentially erosion.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:58] But a mechanical erosion?

Stefano Buono [00:18:58] Yes, mechanical... At high temperature it's probably the most important effect.

Bret Kugelmass [00:19:02] Fair enough.

Stefano Buono [00:19:03] To avoid corrosion, actually, we allow the creation of an oxide layer on the steel and we will put an oxide layer on the steel. So, the erosion corrosion is not important until more or less 480 degrees Celsius. And this is the operating temperature, actually, the maximum operating temperature of the hot spot in our reactor. Because it has been validated not to have corrosion, then we want to go higher. So, we would put on pin a layer of oxide, aluminum oxide, which is very stable on in contact with lead.

Stefano Buono [00:19:52] When we start operating the reactor, we want to have a program to qualify higher temperature. Some of the pins, we leaden this coating. It's a special coating; there are patents that are taken on this kind of coating. It's very thin, but very resistant. We have tested in every possible matter, also with ions. Unfortunately, we cannot do fast reactor irradiation in the Western world anymore because there is no fast reactor. The only operated reactors are in Russia today. So, we cannot do any test anymore in this kind of reactor. We hope that in Japan...

Bret Kugelmass [00:20:32] Even the ATR in Idaho? They don't have part of the core that operates in the fast spectrum?

Stefano Buono [00:20:38] Maybe. There are some reactors that have part of the core that operates in a faster mode. But of course, ideally you could use a sodium reactor. So, the Japanese are restarting the Joyo reactor, a research reactor. So, we are planning also some irradiation in 2025 to be done in this reactor. But at the end, our reactor will be the faster reactor that we will use to improve the temperature.

Stefano Buono [00:21:15] At the same time, we are also... This is a small reactor, 30 megawatt electric, but there will be a turbine, et cetera. And at the same moment, we are initiating in U.K. a licensing partner for the 200 megawatt electric first commercial unit. And we have the plans; we started the regulatory path and the plans are to start this machine in 2032. So, we will go in parallel in building, essentially, two machines.

Bret Kugelmass [00:21:54] Great. If I could just come back to the technical characteristics of the core for a moment, what is the enrichment level of your MOX?

Stefano Buono [00:22:03] The enrichment level is very important because at the moment there is a lot of free plutonium in U.K. and in France. That's also why we put our reactor there at the beginning. They need to be burned, eliminated. So, the current strategy of U.K. is putting this material underground, which is very expensive and it's a long-term strategy. We would like to burn it. So, to allow burning of MOX, we have to have a 30% and reach the MOX. So, 30% plutonium and 70% is uranium.

Bret Kugelmass [00:22:47] And out of the uranium, what is the ratio between U-235 and U-238? And out of the plutonium, what is the ratio of plutonium-240 and plutonium-239?

Stefano Buono [00:23:01] There is no difference for us to have the pairs of plutonium, the 40 and the 42. So, it doesn't matter very much. But at the beginning, we will use plutonium coming from the gas reactor. For example, from U.K., that has a high level of content of 239. All of the plutonium coming from the reprocessing of the French reactors, they also have a quite a high level of 239. So at the moment, we will not reprocess the MOX, which is rich into 40 and 42. But it burns the same.

Stefano Buono [00:23:39] So, we have a fast reactor. No difference. That's why we can do the multi-recycling because we don't degrade the plutonium. Even the minor actinide burns. So, we can burn everything. That's why multi-recycling is only possible if you use a fast reactor. So at the beginning, we want to burn a lot of plutonium. We can work at 30% enriched. But when we have burned a lot of free plutonium, we can work on an equilibrium level that is around 17% or 18%. So that's the idea, we will lower the amount of plutonium.

Stefano Buono [00:24:22] We are lucky because in the process, actually, the starting point in the process is a richer plutonium than 30%. The mix is even higher. So, there is already the technique to produce this kind of plutonium. And then the dilution will be lower, so we will stop the mix of the 30%.

Bret Kugelmass [00:24:44] And who's doing the fabrication of both the mixing, the pelletization and the fabrication of the assemblies for you?

Stefano Buono [00:24:53] We have started to work with Orano at the moment on the basis of a contract to build a new manufacturing line for us in France. But we also have our own people who have a lot of experience on MOX. So, it's an integrated team of Orano and internal resources.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:14] Great. And then how do you plan on circulating the coolant? Is this going to be natural convection with some sort of wicking process like a heat pipe, or are you going to have to invent lead pumps of some sort?

Stefano Buono [00:25:26] Yeah, we don't invent lead pumps, we buy them, because these have been done for 25 years, at least, only in Italy.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:35] Lead pumps. What are they used for in industry right now?

Stefano Buono [00:25:40] For the research on lead.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:42] Oh, they're research-level...

Stefano Buono [00:25:47] In Italy, we have operated like seven or eight lead loops, and there is a lot of know-how. The Italian research center ENEA, which is the equivalent of DOE for nuclear in the U.S. has accumulated a lot of experience because they participated in the '90s in this research. They interacted with the Russians and they started to do a lot of research. And Italy became the reference worldwide of lead loops. ENEA and some Italian companies built the lead loops for Westinghouse in U.K. and China. In China, there is a lot of research as well on lead loops.

Stefano Buono [00:26:37] The pump is one of the devices and we don't anticipate any problem in having a lead pump because there is 20-plus years of experience on that. And the exchange will be done with a vapor generator directly into the lead. So, that's the advantage of having the possibility of having a lead.

Bret Kugelmass [00:27:09] Would you explain that last part too? What is that vapor process that you were articulating? What is that?

Stefano Buono [00:27:15] Essentially, you have a heat exchanger producing high-temperature vapor that goes directly into the turbine. So you inject...

Bret Kugelmass [00:27:23] Oh, I see. You have a heat exchanger with lead on your tube side and water on your shell side, just like a standard steam generator?

Stefano Buono [00:27:31] Yeah. It will be water on the tube side.

Bret Kugelmass [00:27:36] Water on the tube side. Okay, that's fine, because you're going to a higher velocity.

Stefano Buono [00:27:39] And lead on the shell side.

Bret Kugelmass [00:27:41] Okay, that makes perfect sense.

Stefano Buono [00:27:44] And this is our design. This is one of our patents, because we have sort of a heat exchanger, but the way it is designed is particular. It has very long tubes that are shattered by valves.

Bret Kugelmass [00:28:06] Yeah, no need to give yourself extra problems. If it's a power plant and it's not a submarine, you're not space constrained, so you might as well just do a more standard heat exchanger manufacturing process.

Stefano Buono [00:28:18] And we have tested the breaking of the vapor tube into lead and it's not generating significant pressure waves into the system. It's a pool. There is no pressure into the lead.

Bret Kugelmass [00:28:35] Yeah, what happens if you lose your primary coolant? What if there's a rupture? Then, what happens?

Stefano Buono [00:28:43] The primary coolant is very difficult to lose because it's a huge pool of lead. And there is double containment and the lead freezes.

Bret Kugelmass [00:28:57] Right, but is there any concern about your fuel being uncovered? I know there's not a pressure boundary, but there's a vessel boundary. If that were to break, what would happen?

Stefano Buono [00:29:12] The way it has been designed, there would be not enough loss of coolant to have the fuel not covered by lead, let's say.

Bret Kugelmass [00:29:28] I see. Your secondary layer around it, you're saying, is sufficiently strong and sized that it'll catch the lead and make sure that not enough comes out to uncover your core.

Stefano Buono [00:29:40] Ideally, we have to make reactors that are also resistant to terrorist attack, war, et cetera. So ideally, we put the lead container directly into the ground.

Bret Kugelmass [00:29:54] Yeah, I think that's smart...

Stefano Buono [00:29:56] ...Very much the amount of lead. And since the vessel is continually cooled by natural convection, the temperature of the second vessel is very cold. Lead freezes at 350 degrees. So, you have a self-filling of any incredible rupture that you might have.

Bret Kugelmass [00:30:18] It'll self-patch as it leaks, totally understood. And then what about control? Do you have control rods, or how do you control the rate of reactivity?

Stefano Buono [00:30:29] Yes, we have control rods. There are also external control rods because lead is a very fast spectrum because the moderation is the lowest. It's very, very low, the moderation of neutrons, because of the weight of a molecule of lead. And it's the element that absorbs less neutrons in all of the chemical table. So essentially, you have a very, very long path of neutrons.

Stefano Buono [00:31:07] And that's why we keep a very big layer of lead outside of the core as well, because neutrons come back and forth. So, we can control from outside, lead, if it's not too big, the reactor. So, we have control rods, shutdown rods going inside the vessel. But we have control rods outside, just in the periphery of the core. The periphery is free because lead has a very good self-shielding property. So essentially, and this is another patent, we have a kind of a...

Bret Kugelmass [00:31:43] Self-shielding from gammas, but not from neutrons.

Stefano Buono [00:31:45] Yeah, exactly. Not from neutrons because they travel a lot, but you still have a reduction. So, if you keep one meter of lead, you don't need to put the fake fuel bars to protect from that, for example, from the radiation damage, also from neutrons, that was present, for example, in Superphenix. In Superphenix, there were more fake bars to protect the structure from the radiation than actual fuel bars. It was incredible. And this is one of the systems that we have eliminated, all of these fake nuclear bars to absorb the neutrons and to protect the structures.

Bret Kugelmass [00:32:34] We could go on forever about the technical qualities of the system. But actually, maybe I want to switch gears for a second just to get a more holistic perspective from you. One question that I have, given that you're Italian, and I've met some incredibly brilliant nuclear engineers and scientists in Italy... It's like, everyone I talk to there, I know it's going to be a great conversation. There's something about you guys... Very smart scientists and also great heavy industry engineering too. Like, heat exchangers, pumps, everything.

Bret Kugelmass [00:33:08] Why not build in Italy? What is going on with Italy as a country, their perspective of nuclear? And Why can't you, as somebody who is a clear authority and successful, why can't you... Have you tried to influence the political culture there?

Stefano Buono [00:33:26] Well, Italy is influencing by itself, at the moment, in the sense that the opinion is changing. We have been an incredible country because we were... At a certain moment, we were like the second or third countries in the world to build a nuclear reactor. We built in the '50s four nuclear reactors with four different technologies because we wanted to test the best one. But in '87, after the Chernobyl accident, we made the referendum and we closed the reactors.

Bret Kugelmass [00:34:05] Why? But why Italy and not so many other countries? Like, Spain isn't the most excited about nuclear, but they didn't close their plants, you know? There are so many countries that didn't. Why Italy?

Stefano Buono [00:34:18] I don't have any idea. But for sure, there was a lot of support from other energies at the time, politically, and was not a very nice period for Italy that I'm proud of. There really has not been support. The scientists and engineers, they couldn't think that the referendum led to close the reactors. It was just the reaction of some political person. Because the referendum actually didn't ask to close the reactor, but those reactors were closed. It's incredible. Anyway, we kept a lot of know-how, because we were working for all of the nuclear reactors that are around Italy, in France...

Bret Kugelmass [00:35:14] I know. And you still have an engineering services sector.

Stefano Buono [00:35:19] ...Everywhere. So, we kept this know-how very strong. And now the know-how can actually work again. Because the new government wants nuclear.

Bret Kugelmass [00:35:29] Okay, good. I wanted you to tell me that because I didn't know that.

Stefano Buono [00:35:32] They came into power only a few months ago, in November of last year. We have a program to come back into nuclear. Now, they didn't initiate this program because, you know, a new government in the first two months has a lot of urgencies, but I think they will come back soon with a program on nuclear anyway. It seems that they are very open. You know, all the community seems very open versus new generation of nuclear reactors.

Stefano Buono [00:36:08] Again, it doesn't make sense because also the current generational character is very safe. And you could start building one machine that has already been tested. But, okay. I think there are proposals like ours that are more sustainable for a country because, actually, what we want to avoid is to have a geological repository, period. Why that? Because if it allows the multi-recycling, you can always have the plutonium in the minor actinides inside a fuel of a reactor, never, and recycling many times. And this is possible only with a hard spectrum. You cannot do it with water reactors. We have to have a component of fast reactors, because otherwise it doesn't work.

Bret Kugelmass [00:36:56] I know, it's just the waste issue though. Listen, I love what you're doing and I think there's a lot of stuff that you said that I think is extremely impressive and makes a lot of sense. And I'm very excited, the journey that you're on. But I do want to like correct people's assumptions about waste. Like, I also agree we don't want a deep geological repository, but that's because waste isn't a problem to begin with, so we don't need to bury it deep, we could bury it shallow or we could just put it somewhere. Like, waste is not a big deal to deal with. And the social license will not be cured by recycling because the populace, the people don't understand. If there is even the tiniest little fission product left, they're going to still accuse you of just as much waste as every other reactor, even if they're wrong. So it's like, it's not going to solve a social problem.

Stefano Buono [00:37:48] Yeah, but you live in the U.S., in which it's much more accepted. We live in Europe and what we promise is that one gigawatt electric of nuclear power for one year will produce only 900 kilograms of...

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:05] I know, but what I'm saying is nobody cares. Nobody cares. Like, the people don't care, the politicians don't care. You could swap out that number with any other number and they would not be able to tell the difference. The minute you put math in their heads, they don't care.

Stefano Buono [00:38:20] Yeah, it's a challenge. I'm trying to explain to people. It's a big challenge. But I have the science from my side, so I hope that it will work sooner or later. Nobody can argue at the end. And slowly, we will be able to make people understand that.

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:42] I would leave that to marketing people. That's what I always try to tell the nuclear entrepreneurs. It's like, you are going to do such a good job on your reactor. Focus on that, make it awesome, make it economical. But don't think that you're going to cure anyone's public opinion. Like, you do not have that power. Like, it's just never going to happen. Other forces will do that, yeah.

Stefano Buono [00:39:06] But there is an objective of things. Imagine a new country, like Italy, that wants to come back to nuclear. If I deliver fuel to our reactor and then I bring the fuel back, I reprocess, and I give back to Italy, this is a reality.

Bret Kugelmass [00:39:25] Yeah, but the only people that care about what you're saying are nuclear industry professionals. The general public does not understand nuclear waste, how it moves...

Stefano Buono [00:39:34] You don't have to put it underground. For 900 kilograms per year.

Bret Kugelmass [00:39:40] We already don't have to put it underground. That's like a self-imposed constraint. We can leave it wherever we want. It's not dangerous. Yeah, okay. Well, maybe we'll have a talk about that over a beer sometime, too. Because it's more philosophical than analytical. But I do want to ask another question. I think you have the ability to do this not by 2030. Everything that I know about you, I think if you wanted to, you could get this done in three years, you could have your first plant online. What's stopping you from doing it in three years?

Stefano Buono [00:40:17] No, it is really the licensing. It is the time you need to interact with the authorities. You have timings that are really like that.

Bret Kugelmass [00:40:33] And why not find a regulator that can move faster? Actually, I was a little surprised by your priorities in terms of the U.K. versus France. I kind of assumed the U.K. could move faster. You know, they did the Chinese reactor. That was a gigawatt scale PWR in just four years. I assume you could make a pretty good case why yours could be licensed in three years.

Stefano Buono [00:40:56] But four years is the GDA, the Generic Design Authorization. If you really built it, there are a number of things and a number of authorizations that you have to get that brings you, probably, to seven years.

Bret Kugelmass [00:41:14] But you could do that in parallel. Most people don't realize that.

Stefano Buono [00:41:20] Yes, but for example, at the moment in the U.K., we are fighting to have land that is authorized. There are, you know, in the end there is 500 hectares of land.

Bret Kugelmass [00:41:37] I know, but that's what I'm saying.

Stefano Buono [00:41:40] But because of the fact that there have been changes in the government three times, we don't find somebody who says, "Okay, you can buy this land and build a reactor." There are other things that are very strange that you will find only in the U.K. that prolongs very much your... But I hope that...

Bret Kugelmass [00:42:07] Okay, but that's a good point. You made a really good point there, so I want to acknowledge that. But then I want to ask you then why not... You're in Europe. You're obviously willing to look across the countries in Europe. Why not find a country that can move faster? Like, why not go to Bulgaria. You know, they have nuclear plants there and it's easier to get a hold of the Prime Minister, probably, of Bulgaria than it is of the U.K. Like, why not do it just wherever you can do it the fastest? Because I know you can build it faster, so why not license it faster?

Stefano Buono [00:42:39] Well, you know, at the end, the know-how is also a question of all the intellect we've done in our country. And we are operating in Italy, in France and the U.K. because we also need the plutonium we need to make the MOX, which is an added complication as well. Because we have to build, actually, probably two manufacturing facilities, one in France and one U.K. So, it is also for this reason. And the know-how on fast reactors is in France, for example, but also in U.K., because of the gas reactors. I think it's a good compromise. And of course we'll try to go faster. Of course, even the licensing authorities, they are trying to make their best.

[00:43:30] In France, for example, the authorization is given by ASN, an authority, independent authority, that was working with another authority, IRSN. The two had to talk on the same design. And France, the government, decided to put these two entities together. Maybe it's a good choice to go faster because there is only one path and not one depending on the other. So, there is an effort also from the licensing authorities because of the need of energy independence and the need of decarbonized electric energy. So, there are, I think, good opportunities.

Stefano Buono [00:44:22] But we also have to say that it's a new technology, so there might be some learning curve also by the authorities. We have done a lot of research and work, but the authorities themselves, they might need a little bit more time to... Especially because there are a few demands for other reactor designs with other technologies like molten salt.

Bret Kugelmass [00:44:50] Even better then, to find a regulator that's neglected to focus just on you. What I think when I see your project is I want to see this. I know you can do it, and I want to see it built so fast because I think it would be an inspiration to the entire advanced nuclear community to do it. And so, I just want to know that the $400 million, it's not just all going to technology, but maybe you spend $10 million just on regulatory strategists. Literally build up an army of documentation people and lawyers and physicists to scour all of Europe and say, "Which regulator will move the fastest?"

Stefano Buono [00:45:27] You know, we are 200. We will be, ourselves, 500 by the end of this year. And still, we are engaging a lot of companies. We are working with every French company we see. With Framatome, with Orano. So, we are really leveraging also on other people and paying those people to make work for us. So, it's really huge. It's really a huge effort what we are moving. But if you want to see a reactor, we have a clone of a reactor that will be ready in four years in Italy. It will be like a reactor, but having heating rods rather than fuel rods.

Bret Kugelmass [00:46:09] Amazing. I think it's such a god idea. What are these, like just normal immersion heaters, or is it just like bare tungsten or graphite? What are your electrodes?

Stefano Buono [00:46:16] No, no, no. It will be the most of a copy of our final reactor we can do. So of course, we cannot put a 100 megawatt thermal with it in rods, but we put a 10 megawatt thermal. So, we will produce less, of course. This pathway scaled down. But many of the components will be the same that we want to put into the final reactor. We are building this because we believe during the regulatory path we will be asked for additional components, so we have a machine that will be ready to do tests, integrated tests to be able to not get delays during the licensing process.

Stefano Buono [00:47:06] And one other reason why we are doing a machine in France and another one in the U.K. is because there is an internal competition, if you want, in our company between U.K. and France in order to be the first one.

Bret Kugelmass [00:47:23] That's great, that's great. Well, this is very exciting. We're about at the end of our time here, but I'd love to continue this conversation with you in general. I'd love to visit your facility at some point and maybe we could do a whole series and interview a bunch of your leadership and staff and really help expose your project to the world more, because if you get this up and running it's going to be amazing.

Stefano Buono [00:47:43] Yeah, I think we're going to build very soon. Our facility is already being built in Italy. We are on the site of an older reactor, so we are refurbishing all of the facility and we will be putting material very soon. So, we are waiting for you. It's a good opportunity to come to Italy and visit Italy.

Bret Kugelmass [00:48:05] I'd love to, I'd love to. Okay, well, Stefano Buono, thank you so much for your time. I know I got that last name wrong, but I'll try harder. It's great to spend time with you.

Stefano Buono [00:48:16] Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.

Bret Kugelmass [00:48:18] Bye bye.

Josh Mesner [00:00:59] Welcome to Titans of Nuclear. As you can immediately notice, I am not Bret Kugelmass. My name is Josh Mesner. Today, actually, we'll be hearing from Craig Stover, who is the Senior Program Manager of the Advanced Nuclear Technology Program at the Electric Power Research Institute, better known as EPRI. Craig, welcome. It's so great to have you on.

Craig Stover [00:01:23] Yeah, happy to be here.

Josh Mesner [00:01:24] Awesome. So, before we jump into the exciting things that you're working on and your team is working on over at EPRI, let's start with your background. Tell me about Craig as a young kid. Where'd you grow up?

Craig Stover [00:01:37] I'm from South Carolina. I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. I went to the University of South Carolina. I'm proud to be from the South.

Josh Mesner [00:01:50] Yeah. Siblings, or were you an only child?

Craig Stover [00:01:54] I have one older brother.

Josh Mesner [00:01:55] One older brother, awesome. And what was it like growing up with him in South Carolina? You guys got along pretty well, or no?

Craig Stover [00:02:01] Yeah, well, actually, he's 10 years older.

