167 - Nuclear's New Dawn: Tristram Denton on Revolutionizing Energy and Combating Climate Change

In episode 167, "Nuclear's New Dawn: Tristram Denton on Revolutionizing Energy and Combating Climate Change," we embark on a revealing journey into the future of nuclear energy's role in climate change mitigation. Host Chris Sass welcomes Tristram Denton, the director of commercial operations at Moltex, for a thought-provoking discussion on the cutting-edge advancements and strategies within the nuclear sector.

Chris Sass leads the conversation, touching on the critical aspects and challenges facing the modern nuclear industry, from public perception to technological innovations. Tristram Denton offers in-depth insights into the development and potential of small modular reactors (SMRs) and molten salt reactors, emphasizing their significance in achieving a sustainable, carbon-neutral global energy infrastructure.

Throughout the episode, listeners are invited to explore the historical challenges, current initiatives, and future prospects of nuclear energy. Denton discusses the importance of a diversified energy approach to effectively combat climate change, combining renewables with the untapped potential of nuclear technology.

Under Chris Sass's guidance, the dialogue delves into the regulatory, economic, and social factors influencing the nuclear energy landscape. The discussion highlights the importance of transparency, community involvement, and international cooperation in overcoming barriers to nuclear adoption.

This enlightening episode concludes with a look at the global impact of integrating advanced nuclear technologies into our energy systems. Chris Sass and Tristram Denton discuss strategies for engaging public and governmental support to foster a conducive environment for nuclear energy's growth and its crucial role in our collective environmental goals.

Join host Chris Sass in this compelling episode for an essential discussion on the transformative power of nuclear energy in our ongoing fight against climate change. This is an episode not to be missed by anyone invested in the future of energy, environmental conservation, and technological innovation.

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1 

Our children will not forgive us if we don't solve climate change and nor should they. 

00:00:07 Speaker 1 

We have known for years and decades that human activity is causing global climate change, and we have known for years and decades how to solve that. We need to stop relying on hydrocarbons. 

00:00:20 Speaker 1 

The clean energy sector has spent far too long debating amongst ourselves which technology is the best, who should sit where. 

00:00:27 Speaker 1 

The answer is all of us. 

00:00:29 Speaker 1 

The answer is we need renewables. The answer is we need nuclear, and within nuclear we need all types of nuclear. We need them at scale and we need them. 

00:00:37 Speaker 1 

Now. 

00:00:40 Speaker 2 

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, This is insiders guide to energy. 

00:00:55 Speaker 3 

On the program today with me is Christian Denton, director of commercial for Moltex. Tristan, welcome to the program. 

00:01:02 Speaker 1 

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. 

00:01:05 Speaker 3 

Your opening statement is pretty bold. How do you propose or what do we need to do to get away from hydrocarbons? 

00:01:14 Speaker 1 

Yeah. You know the statement is pretty bold because I think the response is to the problem needs to be pretty bold. 

00:01:21 Speaker 1 

Look, nobody's naive. Nobody's going to pretend we can move away from hydrocarbons overnight. The global economy is clearly based on energy and hydrocarbons still form a huge and dominant proportion. 

00:01:33 Speaker 1 

That. 

00:01:34 Speaker 1 

But what we need to do internationally, as industry and as governments and as communities. 

00:01:41 Speaker 1 

Is pursue every option we have to decarbonize now. 

00:01:46 Speaker 1 

I come from a nuclear background and traditionally we've talked about the electricity sector and electricity has shown some progress towards decarbonizing. We've got nuclear power online globally with more coming, we've got renewables, making fantastic strides into that electricity mix. 

00:02:01 Speaker 1 

But I think if you look towards the years to 2050 and we must look at the years to 2050, we mustn't allow net zero to be something that drifts sort. 

00:02:09 Speaker 1 

Of. 

00:02:10 Speaker 1 

Openly on into the back half of this century. 

00:02:13 Speaker 1 

We need to complete and conclude the decarbonization of electricity. We need to complete the decarbonization of transportation, not just vehicles on the road and trains on the rails, but of ships and of aviation. 

00:02:26 Speaker 1 

And this brings us into deep decarbonization. We need to decarbonize industry. 

00:02:31 Speaker 1 

Hydrogens are fantastic sort of option for the future that absorbs a huge amount of discussion, but we do need to look beyond that. We need to look at the whole range of industrial processes going on in communities across the world. 

00:02:42 Speaker 1 

And look at how we can achieve those same ends, how we can achieve the same outputs for commute. 

