Insider's Guide to Energy

71 - Is nuclear part of the solution? Rod Adams shares his views.

May 15, 2022 Chris Sass Season 3 Episode 71
Insider's Guide to Energy
71 - Is nuclear part of the solution? Rod Adams shares his views.
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This week Chris and Johan are joined by Rod Adams, Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a fund focused on advanced nuclear technologies. The three discuss the competitiveness of nuclear power compared to other power sources and its suitability to serve in addition to and as a backup to renewable sources.  Listen in to find out more about nuclear-powered ships and the next generation nuclear reactors. 

https://nucleationcapital.com 


Broadcasting from the commodity capital of the world, Zurich, Switzerland, this is ‘Insiders Guide to Energy’. 

This edition to Insiders Guide to Energy is brought to you by Fidectus. Go to www.fidectus.com for more information.

 | Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript

| 13:37.48 | chrissass | Welcome to insider' guide to energy I'm your host Chris Sass and with me as always his co-host Johan Oberg. Johan, what's going on?
| 13:38.93 | Rod Adams | No.
| 13:49.11 | Johan | Hey Chris another week great to be back but slightly slightly different as I'm trying I'm actually now in a different location so that's a new start for me. Ah.
| 14:01.75 | chrissass | It's nice just your camera works for a change or your video quality has improved dramatically. So did you get new laptop.
| 14:06.91 | Johan | I actually did a brand new one and and I actually bought one at home as well. But unfortunately didn't have the time to get home for for this podcast. But so I'm improving my technology and all my stuff to make sure that we do this as good as possible.
| 14:22.00 | chrissass | Well, it's good to be back together I've done a couple episodes by myself during during some vacation time for both of us. It's great to have us both there. Um I am looking forward to this because you and I have talked about doing an episode on nuclear for a long time and we've we've covered a lot of energy. Yeah, we've we've gone everywhere. We've done a bunch of marine. We've done wind. We've done solar and we've we've really gotten you know we had Meredith on just recently talking about shorting the grid and and I can't help but see this is part of a future strategy in and understanding. It.
| 14:48.88 | Johan | Um, and.
| 14:58.52 | chrissass | Helps me and I think the audience may come along for the ride. They may not but this guest I'm I'm hoping will help share why I think it's part of the Future. That's my personal take I don't know what you think but I think it is if everything's gonna Electrify. We really need to consider that because how else do we do it in the timelines that we have. Ah, that's kind of what I wonder and maybe I'm wrong and you know, ah you know I'm sure I'll get emails and I'm sure I'll get some direct messaging saying you're you're Crazy. You don't need to do this worst idea ever. But but I think it's worth considering in having the data to make an informed decision and that's what I hope we do today. What are what you thinking.
| 15:30.32 | Johan | Now I agree with you I think especially interesting to see where we where we were where we are and where we're going obviously with with different approaches look where we are in Europe we have 2 of the big. Countries in Europe and Mainline Europe and Germany and France with what seems to be totally different strategies around this which I think is quite I would say strange but it definitely interesting to how can how can we make such a big difference in in the way we approach something that is so fundamental to do. To kind of ah be part of the energy ecosystem. So that is something hopefully we can get a little bit of background off. But.
| 16:14.16 | chrissass | And as an american I tell you that's not uniquely european I mean if I look at Ontario right across the river from where I grew up and in the us very different philosophy on the subject as well I think and and and and I hope our guests will inform us or why some of these things are because I certainly don't know I just know they're different.
| 16:19.35 | Johan | Yeah, yeah.
| 16:25.46 | Johan | Um, interesting. Yeah.
| 16:31.72 | Johan | Yeah, no I totally and I and also moving forward in terms of investment always looking at is it How how do you find investment for something because this big investments long investment. So yeah, looking forward to bring them on.
| 16:33.73 | chrissass | Um.
| 16:44.11 | chrissass | All right? So let's do what we always do instead of pontificating. Let's bring on the experts and and learn Rod Adams Welcome to the program.
| 16:49.87 | Johan | Um.
| 16:52.75 | Rod Adams | Thank you Chris it's it good to be here and I'm excited to talk about my favorite topic. Yeah.
| 16:58.59 | chrissass | So you in in the pre show you said well can I talk about my podcast and I think it's fair that you introduce yourself but also that you're an experienced podcaster. So why don't you introduce yourself and tell the audience where you come from.
| 17:06.42 | Rod Adams | Exactly.
