TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Q1 - Path to Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: What is it like to be a Scot and how does that fit into the rest of the U.K.?

Alastair Laird: Alastair Laird is from Scotland, which is part of Britain, and the nuclear energy part of U.K. is a British entity. The very first civil nuclear power plant in the U.K. was Calder Hall, and its sister station, Chapelcross in Scotland opened shortly after. Subsequently, the Magnox fleet was created, the first being Hunterston A. This was Laird’s first formal site when he started employment as a graduate trainee, eventually moving onto the B site, an advanced gas-cooled reactor, and then the construction and commissioning of Torness, near Edinburgh. Laird enjoyed mathematics and physics in school, leading him to pursue physics at university during at time in which laser power technology was popular. His master thesis was an analysis of the reactor physics on the Scottish University research reactor center. It was one of seven of the original test reactors designed to encourage research. They have all since closed because they were early R&D and had radiation source, but did not produce power, and had been open for about thirty years. After graduation, Laird’s first job was with Scottish nuclear, a utility owned by the public sector, spending time at Torness and Hunterston A and B stations.

Q2 - Transition Between Reactor Construction and Operation

Bret Kugelmass: What configuration is Torness and what is the commissioning phase like?

Alastair Laird: Torness is a twin advanced gas-cooled reactor. When Laird joined Torness, there were 5,000 construction workers on the site pouring concrete and placing rebar for the ancillary facilities, but most of the technical aspects of the reactor had been constructed. Progressively, Laird was in the phase in preparation for fuel loading and designing technical equipment. Laird then left Torness to join the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) at Heysham 2 in England. Heysham 2 was another sister station to Torness that was six months ahead and did the fuel load. Laird’s first fuel load experience was spent standing on top of the reactor, hand guiding the fuel assemblies that were being lowered by cranes into the fuel channels. When the fuel is being loaded, it is being monitored for any anomalies, visually inspected, and quality paperwork signed off. The transition between 5,000 construction workers and 350 operators is quite quick. During the operational phase, the mindset must change into calm, procedural compliance with routine things done well. Gas-cooled reactors are cylindrical and have a basement with the cooling systems. The reactor has holes for control rods and fuel, with gas flow channels and a door that directs the flow of gas, carbon dioxide. A concrete structure provides not only the pressure vessel, but also the shielding.

Q3 - Nuclear Reactor Start-up

Bret Kugelmass: What is nuclear start-up like?

Alastair Laird: The control room of a nuclear reactor is one of the quietest places you can be. There is a lot of information and data and the cognitive processes are working. When you make a change during start-up, there is a strong procedural, compliance aspect and criticality is important. Initially, there is zero power, but there is a balanced chain reaction and it is brought to slightly supercritical and back down to critical. This brings the power rating up to the point where you can raise steam, but it is not at operating temperature yet. The first critical reaction is maybe one fission taking place, which doesn’t release a lot of heat. At the point of criticality, millions of chain reactions are taking place. Once more reactions take place and it is at a comfortable power level, you can raise steam through the steam systems to get the turbines and mechanical processes moving and ready to connect to the grid. If there is zero power on the turbine and it’s connected to the national grid, it will synchronize in terms of the 50Hz cycle. If the grid moves faster, the turbine moves faster, The turbine and steam systems must be synchronized against the power reactor. Energy can’t be produced without getting rid of energy. As heat is produced and energy produced in the turbine, the mechanism to get rid of it is the national grid.

Q4 - Privatization of Nuclear Energy in the U.K.

Bret Kugelmass: How does the ratio between thermal power produced and electrical power produced differ between a gas reactor and a light water reactor?

Alastair Laird: The operation temperature of a gas reactor is around 550 degrees Celsius, with a 300 degree inlet steam temperature. Steam can be reheated using the Rankine cycle to increase efficiency. If the outlet temperature it hot, you use reheat steam, and have cold water available gives a better vacuum all helps the reactor generate more efficiently. Alastair Laird went to work at Dungeness B on the South coast of England, which was effectively the first full-scale prototype of a gas-cooled reactor. It didn’t work well and wasn’t designed perfectly, such as components not fitting in the right spaces; it was built by a consortium by a competition process. Due to this, a single design authority entity was created called National Nuclear Corporation. At Dungeness, Laird looked after the turbine, fuel outages, and learned about what else goes into a nuclear reactor other than the reactor itself. After spending fifteen years in operations at five plants with British Energy, Laird had the opportunity to join British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL). Nuclear power plants are designed to be a flexible base load, meaning there is always associated risk. They were part of the national strategic infrastructure, but to privatize them there had to be a niche in the market. The first attempt failed, so nuclear was kept in the public hands. The nuclear utilities wanted to be privatized and felt they had a role. Around 1993, the position was agreed upon that if nuclear utilities could demonstrate three years of continuous cost improvement against the unit strike price that the market was set to demonstrate it could survive in the market. This happened in 1996 and by 1997, British Energy was formed; Laird was on the privatization team.

Q5 - Nuclear Decommissioning Process

Bret Kugelmass: How does decommissioning differ for weapons waste and civilian power?

Alastair Laird: There are many legacy facilities, some as a direct result of the civil research and development program and some tied to the dash for a nuclear defense or bomb production. The U.K. has a mix of both. These facilities have nuclear material and contamination that needs to be cleaned up, environmentally remediated, and decommissioned and demolished. Scotland has legacy sites from the fast reactor and R&D programs, including Dounreay. Dounreay had the full 360 of early reactor design, fuel cycle areas, and legacy decommissioning facilities. Some of the modern facilities were built with decommissioning in mind, but most of the early facilities were built with a focus on speed. In Magnox reactors, fuel storage is not the norm but is instead moved and sent to Sellafield. To suddenly defuel four reactors, instead of a bunch of fuel in every fuel cycle, the reprocessing facility at Sellafield could not take all the fuel at the same time. There was a logic at optimizing the Magnox fuel. In the U.K., decommissioning licenses are given right from the start as a regulator approval to continue under the existing license and commence decommissioning. The Magnox fuel rods are highly irradiated and radioactive, so they must be put within a shielding condition, transported from the reactor into a flask and into the processing facility at Sellafield. The Magnox fuel is transported in water and the cladding is removed in the reprocessing facility. Laird spent five years with BNFL at Sellafield, joined the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for four years, and they joined a U.S. company, Project Time & Cost (PT&C). This work was focused on project assurance and validating costs and schedules while supporting projects going forward. Alastair Laird now works as an independent consultant, supporting programs such as waste encapsulation.

Q6 - European Nuclear Society

Bret Kugelmass: As the President of the European Nuclear Society, what are you doing to advocate for the members?