00:02:46 Speaker 1 

And how people can continue to enjoy the the lifestyles that we have and how more people can come to have those, those comfortable, affluent ways of living. 

00:02:56 Speaker 1 

But in a way that is sustainable and to do that, we've got to remove huge amounts of fossil fuels from the global energy mix. Now there is. There's no one answer to that, right. And any technology which claims to be a silver bullet, I I'd raise an eyebrow with a bit of skepticism there. 

00:03:12 Speaker 1 

The answer has to be the right technology for the individual problem, so whether that's bringing renewables on for electricity grids. If you look at areas with high sunshine, absolutely solar must be a major part. 

00:03:24 Speaker 1 

That I'm in the UK, where wind powers are phenomenally important part of our our electricity mix, because for folks who don't know the UK as well as I do, it's often windy. 

00:03:33 Speaker 1 

But you then need to look at what more nuclear can do, and I particularly work in a part of the nuclear industry which is called advanced nuclear technologies, not your classic GW scale electricity machines, but nuclear facilities to produce heat, perhaps nuclear facilities, to produce responsive demand, lead electricity to to complement renewables so that you can come in when they drop off. 

00:03:56 Speaker 1 

This is the way we have to evolve the electricity system and the energy system to meet the challenge that is real and that is pressing. 

00:04:04 Speaker 3 

So how does nuclear industry need to evolve? So I believe you work in smars or small modular reactors. How is that an evolution in moving things forward? 

00:04:14 Speaker 1 

Yeah. So, look, nuclear has played a huge role globally over the last sort of 50-60 years. And I think there's lots of people who can be very proud of what they've done to to remove carbon from, from, from the mix. 

00:04:26 Speaker 1 

But I feel I think many of my colleagues feel it can and should have done more. 

00:04:31 Speaker 1 

And looking forward, I think the industry is united in believing it absolutely must do more. 

00:04:36 Speaker 1 

We are going to need more base load electricity generation. If you look at electricity demand across the world, it's going upwards and some of the fantastic large centralized electricity generating systems that nuclear offers now are going to keep doing that and they'll. 

00:04:50 Speaker 1 

Keep doing it more. 

00:04:51 Speaker 1 

But over the last ten years or so, you've started to see two different sort of technical threads in the sector, small modular reactors, which are miniaturized versions of existing nuclear, largely light water reactors. 

00:05:06 Speaker 1 

And they're about two things. They're about deploying nuclear, sometimes more quickly, but also more affordably. And the big change there is these are sort of 300 MW electric systems very often, factory produced, reducing your on site construction, probably reducing your scope for delay. They can get lots more nuclear onto the bars faster and more affordably. And they're going to be key. 

00:05:27 Speaker 1 

To decarbonizing electricity. 

00:05:30 Speaker 1 

And then there's the second new stream in the sector, which is advanced nuclear technologies advanced modular reactors. And these look at all sorts of different ways. 

00:05:39 Speaker 1 

I work for a company called Moltex and we're producing A molten salt reactor. 

00:05:42 Speaker 1 

And whilst I won't dive into the technical differences, what matters to the end users is the output differences. 

00:05:48 Speaker 1 

These are systems that generally work at a much higher temperature, 700 plus degrees. That makes them suitable for something like 2/3 of industrial processes. It gives a much wider range of outputs, so you start to look at how can we use nuclear not just for decarbonizing electricity and driving the electrification of previously fossil fuel driven sectors. 

00:06:09 Speaker 1 

But how can we directly take nuclear produced heat and apply it to industrial processes? And I think the final, the final change with the Ant model as well. 

00:06:18 Speaker 1 

Nuclear is very often. 

00:06:21 Speaker 1 

Big high capital centralized, you know, each nuclear nation might have a small number of stations with big grid infrastructure around them. 

00:06:30 Speaker 1 

We need to decentralize nuclear. We need a lot more nuclear facilities. Working at factory level, powering communities, providing combined heat and power, giving direct offtake to heat used in industries as steel factories, you know, glass factories, desalinization factories. And crikey, if you look at the power demands of AI, these data centers are going to need serious on site generation if they want to be low carb. 

00:06:52 Speaker 1 

That's the exact part of the market that advanced nuclear seeks to fulfill. Now, of course, that means nuclear in more communities, it means the sects are having new relationships with new communities and and winning the social license to operate. But if you look at the product we're producing and the impact we can have on climate change, I think we can really. 

00:07:11 Speaker 1 

Offer something there. 

00:07:13 Speaker 3 

Now you talk about advanced technology like this is new, but molten salt's been around since the 50s. I think they did some experiments in the labs, at least here in the US in the 60s, and then it kind. 

