Good Disruption: Small Nuclear

UVA Darden.

The Disruption, a lively discussion between UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka Cocaine and Mike Lennox on cutting edge technologies and practices that are challenging the status quo.

Hey Mike.

Hey, how are you doing today?

I am doing well.

Spring has sprung, and I love this season of the year.

It is a great time of year.

All right, I wanna start today with a word association game.

Oh, here we go.

I'm gonna give you a phrase, and I want you to tell me immediately what comes to mind here.

OK, great.

Nuclear energy.

Uh, no clear, no clue.

No, uh, association, nuclear energy, what do I associate that with?

I actually associate that with something actually negative, and I don't know why.

Tell me, tell me what, what comes to mind.

I know danger, uh, uh, concern, uh, uh, maybe, uh, unclear promise.

Uh, those would be my associations.

I, I wouldn't have been surprised if you said something like Chernobyl or Fukushima, uh, for me personally.

Growing up, uh, Three Mile Island, which for our younger listeners out there was a nuclear near miss, uh, back in the 1970s in the United States.

Uh, it was a little bit personal for me because it wasn't that far away from where I grew up, so it was huge.

This is around, around the time of Chernobyl, kind of we're talking about.

Before, it's almost a decade before actually, but what did happen almost around the exact same time was a movie called The China Syndrome.

Do you know this movie?

Yes, I remember.

So this is like Jane Fonda, this is a near miss, uh, this was obviously fictionalized, but it had a lot of parallels to what, you know, potentially it could have happened at Three Mile Island.

Um, the idea of the China syndrome was that a nuclear accident would cause a hole to go all the way down to China, which is not exactly what would happen, but, uh, the point, the point was made.

Well, I, I bring that up because I think when we think of nuclear energy, there is this kind of popular, maybe misconception about these accidents or near misses that we've had, uh, over, over our history.

Yeah, not, not so much about the near misses, which many people don't even know about, but definitely the.

Accidents that are very noticeable and well people are well aware of the ongoing damage until today.

Yeah, and I think with both Chernobyl and Fukushima, and obviously like huge impacts there that have impacted, you know, again, our perception and the reality there.

Well, what I want to talk about today is advances that are being made in what we call small module reactors, so SMRs.

Before we get there, could we back up a little bit and just in terms of the energy space, I know that you're, uh, you study this and.

Pay a lot of attention.

Uh, can you position nuclear in the landscape of energy sources?

Like, how does it shake up in terms of the different sources of energy?

Yeah, you know, the good and, and maybe the bad associated before we go to the modernization and where we're headed with in terms of innovation and disruption.

So here are the numbers.

So 440, uh, nuclear power plants, uh, throughout the world, uh, it just today is producing about 9% of all electricity, uh, generated.

OK, so still a fairly small fraction, I would say.

A small fraction, but an important one, nuclear energy provides what we call baseload.

Uh, you turn it on and it just consistently produces a certain amount of electricity, kind of moving forward.

So it's, it's great for that kind of baseload that we need to supply our kind of general, our general needs.

Um, maybe surprising to some of our listeners, the US is actually the leader and remains the leader in nuclear energy.

We have 94 large scale operating nuclear reactors at this point.

Uh, number 2 in the world.

Is France with 56, yeah, and France, interestingly, at various points in time have had close to 90% of their electricity supplied by nuclear.

So they, yeah, so they had been a big adopter.

Uh, third on the list is China with 55% and then Russia with 37.

Interestingly, Japan used to be one of the leaders in nuclear power, uh, having upwards of 33 different nuclear reactors for, you know, relatively small island.

Um, but interestingly, after Fukushima, they have now retired 21 of them, so they have greatly reduced their reliance on nuclear power, uh, since that, that accident there.

How does this compare, for instance, you mentioned the 9% globally.

How does that compare with, let's say, other.

Alternative energy sources.

Well, it's interesting when we talk about, uh, decarbonized solutions of electricity, we always go to solar and wind.

Unfortunately, they still remain very small percentages overall.

Uh, hydropower and nuclear are the two largest non-fossil fuel emitting, uh, sources.