Josh Mesner [00:02:02] Oh, he's 10 years, okay.

Craig Stover [00:02:04] Yeah, so he moved out when I was in the third grade. So I have an older brother, but it was almost like being an only child.

Josh Mesner [00:02:09] Very cool. So you grew up in South Carolina. Was nuclear always on the mind? Tell me about the path as you entered school. What was kind of your focus?

Craig Stover [00:02:20] You know, what's interesting is we ask 17 year olds to decide their future. Luckily for me, I really liked cars, and so based on that, I picked mechanical engineering. I just kind of fell into it, which ended up being, obviously, a good discipline to fall into. So that's how I ended up doing engineering.

Josh Mesner [00:02:41] Building cars? Driving cars? All of the above?

Craig Stover [00:02:43] Yeah, all of the above in high school. And then that's why I went into engineering. And I can say a lot of the people I went to engineering school with got there a similar way, though very few of us, I think, ended up actually doing anything in our careers with cars.

Josh Mesner [00:02:58] Okay, so you enter university and you're focused on mechanical engineering. Were you immediately taking nuclear-related courses? At what point throughout your undergrad did you start to focus in on the nuclear aspect?

Craig Stover [00:03:11] Yeah, that's a great question. So actually, it wasn't until I was a senior. Our senior design projects was actually for Plant Vogtle in Georgia. So I spent a year supporting a project at that plant. And that's really when I learned about nuclear and liked it so much I decided I wanted to get into it.

Josh Mesner [00:03:34] Very cool. And how did you find that project? Was it just because you had heard of Plant Vogtle in your own personal life and you decided to do your senior project? Was it a professor?

Craig Stover [00:03:44] I don't remember actually even picking it. I think it was given to us. So just one of those... Sometimes there's just these things that happen by luck.

Josh Mesner [00:03:53] Yeah, very cool. Okay, so you graduate and you're really interested in nuclear. Do you immediately go on for your MBA or do you go and get some work experience first?

Craig Stover [00:04:03] The MBA was probably 10 years later. I actually went to BC Summer first. So it just so happened that I went to the University of South Carolina. I was interested in nuclear and got particularly interested in new nuclear, actually, in building plants. And then just again, just by some coincidence of fate, SCANA, the utility in South Carolina, announced they were going to build two AP1000s at almost the exact same time I graduated from college. So it just... I went there.

Josh Mesner [00:04:39] Serendipitous, there.

Craig Stover [00:04:41] Yeah.

Josh Mesner [00:04:41] Very cool. And the interest in new nuclear, did that come from your continuing understanding of the existing fleet and kind of the challenges that were within the industry? Why the immediate focus on new nuclear technology?

Craig Stover [00:05:00] Particularly being young, it's always fun to work on something new, I think. I liked the idea of working on a really big project. It's fun now, but particularly when you're 22 or 23, there is something really exciting about the idea that you're going to go build these giant power plants on such a big project. It was just really exciting, particularly compared to a lot of the alternatives I had as an undergrad getting out of school. I mean, there were some good jobs available, but nothing as exciting as building a nuclear power plant.

Josh Mesner [00:05:33] Very cool. So you were an associate engineer then, coming out of school, with SCANA Corporation?

Craig Stover [00:05:40] Yeah, we had several titles back then. But yeah, I started as an entry-level engineer. I actually started there about three months, I think, before we signed our contract and like six months before we submitted our license, so it was like a really exciting time to join the project. I was one of the first 10 people on the project that eventually had over 3,000. So it was exciting to be there at the beginning.

Josh Mesner [00:06:08] Yeah. So what sort of changes did you notice? I mean, that's an amazing accomplishment to come in so early at ground level. Like, what sorts of things were you working on that are maybe now departments today?

Craig Stover [00:06:21] Well, it's interesting. We used to always say that we got like six years of experience for every year we were there. Because when you're starting, at the time, what was like a $10 billion project, there's a lot going on, you know? I mean, I was there when we were signing contracts. I was there when we submitted our license. I was there responding to RAIs that were coming from the regulator. I was sitting in design reviews with our developer. I was going on vendor visits to see our components being made. I was on the construction site watching the holes being dug and watching equipment go in. And every day was something different, you know? So when you're there early, you get to see everything, and just the staffing increase that happens so fast. I mean, just overnight, as soon as you sign that contract, you go from 10 people and it feels like the next week there's 100. And then after a year you look back and you're like, "Wow, I can't believe how fast all this has happened."

Josh Mesner [00:07:22] That's wild. Yeah, it sounds like you were a real jack of all trades there for a long time.

Craig Stover [00:07:26] Yeah, it was a great experience.

Josh Mesner [00:07:27] So you were there, what, about six years, is that right?

Craig Stover [00:07:30] That's right, yeah. Six years.

Josh Mesner [00:07:32] And what led you to EPRI?

Craig Stover [00:07:35] I had participated in a lot of EPRI projects when I was at SCANA, at the utility. And so, when I decided I wanted to do something different, EPRI was just a great fit. I enjoyed working on the projects as a utility advisor, and so, there was a role that came open and I just applied for it and the rest is kind of history.

Josh Mesner [00:08:00] Very cool. Before we go into kind of your pathway through EPRI, can we just take a couple of minutes to talk about what EPRI does, who they are, how they got started? Just give our listeners a quick background on EPRI.

Craig Stover [00:08:12] Yeah, great question. So EPRI is a nonprofit research organization. The basic concept of EPRI is any one utility or organization, they could maybe do a little bit of research and they would get a little bit of results. The idea of EPRI is that really we all come together and we kind of compile all those funds and then we're able to do a lot more work and then share the results among all of our members. And so we're able to do a very extensive amount of work over a lot of different sectors. It's not just nuclear; we do nuclear, but we also do renewables and all forms of generation and power delivery. You might see reports if you Google about electric cars. So we do a lot of different work in a lot of areas.

Josh Mesner [00:09:02] Yeah, you guys are doing it like kind of from production, generation, delivery, how it's used. I was doing a little background research on EPRI. I had no idea the extent with which EPRI's kind of involved in thinking about electricity and how it's used around the globe. Just out of curiosity, I'm really interested to hear about some of the projects that you're working on, just briefly on research around how electricity is used. I know so much of our world is focused on generation and delivery. What is EPRI's involvement in the use of electricity?

Craig Stover [00:09:40] I mean, we do a lot of work in that area. Now full disclosure, I'm on the nuclear side. I'm probably not the right person to answer some of those questions. I focus specifically just on nuclear. On the nuclear side, though, and this is something we'll probably get into when we start talking about new reactors, but on the nuclear side, one of the things that's so interesting now is that there are so many new markets that need to decarbonize. Certainly, we talk a lot about electric power and there's certainly a need to decarbonize there. But there's also industrial heat markets, there's district energy markets, there's data centers. You know, we're hosting a workshop soon on pulp and paper about maybe one day using a nuclear plant to provide heat to pulp and paper. So it's really interesting, I guess I would say, to see how many new markets actually need to decarbonize and exploring all the options that we can use to do that.

Josh Mesner [00:10:37] Absolutely. Awesome. Okay, so let's get back on track a little bit here. I appreciate the background. Okay, so you move over to EPRI. Give us an idea, what's kind of the first role that you are taking on as you make the jump?

Craig Stover [00:10:50] My first role at EPRI actually was in what we call our Plant Engineering Group. I was managing all of our heat exchanger and thermal performance research for the existing fleet, which was a great experience. So I did that for a couple of years. It was a great experience. So if a plant has an issue with a heat exchanger... And you've got to remember, we have almost 400 reactors around the world that are members, so there are a lot of heat exchangers when you think about it that way. So it's almost... I'll say the majority, over 90% of the world's existing commercial fleet of nuclear reactors members are members of EPRI, so it's a lot of folks.

Craig Stover [00:11:26] But it was a really exciting role because if a plant has an issue with a heat exchanger, they call EPRI. And ultimately, I got to respond to a lot of those kinds of things. And then, as you're responding to those kinds of issues and seeing trends, then you get to actually kick off research projects to try to solve those problems and get ahead of them and those kinds of things. So it was a good role and great exposure to the existing fleet.

Josh Mesner [00:11:55] Absolutely. So I know throughout your career at EPRI, you've moved from kind of engineer, boots on the ground, a lot of research development, to managing a lot of the programs. So, talk to me about how you started to get a hold of managing the transformative nuclear technologies area at EPRI. That is a really exciting opportunity.

Craig Stover [00:12:21] So, I first moved into management at EPRI in Balance of Plant NDE, again on the existing fleet side, which was great. But really, I have a new plant background and I certainly have always kind of had a bias towards building new plants because that's how I got into nuclear. And really when you saw the... We try not to say renaissance, but renaissance of sorts that was kind of emerging, it was an exciting opportunity to get to kind of move back over into new plants and take over this group. I think I've been in this role for three years now, and the interest in new plants has grown a lot.

Josh Mesner [00:13:09] And how have you felt moving from being kind of an engineer to more of a manager, or do you still get to do a lot of the engineering aspects that you had done previously?

Craig Stover [00:13:18] You know it's a different role, but I love it because to me what's really motivating is getting to kind of have more of an impact on the strategy. As somebody that kind of worked in the first renaissance building new plants, it's really exciting to be a part of this next wave of new plants and being in a role where I can help my team have an impact on that trajectory is really fun. So I certainly enjoyed my time in kind of an individual contributor role, but now my team has 45 projects on advanced reactors and we get to really have an impact on where things are going.

Josh Mesner [00:13:56] And I'm just curious, how do those projects come down the pipeline for EPRI? Is it kind of outside market factors or is it internal decisions that then lead to more publicly focused information or research projects? The 45 projects that you're working on, where are those originating?

Craig Stover [00:14:19] Yeah, it's a great idea. And actually, this is good timing because this week we're actually in Nashville right now at our annual Nuclear Power Council, which is our advisory meeting. So actually, this week there's 550 people here from around the industry who are giving us input on where they need help and we're telling them what we're working on. But that's really how it works. So yesterday, I led the advisory meeting for the Advanced Nuclear Technology Program. We had over 100 guests in the room. Almost all of the advanced reactor developers, almost all of the utilities that are building plants or thinking about building plants. A lot of, I'll just say, interested stakeholders. And we spent a lot of time actually getting input from them. What are their plans for building new plants? Where do they want EPRI's help? And so that's really where those ideas come from. We do a lot of our own thought leadership, obviously. We have a group of talented folks and we see a lot of the needs before they arise. But weeks like this, when we're meeting with our members is where we get most of the input.

Josh Mesner [00:15:26] And I'm curious, is there debate happening in these meetings? Is there, "We should focus here?" "No, let's focus here." Or is it sort of an altogether, "Yeah, we think we're moving in the right direction. This sounds like a great research project."

Craig Stover [00:15:40] Every now and then there's a little healthy debate about priority, which is all very positive. But no, for the most part it's very collaborative. Particularly if, in new nuclear space where we are, we're very mission driven right now. I'll say as an industry, not just what we're doing here, but we're very mission driven. We're on this mission to build an unprecedented number of plants in an unprecedented time scale. So I think everybody's very much focused on the goal.

Josh Mesner [00:16:10] Very cool, very cool. So yeah, let's dive in. Let's go into some of the research projects that you and your team are currently working on. I know one that comes to mind for me is your research on uranium recovery options. First off, let's talk about what that is and then we'll talk about kind of what that research means for these next gen reactors.

Craig Stover [00:16:33] Yeah. So when you say uranium recovery options, I guess you're talking about maybe disposition pathways for used fuel. One of the things that we're working on... When you look at these new reactor types, the landscape of new reactors has totally changed. If you wanted to build a new plant 10 years ago, there were a couple of options. You'd build a PWR or BWR. We've been building those for decades. We kind of understand what's going on there. But when we start looking at the future fleet, we're still going to build PWRs and BWRs and Light-water SMRs and molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas reactors and fast reactors and micro reactors. That introduces a lot of, I'll say, new variables, and one of those is new fuel forms. And what do we do with those fuel forms? And so one of the kind of exciting things we're looking at now is some of these reactors, like fast reactors, for example, can run off used fuel, so there are options to do reprocessing. So that obviously presents an exciting opportunity because you could take even the used fuel from the existing fleet and repurpose that to run these new reactors. So that's a great option. But we're looking at other disposition pathways as well when we think about these new fuel forms and what we're going to do with them.

Josh Mesner [00:17:57] What are some of those other options?

Craig Stover [00:18:01] So I think some of the questions, I'll say, are... If we look at what we do with used fuel today, which is a lot of, I'll say, like facilities where we're storing fuel in casks on sites, maybe we'll do some of that in the future, but with these new fuel forms, how does that change the design of those types of things? We're also looking at things like we actually issued a report a year or two ago on deep boreholes as an option for disposition. So it's an area where we're just kind of getting started. I'll say we spend more time talking about building the plants than how we're going to disposition the fuel, but it is an exciting area and there are a lot of exciting new opportunities with these new plants.

Josh Mesner [00:18:49] Absolutely. Awesome. I'm just going to kind of bounce around to some other topics that you guys are covering, in no particular order. I know there's so many. But if you want to move to some other stuff, you just let me know. I know one of the things that kind of caught my eye that I didn't really think about previously is I know you've done some recent research regarding diode laser cladding. This seems kind of like future technology. I always love lasers, right? So, yeah. Tell me a little bit about that research.

Craig Stover [00:19:21] Yeah, it's a great question. So that falls in our advanced manufacturing area. So the one thing I'll say about that before we talk about diode laser cladding is that when we think about the supply chain for the existing fleet and the future fleet, it's one of the biggest areas for development. And one of the things we're really trying to do on my team is reinvent the supply chain for the future fleet, and that's where this work on advanced manufacturing comes in. So one of our key projects there is we're actually building a SMR reactor vessel at a two-thirds scale. And the challenge there was... Historically, if you want to order a reactor vessel for a nuclear plant, when you factor in lead times and things, it could be a three or four year process to order just the vessel. This isn't the plant, right? It's just the vessel. And that creates bottlenecks; there's a limited number of suppliers. So how do we reinvent the supply chain for that?

Craig Stover [00:20:22] So we launched a project to try to demonstrate that you could build a reactor vessel in less than a year using advanced manufacturing techniques. A lot of focus on, actually, powder metallurgy which we call PM-HIP, which is an alternative to forgings. A lot of focus on electron beam welding as an alternative to traditional welding techniques. But then also diode laser cladding. So, some of these vessels are clad inside and out. Some people say there's an Olympic-sized swimming pool of cladding material that has to go on one of these vessels. So it's a lot. It's expensive, it's time consuming. And so we looked at deep diode laser cladding as an alternative because diode laser cladding is much faster and uses a lot less cladding material. So you're effectively spraying this material and sintering it with a laser on the surface of these vessels. And because of that, you go much faster, and like I said, with a lot less material.

Josh Mesner [00:21:20] And are you pulling that technology and those techniques from other industries, or is this something that you are pioneering or manufacturers are having to pioneer and test?

Craig Stover [00:21:28] That's a great question. One of the things we do a lot of EPRI is take technologies that already exist and qualify them for nuclear. And so all three of these technologies are technologies that already existed and are being used other places. As a matter of fact, if you have a car with a turbocharger in it, more than likely that turbocharger was welded with electronic beam welding. So these technologies exist, it's just qualifying it for a nuclear application is the challenge and the opportunity. And so that's really what we've done. We do a lot of scouting. A big part of our role is trying to find technologies that we think can have an impact on the trajectory of what we're trying to do and then bring those to nuclear. And that's exactly what we did with diode laser cladding.

Josh Mesner [00:22:11] And so, what about the individuals and the firms that are actually utilizing this technique? Is it something where a current... Let's say, Sheffield Forgemasters, who are actually able to complete some of these reactor pressure vessels today. Would they be able to use this technology in their manufacturing workshops or are you going to other pressure vessel manufacturers that already have this equipment and therefore opening up the market, having more firms involved and increasing speed?

Craig Stover [00:22:46] Yeah, that's a great question. The short answer is both. What's interesting is that it does open up the market because some of these technologies do bring, I'll say, new entrants into the supply chain. And so it does help strengthen and broaden the supply chain. But the other thing that's happening is these existing forging companies, for example, are beginning to adopt some of this technology. Electron beam welding, in particular, is one that has really caught on. And so, just like every industry, these folks are modernizing the tools they use. So yeah, so it's really both.

Josh Mesner [00:23:23] And I know there are a number of kind of checkboxes that reactor vessels have to go through. What are some of the additional checks that these cladded vessels have to go through that regular cold rolled, forged vessels don't have to go through for testing purposes?

Craig Stover [00:23:49] Once they're actually qualified, the hope is that there's actually less... You know, less burdensome is the goal. But the work we're doing is kind of clearing some of those hurdles. And so, what we're doing... If you manufacture a reactor vessel, ultimately, you're going to be looking at material properties. This gets really into the engineering, but I mean, down to fracture mechanics of the materials of the vessel. And so, what we're doing when we look at these new technologies like powder metallurgy, PM-HIP, is actually doing that work to qualify the process, to understand the right metallurgy that needs to be done so that you get the material properties that you can use for reactor vessels that kind of like meet codes. And then we actually work to develop some of the code cases that ultimately go in to justify that. The other ones are with all these technologies, we have to be able to inspect everything. With some of these new materials and the new application methods, there's additional work that has to be done to develop inspection techniques. And so we're doing that as well.

Craig Stover [00:24:58] Ultimately, the goal is that once those are on the street, and some of these are very close to being commercially available now, they're actually easier to use, is the hope. Like, PM-HIP, powder metallurgy, is actually a very inspectable material. It's a homogeneous material, so it'll actually aid inspection when it's commercial. But that's kind of where EPRI comes in. We do all the work to get it to the point where somebody can use it.

Josh Mesner [00:25:27] And how are you balancing the work of new reactor technology with existing fleet? Like, maintaining the existing fleet is important. I was going to say is as important, but is important as looking at what new technology brings. How do you guys balance your approach to existing versus future technologies or infrastructure?

Craig Stover [00:25:51] Yeah, it's a great question. Number one, we always say there is no future fleet without the existing fleet. So that is our foundation. We need the existing fleet to be very efficient and effective. And we don't want any issues there, right? So we certainly have a huge priority on supporting the existing fleet. And if you look at what we're doing in the nuclear sector at EPRI, a huge portion of what we do is obviously supporting the existing fleet. But it's also really important that we think about the future. And that's actually why we like to use the term future fleet, because we're not talking about building another plant. When we talk to our members, maybe one of our utilities, the reason why they should be interested in it is one day they're going to have a future fleet of new plants, and so this work is so very important for them and for everyone else.

Craig Stover [00:26:46] So a huge focus on the existing fleet, but we are kind of, I'll say, transitioning into more and more work on the future fleet, because it's here. Every day we hear about a new company that has made an announcement that they need to build new plants, for whatever reason. So we are transitioning into that. And we've been... If you look at my team, for example, we had about five folks a year ago that were working on new plants. Today, we have a dozen. And like I said, we have these 45 projects on advanced reactors. So we are transitioning very quickly to do more and more work in this area. And I'll say the other thing we're doing around the sector, even in the parts of the sector that aren't working on the future fleet, they're now starting to gear up for that and they're starting to prepare for the future, because they have to be ready to support these new plants when they go online before they go online.

Josh Mesner [00:27:45] Yeah. And what are some of the pillars, maybe, that your team follows or maybe EPRI follows as it relates to the new nuclear fleet? Like higher efficiencies, less complexities, safety margins, what are some of the focal points that you navigate your research around?

Craig Stover [00:28:03] That's a great question. Purely from a future fleet perspective, number one, we want to able to build these plants. And if you look at what my team does, we like to say we're reducing the risk and uncertainty of building new plants. Fundamentally what that means is we're doing everything we can to make it faster and cheaper to build new plants. And so, we do a lot of work, actually, on the construction side. Ultimately, cost matters a lot when it comes to building a new plant. We talk mostly about the nuclear part of nuclear plants for obvious reasons, but that is not what drives the cost. What drives the cost is all the civil construction, concrete and rebar and people standing on site. And so, we have a huge focus on that piece, actually, on what can we do to drive these construction schedules down to give folks tools to be more effective there. But we work on all parts of the new plant lifecycle.

Josh Mesner [00:29:04] Very cool. I know that you, kind of at beginning of discussing EPRI, talked about how you go to the event that you're at now, you have internal discussions. Who are some of the partners that you're working with that are giving you inputs as you navigate the space? I know national labs, private entities, researchers and universities overseas. Is it kind of like a world involvement? And are there any sectors that you are hoping to get into to explore to allow their perspective on some of your research?

