And joining me now to discuss all of this is Ronald Stein.

Ronald is the co author of a Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Clean Energy Exploitations.

Ron is an international energ consultant and a policy advisor on energy literacy.

He's done extensive research and published several articles about small modular reactors.

Also joining the panel fro South Africa is Olivia Vaughn.

Olivia helps lead worldwide projects based in energ and infrastructure investments, with a focus on Stem in the built environment.

She's a co-founder of the nuclear energy innovation company Stratis Global, which helps bring together expertise to build these small modular reactor that we're going to talk about.

Thank you both so much for being here not to be bored.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

So now let's delve into more of this interesting subject.

First Olivia, then Toronto.

Olivia.

Before we get to all of what's going on with you in South Africa, globally, we want to hear all about that first.

So explain more about exactl what the small modular reactors are, how they work.

What should we know about the Olivia.

Thanks, David.

So South Afric actually embarked on a project to commercialize small, smaller versions of nuclear reactors in the early 2000.

And, you know, what we tried to do was look at decentralized grids and how, how smal and version of a nuclear reactor could, could benefi the baseload power needs of, of predominantly countries, you know, in Africa that don't have access to, to large grids.

So, so what was found was that when we, you know, reduce the size of these reactors, what we get is a constant baseload power source without the exorbitant costs, and environmental risks that come with larger reactors, as well as a reduced water risk, which is a huge benefit to countries, especially in developing economies and water scarce countries.

So so what we found was that, the smaller the reactor was, we could we could modularize it.

So we coul then build these, these reactors as the regions or cities or towns needed them.

And we didn't have to buil a huge, large scale mega project in order to supply baseload electricity to regions.

Ron.

Further, the narrative that Olivia is explaining.

What more should we kno about the small modular reactors and why are they good, in your opinion?

Well she and I coauthored an article about small modular reactor benefiting developing countries because, you know, we are the billion people on this planet, and the wealthy countries are doing anything they want.

They can't afford to do anything like 80% of the people on this eart who live in less than $10 a day, and they don't have the luxury, a lot of money going after something.

But the world needs electricity.

And, the small modular reactors might be the best way to get developing countries or electricity, less expensive money than the developed countries that are spending a lot of resources going to wind and solar for electricity.

At the same time, we're developing data centers need continuous electricity.

So it's it's a conflict of interest to what the developing countries are doing.

And, you know the small ones are being actors is probably the best bet to switch to a billion people on this planet.

Speaking of this planet, Olivia, back to you.

What exactly are you doing with regards to the summers?

I know you're in South Africa.

Know where we're interviewing you from.

So what's going on in South Africa or globally?

What have you witnessed with the summer so far as a possible energy source for the future?

Because certainly, as you know, both of you know, nuclea it has a detractors, the risks, the dangers, all that which we're going to discuss later in the interview first.

So what's going on in South Africa and globally with you and your company?

So David, I into this markets, the energy markets and about a decade ago and but specifically in this company's strategy four years ago and I joined a team of founders who was scattered around, who had come out of the PMA project, that was shut down indefinitely in 2010.

And, you know, what we found was that we were sitting on a rich source of craft knowledge, institutional knowledge in the nuclear sector, an expertise that had independently, you know, broken away from the then, you know, atomic board and, and the South African nuclear program and had continue to develop these technologies, outside in the private sector and self-funded.

You know, we had about 2000 people working on that project So, so there was a vas amount of expertise that went up not only into South Africa but globally.

So most of the small companies that you are seeing, both in the US and Europe and other places, all have a large contingent of South African engineers, in, in all spheres of engineering as well as nuclear physics working in, in those companies.

So, so we it kind of mushroom from here and, and we, we did have a pool of, of people that that were actually some of the we call them the grandfathers of the idea of the commercialization of these modular reactors still working within, within our consortium and our team.

Chair currently is the chairman of Necsa, which is the the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, which is kind of like the Ional Oakridge.

You know, you national laboratories, which is this is the South Africa and the South African version.

So so we've got this core o expertise and what we decided, and especially after being involved in various energy projects across renewables, oil and gas, you know, and engineering and really finding ou that this is the black, as Ron said, you know, the the one thing that could potentially give the 8 billion on this planet you know, access to electricity, you know, I kind of decided that I'm going all in on, on, on small modular reactors.

And this, by the way, while the world was turning towards renewable and building out wind and solar.

So, so it's been it's been a hard ride, but but we truly believe in what we've got.

And and from South Africa's perspective, we've got a very well established national nuclear regulator.

South Africa is, one of the founding signatories to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

And we are also the only country in the world to have voluntarily given up on nuclear weapons program.

So so we've got an excellent rapport with the international atomic community, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency.

And, regulator is as well poised to provide the standard for, for African countries and how they develop their regulatory process.