Alastair Laird: The European Nuclear Society (ENS) is the holding society for all the European member states that have nuclear and usually have their own nuclear society. Alastair Laird represents the European professional memberships, with 21 member societies, with a wider membership of 10,000 industry professionals. The ENS is about behaviors, standards, training, advocacy, and joining up collectively as industry professionals. Technical conferences, networking events, and webinars support that dialogue. ENS is co-located in Brussels with FORATOM, which have a symbiotic relationship. Many people don’t understand the technology and all they know about is the major accidents. Advocates end up talking about nuclear safety. Safety enhancements increase cost, which is justified by safety, leading to a spiral of cost increases. When the scientists do their design right and the operators operate the plant per procedures, nuclear is successful. Communication about nuclear has differing effects on the public audience; different aspects of the technology inspire confidence. The power generation record of nuclear is phenomenal. The world has become so electricity-centric and civil nuclear power is a key element to keeping the lights on. With a good track record, a consistent investment program is needed to adapt to the changing market. If more politicians and advocacy groups focus on nuclear as a solution for climate change, more people will embrace it.

1) Pursuit of Knowledge
Bret Kugelmass: Where did your career in nuclear begin?
Dame Sue Ion: At a young age, Dame Sue Ion became fascinated with how things worked and how things came to be. This initial spark led her to pursue a degree in material science and engineering at university. There, she elected to take a nuclear science module in her third year that would influence her career far beyond university. Sue pursued her Doctoral Degree, focusing her research specifically on Magnox fuel elements. She describes that the Magnox, a reactor that uses natural uranium rather than enriched uranium, became the most prevalent reactor type throughout the United Kingdom; engineers built a fleet of these reactors that ran for about fifty years. Sue was later awarded the title of Dame as a result of her significant contributions to science and engineering in the United Kingdom.
2) Challenges & Developments
Bret Kugelmass How did you gain the position that you did in British Nuclear Fuels?
Dame Sue Ion: Dame Sue Ion focused her research on clad characteristics that allowed her to understand how it performs as it is manufactured. The challenges that she faced with cladding made her well-equipped to secure a job at British Nuclear Fuels, where she began her career in industry. Here, she started off as a technical support officer and rose through the rankings. She began managing a group of technical employees, which led to her promotion to head of research and development for the fuel division of the company. As the head of research and development, Sue worked on dry processes and wet chemical processes; this included new manufacturing processes, improvements to cladding material, new profiles for cages that hold the fuel, and more modern processing tools and techniques. She later became the technical director for the whole company.
3) Waste Management & Decommissioning
Bret Kugelmass: How should we view waste management and decommissioning?
Dame Sue Ion: Dame Sue Ion dives in by explaining that prototypic plants were not designed for easy decommissioning, and waste was left in tanks to be dealt with later; this left issues for future generations. She argues that if plants were planned better at the outset, these issues would be easier to deal with. Sue recognizes that nowadays we can better plan ahead for safe storage of waste and decommissioning. However, a grand issue is how to safely change sludges, cladding, and fuel into a safe, storable form. Sue argues that we need regulation, but burying spent fuels deep beneath the ground might cause issues for future generations once other resources are depleted. In addition, creates the issue of where to store the spent nuclear fuel; the argument is largely based on emotion rather than understanding. She states that fuel recycling is questioned because of issues with reprocessing even though it is highly recyclable.
4) Repositories and Controversy
Bret Kugelmass: Why is nuclear sometimes treated differently than other energy sources? How feasible is deep geological storage?
Dame Sue Ion: Dame Sue Ion states that deep geological storage could be very feasible from an engineering standpoint; however, the issue has spread to the public space. Sue notes that people tend to get caught up about nuclear waste, yet throw mercury and cadmium in batteries all the time. She highlights the fact that although many other energy sources are widely accepted, society is not as focused on their downfalls. Sue proposes that this paradox results from a general misunderstanding or irrational fear about nuclear energy. Her solution is to develop a better global understanding of nuclear energy to dispel these fears and bad reputations. Proper information must be provided to students, teachers, and families so that society is not driven to make decisions solely on emotion.
5) Modularity and its Construction Costs
Bret Kugelmass: Looking forward, what are some of the issues around new construction of nuclear power?
Dame Sue Ion: Dame Sue Ion emphasizes the fact that it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to build large, complex reactors. The western world often fails to construct reactors efficiently and effectively. In order to resolve this issue, Sue believes that engineers must work more closely with the construction sector to explore modularity. She argues that small modular reactors would allow engineers to lower both the reactor’s size and construction time, which would, in turn, lower economic costs for production. She also emphasizes that government involvement might further lower the price of new reactors.
6) Current Work at BNFL
Bret Kugelmass: What are some of the things that Dame Sue Ion is focusing on now?
Dame Sue Ion: Currently, Dame Sue Ion is concerned with engaging vendors with constructors before beginning to build new plants. She discusses manufacturability of advanced nuclear reactors, such as high temperature reactors, and the technologies involved in making these advancements. She continues to research new materials, corrosion resistance, lifetime monitoring and measurement, and designs for easy decommissioning and waste management. She prioritizes modern designs that will allow for easy access and monitoring.
7) The Future of Nuclear
Bret Kugelmass: How does Dame Sue Ion see nuclear moving forward?
Dame Sue Ion: Looking forward, Dame Sue Ion continues to view nuclear as one of the most sustainable resources. Because of the light water reactor fleet that exists globally, the reliability of nuclear supplies is greater than it used to be. Sue argues that the continuous need for energy will allow nuclear to maintain its ground in the energy realm for centuries.

Environmentalist Preconceptions of Nuclear
How did you find your way into the nuclear space?

Kirsty Gogan studied politics and became an environmental activist, mostly focused on cars, forests, and environmental and social justice. Gogan grew up in Ireland and moved with her family to England when she was ten years old, which helped her interest in politics and the world early on. As an environmentalist, Gogan considered herself anti-nuclear by default. As a young girl, Gogan talked with her friends about whether they would want to survive a nuclear war. The apocalypse seemed real and was reinforced by the media. Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons were conflated at that time. After spending some time traveling and performing on-the-ground environmental work, Kirsty Gogan started working as a freelancer in a government press office, eventually serving as Press Secretary to the Prime Minister. She led the sustainability agenda, working mostly on the housing and planning agenda. After five years, Gogan went back into the civil society sector, working for a small charity focused on specific policy areas, and began to lobby the government from the outside to affect change. Climate change was a new idea at this time and needed its own review to explain it to the heads of government.

Global Effects of Climate Change
How do you see climate change evolving as it relates to nuclear?

For decades, it has been the environment ministers that show up to the climate talks, not the economic, business, or public health ministries. Climate change is not just an environmental issue, but affects factors such as drought, public health, and the advent of new diseases. One goal was to make urban planners aware of how instrumental they were in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Gogan went on to work for a consultant firm in the United Kingdom that focuses on sustainability communications, spending a lot of time on perception change on sustainability, show how it is more substituting instead of sacrificing. Social license is important in considering how issues are framed and perceived. One common perception that’s actually a misconception is that individuals can solve climate change. Climate change must be looked at from a macro perspective to enable people to continue to live their lives in a way they want to live and make it very easy to live more sustainability. It is easier to change infrastructure engineering, putting new systems in place, than social engineering, changing people’s minds and actions.

Strategies for Achieving Climate Change Targets
When did you become focused on climate change?