Craig Stover [00:29:38] That's a great question, actually, and it'll let me talk about our Advanced Reactor Roadmap, too, which is a really important thing. So number one, if you look at the members in our Advanced Nuclear Programs, so the folks who have joined who want to build new plants or talk about new plants... We have 84 companies, today, at the table talking about new plants. And those represent, like I said, all the existing operators, almost all of the advanced reactor developers, people in the supply chain, I'll say, even small utilities that are traditionally non-nuclear that have done an integrated resource plan and realize they need to build a new plant. So there are a lot of different folks. We do work with a lot of universities. We do work with the national labs and other industry organizations. We have a lot of partners. But one of the interesting things that actually came out of that is, again, going back to this mission that we want to build plants maybe in the 2030s at this unprecedented scale. We realized about a year and a half ago that with so many partners and with so many industry organizations that have a similar goal, it was really important that we all get on the same page, that we have a clear, agreed upon industry vision, that we all know kind of like who's doing what so that we can have a coordinated conversation across all of industry to accomplish this goal. And so EPRI actually partnered with NEI to roll out what we call the Advanced Reactor Roadmap.

Craig Stover [00:31:10] So we spent the last, about, year and a half doing a lot of deep dives looking at what are the opportunities and enablers for new nuclear, what needs to be done, what are maybe some technical gaps that we could address. And we rolled all that out into a document. The draft was actually issued this past Friday. By April, the formal document will be issued. But it's really a tool. So when it comes out... You know, as of right now, we have 44 key actions that the industry needs to take. And that's really what we wanted to do was kind of create this action plan so that we can get all those stakeholders like you talked about... So we want to have EPRI and the developers and the national labs and the universities, we want us all looking at the same sheet of opportunities and saying, "If you're going to go do this piece of research, then we'll do this one. And then maybe NEI's going to do something in policy space." But that means we're coordinated. That means we're all working together towards this common goal.

Josh Mesner [00:32:13] And sometimes that can be pretty difficult, especially with so many folks, so many cooks in the kitchen, I'm sure.

Craig Stover [00:32:19] Yeah, exactly. It can be. But again, I think the whole industry realizes that... There's a term that's used a little bit right now which I kind of like which is "co-opetition." It's one of my favorite terms. And the reason is because ultimately there'll be a lot of competition in nuclear just like any other industry. But right now, we're very mission focused. We want to get to the point where we have the option to build all these plants. And so I think everybody sees the reason to work together.

Josh Mesner [00:32:49] Absolutely. I know EPRI's had some other recent accomplishments in 2022 and early 2023, kind of the Owner-Operator Guide, some siting guides as well. Those are really exciting. My question is, how often do you update those things? Is it something where you deliver to the public and kind of put your stamp on it and say, "This is what we think," and forget about it? Or do you come back to it often and try to make sure that it fits with today's learnings and kind of the evidence that you now have available to you?

Craig Stover [00:33:23] It's a great question. So we did recently... We have our Owner-Operator Requirements Guide, we have the Siting Guide, as you said, for siting new plants. We also have a Technology Assessment Guide that was just published in December. Those three documents are really important for... Those are basically the three documents you would use to start a new plant project. And we wanted to make those resources available because there are so many people considering building new plants. But if you look at like the Siting Guide, for example, we just updated that. So it's been six or seven years, probably, since the last update. But not a lot had happened in terms of siting until recently. And so we just updated that because we needed to add advanced reactors to the Siting Guide. We needed to add things like cold in nuclear and bringing nuclear to brownfield sites to the Siting Guide. So we updated it based on that. So you know, some documents can be updated every two years, some every ten years. It just totally depends on the need.

Josh Mesner [00:34:19] Absolutely, absolutely. Fantastic. Yeah, I'd love to transition to kind of what does the future hold. Give us your vision of new nuclear in the United States and abroad. Where do you see a lot of opportunity?

Craig Stover [00:34:37] Yeah, I think the one thing that's clear is nuclear is just one of the options. I do think it's important to say that all technologies, renewables, energy storage, carbon capture, these are all important options to meet these carbon goals. But it's clear we have carbon goals. It's clear around the world that we're all looking for ways to decarbonize the energy sector. As we think about that, it's a very regional issue. Even in the United States, what we might do and what might make sense in the Southeast does not make sense in the Pacific Northwest. And in terms of the role that nuclear plays, that's why I actually see a lot of different options. I think there are parts of the U.S. and parts of the world that are going to continue to build large nuclear plants like what we've historically had. But there are also regions, there are grids that are only a couple gigawatts for a whole grid and you're not going to put two gigawatt scale plants in on that grid because it doesn't make sense. So now you start looking at small modular reactors or smaller non light-water reactors and micro reactors.

Craig Stover [00:35:50] And so what's really interesting is, fundamentally what we have today that we didn't have in the past is a lot of options. And in terms of nuclear, there are options at all these different scales, for all these different folks... Not just for electricity, but a lot of industrial customers as well in things like district energy. So what I see is, I do see us in the 2030s building this unprecedented number of plants at this crazy scale. And that's very exciting. But it's not going to just be one plant or two plants. It's going to be a lot of different kinds of plants in a lot of different kinds of applications. So the nuclear industry of the future is going to be radically different than the one we have today.

Josh Mesner [00:36:33] I always hate to bring up silver bullets, but in your perspective, what sort of areas of innovation do you find to be most intriguing to really help us unlock that 2030s goal?

Craig Stover [00:36:50] Well, I think ultimately, the risk we have in nuclear is we've got to be able to build these plants on time and on schedule. I mean, that's what we have to be able to do. We have to be able to deliver on our promises. And so, so much of the work we do is about making it easier to do that. And so I'll give you one example. We have a project right now that we used to call decoupling the nuclear island from the balanced plant. We now call it decoupling the nuclear facility. But ultimately, if you look at it, we're trying to say how do we make the nuclear part of the plant smaller? And what I mean by that, if you go look at combined cycle plants, you can build a combined cycle plant in three years. With a lot of these new reactor technologies, once you get outside of the nuclear island, you start getting into the balanced plant part, why can't you build it like a combined cycle plant? Why can't you just apply commercial standards instead of nuclear standards? If you do that, maybe you can radically reduce the cost and the time to construct those plants. And we're still doing research to see exactly how much that is, but certainly there's an impact, right?

Craig Stover [00:38:00] So that project that we're working on is actually developing that technical basis that says here's how you would actually go about doing this. And if successful, that's a radically different approach to building nuclear plants than we've done in the past. It kind of like fundamentally reinvents the approach. And so those kind of things are really exciting. And it's one of the things I always say, that we've got to reinvent nuclear. So we don't want to build plants like we used to. We don't want to operate them like we used to. You know, we did great, but the future is totally different. We've got to build them faster, we've got to build them cheaper, we've got to operate them leaner. And so, so much of the work we're doing is around making that possible.

Josh Mesner [00:38:40] Absolutely. Awesome. Is there any message that you'd love to share with our audience about your emotions towards the future and what nuclear holds for it?

Craig Stover [00:38:51] Yeah, that's a great question. I just think that we have this really great opportunity. I'll say it's like a once in a generation opportunity where we've had this realization that nuclear plays a really important role in our future and meeting these carbon goals. And we've got to capitalize on our opportunity. We've all got to come together, we've all got to work together. And I think if we do that, we can have a huge impact on meeting our energy goals for the future.

Josh Mesner [00:39:23] Wonderful. Thanks so much, Craig. I really appreciate your time and joining us on Titans of Nuclear.

Craig Stover [00:39:27] Absolutely. Great to be here.

Adam Smith [00:00:59] I'm Adam Smith and you're listening to the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. With us today we have John Gorman, CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association. John, welcome to the show.

John Gorman [00:01:10] Thank you very much, Adam. I'm glad to be here.

Adam Smith [00:01:13] We're glad to have you. We've got a good one for you today. So, I think we've got quite a few questions that our listeners would definitely appreciate some help understanding from your perspective. And before we get into that topic or any of those topics, tell us about yourself, tell us about your background. Where are you from?

John Gorman [00:01:32] Where am I from? Well, for your listeners who are familiar with Canada, I'm from Ottawa, Canada. So of course, the nation's capital, about 4 hours drive east from Toronto. Born and raised here, but studied and traveled abroad fairly extensively. A little bit about me and I guess how I got here... I suppose when I started my career, and especially just over 20 years ago when my wife Leigh and I started to have children, I began to think a little bit about how it was I wanted to marry professional life with my own personal ambitions to do something constructive and positive in terms of climate change and decreasing emissions. And about that same time I had been appointed to the board of a utility, an electric utility here in Ottawa that was quite a large utility and had amalgamated a number of them.

Adam Smith [00:02:48] Sorry to interrupt you. What was the name of that utility?

John Gorman [00:02:52] That's Hydro Ottawa. And it was a very interesting time in Ontario at that point because we were amalgamating many of our utilities. They were being spun out from sort of being municipal creatures to being share capital corporations. They were being given power to do all sorts of interesting things like to begin owning their own generation projects. They started setting up energy companies and they started setting up telecommunications companies as well as running their regular electricity business. And so that was fascinating for me. And as I said, Adam, at that time... It seems unbelievable now, but climate change was just beginning to register on my consciousness as being something that we needed to tackle. And this electricity space seemed to me to be something that I could focus on that would have a role if we were to get into renewable or non-emitting electricity sources.

John Gorman [00:03:57] And so I started a progression there of just continually focusing on electricity and clean energy, and it's brought me through a number of different things. Not only working with utilities, but as a developer of renewable projects, as someone who spent more than seven years heading up the the Solar Industries Association here in Canada. And I spent the last couple of years of that mandate working with my counterpart at Wind Energy to merge those things into renewables, and then I eventually moved to nuclear. But it's all been with the eye to ensuring that what I'm doing during the day is aligned with trying to make a contribution to lowering emissions in our economies at home and around the world. And although I didn't realize it over 20 years ago, it turns out that electricity is really central to all of these efforts. So that's why I'm glad to find myself here today with the Nuclear Association.

Adam Smith [00:05:00] That's amazing. It sounds like you've really seen the entire gamut of renewable or major renewable sources of energy. Can you talk about how some of that transition has happened for you? I mean, you've dealt with people in the wind industry, you led the solar industry in Canada, you now lead the nuclear industry in Canada. How has that worked out for you? What major transitions did you have to take to get from a solar or wind background over to nuclear? And were there any sort of benefits from transitioning from one to another or skills that you were able to apply?

John Gorman [00:05:40] When I look back at my involvement in these different clean electricity, clean energy technologies, I sometimes find myself scratching my head and wondering how it is I didn't see things more clearly at the time than we do now in retrospect. When I was with Hydro Ottawa, we were looking at creating renewable projects. As I said, that was over 20 years ago, and there was a lot of excitement around smart grid and storage and distributed generation even then, even though it was so nascent at that point. I mean, solar was outrageously expensive twenty-some years ago. And I was really seized with solar power as something that I would say, at that time, seemed to me to border on believing that solar was the silver bullet and that smart grid technologies, especially storage, distributed generation, the prosumer, you know, that thing, the people who are producing their own electricity and storing it and interfacing with the utilities. I mean, I thought that going to solve our world problems. We've seen mega decreases in the cost of deploying solar and wind, of course, which has been really, really important for the world over these last 20 years.

John Gorman [00:07:09] But I kind of woke up one morning after being in this field, working with wind and solar and storage for almost 20 years and realized that in all of that time working together at home and with people around the world, the amount of non-emitting electricity on the world's electricity grids was at 36% non-emitting electricity when I started working with renewables, and 20 years later, it was still at 36% non-emitting electricity, despite the incentives, the investments, the cost declines, the aggressive rollout of things. And let me say firstly, it's a good thing that we had more accessible wind and solar to be rolling out on the world's grids because it stopped us from losing ground against the deployment of coal and gas-fired electricity generation with energy demands, electricity demands around the world growing. So, that's a good thing. But the message to take away from me, the eye opener was, we are just not making progress quickly enough.

John Gorman [00:08:18] And so I thought, "Okay, wind and solar, they're in pretty good shape. What else can I do?" And I looked at the Canadian nuclear scene, this incredible six decades of just world records, safe operation of CANDU technologies here in Canada, and I thought that nuclear is a place that needs to be brought to the forefront as well. There's a lot of work that needs to be done there in terms of getting policymakers and the public to understand how great a technology nuclear is and how it can work with wind and solar. And so four years ago, I joined the Nuclear Association. And the motivation, after all that explanation, to get to your question, Adam, is it's because I realized the challenge was so big and we weren't making progress fast enough, despite making improvements with intermittent sources of electricity like wind and solar. And so I saw a need to help nuclear and I'm doing that every day, working with folks here and around the world.

Adam Smith [00:09:18] Well, that's amazing. We're glad to have you on our side, for sure. So, in your role as CEO of CNA, can you tell us a little bit about how you're advancing nuclear technology and basically nuclear's voice in the world?

John Gorman [00:09:38] Sure. Well, let me say, first of all, that I feel exceptionally fortunate and proud to be representing the Canadian nuclear sector. And I say that because Canada has such an exceptional history with its own nuclear sector. And so, when it comes to dealing with policymakers and the public here in Canada, I get to point to this six decades of excellence in nuclear through our CANDU technology. And on the world stages, Canada is recognized as a leader that's doing just about everything right in nuclear, not just with large, but some of the new innovations that have come up around small modular reactors, and of course, nuclear medicine with isotopes that Canada is a leader in. So, I've got this amazing platform and reputation to use this Canadian excellence, this Canadian industry, to talk in a very persuasive way about the role that nuclear can play at home and abroad. So I leverage that in all of the discussions that we're having at home and abroad. And that, I think, is the success to why Canada has such an outsized voice compared to the small nation that we are in the international nuclear scene. And I'm sure as we go forward in this discussion, I'll be able to talk more about some of the innovations and some of the leadership that Canada is showing on that front.

Adam Smith [00:11:21] You had mentioned SMRs, and from my research, you guys have at least... I think it's two projects that are SMR-based and you're kind of leading the charge, certainly in North America, if not the world, on developing some of these technologies. Do you think the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is ready for SMRs? Are they prepared for it or are they still in their gearing up phase?

John Gorman [00:11:47] What a great question, because regulators in many countries around the world now are struggling to wrap their heads around the regulatory frameworks for new innovations in nuclear, these small modular reactors. I would say that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the CNSC, is regarded as a very progressive regulator. First of all, we've got an incredible safety record of operating nuclear fleets here in Canada and we have for six decades. The President, Velshi, of the regulator here actually oversees the international working groups around safety, and we've got a stellar record. And the regulator is also quite nimble in terms of being able to adapt to new technologies. I think when you look at the spectrum of regulators around the world, some are so prescriptive that they force the technology providers to almost change their technologies to fit into a matrix, whereas the Canadian Nuclear Association is seemed to be one that while having these incredible standards around safety is working with what the technologies can actually do and be adaptive. So is it going through some growing pains right now? Because to your point, Adam, there are actually 12 technologies going through the review and licensing process right now, 12 small modular reactors.

Adam Smith [00:13:22] Oh my gosh, I didn't realize it was that many. You guys really are the leader.

John Gorman [00:13:25] Well, to the extent that it is a little bit of a problem too, right? We can't have 12 different technologies going through a regulator at the same time. So there is a bit of market self-selection that's happening there, some are more advanced than others. But fortunately, the federal government here in Canada has invested quite heavily into our nuclear ecosystem, and that has included investments in the regulator, additional funding, to be able to deal with the new challenges that are around licensing and siting for small modular reactors.

John Gorman [00:14:00] So I'd say we are doing very well. And to your point, there's more than two small modular reactor projects that are currently under development now. We've got our first large one; we'll be connected here in Ontario to the electricity grid in 2028. They're already beginning site prep and stuff like that. It's a 300 megawatt General Electric Hitachi reactor. Ontario is building out four of those in the short term. One of our other provinces, Saskatchewan... SaskPower has also committed to building out four, and the two utilities are working in lockstep to develop and deploy the technology. So that's going ahead full steam. I think you're right. We may be one of the first ones in the free world to actually connect a small modular reactor, full size, to the grid.

John Gorman [00:14:58] But we are working closely with partners in the States as well. Tennessee Valley Authority is working with OPG on the same technology, and there's a little bit of "co-opetition" that's happening there. Jeff Lyash, the leader over at TVA, is working very closely with Ken Hartwick over here in Ontario Power Generation. The two of them used to work together before. In fact, Jeff Lyash was the CEO of Ontario Power Generation until going south of the border there, from our perspective.

John Gorman [00:15:30] So, lots of great stuff happening there, but other technologies as well are being rolled out. Micro reactors at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories here in Ontario, there's a project going with Westinghouse's eVinci over in Saskatchewan. We've got X-Energy that has gotten a bunch of partnerships here in a couple of different provinces and partnerships with utilities. In New Brunswick, which is one of the smaller provinces, we've got two fourth-generation technologies that are being developed over there, Arc Energy and Moltex, which have their own interesting applications. So very, very promising things are happening here.

Adam Smith [00:16:15] Oh my gosh, you guys are hitting it on all fronts. It sounds like every province is getting their own nuclear reactor. Before all of these SMRs came about or started to enter into your regulatory process, wasn't most of the nuclear power concentrated in Ontario?

John Gorman [00:16:34] Ontario and New Brunswick? Yes, you're right. And pretty significant, too. I mean, we've got 10 provinces here in Canada, three territories, but Ontario is our biggest economic province and from a population point of view as well. And nuclear here in Ontario creates about 60% of all our electricity. And in New Brunswick, a smaller province, it our CANDU reactors again. They're producing about a third of New Brunswick's electricity. We have a refurbishment going on here in Ontario of our 10 units, and this is a $26 billion project that is extending the lives of the Bruce Power and and Darlington nuclear plants, extending their lives into the 2060s.

Adam Smith [00:17:32] Love to see it.

John Gorman [00:17:33] Yeah, well you know you're welcome... Let's do that. We'll have you up here and go for a tour of the plants. Those things are going on time and on budget, which is a major accomplishment for any large infrastructure project. But it's on the basis of this incredible activity and this pedigree of CANDU technology that we are doing all of this innovation around small modular reactors and nuclear medicine isotopes and things like that. And so when you combine that with this incredible network of laboratories, nuclear laboratories that we have, like the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, but there are other ones as well, academia, our world leading regulator, and this this cooperation we have going on between four provinces and four utilities, it's pretty amazing. And it's all come together to really give Canada a bit of an advantage in terms of developing and deploying small modular reactors. And when we get to it, Adam, the large nuclear is back on the menu here in Canada, so some interesting things to talk about there as well.

Adam Smith [00:18:41] Amazing. Are you looking at large nuclear reactors with some of these different technologies as well, or are you going with your traditional CANDU reactors as well?

John Gorman [00:18:52] So, another great question, and one that is actually keeping me up at night lately. Let me take a step back for a moment and just say there's a bit of a dynamic that's happening here in Canada, and I think it's happening in nations around the world that have nuclear assets. And the dynamic is people in the industry, especially the nuclear industry, have recognized for some time now, that there is no pathway to a net zero future without a lot of new nuclear. And so the industry itself has been working towards that, despite the fact that the public and the policymakers have not in all cases recognized that yet, you know what I mean?

John Gorman [00:19:38] In Canada, three years ago even, I was having trouble getting a federal minister to say the word nuclear behind a microphone. I mean, it wasn't part of the political dynamic or the read of public support by policymakers that we should be talking a lot about nuclear, despite all the great assets that we have here. And we've seen a dramatic change over these last three years. Now, full support of the federal government, both the cabinet ministers and the senior policymakers for different provinces. Four of the ten provinces and their leaders have signed an MOU for the development and deployment of nuclear in their provinces. As I mentioned, big funding announcements that are supporting the nuclear ecosystem here in Canada, increasing amounts of funding that have been given out through various funds within the Canadian government, like the Canada Infrastructure Bank or the Strategic Innovation Fund that are supporting the specific technologies. We had a billion dollar investment by the Canada Infrastructure Bank in that small modular reactor project at Darlington that I spoke to you about. So within three years, there's been this enormous shift in terms of recognizing that not only is nuclear clean, but that it's needed for net zero. And now we're seeing that translate into actual support.

John Gorman [00:21:08] So, the policymakers are catching up, still a lot of work to do with the public. But getting back to your question about the large nuclear, what happened in Ontario just a few weeks ago was that the system operator in Ontario, our largest province as I said, came out with a Pathway Report in terms of electricity systems planning. They're an independent body responsible for planning the electricity system in Canada, in Ontario, I should say. And it said, "We are going to need to more than double the size of our electricity grid right now. We're going to need 69 gigawatts of new, clean electricity generation by 2050." And right now, Adam, we only have like 40 gigawatts of installed capacity on our system. So, 69 new gigawatts.

John Gorman [00:21:56] And not only that, but 18 of those 69 gigawatts need to be nuclear. So we're not going to be able to build out 18 gigawatts of new nuclear in this province by 2050 unless we include large as well as small nuclear. And that means having to grapple with will it be CANDU technology, the one that we've homegrown here in Canada, or will it be Westinghouse, the AP1000, or are the French interested, are the South Koreans interested? That's up for discussion right now. But there are other exciting things happening in Canada that are complicating this dynamic a bit. And that is Cameco, a Canadian corporation powerhouse, the second largest exporter of uranium in the world, along with Brookfield, a major global investment bank owned by Canada, have bought Westinghouse which owns the AP1000. So, we've got some interesting dynamics around large nuclear here that we have to work our way through and figure out what is going to meet our needs from a large nuclear point of view.

