they recognize we have this insatable need for energy like we're not going backwards in our energy consumption so if we're going to have new energy generation has to be clean energy deliveries of fuel are a clear vulnerability natural gas obviously can hold an entire nation hostage the typical construction timeline is really like 6 to 15 years on the big reactors right now the really exciting thing for me is that at the really far into the scale the portable micro reactors we haven't really achieved that yet you could actually produce these in a factory because they're portable you could do mass production maybe nuclear energy is a lot safer than we actually originally realized the radiation exposure from living next to a coal plant is higher than the radiation exposure from living next to a nuclear power plant 105 years from now the idea that we can't just immediately turn on a reliable and enduring power source for a community it's going to be unimaginable like it's just will be a solved problem what might surprise some people to learn is that nuclear energy accounts for 20% of the electricity in the United States but what I think will surprise very few people is to learn that this carbon-free energy source has quite the stored history over the last few decades resulting in new reactors slowing almost entirely to a halt however the past few years have been what some people might call a comeback story in 2023 we saw America's first newly built reactor come online in over three decades but we're also seeing startups build entirely new types of reactors public discourse shifting and even the US government itself recently announcing its intent to Triple nuclear power production by 2050 so in today's episode originally recorded in the heart of Washington DC back in January and a16 Z's American dynamism Summit we talk about this truly unique moment in time for nuclear energy a6c General partner David ovich joins forces with duck bernauer CEO of micro reactor company radiant and Dr Katherine Huff assistant Secretary of the office of nuclear energy as they collectively discuss nuclear Energy's role in our country's future because remember energy is vital to many of the industries that we talk about here energy pow is the data centers that run our clouds the electric cars that drive on our streets and of course is fuel for the fact iies that build our future so if anything feels certain is that we're going to need more energy not less so tune in here as this group of policy makers Founders and funders discuss why increasing our nuclear capacity should be a national priority and what it'll take to reverse this multi-decade trend oh and if you'd like to get an inside look into a16 Z's American dynamism Summit you can watch several of the stage talks from the event featuring policy makers like Congressman Jake aen CL or Senator Todd young and of course both Founders and funders building toward American dynamism you can find all of the above at az.com admit all right let's get started nuclear has quite the stored history and in the last 50 years in particular progress has really slowed and I'd love to get your take Dr Huff what's your take on the key factors that you really attribute to that the expense of different kinds of energy technology typically determine what utilities are going to select and there was a serious period of time where for example natural gas was an extremely cheap option to build quickly with low capital investment and that I think is the primary driver for a lot of reduction in the builds for nuclear and then as you lose that muscle it becomes more and more expensive to get it back right much like if you stop working out yeah totally and I think there's a lot of public opinion around nuclear some people that to again that slowdown over the last few decades Doug is there anything you'd add there and maybe other misconceptions that you think the public holds I think over the past 50 years A lot has happened you know uh solar and wind technology really came about and was deployed kind of in the middle of this nuclear story we're telling um and these you know forms of lowcost energy um but that are not resilient forms of energy and by the time we deployed them significantly to the Grave we started to look for a source of power that you can scale that you can throttle up and down on demand um and at the same time we scientists started to care about climate and then I think the the public really has come around to really care about climate and not just to care but to want to do something about it and so I think nuclear has this really cool uh new role to fill um instead of natural gas which I agree with Dr Huff uh the low cost of it definitely caus us to adopt that to fill that need rather than nuclear but I think nuclear can leap frog it yeah and I think we are seeing renewed interest which is exciting especially over the last few years David what's your take on that is there a really strong why now and is it just climate or is there another series of factors at play I think that we have the sensationable thirst for energy and we have so many things that power the way we live and the way we want to live and the way we want to work that require electricity um and so we need all forms of energy to be increased I think um some are better than others some have a longer feature I think ahead of them than others and so for me nuclear is this base load energy you don't need the wind to be blowing you don't need the sun to be out um and it can be delivered in a lot of form factors uh and so to me that makes it very exciting and worth a lot of really really worth the investment in rebuilding the muscle to to use the analogy that Dr Huff uh made earlier to really rebuild the muscle of how do we build nuclear power plants and what kind of plants do we want to build and to power what kind of loads and in what kind of circumstances um and so I think that as people I think climate's a huge part of it people want they recognize we have this insatable need for energy like we're not going backwards in our energy consumption that that ship has sailed um so if we're going to have new energy uh generation it has to be clean energy and I think that there's also been I think A Renewed interest in re-educate in people getting re-educated as to what are the risks and opportunities with nuclear energy and I think that's come from a lot of different places um whether it's from government or from industry or from Academia that maybe nuclear energy is a