Kirsty Gogan started out focused on more traditional environmental concerns, such as cars and water, but eventually and gradually began to focus on climate change, as did many environmentalists. Gogan was gifted a book called “Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air” written by Sir David MacKay. MacKay, a Professor at Cambridge, number crunched through the question of how the U.K. could meet its climate targets using existing technologies within 2050 timescales. He illustrates the extensive resources that would be needed to meet everyone’s energy needs, including power, heat, and transportation, with different technologies. Gogan’s first insight while reading this book was that climate targets were not achievable with renewables alone. Her second insight was that almost everything she thought she knew about nuclear was wrong, as MacKay goes through every nuclear topic that is generally raised as a concern: safety, waste, and proliferation cost. Gogan was approached by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and invited her to pursue a path in the nuclear directory. She accepted the challenge to run the public consultation on nuclear new build. Gogan is not afraid to make decisions that are counterintuitive or challenge her tribal norm, but faced disapproval from her environmentalist groups who thought she was selling out. Nuclear is increasingly our fastest, most feasible, most cost effective way to solve the climate problem, but is very unpopular. During the consultation, Gogan listened carefully and genuinely to the NGO community. She created an NGO forum that met quarterly and was chaired by a Minister, which allowed the government to carefully listen to the concerns brought forward by the NGO community. This reduced conflict in public domain because there was an opportunity to be heard and improved the government process.

Nuclear and the NGO Community
By carefully listening to these NGO groups, do you negate the driver of why they oppose your position?

Kirsty Gogan puzzled for a long time over the question of why men are twice as likely to support nuclear compared to women. One compelling argument why older white men are more likely to support nuclear than younger people, women, and ethnic groups, is that these men feel secure in society, the elites are acting in their interests, and they are less likely to be impacted. People who feel more exposed to risk and more vulnerable are more likely to oppose nuclear. Being respectful to everyone who has a different perspective and trying to find common ground is important, but may not happen without dialogue. Shortly after this consultation and having a baby, Fukushima happened and Gogan got a call from the same government department asking her to return to work in communications. She was asked to review the national communications response to Fukushima. After reading all the reports from Chernobyl in preparation for her response to Fukushima, Gogan was shocked to learn that the biggest public health impact from the accident had nothing to do with radiation, but instead the fear of radiation.

Challenging Radiological Protection Standards
How do you institutionalize protecting us from the protectors, especially as it relates to radiation?

Sometimes the radiological protection committee does more harm than good, but we have to learn from history, otherwise we are doomed to repeat it. Kirsty Gogan raised the issue surrounding the radiological protection committee and pushed for changes to the U.K.’s nuclear emergency plan in light of lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima. Gogan was supervised the revision of the Nuclear Emergency Planning and Response Guidance (NEPRG) in the U.K., which brought a broader risk assessment that goes beyond radiological protection. It analyzes the impacts the countermeasures can have in order for leaders to make an informed decision. Gogan advocates for changing the paradigm around radiological protection more generally in the entire industry, from cradle to decommissioning, because it is probably the biggest thing that has an impact on the economics of nuclear. One barrier to climate change from a nuclear perspective is low public confidence, due to with how the industry communicates and the perceptions that exist from nuclear’s historical presence. Another barrier is the high cost of nuclear energy. The U.K. government has accepted that nuclear is important in a cost-effective decarbonization pathway, but the Hinkley power station is considered a blemish in that plan. Hinkley Point C is the the first new nuclear power plant build in the U.K., a European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), for a generation, but the negotiations have been going on for a decade and the construction has barely started. The design is very complex, as light water reactors have high safety records, but EPR’s take it to the next level. When looking at nuclear economics around the world, two key insights came to light. Nuclear new build projects are being delivered for half, or even a third, the cost of what Europe is trying to deliver. Also, inflation in nuclear power comes from indirect costs, such as professional services fees and design changes, not materials.

Keys to Low Cost Nuclear Energy
Can nuclear be the cheapest source of energy if done correctly?

Kirsty Gogan supports the argument that nuclear power can be the cheapest source of energy if done correctly, and if economics is the real barrier to climate change, which is solvable, it should be addressed. Finding the fastest, most cost effective, most feasible way to solve climate change is imperative. Gogan’s study for the Energy Technologies Institute and focused nuclear build out experience around the world and understanding the outcomes they had. The lazy assumption has been that labor is cheap in China and that safety shortcuts were being made, but the study aimed to investigate. The study found that the important features leading to low cost outcomes in China had more to do with excellence in project management and construction, than previous assumptions. If the U.S. and U.K. starts with an honest appraisal of the current situation, changes can be made to achieve the excellence seen elsewhere. Nuclear energy does have a learning curve, but it can be engineered with intentional investment. Kirsty Gogan founded Energy for Humanity, a civil society-based group advocating for nuclear, after meeting Robert Stone, the director of “Pandora’s Promise”. When her idea to start an NGO that includes nuclear as a climate solution came to life, it was the first of its kind. In years since, many more have cropped up and it is becoming a movement.

Energy for Humanity
What does Energy for Humanity do to bring forth what you see as a good solution for climate change?

Energy for Humanity (EFH), co-founded by Kirsty Gogan, advocates for nuclear in climate change on a very small budget. EFH tries to broaden the conversation beyond wind and solar energy and efficiencies to include a broader range of technologies. People who care about climate, air quality, or energy access, can quickly come around to why nuclear is needed and bust through misconceptions of the technology. However, it is different to have someone agree in a private conversation, than to have one take a public stand on the topic. Gogan recently pivoted towards a business model for nuclear. Unless we can make nuclear investable and commercially viable, by transforming the industry to make products that people want to buy, conversations about the technology will not change. Cultural transformation would be if everyone working in the industry felt like they were making a major contribution at scale. Nuclear can be profitable and the market already exists. Fossil fuel infrastructure needs to be replaced and heat, transportation, and shipping needs to be decarbonized. The supply chain has a predatory mindset, as they are being asked to invest without knowing the future of the technology development. This drives up the cost, which makes future development less likely and makes regulation very difficult. Lessons learned can be adapted from other sectors and applied to nuclear, such as using a manufacturing, factory-based delivery model.

Collaborative Hybrid Energy Solutions
What is your perspective on where nuclear energy is going and why it’s important?

Kirsty Gogan is excited to see initiatives like those brought forward at the Clean Energy Ministerial in Copenhagen, where hybrid energy system events took center stage. The international community looked at is less from a technology-focused outlook, and more of an outcome-based perspective. The destination is zero-carbon fast, and nuclear is going to play a role in that, but will need to integrate with other clean energy technologies. Having nuclear as part of the conversation and seeing the industry consider itself part of the wider effort is successful in Gogan’s eyes. Kirsty Gogan continues to collaborate with the growing, global community working on the issue and contributing however she can by advocating for nuclear energy.

Q1 - Heat Transfer in the Forging Process

Bret Kugelmass: Where are you from?