00:07:22 Speaker 3 

Of went by the way, in the 70s. 

00:07:25 Speaker 3 

So why the resurgence? 

00:07:27 Speaker 1 

Yeah. What's different? Look, we've known about molten salt for a long time, and the concept is simple, right? There's two things that make molten salt attractive to to a nuclear operator and developer. Firstly, it works at atmospheric pressure. So you're not containing pressure within it within a vessel. That's an inherent safety benefit. The second point is that the majority of the fission products that sort of the nuclear nasties. 

00:07:47 Speaker 1 

That we're all familiar with, rather than being held in the system as pressurized gases or liquids, they're held as liquid salts and those will freeze solid at 600 plus degrees, which means in the very worst case safety scenario, if you have a breach of containment. 

00:08:02 Speaker 1 

Those fishing projects would trickle and freeze. 

00:08:06 Speaker 1 

And that means you immobilise all of that risk on site within the fence line, not into communities. 

00:08:12 Speaker 3 

And then what kind of skills would someone need? I mean, there there's advocates of having these things more be more easy to operate, but then the then the people that want to negate that would say, well, it's easier for things to slip through if people aren't paying attention. So what? What skills and what kind of operators do you need if you're a large industrial complex and you want to have your own power? 

00:08:32 Speaker 3 

Plant. So you, you you sign up for one of these, you're making steel or some sort of thing. 

00:08:36 Speaker 3 

Where you need the tremendous heat or the power. 

00:08:39 Speaker 3 

What skills need to be on? 

00:08:42 Speaker 1 

Yeah. Look, nuclear is a sector where we have to be always aware of what we're doing and always mindful that we need to sustain the support of communities. 

00:08:52 Speaker 1 

Nuclear is one of the most highly regulated sectors in the world. Rightly so. 

00:08:56 Speaker 1 

And I am entirely confident that operators have safety as their number one priority and that regulators work with them to ensure that that will never change. 

00:09:05 Speaker 1 

In terms of. 

00:09:06 Speaker 1 

What? 

00:09:08 Speaker 1 

In terms of how you see the sector evolve to meet the needs of of direct off takers, what I don't think you're going to see is every steel factory operator in the world, every data center operator in the world or every desalinator in the world suddenly also becoming a nuclear operator. The capabilities you need not just technically but in terms of your systems, your processes, your procedures. 

00:09:27 Speaker 1 

To comply with regulation mean that's unlikely to be desirable. 

00:09:31 Speaker 1 

But what you absolutely could see is facilities adjacent to those high industrial energy users being developed by reactor providers like mine and then being operated by by nuclear operating entities, of which there are many in the world, most notably associated with one of the World Association of Nuclear Operators who could come in and in essence provide power as a service. 

00:09:51 Speaker 1 

My judgment is this. The end users, factory owners, they don't want to get involved in the nuclear operations. What they want to know is they're going to get power, they're going to get it at the price they've agreed. They're gonna get it reliably. They're going to get it safely, and they're going to get it in a way that they can sign off as low carbon and sustainable. And that's exactly where nuclear takes us. 

00:10:11 Speaker 3 

All right, so let's go back to the advanced technology part of this. What's changed? We talked about the molten salt you you gave some of the benefits that you perceive there. What are their safety or things that have been incorporated in a a modular reactor? They're different today than maybe something that we've experienced in the past. 

00:10:30 Speaker 1 

Yeah, I mean we we should start off by recognizing the incredible safety work of all nuclear operators globally. No, no nuclear technology company should ever bring into question that the plants operating next to homes and communities are safe. 

00:10:42 Speaker 1 

What we do differently is we achieve that safety in a different way and in a lower cost way. 

00:10:47 Speaker 1 

So the purpose of a molten salt reactor, for example, we've changed the way you reach that. We've changed the way that you contain your salts. We've changed the way that you manage mentality and chemistry, and we've changed that through long, hard yards, right, the, the, the, the journey to moltex having the flex reactor ready to bring to market isn't a good idea overnight. It's 10 years of work in the. 

00:11:07 Speaker 1 

Rap, largely through sacrificial chemistry and things like that. 

00:11:12 Speaker 1 

What I think the sector is now able to do differently is rather than having concepts of what a future reactor could like look like over the last 10 to 15 years, developers have slowly and painstakingly worked through this technology evolution and are now entering that real engineering delivery phase. So we've got real products to bring to market with real cost estimates and real design. 

00:11:33 Speaker 1 

There are not huge swathes of advanced nuclear operating on the grid today. 

