Nuclear Reality Check with Yangbo Du, Entrepreneur and Innovation Lead @ Innovo

Yes. Yes. Welcome to another episode of The Grove. Today on the show, we have Yangbo Du. Uh he's a friend of mine. Uh he actually works directing partnerships at a company called Innovo. And what Anovo does, I still don't know because uh we didn't get into anything about his professional life, his experience scaling um startups. What we

actually got into was his very extremely deep knowledge of the history of nuclear in the United States and a little bit all over the world, but mainly the United States. is incredibly fascinating uh very educational uh conversation with Young Bo and uh I look forward to the next ones where we cover other information about his own

story. Um so a little less traditional but uh extremely for the grove but extremely educational nonetheless. Uh elaborate talks about a lot of different frameworks. There's a lot of information I elaborate on it on the blog on our newsletter um that you can subscribe to in the description. Thank you to our partners Craz and Friends for producing

and Clean Tech Growth Lab for making this all possible. If you're looking to grow in clean tech, it's Clean Techch Growth Lab. Any other industry, it's Craz Friends. And now I bring you Young Bo. All right, welcome to our episode partners shouted out just before we're on camera here with a very special guest

today, Yanu. Welcome. Yeah, hello there. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I no one else knows what you're reading for. Yo, and I met at a networking event a couple weeks ago and two minutes into the conversation I knew that we had today.

I wish we were reporting in the moment. Yes, indeed. There's just so much uh so much knowledge uh that you possess about um climate change uh and I mean everything else, but I'm excited about. So for everyone that doesn't know yet, can you give a brief introduction of yourself?

Yes. Um and um just very uh broadly um I've been in various capacities in sustainability, social enterprise, sustainable development, any of these adjacent areas for about 20 years now, a little over with um six years uh research in energy and environmental um economics and policy and that's actually where I was most active as far as uh

nuclear is concerned. And then most of the uh 2010s I was co-founding uh various um startups one after another before transitioning over to the impact side of things around uh project preparations. So somewhat full circle except instead of purely academic, it's now fully in the uh private sector really focusing on what can be done in the immediate term to

achieve u 2030 climate targets. Got it. So, um, a lot of what we talked about on this podcast are how to, uh, bring ideas into the world specifically around cloud and that involves a lot more than just how to market, how to sell, you know, these types of thing.

Uh, and I think there's from a from a very high level point of view, uh, there's a very complex environment that a founder needs to be successful within. uh you know considering regulations, considering policy, considering um you know then uh market dynamics and buyers and all those types of things. Uh and so

the education that you got about nuclear specifically I think contributes a lot to understanding what makes it what what create what environment makes it possible for nuclear to be successful. Uh and then also you know asking the question where does it fit and do we even want it to be successful? So um if

we want to start out um uh you know because I'm interested in also your experiences with the startups but could you start at half like the role of nuclear in the US? Yes. Um to to just set the stage here with um nuclear that the US above all was one of the early movers in nuclear

for power generation. Um, the first reactor that came online was back in 1957 in Shippingport, uh, Pennsylvania. And it was a direct, uh, yes, indeed, shipping port, shipping port, Pennsylvania, almost to the Ohio border on the Ohio River, uh, not too far downstream from Pittsburgh actually. and um it was a direct derivative of

reactors used by the uh US Navy in that period on um submarines and very soon aircraft carriers. So for those who um have heard questions about small mod reactors today, well those were original SMR, small mod reactors. They were no more than 20 to 25 megawws. Um so mostly designed for um shipboard propulsion

is that the definition of it v the definition varies a lot. So there's some that go even smaller some that get even larger than that. By the 60s, what was becoming evident is that there were definitely economies of scale with larger reactor designs, which is actually why in the course of the 60s

there started a shift towards larger reactors. So instead of tens of megawws capacity, you're now looking at hundreds. And if we just isolate it to all of the reactors that are still operating uh today, the earliest or let's say more recently because some of the u those from the uh early ones have

already been uh decommissioned. But uh from late60s onwards, those that were purpose-built for commercial power generation, those were in the 500 to 600 megawatt range. And then later ones um through in as you got in the 70s later ones were specified at even 800 even close to uh a gigawatt.

So so just to put it into perspective how much power is that like how many homes I mean people uh roughly is that those countries like how much energy they have? Well, to um just give you an idea and um when actually I was in living in the state of Illinois 20 years

ago that the state of Illinois had a handful. You could count you could count the number of nuclear plants on one hand in the state of Illinois. So back then the active ones were Byron, Braidwood, Dresden, Cordova, and Clinton. Look at that.