Um, so let's talk a little bit about the, the trend line, because I think this is interesting.

So while this is a, a large, uh, at least, you know, 9% of our, of our generation.

It's actually not been growing much both in the US and globally, uh, in the last few decades.

Well, it sounds like some countries have shrunk their usage of it.

That's right.

And, and so, um, in the US, most of the reactors were built between 1970 and 1990.

Just last year, we had the last kind of in-process nuclear reactor, large scale nuclear reactor, uh, come online in Georgia, took 30 plus.

Years to get this thing up and running.

So, when we look forward, there, there really isn't much of any activity to build large traditional nuclear power plants, uh, at least in the US.

And, and it's interesting because the technology has actually evolved quite a bit.

And if you talk to leaders in the industry, they'll talk about how it's so much safer than it was, you know, 40, 50 years ago.

But yet again, And this popular imagination.

So it's in the, the, the tale of what could happen in terms of the downside risk is just too, too big of a deal for, for organizations or for governments to invest and to feel comfortable.

And you're, you're an expert on decision making here.

I'd be curious your thoughts on this because this is the classic, very, very low probability but really high potential impact events here.

How.

How should we be making sense of those types of risks?

Yeah, I mean, I think the near misses is what is of concern and so where the decision analyst and me would go and the project manager and me would go would be to actually work on decreasing the likelihood even further and controlling and mitigating that impact if that is even possible, but I have a feeling that some of these new developments might offer some solutions.

Without regard to minimize the impact in those very, very rare events, yeah, so let, let's talk about small module reactors now.

Um, so there's a couple of things contextually that are happening.

One, as we've talked, you know, previously on our podcast, this increased demand for compute power driven by AI and just digitization in general, just an increased demand for energy, period.

Exactly.

So we have this huge need to build out more electrical generation.

And what we're seeing is some of the big tech companies are actually Entering into the nuclear space, so both Amazon and Microsoft have actually purchased or have uh partnerships with nuclear power plants, including Three Mile Island.

So Microsoft went into what we call a power purchase agreement with Constellation Power, uh, to revitalize Three Mile Island.

It had actually been retired about 6 years ago, uh, to exclusively generate electricity for its data centers, and I.

I find this interesting.

They're, they're relabeling Three Mile Island now the Crane Clean Energy Center, so CCEC.

So it's getting a, a, a new brand and they're kind of bringing this back online.

Are the tails and the risks there, uh, still, do they still exist, or have they dealt with that downside risk in some creative way?

I mean, again, you know, different people have different perceptions of risk.

I think again, these are much safer than they were even 50 years ago, as one would, one would expect.

Reviving it with new modern technology, with new modern working practices to try and minimize some of those instances.

Yeah, and, and again, this is where this interest in small modular reactors come in.

So, so the way I'd like to think about these is if you think about it, we've been doing small modular reactors for a long time, and in particular, we've been using them in a very interesting constrained space called submarines.

So nuclear submarines have been around 50+ years.

We've been using this technology to, to, you know, fuel these vehicles so they can go almost unlimited, unlimited underneath the water, um, mostly safely, less near misses, you know, I, I, I maybe we don't know.

I don't think, you know, we don't have these examples of like, you know, catastrophic failures.

And so this idea that we could take this core technology.

And basically create these modular smaller reactors.

Now the hope is, one, that they can be, uh, safer, you know, just the footprint is smaller, so the, you know, downside risk is smaller.

Uh, they might be more efficient, um, and so there's some technicalities here about using for cooling rather than this kind of large water pools that you see, uh, in a modern kind of large reactor.

Uh, you can use inert gas, liquid sodium, molten salt, um, and then the hope is that you can then deploy them really at the point of need.

Um, so we've talked before about this idea of behind the meter, that could even be deployed by commercial interests, by data centers, you have a small nuclear reactor, kind of, you know, co-located where you, where you need the power.

So now you don't have to worry about how do you actually.

Transport some of this from one location to the next, and some of the logistics related to the to the whole network get eased up or uh simplified.