Charles Carpenter: Carles Carpenter is from Lovelock, Nevada and grew up during a time in which Yucca Mountain was getting ready to become a geological disposal area for the U.S. Residents in Northern Nevada, mostly towns centered around farming and mining, recognized benefits of the Yucca Mountain project such as the economics, rail structure, and research opportunities. Carpenter focused on heat transfer during his studies at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR). After graduation, Carpenter worked for Firth Rixson, a forging company, in the quality assurance department. Forging impacts almost every major industrial sector around the globe. Forging uses mechanical work and heat and temperature to push material into a desired shaped with certain properties. Carpenter completed a lot of titanium-based alloys, which are alpha beta processes. While working for Firth Rixson, a lot of the work was specialized in titanium alloys and super nickel alloys for the aerospace industry and land based turbines. For the nickel based alloys, high temperature and creep resistance were the main concerns and were controlled by grain size and metallurgical properties. During his time in quality assurance, Carpenter worked in heat treatment, which is a special process that must be performed to achieve specified properties. Higher temperatures allow you to forge and press the material into a certain shape and size, but as you get closer to the desired properties, certain temperatures are better based on the end product. Tempering and annealing softens the material for the machining process. Carpenter returned to UNR and received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He worked on the sintering process for two phase heat transfer, which is taking a powder and heating it up to near its melting point.

Q2 - Heat Transfer and Logistics Background

Bret Kugelmass: What temperature is two phase heat transfer completed at?

Charles Carpenter: Charles Carpenter completed experiments with two phase heat transfer during his master’s program, mostly for boiling water at atmospheric pressure, but with other variances added into the experiments. After receiving his master’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada Reno, Carpenter took a logistics role in quality assurance at Aero Electronics. The focus in this logistics environment is not on controlling the specific product, but instead creating a process that produces the desired product at the end. Carpenter got married to a previous Firth Rixson coworker, who was originally from Sheffield in the U.K. After doing logistics for a while, Carpenter decided to move to the U.K., first volunteering at a recycling plant with mentally handicapped adults who worked there. This was an eye opening opportunity for Carpenter to learn about human factor challenges. He learned that everyone in a workforce has different needs and needs different tools to complete what they need to do.

Q3 - Welding Manufacturing Processes

Bret Kugelmass: How do people change a manager’s strategy and technique?

Charles Carpenter: Charles Carpenter sees the industrial setting as sometimes easy to forget that people and roles need to be differentiated. After volunteering at the recycling center, Carpenter travelled around Sheffield to look for jobs. He happened upon the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC), discovering that it looked like a university-type lab environment. He applied to the center and realized it was much bigger than the university-type lab he expected and considered it somewhere worth being. Carpenter’s first role at the NAMRC was as a project manager for welding, spending most of his time in tube sheet welding, which has a lot to do with heat exchangers and steam generators. One of the challenges was how to move tube sheet welding to a more automated process. Carpenter also worked on developing the manufacturing process for this operation. Orbital welding equipment has mandrels that go into the tubes, centers itself, and has an orbital component that can weld all the way around the tube. This is a semi-automated process, as a person still needs to move the equipment from tube to tube and make sure the equipment and material is clean. Carpenter also worked on designing experiments to determine requirements to achieve the desired weld output and identify the inputs that have the most impact on the outputs.

Q4 - How New Manufacturing Processes are Developed

Bret Kugelmass: What’s the result of a welding process development?

Charles Carpenter: Ideally, if there is a welding process that needs to be developed, a customer brings the need forward and accepts the new process on-site to train their operators. Charles Carpenter was recently involved with the machining the nozzles of a new reactor pressure vessel (RPV) head. The team needed to understand how tools, especially milling tools, wear out and determine which type of machining strategy would be used. These processes are proved out on the NAMRC machines, so when it is transferred to the customer, it’s fully programmed and ready to use. For the RPV nozzles, the NAMRC looks at about a 40 percent reduction in machining time and looking where it could be improved for machining wear and limiting cutting of fresh air. When the NAMRC develops new processes for a client, they get people from the customer’s side who will actually be involved in the process involved at the beginning to feel buy in and see the directions taken. For the tube sheet welding process, code requirements on hazardous fluids determined some of the direction taken. Early engagement also includes showing the customer why some paths are not taken in the development process. A positive handoff to the client is necessary, otherwise the research doesn’t get translated into the overall impact. Carpenter transitioned into a role as a senior technology officer. Other research centers are in place for other industries: aerospace, composite, forming and formulations, and biologic. Each site has a senior technology officer and they work collaboratively to identify common areas of interest, such as automation and digital manufacturing. Many challenges, such as quality assurance, are shared across industries.

Q5 - Future of Advanced Manufacturing in Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: How do you overcome communication challenges with teams working at different sites?

Charles Carpenter: When Charles Carpenter first became a senior technology officer at the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC), he had to develop a way for people to start sharing information. They first set up technology forums, bringing in experts in metrology, automation, visualization, and met in groups once a quarter to talk about what they are doing in their technology. Then groups start talking to national bodies that are interested in the same things. The National Physical Laboratory is interested in the same things as the metrology group, because they are both looking at measurements. Cross center projects were developed to create funding avenue for common areas of interest between national bodies and industry. NAMRC is working towards large transformational projects, which is getting the larger partners and people more engaged. Small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors are progressing in nuclear. With modularization, it moves towards more factory type builds. As a factory, they consider the 1-3-8 model from the shipbuilding model. If it takes one hour to create in the factory, it takes three hours to fabricate on a dry dock and eight hours to fabricate at the pier. Technology is progressing to get as much fabrication in the factory. NAMRC has a lot of projects around automation, virtual reality and digital manufacturing. Single platform manufacturing minimizes the movement of products during the manufacturing phase, instead making work cells more flexible and versatile. Advanced manufacturing technologies, such as laser welding and electron beam welding, are growing and being used together, not just singularly. NAMRC is working on a project with the Electric Power Research Institute and the Department of Energy in the U.S. and NuScale to determine how the technologies can be combined to create a two-thirds replica of the NuScale reactor pressure vessel in twelve months.

Q1 - Traditional vs. Disruptive Manufacturing Techniques

Bret Kugelmass: Where are you from?

Jay Shaw: Jay Shaw is from Leeds, which is now the largest financial center outside of London in the U.K. Sheffield, the location for the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC), was historically and still is very manufacturing focused. Shaw left school when he was sixteen and took on an apprenticeship in manufacturing engineering. He attended an old mining college and got a national certificate, which represented his understanding of the technical delivery of machining and metrology and production planning and control. Metrology is the science of measurement, which is used in inspection of additive and subtractive manufacturing. Disruptive techniques may be used to reduce the cost of the megawatt hour price and U.K. companies are working to be more competitive. Traditional techniques can be used, but it is very difficult to increase productivity. Disruptive techniques could vastly reduce production time. Completing an arc weld for a 24-inch ball plate would take two to three days, but with electron beam welding, this time could be reduced to thirty minutes. This technique removes the human element from the process, which includes checking for defects in between welds. In an arc welding process, an alien material is used to fill the prep which creates residual stress. In electron beam welding, the material is melted together in an electron beam chamber by creating a high density energy zone. As soon as it comes out of the chamber, the weld must be post-weld heat treated to remove those stresses. In a reactor vessel under use, neutron embrittlement affects mechanical properties of the material, which could create a crack that may be exaggerated by the residual stress. Without the use of a filler metal, it could remove the need to reinspect the weld.