Those are five reactors, five plants. And if you count the total number of reactors uh at the Byron and the Bragwood plants and the Byron, Bragwood and um Cordova facilities, each of them had uh two reactors. So got eight nuclear reactors and that provided roughly half of the electricity load in the state of Illinois which then had a

population of about 12 million. So you're looking at 6 million roughly. So 6 million about roughly about Philly metro sized. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, so then um I think also to uh set the stage for we talk more about how the development changed after the 60s and things like this, could you talk

about briefly what uh a nuclear facility even is and where it falls in in the conversation of green fuel or or not, you know, how much? Yes. And nuclear it is very much so if you take a spectrum of power generation from firm to flexible nuclear is very much on the firm side as in you you have

just like any plants that have a steam boiler since every pretty much every nuclear plant today uses a steam cycle for power generation. So um you have a nuclear reactor and what that does is you run um water through it. It becomes steam. Again the specifics vary based on the actual design but basically you're

just heating steam to um 300 um some degrees Celsius much like a coal or a natural gas combined cycle plant. Again it's that that's different. And it drives a turbine and then that generates electricity. So that's really how it operates. And it generally takes a pretty long time to ramp up if you have

to get it up from a cold start or if you have to follow loads. So typically you just keep the plant going unless you need to refuel or otherwise undertake some plant maintenance. You keep that plant just running 24/7 as much as possible. So then um the um trouble there is you're then have to figure out

when the load is low like during overnight hours where that additional uh power is going to go. So there are pluses that it's definitely firm. It provides reliable power 24/7. The minus is that it's not flexible at all.

Okay. All right. Good. So now we're in 60s. Yeah. And we have uh several uh plants. uh some of the symbol and some of the multiple reactors uh mostly concentrated in Illinois. Um no not just not just in Illinois. So Illinois was one of them but there were about so most plants most

of the plants then were either in were in the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast. Those are the early ones. reasons for that. Does it need a significant access to water or or just uh well you're for like just like wherever if you're citing a coal or a natural gas plant, you do need some way to cool the

facility. So water of course is indeed a situation. That said, what plants what nuclear plants in Arizona, they actually use treated waste water. So it becomes far less of an issue. So wa so water is definitely a constraint but back in the 60s uh the concern was more it was more about where is the load growth going to

be that there's going to be increase in the 60s there is expected because of um widespread um electrification in the 60s um there was expected to be large growth going forward and thus that was why many utilities even many of the smaller ones felt justified in building new nuclear plants to support additional load.

Okay. So that provided uh the demand was that there was a conversation among the utilities in the United States where they said there's going to be uh an outsized demand for that's right electricity that we need to meet right and nuclear is right. So nuclear was one of them. So and nuclear was of course and again it

played well in the 60s uh given with the rise of the environmental movement then the resurgence that nuclear has zero emissions at the operating plant level unlike coal or gas power plants. So that was a key advantage and um they also of course uh were they didn't have as much material throughput as needed.

So if you make a comparison if you basically have a fistful of uranium as in lightly enriched uranium as a nuclear reactor fuel for power generation purposes. Just a fistful of that can provide enough energy as a pile of coal as big as a two-story house.

Wow. Okay. So, so then so then we're in the 60s. Nuclear has these advantages over fossil fuel also has the momentum from the environmental movement. Yeah. What happens as far as um deployment and building and utilization? Yeah. So as we move into the 70s, so by the early 70s by um 7374 um that period already there were over

100 orders for new plants. So some had multiple reactors, others had only one reactor and about 40ome utilities across the country were um had active plant orders at that time. And what started happening was that these nuclear plants, some of those early ones, they started running over budget and running over uh schedule.

And one of the um biggest drawbacks then of how nuclear deployment happened in the US from the late60s and the early '7s was that the different utilities all of them had a somewhat bespoke design of a nuclear plant.

Every single one. almost almost every single one that they had specifications that were bespoke enough that there wasn't much of a learning curve that whereas for example like learning curve is such that as you keep repeating builds it's often said that every doubling of installed capacity for any power plant would especially if it was a

relatively A new technology like nuclear was back then would result in anywhere from a 10 15 maybe even 20% reduction in unit costs as you keep adding capacity as you keep so there there are two economies scale. But one economy scale is bigger and bigger plants as in because no matter how big or how small your

nuclear plant is, you still need the balance of plant in place. And those don't vary as much as the size of the facility costwise. So the bigger the capacity of your nuclear reactor is then the higher total cost is but you're the lower your unit cost per unit of capacity is going to be

but it but there is a limit I would assume physically or financially big u certain can be there is indeed a um there is indeed a limit to that um though again there because I there was only one back in my own research, there were very few studies that actually demonstrated there was any type of diseconomy of

scale as you get uh bigger. And even with that, even with that study, it's only when you get bigger than a gigawatt where you maybe could see some dis economy of scale. But but yeah, but typically more so even if you compare where most nuclear reactor vendors settled on today, it's much closer to

one and a half gawatts and 1 gawatt. So bigger plants, if you really want to have a maximum economy scale, bigger plants, not just bigger plants, but your second economy scale is you'll need to build that same plant over and over so you can realize the learning effects.

And the big miss that US utilities in the early '7s made was having each having a bespoke design. So there wasn't that learning effect from repeat builds. Fascinating. So, so then you had said at this point there is um uh it's a mortgage between 100 and 150 uh you said orders order or orders for plants

and 40 that were in process. So if you if you were to take all the plant orders that at one point there were at least 170 180 even close to 200 reactors on order. And an order is something that is submitted waiting to be approved by some body, right? So bas basically an order would

be anything that has come up for permitting as in a utility. So again go back to early '7s. This was before electricity markets were partly deregulated. And though some states still have tightly regulated electricity markets, especially in the southeast, but back then that was when pretty much every region in the US still had

traditionally regulated utilities. So what an utility would do is they would file a petition to the state public service commission. So typically those are the regulators for uh new power generation or water generation or any type of infrastructure and they'll make a case that we need additional capacity because under regulated system utilities

are allowed to recover the capital cost of building new capacity through charging higher rates to customers. So that's why they need to petition the state public service commission to approve a rate increase so they can fund new capacity additions.