I think that's an open question, right, because we have, as you can imagine, this massive regulatory, you know, apparatus that surrounds nuclear power.

The NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, oversees this, and there's just a lot of questions that are these SMRs going to be able to be.

Deployed quicker, right?

Again, why did it take 30+ years in Georgia to build out this new reactor?

It's because of all the reviews you have to go through, the approvals from different community groups.

There's, it's complex stuff.

I mean it's complex, yeah, and, and the NIMBY problems, these not in my backyard problems are no one wants one of these in their backyard because of this popular imagic.

Oh yeah, I know the tension here around Lake Anna in our neighborhood, um.

These SMRs, are they, uh, actually affordable?

Like, how, how much does it take to develop?

I am a project management, right?

I think project management.

This is actually feasible in a time frame and a this is great because this is what we always talk about in our, in our podcast here is like where are we on the S curve?

I think it's fair to say we're still fairly early in the S curve.

The good news is there are now commercial entities who are pursuing this technology and bringing it to market.

Um, there are a few pilot projects that have been attempted, um, and as often is the case with a new nascent technology that's just being piloted, it is not economical right now.

Very expensive to develop.

Yeah, yeah, uh, one example here, uh, the NRC approved one SMR by Newscale Power.

Uh, that ultimately got canceled when they thought they could do this for $4.3 billion.

It escalated to $9.3 billion.

So and we're still talking big numbers here.

Billions is not, is not a $3 billion for a small, uh, component.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean we're still talking big numbers.

We're still talking a lot of complexity here and so.

There's just a lot of interest in this, uh, there's a lot of hope because of our energy demands and because of our climate change worries that this has to be part of the solution, um, but in terms of the market viability, we're still early stages.

Um, France, you mentioned France, you mentioned China as other, uh, you know, countries that are actively or active players in the space, are they investing in Um, SMRs, are they kind of spending good time trying to, to get through this more modular kind of China absolutely has been pursuing even large scale nuclear reactors and SMRs.

France has been in this interesting position where because of the concerns with, with nuclear, they have actually started to pull back.

And then the war in Ukraine started and probably some natural gas, gas, and the reliance on natural gas specifically coming from Russia has highlighted the risks associated that.

So they're actually turning some of these back on, um.

With SMRs, there's a hope that they can maybe be quickly deployed on existing nuclear power plant sites.

So the idea being, hey, look, we've already accepted a large amount of risk, we've already gone through the regulatory apparatus, can we deploy these SMRs uh quickly and maybe more effectively and efficiently, and again, create more uh energy here.

A lot of energy conversations always revolve around uh some natural resources, uh, you know, whether it's solar, wind, uh, uh, uh, um, and even if we go back in time, other forms of energy rely on what is there like what can we actually extract, what can we get?

Does this offer an opportunity to kind of remove that limitation?

When you think about land use, clearly the physical land use of these is so much smaller for a comparable amount of, let's say, solar or even wind that you would generate.

So, I think from a land use planning standpoint, absolutely.

From a natural resources side, you know, the inputs, things like uranium, you know, they're, they're available, there's markets there, there could be constraints, uh, especially.

Since the other uses of uranium in terms of things like nuclear weapons is, uh, is a worry, and how much you want this to proliferate across the globe, which opens another whole question is if we put on our lens of climate change, is this a technology we want to see deployed through countries, you know, throughout the world.

All the countries that, you know, we were talking about, the big ones.

Uh, Japan aside, are nuclear powers, so, uh, cat's out of the bag in those, you know, China and Russia and France and the US, um, and so I, I, I think there are as always with this question, this issue, just lots of different.

Uh, political regulatory concerns that we have to, uh, to keep in mind.

No, that's, I'm starting to think in my head around whether good disruption or bad disruption or potential, potential dangers of the disruption.

Well, let me propose.

I think we're, I think we're at that time where we need to bring in our, our expertise here because I'm gone, I'm, I'm done.

I'm, it's all I, this is all I can bring to the table here.

So it's, it's a real pleasure, uh, to invite Steven Lef with us today.

Steven is a project manager at BMX Tech.