lot safer than we actually originally realized um and that's really worth the the time spent there to to see if that's a viable way to generate the kind of energy that we need in the future I mean it's been a long time right we're we're not in the same place as many decades ago there are new reactor designs which we will definitely get to but Dr Huff I want to talk about your house Tes Tony that you did recently and you referred to our current approach to nuclear as quote a national security vulnerability and you reinforced that the office of nuclear energy is doing a few things so first keeping the existing Fleet of reactors operating and online deploying new Advanced reactor Technologies sustaining and securing the nuclear fuel cycle and expanding nuclear energy cooperation and something I'd love to get you to touch on is really that role of nuclear in America's Global standing and security thanks for that and I think it is that that why now question ties to this um you know in the testimony the particular component of our approach that I think is an active vulnerability is the fuel cycle security but energy security and energy resilience that nuclear energy can provide to support those more variable sources to be on no matter what day it is what time it is to to not require refueling consistent deliveries of fuel we've seen in for example uh embattled Russia Ukraine Invasion we've seen that deliveries of fuel are a clear vulnerability natural gas obviously can hold an entire nation hostage if you can not dispatch that power then it's not useful to your resilience nuclear power on the other hand even existing conventional plants they only need to be refueled once every 18 months maybe two years right and so you know they can they can run alone as an island for quite a while and this really underpins what we can see as an energy security and energy resilience that that frankly in today's geopolitical Universe represents our access to sovereignty as Nations our you know continued operation as you know independent states you know the US has a number of other features that make it a secure Nation but there are a lot of other countries that really can be threatened by um another nation that would use energy as a weapon yeah and we have many technologists building towards these new reactors and improving that fuel cycle but can you speak specifically to the government's role in that what is the government's role in securing that fuel cycle and that GL Global cooperation while also ensuring that we're getting these new reactors built in the USA yeah it's it takes a lot of pieces right with tax credits from the inflation reduction act and grant funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law we're able to do things like encourage subsequent license renewals to be economic for existing nuclear power or in the case of you know the bipartisan infrastructure law dollars Advanced demonstration programs but the office of nuclear Energy's Focus has historically been on R&D programs the kind of R&D that takes startups like radiant and you know support technological advancements and through small grants we've tried to expand our support of as many companies as possible and there are lots of them more than we could possibly support actually and it's I think a feature of many decades of working through the National Laboratories which we manage and operate from the Department of energy um and ensuring that we have a basis a tech strong technological capability to support the kinds of you know scientific Explorations that we need to propel those Technologies forward so let's talk about some of those new technologies Doug let's throw it over to you can you actually just break down the different generations of reactors and also where we've come right as I said before it's been several decades where are we now in that technology yeah thank you um I'm G to ask Dr Huff to correct me on anything I get wrong here I'm actually not an expert in all the history of nuclear and every kind of reactor that there is I'm really an expert in what I'm doing yeah um which is portable uh high temperature gas reactor the generations roughly um you know people use these gen 1 2 3 and four terms uh gen one are really the reactors we first figured out they're kind of pre-enrichment they're usually like a graphite moderated reactor um and then generation 2 reactors were very different because we started to do in M with these big gas diffusion enrichment plant and in that time period uh the US was really the for at the Forefront of everything I think we had over 400 uranium mines operating in the US um and really uh we were the Great developers and exporters of our technology to the rest of the world and then gen 3 uh really are meant to be uh an advanced form of those Gen 2 reactors that can make use of enrichment and they're like uh accident tolerant fuels um or uh ability to recycle fuel they kind of these Advanced features and then Gen 4 is really meant to represent these things that are much farther away that are kind of future that you know are like you know they perfectly produce hydrogen let's say and and make a hydrogen economy possible so you have like big reactors right they're a gwatt they're for a million people or a million homes let's say so it's more than a million people this kind of the right scale um and then we've got smrs and the purpose of smrs is really to take that big reactor and build it really fast okay and the typical construction timeline is really like six to 15 years on the big reactors right now depending who makes them even for the exact same reactor like an ap1000 built in the US is very slow built in Asia is very fast um but you can make the reactor smaller you can make it faster the idea behind SMR is to you know make something that's um maybe for about not a million homes but maybe about 250,000 homes right a quarter of the size but be able to build it really quickly and if we could achieve that it would be a great economic success but the the spectrum is getting longer and longer I think one of the interesting things happening now people are looking smaller and smaller and looking at micro reactors and there's kind of two categories of micro reactors um portable and non-portable and if you do a fully portable micro reactor this is around the scale of like a thousand homes so it's a thousand times smaller than the reactor all the way at the other end of the spectrum um and you have Micro reactors which are not portable which are