00:11:38 Speaker 1 

But in 10 years, there absolutely should be because those technologies are ready now to turn into real projects and they're ready to start yielding that benefit. 

00:11:45 Speaker 3 

And then another thing that comes up with development of reactors in my research has been the fuel types that you used. 

00:11:52 Speaker 3 

Describe a little bit about what Moltex is doing with the fuel and and what differentiates reactors of the fuel. 

00:11:59 Speaker 1 

So let me let me try and draw a picture in the mind's eye. If I can of how Moltex reactor works and what the fuel looks like within that. In essence, the original concept of a molten salt reactors that you'd have a huge vessel of of radiological salt that would have the reaction within it. And that would be pumped around the nuclear system go through a heat exchanger, create heat, power a turbine or secondary. 

00:12:20 Speaker 1 

What Multix did was separate that radiological fuel salt from the completely non radiological coolant salt. Our fuel salt stays in a pin just as any fuel stays in appear in any other nuclear reactor, so that's held in the middle of the vessel and around that you have a flowing completely non radiological coolant salt. 

00:12:38 Speaker 1 

What that does is the heat comes out of the pin into the coolant. It naturally connects rather than being pumped around the nuclear loop and comes through the heat exchanger. So the way we architect our fuel is to stay nicely contained, separate from other types of salts. If you look more broadly across the nuclear sector. 

00:12:57 Speaker 1 

This is all uranium based or mixed oxide based fuels. There's not a huge variation in that. There are detailed technical differences that people like myself find very interesting. There's differences in the way it's produced and there's differences in the way that you architect the safety case. Some of the fuels inherently are are harder to leach into the system. 

00:13:16 Speaker 1 

The key point here is that uranium remains an incredibly energy dense source of fuel. 

00:13:22 Speaker 1 

What it's about is accessing that energy density in a way that is safe in a way that is affordable and in a way that is is effective for off takers. And that's where advanced nuclear is, is just challenging some of the norms of doing things that have been around since the 50s in the in the larger nuclear plants that we all know and and work work sort of next to or or indeed just use the energy from. 

00:13:43 Speaker 3 

And then you know. 

00:13:45 Speaker 3 

Lot of proponents of using nuclear as base load. 

00:13:49 Speaker 3 

How is this quick to spin up? How is this quicker to get turbines or get energy spun up than perhaps what we're used to today? 

00:13:56 Speaker 1 

Yeah, look, nuclear can't special plead the the historic argument that we're expensive, but we're worth it and we have to be based low. That can't go on. That's not how you change in energy system. 

00:14:07 Speaker 1 

I believe, and I think many of my colleagues believe, that electricity grids in particular are going to become renewables dominated across the next couple of decades and they should, right renewables are clearly the way forward for electricity. 

00:14:20 Speaker 1 

But it's a fact that you need other sources of energy to come in and. 

00:14:23 Speaker 1 

Provide the peak load support above those. 

00:14:25 Speaker 1 

Now there is always going to be a base load component nuclear offers. 

00:14:29 Speaker 1 

But once you add that renewables on top, you're still in a position where governments are looking to gas some governments even looking to unabated gas as the answer to top up peak load. 

00:14:39 Speaker 1 

The way that Moltex technology works is we have built-in storage, so we create heat in our reactor. We then hold that in our molten salt energy storage system, and we can discharge it through the turbine when the grid needs it. One of the example cases might be that you could run our reactors 24 hours a day, which is great. 

00:14:58 Speaker 1 

You hold that in the energy storage system, but then you discharge for 8 hours a day when peak energy demands. 

00:15:03 Speaker 1 

So in essence, A500 MW electric plant contributes to the grid in a way that a 1.5 GW electric plant would do. Without that flexibility, these things can spin up on a comparable timeframe to fossil fuels, which makes them absolutely vital to displacing gas from from the electricity mix. 

00:15:21 Speaker 1 

And and displacing gas is a difficult phrase, right? Because it's so dominant. 

00:15:24 Speaker 1 

But that's what we need to do if we want to hit net zero, we've got to get serious about driving fossil fuels out of the electricity mix and out the energy. 

00:15:32 Speaker 3 

Mix, so it seems like a common thread that long term. 

00:15:36 Speaker 3 

Dirt, long duration storage and and thermal storage seemed a couple quite a bit, at least recently in interviews I've been doing. How big is this? So you have your your module reactor. How big is this storage component need to be in order to give the kind of hours that you're talking about. You know, if I have 8 hours of capacity or something like that. 