Technologies that is working on uh nuclear technologies for space power applications, but he has a long history in this space.

He was a senior systems engineer at Bechtel, uh, helping to develop T Terra Power's next-generation nirannium nuclear power plant, and before that, he served in the US Navy working on several nuclear submarine, uh, projects and teaching naval science at the University of Washington's Naval, uh, ROTSI program.

Steven, uh, a pleasure to have you with us today.

And great to be here, Mike and Danielle, um, and you didn't mention the most important thing.

One of our, one of our illustrious in the graduates here from 2020.

That's right.

Thank you for joining us.

So Steven, I, I actually want to start with maybe your, your history going back to, um, uh, the.

Navy here.

Can you tell us a little bit about how that technology that we've deployed for a long time in submarines, how much does that relate to what we'll eventually see with small modular reactors?

Is, is it a long walk, a big walk?

Like how, how do you think about that?

Right, it actually relates quite a bit.

And as you said, small modular reactors are, are not new, that the government has been doing this since the 1950s when the, the first submarine went underway and, and later adapted to, to carriers.

Um, these reactors are, um, you know, about 1/10 the size of the large, large scale reactors that we see, and, and they're a lot more flexible too.

They're Um, they, you know, we operate at, uh, various power levels and, and can, can go up and down very quickly.

So they're a lot more flexible, like, like we see, like we will see in this SMR space.

I think the, the big reason, uh, why we haven't seen these commercialized is just, um, cost is not as much of a factor in, in the government, uh, it's more performance and security.

So I think that's a big, you know, discussion that we have to play, how we can reduce cost and, and adapt these for, uh, for the private sector.

Any thoughts on like how far down the cost curve we need to get for these to start to be kind of widely adopted in the, in the energy sector?

I mean, I think eventually they, they can compete uh with uh other sources of kind of firm dispatchable, uh, clean power.

Uh, when I think of the cost, um, you know, say with wind and solar, uh, we can think about, you know, the the levelized cost of, of the power.

Itself.

Uh, but then if we're talking about, you know, being dispatchable, making it available 24/7, uh, load following, etc. uh, we have to consider, you know, the cost of batteries and just energy storage, uh, large scale to, um, uh, to be able to, to meet all of that demand.

And then another thing I think is important is that with these smaller reactors, they have smaller like exclusion zones, uh, smaller emergency planning zones, so they can be, you know, located in urban centers or, or close to industrial sites, which we haven't seen before.

And so the cost of transmission goes down quite a bit, um, especially if we, we have behind the meter applications.

So when we see with wind and solar, typically these larger scale, um, Uh, like, like wind farms and solar, you know, like out in the desert or out in the plains, far away from the demand centers, and, and as we've seen, you know, the interconnection queues for, uh, for some of these projects are quite large because the, the, the transmission doesn't exist.

So I think that's an important factor when we calculate, you know, the levelized costs.

We don't talk often here as a part of our kind of conversation around disruption around safety, although it comes up from time to time.

How, how much does it change the potential out, you know, negative outcome?

Like, does, are we talking about like a real game changer in terms of what it does, uh, from a safety perspective, um, as we.

Pointed out the maybe one of the biggest hesitations, at least reputation wise, is, uh, what can happen in the rare event of an accident, right, right, yeah, the, the concept of a risk is very important here, and I think humans are not really adapted to, uh, to very well internalize these very low probability, you know, high impact, uh, events, and that causes a lot of, um, uh, you know, problems with public perception, which is one of the main barriers, I think.

Uh, when we talk about, talk about small modular reactors, I wanted to introduce the concept of advanced reactors as well.

Um, I think you can make a Venn diagram on one side with SMRs and then advanced reactors, and, you know, they're separate, uh, concepts, but they, um, have a lot of commonalities.

So, With advanced reactors, as, as Mike mentioned, they, they typically use coolants that are, uh, other than water, which, which generally increases the performance of them, uh, but also can introduce, um, what we call like passive safety features.

So traditional nuclear reactors rely on, you know, very Highly trained operators, uh, and you know, if something bad, you know, happens, they have to take very quick action to prevent, um, to prevent a nuclear accident.