Q2 - Developing the Manufacturing Sector in the U.K.

Bret Kugelmass: Tell me about metrology, the science of measurement.

Jay Shaw: The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC), focuses on three main manufacturing processes: welding, subtractive, and additive. The Birkenhead is looking to expand at module manufacturing and NAMRC is also looking at equipment controls and instrumentation (EC&I) and equipment qualification. Even though the U.K. is competitive to the point of making a product, one of the barriers to market for U.K. manufacturing is getting the equipment qualified in the right manner, which could be radiation, thermal, or other testing. NAMRC launched a study to identify the gaps where the U.K. does and does not have capacity and capability. After his apprenticeship, Jay Shaw moved into production engineering and then later a production manager role. A production engineer looks at the drawing of a component, defines the manufacturing process, makes a 3D model, and interrogates a model which drives the numerical tool that goes to a machining or welding tool to manufacture the component. Shaw received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees while working at NARMC, focusing on advanced manufacturing technique. Nuclear ARMC’s mission is to make the U.K. competitive in the manufacturing field by developing new manufacturing techniques and developing people back into the sector, showing the supply chain the possibilities for the technology and technique.

Q3 - Manufacturing Process Optimization

Bret Kugelmass: Have you thought about teaching manufacturing?

Jay Shaw: As an ex-apprentice, Jay Shaw has been given many opportunities. About three-quarters of the NAMRC executive team are ex-apprentices. Shaw mentors nuclear graduates and employees at NAMRC, passionate about sharing things he’s learned along the way to students. Jay Shaw eventually became the Deputy Head of Machining at the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC). The facility is filled with kits, which are bays within a large open room that contain large machinery. The facility has the world’s largest vertical turning lathe and the third largest electron beam welding machine. The team at NAMRC takes an industrial challenge, develop a manufacturing process on the most appropriate size test piece, and look at the technique applied to the test coupon to industrialize it on the manufacturing readiness level. Manufacturing readiness level shows that something can be built at scale. A key process variable for deep hole drilling might be the surface speed of the drill, in rpms, feed, in feet per revolution, and coolant pressure and flowrate. Each process affects the cylindricity, straightness, and accuracy. NAMRC applied a technique called design of exponents in which a matrix of key process variables put against each other at the geometrical outputs are analyzed. This can be used to determined the optimum process. This operation is repeated to determine wear on the drill and determine life and performance.

Q4 - Nuclear Manufacturing Intellectual Property

Bret Kugelmass: What do you do with the information once you develop these manufacturing techniques?

Jay Shaw: The NAMRC has three funding mechanisms that make up the center. The Catapult funding comes from the U.K. government. Collaborative research and development funding is competitively won, predominantly funded by Innovate U.K. and industry together. Commercial funding is also provided to NAMRC, when an organization approaches the NAMRC about solving a particular manufacturing problem and owns the process. Collaboratively funded program intellectual property is shared and Catapult funded projects are property of NAMRC. NAMRC aims to create a roadmap and overlay the manufacturing challenges faced there and bring them back to the teams. In 2016, Jay Shaw was appointed the Business Development Manager for Defense, responsible for looking after the nuclear naval fleet. Shaw worked his way up to Business Director for NAMRC and was recently promoted to Programme Director, making him accountable for delivering the work.

Q5 - U.K.’s Nuclear Sector Deal

Bret Kugelmass: What challenges are you taking on right now?

Jay Shaw: The U.K. recently signed the Nuclear Sector Deal, in which the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) will play a key role. One program is supply chain development, looking at the business side excellence side of companies in the U.K. and making sure they are fit for nuclear, looking at safety, quality, management and overall business performance. NAMRC also looks at manufacturing innovation. NAMRC’s kits and facilities can help U.K. manufactures be competitive in terms of schedule and cost. The U.K. has some of the largest nuclear new build projects in the world, led by Hinkley Point C, and also one of the largest, most complex decommissioning projects at Sellafield. One of the biggest challenges facing nuclear, internationally, is building a new power plant to cost and schedule. Taking lessons learned from build sites around the world and bringing in diverse teams may bring more success. Other opportunities include decommissioning, which applies to not just nuclear but other energy sectors, allowing lessons learned across industries.

"Q1 - Entrance into the Nuclear Submarine Industry

Bret Kugelmass: What is Sheffield known for?

Andrew Storer: The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) is part of the University of Sheffield in the U.K. Sheffield is renowned for steelmaking and has one of the oldest forging facilities in the U.K., if not the world. Andrew Storer is from Derby, a rural town in Derbyshire. When Storer left school, he needed a job for his four year apprenticeship and started working on a power station build in Middlesbrough. His company, Northern Engineering Industries, was acquired by Rolls-Royce and started working for Rolls-Royce through a redundancy program in the submarine industry. Andrew Storer enjoyed both the manufacturing side and mechanical fit-out side, but became interested in the technology side, leading him to pursue a manufacturing engineering and an MBA through his progression at Rolls-Royce. Early on, Storer was an on-site logistics manager in Middlesbrough who was responsible for coordinating incoming trucks with materials for the build. This experience stuck with Storer when he got into the nuclear industry, where one of the biggest problems is on-site construction. When he moved into the submarine industry, Storer worked on a collaboration with the U.S. to help design the current dreadnought reactor which is currently in manufacturing. Storer was one of the first people with the Ministry of Defence to go over and work out this relationship with naval reactors at the Bettis Laboratory in Pittsburgh. The U.K. team learned a lot from U.S. research. Through many conversations, the U.S. couldn’t get over how well the British submarines worked and the way they were maintained, given the small budget by the Ministry of Defence. While the U.S. has spare coolant pumps on board, U.K submarines don’t have any spare pumps. Instead, the operators know the pumps intimately and maintain them very well.

Q2 - Progression Through Rolls-Royce

Bret Kugelmass: What is the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K like when it comes to defense and nuclear?

Andrew Storer: Intellectual property and national security are always challenges, especially with social media, requiring secure office and communication lines. The amount of research in nuclear around the world offers opportunities to efficiently taxpayer money by collaborating with other nations in a secure manner. Andrew Storer brought energy, hard work, and a willingness to get work done to teams that he worked on. During his two years working with the Ministry of Defence, he received his MBA and grew his family. His apprenticeship gave him an understanding in manufacturing and moved to the design team where he was able to manage the design team. Storer then ran one of the five main divisions of Rolls-Royce. Through his experience, he saw the complete life cycle of submarines, from design, to manufacturing, launch, operation, and decommissioning. Storer considers himself competitive, which comes through in his work, but recognized that he needed to use it to his advantage while keeping it in check. That side of that personality can sometimes overpower other people, especially now as Storer is in a more collaborative than competitive space.

Q3 - Challenges of Nuclear Manufacturing

Bret Kugelmass: How did you become the leader of the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC)?