| 17:12.18 | Rod Adams | All right? Well first I'll I'll introduce the podcast. It's an atomic show podcast and it's been on the web since 2006 and we've done almost 300 episodes ah part of the atomic insights infrastructure that's atomicins http://insights.com and that's a blog that's been on the web since 90 ninety five. It's a place where I've been sharing my passion for nuclear not just in technology but in politics economics history. All of those aspects of nuclear. So right now I am the managing partner of a. Venture capital firm called nucleation capital and we think that we're the only venture capital firm so far that focuses on advanced nuclear energy as part of the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and we believe it's really the source that can actually make the transition work. Not the only source of clean energy but all the others need some help so I gain my nuclear expertise and enthusiasm as a nuclear submarine officer spent 33 years in a navy also took a little break from a Navy Navy career to try. Start a small moz reactric company and 9093 called atoms atomic engines. We were a little ahead of the bleeding edge and closed that company down I went back in the Navy and and continued learning about nuclear energy and from the back end of the of the navy system i. Spent 9 years at Navy Headquarters and worked on financing things like atomic or nuclear training nuclear maintenance and I even served as the requirements officer for naval reactors for a couple of years so I have a real good understanding of how the navy spends its money on nuclear and. My perception is different from most so that's essentially me I'm a podcaster I'm a blogger and recently I became a venture capitalist and a real atomic enthusiast.
| 19:15.31 | chrissass | Well thank you so much for coming on I'm looking forward to hearing what you say but before we go there I have to ask you and you've said the word many times and this is gonna be about the dumbest question you've ever been asked. But we we had in our comments this week someone commenting that if you can't say a word. You don't have the right to talk about it. Can you can you say the correct way to say nuclear nuclear.
| 19:36.94 | Rod Adams | Yeah nuclear and you could look at it and say it like this new clear energy.
| 19:43.76 | chrissass | Nuclear engine. Okay, so so for whoever gave us comments before because I think I got flamed for a bit of that I hope that we are improving here were we're trying to meet the audience need. But that's that's just a little distraction so tell us a little bit I mean when I first met you and we spoke. We talked a little bit of my preconception right? So yeah I've already opened up saying hey I actually believe it's part of the solutions that probably tipped my hand a little too much but I also grew up in an era where three mile island happened. Um, you know I watched I mean Netflix has got a show coming out on that I really read you know, enjoyed reading the book about Chernobyl all a bunch of scary stuff and so let's start there.
| 20:27.86 | Rod Adams | All right? We'll start with the the fact that there are 3 very famous nuclear accidents events that everybody remembers three mile Island Chernobyl and Fukushima now those 3 happened over a space of about 30 years have those 3 events and the reason everybody remembers them is because we're constantly reminded of them nobody and I've talked to people recently how many people remember San Bruno upper big branch even Deepwater Horizon all those 3 accidents which were all fatal. They killed. In some cases a couple of dozen people all occurred in the same year 2010 but nobody remembers them because nobody ever reminds them that it happened now those by the way are only 3 of an enormous history of fatal energy accidents. But in nuclear we remember the 3 and of the 3 only 1 caused fatalities. There was there wasn't even any injuries or property damage as a result of three mile island there was an incorrectly ordered evacuation. And and incorrectly stated risk to the public from something called a hydrogen bubble but that was not a problem. The event definitely destroyed a large expensive industrial facility but it didn't go anywhere outside of the boundaries of the plant now Chernobyl was. Definite difference that one was a reactor where the operators managed to put the reactor in the most vulnerable position it could possibly in the most unstable condition a condition by the way that even the the series Chernobyl said that there were. Plenty of people within the technology hierarchy in Russia they knew that if you put the reactor in that condition. It would be unstable so they got there as a result of an ordered experiment an ordered test of the reactor and in fact. It did what it's supposed to do it exploded when it was there in the most vulnerable position caused a fire caused a release of a lot of radio material and resulted in the deaths of about 31 people 20 ah 28 of them almost well within the first 30 days and those were. Deaths caused by overexposure to radiation people who were so exposed they were in the process of throwing radioactive material away from the roof which was burning the radioactum and the roof was tar. The red material was very hot and it was causing fires. They were sacrificed.
| 23:16.98 | Rod Adams | 3 more people died a little bit later over some injuries or sicknesses that are related to radioactive exposure. All the rest are speculative deaths. The international atomic energy agency and the Chernobyl forum said that up. 2 4000 people may be result in an early cancer death over the next fifty years that's not 4000 that's up to 4000. It could be as few as zero because the radiation exposure they received. Was low below the level at which any physical evidence shows that it could cause cancer go on you get that question.
| 23:59.81 | chrissass | Right? so so so what I what I heard this time has and last is you think that the risk to physical life is low and and you're giving the history of the industry as your example, you gave me the example of living on a sub and and sleeping and. Breathing and being near a reactor for many years of your life that that you think that's slow. So let's let's take that one table that the the second I think point that that I brought up in our free call is you know.
| 24:21.14 | Rod Adams | E.