And so a lot of these new reactors are really every advanced reactor has these passive safety features where you can have the worst case event happen.

Uh, the operators have to take no action for several days or even indefinitely for some designs, and they can just walk away and the public will be protected.

The environment will be protected. fascinating.

Is this what mentally I imagine is like you have this thing in a box, and the box is a lot smaller than like, you know, your, your traditional nuclear reactors, and you just, it's contained, and if something really goes wrong, you're just like, yep, yep, now it's just gonna sit there unused for, I don't know, maybe a long time, I guess, with, with nuclear uh radiation.

Is that, is that the right way to?

Think about that, right?

Yeah, some very small reactors can be, you know, containerized.

I think all modular reactors, at least, you know, the components can be built in a factory, at least in a modular fashion and transported.

Um, so that some of these, some of these are still pretty big.

Uh, the, uh, the traditional reactors are all about 1000 megawatts or even.

Uh, even higher.

Uh, these are less than half the size, uh, but, but still quite significant.

They could be the same size as a coal plant or, or, or a natural gas plant.

Uh, so there's still going to be some on-site, uh, you know, civil works to do, and, and, um, uh, but, but yes, in general, um, you know, they have these features where the reactor can shut down itself, it can keep the, the core covered, as we, we like to say, uh, but basically to prevent the, the fuel from, um, ever, uh, um.

Uh, you know, melting, melting down, uh, so it, it can do that all automatically and passively.

It's amazing.

I, you know, too much watching of, uh, the Chernobyl miniseries.

I, I, I, it was interesting something you said there, uh, about the fact that the, there, the smaller components allows for an essence, kind of mass production.

If I heard.

You correctly.

And is that where the promise of some of the cost savings comes from, that we can just kind of print these out right at scale?

I think it, it, it is the cost is an interesting question.

I mean, that is the very premise of an SMR itself where, uh, especially the, the core vessel itself is manufactured.

Uh, in, in, in a factory and, and transported to site where you don't need this, um, this large scale assembly of, of a containment vessel on site, and, and also other, just other standardized components.

I think it's been unfortunate the nuclear industry has never really benefited from economies of scale.

Um, even Mike, as you mentioned, the, the large scale buildout in, in the 70s and 80s.

Um Common technology, but there was still so much, you know, innovation.

Every site was very specific, designed, very specific for, uh, you know, a certain technology, and there was a lot of design changes.

So I think the cost curve never really went down.

So I think uh that is definitely one promise of, of these new technologies.

How do you feel, um, from your advantage point and your experience, how do you feel about companies like Microsoft, Mike told us before and the partnerships around, uh, Three Mile Island.

How do you feel about these partnerships and cross-industry kind of, um, integration.

Does that, uh, worry you, or is that their hope there that more organizations get involved and maybe, uh, the talent starts to look differently or they start to feel differently about investments in this, uh, in this area?

You know, I think that's a, that's a very, um, good sign for, for the industry, um, you know, typically all these big. reactors are owned and operated by, you know, large utilities, um, and there's really not any diversity in the business model, so I think that works fairly well.

There's still room for those types of reactors where they can serve, you know, as baseload power, um, but I think these, these smaller, Size reactors that are, are more, uh, I would say affordable for other, you know, private entities or, or other technology companies that maybe sell power to utility, that opens up, you know, a wider variety of, of, of business models, which is exciting.

I'm curious with that, cause I think that is really intriguing.

Like if you imagine uh Microsoft and Amazon opening up their own SNR, you know, business units, and they're starting to build these things themselves, and they're locating them next to all their data centers, and like you said, they might even be selling electricity back to the grid, um, the regulatory piece of this, like, how onerous is that, and is there any discussion of trying to make it basically easier to, to build these?

There, yeah, the regulatory pieces is hotly discussed, I would say in the industry.

I think it's important to recognize, you know, nuclear power has always been and always will be a highly regulated industry.

But ever since, I think even 20 or 30 years ago in the 90s, they started talking about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission moving away from a, like a very prescriptive approach, like you have to have this design feature and And you have to have this exact performance to a more what they call a risk informed performance based approach.