you know 10 or 20 times larger maybe like 10 or 20 megawatt electric something like that um the really exciting thing for me is that at the really far end of the scale the portal micro reactors we haven't really achieved that yet and you could actually produce these in a factory because they're portable you could do mass production um and then ship them around and very quickly deploy them in all these little areas where you have you know equivalent of a thousand homes which could also be like you know a workplace that has 2500 people a mine a military base a hospital um in some key kind of remote region so I like this scale better than than like thinking about the advanced ones more about like deployment and like how can you the use case put them out yeah in different areas maybe we can talk about the use case right so when we're talking about let's say a military base what is the current state right if we're not using these micro reactors what is being used today and what's the trade-off there if we can actually get to that future reactor current state in literary base is that they have backup generators like any any site that has critical infrastructure um those backup generators will have storage tanks they'll be 40,000 to to 150,000 gallons of diesel um on those sites and they only only use it in a backup scenario so it requires they put batteries all over the installation and uh if they're is an outage they're typically going to run out of that diesel um especially if there's you know something like the that Colonial pipeline Ransom were attack where we lost an ability to move fuel in a huge multi-state area um and they they run out a fuel before their their time frame which is um usually a 14-day resilience time frame um so they've got a problem and they're looking for Solutions and they're actually very interested in um both categories of micro reactor because those are this around the scale of the base all of the larger ones an SMR or a gigawatt class reactor would be too large for them David let's bring you into this conversation obviously we've invested in radiant and I want to get your sense of where you see Capital being deployed in this new ecosystem as new reactors are coming online what's the opportunity here and where do you see again some of those private dollars actually being deployed to yeah so let me let me I guess back up and and both Doug and and Dr Huff talked touched upon some really important I think points that relate to why having modular or just numerous points of energy generation spread across our grid and possibly amongst our allies is really an important concept because I think we we touched on it but for people that are that are not spending all their time in energy it may not be obvious why energy and defense or and National Security and and sovereignty are really really interrelated um so I'll give it I'll just give one example and this is this is maybe not what Dr Huff was referring to but take take an Ireland country like Taiwan that does not have its own energy Independence um you could imagine a blockade of a country like Taiwan where um coal oil or other fuel sources that are normally supposed to to go deliver fuel to the island are prevented from reaching their ports um at that point a country like Taiwan may only have a week or two or three weeks of fuel on the island and rather than having some kind of a kinetic or or war on on Taiwan a blockade would just be equally potentially as devastating um you can imagine hospitals running out of their generator Supply military bases uh not not able to turn the lights on runways have no Runway lights I mean it you know it Cascades from there um and just all the infrastructure eventually just quickly starts to fall apart and so for for countries that that same example actually applies to the us we do have lots of geographic things that protect us as a country we have two major oceans on both sides we have lots of resources um we obviously have our own fuel supplies uh but our grid is very brittle and one there's multiple ways to make the grid more resilient but one way is just adding capacity in distributed Fashions so that when there are power line issues or fuel transfer issues you're not to reliant on these major sources of power or for fuel to power entire parts of our country and so that that's just critically important that we increase the resiliency of our grid by adding redundancies and and lots of power generation and if we are able to do that by creating these more uh modular reactors even if they're not mobile um but modular reactors we could I one of the issues with nuclear historically is that it costs a lot of money to build not just time but a lot of money one of the reasons it cost a lot of money is we don't actually make that much of it and if we made more of it and we sort of developed that muscle we could make more reactors more cheaply right um and by doing that we could place them in strategic places across the country make sure they're close to our key Air Force bases and military bases uh in places where we need really reliable and enduring energy um so that that's why it's so important for National Defense and for security um and why our allies carry care about it as well no country wants to be totally at the mercy uh for energy of of other countries and so that's important okay so with that and I did I say anything wrong there perfect okay I think I got that right so I heard I heard deploy more more energy more yep and and then you know we didn't even talk about we didn't even talk about data centers but like you know we're going through an AI Revolution right now and you know it's going to bring lots of cool apps to our phones and our devices and our new vision goggles or whatever um and all kinds of new devices we don't even have yet um our cars are becoming electric and we got to charge those things up and so all those things need power uh and so we just need way more resiliency and way more capacity on the grid um and again that's going to come from lots of ways but nuclear is a is a really really good way that's why um I think there's this is like this much more palpable energy okay so now to your question of the capital why are we investing in nuclear and where is that money going to come from was that part of the question well yeah I think just as we get these new reactor designs coming into this ecosystem like is there a new play is there a reason why now private dollars are yeah so look I I think the National Lab system