This you mean by order order? Yes. So they filed they filed for permits to build a plant and as many of them as they were approved about a third of them never actually end up happening. And mostly because they were just simply cancelled. that that um for a number of reasons. So as we progressed into the

'7s, first the low growth that was projected back in the 60s, not it was far lower than with projection. Oh, I see. So by the late '7s it turned out the justification for new plants became a lot weaker. And in fact actually until 2007 so for a whole 33 years a third of

century from 1974 until roughly 2007208 there were no orders in the United States for any new nuclear plants. Was that was that because the environment just didn't uh support it or was it because of this low conversation like was it back?

So this was before there were changes in the regulatory environment because that only happened in the late '7s where there were changes in the regulatory environment that made permitting a lot more stringent. So it wasn't strictly people said don't build. No, this this was this was before and it wasn't even the regul necessarily

regulators making it very hard. It was that many of these utilities, they just and even um to this day for many utilities, especially back then, the cost of building one of those nuclear plants, the amount of equity needed to build a nuclear plant in some cases was already close to half the market

capitalization of any of those utilities. So already it was what was already doing is that well if you're in that situation if you need to put half your market cap as equity in new power plant then that is going to cause some issues with your ability to raise funds right and yes and indeed it said um that

half in fact if you take the 40ome of overall I think 47 or 48 how however many utilities that actually filed to build nuclear plants. Half of them either ended up insolvent and liquidating or being forced into an acquisition into a by a much bigger utility.

And 40 of them had their credit ratings downgraded by at least a full letter. Wow. This is this is in the late 70s. since since the 70s over time because what happened in the 70s is that because of cost overruns that many of these utilities they started running out of budget as and

again as people might know early mid pretty much throughout the 70s was an era of high inflation in the US typically high single digits low double digits in the 70s so with the high inflation what had been budgeted as outlays quickly was eaten up by rising price of inputs. So many of these utilities they

had no other option but to keep the laying which again cost just kept going up. So some of those plants what one would expect to take only five or six years end up taking 10 or even 15 years to complete.

Okay. So then if we could uh up a little Yeah. So we so we went from effectively uh the 1950s in the US where nuclear became viable enough for there would be an argument to commercially deploy right the 60s where there was uh first deployment second deployment there's confirmation that this could work

right um and then in uh the late60s there was a projection of the low growth that validated or justified that uh the the uh the investment in nuclear through the beginning of the 70s and then a combination of uh uh inflation and uh that load growth not realizing right and a lot of that load growth was

um thanks to it was a combination of two factors. one was very high because projections in the 60s they were still projecting mid to high singledigit um GDP growth so they were expecting low growth to persist and then in the stackflation area of the 70s GDP growth fell flat therefore there wasn't as much demand as

once projected and what deadened that load growth even further were post 1973 oil crisis efficiency measures. So before we get into what nuclear is now or the resurgence of interest that can you speak uh at all to um the publicity aspect of nuclear because it's gone back and forth as far as what

representation? Well, there was at one point a resurgence and if you go back 20 years, if you look into papers from 20 years ago, um even journal articles in many engineering magazines, they were proclaiming a nuclear renaissance is coming and this was 20 years back and that was on a heel. So you could

take if you take zoom out again with the whole history with early nuclear plants, you could say those were your generation one reactors. So even before there was a commercial reactor in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, the first reactor that actually produced any electricity for commercial purposes was one a year prior in the UK, Calder Hall.

Okay. And both in in both the US and UK there were a bunch of these Gen One builds as they say which were again direct derivatives of uh naval reactor designs. Then most reactors operating today are what they call called generation two. So gen two. So those were the 500 to 500 megawatt to 1 gawatt reactors that more

or less settled on the technology of lightwater reactors. And back in the 50s and 60s there were many competing technologies especially because back then there was a concern that uranium is going to be is a very is very scarce. So we need um to be able to create new uh file material for nuclear reactors. And

it turned out that that uranium wasn't as close as scarce as what was uranium uranium it was in the 60s when it's not it's not as scarce as initially believed. So that was why the utilities for commercial reactors they settled on lightwater reactor technology. So there was that generation 2.

Then in the '9s so again while the US stopped building reactors in the '9s though that was when um re nuclear construction was still across East Asia going on. So Japan, South Korea, mostly Japan in those days and you had what are called generation 3. So they had the same underlying architecture as generation 2 reactors

but enhancements like passive cooling and much more robust safety systems and the like. And then in the early uh knots, early after 2000, there was this class called Gen 3 plus as they say. So think gen 3, right? Think gen 3 with further enhancements.

And you're saying that was here that that occurred in the around the world. So, if you go back 20 years, um the Gen 3 Plus designs, um Westinghouse had the AP-1000. Um General Electric had their basically they had their uh new generation of uh advanced boiling water reactors.