| 24:33.11 | chrissass | What do you do with radioactive Waste. You're going to have all this Way. So if you look at renewables if I look at wind I look at solar I look at these things. Well yeah, they they have to make some stuff and yeah I got to recycle the the blades of a turbine or whatever but you know the half-life is pretty short. So I guess. But you know what do we do with this waste that that's my second preconceived notion.
| 24:51.13 | Rod Adams | Well first of all, nobody is recycling blades from wind turbines right now they're burying them in landfills. Secondly the waste from a ah from nuclear reactors the high level waste that seems to be the issue of most concern. Is pretty darn compact if you didn't store it in the and the dry casks. It would cover a football field to a level of about ten meters one single football field for the last sixty years worth of waste from in the us now what we do with it is very carefully store and monitor it. We keep the waste in a pool for the first five years or so after it's been used in reactor and once it's gone through and cooled down we put that waste into engineered dry casts. It's a steel container with a concrete burial around it and those casts are designed to last about 100 years Licensed for 40 years by the net nuclear regulatory commission but all that limitation means is near the end they going to have to go through a relicceensing procedure and inspection and make sure they're still good. Okay, that material that deadly material as people always describe it. Is only deadly if you're exposed to it so far worldwide there has not been a single person who has been exposed to the used nuclear fuel that everybody worries about because we know how to handle it. We know how to store it. We know how to shield people from it. Had to use time distance and shielding to make sure nobody gets exposed and it to me. It's a solved problem. It's a lot easier to store nuclear waste safely than is to imagine putting co 2 underground and keeping it there for a long period of time. It's solid, material. It doesn't leap. It. The containers are pressurized with helium and it's easy to detect if there's any leakage that there's any crack at all in the material. So it. It's a solved problem now there. There are ways to make it more permanent but that's another.
| 27:00.64 | chrissass | So I guess I hear the logic there and the only thing that goes through mind and yon's obviously going to have some questions here because I can see the wheel spinning through through the video is there's this little conflict going on in the Ukraine right now that's not so little and so you said there so just objectively you know.
| 27:00.86 | Rod Adams | Question another answer. But.
| 27:14.39 | Rod Adams | You.
| 27:19.45 | chrissass | Said that there weren't veryade deaths but yet the russians seemed to camp out in the Chernobyl area and there seems to be people that got a bunch of high radiation exposure. We don't know who they are but some soldiers got dug in for whatever reason into hot ground. Um, but that does question that the world isn't always a controlled place right? So in a controlled environment. We use.
| 27:35.21 | Rod Adams | Okay.
| 27:38.86 | chrissass | Said sounds perfectly reasonable to me but I also wouldn't have thought europe would be at war in 2022
| 27:44.14 | Rod Adams | Well this brings up another part of my thesis on exactly why nuclear's perception is different from the reality and one is that ah the organizations. The entities, the individuals with the most to lose. From a prosperous growing expanding nuclear energy field are those whose interests lie in coal oil and natural gas now Russia is an oil and gas country 50% or more of their income comes from selling. Oil and gas so they are highly motivated to raise concerns about nuclear energy. There is no no truth to the fact that soldiers dug into the ground at Chernobyl have been. Overexposed to radiation. There's simply no truth to that it is a myth because the the contamination in the soil at Chernobyl is well known and well understood and I can't run this through the calculations right here right now. But I've seen people like Jerry Thomas from the. Remember he. She's ah, an expert on Chernobyl Health effects she's done the calculations and there isn't enough material in the soil to cause overexposion now. The only place they could get that kind of overexposure if they actually chip their way into what's called the elephant's foot which is the melted fuel and. Basement of the actual physical plant nothing outside the plant could cause overexposure to radiation even if they were there for months at a time.
| 29:30.14 | Johan | But but isn't it. Also I think if if we look at you mentioned the beginning that the things that we kind of over-communic communicated. We talk more about the accidents around nuclear than we do on on some of the other things which we are kind of tend to agree On. But. It is a little bit like the airline industry isn't it where where a plane crash is much much more visible. It's much much more scary in a way that then and the numerous car crashes that we have because it's so fundamental to to to view. But.
| 29:58.84 | Rod Adams | With.
| 30:05.50 | Johan | But 1 of the things if we we take a little bit of a step towards as I grew up in Sweden in the 80 s where where we actually were affected by by chernobyls so there is a connection to to what happened there and and and the mos and then on the barrierrs that we had in the north of.
| 30:09.17 | Rod Adams | Um.
| 30:20.65 | Johan | No of Sweden so there is a personal kind of affection on this. But 1 thing that that leads to is also the future of of energy I think there's difficult to say that the the actual impact of the and of nuclear as an energy source is undebatable. It is a great source. But. But is this a political then if if it is what you're saying there is really no major concerns we can take care of the waste. It is a phenomenal way of balancing also for the for the new renewable energies. Ah if I look at. 2 countries and we discussed also in the Us but specifically in Europe we look at 2 countries like Germany and France that in the last years have totally different approaches to to nuclear is this purely political or do can they see the world so differently.