which is really a unique and special thing about America um other countries have things that they try to replicate the National Lab system but there's nothing quite as robust um and the National Lab system has many roles and Dr Huff can speak to this better than than I can since I think she helps oversee the National Lab system uh in her current role um but they not only do they provide research but they're actually part of the supply chain of fuel for nuclear power plants um they provide grants and funding uh for private uh industry to work on nuclear reactor designs there's a competition element that the National Lab system Fosters and the doe Fosters uh and and so that has been all wonderful but I think that we have noticed that there's an opportunity to be an accelerant to what's happening in the National Lab system and what's happening in which is closely tied to Academia to say hey look maybe there's a commercial opportunity and actually maybe it's possible when we think about all these data centers that people want to build you know a lot of utilities are private even if they're regulated that they're private companies maybe that we could say hey look maybe there's an opportunity to really jump start a different kind of power industry uh and that's a bet that we're willing to make we think that there's Tailwinds from a regulatory standpoint uh we think there's Tailwinds from an economic standpoint of building reactors there's a talent Tailwind so Doug worked at SpaceX when SpaceX first started there was only one company that really reliably put things into space and it was NASA um and now and now we have space doing it so often that it's it's almost a non-event now when when they launch uh satellites into space and Rockets into space and we think the same thing can be true with nuclear and it doesn't seem like the kind of Market where only one company can win uh as Doug mentioned there's all kinds of different approaches to nuclear for different use cases and so that's pretty exciting and I think that since since our investment in radiant what uh I've discovered is that there's a huge amount of what I call Downstream Capital so other investors who have larger pools of capital that are maybe not as risk tolerant as as as we are in recent horror wits but who want to do project financing uh or who want to fund large scale capital projects they have all they're very interested and then companies like Microsoft have spun up nuclear teams nuclear energy teams to figure out how do they procure energy that comes from a nuclear power plant uh and so that that to me just says look there there it's unclear exactly what the road map is going to look like my two colleagues here will know better than I do but there there's just a lot of momentum and enthusiasm for something that we know is possible there's no scientific risk like we're with nuclear that's another important thing is we invest in all kinds of things there's no scientific risk with nuclear energy or minimal SC like we know how it works the the science has understood yeah we've known for a while we we can come up with better designs uh and better programs and we need new kinds of fuels but we know how it works it's not science fiction um it's very real yeah it's science reality so that's why I'm excited about it and that's why I think there's a lot more capital an interest in it now and people recognize it's a a predicate for for everything else we want to do yeah I mean something you mentioned several times there is the economics and even you talked about space and that whole industry being rethought due to the economics fundamentally shifting so can we talk about that and the role of regulation in impacting some of these projects I think a lot of people cite vogul as a project where the economics were you know far out of proportion at least relative to the original project plan and a lot of people think you know that's an example of where people aren't willing to invest in nuclear Dr Hoff can you just speak to maybe how regulation plays a role in enabling some of these projects and whether any of that is changing or maybe whether Vogal is an outlier how do you think about that Vogal in a very real sense is a first of a Kind build it's not the first of a kind you know as was already mentioned you know those AP 1000s can be built faster and different environments but those different environments aren't different just because of Regulation they are also different because of the work capacity available so you know you look at a Chinese build of an ap1000 and comparative ogal and they had real differences in the workforce availability and I think th that's one of the longer polls in the tent not to divert from your question about regulation but I do think you know the nuclear Regulatory Commission does an incredibly good job keeping nuclear reactors operating safely they have an incredible safety record here in the United States and NRC makes sure that that's true it makes it easy for me to say nuclear nuclear power is safe it's going to continue to be safe here in the US US nuclear technology is some of the safest in the world and people should import it rather than you know some different technology and you know we know how to do it well it can increase timelines it can increase costs but I think even more critical is going to be Workforce and supply chain issues that can delay the deployment of me mega projects so regardless of whether you're a nuclear reactor that you're building or whether you're looking at building a bridge or a highway system or a rail line these Mega projects in the billions of dollars take years they sometimes take significantly more time than they should and each day in a project like that is another day on which you are holding billions of dollars of capital and not making profit and the cost of capital then starts to play into the total cost of the project and so the timeline on which you can deploy a reactor depends on yes regulation but also Workforce availability and supply chain issues and like simple project management adding up all of these things the US has lost this muscle being able to do this efficiently in these big big Mega projects whether it's an airport or a nuclear reactor and by executing Vogal we have succeeded at getting there with some reactors I mean the Vogal unit 4 will turn on you know in a few months Vogal unit 3 has turned on and is providing clean power to the people of Georgia and in the course of doing so it has ensured