Adam Smith [00:23:09] Yeah. It definitely seems like the nuclear industry is small enough that every direction that you look in, it's everyone kind of owns a little chunk of everyone else or everyone knows everyone. So yeah, that dynamic between your typical CANDUs and your AP1000s or if the French get involved, that'll be interesting to see how that plays out. But it seems like Canada is taking a bit of, I would call it almost an all-of-the-above or sampling of all the technologies, at least on the SMR side, and then you guys already have expertise in the CANDUs. Is there anything that specifically drove Canada to develop their own CANDU reactor as opposed to going with your typical light-water reactor?

John Gorman [00:23:55] Well, my understanding is that we were very motivated to find a technology that could use natural uranium. So, you know, the fuel.

Adam Smith [00:24:08] Yeah. Well, you have plenty of it, so.

John Gorman [00:24:11] We have plenty of it. That's right; that's a good point. And it's not enriched. So that was the motivation for it. And of course, as I said, not only do we have six decades of experience with the CANDU technology, but now with these refurbishments going on, the $26 billion project here in Ontario, there's just a lot of expertise, a healthy supply chain around CANDU, and a lot of economic benefit that comes to Canada because of that. So it's going to be interesting to see just how the industry, how with government, frankly, whether there's going to be a resurgence of support for CANDU over other technologies or not. I think on the large scale stuff, you do see most nations are favoring their own large technologies. So Canada will grapple with that now.

Adam Smith [00:25:05] Amazing. So going back to the communication and support side of this, you've mentioned that Canada has gotten fully on board from top to bottom government-wise, and now you're trying to get the public on board as well. What's your plan for that? How exactly do you plan to do that? And do you have any learnings from getting the government on board that you might be able to share with us so we can apply that to every government?

John Gorman [00:25:33] Right. Well, look, when it comes to policymakers catching up to the nuclear industry, I think that's going to happen just about everywhere. As we move into this increasingly carbon constrained world and as we start looking at actually planning out how we're going to decarbonize our electricity systems and how it is that we're going to double or triple the size of our electricity grid so we can fuel switch in these other sectors, transportation, buildings, you name it, as these countries and planners go through the process they're just realizing that we can't do it without nuclear. So, I guess my point is the policymakers are going to come to that realization.

John Gorman [00:26:27] And we're seeing that in surprising places now. Japan has as made the tough decision now to reopen all of its nuclear plants, despite that dynamic, the public sentiment after Fukushima. Germany, the poster child for wanting to go all renewables and phase out nuclear is extending the life of its nuclear plants. And we'll see where that goes from here, whether there's a nuclear resurgence in Germany. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine, energy security, as you know, Adam, from the other discussions that you've had on this podcast, this is only accelerating. Energy security concerns are only accelerating the adoption of nuclear because, frankly, you can build nuclear anywhere, right? It's not dependent on needing large portions of land or needing the right wind or solar resource or water resource, which, those things are hard to... Especially water can be very hard to come by in terms of producing the base load. So all of these things are accelerating the adoption of nuclear.

John Gorman [00:27:41] So that policymakers, I think they're going to eventually get there. The bigger problem is the one that you mentioned, which is the public opinion. And I guess I'd have two things to say about that. The first is we know for certain that the more people understand the facts, look into the facts and understand the facts around nuclear, from being a clean energy source to being one of the safest forms of electricity generation, period. I mean, it's as safe as wind or solar in terms of actual safety records.

Adam Smith [00:28:18] Safer, safer.

John Gorman [00:28:19] It is. It is actually safer.

Adam Smith [00:28:21] It's so much safer.

John Gorman [00:28:22] Yeah. Or even the harder issues like waste, which is one of the first questions that come out of people's mouths. So, the more that people understand the facts, the more supportive they are. So that's good. The other thing I would depend on is people are actually beginning to care now, maybe for the first time ever, where their electrons come from. You know what I mean?

Adam Smith [00:28:48] Oh, yeah.

John Gorman [00:28:50] We've lived with electricity in fortunate developed countries for more than 100 years, and I think people have just always depended on it being there. They didn't really care or understand where it came from, whether it was produced by coal or gas or nuclear or something else. But now we see that people are actually looking into it, questioning how it is we're going to lower emissions. And so they're looking into nuclear along with the other things they're exploring and they're finding out that nuclear is an amazing technology. So I feel hopeful about that dynamic and that the industry can take advantage of policymakers and the public now taking a serious look at nuclear. And if we can communicate properly, then I think we're going to make some real progress here. The ground is very fertile.

Adam Smith [00:29:35] You have an optimistic view here, and I love it. I am definitely on board with that. I think the more we can just educate people. I think really nuclear's biggest issue, it's marketing. People, for the last 40 or 50 years, have been scared of something that they just didn't need to be frightened of. And the more we can educate people and the more that we can show them that it is this amazing source of energy, the more traction we can actually get. Because at the end of day, the regulators do what the general public wants. And if you can make the general public want nuclear and clean energy and for it to be stable and cheap, then the government officials will bend to that quickly. So, I'm equally as hopeful as you are here. Going back to Canada then, you guys just classified nuclear as clean energy, right? How does that...

John Gorman [00:30:37] Oh, yeah, we did. And that was a major breakthrough. As I said, three years ago, hard to find a federal minister or politician who would say the word nuclear behind a microphone. And now, very strongly supportive and a lot of champions for nuclear within the federal government. And as I said, four of the ten provinces also are being very supportive of nuclear. So acknowledging it as clean was an important first step. It's emissions free, and in fact, it's got a full-life carbon footprint that's the lowest of any technology. It's lower than solar, as low as wind, for sure. So, yeah, I mean, saying it was clean was the first step and then recognizing these other attributes that it has and seeing that it's needed for a net zero future, that's translated into big support.

Adam Smith [00:31:33] So in the U.S., for renewables, for example, we have incentives for building wind or solar. Is there an incentive that goes along with that clean designation in Canada?

John Gorman [00:31:47] Yes. I'm glad you asked this question. So, a couple of things. First, just to cover off on that last point about wind and solar and investments in clean energy. So now we find that nuclear is being supported along with the other clean energy sources. There are some historical inequalities. So before nuclear was really being embraced by the federal government and others, there were some decisions made to support wind and solar and storage and hydrogen and other clean energies that were not extended to nuclear. So we are fighting to get those extended to us so that we've got a level playing field. But yeah, Adam, I would say the real dynamic at play right now is what the Americans have done, what you folks south of the border have done with the Inflation Reduction Act. $369 billion dollars worth of incentives being directly pumped into the sort of clean energy infrastructure. I noticed in the U.S. coverage, we don't see all that much treatment or coverage of how much has been extended to nuclear, but it's very, very significant. It's like really significant, as you know.

Adam Smith [00:33:11] Wind and solar always get the spotlight, but yes, very, very significant. Very significant if we can make it work.

John Gorman [00:33:20] Very significant. And so from a Canadian perspective and also other nations looking at the United States, there's a flurry of activity right now to try to level up with what the Americans have done, where they've put the stake in the ground in terms of this massive injection into the clean energy transition. So we are, I would say, arguably or even factually, Canada was well ahead of the United States in terms of the type of policy environment and even support on a relative basis that we were giving to clean energies including nuclear. But with the IRA, the bar has been raised. And so we're looking at how we're going to try to create that level playing field with the United States to meet the incentive or at least the support that you have for clean energy. And I think we're going to get there.

John Gorman [00:34:17] What we're focused on right now for this budget is investment tax credits. So with investment tax credits, the government announced in the fall that they were going to extend the investment tax credits to small modular reactors and that they would discuss whether those investment tax credits would be extended to large nuclear. Of course, these investment tax credits are going to be used as a mechanism to help many clean energy technologies, but I'm just talking about nuclear right now. Our main thrust over these last few months has been, okay, yes, with the investment tax credit, let's ensure it's extended to small. You also have to make sure it's extended to large nuclear. Make sure you include the ability to extend these investment tax credits to the refurbishments that are going on so that we can expand the amount of production we're getting out of each of those plants.

John Gorman [00:35:15] And very importantly, let's make sure that Crown corporations, non-tax paying entities in Canada, can also take advantage of this investment tax credit. Because in the Canadian context, it really is the Crown utilities in each of the provinces that is driving, I think it's 75% of all investment in clean energy, clean electricity infrastructure. So in the Canadian context, we need to have that ITC not just available to the private sector but also to the Crown utilities. So that means, yes small, yes large, private sector and non-taxpaying entities need to be able to access this. That's what we've been pushing for. And by the way, again in the Canadian context, it's important because municipal governments are non-taxpaying. We want municipal governments to be embracing smart grid technologies and making other investments.

Adam Smith [00:36:13] Absolutely.

John Gorman [00:36:14] Absolutely. And then our indigenous people, right? The reconciliation that this nation is trying to achieve with its indigenous peoples here requires not only a pathway to reconciliation, but also forming partnerships like commercial partnerships with these communities and First Nations communities on real, equal terms that meet whatever their needs are. There isn't going to be a major infrastructure project built in Canada without having Indigenous people agree and support and participate in these projects. So they are non-taxpaying entities as well. We need to ensure that these things are extended to them.

John Gorman [00:37:02] And the last thing I'll say about it, Adam, is getting back to the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., those incentives, those investment tax credits, they are available to small, large, non-taxpaying entities, the private sector, etc. So we need parity between our nations as well, right? We can't have Canada or the U.S., in my view, having an advantage over the other as we try to go through this energy transition in both of our countries, because we need to be ensuring that investment dollars and human talent and supply chain are not going in one direction or the other. I think we, especially in the nuclear sector, need to create an almost bilateral or U.S.-Canada nuclear ecosystem where we're going through this together and cooperating so we can roll this stuff out.

Adam Smith [00:38:01] You definitely have the right idea here. The competition between the two countries just doesn't work very well if we end up having talent go either north or south, just depending upon where... Well, not just talent, but more importantly, capital going north or south, just wherever it makes more sense. So some sort of bilateral partnership between the U.S. and Canada could really spur some serious development.

John Gorman [00:38:25] We are working on that and we're working on it in many ways. Not to get too into the weeds, but the Department of Energy in the United States and our equivalent here in Canada, which we call Natural Resources Canada, they've signed a memorandum of understanding around nuclear collaboration. The regulators in both nations have done the same thing. Our association, the Canadian Nuclear Association and NEI in the states, Maria Korsnick, my friend and collaborator, have very structured working groups and task forces that are looking at everything from creating a nuclear fuel ecosystem to things around human resources and supply chain and all the rest of that. So, there is serious work going on there to ensure that we get it right.

Adam Smith [00:39:16] Amazing. Well, John, we're about out of time. But before we go, I have one last question for you. And that is, would you like to share any message for our listeners about nuclear?

John Gorman [00:39:28] Okay, messages. Well, look Adam, I think we touched on a couple. We know that the more that folks understand the real facts behind nuclear, the more supportive they're going to be. So, we're dealing with Titans of Nuclear Podcast listeners. We know these folks are going to be learning a lot about nuclear and they're supportive, but I would encourage them if they are supportive to reach out and talk to family and friends about nuclear and encourage them to understand as well.

John Gorman [00:39:59] Secondly, I'd say what sometimes the nuclear industry even is guilty of is not talking enough about the fact that we are not the silver bullet. Nuclear technology, even with the great innovations that are going on and our history of providing a lot of clean electricity, we're going to need all clean energy technologies to meet this challenge. I mean, you're just going to need them to be able to create a balanced, clean electricity system that is actually affordable for users. And the mix will change depending on what resources are available where. But you're going to need both large and scalable, smaller nuclear to support more opportunities for renewables as well; we're going to need everything. That means hydrogen and carbon capture and storage as well as these clean electricity technologies. So, all tech.

John Gorman [00:40:50] But something that I've been spending a lot of time on lately with my team here at the Canadian Nuclear Association and with the various policymakers is just this overall challenge we have in terms of building out so much infrastructure over the next 27 years. And I don't just mean nuclear. How are we going to build the transmission wires, all of the new generation assets that are going to be required to double or triple the amount of electricity we're producing? Certainly in the Canadian context, I mean, we have an Impact Assessment Act, which is very arduous and takes a long time to get through. You layer on top of that the nuclear regulator and all of the requirements that have to go along with the approvals and siting around that, and you could be talking more than a decade to try to build out a single piece of new infrastructure. And imagine doing that across the board in both nations as we deploy all of these technologies, all of this infrastructure over the next 27 years or so. It's a Herculean task.

John Gorman [00:41:53] And I guess people, your listeners, others, need to get their heads around the fact that this is going to be disruptive. It's going to require patience and buy-in and understanding of why it is we're doing this. And so I think that's a big collective challenge we're all going to have to work on.

Adam Smith [00:42:11] John Gorman, thank you for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.

John Gorman [00:42:15] Thank you so much, Adam. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Adam Smith [00:42:18] Likewise.

Adam Smith [00:00:58] I am Adam Smith and you're listening to the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. Today, you'll be hearing from Boris Schucht, the CEO of Urenco Global. Boris, welcome to the show, and we're glad to have you here.

Boris Schucht [00:01:11] Welcome, Adam. Nice to hear you.

Adam Smith [00:01:15] So, I guess to start this off, let's hear more about your background and just give the listeners a view of how you got started in the industry as well.

Boris Schucht [00:01:27] It's interesting. Not a lot of people know that actually I'm a nuclear engineer, most likely one of the last ones in Germany. But I never worked before, I don't rank within the nuclear industry. So really, I have grown up in the energy business, working for utilities for a long time in integrated utilities. And then the last 10 years, I was responsible, before I joined Urenco four years ago, for one of the four German transmission system operators. And so when I would describe my whole life, my whole business life, what what drove me is very simple. I have so far dedicated most of my business life for organizing the energy transition. And I'm very much convinced of that. My former role was about integrating as many renewables as possible into an electrical system, into a system that was world class there. And now once again, a very important company, Urenco, in the nuclear fuel cycle. And without nuclear, achieving net zero is in my view absolutely impossible. Therefore, this is such an exciting role, and once again one step in my personal life in delivering my work for the energy transition.

Adam Smith [00:03:02] Yeah. We also agree that nuclear is one of the key pillars of the energy transition. So I guess going back to your background then, what from your childhood led you to be interested in the energy transition? Or was that something that happened more in your later years as an adult?

Boris Schucht [00:03:24] I think when I was 16 or 15. So really, still before university or the end of school. There were always newspapers and weekly papers about exciting technological development. And one of the things at that time was the first big one megawatt windmill that was called Govian somewhere on the North Coast. I was very excited; I said, "That makes a lot of sense." And when I started then 10 years later in my business life I created the first windmill. They then slowly became reality. And it was interesting. I came into an organization which was running lignite coal plants on a big, huge grid. Wind farms were seen as a threat and not as an opportunity. And I never understood it. For me, it was always an opportunity. So what I learned in all of the different, all of my different phases of my career, the energy transition is a huge opportunity. It's of course, a challenge, but it's also a huge opportunity for companies but also for individuals. And I'm a good example as a person. As a person, I have always looked at the opportunities around the energy transition and by that, I made my career.

Adam Smith [00:04:51] Yeah, that's amazing. So, you've always been looking for the opportunities. How did you come to the conclusion then that nuclear was the opportunity? Because I'd imagine at the time, or for the time period that you would have been growing up, nuclear might not have been as favorably viewed as some of the other alternative energy sources.

Boris Schucht [00:05:15] Absolutely Adam, and especially in Germany, as you can imagine.

Adam Smith [00:05:19] You're a dying breed. A nuclear engineer from Germany?

Boris Schucht [00:05:23] Absolutely. But I can tell you, when you look... And that's a very simple story. And I understood that 10 years ago. When we talk about the energy transition, we often only think about the electricity consumption. We only look at the electricity consumption. And most countries have nowadays a share, at least of the industrial countries, of 15% or 16% of the electricity consumption that is already decarbonized, which is, I would say, after 30 years of energy transition, a huge success. And based on hydro power that was first, then renewables and also nuclear power. So, very different sources. And and I think it's not unrealistic... It will be challenging, but it's not unrealistic that we will decarbonize the other half or 40% of the electricity consumption.

Boris Schucht [00:06:21] But the electricity consumption is only one-fifth or one-seventh of the total energy consumption of a country. And that describes pretty well, when you mentioned that describes the rest as only fossil fuels. So it's about oil, gas consumption, coal consumption for all the industry processes, for all transportation, whether it's private or heavy duty transportation or airplanes or ships or whatever it is. So there's a huge amount of energy consumption which still has to be decarbonize in other sectors, not directly in the electricity sector as we know it today.

Boris Schucht [00:07:04] And when you look at that, then you're saying, "Okay, this is such a huge challenge. That is such a huge challenge. It will be extremely difficult for the world to achieve these targets." And then excluding a CO2 free technology, how should that work? We will need all of them. And whether we like nuclear because of the... Also the deficits of nuclear, we all know them whether we like it or not. But at the end, we have to make a judgment and I think it's the only solution to achieve net zero or to come close to net zero when we also include as much as possible nuclear as part of the solution to decarbonize the world. And that's where I'm coming from.

Boris Schucht [00:07:50] So, when I arrived here at the company, we were not yet there. It slowly took countries to understand and societies to understand that Germany has not arrived yet. So, that's another story. But I'm highly convinced of that. And therefore, I believe it's a very interesting industry and it's a very challenging industry which gives a lot of opportunities, businesswise, but also for young people, for the new generation, for career opportunities, because it will be needed.

Adam Smith [00:08:29] Yep. Nuclear is going to be absolutely critical, so we completely agree with you on that one. To further that point, to exclude baseload electric generation is just crazy because some of these offtakers that you mentioned in the industrial and commercial spaces, they need that 24/7 uptime and that's just challenging to get in the current electric generation environment. Maybe one day with storage, but for right now we have the perfect technology in our hands and it's been operating for 60, 70 years, very reliably. What got you particularly interested? You're a nuclear engineer by background, but what particularly interested you in the fuel cycle side of this, the enrichment and the whole cycle of those fuel products?

Boris Schucht [00:09:26] I must say, when you look now specifically at Urenco, that was a very special company. The fuel cycle is also special industry, but the company is really unique. And I personally like to work on the interface between political environment and industrial and commercial environment. And Urenco is once again exactly in this space. Two governments as shareholders with the whole company based on a treaty. It's on three treaties nowadays, but it's very different from a normal commercial company. It's something which I personally like. So it's bringing industrial needs and commercial needs with political needs and societies together. And I think we have a role to play as Urenco to serve, somehow, societies. And I think we are doing that pretty well already for quite a long time. That company is already 50 years old, more than 50 years old, and is doing that, I think, extremely, extremely well.

Boris Schucht [00:10:44] The second point, I must say, a more technical point. The enrichment plants that we operate and the centrifuges we operate are at the edge of what you can engineer, of what you can build. It's amazing. It's really fast spinning things that you switch them on and they operate without any maintenance for decades. And that is really amazing. So this technology is a very efficient technology for producing the fuel. And that is exciting from a technological point of view. So, I like that.

Boris Schucht [00:11:32] A little bit of the drivers, there are of course always some more. This company is a very international one, more global than any other company in the nuclear sector and in the energy sector. And I must say, that was for me also one personal one. And I have taken the decision a few years ago that was one of the personal things that I really was seeking, to work in a very international, global environment. And I must say, I like that very much.

Adam Smith [00:12:10] Yep. For the listeners... And correct me if I'm wrong here, but Urenco is a consortium of British, Dutch and German entities, correct?

Boris Schucht [00:12:20] Yeah. We have four shareholders. The U.K. government, the Dutch government and two German utilities. So that is our shareholder structure. But we have plants in four countries. So that is in the U.K. and the Netherlands and Germany and the U.S. And we have more than 50 customers all over the world in 20 countries, all over the world. And in a lot of countries, we have a very important role to play. In the U.S., we are the only enrichment plant, locally. And so we have a very important role to play for the fuel supply of the U.S. nuclear power plants. So the company is extremely important, and has in this special niche, a very, very high visibility.

Adam Smith [00:13:27] You mentioned that you have four facilities and one of those is in the U.S. Is that the Los Alamos plant?

Boris Schucht [00:13:33] No, it's in Eunice at the border between New Mexico and Texas. So in the middle of the desert, there in the oil area. A very special area and a very special plant that was newly built. It is now roughly 10 years in operation and is our newest plant and a fantastic plant, very efficient and very well managed, I must say. And it's fantastic that we have this opportunity there.

Adam Smith [00:14:10] Yeah. It sounds like you guys have really perfected the centrifuge technology. I was reading a report from Urenco from like the early '90s, I think. You guys were experimenting with not just making centrifuge technology more efficient, but you're also looking at other technologies and their benefits, like molecular laser isotope separation and the atomic vapor separation. And what it really seemed like was there was so much room for improvement on the centrifuge technology. Just to become more efficient, you make the centrifuges longer and you spin them faster, and then all of a sudden you can produce just multiples of what you could previously in terms of enrichment capacity. Do you foresee that continuing? Are you kind of at the limits of the engineering threshold on how fast you can spin these vessels or how, I guess, tall you can make them?