00:15:56 Speaker 1 

Yeah. So this is a serious industrial facility, each one of our reactor modules is about the size of a sort of four bed detached house. I'm afraid that's really British parlance for international folks listening to this, but it's a it's a moderate family home that's about the size of one of our reactor blocks. And to give a 1/2 GW electric install capacity, you probably have about 20 of those. 

00:16:16 Speaker 1 

Laid out what you then have is a footprint about half as big a gain for secondary plant including salt storage. So it's a big industrial facility. It's not a sort of small micro piece of technology. 

00:16:27 Speaker 1 

But it's completely within the overall delivery of of of a of a nuclear of a power station. I think the thing about storage is. 

00:16:36 Speaker 1 

We can't build an energy system based on off takers and users having to have it when we're able to produce it, whether that's nuclear based load or whether that's renewables dependent on externalities, we have to get storage. Batteries are clearly fantastic for fast response, but for medium and long duration storage, you absolutely need a thermal component. Molten salt systems like ours. 

00:16:56 Speaker 1 

And give you many, many days of storage which gives you really strong flexibility to drive costs down. 

00:17:02 Speaker 1 

And sustainability up in the grid. 

00:17:05 Speaker 3 

I think I read somewhere that your your program is that what the reactors were about 60 years you expect out of one of these or how how long is it that you expect one of these to go? 

00:17:13 Speaker 1 

Yeah, that's the design basis life. We think 60 years is an appropriate point. We're going through the engineering of the product now and and these things can sort of ebb and flow as you learn more. But 60 years is a reasonable time frame for one of these plants. It's not the same capital intensity as a as a large scale nuclear power station. 

00:17:29 Speaker 1 

But we are absolutely looking at infrastructure on there. 

00:17:30 Speaker 3 

And that that's where it's going to go right in the renewable world with capital, you know, 30 year assets seems crazy, you know 20 year asset still seems crazy. 15 years may seem like forever in an energy transition. 

00:17:42 Speaker 3 

How do you go? 

00:17:43 Speaker 3 

About getting people bought into buying an asset that's going to be there for very long time in terms of energy transition. 

00:17:51 Speaker 1 

Yeah, nuclear works on long time frames, right? But uh, we're often pointed out how long it takes us to deliver. And I sometimes point back at how long we then contribute for. 

00:18:00 Speaker 1 

You're talking about. 

00:18:02 Speaker 1 

A generating asset that can produce electricity. We anticipate around 30 lbs a MW hour electric around £10 a MW hour thermal for direct heat offtake. These are incredibly competitive energy prices. So the the investment is a perfectly tolerable one for a serious industrial user, or indeed for a moderate scale grid. 

00:18:20 Speaker 1 

Operator that you would expect the asset to run for 60 years, you wouldn't have to run it for 60 years. But the key point here is about delivering energy at the right cost. What you then have to make sure you do as any nuclear developer and operator is manage your back end. Make sure that your waste arrangements are in place. Make sure your decommissioning arrangements are in place. Technically, none of this is complex. It is all perfectly manageable. 

00:18:43 Speaker 1 

The history of the sector is in the early days it wasn't done right and I think that's one of the legacies that we're probably still living. 

00:18:49 Speaker 3 

And I guess that not done right part also leads to public perception. 

00:18:55 Speaker 3 

And regulation where we're at, I mean, if you look at the, the, the lean years where everyone said ohh you know EDF and France was so smart, but then they had all the water cooling and they they had trouble with with still had global temperature impact because the, the rivers they couldn't run all their plants. What is the regulatory framework feeling like and what countries are embracing this? 

00:19:16 Speaker 3 

Early. 

00:19:18 Speaker 1 

Yeah, that nuclear will always and rightly be be highly regulated. We shouldn't try and get away from that. And I don't think anyone is what we need to make sure is that the regulation doesn't provide an unnecessary and disproportionate barrier to entry. If you've got a a client who wants to off take nuclear energy, if you've got a reactor that is safe, properly designed and capable of passing every benchmark test, and if you've got an operator of. 

00:19:38 Speaker 1 

Of fit and proper standing, ready to run it now my view on decarbonization is those are the three things that give your product that should be. 

00:19:44 Speaker 1 

Go ahead. I you know, I've worked a lot with the UK regulator and I thought I find them incredibly enabling regulation drives us all to do our best and I think that's good. I think what we need to see internationally is the greatest possible collaboration between regulators. What you do not want to end up in a position where is you are. 

00:20:05 Speaker 1 

Completely from scratch, Re approving a single plant design in every country that adopts it. That's not the way you work in the airline industry, for example. 