this the availability of some Supply chains around nuclear it has trained thousands of workers that are otherwise you know excellent skilled crafts workers and are now nuclear trained skilled crafts workers electricians and boiler makers and uh welders and everyone else you know all of the Building Trades and Etc I mean they had peaks of you know staff on site you know around 8,000 people it's a huge number of people on site building a reactor you know Union crafts workers from 48 states um and so that is the thing that I would point to as something that I would worry about in the longer term around the profitability of you know reactors is that you know we've now shown that ap1000 can be built if you were to replicate that particular reactor you should see some learnings right because now you've got a bunch of workers you can draw on you've got some Supply chains you can draw on but so too can all the other reactor companies that are planning to build new technologies they'll share some of the supply chain they'll share some of the workers and if we don't do it tomorrow a lot of those workers will go and build win turbin they have other things to do this is a really tight environment um to have you know enough skill set for the kinds of builds we need to do across the energy space Not Just nuclear so is that what you would point to it's not so much the regulation but ensuring that we have that Workforce is there anything you would do or say that we can do to improve that Outlook yeah I think you know a focus on trade school instead of merely universities you know I say this as a former and future University Professor it is absolutely important the trade schools and community colleges and you know Union training programs all be stood up at the capacity we need for nuclear builds wind turban build outs you know solar panel build outs the kinds of transmission build outs we're going to need um and regulation certainly can get faster but I would focus instead of lowering the barriers and accelerating the process so Doug obviously you're building in this space how do you think about those relationships whether it's with Regulators or with the large workforces that are needed in some of these cases how do you think of those relationships becoming productive I have so much I want to unpack uh so I think what Dr Huff was talking about um I want to connect a little further so a really really big plant that was built like that is amazing it's awesome and all that Workforce that we trained and I think that can apply across this entire spectrum of the different real sizes that any successful project should be cross pounding that other project and that's not just from regulatory sense but from just gaining that experience that learning by doing and getting the cost to be lower so I'm excited to be part of that way down at the tiny end of the spectrum where we're our reactors are 1,000 times smaller but the the regulatory environment uh does need to change and I think we were already working on it there a bunch of NRC modernization efforts um coming by Direct through Congress um we've been working on developing things like 10 CFR 53 and that will be an ongoing and continuing effort but I think for it to really succeed we need reactors to get built to get fueled to demonstrate and the doe to a large degree are already fully supporting that um and just for the audience can you break down what some of those changes are reference well I think some of the changes are are really just broad broad spectrum we don't have reactors that are this small that can be built in a factory I'm just going to talk about uh portable micro reactors only um you know for us to succeed at doing that our timeline has not changed since we started a company in 2020 we want to do a fuel demonstration in 2026 um we're we're going to go through doe authorization licensing this path that exists at the National Labs to go faster than normal um to do a test reactor at a test facility where you've got all the National Labs support the expertise the poster radiation experiment Labs um we're going to do that with our first unit uh our second unit though needs to go through NRC licensing and so we've got to staff up in our uh a little 45 person company uh these parallel paths to support going along both sets of regulations and I think the the two could be actually woven together in a really practical Manner and I know that people have thought about this for a while we just haven't achieved it so so that's one of the things we could do um but we've never cited a factory to mass-produce reactors um what's funny about that is the regulations actually exist if you go look at like the original code 10 cfr50 has a thing called a manufacturing license it's in there and unused but I think um if we willing to how many how many manufacturing licenses are there there zero there's zero there never been used well in the US this is just us reactor Factory there there there exists no such sounds like a good idea though yeah yeah the only way a micro reactor is going to get to the economics right is if it's built more like airplanes absolutely so we've been looking at that code learning about it figuring out what our questions are talking with the NRC um actually our uh kidos micro reactor is now officially in pre-application um only very recently uh we're on the nrc's website they're planning for uh us in their budget so we can get that uh sorted out on time um so we'll be uh citing a reactor very quickly we want to deploy a unit in 2028 we're going to to build our unit with as much support as we can gather we're not going to uh change our timeline um and we started to feel real support from the doe I just I want to say thanks uh for the support we have at um we're working with idah National Laboratory um R is committed to it being ready in 2026 uh to go into the the Dome there's an old uh experimental breeder reactor Dome that was converted to now do these micro reactor demonstration experiments and a lot of work and effort and funds have gone to build that structure and uh we're still on Target and ready to go use it as soon as it's available it's so exciting actually this feed study that radiant is doing you know they're in the first set of three companies that are going to sort of tell us exactly what they would do inside this former containment structure that housed one of the coolest reactors we've ever built out there in the in Idaho that reactor is over and now there's room for new reactors