Boris Schucht [00:15:07] It moves a little bit into a different direction. When I was arriving here four years ago, I was surprised that we are doing something outside of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is what was our technology, which not a lot of people know, it's not very visible, but which is extremely important because we are producing stable and by then medical isotopes. And what are rare, rare isotopes for diagnostics or cancer treatment. And with our isotopes, I think more than 2 million patients are each year are treated worldwide. And we have only a small market share in this market, so that is quickly growing and we are heavily investing in that. But that is a very interesting area where our technology is used outside of our normal core application, and as I would say, providing a lot of added value to societies because this is an area where a lot of things are in the moment happening. Cancer treatment by radioisotopes is one of the hot topics in the moment. And I think it's a very nice additional activity that we have there. It's not only saving the climate, but also saving lives of people by something which is otherwise not possible.

Adam Smith [00:16:44] Well, you're saving lives from both ends. It's clean energy saves lives through avoided air pollution, and then you also end up with the medical isotopes for cancer research. And yeah, it's just all around useful, helpful technology to everyone on the planet. So we definitely support your efforts there. And you mentioned that's becoming one of your larger segments. Is that within your current, I guess, enrichment markets or are you doing that globally around the world?

Boris Schucht [00:17:13] That is globally around the world. But we are currently doing, technically doing that in one of our sites in the Netherlands and we are enriching stable isotopes and we are building one cascade after another. I think one of those years ago we took the so-called Leonardo da Vinci cascade into operation where each cascade is then designed a little bit for different isotopes. Some are more flexible. Then we are also doing a lot of research.

Adam Smith [00:18:57] So, you mentioned that you've moved into the medical isotope industry, and that will be a huge growth area for you. Are you also looking at how Urenco's role might play into the development of the new nuclear space within these different fuels or different SMR designs? All of the above, really.

Boris Schucht [00:19:21] You're touching a very important topic. I strongly, personally believe that the next generation of nuclear power plants will be needed pretty soon. It's now the right momentum at the right time for these power plants to come up. At least some strong nations like the U.S. and the U.K., my understanding is they have a similar understanding on that. The support that we see, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., but also the additional discussions which are ongoing in the U.S. will give to this market exactly what is needed.

Boris Schucht [00:20:14] Why do I believe in that? I think the existing nuclear power plants, when you build more of them, you will be also more efficient. But they are, at the end, extreme large constructions. And the lead time to construct them, to plan them, is extremely long and they are extremely big and complex projects. To reduce the complexity of these projects makes a lot of sense. And by the way, we are still using a little bit of the concept that had been developed 30 or 40 years ago. And we all know that you can build today safer and less complex nuclear power plants. And that's why I think that the development into new designs and into new SMRs and RMRs is so extremely important. And I'm pretty sure they will come. And there's a second driver we can touch on maybe later on in hydrogen, that is hydrogen related, but that is an additional driver.

Boris Schucht [00:21:18] And a lot of these concepts, new design concepts, they need also slightly different fuel. And we are strongly committed to deliver this fuel. In the first instance, we have a name for it, advanced fuel, we call it. And the first product in there we call LEU+. It is LEU enriched up to 10%. And we see now the first customers knocking on the door and negotiating contracts with us. So that is close to realization. In the next two years we will be able to deliver on that.

Boris Schucht [00:21:57] And then there is the area that a lot of SMRs will need. That is a fuel between 10% and 20% enriched, 19.75% or whatever it is at the end of the day. And there we need to invest in new assets. That's a chicken and egg problem. I strongly believe it will come, but there is no market yet. And it's a huge investment for us, so we are in discussions with the U.S. government, with the U.K. government, to find solutions and how to actually get the kind of regulation around it that allows us to take such an investment decision and offers this fuel as soon as possible to the industry.

Boris Schucht [00:22:48] My impression is that the support, that first of all, governments have understood this, that there is a need to bring the things together. The SMR/RMR industry is also articulating their needs very clearly and we are ready to go. So that is really the next step. And when these things are in place, I'm pretty sure that we will see the next generation of nuclear power plants then coming. But we should not forget, until this is really deploying in the market, until then, we will see a lot of other projects still designed that we are currently building worldwide in the nuclear sector. And we will see quite a lot of them still also with some learning curves and some really hopefully positive messages around them.

Adam Smith [00:23:48] Yeah, that sounds amazing. You guys seem like you're positioned really well to take full advantage of what I would call, not to beat a dead horse, but the nuclear renaissance. The actual nuclear renaissance this time around where we have all these new reactor designs, new fuels, just generally more demand coming from an enrichment side of things. Given that we have all of this oncoming demand and we also currently have some geopolitically induced supply constraints on SWU, have you as Urenco's CEO started looking at potentials to expand Urenco's current production capacity, or is that more of a short-term view on the geopolitical side of things where the SMR design might be more of a longer-term view, and you'll build out that capacity as the demand comes online?

Boris Schucht [00:24:52] The SMRs and RMRs, I think that will be an additional demand more on long-term. So that will come slowly into the market and will be visible before it starts, years before. What happened this year, the geopolitical changes, they are dramatic. However, we have been in the luxury of situation that due to Fukushima we had some overcapacities which we could use now to actually make sure that the dependency of our customers and the flexibility of our customers on the fuel side is as high as possible. So, we don't see currently that we can't deliver or fulfill requests of any of our customers. So, there is sufficient capacity available. However, of course we have planned in mid and long-term with a completely different scenario, and that's why we have heavily invested into capacity in the coming years in refurbishment campaigns to keep capacity alive, but also into capacity expansion to be able to fulfill all the requests of our customers also in the coming years. But the good thing is, even with this geopolitical disruption that we have seen last year, we are able to actually cover the demand without too many problems.

Adam Smith [00:26:42] Yeah, it sounds like you guys are all around well-positioned in the market then. You mentioned earlier, we were talking about SMRs. Do you have any particular technologies that you are interested in or find particularly beneficial to solving some of the issues in the nuclear space?

Boris Schucht [00:27:03] There is one that comes from the demand side. So for what do you need the heat or the electricities that a nuclear power plant produces? And we already mentioned the electricity sector is not the one which creates the biggest headaches for us. I think all the other sectors are more complex. And what more and more countries also understand, you can't decarbonize these other sectors without a hydrogen industry. You will need hydrogen to replace, for example, coal in steel production. You will need hydrogen for synthetic fuel for airplanes or wherever it goes. So, a lot of processes where you have to replace fossil fuels by hydrogen or hydrogen-based synthetic fuels.

Boris Schucht [00:28:01] Then the question is, where does hydrogen come from? And we did two years ago, a very interesting study based on the situation in the U.K. The first study was done in one industry to see how high will the hydrogen demand of the U.K. be in a fully decarbonized world. And then the second study, which we asked Aurora to do for us as an independent study was where should this hydrogen come from and what is the cheapest way to produce this hydrogen? And there, actually it became very clear when you combine high temperature reactors with hydrogen production then you have the advantage of a baseload energy source combined with a pretty expensive hydrogen production. So with this essence, you can avoid going via electricity. When you go via electricity, you lose a lot of efficiency.

Boris Schucht [00:29:08] Now, first from heat to electricity and then back from electricity to hydrogen, the efficiency is below 30% or below 20%. And when you go directly from heat to hydrogen, then the electricity demand is much, much lower, and this process becomes extremely efficient. And the cost advantage that you have by going this path is tremendous. And that's why I personally believe the combination of high-temperature reactors with hydrogen production, that is one element that we will see in the future. But once again, the energy mix is always a very wide, wide mix. So I think that will not be the only solution, but I think that will be an interesting additional technological element in the energy mix where new technology will come up.

Adam Smith [00:30:07] Yeah. It definitely seems like hydrogen is going to be critical to nuclear's growth, just because we are one of the few sources of energy that can actually be used to produce truly clean hydrogen on a continual basis. So as hydrogen becomes more and more adopted, nuclear is going to be more and more widely accepted or at least needed. So, yep, we are tied together with the hydrogen industry.

Adam Smith [00:30:40] Now pivoting a little bit, in 2020 Urenco celebrated its 50th anniversary of its founding treaty. What are some of the milestones Urenco has experienced since then and what can listeners look forward to seeing next year out of Urenco?

Boris Schucht [00:30:56] It's not a long time ago, two years ago, one year ago. It depends how... three years ago now, nearly. Anyway, COVID times in between, so that was a first experience. How to work in COVID times, we all learned that. A very big experience. But seriously, I think for us, my personal biggest milestone is that we as a company have ourselves committed to net zero. I call nuclear our CO2-free technology, but it is of course today not fully CO2-free because we have in like every windmill, the concrete that you use is, of course, there is some CO2 connected with the production of this concrete of the windmill. And also in the fuel cycle, you still have very low, but there are some CO2 emissions. And our ambition is that we can offer our customers, in 2040, already completely CO2-free fuel. So that means we have signed a pledge to fully decarbonize our industry and our activities on to 2040.

Boris Schucht [00:32:14] On to 2030, we plan to have already the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions down to zero. And we are on track on that, to be very clear. I think even a little bit ahead of track. The one element of that, Scope 3 emissions, which are the indirect ones, the ones by your supply chain, they are much more complicated and they are the ones that we want to achieve on to 2040. But however, on to 2030, the Scope 3 emissions should also be reduced 30%. So that is, for me, a very important milestone, delivering to our customers, in a few years, CO2-free fuel. That is our contribution that we can bring in there.

Boris Schucht [00:33:06] The second one that I think makes sense to point out, the fuel cycle in itself needs also to be closed. So there's uranium mining then there's conversion and then we are enriching the fuel and then we have enriched uranium. But tails, also tails. And so far, we haven't managed to close the fuel cycle on the tails. And therefore we built in Capenhurst, our U.K. site, a big deconversion plant to deconvert the UF6 tails into uranium oxide. And this plant is now in operation; it came in the last two years in operation. And by that we are one step closer to actually closing the fuel cycle. We have just the pilot going on where U.S tails are transported to the U.K., are deconverted, and then they will be transported back to the U.S., and there we have already in the U.S. a final disposal option. So that's the first time then that we have fully closed the fuel cycle. And that, I think, is something which is important. We have to show societies that it is possible, without huge problems, to close these fuel cycles. And that's why I'm very keen that we get that done. So these are the two ones that I wanted to mention. When you ask me what are the biggest milestones of the last two years, they are, I think, extremely important ones. The company's proud of them.

Adam Smith [00:34:41] Yeah, those are incredible milestones to be hitting, and I think that's very forward thinking of Urenco to be thinking about their own CO2 footprint. A lot of companies that want to go green and are really thinking about their carbon footprint not only have to think about their existing product, but their supply chain as well. So, if you're thinking from a nuclear power plant standpoint, you are part of their supply chain and you guys decarbonizing helps the nuclear industry as a whole decarbonize just given your critical point in the fuel supply chain. So that's that's amazing; I'm glad to hear that. What are some things people might not know about enrichment services or the fuel cycle products?

Boris Schucht [00:35:31] Oh, I hope a lot of things. I hope a lot of things. I think the most important is the less people hear from us, the better it is, because then we are doing our job well. The fuel costs of nuclear power plants, they really don't play, commercially, any role in the energy price. They are very, very minor. So here, I think what we offer mainly to our customers and by that to societies is really a reliable energy source. And this company always advertises with no missed delivery in the whole lifetime of the company. That's amazing; I must say that's really amazing. But that is where the company is extremely proud. I have never heard that from any company before. They are so focused on that and that is something which people don't know. So this company feels extremely responsible for the safe and secure supply of fuel to their customers. Energy security is, I would say, of highest importance, and the company is delivering on that very well.

Boris Schucht [00:36:57] What also not a lot of people see, yes, we have a huge capacity program in the background. We have a huge investment program to actually manage all that. And all investments which are not necessarily very visible. People are not aware of that. That's a big, big challenge for us in the coming years. We have, on the one side, to refurbish our existing plants while they are in operation because we don't want to take out the capacity, then capacity would be not enough for meeting the demand. That is a huge challenge. And beside that, we are also building up new capacity. So that will be a big challenge for us and that is also not very visible.

Boris Schucht [00:37:58] And last but not least, maybe to repeat it again, everything that we do on the medical and stable isotope side is an additional value. And also in this area, there are only very few companies who are able to deliver on certain isotopes and the dependency on special suppliers are even higher than in any other sector. So I think we have there, also, an obligation against our societies that we are offering there our solutions and our services that the medical sector has sufficient supply.

Adam Smith [00:38:50] Wow. Well, it seems like you guys at Urenco are very forward thinking. You guys are really seeing the industry and preparing for its growth and the expansion of your product lines. So, this has been amazing. We're just about out of time, so let me ask you one last question. Would you like to share a message about nuclear with our listeners?

Boris Schucht [00:39:18] I strongly believe that nuclear has a really important role to play in the future of the energy sector. Decarbonizing the world is nearly impossible without... It is impossible without adding nuclear. It makes a lot of sense to go for nuclear as a technology for on the one side, reliable supply, energy independence. But on the other side, to meet the climate targets and to be able therefore to hand over a world to our children and to our grandkids which is a nice world to live in. Nuclear can play there a very important and a very big role. Thank you.

Adam Smith [00:40:08] Boris Schucht, thank you for coming on the show. We appreciate it. This has been an amazing conversation. Thank you.

Boris Schucht [00:40:14] Very good. Thank you very much.

Bret Kugelmass [00:00:00] So we're here today with Grace Stanke, who is Miss America 2023. But what I think is more important, an undergrad research assistant at the Reactor Technology Integration Lab. You've been working at the co-op at Exelon Constellation, and just like generally as an up and coming nuclear engineer. Just so excited, so excited to have you here.

Grace Stanke [00:00:20] Yeah, it's been super exciting. I've worked in two research labs at UW Madison on the campus there. One was the HSX stellerator, so I did some fusion research and then the other was that Reactor Technology Integration Lab. So I did some work on desalination plants. Otherwise, I worked with Constellation as a co-op for a little over three semesters where I was able to do a lot of work with their vendor independent methods group. But now, I'm kind of stepping into a different role within the nuclear community as I became Miss Wisconsin and now as Miss America, where I get to do some really fun advocacy work and work with the general public on nuclear topics.

Bret Kugelmass [00:00:57] That's so cool. But we're not going to gloss over your technical achievements. I want to actually go through each of those and get into actual real detail because I think like, just as you being a high profile figure now, your ability to inspire people to go into this discipline I think is actually pretty important. And so I want to have this as an opportunity for people to be able to refer to your experiences more broadly and inspire people to join there. But it's just so funny, I think you're our second Miss America, maybe... Actually is there a difference between Miss America and Miss USA?

Grace Stanke [00:01:29] There is. There is, yeah.

Bret Kugelmass [00:01:31] Did you know we had Kára McCullough on the show?

Grace Stanke [00:01:34] Oh, I didn't know she was on the show. I do know of her and everything. She's a wonderful young woman. But yeah, Miss USA and Miss America are two separate organizations.

Bret Kugelmass [00:01:42] So we've had both now. We've covered both our bases. How cool is that? Something as like niche as nuclear engineer has now been represented on both. That is so cool, right?

Grace Stanke [00:01:51] Yeah, it's really exciting. It's really exciting having that. And it goes to show that nuclear is a growing field and a growing industry. I think it's awesome.

Bret Kugelmass [00:01:59] I don't think it's growing that much, which I think is just even more impressive. It's just so cool when people are able to do things from this multifaceted approach. I even think just bringing a different lens, like being super good at one thing in one space, I don't care what it is... Like, you could be a part time EMT or something and also be a nuclear engineer and there's going to be a tremendous amount of new things that you're able to bring into both spaces, just lessons learned, cultural perspectives. So I just think that's so cool. Take us through... Can we just go like, earlier childhood? How'd you become an engineer to begin with and why nuclear?

Grace Stanke [00:02:38] Yeah, so engineering in general, I kind of always knew about. My dad was a civil engineer. So I grew up, he would take us to construction sites and I'd see bridges get demoed overnight and things like that and watch the videos and things like that. So, growing up I always knew engineering to be a part of my life and I always enjoyed math and science. I was a kid that, I strived for a challenge. I personally, this might be a hot take, but I don't believe in having a 4.0. I think if you've got a 4.0, you should be in some harder classes. So it's a weird take, but that kind of started in sixth grade. I was doing really, really well in all of my classes to the point of boredom. And I'll fully acknowledge, when I get bored I cause trouble in the classroom. So I was like, "Okay, I need to be in some harder classes here to not be in trouble." And I ended up talking to administrators in middle school and I skipped a grade then after some discussion. So I did 6th and 7th, all in one year. Then, I wanted to push more on math moving forward at that point, and I ended up taking algebra one in 8th grade.

Grace Stanke [00:03:44] That desire to push further with math and science, specifically, continued through high school. I started taking dual enrollment courses at the local college as a sophomore in high school. So by the time I graduated high school, I had the equivalent of an associate's degree at that point, because of the dual enrollment courses I had taken. I never actually got the degree because to get the degree, you have to have graduated high school first and I graduated high school a month after college graduation happened. So super, you know, I'm totally not salty about it still, but it's fine. But it was something that I think contributed a lot to my interest in math and science, that strive for a challenge and that strive to have that ambition and that challenge moving forward.

Bret Kugelmass [00:04:29] Before we move on, did you have any mentors that helped guide like, your energy? Because I know that if I were in your shoes... Like, I got into trouble. I didn't have someone to like help me to focus on just taking on harder classes, I just like, did what I needed to do and then spent my time, you know, just getting into trouble with other stuff. So, any mentors that pushed you in the right way?

Grace Stanke [00:04:52] For me personally, there were a couple of key teachers throughout my childhood that really, really knew how to channel that energy and support me. And good teachers are so important. And that's why I fully support, you know, my sister's going into teaching right now, and it's so important that our teachers, one, should be getting paid more, in my opinion, because they're literally shaping the lives of all of these children's futures. So I had a couple of teachers... I had a math teacher, I remember I told him explicitly to his face, I'm like, "This class is too easy for me and you're not providing me enough of a challenge." And like, I was a freshman in high school, right? So like, that's kind of a weird thing to say to your teacher. But he was willing and was like, "Okay, I understand that this class is not at a high enough pace for you." And he stood in the meeting with the principal with me, and he stood in all of those meetings necessary and he said, "No, this needs to happen." So having that support from teachers and also from my parents... My parents were a crucial part of pushing, not necessarily pushing, because I was very self-motivated throughout this whole process, but they were also willing to support and stand in that back of the room to give me the qualifications and validation that administration needed to be like, "Oh, this 12 year old actually knows what she's saying."

Bret Kugelmass [00:06:12] Was your mom an engineer too? You said your dad was a civil engineer, right?

Grace Stanke [00:06:15] So my dad was a civil engineer. My mom was always a communications person. So that's kind of how... She was a stay at home mom, actually, and raising me and my two siblings, there was a focus on communication as well. So that's kind of led to me becoming the person who I am today as this blend of engineering and having this love and passion for communicating, this high science-engineering world, specifically nuclear, to the general public to break down those misconceptions.

Bret Kugelmass [00:06:42] That's so cool. All right. So was it when you went to college for the first time that you got introduced to nuclear? When did nuclear become of interest?

Grace Stanke [00:06:48] So this is a really great story because I wish I had a cool and inspirational story as to how I got into nuclear. I got into nuclear purely out of spite. I learned about it because I was at Texas A&M touring the college as a sophomore or junior in high school. And you know, there's the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and I was like, "Oh, this is really cool." And I talked with the department head and it went way over my head; I had no idea what they were saying. But I was like, "Ahh, it sounds neat. You know, whatever. We'll see what it is." And when I got back home, I was talking to my dad about majors and what I was thinking as I was getting closer to figuring out where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. And at that point in time, I had narrowed it down to aerospace or nuclear engineering. And I remember talking to him about it and he looked at me, and I'm 16 years old at this time. He goes, "Grace, you shouldn't go into nuclear." He's like, "There's no future there. Everything's shutting down. It's not a good career." So 16 year old me literally goes, "Watch me." And I did. That is what started me in this field. I wish it was a cool story, but you know...

Bret Kugelmass [00:07:51] No, that is a cool story. And I actually think there's a lesson learned there. Someday when I have daughters, I'll love to just do a little reverse psychology there.

Grace Stanke [00:08:02] Yeah, well I mean, it's the teenage sassiness, right? But it's more than that that kept me in this field. I started out in this field because of that, but what has kept me here is learning about how... My dad went through cancer twice. He's alive today because of nuclear medicine. And that's something that... He is fully pro-nuclear now, like super team like "you rah rah, let's go nuclear." And learning about how it exists all around us, and also on a personal ambition and career note, it's something different every day. I talked about how I love that challenge, how I love that difficulty, and nuclear is definitely something that I wake up and... Every day when I was working at these previous jobs, some days I was doing mechanical work, some days electrical, some days chemical. It was a little bit different every day, and I love that about nuclear. I kind of call it the melting pot of all different types of engineering.