00:20:15 Speaker 1 

Naturally, each country has their own sovereign obligation to approve technologies, but greater sharing of information, greater sharing of assessment reports, greater sharing of details will enable that to be done in a faster and more cost effective way, which means we can get stuck into decarbonizing ever more quickly. 

00:20:31 Speaker 3 

And So what countries are kind of leading that charge? 

00:20:35 Speaker 1 

I think you're seeing more and more internationally. I think you're seeing across Europe. I think you're seeing increasingly in, in the US and Canada, real moves for for smars and amors. 

00:20:47 Speaker 1 

Naturally, it's been those sort of traditionally big nuclear markets that are leading the way. But I think we need to look at the longer term objective here, which is to decarbonize globally. You know, if if we look back a few years to the, to the COVID pandemic, one of the one of the statements often made was. 

00:21:03 Speaker 1 

There's. 

00:21:03 Speaker 1 

No point. Just vaccinating the UK, we need to vaccinate the. 

00:21:06 Speaker 1 

World, you know, like, like COVID, climate change is an inherently international problem. We need to decarbonize the world. And those countries that already have established nuclear systems, regulators, infrastructure, waste management arrangements need to be looking to enable other countries to adopt nuclear technologies to get the decarbonization benefits. So. 

00:21:26 Speaker 1 

While it's the US, Canada, Europe, Korea, Japan's fantastic program out in the UAE at the moment, whilst it's these established nuclear nations that perhaps on the front foot we absolutely need to be looking far more internationally to to expand the role of. 

00:21:40 Speaker 1 

Yeah. 

00:21:41 Speaker 3 

Now, a couple of weeks ago I was at a A A a fusion conference here at MIT, and they were talking about supply chain issues on that side of nuclear on, on the fission side for small modulars, what's the supply chain look like? 

00:21:57 Speaker 1 

I think evolving. I mean, look, fusion energy is a fantastic component to this mix. It offers so much potential and I think all of us who care about the planet look forward to seeing fusion energy coming forward in, in the years and decades ahead just as we look forward to seeing advanced nuclear come forward in, in the years and decades ahead. 

00:22:12 Speaker 1 

The the reality of the supply chain, I think for nuclear is that globally the supply chain has been stood up and stood down too many times. They've been too many forced arms and nuclear too many times when supply is expected to provide for a fleet that never materialized or a fleet that became a small handful. 

00:22:29 Speaker 1 

If we want to see nuclear playing its full and complete role in decarbonizing the global energy mix, we need to give suppliers confidence that it's a sector to invest in. Manufacturers need to build the kit and build the factories to produce our vessels our components. Now they differ for all sorts of technologies. OK, every technology has its own requirements to supply chain. Some need more specialist care. Others, like mine, tend to use more commercial off the shelf. 

00:22:51 Speaker 1 

That's detail for another day. The key is to give the market confidence and actually there comes the skills answer as well. 

00:22:58 Speaker 1 

So many people say how do we attract more brilliant, capable people into the sector? And my answer is always we deliver, we deliver projects, we deliver for communities, we deliver decarbonization and through that certainty. 

00:23:13 Speaker 1 

You can focus then on the exciting nature of the jobs themselves and people will come into nuclear and be part of what is a fantastic and growing sector. 

00:23:20 Speaker 3 

But there seems to have been significant investment in small modular reactors over the last few years. Is that following or or is the talent following the investment? 

00:23:31 Speaker 1 

Yeah, I think I think the talent certainly follows the investment into smars and and and to and T if if you look at sort of the the scale of the sector, nuclear is still very much dominated by these big sort of massive delivery infrastructure projects of of GW scale reactors. They are a fantastic part of the sector and employ some brilliant people. What you see in the. 

00:23:51 Speaker 1 

SMRS is there at the sort of next stage of delivery starting to look at deployment projects and then the ants are are concluding technology design and moving into deployment. 

00:24:00 Speaker 1 

You'll see a change in the personnel through that period. You'll go from an R&D culture to an engineering culture to a delivery and operations culture. 

00:24:07 Speaker 1 

That's brought with it the right people with the right approaches. What I want to do now for those people, for the the colleagues in my own company and and colleagues across the sector. 

00:24:18 Speaker 1 

Is show them that we can turn the potential of Ant into real delivery. We need to start securing off take agreements with operators. We need to start securing power purchase agreements. We need to start securing grid connection licenses. It's all these things that are going to give those folks confidence that they haven't just developed a theoretically. 

00:24:36 Speaker 1 

This idea that they've contributed to the birth of a real product that's going to play a real role. 