So one of the discussions that we having on very high levels, with the African Commission on Nuclear Energy is, to standardize, this reactor technology across Africa.

And not only will that, you know, curb weapons proliferation risks, but it will also allow African countries to develop these, programs and these the power plants are at a loss, a lot faster rate, and give the international community and, and particularly government security that you are working with a, you know, credible, signatory to the International Atomic Energy Agency, government, despite, the politics of the day, internationally, is actually very pro nuclear, one of the, in nuclear energ and one of the few in the world, that really has supported both coal and oil and gas and nuclear energy as a, as a baseload of, of, of our power grid.

Now, South Africa is huge.

National utility.

Eskom won the award in 2001, the Financial Times Global Award for the biggest power utility in the world.

And has since been hollowed out.

So various reasons, but, it still remain that we as a country still have that expertise and institutional knowledge of the blueprints of how to roll out, extensive.

Well, not just nuclear, but energy programs.

In a very short space of time, we were pumping out, its six, six packs of coal, coal fired stations.

Well, coal fired at least three axes, every, every 18 months at a stage.

And that's how we developed an industrial economy in South Africa.

And that's what we need to do in Africa.

What what do folks need to do though, in your industry, Ron?

In, in this smaller industry, so to speak, in the US, where are these located in the US?

These are SMS, ironically.

And so Mars are coming to California.

We have data centers are big, huge power users.

And the companies go, okay, thank you.

Can look them up.

We're in preparation meeting with actual mast power data centers because you need continuous, uninterrupted electricity.

The downfall of wind and solar is and you're only generating UTC depending on the weather.

So you can't run data centers, hospitals, airports, operating rooms on, you know, electricity.

And so that's that's the main advantage.

And especially with the South in Africa, you know, wind and solar is is very, very expensive and you only generate electricity.

So you want to take that the least expensive way to go for electricity.

And you want that continuous pretty repeatable electricity.

That's the thing that drives the economy.

And it's the larger or smaller, more affordable to South Africa, I think is going to set an example for developing countries to airfreight them around the world, although.

Right.

Sure.

Sorry, David, if I can jump in there on North America.

So, so in our rollout plan, you know, we've looked at the various regions across the worl and how the essential technology benefits the the economic stage of development of each of the regions.

So, so each of the regions is very different.

You've got two developing economies that needed electrification and they needed it yesterday.

So so you know, we can't mess around with in, in those regions, you know, with technologies that are not proven like wind and solar.

They do have the applications of course, but in North America, you know, w we really are looking at things like propulsion, propulsion systems, chemical production, hydroge production, cool pink hydrogen.

Six of our reactors, thermal power can produce 85 square cube, 85 million squar cubic feet of hydrogen per day.

So so we, you know, we're looking at applications that can benefit propulsio systems, energy storage systems.

And then obviously the space the space industry is a big one for us.

You know, Africa is also looking at that at the space industry and looking to join, you know forces with, you know, with some companies in North Americ and in terms of North America, you know, thos those kinds of technologies are what one would be looking at.

Olivia, let me further this with you, just for one more, moment and then we'll get back to Ron, because both of you were mentioning this earlier.

And Olivia, you just now, there are here in the US, we hear at constant on news media and with liberals or conservatives, dependin where you fall on party lines.

You know, fo some oil is the greatest thing in the world, right?

We have so many options for energy these days.

We've got oil, we've got natural gas, we've got coal.

Some say that's great.

Others say, no, we need solar, we need wind, we need all the renewables and so on.

So with all that said, tell us more about where you rate nuclear power in this sort of energy equation, Olivia.

And then back to Ron 100%.

So nuclear to me, is is extremely important in terms of the constant baseload electricity or heat that it can produce in terms of industrial applications, electrification and, and producing things like, you know, ammonia or natural fertilizers or things that traditionally have had chemical reaction.

Well, chemical reactors or, you know, heat sources producing these things paper, the paper and pulp industry.

So, so the application in terms of electrification and getting rid of, you know, these, these chemical reactors because what they actually do, pollution aside, when they actually do is the use a lot of the input products, for instance, whether it be oil or whatever you put in you using the coal, for instance, to, to produce products as a input for heat to produce heat.

So, so the heat factor is fantastic.

The desalination is, is another one.

So, so in terms of that nuclear, you know, should provide a percentage baseload oil, and nuclea do completely different things.

And, you know, you have to realize that nothing would be here without oil.

I think, you know things are produced out of oil that products are made out of oil.

There are over 6000 products that are made out of oil.

There are numerous products made out of coal.

So the everyday lives for for people would not be possible without without oil.

And also with that coal.

However, the the percentage of the heat and electricity that can be produced from nuclear can facilitate.

Yeah, better production, cleaner production and and cheaper production of these products and services that the world wants and needs.