And then in Europe u Arva well back then they were called Arava now renamed Arano after restructuring. Yeah Aria back when they were called Aribba then they had they were a consortium behind uh the European pressurized reactor or EPR. So you had those three different uh light water reactor designs that were what were called Gen 3 plus.

And on the regulatory side, it converged with um the roll out of what are called early site permits. So if you already have have a site for nuclear reactor, you can get permitted for one even if you don't actually have one under planning. You can actually get that site pre-permitted.

This was um about 20 years ago in the US. early sight permit coupled with combined licensing. So previous because previously with um if you wanted to build a nuclear plant you need to apply for a site license and an operating license separately.

Why was there interest from a regulatory perspective to make nuclear uh easier I guess or or to put momentum into the nuclear space? Like there's been it's like nuclear where it fulfilled was a point of consensus amongst advocacy groups that otherwise tended to disagree sometimes vehemently of each other.

Okay. So for as far as nuclear is concerned because it generated no emissions that it was acceptable not to all but to quite many environmental groups it was quite acceptable because it generated no emissions. It also fulfilled those who were trying to champion energy security as in having domestic uh power production. But

there's also the aspect um mentioned earlier is the aspect of how nuclear what nuclear's reputation is because there have been uh a few nuclear catastrophes that well there has been again to be clear about those the one reactor the the one situation that has really led to significant mass casual cases on site

was Chernobyl. That type of reactor design from the get-go was never permissible anywhere in the US because that reactor had no containment containment shell. So and also had a positive void coefficient as well that reactor where because like a void coefficient just to explain it simply is um that normally let's say if you

superheat um water that cycles through a reactor once it's superheated it may you may form bubbles or voids. So void coefficient is as voids form what happens to the nuclear reaction. So a positive void coefficient means that with voids the reaction level increases with negative it decreases.

And in fact, from the get-go, reactors where the positive void coefficient have been illegal to construct in the US from the get-go. So, Chernobyl wasn't really an issue there. That was it was a design issue that was complicated by operator error.

And and that design that is inherently flawed that you're saying is not allowed here, right? And then if we go back to the big mis um significant mishap that triggered evacuations which is three mile islands in Pennsylvania just to southeast of Harrisburg.

That incident what really happened was the safety systems they did in fact it was called a loss of heat sink. So there wasn't any place to reject any um decay heat. So for example, as in there was an overheating.

So the um water was uh boiled away. So therefore there was an overheating. Some parts of the reactor unit melted. But it was contained because it had a containment. It was contained within the pressure vessel. So that was the worst it ever got in the states.

And then now there was it was it was a precaution. They evacuate as a precaution. There was some release of radioactivity but minimal compared to say Chernobyl or even uh Fukushima over in Japan which that situation was also a design issue in which in a coastal area putting backup generators underground susceptible to flooding when there's a

tsunami as opposed to putting them above ground on the rooftop units of a reactor. Yeah, clear the name of nuclear. Those three uh I guess those three major cases they all have reasons and they are all considered in today's environment of constructive.

Right. Exactly. And with those there there really isn't anything because the thing with nuclear is that it's a lot easier because any pollution that comes from nuclear plant comes out in the form of solids as in spent fuel which in fact with the light water reactor designs you still have 95% of the energy latent energy still available

in a spent fuel. huge. Actually, a question I had question I was going to get into after I finished the the time on was that uh recently on an episode with this guy uh uh who runs nucleation capital uh I believe they were based in Florida or something like that. They invest in in modular nuclear and uh

that's something that he brought up as well was that there is um a lot of potential energy still left in what we dispose of in correct process. it it it's there. And then that was actually a motivation about just over 20 years ago. That was actually a motivation for what were called generation 4 reactors.

So generation So the difference between gen 4 and gen 3 is that generation 4 that was when it seemed so that alternative to the once through fuel cycle with light water reactors it seemed to be on the horizon as in having a closed loop fuel cycle.

So that was with Gen 4 and um it was um and there were several designs and actually the technology themselves have been around since the 50s uh in labs. So yeah, so now we're here at the uh at the 2000s and like you're speaking to we're at Gen 4 of the stage of of nuclear innovation.

Yes. Um and we went through this period where there was not development in the US at least in the US. There were reactors being built elsewhere in the world in the same time but there weren't any orders in the US.

All right. So take us from there. Where do we go from here? Okay. And with this whole nuclear uh renaissance talk about 20 years ago, what often came up in that period was while nuclear power plant construction trailed off in the US as we got into the 80s in France that was when they really started

picking up. France. Yes. Okay. And it's a big difference in how things are approached because France was your the only example only place where nuclear actually successfully displaced fossil fuels. Really? Yes. Because what France managed to do that the US couldn't was to reduce its oil dependence by any

conceivable amount. Okay? Because if you take French uh energy, I mean, if you take the total private energy demand in France, private energy and production in France, go back in the early '7s, 2/3 was in petroleum. By the mid 1990s, mid to late 1990s, it was down to one/3. And all of that

almost all of that of course there were all sufficiency measures but the actual displacement was thanks to nuclear power that what France did that the US did not do was concentrate on a single design of nuclear reactor. Okay.