So this will allow a bit more flexibility on evaluating the technology, um, seeing, you know, what's the worst case accident that can happen, you know, based on this specific technology, and then look at the risks from there and see how we can address that.

Um, I think that's a great idea in practice, and, um, you know, we're, we're still testing that, uh, companies are going through that regulation.

I think most people would agree there's still a lot of work to go.

There's congressional action that's, that's needed to, to even further streamline that process, but I, I think it's, it's definitely needed to, to help ease the burden on these companies while, while keeping this, the same amount of safety for the public.

Uh, you know, you're talking, I know that your, your title is a project manager and you're talking project management language to me here, right?

Like that's how we deal with, uh, with risks, uh, in most projects, and so it makes sense that that's how you would deal with it in this case, yeah, um, for sure.

Well, I'd be curious your thoughts on, um, in the US context, federal, uh, support.

Uh, the government has become more supportive of, of nuclear, I would argue, in, in the last few years, um, uh, especially, uh, with, with the Trump administration.

Uh, the number we saw was like $900 million which we were kind of laughing about, like that doesn't, that doesn't seem serious when you say, you know, we've got $900 million to help, you know, push this along.

What, what's your thoughts on the, maybe the role of the federal government, uh, and, and what does that need to really look like?

Right, no, I think, and I think that number was for one specific program, that there are some other programs that have, um, been funded, but, but still, uh, not very significant, you know, on the order of a few billion dollars to help some of the first projects, um, to get, uh, to get started.

And I think.

You know, government, um, I think consistent government support is needed across administrations.

Uh, you know, I, I, I do, as I said, I think nuclear can compete, um, after, you know, with, with other clean technologies after we got past some of these initial first of a kind projects, but, um, but with such a capital intensive regulatory, regulated industry.

Um, yeah, I think, I think for, for actors to really take, uh, you know, these investment decisions, um, the government's support is, is really critical.

What, uh, you know, what kind of biggest innovation have you seen?

I mean, you're at the cutting edge of this.

What has been the biggest excitement that you've seen recently, uh, in this area?

Like what got you all excited that this is a game changer?

Is it a timeline, kind of construction perspective and design, or is it, uh, uh, just an acceptance by, by more organization?

Where is the enthusiasm coming from?

Yeah, I think uh it's hard to point to one thing.

I, I, we mentioned the, the safety, and I think that, um, you know, if we, um, You know, present that in the right way to the public, I think that's a very, uh, that's something, you know, we can latch onto and say, you know, if, uh, you know, we can just walk away, um, you're going to be fine, you can live near this reactor, um, and, and, you know, and there's, you know, nothing's going to happen to you, even if there is, you know, an event.

Uh, I, I get excited.

I'm, I'm a systems engineer.

I think, I think both of you have similar backgrounds as, as well.

Um, and just about, you know, some of the technology, and we don't have to get, uh, too, too deep into it, but, uh, using these alternative coolants, um, uh, like the, the molten salts, the Uh, the helium, for example, um, those have always been, you know, those have been researched for a long time, but I think we're at the point where, uh, we can see real, you know, increases in performance, um, if we use these alternative, uh, alternative coolants.

So that's really exciting as well.

One of the things we often talk about is this idea that the nascent technology has the dominant design emerged yet, you know, basically an agreement they're like, oh, this is the right architecture for this.

Yeah, we talked about it even last time when we talked about, uh, quantum.

Yeah, exactly.

Or, or the sense I get is we're not there yet, right?

We, we don't know what what that emergent dominant design is.

Any sense like time scale here, and I know this is such a hard prediction to ask you to make, but I mean, are we like 2 years away, 5 years away, 20 years away?

Yeah, it's, it's interesting.

Yeah, we're, we are still very early.

I, I, the last I I looked there, there really is a couple of dozen startups, uh, technology startups that have Entered the regulatory process or, or filed, you know, pre-applications or just expressed interest, and, and that's, that's quite a bit of, of companies.

