447. Nuclear Power Is Safer Than Wind and Solar | James Walker

[0] Hey, everybody.

[1] So I had a great discussion today with someone I've wanted to talk to, the type of person I've wanted to talk to for a long time, and it turned out to be exactly the right person.

[2] James Walker, he's a nuclear physicist and CEO of a very interesting company called nanonuclear.

[3] And nano is making microreactors that are nuclear reactors that are portable, that can be moved around on the back of trucks.

[4] And this is something I'm very interested in, being interested in the nexus in the relationship between energy, environment, and the amelioration of poverty.

[5] And it seems to me that investigating the provision of low -cost, resilient, widely distributable nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels is morally required.

[6] partly because we know, we know this isn't some wild hypothesis that if you can make people who are absolutely poverty -stricken relatively rich, they start to care about the environmental future.

[7] And so what that means is the fastest way to environmental sustainability is by the amelioration of poverty.

[8] And the best way to do that is to provide low -cost energy and potentially the best way to do that is with nuclear energy.

[9] And so I think these guys are on the cutting edge.

[10] So I talked to James Walker, who has extremely interesting technical and managerial background, military background as well, about just exactly what they're up to.

[11] That's all part and parcel of this.

[12] So, you know, welcome aboard.

[13] All right, Mr. Walker, James, you're CEO of nanonuclear, and you've got a cool title, I think, head of reactor development.

[14] That's a cool title.

[15] And I was looking at your bio.

[16] And, you know, it's quite a lot of fun.

[17] So what have we got here?

[18] Extensive experience in engineering and project maintenance, including mining, construction, manufacturing, design, infrastructure, and safety management.

[19] So that's a lot of practical work.

[20] And so, you know, I'm very interested in talking to you today.

[21] And so thank you very much for agreeing to participate in this.

[22] I've been following nanonuclear on Twitter for quite a while.

[23] And I'll just give you some background so you know why I wanted to talk to you.

[24] I mean, I've thought for years that it's utterly insane that we're not pursuing nuclear energy at a rate that's as fast as we can possibly move.

[25] And I have a lot of questions about simplicity of design.

[26] And there are probably stupid questions, to be frank, but now I have the opportunity to ask them and hopefully I won't be quite so stupid after I've done this conversation.

[27] So do you want to start by telling everybody what it is that you're up to with nanonuclear and why you think what you're doing is plausible and plausible, helpful, and possibly revolutionary?

[28] I mean, you're up in Canada.

[29] Take mining sites, or a lot of the First Nation communities, they're in remote areas.

[30] All of these things are run on diesel power, and you can't substitute this out for anything else until microreactors come on the sea.

[31] And then suddenly you've got to market this.

[32] Thousands of mining sites, hundreds of remote communities, island communities, charging stations, free -vee vehicles.

[33] you can essentially put these remote power systems in the middle of nowhere, and they would power your communities or businesses for 15, 20 years.

[34] And that's a wonderful business opportunity that's never really been present before.

[35] And that's why we pursued the micro -reactored.

[36] Okay, so let me get some terminology straight, so I understand exactly what we're talking about here.

[37] So we have large -scale nuclear reactors in Ontario, and they're probably to refurbish the Pickering site, which is a new decision, I think, that came out actually last week and a good decision, thank God, we're not as dopey as California or Germany, let's say.

[38] Now, you talked about small modular reactors, and I've looked into the molten salt technology reactors and so forth, but you're differentiating that down further to microreactors.

[39] So do you want to distinguish for us, draw a distinction between a microreactor and a small modular reactor?

[40] And can you tell us the scale of power production, you know, in house equivalents, let's say, A standard reactor will power something like a small city, if I understand, if I've got my numbers aligned properly, a small modular reactor, I'm not sure about their power -generating capacity.

[41] And what exactly constitutes a micro -reactor?

[42] So differentiate that for us.

[43] Absolutely.

[44] So let's start with the conventional civil power plant, because that's what everyone's familiar with, because we've been using those for decades.

[45] So those things are powering cities and beyond.

[46] So usually a significant portion of your national group.

[47] And that's in gigawatts, you know.

[48] But when you shrink down to an SMR, you're talking about something really between, say, 20 megawatts and about 300 megawatts.

[49] And when you're getting up to about 300 megawatts, you're getting up to quite a large range.

[50] And so that's really the definition we can place in an SMR.

[51] But microreactor really is anything between, well, anything less than 20 megadles.

[52] At that point, you're dealing with very small reactors.

[53] Okay.

[54] Yeah.

[55] And so that's where we are, and we're at the low end of that because we want to transport a microreactors.

[56] Okay, so let me, okay, let's zero in on the microreactors now for a moment, and then we'll talk about the technology.

[57] Okay, so when I've been thinking about this, because I've been thinking about the relationship between energy and the environment for a long time.

[58] So, when I've been thinking about this, a number of things struck me. The first is the absolute power density of nuclear fuel, which is unsurpassed by any standard except for fusion, and we're not at fusion levels yet, although I talked to someone about that recently, and that'll be released quite soon.