| 31:04.50 | Rod Adams | Um.
| 31:11.29 | Rod Adams | Well, it's political. But as some people say all politics is economics when it comes down to it's all about money and again the answer is that there's a lot of money riding in the energy business. It's a huge business about $6000000000000 a year and. There's an awful lot of interest whether they be coal oil natural gas wind solar geothermal hydro all of those interests. Don't like the fact that nuclear is an abundant energy source with the potential. Not the reality but the potential. To be very affordable and it is that way because it uses the least amount of material per energy output. It's just a very low energy material. Even if you include all the steel and concrete in a nuclear plant. They're still. Much more material efficient than any other energy source and so there are interests that don't like nuclear for many reasons and the nuclear industry has done an extremely poor job of telling its message and part of that is historical. The first dozen or so years that nuclear fission was known to the public you know was after about 1945 there was no talk about it because it was all classified. It was all very secretive and in the us scientists and engineers. Would have been put in jail if they shared any information about nuclear. The only people that were allowed to do it were those with clearances and working for the atomic energy commission. So that developed a habit of secrecy and also some of the most successful nuclear programs are still classified. Program that I spent my time in the u navy' program. It's more carefully controlled in the navy than most top secret material. In other words people who don't have a need to know? don't don't learn about it. So it's not so good as in terms of telling its storyd to the public. And also in the us the only real people involved in nuclear were people involved in the utility industry and again that industry's not very good at telling its story. They never thought they had to advertise their monopolies. Why do we have to advertise eds tells the same story. Why would we have to tell people what we do. World monopoly they have to buy a product.
| 33:44.16 | Johan | Which which is obviously true because that's how it was built up so I can I can conjure with that. But if we look if we look at something that you said in terms of the financials. It all comes down to economics. We have discussed some of the shows before in terms of the future of the energy.
| 33:58.70 | Rod Adams | Yep.
| 34:04.16 | Johan | Ah, landscape of the energy ecosystem which is according to to some of our guests. The sole wind and and batteries that would be kind of enough, especially long term now we we need some kind of balancing part. But if we then look at the French strategy and that. Macron The president came out with ah just a few weeks ago in terms So we're going to invest in number of New. Ah nuclear facilities is through economics in actually building New Ah nuclear facilities with the long term investment that is needed or is the return on the investment quicker and better. If you invest in in other renewable energies.
| 34:43.59 | Rod Adams | What the the reality is that nuclear costs and schedules are vastly inflated by a couple of factors. 1 of them is that in the west we haven't been building nuclear plants much at all. Very little practice. So the only plants that we people point to and say the costs and scheduled are horrible were first of a kind plants every one of them required the startup the scale up of and of a workforce of a supply chain. Of learning how to put all of the pieces together learning how to manage huge projects. They were very much a these are the first things we built in 30 years it's not like you know we it's a technology that we knew very well we know very well, especially in the us how to. Operate plants. We had no idea how to build them anymore. The people who built them that there were a few people in management positions in the us who who claimed that they've built plants but in thirty years ago they weren't in management positions. They were you know, maybe welders or or concrete pores or someplace. And they saw a little piece of of the building process. No no skills. So if we practice what's that.
| 36:03.41 | Johan | Um I of Curiosity What was that so out of curiosity when was the last time ah in in the Us they actually opened up a new nuclear facility.
| 36:14.37 | Rod Adams | And well we'd opened 1 in in 2006 and 1 in 1996 but both of those were started in 1973 and 74. Okay, that's how long it took to to complete those because they went through several. Periods where they just stopped constructing and just held ah held onto them. They were both owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority which had the ability to keep paying whatever cost necessary to keep the plants. You know in a hiatus condition. But so before that we hadn't completed a plant since the. Mid Nineteen eighty s so we started building a plant or 2 plant for well 4 units 2 reactor stations in the us in two thousand and twelve one of them went bust after spending $9000000000 and then the next one. Should be operating both units by the end of 2025 of them may be operating but in this year they're kind of if the and in terms of exactly when they finish all their testing. The plants completed construction. So that's some vogal plants all right? so.
| 37:24.98 | chrissass | So you've you've you give it history right? and like so things are kind of coming along but yet in your introduction. You said your current role is finance in doing things and and helping bring nuclear to to the market. So if plants aren't being.
| 37:27.62 | Rod Adams | Good.
| 37:40.81 | Rod Adams | In.
| 37:44.54 | chrissass | Built what kind of things would 1 invest in.