Um, there, there are a few, uh, you know, a, a few reactors that are starting preconstruction out there.

Um, and I think, you know, those will, you know, come online in the next, uh, I would say 5 to 7 years.

Uh, so it's, it's still, uh, it's still a long ways away, uh, but I think, I think within the decade, we'll, we'll start to see, you know, the winners emerge and And I think that'll be important to, to really adopt those technologies and, and uh actually achieve, you know, the economies of scale, and we can, we can build out factories, revitalize our industrial base, and, and make these common components so that we can really assess, you know, where we are, uh, on the cost curve.

Um, we hear a lot in our podcast about AI.

Um, obviously it's all around us, uh, generative AI, AI in general, um, in general, is it affecting any progress in this area?

Like, uh, can you share a little bit about that, how it's, uh, how it's changed or not, uh, what you do and what you think like design or maybe the operation, that's what I'm asking, like, right, or even the materials, right?

Like, um, sometimes AI can be used to explore different.

Materials and combinations of right, yeah, AI is, it's, it's uh very much talked about.

It's, uh, especially in the early design or research and development phases, as you mentioned for looking at advanced materials.

Uh, I think where it becomes difficult is, you know, for like for a designer view, uh, you know, a human still needs to look at the drawings and and produce the drawings and sign off on, on.

All the drawings.

So, I think it can be used as a tool, and um I, I, I don't even know if we can predict how it will be used.

I think that's, you know, some of the excitement about uh AI, uh, but, but I think in the end, um, you know, humans will still play, uh, quite a big role in certifying these designs and operating them.

Um, I, I mean, AI can certainly Uh, I, I think we can imagine a world, and there's been discussions where you can have autonomous, uh, nuclear reactors, and that's, that is a big research area, uh, but I, I, I don't know if we're ready for that, uh, uh, quite yet.

Just, just like airplanes, as we think about, you know, it's, it's easy to design a plane that flies itself with passengers, but I don't think, I don't think the public or the government's open to that.

Uh, sorry, with Waymo, with Waymo coming to DC, I'm not sure what I'm quite, I'm not quite ready for all the autonomous vehicles.

I have an uncle who was a pilot.

He's long retired now, and he said even in his career, like they, they largely fly themselves.

It feels good to have the pilot there, but they're largely, uh, flying.

Steven, I was curious, uh, maybe venturing into other.

Kind of challenging questions, but, um, the geopolitical piece of this, we're seeing this repeatedly in this day and age where technologies are seen not only as economic engines, but there's, there's, uh, you know, warfare, there's other political uh elements.

This is an industry clearly that has this since its very beginning.

China is a leader who's been investing in this, as we mentioned, France, Japan.

Uh, what are you seeing globally here?

Is there a race going on between these various countries to be the leaders in SNRs?

Or SMR, excuse me.

I think Yeah, certainly China and, and Russia have um both legacy programs and, and they continue to build out of their, you know, large scale reactors and also um are, are developing these small reactors as well.

Um, I, yeah, geopolitically, it's an interesting question.

I, I don't think we see it as much of an arms race as nuclear weapons was, uh, just to the security implications in each country.

You know, needs to manage their, um, their energy system and, and energy security differently.

Uh, but I, I, I do sense that the US doesn't want to, uh, fall behind and we want to, um, to, to revitalize the, uh, the supply chain, uh, domestically.

We want to be able to build these components within the US and source, uh, uranium and other, other, uh, source materials within the US.

So I think there's a lot of investment going into that space and And trying to become less dependent on, you know, say, Russia and China.

And one quick question on that.

Uh, with these new SMRs, are they, is it still the, the same basic fuel source with uranium, or are, are there also alternative fuel sources being, uh, pursued?

It, it is, uh, it is uranium.

There, there are, uh, uh, some reactor designs that, that use thorium, for example, uh, but really all these designs that are, uh, at least at the, the higher technology readiness level, it's all still uranium.

Until AI finds a different way to do it, makes a new chemical or makes a new molecule a new chemical, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, Steven, this was, this was so informative.

Thank you so much for joining us and teaching us all about it.