Andrew Storer: During his final years at Rolls-Royce, Andrew Storer was the program director of the civil nuclear business which was set up to replicate the submarine program. With the event of the nuclear renaissance coming into the U.K., they set up a small team to take charge of the new nuclear civil industry. The team spent a lot of time overseas in China, Japan, Russia, and France, talking to government about policies and new build. Rolls-Royce was well positioned for supply chain support, but unfortunately, because of the lack of volumes of the same types of products that needed to be manufactured, the business case for Rolls-Royce wasn’t solid. This drove Andrew Storer to see what he could do to solve this challenge. Nuclear has a great place in the energy mix, but it needs to reskill people or support the current skillbase and to grow the manufacturing capability. Storer aims to get better at manufacturing so the U.K. can supply more products. He supports taking people from university and giving them a valuable apprenticeship to prepare them to be leaders for the future, but this is hard to do with a stagnant nuclear sector. The U.K. also needs to have a nuclear export market. The Nuclear AMRC was up and running in 2011, whose facilities have huge capabilities and some of the largest machines in the world. Storer expects to double the size of the team in the next two years and NAMRC is about to open a new center in Derby. NAMRC also has a facility in Birkenhead, which is a collaboration with a member organization, that takes the best of shipbuilding and looks at how to modular build nuclear reactors.

Q4 - Regional Development in the U.K.

Bret Kugelmass: Did the European Union identify different regions that may be revitalized with support?

Andrew Storer: In 1995, the site of the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) was a coal mine and the site of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill’s last stand of the miners’ strike. McLaren Automotive and Boeing are both developing facilities in the region. Many fathers of the people working at NAMRC were miners at the coal mine. A lot of the staff was brought in as locals; the technicians and machinists were in other trades and were brought in to have a job at NAMRC. The sites at Derby and Birkenhead are aimed to replicate the NAMRC headquarters. NAMRC is talking to the Center for Advanced Nuclear Manufacturing and MIT in the U.S., Canadian National Lab, Xinhua National Lab in China, and collaborations with South Korea and Abu Dhabi. Andrew Storer’s mission now is to replicate the research and collaboration of the NAMRC model in other countries to bring down the cost of electricity to bring good, clean energy. He aims to make the center’s agenda sustainable for the long-term. The U.K. government has a Strength in Places Fund that focuses on bringing economical boosts to deprived areas. The NAMRC sites in Derby and Birkenhead support this location-based mission.

Q5 - Current NAMRC Research Projects

Bret Kugelmass: Could you highlight a few projects that the NAMRC is working on to demonstrate some of the efforts here?

Andrew Storer: The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) manufactures innovation in their 8,000sf facility with some of the largest equipment in the world. One project Andrew Storer is proud of focuses on cryogenic CO2 machining, which is a coolant that removes heat during a cutting operation to effectively cut the material. The cutting operation with coolant requires keeping a high temperature in the right conditions, which costs money. Once it has gone all over the machine, the material will be removed, cleaned, and changed to something else. Because of this, there is generally a machine that uses certain fluid and materials to avoid cross-contamination. Using cryogenic CO2 is cleaner, doesn’t require a clean down, the tips last a lot longer, the machine can cut faster and deeper, and the surface finish is better. NAMRC is completing research to make sure the microstructure is not adversely affected by this process. Andrew Storer is also proud of NAMRC’s electron beam welding program. Welding requires preparation, putting the material together and jigged exactly correct, placing an insert, filling the root, and completing a weld. For a six inch or 150 mm weld, which would be used on a pressure vessel, this process takes about 150 days. Over the last two or three years, NAMRC has been completing research for an electron beam welding that does not require machined prepped and has no material added, but instead fuses the material. With this method, the material can be joined together in two hours, compared to 150 days. If the UK embarks on its own national endeavor for small reactors and advanced reactors, these technologies can be time and cost changing if the quantities support the economics.

Q6 - Nuclear Supply Chain Development

Bret Kugelmass: How does the NAMRC get multiple stakeholders involved in technology development?

Andrew Storer: The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) welcomes customers to their facilities to get hands-on time, run the machines, and collaborate. Companies can become a member of the NAMRC; membership fees go on a shelf and is not used for anything other than research. The research board, of which the members are a part, decide which research is done with that money. Multiple massive companies and many SME’s collaborate on new research that couldn’t be done on their own dime alone. The second mission of NAMRC running a program called Supply Chain Development, working with over 800 suppliers in the U.K. Eighty percent of these are SME’s, or small and medium-sized enterprises. NAMRC offers their services and support for free, but the companies invest their time. NAMRC gives these companies an online diagnostic, look at their portfolio and what they want to do, and match their services with nuclear. Once they are determined a good fit, NAMRC visits the supplier and draws together a program of work, a gap analysis effectively. The supplier decides whether to invest in the program and fill the gaps, which will bring a follow-up analysis from NAMRC and connect them into the nuclear industry. This program builds technical capability, but also commercial and project management capabilities and quality standards and systems. There is a disconnect between the customers and the suppliers; this program links the 142 suppliers that have a certificate to win opportunities. The NAMRC tries to advise them on winning business and delivering business as much as being technically fit. After seven years, feedback on this program is that, whether they work in nuclear or not, the program has benefitted them and they won more work in the sector they were working in before. The benefits are spun out across many different sectors, such as petrochemical and aerospace.

Q7 - Future of Nuclear Energy in the U.K.

Bret Kugelmass: Where do you see the NAMRC going for yourself, your country, and the nuclear industry?

Andrew Storer: U.K.’s Secretary of State for Business, Greg Clark, launched the Nuclear Sector Deal. The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) played a very active role in the Deal, in that they co-authored the Deal with various industry partners and the government. It has been well received by industry and government. This deal provides around 200 million pounds of government investment, to be matched by industry, with a lot of focus on research and supply chain development. Andrew Storer firmly believes in the U.K. developing a reactor technology. Storer is positive working with the Department of International Trade and their export trade, looking at the export opportunities and where the technology readiness is. In the next decade, Storer hopes the nuclear renaissance will truly happen in the U.K, with the country able to execute nuclear energy on their own.
"

Q1 - Introduction to Nuclear Energy

Bret Kugelmass: What is the NEA and the OECD?

Bill Magwood: The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is one of the organizations formed during the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the second World War. One of the things the Europeans wanted to do as part of reconstruction was to make a big investment in nuclear technology. This predecessor organization became the NEA. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) today is a global organization with 33 member countries, including the United States, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Canada, and many European countries. NEA’s mission is to bring the best and brightest people in the world in nuclear technology together to solve difficult problems, such as technology, science, legal, and safety issues. Bill Magwood grew up in Pittsburgh and followed his desire to learn how the universe worked by studying physics at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating in physics, Magwood stayed an extra year and got a degree in creative writing. This led to a position in the University of Pittsburgh creative writing graduate school, where Magwood taught until he returned to engineering and got a job at Westinghouse. Magwood’s biggest influences included space exploration and the visionary space program that transcended national concerns. He participated in Westinghouse Science Honors Institute as a sophomore in high school, a program intended for high school seniors going to science and technology universities, where he first learned about nuclear energy. Shortly after this, Three Mile Island happened, bringing nuclear into the media. Magwood’s first role at Westinghouse was doing thermal analysis for waste technology and retrieval storage at Yucca Mountain. After four years, Magwood applied for a position at Edison Electric Institute and moved to Washington.

