[Scott] Next on "Energy Switch," nuclear energy seems to be more welcome today, but will we build it?

- Absolutely.

We cannot afford not to.

- Most likely.

- Most likely.

- Most likely, you know, if you look at the average time that takes to build a nuclear power plant, looking at the last 20 years, it's 5.6 years.

So China, United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, and also if you look at the cost of, the capital cost of these units, you are looking at less than $3,000 per megawatt, which is not what you, what you have seen in U.S.

projects, in Western Europe projects.

- Can I expand on that?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- In the U.S., we have a very diverse hierarchy of stakeholders where it's not just the government that says we're going to go build nuclear.

And we don't get a clear directive to go build nuclear or any other energy source.

And that's what's missing here.

[Scott] Coming up, we look at the barriers to building nuclear and how to get over them.

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[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

More people have embraced nuclear energy as a low carbon, always-on, high-density domestic energy source.

The U.S.

has about 100 reactors today, most built 50 years ago, but has struggled to build any more, large or small.

Why?

Challenges with budget and schedule overruns related to our stagnated industry, lack of capital investment, complicated permitting, a broken supply chain.

Can U.S.

nuclear energy surmount these to rise again?

We'll find out with... Sama Bilbao Y Leon.

She's the director general of World Nuclear Association and president of World Nuclear University, with over 20 years' experience in nuclear engineering and policy.

Adam Stein, he's the director of Nuclear Energy Innovation at Breakthrough Institute.

Also with decades of experience in nuclear engineering.

Coming up, barriers to nuclear and how we might overcome them.

I'd like to do a quick sort of one word, almost a lightning round with you.

So let's go, do we need more nuclear energy?

- Absolutely.

We cannot afford not to have more nuclear energy.

- Yes, definitely.

- Yes, definitely.

Okay, why?

- It reduces overall system costs.

- 24/7 carbon-free with very, very low use of raw materials.

- It increases reliability of the grid.

- Can produce electricity and heat decarbonizing the entire economy.

- It actually reduces environmental impacts compared to other energy sources.

- Great, good stuff, we need it, will we get it?

- Absolutely, again, we cannot afford not to.

- Will we get it?

- Most likely.

- Most likely.

- Most likely.

- Who's going to get it first?

- Some are getting it right now such as China, the United Arab Emirates just finished plants.

Question is, who else is going to build it next?

- Okay, who's going to build it next?

- Well, we have 70 plants under construction in the world right now so lots of people are building-- - Seventy.

- Seventy in 30 countries.

So obviously there is a lot of people building things.

- It's happening.

- Yeah.

- Who's leading and who's lagging?

- Well, China's leading right now.

They are building more energy of all sorts than any other country.

- Yeah, so what could stop new nuclear?

- Barriers to deployment such as supply chains that don't exist anymore but need to.

- Okay.

What else?

- I would say regulatory frameworks if we don't optimize the way we regulate and license nuclear power plants.

- Okay.

- Willing and eager buyers that also have access to the correct capital.

- Okay, good.

- A change in mindset in the global nuclear industry.

We need to wake up to the opportunity and the challenges.

- Okay.

Cultural then?

- Yeah.

- And availability of workforce to actually build the plants quickly.

- Sure.

Can we get past some of these barriers?

- Yes, absolutely, and we are getting past them, but we really need to get going in the U.S.

as they, as they are going in other countries already.

- I think it's more how do we get past them than can we get past them.

So it needs a strategic approach.

Each problem that we've listed is separate with separate stakeholders, separate objectives.

They're not all aligned right now.

We need to get them aligned before we'll have a clear path to actually start building quickly.

- Well, let's dive into all this stuff.

- Let's.

- Sama, let me start with you, public opinion.

It's a big deal.

Has it changed?

- Well, we have seen enormous changes in overall social license, public opinion in most countries in the world.

And why?

Because people have made the connection between prosperity, quality of life, and access to affordable, hopefully clean 24/7 energy.

- Agree?

Things to add to that?

- I would say that public opinion hasn't actually changed much.

The public opinion near nuclear power plants has always been much more supportive than public opinion away from nuclear power plants.

What has changed is that there's a new driver, either energy demand or consideration of climate that has made other folks that are not near the nuclear power plants now decide whether they support it or not, because before they didn't have a heartfelt opinion one way or the other.

- Interesting.

What about like capital?

How do we address buyers being there?

What are the things we can do?

- In the capital space, an order book approach is necessary to have first movers and have second and third movers that go along with them instead of wait until the first project's done.