Different capacities. So not all plants had to be exactly the same size. So had three different sizes roughly. But as they um got into the later builds, as we got into the um the Gen 3 Plus after 2000, yeah, they also started having issues with cost overruns and budget over and the schedule overruns,

okay, with the new ones. And what that really points to is for nuclear, you needed a whole host of factors in place in order to deploy nuclear successfully. That you're going to need government buy in from the top level down.

Okay. Also standard design so you can do repeat builds. And then furthermore, you would also need a supportive supplier ecosystem around the plants. And that's something you can only maintain if you're building nuclear plants relatively continuously. Okay. As opposed to stop start.

Is there any place that has been doing that? Well, the one place that has so far come the closest to it. So France is a historic example. a current example that hasn't quite gotten there. They might be able to do so, but there's um grounds to believe it that's not going to happen. Is a China that they've had a

pretty good construction rate in terms of a new nuclear reactor coming along every month or two. However, it's they've still been consistently like with nuclear deployment has consistently been below targets government set. Okay. And what is actually cause for concern about can they sustain this? Can they work their way down the cost curve

further? Even though um costs are um pretty manageable so far because of high construction rate, they have the ecosystem place. They have that economy of scale there. Okay. But the fact that they're also trying to export a wide range of designs does not bode well going forward as as we've established with the USA and

France like you're saying right and then that also gets to concern now with um small module reactors which is same thing as larger reactors. you're going to need to focus on one design, choose a design, and build it over and over.

So, h have have SMRs, small mod reactors, has that become more popular? Uh I know they've been around for a long time, but have they become more popular and uh potentially more viable or at least more of an interest, attracting capital, regulatory um interest, all these things in the last 15 years or so? Would that

be accurate? There you can even trace it back a lot longer since if you go back 20 years there were there was study after study about different designs of small module reactors. What point did it starting did did companies start creating and new technologies start being deployed pilots things like that? You can go back um

around 20 years ago when there was a lot of talk then about a nuclear renaissance that this notion that the fuel cycle that the spent fuel issue can be solved. Okay. And what has always impeded reason that it was always impeded it was that there was really never a strong economic pure economic argument for it that you

can make arguments around national security or materials or anything about managing the spent fuel issue. So we're in the 2000s. So my last question you you brought up SMRs. Yeah. And uh we brought up the fact that um in the two up to the 2000s there were not new projects commissioned. Have there been uh question have there been

since the mid200s since this increased interest in SMRs any new largecale nuclear projects commission? Yes, there have been. And um as mentioned um earlier, the two places where uh nuclear plants have still been commissioned at a fairly rapid pace were uh China and South Korea.

And until at least until the Fukushima incident, even Japan, as in until then, Japan had a distinction of being one of the countries that never ever since the nuclear buildout began in Japan. Never actually had any gap year where there were no nuclear plants under construction.

Wow. Yes. So all the way up till Fukushima. Okay. That then prompted That's crazy. Yes. So Japan was on a few. South Korea, they also had fairly continuous buildout. Okay. And so did uh China even though they started a bit uh later.

So how about the US? um while uh while China, Japan and South Korea were doing so was there anything that um the rest of the world was able to learn from the rapid deployment of nuclear in in uh in those three countries? Well, it the deployments validated lessons from the French examples that

if you have a standardized design, a robust supply chain, you have all of a have a robust ecosystem of suppliers around the whole nuclear value chain. You have support from all the way from the top of the government like and which in France there was consensus around it.

You had direct top town government support. Those you needed those in place in order to actually conduct a dep rapid deployment of a nuclear of being able to even potentially even get plants complete in four to five years. And that's only if you were to incorporate modular construction techniques which would be justified again only when you

have a high construction volume. Okay. And that was one of the original arguments why SMRs could be viable. That they're smaller but you build more units so perhaps you can work your way down the learning curve faster. What is problematic about that though is for a nuclear plant, a reactor isn't always necessarily your biggest cost

object. Especially if your reactor is smaller, even have a small reactor, what increase your costs even more significantly with a smaller reactor is the balance of plant. Okay, that you'll still need power gener. Even besides that, let's say even if you size your power gener equipment smaller and uh let's say they're then cheaper to

acquire, you're still going to need fixed costs in terms of layers of defense around the perimeter, like no matter how big or small your reactor is. Okay, so that's the shortcoming. And given those requirements, anyone looking to build small module reactors would really do well to focus on sites where they're already existing reactors

because otherwise you're going to have to uh put in these layers of the fence again. Interesting. So, um I think that's extremely interesting that that because it seems very nuanced that piece of um friction that could that could hurt uh someone or a company's ability to bring uh this modular technology um uh to the

market. So that so I think that's very interesting. My follow-up question to that is what are your thoughts about the evolution of particular uh the technology itself how uh how the fusion is is happening because there's been innovations and there's a bunch of different approaches uh in SMRs and those different technologies. So what do

you think about that? So there have been waves of interest in um SMRs. So you got the 50s, you have the 70s till through the 80s and 90s, another wave from about 20 years ago and we're seeing now there's a um surge that now thanks to again it's almost like a replay of where

things were 50 60 years ago that load growth again because of data centers again don't know exactly how it's going to turn out. Um but what is very likely is that there's plenty of calls for um caution around that because especially with the data centers given how quickly like compared to compared to

power generation data centers given how quickly especially thermal power generation given how quickly technology ology behind chipsets and data centers evolve. Within 3 years, the data center that's just put up today may end up being obsolete. You're going to have to completely refit it because those ships go obsolete in 3 years.