00:24:41 Speaker 3 

How many of those people coming in come in? Typically in the US want to meet people there or in fact, even in Europe, they're former military. They they got their expertise through the military. Is there a huge civilian or is there enough of a civilian workforce to help this scale up with so many companies focusing on this? 

00:24:57 Speaker 1 

Yeah, for sure. Look, I mean, there's certainly a really valuable cohort of former military folks globally across the nuclear industry for sort of overlapping reasons of operating plant in various scenarios. What you start to see in, in my experience is you've got a sort of a middle point dip in the profile. 

00:25:12 Speaker 1 

Our industry, there's lots of folks approaching their middle and later careers who have got experience in nuclear and there's actually a fantastic cohort of folk coming out of university over the last 10 years really focused on sustainability, really focused on climate change, really focused on STEM skills and some of the most. 

00:25:28 Speaker 1 

Capable and frankly inspiring colleagues I've worked with came out of that, that sort of bracket. There is a gap of that people where nuclear didn't appear to. 

00:25:36 Speaker 1 

The future and what that means. It places more opportunity, but also more expectation on the people coming through in the last 10 or 15 years to take this sector forward. Many of them are scientists, many of them are engineers. What they've all got in common in my experience is a serious commitment to delivering nuclear plant. 

00:25:55 Speaker 3 

So what's the biggest challenge facing the industry now going forward? 

00:26:00 Speaker 1 

I think the biggest challenge facing the industry going forward. 

00:26:05 Speaker 1 

Is to show that we can do what we've promised. 

00:26:09 Speaker 1 

We're a sector that has had, as I said, too many false dawns or a sector that so many times promised affordable energy, promised energy at scale, promised fleet rollouts. 

00:26:18 Speaker 1 

And I don't feel, and this isn't to criticize those you've delivered fantastic projects, but I don't feel that we've ever really delivered on that. 

00:26:24 Speaker 1 

Potential. 

00:26:25 Speaker 1 

We need fleet rollouts of GW scale, plant fleet rollouts of SMR, light water reactors and fleet rollouts of advanced nuclear technologies. That is what's tough. How do we do that? We sustain the dialogue with governments on the policy measures that let us do that planning policy, energy policy, market structuring, we sustain the confidence of our suppliers to keep being ready when we need. 

00:26:47 Speaker 1 

And we keep attracting in the best and the brightest talent from the sector and over and above all of that, we keep talking to the public about who nuclear are, what we are, what we can offer and earning every day our right to operate in their communities. 

00:27:03 Speaker 3 

To the evolutions in the market, the spot markets impact how this development will go. So I mean every it's a business at the end of the day producing power and delivering power and with renewables, the markets are changing, they're dramatically changing our practices. The windows are changing. How does that impact your deployments in the? 

00:27:23 Speaker 1 

I think there's two. There's two ways that the markets are really going to affect nuclear. The 1st is product development financing companies, raising the money to develop new and innovative project products, which inherently have quite a long time frame to delivery. That's the first point at which you know challenges need to be overcome. The next point is project financing. 

00:27:42 Speaker 1 

Financing the construction of nuclear. 

00:27:44 Speaker 1 

World. 

00:27:45 Speaker 1 

While SMRS and Ant are nowhere near as capital intensive as GW scale, there are still significant projects with significant infrastructure commitments. We need to make sure that governments are bringing forward measures like the CFD, like the regulated asset base that we've seen in the UK to make sure that investors have the confidence to build those projects, the confidence to commit that capital. 

00:28:06 Speaker 1 

And we as developers need to make sure that we can give the investors confidence in our products that they will do what we say they're going to do. They'll perform in the way we say they're going to perform and that they will take us long to build. As we say, they will take to build. 

00:28:17 Speaker 1 

This shouldn't be an overrun sector. It's not an impossible sector to finance. We need to get to the point where we can deliver products and then turn them into projects. 

00:28:26 Speaker 3 

You implied earlier in your answer that you try to use commercial off the shelf parts wherever. 

00:28:32 Speaker 3 

Possible. So how does that make price comparison? How how much can that reduce the cost of a an advanced reactor? 

00:28:41 Speaker 1 

Yeah, like you know, there's there's a running joke with anything advanced in nuclear that do you rely on unobtainium? No, there's there's a challenge here, right? Because it's very easy when you work with scientists and engineers to get into saying. 

00:28:55 Speaker 1 

If this component could look different then we could achieve the following right? And you can start to get in some really great ideas there. One of the things Moltex have done and many others doing as well is focusing on saying we must be able to use materials. 

00:29:07 Speaker 1 

That. 