Bret Kugelmass [00:08:53] Yeah, well, you do need so many different types in order for the whole system to come together. Your dad's still around, right? Can I ask a little more on the cancer side?

Grace Stanke [00:09:00] Yes, he's still... He is. He's around. He's good. He's great. He's healthy. He just got cleared this month during his yearly checkup. So he's good.

Bret Kugelmass [00:09:07] And so you were studying nuclear engineering when he was going through some sort of radiation? Well, actually, what nuclear technology actually was it?

Grace Stanke [00:09:16] It was radiation treatments and then a combination of the iodine tracking.

Bret Kugelmass [00:09:22] Tracers. You were able to help explain to him how it all worked.

Grace Stanke [00:09:25] Yeah, exactly. So I didn't know at the time... So he went through cancer once when I was in about 4th grade. So I was really young; I didn't understand it at the time. And then again when I was a freshman in high school, approximately. So by the time I actually was choosing to go to college, he had been cleared at that point and was a survivor and everything and still is to this day. But it's really funny because now we look back at the treatments and I look at him going in for an MRI scan, that's nuclear technology. And all of those things that it's still prevalent and still something that's very used in society.

Bret Kugelmass [00:09:59] And all the equipment that's been sterilized at the hospitals, that's nuclear technology. There's so much, there's so much. Okay, so now you're a nuclear engineering major. What were some of those early either co-ops or labs that you participated in where you got a deeper technical understanding?

Grace Stanke [00:10:18] So the HSX stellerator, I got involved in my freshman year of college, and I cannot thank them enough because they are the group that made me fall in love with nuclear engineering, really. That's something where I learned that melting pot kind of idea that it's something different every day. You know, I worked on 3D modeling, then I worked on coding, then I worked on data analysis. I did a little bit different things every day. And it was just the community and the people involved in that group as well that I was able to have some really valuable conversations. You know, I was 17 years old at the time, a freshman in my undergrad degree, and I'm sitting there with all these Ph.D. students like, "Wait, can you explain to me what fission is?" I know nothing at this time. But the patience and the willingness to help and guide people throughout that was so important to me. And it really made me feel not only included but valued as somebody on the team. And it was exciting to see the work I was doing even as a freshman. I was working on developing testing procedures for a cryogenic magnet and things like that, which is super exciting. For a freshman to be like, "Oh, liquid nitrogen..." You don't get... Of course I'm going to love that. So they made it really fun and awesome and it continued to grow my love for nuclear and the nuclear industry as a whole from there.

Bret Kugelmass [00:11:35] Yeah, you're giving them a lot of credit, but something makes me think that you weren't afraid to ask questions.

Grace Stanke [00:11:40] No, I certainly am not. I always firmly believe that there is no stupid question because I am willing to bet there's someone else, especially in a classroom setting, there is someone else that is thinking the same exact question. And you know what, the worst that happens is you ask the question and if it doesn't get answered you're still at the same spot you were before you asked the question.

Bret Kugelmass [00:12:03] That's why love the podcast stuff.

Grace Stanke [00:12:05] Yeah, exactly. So I certainly encourage a questioning attitude and that's something that was even promoted throughout my time when I worked at Constellation. That was always promoted.

Bret Kugelmass [00:12:15] Yeah, so let's get through that. So first you joined a lab, like a research lab that had some experimental equipment and was getting data. Then, was there another lab or did you go to Constellation at that point?

Grace Stanke [00:12:29] So, I started working on HSX in the spring of 2020. We're going to lay out the timeline here. So spring of 2020, we all know what happened, a wonderful global pandemic hit. I actually had an internship lined up for that summer that ended up being canceled, but I ended up staying with HSX part time through the summer. During the beginning of the summer after I learned my internship was canceled, I panic applied to anything and everything that had the word nuclear in it. It didn't matter if they were like, "Oh, this is a full time position." I'm like, "I don't care. Here's my resume."

Bret Kugelmass [00:12:58] Funny, I didn't see a resume come in on our website. Interesting.

Grace Stanke [00:13:01] Oh, my gosh. Well, I must have missed that one. It's something that I think, at that point in time, I just really wanted to be in the industry and working somewhere. So I ended up staying with HSX throughout the summer, though, as a part time employee. And I got a call in July from Constellation and they said, "Hey, do you want to interview for a co-op?" And I was like, "Well, I never really actually considered a co-op before," because I wasn't super interested in delaying my graduation or having anything along those lines happen. So I was like, "Oh, well, you know, yeah, I'll interview." What's the worst that can happen, I get interview practice, right? So I interviewed and it went well and I moved on with my life. And then like a week later, I get a call and they say, "Hey Grace, we'd really love to offer you the position." And I went, "Well, crap." I had to sit back and I really evaluated it and it really just made sense from not only a financial standpoint to help me pay for school, but from an experience standpoint as well. This was a four semester long co-op and I really valued that that hands on work experience. For me, I struggle in classrooms when I'm learning just theory or just, "Okay, imagine this reactor." Like it's so hard to just imagine a reactor, right?

Bret Kugelmass [00:14:13] I can't believe that hands on physical work isn't part of every engineering curriculum, period. Like, I don't even care if it's science. There's got to be some lab experience to make people a more well-rounded product at the end of their undergrad.

Grace Stanke [00:14:26] Exactly. And there certainly is, but I struggle with comparing the UW Madison Research Reactor to... When I spent some time with the outage in 2020's spring at Byron. Like, two totally different experiences in terms of... I took the research reactor operating class so I actually operated the research reactor on campus at UW Madison. And you know, it's a totally different...

Bret Kugelmass [00:14:51] What is that? Is that like a TRIGA or something?

Grace Stanke [00:14:52] Yeah, a TRIGA reactor. So a totally different experience operating that versus an actual commercial power plant.

Bret Kugelmass [00:15:00] And what's Byron? Is that a PWR? Which one do they have?

Grace Stanke [00:15:02] Byron is a P, yeah.

Bret Kugelmass [00:15:04] Okay. And do you know who the vendor was, how many loops? What was the configuration?

Grace Stanke [00:15:11] Oh, that one specifically, I believe they're Westinghouse out of Byron. I wouldn't know the exact loops and things like that. I was just there for the outage and that was it, because I worked at the corporate level with Constellation. So I did a lot of work on all of the nuclear power plants, just a little bit everywhere. Byron was more of... I was there to actually be able to see the plant, for one, for the first time in in my life, really. I had seen Braidwood prior to that which is Byron's kind of sister power plant. But seeing Byron in person and seeing that refueling outage was really exciting because that's one of those crucial points of a nuclear power plant's life cycle. And that's why I was like, "Oh, this is really neat to be able to see it," as a 19 year old kid that has never touched a nuclear power plant before other than walking through it to just see. So that was really exciting.

Bret Kugelmass [00:15:58] Yeah, let's actually double click on that experience for a second because the outages are something that I think the nuclear industry has really excelled at over the years. I mean, I'm quite critical... Having interviewed so many people across the industry, I'm quite critical as to how the industry has evolved, but not when it comes to outages. They just keep getting better and better. So, what did you get to see? Did you get to see them shuffling fuel or what?

Grace Stanke [00:16:21] So I got to see... I was able to sit in and watch as the fuel was being moved and being loaded into the core. So I was sitting with the reactor engineers and they were going through verifying the serial numbers and verifying the location, and I was helping and more of shadowing along with that process and watching it because reactor engineering is something I was interested in. I was starting to think about graduation and things like that. So I was able to help out with that process and moving all the fuel in, which was exciting. They had a little livestream for the company that, I don't know how I got the link, I don't even know if I was supposed to have the link, but I got the link. And it was really exciting. So I was back up in Madison with my friends and I'm like, "Guys, look at this! Look at that. There's the fuel, look at it!" It was just so exciting. But it's the little things in life that, you know. I feel like there's a lot of excitement in the youth that if we channel it onto these onsite locations and start seeing more of nuclear, that's just going to fuel that excitement even more because it certainly did for me.

Bret Kugelmass [00:17:18] Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges or self-imposed problems the nuclear industry laid on itself was making it harder to do tours of nuclear facilities. Same thing with like, France. France had the highest public approval ratings, and you can see in the data, you can see when they stopped doing tours, the public approval just started going down, down, down. People are afraid of things that they're not exposed to, so we've got to figure out a way to get people more exposed to something. Of course, as you're articulating, that has so many disciplines involved in it. There are so many opportunities for people to match their interests to the actual industry.

Grace Stanke [00:17:50] Exactly, exactly. I love that you say that, because that's exactly what I communicate to people all across America with being Miss America right now. There are a lot of different ways to be involved in nuclear. You don't have to be an engineer to be involved in the nuclear industry, that's for sure.

Bret Kugelmass [00:18:04] So when did you start doing... What do you call it? Do you call them beauty pageants or what is the whole industry called?

Grace Stanke [00:18:11] So, Miss America is typically... We go by scholarship competition. Because at this point in time, I've earned now $70,000 in scholarships. I had never considered going to grad school before a month ago. Well, now I'm thinking about grad school, I'll tell you that much, when I can do it for free. So I started when I was 13, actually, just to help out with my violin skills because I'm a violinist and I was struggling performing. So I competed for two years in the Teen program and I took some time off because... Teen is for 13 to 18 and then Miss is 18 to 28 now. So I competed as a 13, 14, 15 year old for two years and then waited, grew up, spent some time just being me and being a kid. Then I returned as a Miss to help pay for school because those scholarship dollars, like I said, is truly...

Bret Kugelmass [00:19:03] And what kind of time commitment is it? What do you have to do? Like, how many events do you go to.

Grace Stanke [00:19:07] It depends; it really varies. Miss America is a full time salaried position. This is my job for the year. I am still able to do school part time. But like this week alone, you know...

Bret Kugelmass [00:19:17] Are you in school? Have you graduated or are you still in school?

Grace Stanke [00:19:19] I still have one semester left. I've got 17 credits left right now, so I'll still graduate this year.

Bret Kugelmass [00:19:24] Okay. So you're like wrapping up classes while doing this full time. Okay, cool.

Grace Stanke [00:19:27] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Bret Kugelmass [00:19:34] And two of those years were like, with COVID and everything, I can only imagine what it's like being a student. It sounds awful.

Grace Stanke [00:19:42] That's part of the reason why I took that co-op, because I knew online school wasn't exactly ideal. So I actually got really lucky where I skipped most of online school. Nuclear is a small program at UW Madison, as I'm sure it's relatively small at many other schools. So we were lucky in a sense that once we started having some restrictions lifted, nuclear classes are under 20 people, so we were able to fit in classrooms that we could social distance and we could still go in person. So it was really nice where I think throughout the past two years I have only done a few classes entirely online. Maybe two, I'd say. And it's because they're not nuclear engineering courses. Now as Miss America, I'm very thankful for online classes because that's how I'm going to finish my degree this year. But it was something that I avoided up until this point.

Bret Kugelmass [00:20:36] I want to come back to the time commitment and what goes into it. In most competitions, I mean, I can do nothing but call you an elite performer because you won, so it's like, what do you do? How do you practice these scholarship competitions? How do you get better? I understand how like a swimmer gets better, they swim more. How do you get better at being a scholarship competitor for the Miss America?

Grace Stanke [00:21:00] So Miss America is all about who the woman is and what she represents. So a lot of the preparation in a sense is...

Bret Kugelmass [00:21:09] Just being awesome in normal life, you're saying?

Grace Stanke [00:21:11] Well, not necessary. I mean, kind of. But like, being confident in who you are. I think there are a lot of young women, especially in STEM fields, that struggle with confidence and struggle with that journey. So it's becoming comfortable in talking about difficult subjects or being able to articulate technology.

Bret Kugelmass [00:21:27] Do you practice that? Do you practice being confident when you speak? Like, do you take courses, or do you just do it a lot?

Grace Stanke [00:21:34] Well, you just kind of do it. That's what I was going to dive into next here is... I did mock interviews leading up to Miss America and things like that. Everyone has different versions of prep. I know there's a former Miss Wisconsin that she just, instead of doing mock interviews she went through and she treated every conversation like what we're doing right now as an interview. So it really varies from each role to figure out what process works best for them. But even with stuff like my violin, right? For the talent portion of the competition, I got to have fun with it because I got to play something that was not classical or I was able to modernize a classical piece, which is what I did this year. I've played Thunderstruck by AC/DC on my violin. I've done a ton of fun stuff that you typically don't get to do as a violinist, so I really enjoyed that aspect of it. But it's the little things of just like... I'm 5'11", so I'm naturally just a very large woman, and being able to learn how to stand up tall is a very powerful skill, not only in the context of Miss America, but also, as much as I hate to say it, in the engineering world it's a powerful skill. To be able to walk...

Bret Kugelmass [00:22:39] You mean literally, right? Because I have heard that some taller women like hunch down.

Grace Stanke [00:22:45] Exactly. So it's something that... Growing up, in high school, most of my friends were shorter than me and things like that. So I would be kind of be shrinking myself to get to their level. But there's a lot of power in your body language. People read a lot more into body language than what you're actually saying. And then on top of that, Miss America Prep, like I said, includes things like preparing your social impact initiative and thinking about how do you serve your community best? How can we make a difference, and what is that plan? What is the course of action? Is it written down, or is it just in your head? What does that actually look like?

Bret Kugelmass [00:23:19] You said something interesting there because I've often thought this. When they teach kids to play classical instruments, how come they teach them on classical music? How come they don't just do something that's more contemporary so people, as they develop, love it more because it's like a beat that they're friends know and that they listen to? Why isn't that the curriculum from the get go?

Grace Stanke [00:23:37] You know, that's a great question. I had a really unusual violin upbringing. I would say most... I'd be willing to bet that most professional musicians went through what's called the Suzuki program. And the Suzuki program is this world renowned idea of how to teach a young child, and all the way up through high school, a certain instrument. So it's just this world recognized way of teaching and that's, you know, it's like a textbook, and it includes all the classical pieces. You're learning different styles of playing different things. But I think as time goes on, people start to branch off and become more interested in specific... Maybe they've got a taste for just Irish compositions or something like that, and that's what they want to play as a musician. For me, I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to go play some classic rock." So I think it grows as people learn the skills because you still need the skills to be able to play those things. For me personally, I actually did not start out in the Suzuki program. I started off with a different violin teacher. I was actually one of her first students. So, for the first two years she kept it really fun and interesting for me, which was really great because I don't know if I could have played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for two years like they do in the Suzuki program. I think my eight year old self would have lost their mind.

Bret Kugelmass [00:24:54] Yeah, seriously. Have you gotten a chance to play on any famous violins just because now you're at another level?

Grace Stanke [00:25:03] No, I haven't. In the violin world, I'm an okay violinist.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:08] You're high profile, so you should be able to access some cool violins, right?

Grace Stanke [00:25:14] Oh, my gosh, that'd be cool. That'd be really awesome. Like, go find a Stradivarius.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:18] Yeah, I think we have a connection we can work in for you, somewhere. We'll follow up on that.

Grace Stanke [00:25:22] I love that. I love that.

Bret Kugelmass [00:25:23] Oh, that is cool. All right, so now you are Miss America for this year; that's your main thing. What do they do? Do they like fly you around to high schools to talk? What are the platforms that they provide for you?

Grace Stanke [00:25:37] So I have a huge variety of events. Obviously, as Miss America, I bring in my social impact initiative, which for me is talking about nuclear energy and breaking those misconceptions, snaps for that. But there's also sort of the traditional Miss America things. Like this weekend... I just flew back in from Connecticut last night. I was at the Celebrity Chef Dine Around at the Sun Food and Wine Festival at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. So things like that, something where I got to meet a bunch of chefs that are on Food Network and I got to eat a bunch of really great food. And I'm not complaining.

Bret Kugelmass [00:26:12] Do they send you around the world too? Are there, like, international...

Grace Stanke [00:26:15] Yeah. So I do have international bookings. So that's where nuclear comes in, which is really exciting. You know, I've got bookings in Germany to speak at conferences about nuclear energy and in Canada, and that's continuously growing. So it's exciting having those international opportunities come in and across the country. I'll be at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix at the end of February and things like that.

Bret Kugelmass [00:26:37] Is that where they do the golf tournament? There's like a big golf tournament there too, right?

Grace Stanke [00:26:39] Yes, there is. There is. I don't think it's the same time. That's like the Waste Management Open, I think is what it's called. But the Waste Management Symposium is kind of like a nuclear related conference, so that's exciting. I believe, I mean, unless they just mistyped it in my calendar. We'll see. We'll see.

Bret Kugelmass [00:26:55] Okay, well that actually brings up another question. How much of this is on you, logistically, or do they have a staff that makes your life easier?

Grace Stanke [00:27:03] There's a staff. So, I have a booking manager. So honestly, it's really great because all I have to do is look at the appearances and say like, "Okay, so I fly to New York City tomorrow. Okay, what do I need to pack? I'm going to be gone for the next two weeks. So what do I need to pack for these next two weeks? What speeches do I need to have prepared?" And throughout the day, you know, today is a day where...

Bret Kugelmass [00:27:22] And do you have a speechwriter you can bounce things off?

Grace Stanke [00:27:25] No, I write my own speeches, but I do have people from my personal life that I'm like, "Hey, can you just read this over? I'd love some feedback," and things like that. Both people that are familiar with the nuclear world, if it's a nuclear related speech, because I've got people that are outside of the nuclear world that are more than willing to give feedback on a speech, but they don't know what I'm saying when I talk about something nuclear, right? So it's awesome because that's one thing about this organization. There just an incredible network of people that are cheering you on and willing to support you if you just ask for help. And that comes back to that questioning attitude, right? All you've got to do is ask.

Bret Kugelmass [00:28:01] And how many people do you come across that like don't even know what nuclear is? They're just like, "What?"

Grace Stanke [00:28:07] I think everybody knows what nuclear... Everybody has heard the word nuclear. It's the idea of if they actually have the correct knowledge of what nuclear is. That's the thing I run into a lot.

Bret Kugelmass [00:28:18] Sometimes I come across audiences, because I've given talks too, but sometimes I've had people come into audience as like college students, and I don't think they're dumb, but they just never knew that it was an energy source, like a power source. They were just always like, "Oh, nuclear, yeah, it's for weapons." And no judgment, but they just didn't know it was a power source.

Grace Stanke [00:28:35] Exactly, exactly. And that's what I'm saying, there's a lot of people that don't necessarily have the correct or... I don't want to say the proper or the correct because it's my image of nuclear that I'm trying to convince them to see and things like that. You know, I sit there and I look outside and I'm like, "Okay, every time you step out into the sun, that's radiation. Don't be afraid of radiation, people. You experience it every day," and things like that. I have a lot more of those conversations. When I say the word nuclear to people, I've never had anyone go like, "Oh, what's nuclear?" Except for 1st graders and 4th graders and things like that, so.

Bret Kugelmass [00:29:11] Yeah, very interesting. And then when you write your speeches, do you get to know exactly who's going to be in the audience, like how big a crowd is, how many people? Because I feel like you've got to tailor the speech a little bit to the environment, to the audience's background knowledge. Do you get prep information on that?

Grace Stanke [00:29:28] Yes, I do. Like earlier this month, I gave a speech to... I believe it was 450 7th and 8th graders that were girls interested in going into STEM. But that was a very different speech than when I gave a speech in Canada to the Women In Nuclear chapter at their annual meeting, right? Like, two very different speeches. So I do get that information, and I typically tailor the speech to each event because I want to give them the best experience. I want to make sure that I'm communicating something that these people care about, and I want to deliver my message in the most effective way possible.

Bret Kugelmass [00:29:59] And you're based out of Wisconsin right now. Is that where you're going to live for this next year or can you live anywhere?

Grace Stanke [00:30:04] Yeah, kind of. I mean, I'm home a little bit, but the thing is, I'm traveling so much that... Like, yeah, my items are in Wisconsin. I do my laundry in Wisconsin, but it's also difficult to say that this is where I'm going to be because of just the amount of travel. I'll be doing about 20,000 miles a month on average, so it's definitely keeping me busy.

Bret Kugelmass [00:30:24] And for grad school, I'm going to assume that you're going back. Whether or not that's true, maybe it's just wishful thinking. Do you know where you'd like to focus and maybe which school you'd want to go to? If you were to keep advancing with nuclear, specifically, do you have an idea of a grad school?

Grace Stanke [00:30:41] So here's the hot take. I don't know if I'm going to get another engineering degree.

Bret Kugelmass [00:30:45] Really?

Grace Stanke [00:30:46] Yeah. I love engineering, but the route that I see my career going, I plan on engineering for the early part of my career. I love it and I will always enjoy it, but I feel like you get to a point as an engineer where you either choose to go down a technical track or you choose to go down a management track.

Bret Kugelmass [00:31:04] Can I push back?

Grace Stanke [00:31:06] Yeah, please.