[59] And so then I thought, well, we've obviously had something approximating microreactors that are reliable for a very long time, because we've been using nuclear subs for what?

[60] How long now?

[61] Seventy year?

[62] Is it at least 70 years?

[63] Yes.

[64] Right?

[65] I mean, so that's a long time.

[66] they fit in a submarine so they're not very big and submarines move around so they're obviously portable and the people on them don't survive from radiation poison and they can stay underwater forever and they're obviously extraordinarily reliable so then i keep thinking well why the hell aren't they everywhere and so let's talk about everywhere for a minute i mean there's some real advantages to distributed systems i would say you pointed to the fact that they could be used in isolated communities, but I'm also wondering, it's like, well, why not a network grid of microreactors as a substitute for these multi -billion dollar massive reactors that can, but don't very often, fail cataclysmically?

[67] And so, I mean, is there, as well as a market for these isolated places that you describe, is there the broader capacity of making a resilient networked power grid that gives country's sovereignty over their own power supply, but also has the advantage of like multiplicity of provision, which, you know, I mean, we have a distributed system for fossil fuel and there's some real utility in that because if part of it goes down, the rest of it doesn't.

[68] And so tell me your thoughts on those sorts of matters.

[69] Well, it's interesting you bring that up because we were recently at a conference, in fact, just last week.

[70] And a representative of the Polish government approach is about exactly this.

[71] And they have a grid system where certain shutdowns mean that the whole grid gets.

[72] gets lost.

[73] And so they really come up with no real solution to this, apart from microactors, which they believe they could space these accordingly so that in the event of a blackout in a certain area, the grid can be substituted with other power sources along the way.

[74] And this is a far more preferential solution than, say, a big grid system or even a diesel generator system, which is actually less consistent and requires the daily importation of diesel just to maintain it.

[75] Right, right, right.

[76] Well, these systems, are they resilient to solar flares just out of curiosity?

[77] Because this is also a concern, right?

[78] Because solar flare is about a once -in -a -century occurrence.

[79] And the fact that a solar flare could take out our whole power grid seems to me a lot more pervasive and present a threat than this climate alarmism that we're short -circuiting ourselves about.

[80] So I know that the distribution infrastructure still might be susceptible to, say, solar flare -induced shocks, but what about the reactors themselves?

[81] Well, the good part about a reactor is that it's almost entirely mechanical.

[82] Obviously, you can make the argument that mechanics can be very controlled by the electrics.

[83] But the truth of it is that, like, the reason why microreactors are very safe is that, say there was a big solar flare and knocked out the electrics, and the mechanical systems all simultaneously failed.

[84] With a microreactor, you can't get the disaster or the core melt, which is the big problem with a big civil part.

[85] And the reason for that is that it can't generate enough heat, especially in our designs, to actually melt the reactors.

[86] So it passively goes.

[87] Right, right.

[88] So it just shuts itself down.

[89] And even then that, say, the uranium just keeps, keeps getting hot, it's fine.

[90] It just radiate heat out and it's not going to melt.

[91] And it doesn't matter.

[92] The worst thing that can happen with the reactor is if, I don't know, it's a coolant leak, which leads to a core overheat, which leads to core melt, which can happen in big reactors.

[93] It's not going to kill any one, but it's messy to clean up.

[94] Right, right.

[95] But in a microreactor, it's just passively cool.

[96] So say you did get that solar flare, there's not a huge amount of electronics that it.

[97] It would be a fairly quick fix to go around and put these things back in order, but they would essentially just sit there until you came around to do that fix.

[98] So it's a big advantage.

[99] Okay, so that's another advantage on the resilient side.

[100] Okay, so now I want to delve, if you would, into other issues, so let's say cost, availability, but I'd also like to ask some really stupid questions about the technology itself.

[101] So I've been, and correct me any place I'm wrong, and there might be many places like that.

[102] I mean, so you refine nuclear fuel, and it heats up of its own accord, as a context.

[103] of radioactive fusion.

[104] And so, and then in a big reactor, you use rods to dampen down the rate at which the fission reaction occurs so that it stays with an acceptable bound.

[105] So let me ask you really a basic, simple, technical question.

[106] So I was thinking, well, what would be the simplest possible source of electricity that you could hypothetically design if you were using nuclear power?

[107] So I thought, well, why not embed pellets of enriched uranium or some other substance inside molten lead balls.

[108] And calibrate the distribution of the uranium pellets so that the balls were basically red -hot, but no hotter, drop them in a bucket of water, capture the steam, and run a generator.

[109] Okay, so like, why is that stupid?

[110] Because it seems, the lead seems to me to be something that's dense and would shield.

[111] I guess it would get radioactive over time.

[112] But so that's a very simple design.

[113] So tell me why that's a stupid design.

[114] No, I mean, effectively what you've done is design a basic reactor because like uranium gets hot, heats up water.

[115] Like the only thing that's missing from your design is the circulation of water.

[116] So what you would want to do is obviously move the hot water.

[117] Right, of course.