Given where things stand because of high power requirements, there is a very high likelihood that more and more companies will shift towards much more efficient computing models in response. But what is the the okay so this is a huge theme in clean tech I think in general right now is the fact how much money is going to AI

therefore how much money is going into data centers therefore how much money is going into grid modification renewables different energy sources these types of things because through the Trojan horse of data centers it becomes economically now not just feasible but a requirement to diversify your power sources to make sure that you're not over reliant on any

particular That's right. Data centers. So what do you think about the application of these energy sources outside of the data center application? Do we need these anyway or is this only happening because of this data center? So big drivers data centers and even that is somewhat mismatched because running a data center yes you're going to need to have

availability but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have the same load 247 and if your load is going to vary basically hourly on an hourly basis nuclear is not at all a good fit for it because nuclear here is best matched with steady load 24/7.

So why is there why is there such a a heavy investment like I just read today like we were talking about that uh a bunch of the major tech firms have been making u major investments in nuclear and uh Meta hasn't until uh very recently this last week they announced a very significant investment um uh in a

in a big uh nuclear company. So what if if that's true you know what you're saying why is there so much attention from big tech in nuclear when largely with big tech um again one assumption is well even if you have basic if you have say nuclear power plants there is an operating assumption that

even when load is low you could still send the power somewhere else that even the implication with Google with them acquiring a power generation company is you can actually be you can actually then turn yourself into a utility potentially. So from what I observe and this is just my outside observation about this for the tech companies

they just are looking for ways of fundamentally more so an of option value as in potentially this going to pay off or might not and especially now given this rush into data centers the fact that if you want a gas turbine now the wait time is four And what some of those developers of

small mo larger reactors and even let alone small reactors, even some of the larger reactors, what they're promising is a new nuclear plant can be brought online within seven years. So well, if you still already need to wait four years for gas turbines, wait three more years and you can have a nuclear available. Mhm.

And um it's basically firm power. It's um zero um emission in particular and effectively in general with um nuclear. If you look at the overall track record and one reason why many of these developers of these new uh nuclear reactor designs have actually been getting some traction with the big tech firms is they're willing to pay a pretty

high premium for power that would then justify the highle wized costs of those first plants of that first design as in 20 30 cents a kilowatt hour. Okay. So where so with all this context and these little little things that we've sprinkled in uh two things the first thing that I want to return to is this is this uh

concept of the closed loop using the the nuclear waste as a secondary power source. Can you talk a little bit about um just short about the history of it where it came from and has there been an actual application of it? about the the closest the mo the furthest any case you find anywhere that the furthest

any entity has gone in reprocessing of spent fuel is again goes back to um Ariva so in French that what they have actually been doing for decades now is reprocessing spent fuel into what's called a mixed oxide fuel. So, it's not just uranium oxides, but also plutonium and other uh so-called transuranic elements. So, elements that are heavier

than uranium on the periodic table. Okay. So, they've been doing that and you don't actually get that much through the current process. You don't actually get that much more yield in terms of power. instead of four or 5% like 3 to 4% maybe 5% of the energy in um lightly enriched uranium that you're going to

have available you're more so may maybe five 6% okay so it's somewhat of an improvement but not too much and again the biggest drawback has been because the price of uranium has never really been consistently high enough to justify an alternative the to the ones through fuel cycle for commercial purposes.

Interesting. There really isn't any justification at least on a pure financial and commercial standpoint. Okay. So, okay. Well, that's interesting. So from a science perspective, physics perspective, chemistry perspective, right, it is possible, but it doesn't yield that much more uh fuel based on the current based on how uh the French do it now.

Okay. There have been other technologies that would require new reactive designs that can have um higher yield in terms of how much can be reprocessed. So in fact um if you dive um for back from the 70s until the early 90s there was a reactor called the EBR2 the experimental breed reactor over in Idaho

that was used to test a closed loop fuel cycle that was very safe by design. It had passive safety features. So it's already even 80s far safer than even many of the nuclear designs today. How quickly it shut down whenever there was a loss of heat sink or loss of coolant flow.

Sure. And also the main constraint then was you needed fully remote handling of the fuel which they thanks to advance in automation it's not a difficult problem solve. Okay. Now the challenge with that though is again it goes back to what is the justification that it's great to have that spent fuel available as a strategic

energy reserve but other than that what's the uh additional benefit? So does it just come down to the fact that you can't make a lot of money off of making fuel of the waste? So it's more economically viable to just store it or put it away.

Right. That that's that that's that's exactly why. And it's actually why it goes back to why for any successful nuclear deployment, you never actually had a successful deployment of nuclear power without heavy top-down government direction. M that if you're saying if you want nuclear deployment at mass scale, you're going to need very aggressive

intervention from a top down. But like from from from a from a fe like a like an actual standpoint of the reality of how things get done, isn't that very naive because I don't know anything about this actually, but isn't that the same thing as for example like the automotive industry? very heavily

subsidized by the government and if you if it wasn't as heavily subsidized as it is it makes no economic sense to make it produce cars. Well, there there are some differences though again there's some similarities in the whole in operating principles but the key difference is that compared to automotive if you com compare the volume

for let's say in one year 88 to 90 say if you just look at passenger cars maybe 80 million if you count commercial vehicles maybe 90 million how many motor vehicles are produced around the world every year? No idea.