to try things out in a safe sandbox yeah and I know we're early stages but this picture of an assembly line of reactors is one that you know a few years ago might have sounded outlandish but now there are Builders creating this where will we be like let's say in a decade if this does come online can you just paint a picture Doug of you know where these reactors could be deployed and how maybe broadly they might be deployed and the use cases for them yeah absolutely so we'll start the 10 years in in 2026 so ideally we Fuel and demonstrate at full power in the dome uh and then in by 2028 we had One commercial unit just a few years later to do that we're we're really running two regulatory efforts in parallel um and then three units in 2029 eight units in 2030 scaling on up until we're at 2036 we should be making 50 units a year a reactor a week coming off the line um and the reactor we're developing it's a heavy unit but it can fit in a c17 aircraft or on a truck and you can move it around get it wherever it needs to go in the world um the optimal use case is really replacing diesel generators in some remote region and then a reactor lasts for 5 years approximately out in the field and then is shut down and we bring it back to that factory to refuel it so it is not only a new reactor construction Factory um but a line producing a bunch of new cores and a refueling facility all co-located on the same you know 25 acre or so plot of land and and so what we would do is have a population of about a thousand of these out in the world because we're planning for a 20-y year licensing time frame so youve got the 50 a year and about 20 years they last and so there's kind of a thousand of them that we can go and put in the Thousand most important places that there are so these are like North Slope in Alaska these really remote communities that uh the ocean freezes up for them and they have to store huge amounts of diesel and it can't get new over the winter so you've got to plan ahead and have enough um and even when they can get new the price variability is incredibly injust unjust give of that like how much they can flate by an order of magnitude and you can't plan ahead for your family's budget if you if you have to be planning ahead for diesel power that changes on the day-to-day time frame on the market especially in a geopolitical situation letting a town lease a reactor for 20 years is very doable yeah and it just dawned on me as all of you were saying that that you might imagine that people in the public might think oh I don't want a reactor in my backyard but at the same time in this scenario you could imagine that this Alaskan town would beg for that right we don't want this variance we actually like please give us this reactor now I think a lot of people would want a reactor near them maybe not in their literal backyard but I think that's mostly because they'd rather have a pool um not for any safety related reason uh but I think they want one near them heated pool and I think that if you're in a natural disaster area and you're hoping that FEMA is going to come in and they might come in and provide you some tents and shelters but it's very hard to provide Power in a real serious natural disaster whether it's wildfires whether it's hurricanes uh and the two things you need immediately after disaster clean water and you need power and you can't do clean water from a generator too it takes way too much fuel but you can do clean water from a reactor uh you can hook up a reactor to something that will clean water very easily and provide people with the water they need to survive and with energy and that to me the fact that you can bring that in on an 18wheeler is just supremely powerful uh and there's nothing like that today that exist in the world and the number of lives that it could change is tremendous so separate from all the defense related National Security related things that's just one more example of many um of where having the ability to quickly truck in or fly in reliable and enduring power it's the idea that we will to me you ask 10 years where are we going to be 10 or 15 years from now the idea that we can't just immediately turn on a reliable and enduring power source for a community it is going to be like it's going be unimaginable like it just it will be a solved problem I want to add one thing to that um you know not only is it a mass-produced reactor you can truck in but you can truck out so this use in FEMA right uh for temporary use uh is perfectly what the kidos micro reactor designed to do uh reactors don't carry themselves away and everything that was radioactive can be fully removed just on a normal truck um and you leave a green field the day you leave um that's never been seen before nuclear I don't think um I wanted to share that point yeah you can take it and move it somewhere else yeah it's a brilliant application I mean like people see these United Rentals trucks around that like when you go to a concert there's like you know the big United Rentals thing that's got this big generator and it's like makes all the noise yeah U it's like look we just have United Rental reactors like you know why not that's actually what we ran um when we did the hyperloop project at SpaceX I was in charge of all the electrical work for it we rented a big Diesel jensa and that ran this futuristic tube that we pumped down to vacuum and and ran Vehicles up to 350 M hour in but it could be every reactor I want to connect one other thing too we talked about this Alaskan Town there's one more thing that really motivates me uh about what we're doing in a lot of places they use diesel generators only for Prime power um the health implications of that are dramatic right a diesel gen set operating of course will produce uh CO2 but more critically more importantly it's producing carcinogens fumes that people breathing in that area they're breathing carcinogens um and if you look at um what happens in a town over 20 years of span um if you pick a diesel gen set instead of a reactor um there's something like 12 uh deaths that are going to occur prematurely from the use of diesel normal natural measure just just at a rate ending people's lives prematurely so that's one of the things that really motivates me um and on the regulatory side uh I think we we got to think about that case I think we've got to make it possible at some point in the future for that the people the decision makers in that that town this theoretical little town to be able to