Q2 - Rebuilding Nuclear’s Research and Development Program

Bret Kugelmass: What work did you do in D.C.?

Bill Magwood: Bill Magwood spent six or seven years with Edison Electric Institute and left to join the Department of Energy (DOE) as a political appointee. Instead of being a career civil servant staff, Magwood was appointed by the Clinton White House to come in to be part of the management staff of the Department of Energy where he was in charge of policy, program planning, and development of technology programs. At the time, the DOE was very focused on the advanced light water reactor program, which led to the creation of GE’s advanced boiling water reactor in Japan, Westinghouse’s AP-600 reactor, and the System 80+, whose combustion engineering system is the base for Korean reactors. Magwood became passionate about university nuclear engineering program and worked with staff to create programs to encourage more young people to pursue nuclear. After Three Mile Island, the number of nuclear students stayed fairly steady, but during Clinton’s presidency, Clinton called for ending all unnecessary nuclear research. This shut down almost all the research and development underway in the United States. After four years in the DOE, Magwood’s took over the Office of Nuclear Energy at the DOE in 1998. The new Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, came in soon after and was a strong supporter of the program. Magwood was the head of nuclear energy for the next seven years. During the same year Magwood took over as the head of nuclear, Congress zeroed out nuclear’s research and development budget due to a lack of faith in the way things had been managed. Magwood worked to rebuild the program by establishing an advisory committee, the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC). The Nuclear Energy Research Initiative accepted proposals for grants in nuclear technology; one of the first grants was for the program that would become NuScale.

Q3 - Reestablishing a Nuclear Presence in the U.S.

Bret Kugelmass: Was the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative something for the industry to rally around and look forward?

Bill Magwood: Things in the nuclear industry were pretty depressed at the time and there was not a lot of enthusiasm, but Bill Magwood thought there was a lot that could be done. In 1998, there were 480 students in all of the nuclear program across the United States and people thought the program would collapse. They got money to provide fellowships, scholarships, research grants, and infrastructure investment. Magwood spent a lot of his person time going to universities and talking to administrations and students; today there are over 5,000 students in nuclear engineering programs. It was five or six more years until industry started hiring people in significant numbers. The Generation IV International Forum was also launched around this time. Magwood realized he didn’t have much money, but wanted to pull resources from people who do have money and worked with the Department of State to invite countries to Washington to talk about advanced reactors. This forum still meets today. Nuclear Power 2010 was launched after getting together with an advisory committee with industry, academia, and laboratory experts. These groups got together and wrote a report identifying what it would take to have nuclear plants in the U.S. by 2010. Government resources and encouragement were needed to get utilities back in the game of building nuclear power plants, but some utilities didn’t even want to consider at first. Government offered the industry a 50/50 cost share of completing the designs of new advanced reactors and moving them into the licensing process. Two applications were accepted: one from Dominion Resources, and one from New Start, which eventually paid for the AP-1000 certification and the ESPWR certification. The Department of Energy struggled with getting the laboratories aligned with where the DOE wanted to go. DOE started launching programs that would give money to groups that had partnerships between academia, laboratories, and industry. Another program forced universities to talk to each other in order to create interuniversity cooperation and collaboration.

Q4 - Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Bret Kugelmass: How did you become leader of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)?

Bill Magwood: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency in the U.S. Government that oversees nuclear safety. When Bill Magwood was at the Department of Energy (DOE), the Chairman of the NRC was Dick Meserve. Magwood and Meserve had a very good relationship and found a lot of common ground between nuclear safety and technology. Nils Diaz succeeded Dick Meserve at the NRC. Magwood was expecting to leave the DOE after the Clinton administration, but was asked by the Bush administration to stay. Magwood stayed through the whole first Bush term. Many of Magwood’s programs were planned during the late Clinton years and executed during the Bush years. The officials at the DOE were skeptical of the Generation IV program, but new Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham got excited about the program and supported implementation. After spending 11 years at the DOE, Magwood was ready to do something else and left for a couple years. When the Obama administration came in, Magwood was accepted an offer to serve as a Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. The five commissioners of the NRC serve as a court with an appeals process for the regulation and decisions.

Q5 - Role of Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners

Bret Kugelmass: What was something interesting that you had to rule over while serving as a Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner (NRC)?

Bill Magwood: If someone felt that the NRC had not implemented a regulation correctly, they could file a complaint and it would go through the adjudication process. The commissioners would have to rule whether the decision was correct or not correct. There were also cases in which people were accused of lying to the NRC and in once case, the staff recommended banning the person from the nuclear industry. One very contentious case was regarding whether the Department of Energy had the right to withdraw its application on the Yucca Mountain site, since President Obama did not want to proceed with the Yucca Mountain program. This issue was never resolved or withdrawn, but the administration has changed and is no longer an issue. Bill Magwood saw his tenure on the commission as the other side of the coin from the Nuclear Power 2010 program, thinking that it would be about building new plants. About a year into his tenure, Fukushima Daiichi happened at the same time a regulatory information conference was going on the U.S. The first thing Magwood hear about the nuclear plant was that it was hit by a tsunami, but that it was under control. Throughout the day, it was determined that there was actually a nuclear accident taking place. Luis Echavarri, the Director-General of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) at the time, reached out to Magwood, a friend of many years, asking him to take over his position upon his retirement. An American had not held this position since 1985 and decided to go for it; Magwood now leads a staff of about 125 people from all over the world.

Q6 - Nuclear Energy Agency Initiatives

Bret Kugelmass: What did you see at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) when you first came in and what initiatives did you decide to put forward?

Bill Magwood: Particularly in the aftermath of Fukushima Daiichi, there has been a lull in excitement in the nuclear area in some places. It was clear to Bill Magwood that something needed to be done to regain momentum. Magwood saw that innovation had become very difficult in the nuclear business. If you wanted to deploy a new nuclear fuel, it was estimated to take 20 to 25 years to get approved. A new program called Nuclear Innovation 2050 brought in over 100 people from around the world to talk about where the nuclear program should be going. One priority from that group was advanced fuels, so the NEA is pushing to bring the international community together to shorten the development cycle for advanced fuels and to cooperate the use of testing facilities to get new fuels into use. For the kind of fuel testing needed, the major facility in the world is the Holden reactor in Norway, which was operating under an NEA project for the last sixty years. The operator of the Holden reactor recently announced they will shutdown the reactor; there is no reactor that completely replaces the Holden reactor, but there is a Modernized International Reactor (MIR) facility in Rosatom, Russia that may be made available to a lot of international players. The French are currently constructing the Jules Horowitz reactor, which could solve a lot of problems and will hopefully be available by the mid-2020’s. NEA looks at the whole nuclear picture, including small modular reactors (SMR’s) and thorium.

Q7 - Future Success of Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: Why have you remained in leadership roles in the nuclear industry?