90 million. Okay. Roughly. Roughly speaking, 90 million roughly. If you compare that to how many nuclear plants have been built around the world so far, that last count, let's say if you even count those that were building shut down, not even a thousand.

Not not even a thousand. And that's already over 75 years. Okay? Not even a thousand. Whereas 90 million cars get assembled a year. Okay? So therefore, let's say with cars, it's actually why in automotive industries, you can have multiple players that are significant. Let's say Toyota, GM, Volkswagen. Each of them between 8 to 10

million cars a year they manufacture give or take. at that level learning curve you can easily work your way down the cost curve at that level at that at that level of production. Okay. Whereas for whereas for nuclear many fewer builds and because every nuclear plant it's actually said that for nuclear there are a lot more what are called

longtail risks. Got it. of building a nuclear plant that assembling car right that book by the the Danish professor that uh yeah bent uh flebe what's what's the name of that book it's um so it's about project management right so it's his u no he's actually published it's not just a book but he's

published multiple papers that look into different types of mega projects yes yes and super interesting so and the one category of projects even with even greater launch on tail risks than a nuclear power plant is nuclear spent fuel management.

Really? Yes. So, okay. All right. Well, I I appreciate you going through that because that was definitely um because you have a lot more of the long tail risks with the nuclear in terms of what can trigger right a massive budget or schedule blowout.

Sure. But so so okay I I'll just ask where are we now and where are we going? So, so right now with nuclear, so if we're looking at the current context is what makes sense is already what no one can honestly deny is that even with the somewhat relatively speaking limited roll out of nuclear,

maybe with the exception of France, but nuclear roll out has far undersshot what its proponents of 5060s promised that and even some say even actually someone I know who uh also um who has been in this industry he even said that especially in the US that the nuclear industry and was still born as he called

it. Okay. And this was 15 years ago he had put that label on. So where we stand now is for nuclear what is the most viable approaches with the exception of some of the older nuclear plants which already there are requiring increasingly high incurring increasingly high maintenance expenses that if you were to need to upgrade them

or overhaul them sometimes in some cases uh it wouldn't actually justify keeping going. But other than those vast majority of reactors operating real world today that they could readily continue to operate for at least a few more decades.

Okay. Because what has actually been proven is that over offering records is that for a nuclear plant that an operating life of a nuclear plant instead of 40 years could in fact be extended up to 60 years without any significant uh safety issues. That's that's like recent research.

Yes, it's research that has been done from the '9s onwards when the first nuclear plants the first builds in the US they were nearing end of life as in originally permitted. Okay. And then there were a spay of them that applied for spay of operators that applied for life extensions. So keeping those running

ensures that we'll still have that low carbon generation available. So then so then that that deals with the the the large uh existing um plants that are operating but how about the state of the SMRs like you? So don't count on any SMR being available before 2030 given especially where they're now that

it will most of them will still require certification and let's say even you expedite the construction process post certification still the very earliest you can get a nuclear plant running like even in the best case scenario if you were to start planning one right Now the very best case scenario would be end of 2030.

Yeah, that would be your very best case scenario. Got it. So what makes sense is yes, keep those existing plants running. Okay. If you're looking to add additional power supply between now and 2030, go with look at what China is doing now.

Because what has happened is even as nuclear and China chronically undersshot targets in terms of buildout that at one point they were targeting in the um like 20 years ago they were trying to go for one nuclear plant every month. The best they were able to maintain was one nuclear plant every two months.

That's still s that sounds like such an insane number of plants still. Right. And um that wasn't too far off. That's even if you just by population that's not too far off. Yeah. From France's buildout from the late 70s till the early 90s.

So So I guess to to to help uh you know put a nice end to this this uh whole journey of nuclear that we've been on. Where does in your and this is opinion question so subjectively. Where does nuclear fall as far as building um a grid, building a society, a world, you

know, however you want to take it, where we're utilizing resources from the the planet uh responsibly. Yeah. And creating uh societies that are um that are sustainable in that way. So where does it fall relative to the other technologies? So if we look at nuclear so nuclear the best the biggest benefit from nuclear is the fact that there are

ready plants running and most of them can run for a few more decades without uh any adverse issues safety wise that's a big benefit right there already. Okay. Now, for anything additional to that, and this is just purely looking at if you're going to need to justify to any private investor around power,

there's a good reason why China, they've been increasingly waiting their efforts towards solar, wind, and batteries. Because those types of generators unlike nuclear, unlike coal, unlike gas, those are modular by design. That there is no risk. Like even have a nuclear, coal or gas plant, even if it's 99% or point, however many 9% complete, you

can't operate it. Whereas solar wind, even if you get it barely a quarter or even 10% complete, you just have a smaller facility, you can already be generating income. And because you have so many builds, as in it's very well suited to mass production, like automobiles for example. Sure. Like if you're building

solar plants or wind plants, those work a lot more like automobiles as in you have parts that are very would could be widely interchangeable, very commonly used that it's very easy to uh get online once you have the site ready.