pick the nuclear reactor the clean technology that's going to save lives and to have a equal bar for regulations so that they can pick it because one of the barriers right now will be the regulations for nuclear very challenging to site these little reactors and it's because they don't exist and we haven't planned for it yet but that's um what I think we need to start working on now so that 10 years from now that future is achievable mhm and when we think about these communities just so we can attack this question head on Dr Huff can you just speak to waste right that's something that comes up a lot from these reactors old reactors do we have a way currently today to safely store nuclear waste from these reactors yes this is a technically solved problem right now all the spent fuel is stored safely where it is it's a solid it's not a glowing green goo it's a ceramic it's more like a teacup right um now defense waste is a distinct thing but the commercial nuclear fuel in this country has never caused any you know radiation harm to humans it is stored safely in either pools or um in drycast storage it is however at 70 locations across the country in places where the department of energy promised to take it off of their hands they didn't intend to store it there for the long term and while it is safe for the long term as it currently stand stands it is the Department of energy responsibility to take it and consolidate it into a you know one or more Consolidated interim storage sites to reduce the number of communities that live near those uh facilities that they didn't agree to in the long term and so we're working through a consent-based process to identify locations that would be amimal to this um it's a really exciting process that worked really successfully in uh Finland to site a whole final repository and is working in Canada they're down to two sites uh for their final repository which is much more complicated than an interim storage facility um so it's our responsibility to do we're doing it there's no technical question about you know is it possible to safely store spent nuclear fuel we do it every day we've continued to do it we transport spent nuclear safe fuel safely across the United States successfully no problem just to expand a little bit to going back to this sort of what does the future look like 10 20 30 years from now right in addition to micro reactors saving the world at the sort of edge of you know accessibility to power at the edge of you know um viability of other options right where diesel generators might sit at the edge of that small size scale we also see real opportunities to directly replace one for one coal facilities right unabated fossil facilities across the country represent a real opportunity for those 100 200 300 megawatt units even bigger and they should be a real Boon to the communities in them because interestingly the radiation exposure from living next to a coal plant is higher than the radiation exposure from living next to a nuclear power plant we can reduce the radiation yeah because you know we we really you know there's no emissions from nuclear power and the emissions from unabated fossils actually can really um include a lot of heavy metals and whatnot I we're in this place where you know I think it's it's really important that communities especially communities around retiring and retired coal sites can have better Health outcomes just like what doug was saying about micro reactors and Diesel the same can be said about small modular reactors and and you know larger scale fossil plants and that motivates me too when we think about the 200 to 300,000 premature debts every year caused by pollution unnecessary pollution most of which is from power generation we can save those people yeah so it needs to be addressed at every scale it turns out that burning Trace radioactive materials and releasing them and these other energy forbs is much less safe than nuclear waste which is kept in containers and shipped and moved safely yeah has caused no accidents absolutely well maybe to come full circle Dr Huff in your recent testimony you mentioned that recently at cop 28 the US and 24 other countries signed an agreement to Triple nuclear power by 2050 that's very exciting but it also sounds quite lofty and so what do you really think needs to be in place we touched on some of these things whether it's regulation the workforce Etc public opinion A lot of these are shifting in terms of tithes as well I should say so what's your take on how we actually achieve that goal and reverse this multi-year trend yeah let me be clear you know these 24 countries signed together to say we recognize that we need to get to tripling nuclear power we didn't say we knew it would be possible you know I think the agreement here is that we recognize that there's Gap that has to be filled by Clean firm power and that Gap is gigantic and a huge fraction of that gigantic Gap must be filled by nuclear power or else we're never going to get to Net Zero and so this agreement is that you know the intergovernmental panel and climate change the Ia the Ia Etc have all done a bunch of studies we our individual countries have done studies about what it's going to take to get to Net Zero and it's going to take tripling nuclear power how do we get there um we are going to have to build new nuclear power at a rate unparalleled now not so crazy dissimilar from the rates of gigawatts we added in the' 70s 80s if we don't start tomorrow building reactors then the rate goes up so importantly if we don't build any new reactors next year then we're going to have to build slightly more every year between now and 2050 so the slower we are at startup the harder it's going to be to build out a supply chain appropriate for building the number of reactors we have to build um you know if you wait until the last minute to do all your homework you have to write a whole essay in one hour but if you spend the week ahead of time then you only have to write a few words a day and that's the situation we're in we have a little time but we have to start tomorrow we cannot wait until the last minute I think I think there's a couple points you brought up that I think about a lot um one you mentioned the supply chain for nuclear energy uh we need to be the source of fuel right now uh America is a source of nuclear fuel um but there are other countries that make a lot of nuclear Fuel and I think you know I I think about our American dynamism practices and investing