They would be built in sequence.

So most of the reactors that we've built in the U.S.

in the past were owned by four or more utilities in part.

And they shared the cost and they shared the output.

Over time, those all have been consolidated into single owner plants.

- And in fact, many of the single owner plants are actually owned by one owner of many plants.

If we can get back to the consortium approach where either states or individual utilities buy a portion of a plant, we can once again get back to building order books.

- I mean, I couldn't emphasize that.

I mean, so we really, really need to move from one project at a time to programs to build not one unit every 20 years, but 20 units a year.

And the more that you do something, the better you get at it.

And then the supply chains will develop and will be very good, very high quality, very good timeliness.

You will have the workforce that is going to contribute to all that high industrial process.

So clearly having the volume that is needed is essential.

- In a market-based economy, volume production is necessary.

While I think that nuclear energy is going to be very important to the world meeting its energy needs, those signals don't always get down to the market.

If a airplane company was building one airplane at a time without a market, it'd be a billion dollars for every plane.

And that's not sustainable for the market.

You want an order book with volume so you can justify building a manufacturing facility to actually build the planes one after another.

Then you, and only then do you actually change how you actually build the plane.

Instead of one-off bringing the parts to the plane, you now can optimize the whole manufacturing cycle in a completely different way.

- Yeah, and so is that signal, tech, basically saying we just need a pile of electricity to run these massive data centers?

- In the U.S.

right now, absolutely.

But ultimately long term it has to be utilities.

Even with the large scale of demand from the tech industry, utilities are still going to be 90% of the electricity generation in the U.S.

- It is true that markets need to provide a signal.

Currently, most deregulated markets do not have embedded any signals that incentivize any investment and any planning.

So you are, you are looking at next day's price signal.

How is that telling you that you need to invest in your grid in your transmission?

It's not telling you that.

How is it telling you that you need more inertia, more capabilities for the control of frequency and voltage?

It's not telling you that, so you build anything.

I don't care what it is, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, hydropower, you name it, you are going to do it because you have a PPA.

- A power purchase agreement.

- A power purchase agreement.

Because you have a feeding tariff, because you have a production tax credit, because there is another off market tax incentive that asks you to build that-- - So it's more of a push than a market pull?

- Exactly, exactly.

Those decisions are made offsite, outside of the market.

- It does sound a little bit to me like some central planning is more efficient to recognize all those benefits.

- Exactly.

- Sama, you sort of implied the industry being better on time, on budget, et cetera, talk more about that.

- You know, if you look at the average time that takes to build a nuclear power plant, looking at the last 20 years, it's 5.6 years.

So China, United Arab Emirates, Korea, India, Pakistan, there are cases of countries that are building plants in 5.6 years or less.

And also if you look at the cost of, the capital cost of these units, you are looking at less than $3,000 per megawatt, which is not what you, what you have seen in U.S.

projects, in Western Europe projects.

So the very few not so good examples are the outliers, not the norm.

[Adam] Can I expand on that?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- So in the U.S.

context, we have a very diverse hierarchy of stakeholders, where it's not just the government that says we're going to go build nuclear.

But it's the buyer, which is usually utility, under a certain public utility commission in a specific state which has their own goals for either clean energy or not.

And a separate market, which is then in a larger region with different grid demands.

So there are all these different layers.

And we don't get a clear directive to go build nuclear or any other energy source.

And that's what's missing here and why it is harder to build an order book than in some other countries where they just have a 10-year program to go build 10 reactors.

- Again, are there good examples of this happening in capitalistic democrat societies?

- It's mostly happening in central governments that say make it so.

But it is also happening in some democratic societies such as Canada.

Canada is planning to build new SMRs.

The United Kingdom is planning to build new reactors, probably SMRs, but maybe another large reactor or two.

- An SMR, small modular reactor.

- Small modular reactor.

Generally under 300 megawatts in size.

- Is this where the tech companies seem to be able to afford a lot?

If they're building serial number one, two, three, four, the SMRs, is that going to minimize the perceived risk for SMRs and the utilities, Adam, or not?

- It will absolutely reduce the perceived risk.

It will only actually reduce the real risk if second, third, and fourth plants are built in sequence with the first plant.

- But like NuScale, TerraPower, Oklo, they all have different reactor designs or at least cooling strategies, right?

So that doesn't really line up if I'm hearing you right with what you're talking about.

- It does and it doesn't.

- If they do, if they'll do the sequencing themselves-- - They have more sequencing already built into their business model by having smaller units.