Bret Kugelmass [00:31:07] Yeah. Because it's like, I got told a lot of things growing up also, some like career advice, and that's one of the ones I heard too. But I think people tend to generalize what the world looks like, especially our parents' generation. There wasn't just such a variety of different opportunities. There wasn't so much, like, you can pave your own path, you can go into a company and create your own role. There was just like only so many companies and only so many things people did at those companies. And so if that's the problem you're trying to solve it, that you don't like those two different paths, neither of them really resonate with you, I would offer you my career advice and just say you can create whatever path that you want. And I would also... Man, I don't want you to give up, just because you said you loved math and science, I don't want you to give up on getting a Master's Degree in Engineering.

Grace Stanke [00:31:54] Well, I'm not giving up on a master's.

Bret Kugelmass [00:31:57] I know, but I know where you're going with this. It's going to be like, "I'm going to do policy," or something. And don't get me wrong, these are great, these are amazing as well. But I feel like you can probably teach them. Like, you can probably teach the grad level course on communication, on policy. Like, there's no teacher that you're going to go to school with that is going to be better than you are naturally on the soft skills. But on engineering, to get that... Doesn't have to be a Ph.D., but just like even just a one year master's program to get just like a little bit more technical in something, I feel like that's like a sledgehammer of power you can carry around with you for the rest of your life.

Grace Stanke [00:32:35] Yeah, yeah, For sure, for sure.

Bret Kugelmass [00:32:36] Unsolicited advice.

Grace Stanke [00:32:38] That's okay, that's okay. I will gladly listen any time, any time. It's always just interesting, though. It'll be interesting to see where my career goes because I kind of agree in a sense where I see those two tracks and I don't see myself fitting into either one of those tracks, just because I love communication but I also do love the science and the math part of it. I do want a blend of some sort. For me right now, I'm like, that's later in life to figure out whether it is some sort of front end advocacy or, as much as you hate to say it, policy sort of role or whatever it might be, finding that blend in that healthy middle. But I think number one priority, happiness and quality of life and all that good stuff, so.

Bret Kugelmass [00:33:19] Yeah, do you know this term ikigai? Have you heard of this? Ikigai.

Grace Stanke [00:33:23] I have not, no.

Bret Kugelmass [00:33:24] Oh, you should look it up at some point. It's like Japanese philosophy and it's like to achieve not just happiness, because I think happiness isn't even the right goal. I think it's like, fulfillment, like spiritual fulfillment, I think is more of the right goal. And there is this blend... Ikigai is the blend of, I'm going to get this wrong, but it's like what you can do that is valuable to other people, what you can do that is valuable to you that makes money, what you can do that you're good at, what you can do that you enjoy doing. And when you blend all these things together, if you find that, and by the way, you can't find it, you have to create that, but once you get there, I should say, that's ikigai and that's like another level of spiritual satisfaction that I think we should all be aiming for. I think the word happiness is just too blunt a sword and doesn't even describe what the outcome should be.

Grace Stanke [00:34:17] I would agree with that statement. I think there is a lot of validity in fulfillment. Now, the question is, does happiness come from fulfillment? You know, where is that source of all those things?

Bret Kugelmass [00:34:27] Okay, now we're getting philosophical.

Grace Stanke [00:34:29] And that's where there are a lot of other questions of like, "Okay, what does that lead to?" So I don't know; it's interesting, it's interesting. I always say in another world I might have become a psychologist, but I don't know if I could do that now.

Bret Kugelmass [00:34:41] Yeah, that's one of the ones that I don't think people... That's one of the things, I've got like friends who I think are better psychologists than psychologists, but like the credentialism there, many, many years of investment.

Grace Stanke [00:34:55] Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Bret Kugelmass [00:34:55] What are some of the hot takes that you have? Any other philosophies that... Because obviously, you're not afraid to speak your mind, that's one thing I figured out from you so far.

Grace Stanke [00:35:04] I hope that's okay.

Bret Kugelmass [00:35:06] No, it's preferred. Cuts through the bullshit. Are there other things that you see when talking to people that might be the common wisdom, but you have almost like a heterodox perspective on it?

Grace Stanke [00:35:21] I would say like in general, for specifically nuclear professionals... So first of all, I want to strongly encourage any sort of nuclear professionals to go out in their community and do this same sort of grassroots advocacy of just having the conversations. I think it's important. So the North American Young Generation in Nuclear, I'm sure you know, they told me about this really awesome thing that they did that I loved where after Three Mile Island they got a bunch of nuclear professionals to organize an event at their local hometown bar where people could come in and just have a beer and ask that nuclear engineer questions about Three Mile Island and what happened. And I love that. I think that's a great way to talk to the general public in a relaxed, friendly setting. But I think the biggest thing is, one, as a professional, establish the connection with the people first. Because as much as I love to go into places and be like, "Oh, my gosh, let's talk about nuclear..."

Bret Kugelmass [00:36:15] Yeah, so this is why you should be teaching the master's courses and not taking them when it comes to communication. Come on, you're two steps ahead.

Grace Stanke [00:36:22] Well, and it's something that there's a lot of power in... There's like a lot of power in just... If you get someone to like you, it's going to make it a lot easier to convince them to support nuclear, to invest in nuclear, to become a part of the nuclear industry or whatever your end goal is. And that goes really a long, long ways. So that's one piece of advice. But I would say also, on the flip side, there is a certain value of your time, right? We've got a lot of people and a lot of work that we need to convince to support nuclear, and I think that is happening at a more progressive rate and a quicker rate than it has been in the past. But for the guy that's sitting there and just won't listen to you, save your time. Save your time.

Grace Stanke [00:37:06] But overall, ultimately, I'd say that, sometimes an engineering degree, and I think that this kind of comes through. I can get an engineering degree, I can do the math, I can do the science. But sometimes it's the communication that's really, really needed. And I hope that schools, as degree programs continue to develop and continue to change over time, I hope communication is enforced more because I think that's one of the fatal flaws of the nuclear industry right now. We have this huge knowledge gap between all of the brilliant, intelligent and just amazing people working in the nuclear field and then the general public. And that comes to like... The amount of times I talk to people about nuclear waste and they honestly think it's green goo that's depicted by "The Simpsons." It's shocking how many people actually believe that. So that's where we need more of these communicators and more of these people not afraid to just go out and talk about it and answer those questions.

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:00] Yeah. And then just back on that grad school point, because I'm just not going to let this go. There are technical master's degrees that aren't so pigeonholed into just doing that. Like for instance, the master's degree I got at Stanford, my main core curriculum was on need finding. Literally, they teach you how to solve the right problem. It's not like courses on circuit design. And I think that helps in communication too, like understanding what problem am I actually trying to solve here? Okay, I'll leave it at that.

Grace Stanke [00:38:32] No, that's okay. I'll let you know that I am considering a master's degree. I just don't think it's going to be...

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:38] A Master's in Engineering. Master's in Engineering.

Grace Stanke [00:38:40] I don't know. I don't know about Master's in Engineering, though. It's such a struggle.

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:46] I'm going to send a couple programs.

Grace Stanke [00:38:48] You're going to be sending me the links and saying like, "All right, so this program..."

Bret Kugelmass [00:38:52] No, I'm going to be sending you professors' email addresses, is what I'm going to do.

Grace Stanke [00:38:55] I would love that. Hey, I'm all in for that. No, it's something that I'm just really... I'm really passionate about specifically that communication. I would love to do a thesis about how to effectively communicate this high level of science, how to actually develop public support and things like that. But now the question is, is that an engineering degree? You know, that's where it's like...

Bret Kugelmass [00:39:15] That's what I'm saying. The world is not what it is, it's what you make it. So if you want an engineering degree... I would go to Todd Allen, who runs Michigan's nuclear department. You could talk to him about what opportunities are there to like, craft the path. But I don't even think it has to be nuclear engineering that your master's is in, I just think any engineering. And then you find the right professors that are going to help you build your own curriculum. Oh, man. I'll leave you alone on that.

Grace Stanke [00:39:41] Send me some emails. I got you.

Bret Kugelmass [00:39:41] Trust me, I will. Okay, I'm going to let you wrap up on a note of your choosing, but I'm going to force it to be optimistic and speak about the future.

Grace Stanke [00:39:51] Oh, I hope I've been optimistic.

Bret Kugelmass [00:39:53] You are optimistic. It's like, just in case.

Grace Stanke [00:39:56] I would largely say, one... As someone who speaks a lot, and people ask me a lot about what the youth perspective is and what the youth experience is like, I'd just like to say there are so many people that are so excited to get involved and thrilled to be a part of this industry. And we're excited to learn. You know, nuclear is a very advanced and technical subject. We're excited to learn. I just ask that everyone who has the knowledge, who has that power and that skill, share it with the young people. Don't be afraid to talk about that one super niche thing about that one BWR you worked on in 1972. I want to hear about it, okay? There's a lot of power in the story, so I ask that you make sure to reach out. Talk to your local ANS chapter, talk to your local WIN chapter, whatever might be in that area. And don't be afraid to be that mentor. I think there's a lot of power in mentorship and having someone to look up to in the industry and someone to just ask the stupid questions to. You know, I encourage that questioning attitude, but there's always going to be a scenario where I know there's many people out there that will be like, "I can't ask this right now, I'm going to look stupid." So having that trusting relationship with a powerful mentor is a good thing. And I think that, this generation coming up, I'm excited to be a part of it. I think we've got a lot of really awesome, exciting things to offer. We're not afraid to speak our minds and we're not afraid of change either. And, you know, maybe it's time that the nuclear industry has a little bit of change.

Bret Kugelmass [00:41:23] Grace, thank you.

Jim Glasgow [00:00:00] Well, I'm delighted to be here. And it certainly, in a way, feels good to be able to put on a suit and drive downtown. I used to do that every day for 50 years to pursue law practice, and now I practice law from home, mostly, with the Hunton, Andrews & Kurth law firm, which I joined back in September of 2021. But I got here not through any great plan, starting early in life. I planned to be a professional musician, and that worked just fine for my college and high school days. I made a fair amount of money being a clarinetist and playing a saxophone, alto and tenor, in the Tucson Symphony, as well as Tucson Pops Orchestra, various bands, jazz bands, and also my own group called The Sophisticats. We were not a great crowd pleaser except for older audiences.

Jim Glasgow [00:00:58] But then when I got into college, I realized that I wasn't really cut out for my pre-medical studies. I didn't take a lot of physics, chemistry, math and other things that have helped me in this industry. But when it came to deciding what to do, the debate team participation at the University of Arizona in Tucson was what carried the day for me. I ended up liking presenting things and having to make arguments on the debate team, and that led to law school. But that again was at the University of Arizona College of Law. I was a bit tied to Tucson. I needed to make money to get my way through school, and I couldn't do that by just going anywhere. I had to keep drawing on the contacts I had. Amazingly, that experience is still relevant to my law practice. It sounds odd, but I've found reasons to work clarinet playing into client events.

Anton van Saase [00:01:53] Nice. That is something different.

Jim Glasgow [00:01:55] Well, and probably enough about that. But when I got out of law school, my big break, frankly, was getting a clerkship with Chief Judge Richard Chambers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. I showed up and had one year of a great learning experience. Being a law clerk, as you know, is a lot more than filing papers. You're essentially a sounding board for the judge and a drafter of opinions, first draft. But that led to coming to Washington, D.C. to work for the Justice Department. I hadn't planned to do that, but I was always interested in natural resources, water rights and the like.

Jim Glasgow [00:02:36] So perhaps that makes sense that I wound up with the Land and Natural Resources Division at Justice. And that was when a lot of things were happening. That was 1970 that I started. But the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, had been passed in 1969, and little did I know, but the experience even that I had gained as being a law clerk about NEPA, as it's pronounced, turned out to be quite valuable. When I got to the Justice Department, a lot of my cases had to do with NEPA. Not all of them. One of them harked back to the Refuse Act of 1899, Section 13 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, to be precise, 42 USC § 407. See, I had to write that so many times in briefs that I still remember it. The Justice Department used that, quite oddly, to bring a case against a nuclear utility for thermal pollution. Well, that's not exactly discharge of matter, but rather of energy. But still, the district judge upheld the Department's use of the case. I went to Miami a lot of times to argue procedural motions, prepared for trial. We settled the case. I signed the decree, the judge approved it. A huge cooling canal system, over 4,000 acres was deployed.

Anton van Saase [00:04:05] Was it Turkey Point?

Jim Glasgow [00:04:05] Yes, it was indeed Turkey Point. 4,000 acres of mangrove swamp were sacrificed to a labyrinthine cooling canal. Water went around and around like an automobile radiator and came out into Card Sound lots cooler than it had previously been discharged. So that maybe as an inauspicious start to working for and in favor of nuclear power, but indeed I did. I think that was my last act taken, arguably, against a nuclear plant. My big break at Justice was, frankly, as a 27 or 28 year old kid being thrown into what really had emerged as perhaps the most important case that particular Land's Division had at the time. The opponents were five auto companies and they didn't like the fact that Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus of the EPA had denied their request for a one year extension to get their tailpipe emission compliant with the Clean Air Act emission limits. Fortunately, the Act gave a one year extension if the companies could show they needed it. They tried to show it; the EPA said, "No.".

Jim Glasgow [00:05:24] The companies took them to the circuit court. I was assigned to brief and argue the case, which I did, and it was one of those hugely accelerated briefing schedules, a lot of pressure. I walked into court and there are about, oh, a dozen lawyers for the companies sitting there at the table. Only one for the government, yours truly. But the court accepted the arguments that it was putting forth for the U.S. Justice Department and ultimately and quickly ruled mostly in the government's favor on all of the key points, such as APA, Administrative Procedure Act issues, NEPA issues, National Environmental Policy Act, that is. I'd sent the matter back to Ruckelshaus saying, "This is the most important industrial case of the decade. We need you to have some more hearings, have some more findings." On that second go around, Ruckelshaus changed his mind and granted the extension. I think it was sobering to think how many jobs were in the offing. The Department liked what I'd done, gave me a big cash award, and I got lots of job offers.

Anton van Saase [00:06:37] Nice.

Jim Glasgow [00:06:38] Loaned me out to the Atomic Energy Commission. That's why I'm here today.

Anton van Saase [00:06:43] Yeah, that's the interesting segway into there, of course. You got the orders to the Atomic Energy Commission that became obviously the NRC. Were you there when the transfer happened?

Jim Glasgow [00:06:52] Yes, I went through the whole thing. I might possibly be the only lawyer still in practice who has gone through the full loop of agencies involved in nuclear power matters. In other words, Justice was lots involved, obviously AEC, NRC where I went after the AEC folded at the end of '74. But I spent time at both AEC and NRC, mostly as an appellate lawyer, defending the licensing decisions of the AEC and later the NRC against challenges that were mostly filed in the Courts of Appeal, because the Administrative Procedures Review Act, the so called Hobbs Act, trusted their jurisdiction exclusively in the Courts of Appeal when it came to final awarders of those agencies. If somebody thought they were aggrieved and had an interest, they could go to court. They usually were required to have exhausted their administrative remedies. And if they had not participated in the agency's proceeding, then often they were precluded from going to court.

Anton van Saase [00:08:08] So let me ask you a question. Do you think that the approach of the AEC and the people and the goals they had, etc., did they change when it became the NRC?

Jim Glasgow [00:08:21] I didn't see a lot of change. Some would think there should have been change because the rationale for abolishing the AEC was that it combined promotional and regulatory functions. The AEC was charged with the national security aspects of nuclear power, frankly, weapons development, but also R&D on new reactor systems. And there were a lot of R&D projects on, well, some far-fetched systems. Reactors for airplanes, oh, yes, there was a big one that really didn't get off the ground. I'll spare you the rest of that. But the the climate seemed to me to be a meticulously fair regulatory climate at the AEC. There were about 35 commissioners of the AEC over time, people we still remember today, James Schlesinger and Dixy Lee Ray, who went on to become governor of Washington State. But my favorite among the group was William O. Doub, who was a commissioner for the years that I was at the AEC, and he later became my law firm partner. It's one of those serendipitous occasions. I didn't plan for these things. They just happened. Bill kind of took me under his wing and helped me get over to the NRC, aided by Anders, who went to become the chairman of the NRC. So I had a good start at the NRC. I had great cases; I could mention some. You know, I think I'd save that and see if there's time, because I can weave some of these in. I don't just want to tell war stories.

Anton van Saase [00:10:04] No, no, I'm actually kind of interested more in, or we are more interested in the more philosophical on where you think the NRC at the time were supposed to head and ultimately where they ended up and where we are right now. Because there's of course, an enormous drought of, what, 45 years or so, where the NRC pretty much did not license anything other than a renewal of an existing license, and what caused that. And of course, now there is from Congress a request to come up with some new regulations related to SMRs, which is what we are in the business of. And the NRC seems to have some trouble in coming up with new regulations, which, and I have to be a little careful I guess how I state that, but less prescriptive and a little bit more risk based and it seems to be very difficult for the NRC to get themselves to that point.

Jim Glasgow [00:11:06] Well, yes, risk-informed performance-based. There's another acronym; it's definitely the watchword. But that's been true for a long time. And I have to compliment my former colleagues. I thought that the level of performance of the AEC and NRC people that I met and worked with was top flight and excellent commissioners served during that term. I didn't know them all. Some were lawyers, some were not, but all were, I think, devoted to the mission at that time. But there was a big impediment in those early days of the NRC, and that was, frankly, the government was suffering an onslaught of litigation. And because some of the plaintiffs and petitioners for review were successful, that vastly slowed down the NRC licensing process, slowed it down at the construction permit stage, certainly the operating license stage. Later, of course, the NRC tried to implement these new ideas about risk-informed performance-based licensing and to that end promulgated a new Part 52. And I think that's what you were alluding to, because the NRC did a number of things to try to make that process work and to make it work in a more rapid manner than the old Part 50, which was the two step. First, you get a construction permit, later an operating license. There were not too many opportunities, though, for the NRC to use the new Part 52. There were a number of applications for Early Site Permits, ESPs. And that was good, a number were granted. But this was also a time when the bloom was off the rose of the renaissance. I had hoped for that myself, greatly, as we all did.

Anton van Saase [00:13:01] I was in the middle of that one. I know all about it.

Jim Glasgow [00:13:03] But the dearth of cases soon came and there weren't many opportunities for the NRC to apply 52. One was, however, with respect to the Vogtle plant in Georgia. And that, to my understanding, is the first and only to date large nuclear plant that has been through the entire Part 52 process and got a combined license. Indeed, this all happened back in August of 2022. The commission had put out a notice saying that the company had successfully demonstrated compliance with the so-called ITAC process, Inspections, Test and Acceptance Criteria, which is part of the Part 52 rule, and authorized the company, Southern Nuclear Operating Company, to load fuel. So I think perhaps it's done that. I'm not up to the moment on that. I'm not representing anybody on this particular matter, but I keep very close track with these things. It's part of my business to keep current. I'd be remiss if I did not.

Jim Glasgow [00:14:16] Now, you alluded to the fact that while the NRC has been under pressure, yes. Congress laid down a command, enacted into law on January 14, 2019, NEMA, Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act. It has a lot of things. My favorite is Section 103, which commands the NRC to develop a new rule to try to fix what's wrong with Part 52, to enable a faster, better, more predictable process for licensing advanced reactors, both Generation III+ reactors but including, of course, small modular reactors of all fuel types. And the NRC is embarked on the process. Some would say too slowly. It's on a seven year total timeframe. In Section 103, Congress commanded, "Get it done within seven years." Does that sound like a reasonable pace? Some would say too long. How much has the NRC gotten done to date? Well, a few things. In 2020, it did put out a notice inviting public comment on the so-called framework or basis, the regulatory basis for this rule. The NRC didn't want to jump to the rule text itself, the proposed rule; it needed an intermediate step. And it's that intermediate step on which comments are being received. And there have been many hours of public meetings. Industry groups, including the nuclear industry institute, the NEI, has commented. I've read the comments. I've spent too much time reading the comments. I'm to a part of my career where I'm no longer writing the comments as I once would have done, but I'm very closely tuned into all of this.

Jim Glasgow [00:16:14] And I think that the consensus so far has been one of disappointment among the industry. I can't speak for everybody and there are some anti-nuclear groups that are probably going to weigh in against the rule. And I predict, looking down the road, that when the rule is promulgated it's almost certain that there will be people who will petition to review it. And they will have participated, so they will have exhausted their administrative remedies. Some of them will show sufficient standing to be in a court of appeals, probably the D.C. Circuit, and they will have their arguments. So instead of getting a rule that's effective in seven years, it might be strung out for another few years beyond that. It might be a decade. Now, that's highly discouraging. So I would hope the NRC could get its work done sooner. But the pace suggests maybe not.

Jim Glasgow [00:17:06] At least one good thing happened recently, and that is in 2020, the NRC said, "We're going to prepare a Generic Environmental Impact Statement, a GEIS, to analyze the environmental impacts of the rule. That's a good idea. One of my former colleagues, Jeff Merrifield, had a big role in suggesting that, but others did as well. The NRC does have a history of such statements in other matters on which I was involved, and I can testify that it is a good thing because it's possible in that manner to clear away a lot of the legal objections. If you let them rise and keep alive until licensing proceedings, then they're interjected into those proceedings. You don't want that. So I agree with those who supported the idea of a GEIS. It's not out yet, but when it is, of course, it'll be circulated interagency, public can comment, but clear away those objections right up front. So I say NEMA was the right thing in this respect. Whether or not it really expedites the process, we don't know yet. And I think a lot of it will depend on how creative the NRC can be in addressing the concerns that industry has raised thus far.