Bill Magwood: Bill Magwood sees nuclear technology as one of the most important areas of science, engineering, and technology that mankind has ever had. Nuclear is the way to solve so many of our problems, such as energy, environmental issues, curing cancer, and going to Mars. For example, there is no other technology that can enable us to be effective in exploring space. The technology on Earth needs to be evolved to be cheaper and safer. The public needs confidence in the nuclear system. The International Energy Agency has made it clear that the climate issue cannot be solved without nuclear energy. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) aims to make more facts about the technology readily available. To take the next steps in nuclear, countries cannot be successful if they work alone and it must be pursued on a multinational basis. There must be a big market across the world to make nuclear successful. The future of nuclear is a global future and a multilateral future. Many countries are still trying to get their people access to electricity or to develop their regions into middle-class life. Nuclear is part of the answer to environmental issues, but only if it is cost effective and safe to the public.

Merging Nuclear Academia and Industry
How did you get into the nuclear space?

Milko Kovachev studied nuclear engineering at the Technical University of Sofia. In 1979, Kovachev graduated from university and moved to work at the nuclear power plants operating in Bulgaria at that time. Nuclear was a new technology at the time, seen as a popular source of energy. In order to become a licensed senior reactor operator, one must study and obtain a Master’s degree and then go through the plant training system. This changed Kovachev’s mentality from academic thinking to a practical, business-oriented, operational thinking. He went through many positions such as field operator manager of the field control room, eventually taking practical exams to qualify him to operate the reactor. The operator understands all the operating parameters and studies different accident conditions to know how to react to these events. After serving as reactor operator for four years, Kovachev returned to school to pursue his PhD and teach at the university, where he found his field experience very valuable. In 1992, Kovachev returned to the nuclear plants, which were at the center of the international community focus for safety reasons after Chernobyl in 1986. Upon his return, Kovachev became director of a new training center at the plant and re-designed the training curriculum based on a systematic approach, integrating the use of simulators in the process. Next, Kovachev joined the Committee of Energy, a policymaking center in Europe, to manage the EU support for safety. Sample testing the reactor pressure vessels of Unit 1 occurred during Kovachev’s time on the Committee and was a key element of showing the integrity of the structure.

Nuclear Infrastructure in the European Union
Were you trying to figure out how to integrate current energy infrastructure into compliance with European Union standards upon entering the EU?

The European Union has a number of treaties, directives, and regulations and a newly integrated country must prepare to operate in a new environment and accept new rules. Some chapters are more challenging to adapt to, such as creating 90 days of supply and meeting environmental standards, and have significant cost implications. The country had to accept closure of two units in 2002 and another two units in 2006. This was a difficult internal dialogue, because the response from the society was not very positive about this move away from nuclear power in the country and was logistically and politically difficult. In 2000, Kovachev was invited to join the new Bulgarian government as the Minister of Energy. This position carried high dynamism, but also high responsibility due to the impact his decisions made on a large number of people. Energy loads were changed and strategized for long term development.

Framework for Nuclear Program Development
If you had the ability, how would you have transformed the country’s energy infrastructure and resources overnight?

Energy infrastructure and resources cannot be changed overnight, but one needs to do the right thing at the right time to bring results later. Leaders need to implement the right strategies, legal environment, and institutions. The institutional, legal, and regulatory framework was the most interesting part of Kovachev’s position as Minister of Energy. There may not be immediate results, but when systems are placed in the right direction, results can come later. Ten years ago, a special program for countries embarking on nuclear power was developed to guide countries through the process and complexity of developing a nuclear program. This guide, called “Milestones in the Development of National Infrastructure for Nuclear Power”, became very popular with nuclear countries and became a standard and common language between countries embarking on nuclear power and the technology providers. Nuclear power requires a specific environment as it pertains to legal obligations, safety, security, and safeguards. It is important to have a competent and independent regulator, since the regulator oversees the operating organization. The accumulated experience, reflected in the guide, show that 10-15 years is timeline starting from scratch, preparing your commitment to the program, all the way through putting legal and regulatory framework in place, building institutions for operation and regulation, and contracting, constructing, and commissioning.

Kovachev's Role at IAEA
How long have you been in your current role at the International Atomic Energy Agency?

Milko Kovachev joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the summer of 2015. The Agency has seen steady interest from countries interested in embarking on nuclear power, with about 30 countries currently in different stages of program development. Some frontrunners, like UAE and Belarus, are constructing and close to commissioning their plants. Other countries, such as Turkey and Bangladesh, recently began building their first nuclear plants via contractors. A significant number countries are at the face of consideration and also establishing their nuclear infrastructure, to which the Agency provides assistance. As part of the IAEA, Kovachev sees countries that decided to pursue nuclear in the past, but may not have considered the commitments that requires for the future. When digging deeper and understanding the implications, some countries may decide not to pursue nuclear after all. Nuclear is a high capital intensive industry and requires big front end capital, along with total preparation to get into the contracting phase. Engaging in nuclear power is different than developing research and development reactors. Have this prior experience in research reactors might be helpful for implementing power reactors, but is not a prerequisite and is not necessarily recommended. Small modular reactors (SMR’s) vary differently from large power reactors in terms of capacity. Technology is now coming from the market, as vendors provide innovation and support.

Implications of a Commitment to Nuclear
Do non-nuclear countries ever come to the IAEA wanting to become a nuclear country, but unable to bring on gigawatt scale reactors?

Are they interested in other options?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has steps from the very beginning of the program intended to share available technologies on the market and options about reactor systems. The Agency is maintaining an advanced reactor information system database and has a center for competencies across the Agency which assists countries in understanding available technologies and commitments. In the next phase, the Agency supports in more sophisticated approaches, such as how to structure negotiation process. Different designs and features are reviewed before deployment. The time to develop a program is approximately 10-15 years, which may bring new technologies in the next decade. Thirty countries are currently in pursuit of nuclear power by 2030. When invited by the government, the IAEA may visit the country at certain checkpoints to give relevance of the infrastructure, identify gaps, and support the efforts of the country moving forward.

Future International Demand for Nuclear Energy
If significantly more countries wanted to implement nuclear energy in the near future, where might the world see bottlenecks in the surge of interest in nuclear energy?

Last year, the International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Power in the 21st Century was held in Abu Dhabi. Many decision makers, policymakers, and nuclear experts were present to discuss nuclear planning. The Agency is developing projections and scenarios to serve the needs of nuclear member states. One important takeaway from the conference is here is no full alignment of the energy, environmental, and climate change policies. Many countries in the advanced stages have declared that nuclear power is part of their solution for climate change. Another of Kovachev’s takeaways was presented by WNA, the World Nuclear Association, showing that the nuclear industry, prior to Chernobyl, was able to construct 33 nuclear units in one year. Today, in the last two years, ten units sequentially were connected to the grid. The complexity of the industry is much bigger now. Scaling up can serve a surge in nuclear interest, but will depend on the policies set by countries and commitments made. The sector is ready to deliver upon the needs of countries. New generation reactors are coming online. High levels of interest are coming from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Kovachev is certain that one day nuclear will be operated in sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, and West Africa. The big nuclear market right now is in India and China. Newcomer countries may drive deployment of the first small modular reactors (SMR’s). The International Energy Agency is classifying all low-carbon electricity sources, including nuclear, as clean energy, which is key for addressing the needs and challenges for the planet.