| 37:45.83 | Rod Adams | Okay, well I what I told you was the history a little bit about the history of why we aren't building. We weren't building nuclear plants recently part of the problem is that they're huge projects multibillion Dollar huge 5000 workforce projects and. It's hard to get good at those without practicing and it's hard to practice if you do so poorly on the first one nobody wants to buy the next one so the the tendency the trend within the us is to figure out how to build nuclear efficiently on a smaller scale. Maybe use different technologies that aren't limited as to light water reactors are they light water reactors the current ones we have today have a limited temperature output. For example, maybe three hundred possibly three hundred and fifty degrees C which isn't very high and it leads to fairly. Poor efficiencies and it like ah limits your application to mostly generating electricity. It's not something you can use to generate industrial heat. So some of the advances that we're seeing are are smaller reactors and a much broader size scale instead of only. Producing extra large reactors. We looked out or the the you nuclear folks in the us looked around said hey there's a huge spectrum of react of power demands out there and we only are playing in the one market and it's a market where there's a much of very much a follow the leader market. So. The designs are now ranging in size where we reviewed companies reviewing ventures in the kilowatt scale 10 to hundreds of kilowatts and all the way up to three hundred of four hundred Megawatts and that's where you see what's called the the micro and some people are even calling themselves the nanocale reactors you got the microreactors which are the 1 to 10 n megawatts then you got the the small module reactors which are say 20 to to three hundred Megawatts and and of course there's gaps in the middle and there's different ways to name them but having that broad scale or broad spectrum of reactors allows you to target different areas different places where people aren't you know, paying ¢3 ah a kilowatt hour or 5 $50 a megawatt hour or something like that. The grid scale you're focusing on areas where the only alternative to a small reactor is a diesel engine and a diesel engine is a complex machine requires a fairly costly workforce is polluting.
| 40:36.14 | Rod Adams | And it burns very expensive fuel. Especially these days I mean I was driving in the state of Georgia which is a fairly low cost state near in the us and on the marquees at the at the truck stops. There's they're selling diesel fuel for $5 and ¢70 a gallon. Okay. Imagine what it costs deliver diesel fuel to a small village in Alaska or to a mine in Northern Canada those are are our applications where a lot of the new reactor vendors are looking at and some other reactor vendors. We're looking at are going back to the the important. Market that I see is ocean shipping. Of course we know that nuclear power can can drive ships. We've been doing it since 1955 these guys are looking at building a reactor specifically designed to power ships which again the alternative right now is diesel fuel and. They used to burn some really cheap fuel and when they could dump fuel that had 20000 parts per million of sulfur into the the ocean environment those rules have changed and now they're all required to burn low sulfur fuels. And very high cost $300 a ton $500 a ton those kinds of things.
| 41:57.60 | chrissass | But aren't you competing with Hydrogen for Bunker Fuel replacement I mean that's kind of where a lot of lot of money's going right for for Bunker Fuel replacement.
| 42:04.17 | Rod Adams | Ah, well yeah, money is going there but hydrogen is a pretty easy fuel to compete against first of all, how do you get? Hydrogen. You got to split other molecules. Maybe you if you split ch four that's methane. That's the probably the cheapest way to get hydrogen. But. Instead of burningchfour and getting the energy from both burning carbon and burning hydrogen. You're only getting the hydrogen. So now you're definitely a much higher cost than natural gas to burn hydrogen and or you can split water which in reality what you're doing is. Is unburning hydrogen and then burning it again. So you get very little efficiency from that. Yeah, the h two o is going to become h two o again when you burn it and you have losses in both processes. Hydrogen is also extremely. Extremely difficult to store natural gas is hard enough and of course transporting natural gas requires as very complicated lng tankers. But imagine what it would be hydrogen is a much lower ah temperature at which it becomes liquid than than. Natural gas and its density is very low so you that have really big tanks and on ships you know space and weight are are money generators any space and weight you're devoting to fuel. You can't devote to care and cargo. So.
| 43:33.74 | chrissass | So so what happened so I remember the Savannah was was a project in the Us right? There was a first nuclear commercial ship I believe and I'm I'm not a historian there on that but I know that it didn't work or it worked but it didn't.
| 43:40.24 | Rod Adams | Yep m.
| 43:49.37 | chrissass | Catch on. So so what's different today. Is it just the cost of the alternatives are so much more or what what makes this attractive today and not years ago.