- And when you build the first one, the first unit on time and on budget, even though it's part of a larger plant, you're now signaling to the market that the next plant has more likelihood that it's going to be on time and on budget.

- We have the nuclear regulatory commission here.

What needs to happen for permitting to be reasonable?

- I would say that we really need to optimize and streamline much better the regulatory and the licensing frameworks.

We really need to make sure that what we do well in our country can be easily replicated in different countries.

So we cannot reinvent the wheel in every country.

[Scott] Right, interesting.

- So regulatory reform is not about allowing something to be faster by being less safe.

But if you're licensing the same design for the 10th time, it doesn't have to be a 100% new review.

- But on the judicial side, those also can be potentially reduced where appropriate as you're building more of the same design because you should not say after the 10th design is licensed, "Maybe now we should question whether the design is safe, but we have 10 years of experience operating that design."

- Right, where is that happening well?

- France took one design and they replicated it very quickly, in less than 15 years, they built 19 reactors.

So that's quite impressive.

And definitely China is doing that.

They're moving from individual, one-of-a-kind projects to programs.

But I would say something, I mean, so often we have blame, if you wish, regulators for all the shortcomings.

And I would say that certainly in the last five, even more than that years regulators have understood that they are essential, an essential enabler of this new growth of nuclear.

So they are trying to standardize as much as possible how they look at these reactors.

They really are talking to each other quite a bit to make sure that they can learn from each other, that we can share the regulatory judgements and analysis that they have done so we can optimize this.

But blaming the regulators and look in the mirror?

- No, exactly.

I mean-- - Do you agree with that or is it-- - How do I want to say this?

We attend every NRC meeting and have for years, over 200 meetings a year.

So-- - How many?

My team and I attend more than 200 meetings a year at the NRC.

- That doesn't sound efficient to me, that means-- - It is not, but it's the only way that we can see the issues that cross boundaries that the NRC itself doesn't see, that one developer is treated differently than a different developer.

- And the same is true on the developer side where each developer's taking their own unique approach to how to license.

There is no sharing of information on either side.

Or at least not enough.

- Okay, well, that doesn't sound-- - It does not-- - Not as rosy as-- - Well, no, it's like-- - I'm trying to bring this together.

- No, I think that Adam is completely right.

There is no overall framework that is conducive to all of us understanding that whether I have a large reactor or a small reactor, whether it's cool with water or with molten salt, I can find the path that is going to allow all of us to be as effective as possible.

[Scott] I gotcha.

- So that's why regulation is a fundamental barrier that I mentioned.

- It's a fundamental barrier because there is no framework that is technology-inclusive.

It is optimized for the existing light water, large reactors that we have today.

And most designs are not that.

- So capital buyers, regulatory.

- Any other big barriers that we saw?

- In the supply chain too there are international constraints on certain supply chains such as large heavy forgings for reactor pressure vessels.

There are only a few manufacturers that actually can create those large vessels right now.

And that is insufficient to meet the demand from countries that have stated that they want to build more nuclear.

- So who's building those now?

- Primarily China and then South Korea and Japan have the majority of the remaining large reactor pressure vessel capabilities.

[Scott] Okay.

What else?

- Fuel availability?

Particularly for advanced reactors.

There is very little availability of high assay, low enriched uranium or halo fuel internationally at all.

- What's limiting it right now, Adam?

Why don't we have more than that?

- The full supply chain to actually enrich it.

We have centrifuge capability to create lower enriched uranium, the more common fuel type.

But there are not commercial scale facilities to actually create high assay, low enriched uranium right now.

[Scott] Who has them?

- Russia and China?

- I've read China and Russia are building 60 to 70% of the large reactors today in the world.

Is that plus or minus correct?

- Of the 70 reactors that are under construction right now, 30 are in China.

- 30.

- There is a few that Russia is building not only in Russia, but in other countries, in Bangladesh, in Turkey, in Egypt, in Uzbekistan, other places.

But I would say not only 100% with Adam that our fuel capabilities are very important.

But once again, you need to invest on those capabilities to be recreated.

So it's not a matter of raw materials.

This is not a matter of new technologies or know-how, this is a matter of doing it.

- Is there any motivation for China to give us these forged reactor?

Why would they?

Why wouldn't we be last on the list all the time?

- China is interested in exporting nuclear now too.

They have built their infrastructure to the point where they can meet their own goals and they have a little bit of slack that they can sell to others.