Um, I've learned a lot.

Yes, very, very helpful there.

So thank you.

And, you know, from a fellow systems engineer, so it's good to hear the systems engineering perspective on our, on our podcast.

Oh, love it.

Love, uh, learning from our. out there doing incredible things.

Uh, so Mike, I think you're a believer, this is a disruption, a, a good disruption.

You know, it, it's interesting in, in, in environmental circles when people talk about climate change, there, there's a divide on nuclear.

There are, there are many who are like, because of the issues with, um, radioactive waste and the disposal of waste and long term and long term, and, and they're like, we don't want this to be part of the solution.

I, I find that the people who I talk who are in the industry, who understand the, the challenges we're facing.

There is no way we address our climate change challenge without having this be part of the puzzle, and so from a climate change perspective, not so much from an energy or energy needs that we have.

Potentially both, I mean potentially both, and, and I think it's what's interesting from a political standpoint is that there have long been conservative voices saying nuclear needs to be part of the solution.

And then maybe that's why some of the more liberal voices have rejected nuclear as a, you know, the crazy, as we've always said, technology has no political means, uh, though people bring it, and yet, and yet what I find fascinating is, and I really do think it's been within the last two years, is that debate seems to be going away, and it seems to be a growing consensus that nuclear needs to be part of the portfolio.

And we need to figure out how to do this differently, because again, we aren't building big new nuclear power plants, at least in the United States.

And so renewing the license, we're, yeah, we're renewing the licenses and trying to keep them going.

And by the way, our nuclear stock, because again, built in the 70s and 80s is, is aging.

And some of these will probably have to be retired or at least refurbished.

So I think there is a lot of interest now of how this is going to fit in, and the small modular reactor piece is where there's a lot of energy, no pun intended, uh, a lot of investment, um.

You know, and, and so I, you know, I'm an optimist, so I think we'll get there with the technology.

The timing, as always, hard to predict whether it's, like I said, next year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, you know, we didn't talk about uh fusion by design, you know, which is another one of those technologies that's been out there forever and never quite gotten.

Uh, to where it could be commercially viable.

Uh, where are your, what are your thoughts on it?

Uh, my sense is, um, trying to make a call today on our show, I would probably say I don't see the disruption quite yet.

So, uh, I just, even if we do get to a point where these small modular reactors are more, uh, readily available.

It, it doesn't seem like it's such a big shift from where we are today to yield that big, that disruption, uh, that we've talked about often in this, in this, uh, uh, show.

So for me it's, it's neither here nor there, right?

Like I just don't see the disruption right yet, right?

I love it.

I love it when we get the no disruption, uh, this is the project manager in me that I see that it's, and I think that's, I think it's, it's a good check for us too because when we talk about disruption in the technical sense, it is often about a competitive reordering, a real change in the.

You know, the nature of the who's, you know, doing this, we might see that there are a number of entrepreneurial startups, but will this fundamentally change the nature?

I think it's a, it's a fair question to just provide the counter.

I think the notion of like we talked about if like the big tech companies get into this business and start to develop it at tech scale and tech speed, it could, it could be disruption.

So I'm gonna not shocker here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fall on good disruption.

But I completely concede that like this isn't happening.

My, my sense is from everything I heard from you and from Steven is that there needs to be something else that happens from a technological perspective that would really have some benefits from a, from a disruption sense, like even if those big tech companies are coming in.

Yes, maybe it's democratizing it or changing a little bit of the players in the field, but I don't see where the actual different, you know, business model is going to be a step change to, to yield that disruption quite yet.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

So I'm, I'm, I'm neutral on this one.

All right, I like it.

I like it.

That's good.

Well, uh, yeah, always a pleasure to talk to you about these. new technologies.

As always, I want to thank our producer Gary, our lead researcher Becky.

Uh, we couldn't do it without you here.

Um, everyone talk about next time.

We don't know yet.

We'll have to, we'll have to think about it.

Yes, and listeners, if you have, uh, specific technologies and disruptions that you want us to discuss, please share them with us.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Good Disruption is a podcast from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Darden.