So I see the renewables section, you know, I'm all for embedded, what we call embedde or behind the meter renewables, you know, on rooftops or, you know, dead zones where, you know, parking lots, covers, etc.. And we've done a lot of that in South Africa.

We've added 6.4GW to the system.

So so there's definitely a use case for it.

But in terms of an industrialized economy that the West is used to, you know, nuclear plays a foundational role in terms of actually starting to produce these goods and services that are needed I've talked to a lot of detractors as, as you can imagine for this program.

And they say there's a lot of disadvantages to small modular reactors.

I'm sure you've heard the words.

Let me just explain some for the audience.

You know, they're sayin first, look, the cost is insane because many of the opponents of this summer say they're, in fact, more expensive to build per unit of power than the more larger nuclear reactors we're familiar with.

Then they're saying there's the power generated from the SMEs, which again, the opponents, the critics say you have actually the lower power output than the traditional reactors, which can mean less revenue for utilities.

And that's a factor, right?

Then there's certainly the the elephant in the room, the nuclear waste, the management.

What are we going to do?

You know, people freak out when you hear nuclear here in California, in the U.S, I don't know where it is in South Africa or around the world, but they're nervous of these high levels of nuclear waste.

This radioactive waste that seemingly remains in the environment forever.

So they say, the critics.

And then there's certainly concerns of how do we manage that?

How do we dispose of the radioactive waste?

You know you got to bury at 10 billion, feet under the ground, right, to get rid of it.

So these are jus some of what people are saying.

And lastly, and, and wrong to you and then back to Olivia.

You've got to have some mega electric grid, right, to be able to support all of this.

So with all these things taken into consideration, first, Sharon and Olivia, how do you counter what your detractors are saying with regards to smears?

Well, you have to understand the electricity came after oil and we repeat that came after oil.

We got different ways to generate electricity, got wind and solar, hydro, nuclear, coal, natural gas.

All six ways to generate electricity cannot exist without oil.

There's all the parts, the components, the computers, the wires, insulation, you know, the furniture.

It's all made from oil.

And without oil you have no electricity.

So you want to minimize using Earth's resources.

Earth' been around for 8 billion years, and we're usin a lot of resources to generate electricity.

We're we're using a 8.5 billion tons of coal per year.

And, you know, the well do run dry at some point in time being 100 years, 500 years, 5000 years.

But whenever it does run dry day, that's going to be around here with or without air.

And so we have to be cautious about using energy and going to wind and solar.

You got lithium and cobalt.

Lithium what you're extracting in a 10 to 40,000 tons.

Lithium per year.

And that's projected to double on the next few years.

And then cobalt and we're extracting, 30,000 tons a year for cobalt.

And there's a lot.

And so you want to basically kind of favor the resources.

I mean, electrical generation that uses the least amount of natural resources because, you know, our future generations, thousand years now, we'd like to own intrinsically also.

And so but you refer to our nuclear waste, one of the things in different articles you're working with other folks is nuclear waste is basically only used about 3% of the energy you go through, 95% of the energy still available in the nuclear waste.

And so that's breeder reactors.

The big guys are going with the slightly use nuclear fuel issue.

And that is the buzzword.

You can basically take the nuclear waste and you still get 97% of its energy left to be fuel for the big reactors.

That's for your reactors only.

Oh, yeah, I hear you.

I hear you, Ron.

I want to get Olivia's perspective on this.

How do you, Olivia, counter all the negatives I just mentioned about the smears?

Great.

So let me start with the economics.

So we've done a number of pre-feasibility things together with an actuary in London.

Whose bank of England.

And we've done it over a number of years.

We've ripped our model apart.

We've put it back together, we've ripped it apart again.

Our team has been involved in huge infrastructure projects over a number of decades.

So people the first thing people ask is, well, how do you know how much it's going to cost before you've built one?

So I'll say, well, how did we how did we build anything, is that is that be the case?

And we know how to run large engineering projects.

We know how to cost them.

And, you know, our engineers are working on large infrastructure projects as we speak, so they are definitely not expensive.

Expensive is a relative term.

So what the the green advocates for the, you know, the the people that advocate for wind and solar like to say is that it's expensive compared, to to renewable energy.

And you can't compare them.

It's like comparing oranges and apples because you've got a technology that is going to last probably 80 to 100 years, but we'll bet on 60 and I'll I'll get there.

Why?

You know why I say that in a minute.

So we've amortized our costs over a 40 year period, which is still only about half of the life of, of, of the plant.

And we still come out to a levelized costin on the first of a kind reactor, which means you've, you'v got about 30 to 40% extra costs on, final design and R&D that needs to be done in the process of value building as well as the licensing process, which is extremely expensive.

We've already got small companies in the US that have droppe hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, on the licensing proces and have not yet got a license.