| 43:55.91 | Rod Adams | Well Savannah was a one of kind. Okay, so an she was designed as a as as basically a a a show ship a ship to to go around and and care of the flag and show people how cool and clean. US nuclear power was it was part of the adamtoms for peace program. A concept concept ships sort of like a concept car. Okay, the idea that a concept car can go out and be sold in the marketplace you guys if you know anything about cars. You know the concept cars may cost 3 or $400000 for a car that. In manufacturing would cost 50 or $60000 rough rough numbers so savannah costs a lot. She had a specialized workforce part of her initial problem was because all of the the engineers had to go through nuclear power school their unions demanded. Very high wages and salaries which wasn't a big problem. They could afford them. But then the the debt unions got really upset because the debt unions said wait a minute the engineers are getting paid more than we are so one of the first things that happened to Savannah was she sat in port after being completed for a year while the unions tried to figure out how to pay the the engineers fairly and maybe not pay the debt guys as much as the engineers were getting paid which is you know it was a politics kind of thing or economics. You know the debt guys are used to being the highest paid guys on the ship. Was the first thing then the savanna when I had a very successful tour 50 or sixty ports that she entered performed very well e cetera and but her time as a concept or showship ended after maybe 4 years and she was leased to a. Ah line and had to it cost roughly a million dollars a year more to operate Savannah than a similarly sized ship but savannah also was limited by the fact that she was designed to look pretty and she is probably the prettiest merchant ship the us has built in the last seventy years maybe the prettiest ship ever. She did gorgeous but her lines were designed to be pretty not to carry cargo okay so Savannah had the cargo holds it were triangular up in the bow made it very difficult to load the ship so that contributed you know a negative impact to her economics. And finally she was decommissioned. She was put in out to pasture in 1972 okay 1972 the price of oil was $3 a barrel at the end of 1973 just one year later
| 46:48.18 | Rod Adams | Price of oil was $12 a barrel and that difference would have made her economic if she'd been in service still by 73 she would have been economic. But again she was a one of a kind for various reasons. What's that.
| 47:00.42 | chrissass | So where are we today then so so so turn the clock ahead to 2022 so that's a long time. So you you, you've talked about some companies and all these different size scale generations. So you you you have different size are we to place where you rent or.
| 47:06.84 | Rod Adams | So yep.
| 47:16.60 | chrissass | Retrofit existing ships and can drop these in or do you need to build a ship from the ground up to to handle this.
| 47:20.49 | Rod Adams | Um, there's a couple of different companies going in different directions some are going in the direction of building a ship specifically around the reactor plant some are also trying to figure out and actually succeeding and figuring out how to fit the. Nuclear generator into the same space as the current diesel generators because many ships today are diesel electric. They're basically hybrid ships where they have the diesels are generating electricity in the middle of the ship and they're distributing it it out to the to electric motors that are driving the ship. And also to supply all of the electric loads and some ships have very large electric loads if they're cruise ships or if they're refrigerated container ships. They have large electric loads. So again, there are companies who are designing generators that can fit to replace the diesel generators and and. Fit right in with the existing ships.
| 48:19.90 | chrissass | So what about the problem going to the school to learn the skills to manage and contain I mean so some of the problem statements. You didn't say go away right? So do I need a specially trained crew or are these things safe enough that that you know you get a merchant marine that's gonna be running this thing.
| 48:36.42 | Rod Adams | Well, you still have merchant marines they need to be trained to operate a nuclear reactor instead of being trained to operate a diesel power plant The overall training budget is not going to be that much different. So yes, they will be specialized. They will be adequately compensated but nuclear reactors are so material. Efficient So much less cost for the fuel that they will be able to cover the extra labor without necessarily. Changing the cost and again that's a huge advantage for nuclear not just in ships. But on Land you end up having if you do the cost Budgets. You have higher capital Costs. You have much slower fuel Costs. You have somewhat higher labor costs. But higher labor cost means prosperity to the host Village Host cities villages whatever because you know people getting paid good wages and getting in jobs that will last a very long time.. That's a good thing. Okay, that's that's a positive because you're not spending all your money On. On Fuel and this whether it be oil or gas or coal and you can instead spend your money on labor which is good from my point of view.
| 50:01.26 | Johan | I think that would the old agree on. But if we look at labor in general related then obviously the competence is I can't go back to to what you just mentioned in terms of you know they started in 73 there's a few of them if we if I understand it correctly we're.
| 50:16.10 | Rod Adams | He.
| 50:19.69 | Johan | Almost changing also or when you're looking at it's changing the landscape a little bit also to to smaller plants. Not just the massive ones which means a diverse kind of the knowledge sharing as well and diverse of the labor is there enough competenceies today in order to do this because it's 1 thing that technology.
| 50:23.57 | Rod Adams | Okay.
| 50:32.33 | Rod Adams | In it.
| 50:39.61 | Johan | Developing We might do it with as you mentioned looking at new technologies. But if no one has really put their efforts and worked on on nuclear for the last X amount of years more than maintaining it is there enough competence is out there in order to do this.