00:29:07 Speaker 1 

Exist. Now we must be able to use manufacturing techniques that exist now. We must not rely on anything that we cannot bank at the moment. 

00:29:14 Speaker 1 

And what that means is you potentially sure miss out on some opportunities to to use materials that may be on the brink of proof, what to use manufacturing techniques that look interesting. But what it means is you can immediately start building a solid cost basis. It means you can go to clients and operators and take us now and show them a design that you could build as soon as you got the contract. So multix, the focus has been on not. 

00:29:35 Speaker 1 

Hoping for things in terms of control and metallurgy that are unachievable. 

00:29:39 Speaker 1 

But relying on what's there now and driving ourselves, driving our chemistry team in particular. 

00:29:45 Speaker 1 

To say OK, there isn't an option to use something different that is a huge advantage. It's an advantage not just a cost, but it's a huge advantage to customer credibility as well. 

00:29:55 Speaker 3 

So if you had your crystal ball out today, five years from now, where is the industry and how many gigawatts are being produced from nuclear? 

00:30:05 Speaker 1 

Well, that I mean that that's huge five years from now I think. 

00:30:08 Speaker 1 

That feels probably like a a long time to a lot of a lot of folks. But in nuclear terms, that feels. 

00:30:12 Speaker 1 

Really. 

00:30:12 Speaker 1 

Really immediate, right. I think what you'll see in five years is the the GW scale plants currently under construction concluding that construction and contributing and showing the publics who funded them and the governments who backed them, why they were so worthwhile. I think you'll see the small modular reactor projects that are being proposed today in the UK and. 

00:30:29 Speaker 1 

Around the world, coming through the middle and latter stages of their construction and delivery period, showing they can do it on time and on cost and showing those communities they can deliver what they promised. And I think you'll see by then a significant number of investment decisions starting to be taken on advanced nuclear technologies, you're going to see off takers really believing. 

00:30:50 Speaker 1 

That when you can deliver energy at 30 lbs a MW hour with an on site safety case that you're a technology worth working with for that first of kind or the early 10th of a kind, I think you'll see those projects starting to come on. And then by the early twenty 30s, you'll see them starting to really buy. 

00:31:05 Speaker 1 

And I'm going to go one step further and say, where are we in 10 years? I think in 10 years, we absolutely must have seen a complete step change in the role. Nuclear plays no longer just centralized grid infrastructure, centralized grid plus decentralized grid, plus direct industrial offtake. That's when nuclear's got to achieve within the next 10 years. 

00:31:25 Speaker 1 

To play our role in decarbonising by 2050. 

00:31:28 Speaker 3 

Is is the biggest potential gate getting off takers or getting funding? 

00:31:35 Speaker 1 

The two feed one another right. If you look at it from a product development cycle off, take a confidence client traction is the number one thing you need to develop to show any credibility when you're seeking to raise finance. But showing that you can raise finance is the key thing you need to achieve to demonstrate to off takers that you're a real viable product coming through and you can deliver project financing. I don't think you can say one's more important than the other. 

00:31:57 Speaker 1 

This needs to be an industry that is well capitalized to move forward and do its job. And if you look at back to that point about a 60 year operation. 

00:32:04 Speaker 1 

Life the economics of nuclear have never been the problem. What's precluded nuclear was the scale of capital and the ability to finance projects to to final investment decision. That's the point at which you get to once you've got an operating generating asset, these things are a very, very investable asset and anti are faster, cheaper. 

00:32:24 Speaker 1 

And lower risk to build with a greater factory component that addresses the really tricky bit of where nuclear financing is always. 

00:32:31 Speaker 3 

So do you see this being an investment, a pension fund or something like that would make it's that comfortable a future or is there something still that's considered more of a speculative investment? 

00:32:40 Speaker 1 

Look, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna sort of speculate on who or or what organizations might want to come through to nuclear. And I think that will vary. 

00:32:46 Speaker 1 

From different parts. 

00:32:46 Speaker 1 

Of the sector, what I think is clear is that you're gonna see more nuclear projects coming forward. I think you're gonna see more EG criteria looking at nuclear and saying it's on the right side of history. And I think you're going to see the industry demonstrating it can deliver on time, on cost and. 

00:33:00 Speaker 1 

Quality at scale, and I think that's going to make everyone understand this should not be an unreasonably high risk investment either to develop new products or to deploy those through projects. 

00:33:10 Speaker 3 

Well, I thank you very much for being a guest on the podcast today. This has been a fun conversation. Thank you very much. 

00:33:16 Speaker 1 

Thank you.