Cool. And they're also uh especially with batteries, they're also very flexible. So you can easily very easily match the amount of power generated according to actual demand. Yeah. So if you actually want additional uh load you really what's is actually quite lowhanging fruit would be distributed generation across multiple kinds of technologies like

like distributed generation as in enabling distrib meaning that you would have especially large industrial customers have on-site power generation and also the cheapest right now by far the cheapest form of power right now. Like even if you just take it on a levelized cost basis, utility scale, solar and wind, even with battery storage, you're still going to

beat gas, you're definitely going to beat coal, and you're definitely going to beat new nuclear on a levelized cost basis. So, nuclear is great given that you already have an installed base in place, but going forward again maybe 20 years ago it was a different question because that was when solar and wind was still at a pretty

singular premium back then. Right now if we compare today given that the price of solar and wind has fallen by over 80% on the hardware even 90% in some cases then if you're really an investor in this if you're looking at what is the best use of funds as far as energy is

concerned you'd go with what can be deployed very quickly and economically. is there any so you answer all my questions nominally this is an amazing conversation I learned so much uh before my last question is there anything that you feel uh needs to be added in order to round out um this conversation about nuclear

well to really paint a picture of what a climate smart solution around energy supply could look like if we take all of the resources let's say if you take the whole European continent and there are fits and starts but they tend to be they're now going in direction of actually integrating uh the

grid at the continental level much better much like what China has been doing for decades by now is doing continental scale grid integration so if you take Europe for example France What is more useful to think in terms of France's situation is in France about 3/4 electricity in France comes from nuclear and in fact there's today yes

in fact in France they have so much power so much electricity from nuclear that even with exports of electricity during low demand hours to neighboring countries. There's still nuclear plants in France that must be ramped down because there just isn't any place to go.

Wow. So about a third of their plants actually do load following which of course they're not exactly designed to do. So therefore some of those have incurred some unplanned maintenance outages as of late. All right. However, let's say but if you take the continental scale of Europe instead of thinking threearters of French capacity, well those nuclear

plants in France, that would be a pretty good 10% of a future zero carbon European grid. So that would be your firm capacity that runs 247 no matter what. And with better grid integration across borders, you can then send that power it needs to be. So for example, you have in France, you

have your nuclear plants. Over in the North Sea, you have a lot of wind potential for offshore wind. You have like anywhere in Europe, plenty of opportunity for distributed solar generation, plus utility scale. If you're in Spain, Italy, Greece or Turkey, further north in Scandinavia in the Alps, you have a lot of energy

storage potential in terms of pump hydro. So if you connect all of those energy generation and energy storage resource together with a grid with a continental scale grid that nuclear that's actually where you can see what is the most appropriate role of a nuclear reactor fleet.

That is wonderful. Does that does that concept and and very well said well done. Does that two things does that concept apply to the US as well? It very equally it does. It's that the difference in the US is the US is a lot further behind then Europe and even further yet behind

China in terms of the grid situation. So, so is it actively happening in Europe that they're looking to connect across borders and make it like a continental scale? Yes, it it is active and lately there has been much greater push to it especially in response to escalation of uh war against Ukraine and

u reminder that war started back in 2014. Yeah. When Cremia was annexed, right? And then also parts of the Dumbbas and Eastern Ukraine were annexed. So with that escalation in February 2022 served as a greater impetus for Europe.

Sure. To reduce dependency on gas, right? Yeah. Got it. All right. And better grid integration is part of that. Well, that's that that's a that that's a good framing of I think ultimately where um you know if slash when I guess depending on who you are. Yeah. uh nuclear comes uh into being a major and

stable player in the mix of of energy generation. So I appreciate you adding that on top because that's really awesome. So my last question for you is with all this work that you're doing because we haven't even talked about this only been about nuclear, haven't talked about anything you're doing now, which we will we'll get to future

episodes. What inspires you? Well, for me it's uh it's always about it's pretty uh consistently it's making every next day better somewhere in the world that there's never going to be any form of an end state. So don't be deluded by any talk about that there's any end of history or anything like

that. It's always a matter of continuous improvement that just realizing that there's that pretty much every single problem we're seeing right now, it's been solved by someone somewhere in the world already. So, it's really all about learning from what's already exists and even some cases what has been solved decades ago. Y has been understood decades ago and just

understanding that there's a lot more similar. There's a lot more that can be learned than differences might suggest at the surface. Well, that's beautiful. I'm going to capture that. I'm going to quote it. I'm going to frame it. I'm going to put it on my wall. If anyone else was inspired, what's the best way to uh follow along

with your journey or get get in touch with me? Well, you could very easily uh find me online. Probably the only one that actually has much of an online presence, someone with my name. So nice. And that and that would be that would be Young Bo.

Yes. Yeah. If you just type my name in and on LinkedIn on LinkedIn or even if you just do a Google search, it's it'll probably come up. Gotcha. Well, thank you so much for your time. This is so much of it and I'm so grateful for it and I'm excited for future episodes.

Likewise.