| 50:54.13 | Rod Adams | Yes, and part of the answer is it doesn't take that long to train a new I mean I was an english major in college. Okay, not and wasn't an engineer that kind of stuff I went to nuclear power school and with the prototype I was qualified to operate. Ah, submarine reactor is the engineering also watch 2 years after graduate college so that's that's how not much time it. It took to train me from being you know a complete then I'd I'd driven a car before but I had no technical training. You know I had some other courses I had. Decent math courses and science courses. But no technicalal training two years now there's there are many people who have nuclear training the us has ah we're operating a hundred well down to 93 now but they have large workforces and there's lots of people that that have learned how to train the navy still trains. Ah, thousand people a year and that means a thousand people a year are coming out of their schools that have good basic knowledge and the the new plants are designed to be somewhat simpler to operate somewhat less intensive in terms of how much you have to know and much more. Focused on digital stuff and and computerization and and control systems and of course there's lots of expertise in those areas. So I don't see personnel as a problem There's always going to be people who are willing to go to school to learn a job that pays. In the 6 figures just gonna it's happens.
| 52:33.20 | chrissass | So I guess you know we we have a little bit longer and and so let's talk about the energy transition. So you you gave some use cases you you know I'm up in Alaska and I have a mine that I want to run or maybe I'm on an island nation I don't want to import diesel all the time. How do we get to some of the.
| 52:38.30 | Rod Adams | Me.
| 52:51.66 | chrissass | Climate change goals or electrification goals that people say with what you see in the pipeline because we're not building the big grid scale stuff very at least in the us they're not I mean you know Johan talked about a french decision but I mean universally, it's not happening I don't think um so how does this play out in your mind. Where do we go from here.
| 53:10.10 | Rod Adams | Well some of the smaller reactors are designed to be ganged together to produce a pretty good sized power station. For example, there's a company called newscale which just went public by the way. New scale has got a reactor module that's seventy seven Megawatts and the first plant they're going to build is going to be a 6 pack. So it's going to be 6 times seventy seven Megawatts or 400 and whatever 428 I won't do the math in my head. But. But they also have a 12 act design. So that's another almost a thousand megawatt power plant general electric is a company that's had a long history in nuclear and is designed a small module reactor called the bw r x 300 which is going to be cheaper per Kilowatt hour than very large reactors and again designed to to build multiples on a site you mentioned Ontario maybe with iki members of the precall or this but canadian reactors have always been ganged together. Not all of them because there were one of a kind and. Point la pro and there was a 1 in Quebec at 1 time but the reactors in Ontario are 8 units per site right next to each other they they you know share a lot of the same workforce they can trade spare parts that when they were built. You know the workforce went from one to the one to the one and so you know you get practice and become better at building and that's what some of these smaller reactors are going to do but there's lots of interest particularly in like former coal sites in the us where the the. Towns of the areas that host the coal plants have a pretty good sized workforce already. That's trained in thermodynamics and in and in steam and in electricity and and all of the metallurgy pipe fitting all the stuff that you need in reactors. They just need some nuclear training. So. There are places where the hosts of former coal sites are actively trying to recruit nuclear to come in the first one of the first advanced reactors. We're going to build is going to be the at cameram Washington sorry. Kemron or Wyoming form a coal plant city and the the power plant's going to be a power plant that's supplied by terra power the partnership with Pacific Pacific Gas andelect would I came' up with the name. But anyway.
| 55:57.43 | Rod Adams | Warren Buffett's company. So bill gates Warren Buffett come come together build a nuclear plant on a coal plant site just to show that this is something that can be done for a just transition use some of the same workers the same workforce same training and you you keep the community together and and and. Able to have a community where you don't have to have the kids go away and and the community just age out and die.
| 56:22.73 | chrissass | So the the other thing that we talked about and this was definitely the precall. We haven't talked about it yet in the show is you know what? what I visualize and what your audience or our audience visualizes is the nuclear plant I think you said was the cooling tower that the containment.
| 56:38.72 | Rod Adams | It.
| 56:39.47 | chrissass | Isn't so big. So now you get these modular systems of these smaller systems whether they're on a ship whether at a you know a mine or somewhere you know remote. What's the containment like for these smaller units.
| 56:51.97 | Rod Adams | Containment's going to be fairly small like the new scale for example is designed almost like a thermos bottle imagine the the inner lining that's the pressure vessel the outer lining is going to be the containment and it's all 1 tube that has the whole system inside of it and that's going to be fit on the back of ah of a semi-tractor trailer. So each one of these models would be transportable or fit on a barge. So the containments are going to be smaller partly because all the energy release that you have to calculate. To figure out your containment size comes from a much smaller plant in some cases different kinds of of fluids different kinds of coolants. Not the potential for water to flash to steam because you got this big pressureized water reactor operating at °C so all that water really wants to be steam if the pressure goes away and then you have to you have to figure out the size of the containment. But again, the containments are not the the big impact thing that you see you see the big cooling towers and not all plants have cooling towers if you take a look at some of the pictures of Diablo Canyon that are running around the web right now there's no cooling towers there. There's were no cooling towers a design facility at a pilgrim facility the crystal river facility near my house. None of those had cooling towers. They didn't need them. They were direct cooling.