And we, we speak to them so, so, so we, you know, this is not something we read in the news.

So, the economics, we're looking at about a level as costing on the first of the kind of about 18 US cents a kilowatt hour.

And that is an extremely conservative figure.

Now, if you look at the cost of electricity in Germany, that is currently costin 40 to 45 cents a kilowatt hour.

So we are really looking at a cost.

And of less than half of what Europe is paying the guys that have gone for the wind and solar and turned off the nuclear reactors.

So, relatively speaking, one cannot say that estimates are more expensive.

They're certainly not more expensive.

You're looking at an upfront capital costs.

It's not a cost issue.

It's a financing and structuring issue.

And it's a it's a banking mandate issue.

That's that's what needs to be solved for.

So you've got long term stable production of electricity.

So one can say that it's going to it's you know, the smaller if you've got a plan that produces matches or cans, you can't say that a smaller canning plan is going to make less money or relatively speaking, in terms of percentage margin than wha a larger plant is going to make.

It's got a constant output of 93 to 95%, a capacity factor, which means that you ca confidently predict your output.

You can confidently plug that into a manufacturing process and predict that output.

And therefore it's the most stable energy and utility investment to run with a minimal, geological footprint as well as the minimal environmental footprint in terms of mining.

So that that I think addresses maybe, maybe 2 or 2 of them, the output, I think, as well as the economics on it, in terms of the grid, these small with specifically bolts to cater for microgrids.

So South Africa is almost the size of Western Europe.

A lot of people don't know this because, you know, you look at the map and, you don't realize how, large it is.

So we transport electricity over thousands of kilometers, from from the coal fired station near the mines to the urban center and factories where they needed.

So that was one of the problems in this region that we needed to solve for Africa is a huge, huge plus.

We even, transpor some cross-border electricity.

Up into Mozambique and vice versa, as well as Zimbabwe.

So one of the things that w needed to solve is not building these massive grid systems where you can plug a small modular reactor into a municipal town, or a factories industrial or an industrial zone, and build them as they're needed.

And as the as the space grows.

Now that brings me to the emissions.

There are zero emissions that come ou of these small modular reactors.

So the reactor that and the technology that we've got is a hig temperature gas cooled reactor.

So it is a helium cooled reactor.

Now heliu is one of the two noble gases.

It doesn't take a radioactive charge, which means that even if you had to, have helium leak, which is, you know, gas leaks, but but even if you had to have a helium leak you would have absolutely none.

We we laugh at it and say you wouldn't potentially speak like Donald Duck, but there would be no, no radioactive, leak that would come out of the nuclear reactor and definitely no, pollution emissions.

So the footprint of these reactors is about the size of the, of a football field.

And if you put four of them on, on one property probably the size of two football fields.

So it' got an extremely small profile.

And what we've also done to try to help the public perception, really.

But, you know, maybe it' a bit of a woman's touch, but, we designed eco architecture to design a to, to suit the certain regions or the regions where it, where they will be built in.

In other words if they are built in, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, urban, urban environments, the Swiss mountains, it's that's basically pleasing.

It doesn't look ominous and, and doesn't emit any, anything horrible.

They also designed to hous the nuclear waste for 40 years.

All right.

And, so, in other words, the waste stays on site.

Half of the reactor complex is underground.

It stays on site, and, it will be moved to a geological repository that's licensed to handle high level nuclear waste at a later stage.

And that is also all you know.

It will be different according to each country.

Some, some countries only allow their waste to be stored on site for a certain time period.

It's normally 20 years, but we seeing change in the regulatory environment.

So we've worked hard in public perception over a number of years.

For instance, they were not radioactive injuries or exposure during the Fukushima accident.

Contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of other injuries, with regards to the tsunami, but no, non-nuclear, injuries were reported or radioactive, injuries were reported.

You make a good case.

I have 30s left.

Ronald.

You get the final word.

No more than 30s.

What is your final message?

What must we know about MSR?

Because we've talked about both the good I mentioned the bad what the detractors are saying.

What do you say wrong was Olivia mentione we need continuous electricity.

Wind and solar.

Can't provide continuous electricity, especially without that storage coming on board.

So for continuous electricity, you got nuclear or natural gas.

Hydro is basically depending on, you know, the location in the world.

We support that.

So we have very limited opportunities for continuous electricity.

And the advantages are it uses the least amount of resources, continuous zero emission.

Everybody wants zero emission.

And and it's basically affordable for I think 8 billion people on this planet.

We're going to have mor on this story later this year.

I'm gonna have both of you back on.

You were a wealth of knowledge.

Ronald Stein, Olivia Vaughn, thank you both so much for being here, especially you, Olivia from South Africa, for this interview.

Thanks, David.

Thank you Dave.

Thank you both.

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