in companies that support the national interest one of the things that I think is in the National interest is to be the Premier Source for nuclear fuel for not just the us but also our allies um and that's something we can do and we certainly certainly could do um much like I think storing nuclear spent nuclear fuel um or recycling nuclear fuel some people have this there's atmospherics around it like PR atmospherics and people are like oh I don't know if I want that they they ignore about all these other things they have in their backyard they they oh but that sounds bad because I saw a commercial once where I saw The Simpsons exactly um and they don't want to fish with three eyes which it's not a real thing um and and so I think we have an opportunity to really invest in the supply chain for nuclear resources and nuclear fuel um and I think it'd be really cool to see something kind of like the chips act for nuclear first of all I think it would be a very bipartisan thing in in this country um I also think it's something where we could really encourage investment abroad there are a lot of countries that would love to be having more would like to have more nuclear energy as Dr Huff uh said and I think we have an obligation to be a leader there um there are things called one two3 agreements that I believe the state department oversees today that sort of regulates the amount of nuclear information and nuclear sort of business that we can transact with certain countries um but it's still an onerous agreement and it's still there's different standards to that agreement um and there there could be a real National priority put on elevating those standards or making them more accessible or dis disseminating them more widely um while still maintaining and especially if we're the source of nuclear fuel for these countries it still gives us the levs of control that we want to enable countries to have more nuclear power but in a way that we think is safe and reliable and um you know represents the interests of our of our country I I do think there's some regulatory Improvement that that is gaining momentum here and we want to see more of I also think there can be a much larger International focus on you know America exports all kinds of Technology we export defense products we export all kinds of things and there's no reason why we shouldn't be exporting more um nuclear uh reactors and we and we do like ap1000 but we we could be doing much more um and that to me is exciting an exciting opportunity at least when you think about the commercial aspects that it's not just the US that has this insatable need for energy but it is a is a global opportunity absolutely and if we don't do it I think that other countries will y I guess that's that's the flip side of it is like you know right now um for instance there's a country that that uh very much would like nuclear reactors for energy um and the US is not allowed to sell into that country and currently the only other country bidding on a reactor is China um and I just think it'd be better if we could bid in that country also so absolutely Doug anything you'd add there in terms of you could say a wish list you're building in this space and are so many different factors that come together what do you hope to see whether it's the supply chain the workforces the regulation that we've talked a lot about uh I'm thinking we talk very long term I'm thinking much more shortterm about my wish list because I have a very tight schedule um operating the Dome is just two years away 23 months um uh I need to make sure I get access to fuel um something David mentioned it's really challenging and Dr has been helping we talk about this regularly and I appreciate it um but it's still a challenge for us uh I think a a real micro reactor demonstration program from the federal side would probably be the single biggest thing we could do to accelerate our efforts to commercialization um and I think that would help cross-pollinate every other project that we have going on Dr Huf I'm going to close with you anything else you'd like to share with the folks in the room but also we have so many people listening who may have varying degrees of education on nuclear the state of it in our country what would you like to leave people with about the years ahead yeah I think there's an incredible amount of money to be made there are lives to be saved there is democracy to preserve sovereignty to deploy abroad and we have unquestionably some of the best technology in the world that's American design it's an American invention uh we are the First Nation to ever you know sustain a fusion chain reaction on purpose we have the largest nuclear Fleet in the world we are poised to lead this as we transition into a cleaner energy system but we have to see Private Industry step up and say I will be the first to sign a contract to build the next radiant or whatever and I want to see as many contracts on the books as possible in the next couple of years or else we are going to have a much bigger supply chain challenge in the next 20 years than we have today every few months that are delayed between now and the order books that we need to show that deployment the harder it's going to be to build out as much as we need to get to Net Zero we have to get to Net Zero full stop not only have we promised the world we're leading the world and I intend to still be around in 2050 and I'd like to be able to breathe here here here here that's a great place to end off we thank Dr Huff I think for her effort in doe and really pushing forward I would say A Renewed and re-energized attitude towards nuclear policy it's you know innovators like radiant and others that are really leading the way and give us some good work to work with well I mean I think that's why we brought all three of you in right we have all sides of the equation we have the funders the builders and the policy makers um all in the room because that's all required for the future now if you have made it this far don't forget that you can get an inside look into A6 Z's American dynamism Summit at az.com Summit there you can catch several of the exclusive stage talks featuring policy makers like deputy secretary of defense Kathleen Hicks or Governor Westmore of Maryland plus both Founders from companies like andril and coinbase and funders like Mark Cuban all building toward American dynamism again you can find all of the above at az.com slad Summit and and we'll include a link in the show notes