| 58:14.88 | chrissass | So I guess you ah you know as we get there I might my kind of last question for I like Johann kind of wrap things up is help help with your crystal ball. You know you've you've been doing this for a long time. You've been talking to folks you you've obviously made a career choice to stay in it and invest in it. So how do we get through the politics or how do we does it succeed or does public opinion to say not in my backyard and and keep this from being ah an alternative for further the future.
| 58:44.76 | Rod Adams | I think that things are changing. People are more concerned about climate change nuclear is clean enough to run inside. Submarines people are concerned about energy security. Ah uranium is is abundant around the world. We've got enough to last forever. It's inexhaustible and I can show you the papers that prove that so energy security is not a big issue. Yeah, we import uranium today from other countries because it's cheaper, but we have plenty in the us I mean there's ah, there's a guy in in Virginia who's sitting on 113 Million pounds of uranium and it stainable. Let him mine it at least not yet, but so public opinion is going to change as people pay more attention to energy whenever gas prices get high people are starting to pay more attention to energy and more attention to alternatives to fossil fuels. And that's going to help nuclear change and the thing's going to really help a change is when these new companies that were investing in successfully showed that you can build nuclear affordably and on a schedule as predicted then people going to start buying that the people that make the decisions are going to say this is a more affordable choice. We're going to invest in it. Going to buy it and the more people that are buying the more people that invest and we'll get a a virtuous cycle of showing that we can do this right? We can get better at it like any manufactured product. We can drive the cost down and and that's going to be what makes nuclear successful.
| 01:00:13.83 | Johan | So last question for me and before we wrap up and and we're mentioning this of course with with prices going down and we see that across all all businesses in general but is there anything other specifically when we look at innovation around nuclear that you would say is. Is kind of part of this game changinging new world that actually makes this happen because surely we're not replicating what we did in 73 with with such a long term etc is there is sort 1 or 2 things that you can pinpoint apart from prices that actually is a difference from then to now.
| 01:00:43.64 | Rod Adams | The.
| 01:00:50.50 | Rod Adams | Well first of all, we've got ah forty years worth of experience in innovation at the university level and those kind of things. Well we weren't building. There was lots of people who were trying to figure out ways to do it better. So we've got a lot to draw on. There are some high temperature fuels that are have been.
| 01:00:49.38 | Johan | That that it's in fake for nuclear.
| 01:01:10.30 | Rod Adams | Well developed and proven ah particularly a material called triso which is a tiny little particle of uranium coated with 3 layers of graphite and silicon carbide and that keeps all the fission products inside and those triso based fuels allow temperatures to go really high allows you to get. Much better efficiencies and better alternatives for industrial heat source and they can prove safety with much simpler systems much fewer many fewer components because the the fuel itself is much less susceptible to being melted matter. Of fact, you can't melt it. It just can't be melted. It can be heated high enough to release in fission products but those require temperatures around 1800 teen hundred c another another thing that's been developed is we're improved on a technology that we started using. Back in 51, it's called the liquid sodium fast cooled reactor sorry liquid sodium fast reactor breeder reactors and they can be used as burners as well where they consume more fuel but if they breed they extend the life of fuel drill. Drastically so fast. Reactors are are a big thing again and several of the reactors that we're investing in are fast reactors and the final one is molten salts where you have the reactor fuel dissolved in a molten salt bath and the reactor itself is already liquid so it can't. Melt because it's already liquid and it's designed to be liquid designed to be safe in a liquid form much lower pressures all possibility of vastly extended fuel use and those will require a little more development because of issues around. Materials and corrosions and those kinds of things but they're engineering issues. They're not science issues. We we know how to do it so all of those 3 alternatives are going to be added to the continued use of light water as a coolant.
| 01:03:20.92 | Johan | Cool I think that wraps it up. Ah I thought it was really great to have you on rod and for me I've heard I've worked a little bit with it I'm far from being an expert and as Chris mentioned in the beginning of the show we haven't had this asset topic. So I think we really get a deep down in the history of it and also in the future. So thank you very much.
| 01:03:45.60 | Rod Adams | Thank you.
| 01:03:46.77 | chrissass | Well thank you for joining us today. It has been enlightening I really enjoyed going through talking about some of the things that the perceptions that I've had or that others in your audience probably had I appreciate you humoring me through that. Ah, definitely got liked the end where we got to figure out what the innovation is and where it's going because that that helps us understand a bit more What's going on. Thank you Rod for joining us and for audience you've spent another hour listening to insider's guide to energy. We hope you've enjoyed this content as much as we have please remember to share it. Remember to like it and don't forget to comment. We'd love to hear your feedback and we look forward to seeing you again next week bye bye

Introduction
Talking nuclear safety
Radioactive waste storage and disposal
Nuclear secrecy
Economics of nuclear power
Nuclear Ship Savannah
A new generation of nuclear reactors
Will nuclear succeed?