But they'd rather sell their designs and their technology and their whole plants to new entrant countries where they can then have influence in those new countries politically and economically instead of say, selling that passage to the U.S.

- So to get our supply chains up to speed we have to do things that are not going to necessarily have China in a critical piece of the supply chain.

- Yes, or design around them with different designs that don't need those particular supply chain pieces at all using lower pressure designs that can use rolled sheet steel that there's much more access to than say heavy forgings.

as an example.

- Exactly, there is much more supply chain capabilities if we look at the supply chain as a global market.

Historically, until perhaps the last five years the nuclear supply chain has been very global.

And companies would work in many countries, many markets.

So that does work well.

So what is a little bit different now is that we are in a different world where energy security, energy independence is a priority.

And when countries are looking at new nuclear power projects, they not only want to be somebody's customer, they actually want to become a piece of the global nuclear supply chain.

So we've seen this in Africa, for example.

I mean, the times where African countries, we want somebody to come and build them a reactor are long gone.

I mean, they may not be the next manufacturer of reactor pressure vessels, but they may be the next manufacturer of, I don't know, pipes or bulbs or pumps.

So that makes things a little bit more complex, but also I will tell you-- - But better.

I think better, and certainly hopefully more collaborative and more well, competitive in a constructive way.

- Yeah, for sure.

But isn't it true that, and U.S.

is a decent sized country, isn't it true that if we wanted to be fully vertically integrated in nuclear from the fuel all the way through, we could?

- Yes.

- Nothing prevents it, really.

- No.

- That's how we started out.

- What can we learn from Russia and Korea and China?

What do we learn to get this thing going again?

- I Would say the things will be challenging, but a determination that you're going to move forward solves a lot of problems.

- The make it so kind of approach.

- Make it so you're going to hit challenges, especially with first of a kind, anything.

If those are challenges instead of stumbling blocks, because you know that you need to get to the end line, that solves a lot of problems.

People will try to figure out how to fix them instead of say, "Okay, we should stop."

One thing that the federal government could do that relates to how the markets work is actually say that they're going to buy electricity from new nuclear power and be the demand signal that the utilities aren't creating yet.

Because the U.S.

government is actually the single largest purchaser of electricity in the U.S.

- Military and other.

- Right.

- That's interesting.

Put some firmness in the future demand and help motivate that.

Fantastic discussions, really have enjoyed it, learned a lot.

Given all that, as you think about nuclear and its role and providing energy for the world, what gives you hope?

- I have a lot of hope that the industry can achieve it if the right conditions are in place for it to achieve it.

I think that nuclear energy can scale very rapidly.

We need consistent markets, policy, supply chains to get there.

So we need to overcome some of the barriers, but once we do that intentionally, so it's a durable change, then we can unlock very low cost, very reliable energy source for the world.

- Okay, yeah, that's nice.

How about you, Sama?

- It gives me hope that well, nuclear has achieved this social license in most countries that we need to move forward.

It gives me hope that policy makers are recognizing not just the current fleet, but the need for additional nuclear.

It gives me hope that the finance community recognize that this is a worthy investment, not only financially, but from the social benefit point of view.

It gives me hope that the large energy users, AI technology companies, oil and gas, and metallurgical companies, shipping companies, all kinds of companies are looking at nuclear as an essential piece of their puzzle.

And more importantly, it gives me hope that the nuclear industry is waking up to the opportunity.

Not only to the opportunity as in a gain opportunity, but to the opportunity to be a key piece of the future puzzle of energy in the world.

- Nice, look, I've really enjoyed our conversation, your expertise, your knowledge, thanks for being here.

Scott Tinker, "Energy Switch."

Sama, thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, it was really nice.

Adam, thanks for being here.

- Thanks.

- Yeah.

There are some 70 reactors under construction worldwide in many countries.

China and Russia lead with about half of those.

Their average build time is 5.6 years at a cost of $3 billion.

So clearly, nuclear plants can be built in a reasonable time and cost.

In the U.S., we once did so with great success.

To do it again, my guests said we'd need to build an order book of projects so we can build plants in groups, not one by one.

This would create consistency and demand across the industry, and that would help rebuild our supply chains, support industries, and talent base.

Building plants for a consortium of buyers, as we once did, would spread the capital requirement, good for large power plants and the new small modular reactors or SMRs.

For both, we need to increase and improve our nuclear fuel enrichment capabilities.

It would help if the federal government made power purchase commitments and reform permitting to speed the process and help overcome barriers to nuclear.

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