Anton van Saase [00:18:29] Do you believe that there should be a different process for small reactors versus gigawatt reactors? And the reason I'm asking that is the United States Navy has been using small nuclear reactors in their vessels and submarines for 50, 60 years, something like that, a long, long time. And basically people are, especially in a submarine, living pretty much next to the reactor. Nobody seems to be blinking an eye about it. So if it is relatively safe to do in a submarine, why couldn't the process be replicated on land as well?

Jim Glasgow [00:19:12] You make a good point. And I think that perhaps some of the lessons learned with submarine reactors could be applied by the NRC. I would be surprised if they haven't to some extent taken this into account.

Anton van Saase [00:19:28] It's a different process with the DoD.

Jim Glasgow [00:19:29] You don't go to the NRC to get your submarine corrective license. With respect to emergency exclusion zones, see, there's one area where, at least for small modular reactors, there's an absolutely powerful argument for a different approach entirely. Inherent passive safety features should, and I think will, enable a different approach to how much in the way of emergency measures you need to show and how you demonstrate it. Milestones is a word that's bandied about in the NRC's regulatory basis framework, and that's a nice term. Yes, that would be an important thing. Establish performance-based goals for the licensing process. One of the things that's hard to move in all of this is the fact that the Atomic Energy Act, from the beginning, at least in 1954, has prescribed rights for people to intervene. The idea is citizens should have a right to speak up. It's built into our democratic system, but it's one of those problems that inherently has the potential for us folk.

Anton van Saase [00:20:44] Yeah, lock it down, absolutely.

Jim Glasgow [00:20:45] Lock it down. But we will learn, I think, even over the next year through more hearings, more public meetings that is. If the NRC can go from the general to the specific, if it can internally tee up the industry concerns, find a creative way to respond with some specificity. In other words, it's not enough just to say, "Well, gosh, that's a nice point. We'll throw in a few more process related words. We'll come up with some more synonyms for milestones, goals, objectives." The proof is going to be in how effective the NRC can be with responding to the industry comments. And actually, the Part 52, you could say, was not all that successful. Part of it's no one's fault, there simply weren't applications filed. But even today, I'm aware that some small modular reactor developers don't want to use Part 52. It's still on the books. Why not apply there? Isn't it better? It came after Part 50. But indeed, many are thinking already, "We'll have to go with the older Part 50."

Anton van Saase [00:22:01] Well, part of the problem which is seen, especially for an SMR, is the cost benefit analysis. You can get to the point where the amount of time and the amount of money it takes to get through a licensing process with the NRC, for a relatively small plant which will not have the revenue base which a giga plant would have, it makes it pretty much, from a cost point of view, prohibitive almost to go through the process unless there's significant government support. And that is a whole other issue you have to deal with at that point.

Jim Glasgow [00:22:37] I'd like to find some good news here somewhere. You know, at the beginning of the year, I always manage to refresh my memory on things that are not billable to clients. I just like to read the cases; it's part of my job. Read the regs, go on the NRC and DOE websites. I must do that. Strangely, I enjoy it. But one area of good news might relate to the so-called Waste Confidence rule. It goes back to 1997. It's not called Waste Confidence anymore. It's a Continued Storage rule. But that, even as early as 1977 was emerging as an element that interventionists would put forward in saying, "The NRC has not really adequately looked at the consequences, environmentally at least, of the fact that spent fuel is going to be on the site long after the reactor's operational license life." So, the NRC started to play with ideas to get around that. The famous S3 rule came about, which was inserted into the NRC's Part 51, which is their environmental review portion of their regulations. And that rule was like a shuttlecock. It bounced between the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court a number of times, and the arguments were impassive or impassioned. The Supreme Court mostly rejected what the D.C. Circuit had done. Judge Bazelon spoke learned words; his colleague Judge Wilkie responded in dissent. The Supreme Court looked at it and mostly took Wilkie's approach. Both of those fine gentlemen have been long dead, but the jurisprudence stays alive. There is not a geologic repository, as far as I'm aware, for all judicial opinions so that nothing can leak out to hurt you. Oh no. They stay part of our jurisprudence. Some are superseded by time and the passage of congressional acts that undo what the court said. But it is totally amazing the extent to which these early decisions are still fully applicable, particularly with respect to NEPA. And maybe it's only because I argued some of those cases that I have an affection for them. I keep track of them. Many, like Citizens for Safe Power involving the Maine Yankee Plant operating license are still alive. And I marvel still at the ingenious arguments that some of those petitioners made.

Jim Glasgow [00:25:18] In that case, Professor Harold Green came up with a very scholarly argument. He said, "It's fine that the AEC has gone and looked hard and concluded that all of its regulatory requirements are met under the Atomic Energy Act." "But," he said, "the commission failed to assess the residual risk." That is to say the risk that remained after the more specific requirements were specifically addressed by the Commission in its final Safety Analysis Report, for example. The Commission, and I wrote these arguments, said, "Well, not so fast, because the Commissionar has already looked at these issues under the auspices of the NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act." And that's what carried the day, eventually. And the court, the D.C. Circuit, was unwilling to draw a formulistic, as they say, distinction between analyzing things under the Atomic Energy Act and analyzing things underneath it. The Commission, to the extent it didn't specifically look at residual risk under the Atomic Energy Act, did under NEPA. That was enough for the court. So I kind of dined out and wrote my briefs on the strengths of precedents like that.

Jim Glasgow [00:26:40] But I shifted later to international work when I went over to the old Energy Research and Development Administration. I guess I had a wanderlust. I'd heard they had great parties at the IAEA in Vienna, Austria, and the U.S. mission, and frankly, my colleague Peter Brush had made me an offer that I couldn't refuse, and I soon started to travel, which I liked greatly. I went to Japan many times, the Middle East. The Middle East hadn't come on... Oh, yes, it did. I went to Egypt, as a matter of fact, to help negotiate the U.S.-Egypt 123 agreement. I went to Brussels to help negotiate a huge revision to the U.S.-European Atomic Energy Community, EURATOM agreement for cooperation. All critical endeavors. I got to do many other things.

Jim Glasgow [00:27:33] One was to work on legislation for the Department of Energy, because at that time nonproliferation was the watchword. Several members of Congress were drafting bills to greatly strengthen nonproliferation requirements for these 123 agreements. I would work on helping the DOE send in a response, working hand in glove with the State Department. Out of it came the NNPA, Nuclear Nonproliferation Proliferation Act of 1978. NNPA, as everyone calls it. And there again was serendipity in operation. I had no way of knowing this, but my work on that act put me in the driver's seat on helping interpret the law once it had been passed. And it was infinitely complicated and participants were outraged. Many, such as EURATOM, even delayed the negotiations. So bad they thought the law was and so onerous it was in asking from them more than they should have to give, they thought.

Jim Glasgow [00:28:44] And that really was a game changer because it caused me to enter private practice. I had opportunities to do that. I linked up with Commissioner Bill Doub. No longer a commissioner, he was in private practice. I became a member of Doub, Muntzing, and the word Glasgow was later added. I was thrilled with that. It was a boutique firm and I went hither and yon to work with utility clients and others on helping them understand these requirements, sometimes accompany them to Vienna to help them talk to the IAEA about safeguards agreements and many other things. But by those days, I was still working on domestic licensing. That never went away. You couldn't do just one thing if you wanted to make a living. Absolutely not. You had to be able to do contracts. I worked with a lot of utilities on uranium enrichment contracts. And in those days, the provider was, well, the Department of Energy and AEC before that. Those contracts were complicated. Foreign companies also had those contracts.

Jim Glasgow [00:29:55] So by and by though, the age of large law firms was more and more upon us. It was rather necessary to be a part of a larger firm to handle huge industrial opportunities. So Bill Doub, Manning Munzting and I merged our firm into a firm called Newman & Holtzinger. Credit still goes to Jack Newman for being my mentor of sorts over at the firm. I benefited from the people I worked with. There aren't textbooks where you can learn everything. You can if you've studied the law a lot, as I did with the NNPA. I could maybe emerge at times as the leading expert on these things, but I knew I wasn't an island. My friend Chuck Peterson, who had been chairman of Nuexco before I twisted his arm and he joined Morgan Lewis where I was after a time, I was able to see that business people who happen to be lawyers have a different perspective. I incorporated that into what I tried to do. When negotiating contracts, when working with clients, I felt it was critical to know the business. I give great credit to the Nuclear Energy Institute, its predecessor USCEA, World Nuclear Association and its predecessor, Uranium Institute. I went to other conferences all around the world. They gave me opportunities to speak, and I sat for hours hearing speeches about how the industry worked, licensing, mining, conversion, fabrication, all of that. And if I hadn't learned that, I don't think I would have been credible in talking to clients. They don't want to give their lawyer a tutorial. You need to know those things.

Anton van Saase [00:31:48] You need to understand the business. You need to understand because otherwise you cannot provide the proper advice either. Because advice which does not support the business is ultimately not relevant to them. That's usually the way it works, right?

Jim Glasgow [00:32:02] Well, with lawyers, it's very much a people business. Sounds a little strange, but it's definitely not "go to one firm and 30 years later, get your gold watch." Not so. It's such a specialized business, in my experience, that things happen. Your friends, who maybe even attracted you to come to a firm in the first place leave. They go to another firm for all kinds of reasons, including conflicts of interest. So I migrated from time to time. People left me; sometimes I rejoined them. I went to the Pillsbury firm. Enjoyed my decades at Morgan Lewis and Pillsbury. Met great people, great friends. But some of those great friends went on, such as Chuck Peterson left Pillsbury as did George Borovas. So having worked for George in two firms, I was maybe not totally surprised, but I certainly was gratified when he asked me to join Hunton, Andrews & Kurth, which had a large nuclear practice and once again does. George heads up the Tokyo office and also the nuclear office. But anyway, I'm still working. I failed retirement. I have to admit it.

Anton van Saase [00:33:21] That's got to impact your R&D, right?

Jim Glasgow [00:33:24] But I would like to say, if you'll permit it, a little bit about some key international things that have just happened because I think your audience needs to know about them. They're of a blockbuster status. I wouldn't have picked them up unless I did my own continuing legal education, but I did so. The most recent one is in a Federal Register Notice on January 12 of this year, and it significantly amends the DOE technology transfer rules. They are codified 10 CFR Part 810, and that's been on the books since 1957 when the statute on which it's based was enacted. That's Section 57 of the Act. Very broadly worded; it was a product of the Cold War, a product of the concern that our technology might leak overseas, and even the power reactor technology might have non-peaceful implications. This technology is kind of one of these... The rule is an eye glazing-over moment. It's forbidden for U.S. persons to engage overseas in the production of sources of special nuclear material without an authorization to do so. And the authorization process is laid out in the statute. You either get a license, a permit from the Secretary of Energy, personally. Now, that sounds odd. How can the Secretary be running around doing that? But it says so in Section 161N. The secretary personally has to do that. I can't tell you how many times that's significantly delayed the process. But this latest change amps up the penalties provisions that are laid out in 115, in .15 of Part 810. And it establishes once again, I think, that the DOE has civil penalty and additional power in addition to criminal. The new penalty, get this, is $112,000 a day.

Jim Glasgow [00:35:53] Now, the violation can be continuing, maybe in some instances it's only a day. But if you're an engineer and you've gone over to help a foreign nuclear power plant with technical matters, most likely you're within the scope of Part 810, if you're there without the requisite permit and you're not within the scope of a general authorization... You should be looking at the books, shaking in your boots and thinking, "Am I going to have to pay $110,000, roughly a day?" And that is adjusted for inflation later. So what do you do if you get a notice of violation as provided for in the new rule? Well, you have an opportunity to respond within 30 days. You can explain. But if the NRC sends you a notice, a formal notice of violation, now you can request a hearing. You can even bring your lawyer. And the NRC has its lawyers and there's cross-examination provided for and other formal processes. At the end of the day, what if the DOE does send you a notice and assesses the penalty? And they have to tell you why and how and what factors they applied. Unfortunately, the DOE certainly has the ability to chase after your money and find a way to make you pay it. So this is a real blockbuster. I think that many companies will probably want to look at their compliance programs and make some adjustments.

Anton van Saase [00:37:26] Correct. We are actually doing this right now as well because we have, basically, existing technology. We don't have an advanced nuclear reactor, so we're not using molten salt or lead or any of those other more esoteric type things. We're in that respect a little bit more in the public domain, I guess, with a lot of the stuff that we're doing. But still, it's one of those areas where you've got to keep an eye on and say, "Okay, what are we doing and who's going abroad and who are they talking to, etc.." So, yes.

Jim Glasgow [00:37:56] That's been one of my frequent assignments of private practice, to meet with clients to talk about exactly that. And sometimes it's not so clear what is totally in the public domain and what represents an embellishment. In other words, proprietary knowledge that builds on something in the public domain but adds more. And that's why, frankly, the company is getting paid. They're not just providing public information. Sometimes it's hands on work; it's the reactor operator. So even back in the 1990s, a number of reactor operators thought it'd be cool to leave their jobs at the TVA and go to South Africa, work for Eskom where they were going to get paid a lot more, but the FBI came to visit them and said, "Do you realize that you're here without a specific authorization? We know you don't have one." South Africa was not a generally authorized country at that time. Threatened them with prosecution; they mostly came home. All right, that's all. But that kind of scenario is still possible to be repeated.

Jim Glasgow [00:39:03] Sometimes this is a burden placed on foreign new build programs. The foreign new build program almost has to be in the possession of educating some, not all, but some of their American contractors about American law. It's a better idea not to do that. And the DOE did get a little bit more hopeful in 2015 when they just had a massive overhaul of the Part 810 rule. But it didn't answer all the questions. And having struggled with the DOE, a nice booklet about what they did identify, I appreciate that, but there's still a lot of unanswered questions. One modern one has to do with those advanced fuel cycles that you mentioned because there is the concept of Special Nuclear Technology. It was defined in the NNPA; the definition is repeated in the DOE rules. And people look at their technology and they think, "God forbid, is this possibly Sensitive Nuclear Technology, SNT?" Because if it is, full stop. It's not going to be possible to transfer that overseas. And all these big penalties would kick in if you do.

Anton van Saase [00:40:15] And part of the problem there is... Because obviously that is on our radar as well. The law is never a bright black and white line, right? There's always a gray area. And when you're talking to engineers and tell them about, "Well, this is potentially, depending on etc.," they're like, "Wait a second, is it or isn't it?" Then it's like, "Well, it's not that simple to answer." And then sometimes an interesting discussion you can have. I'm originally an engineer myself, so I'm very much aware of that black and white thinking of one plus one is two, end of discussion versus like, well, what's your argument, right? The law in that respect is a little different than pure engineering. And sometimes it would be nice if regulations and laws would be more specific and let people exactly know what they are, but that's just not always the way it works.

Jim Glasgow [00:41:12] The DOE did get more specific in 2015. They did, but not specific enough so that it answered all the questions. We can easily understand that what they control in the way of nuclear power technology is that which is essentially in the nuclear aisle and not balance of plant. You know, things that are attached to the... The fuel, the core, the fuel handling, discharging, etc.. But it's not always possible to identify every last thing. But that's mostly pretty much settled. But what is Sensitive Nuclear Technology isn't. And when you get to new fuel cycles, the meaning of the word reprocessing sometimes is front and center.

Jim Glasgow [00:41:55] Now, it might not seem that such a plant would reprocess, but they do have online fueling in some cases, ways of extracting contaminants from like liquid fuel. Is that reprocessing? Well, I'm not here today to give legal advice, but in the past I've represented some of these startup and later stage companies that have innovative reactors. We usually prepare very well, go over to the DOE, talk to the right people, try to get the right answers, try to get it in writing. The DOE only modestly makes use of its authority to give advisory opinions. Over the years, I've been greatly blessed with the indulgences of John Rooney and Katie Strangis and others and head up that function as a regular job.

Anton van Saase [00:42:45] Yeah, I've had my interactions with Katie in a number of activities with getting approvals, getting notifications. It's part of what you need to do.

Jim Glasgow [00:42:59] Well, the general counsel of DOE has almost never, over the years, used his or her authority to issue an opinion. And that's the only opinion that is actually binding on DOE. It says that right in the Part 810 regs. Now, that's disconcerting. I think that more certainty could be achieved in that matter. I think the DOE has taken some modest steps toward making their actual decisions more readily available. It used to be necessary to go to the DOE and stand there and work the Xerox machine and put quarters into it. I eventually compiled a set of every publicly available 810 determination they made. That was my case law. That allowed me to show clients, "Here's what DOE did in this case," and that was invaluable. I still do that. But they could do better; they could have all that online, please..

Anton van Saase [00:43:51] Nowadays, you go on the NRC website, DOE website, they actually have a lot of information there, schematics and designs, etc... So that is giving you quite some guidance on, "Well, this is clearly public because the NRC has it on their own website. So we are okay; we have something similar." It's still, you need to evaluate it, but it is what it is, so.

Jim Glasgow [00:44:16] It's better than it was. I'm not criticizing my former colleagues. Some of my previous friends and colleagues at law firms are now at DOE's Office of General Counsel. I told just one too many good war stories about how much I like DOE, so my colleagues at private law firms went there. I wasn't too smart in that regard. I lost people I needed.

Anton van Saase [00:44:39] Well, the DOE is not the enemy, right?

Jim Glasgow [00:44:43] Oh, no, no, they weren't. I got to my current law practice largely by the good opportunities I had with the federal government. I'm deeply grateful for that and I'm still trying to stay right on the cusp, even at 52 years of law practice. If you'll allow me, I'd like to say something about another blockbuster development having to deal with 123 agreements. The agreements for coorporation are changing. Several have expired over the years. Egypt expired at the end of 2021 and the South Africa agreement expired on December 4, even though a replacement agreement has been sent up to Capitol Hill on September 1 by President Biden. The 90 days of continuous session review are apparently not finished. But in the remainder of the decade, several agreements are coming due for renewal, and there's good news and bad. The ones that are expiring in 2029 are the bad news because they don't have renewal provisions other than just go negotiate...

Anton van Saase [00:45:52] A new one.

Jim Glasgow [00:45:52] ...a new one. And that takes a long time. And they are Brazil... Let's see if I can remember. Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. But if we go to the one that's expiring soon it's June of 2023 and it's Turkey. The good news is it has a five year renewal, a rolling renewal. So if the countries don't send out a notice that they don't want to renew, it just rolls to another five years and another five years. Same is true of EURATOM. Hugely important because under its rubric are 27 countries. Immensely important. Its term expires in 2026 except it has that five year rolling renewal. So if nobody does anything to say we want to stop, it just rolls. It's a little uncertainty because it means that every five years there's a question.

Anton van Saase [00:46:45] So probably you're going to get the Westinghouse guys somewhat nervous or somewhat wondering like, "Okay, do we need to get involved in this?"

Jim Glasgow [00:46:52] At least we're not back to the dramatic times in which I participated in the years... The 2010s were pretty dramatic. A lot of agreements were coming to be renewed and they didn't have renewal provisions. I worked hard on several of those and they were controversial, as were some in the '80s and '90s. I worked a lot on the Japan agreement. So enough of that. But if I could just say something, if there's still time. It has to do with court cases because it's woven into the fabric of nuclear law from the beginning. We're looking at some critical cases being handed down probably within days. I checked this morning and the decision in the lawsuit by the state of Texas against the applicants for a combined, a long term interim storage facility, consolidated interim storage facility, CISF, have a lot at stake. The one in west Texas has a license that was issued a few months ago... Well, actually back in September of 2021. But the state of Texas challenged that license within 10 days. They challenged it in the U.S. Court of Appeals under the Hobbs Act. Oral argument on the case was held in August of 2022. There should be a decision pretty soon. It's huge consequences. I mean, I think, personally, that the grounds for the license are very strong, but what the Fifth Circuit says is going to be hugely important. The court's heard the oral argument; there's a similar case in the D.C. Circuit that was argued on November 11 of last year. So there too, there should be a decision pretty soon, but the fate of these licenses will hang in the balance.

Jim Glasgow [00:48:46] Both parties are strongly relying on that West Virginia case I mentioned. State of West Virginia vs. EPA. It's a case that basically says if it's a major question, the Congress has got to speak with great clarity, if the matter has large, overarching political and economic consequences. These plaintiffs, these petitioners say that's true. So please keep in mind the 330 Court of Appeals cases that are on the books still. There's a dozen Supreme Court cases. There are maybe about 100 District Court cases. And I promise you that I won't bother you with another one of those, but they're going to be important. That was my bread and butter for years. I sent my daughters through college on such things.

Jim Glasgow [00:49:36] Great pleasure to be here today. Thanks for helping me prepare, do my annual continuing legal education review and my exercise program. I listen to the podcast while I walk around the neighborhood. Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Anton van Saase [00:49:51] Thank you for coming and thank you for your wisdom. Nice to meet you.