[118] Yeah.

[119] So that's a simple.

[120] We have pumps.

[121] We could do that.

[122] We have pumps.

[123] So, okay.

[124] Okay, so why aren't extraordinarily simple systems like, I mean, I know it's not simple to mine and refine the uranium, you know.

[125] But why aren't extraordinarily simple systems like that available, even as heat sources for that matter?

[126] Well, I'll give you a good example, actually.

[127] You know, do you remember the voyage spacecraft at NASA launch?

[128] They're, I think, are on the periphery of the solar system at the moment.

[129] And essentially all that's powering those is plutonium.

[130] that's basically radiating heat and that's it it's like the jordan peterson reactor but um it's radiating heat and there's like a thermoelectric turbine on that just convert some of that heat into electricity that's it that and that's that's the totality of it so um that's probably the most simple nuclear device nuclear power device you could get um but say with say with a lead lined uranium pellet like you've described well say you have a place for you your fuel and you're putting all of the lead pellets in there.

[131] That's going to, obviously, the lead is now occupying space that the fuel could be.

[132] So you might need to have a bit of a larger reactor.

[133] And if you have a bit of a larger reactor, you need to put a bit more fuel in there.

[134] And then you can get that runaway effect.

[135] And unfortunately, the laws of physics keep pushing us in certain design decisions.

[136] So that's, I think, been the challenge.

[137] Why microreactors and SMRs have never been done before?

[138] is that material science is now catching up.

[139] So, for instance, you've actually described something very close to a solution that a lot of the big reactor companies are coming up with called trisofune, which is uranium encased in certain layers of, like, lead, so eventually you can't get the fuel melt.

[140] And they're essentially pellets that go into a fuel space.

[141] Okay, so that gives me some sense.

[142] I'd like to kind of understand the most basic possible model before things become elaborated.

[143] So can we walk a bit through your technology?

[144] One of the things that struck me about your technology was its portability on the back of a truck.

[145] I mean, I can imagine 50 ,000 reasons why that might be extremely useful.

[146] But there's something that's kind of cool about it, too, that you can just trundle one of these things wherever it's needed for emergencies, for backup power, and for remote communities, which is obviously and mining sites and so forth, as you pointed out, which is a big deal in a place like Canada.

[147] And would also, as far as I can tell, would open up the possibility, especially in places like the Northwest Territories, for mining where that's practically not feasible because you can't build the bloody hydroelectric lines across 2 ,000 miles of tundra to fire up a mine.

[148] But with this provision of power, then I was also thinking it'd be pretty damn useful hypothetically on the desalination front too, because everybody's jumping up and down about not having enough water, which strikes me as like abysmally foolish given that 70 % of the planet or something like that is covered by, you know, water some miles deep.

[149] So I don't think we're going to run out.

[150] So walk me through the, if you would, to the design of your reactors and help me also understand why they're not already everywhere.

[151] Okay.

[152] So with our reactors, as you mentioned, we wanted them to be portable.

[153] But it was actually a business decision that speared that on because we thought, well, if they can fit within an ISO container, as an example, then you could transport them by truck or by train or by just put it on the back of a maritime vessel and you could ship these things anyway.

[154] You could even affect the helicopter in.

[155] Now, when you do that, you can straighten your design a little bit.

[156] So you've got to work within the confines of an ISO container.

[157] So you kind of end up with almost a bath -shaped design.

[158] design.

[159] So we have two technical teams, one drawn principally out of scientists and engineers out of University of Berkeley, California, and the other out of University of Cambridge.

[160] But we gave them the same MO, so it needs to be transportable, it needs to be an ISO container, it needs to be modular, and needs to be able to passively cool, like we talked about earlier.

[161] And they had different solutions.

[162] So the US team, they realized that if they take the coolant out and you just have uranium conventional fuel and it radiates through a solid core, then you don't need lumps for a coolant at all.

[163] And then the whole mechanical system shrinks right down.

[164] So it's basically the, it's one of the most basic designs you could probably make.

[165] Okay.

[166] Let me conduct for a solid core and then circulated air basically removes heat from the periphery of that core to a turbine.

[167] And that's pretty much.

[168] Oh, really?

[169] Really.

[170] So you're not using, you're not using liquid at all.

[171] You're just using heated air.

[172] Unless you want to define air as the liquid, but that's effectively their solution.

[173] I think it's quite brilliant.

[174] I'm bound to say that, but I do genuinely think that.

[175] And the University of Cambridge's solution was to take a basic fuel form, uranium dioxide, fuel rod, and surround it with a solar salt, but introduce some heat into that system to create a natural circulation.

[176] And then as that circulates, the uranium keeps that momentum going.

[177] And so then you can take the pumps out, you can take the mechanical systems out, and the system shrinks right down.

[178] Okay, and you said that was salt, that was salt based?

[179] That was salt based, yes.

[180] So it's like, so.

[181] Right, right, right, but the salt isn't molten in that system.

[182] So how, is it, or is it molten?

[183] Or how is the heat transferred?

[184] So it is, it is essentially liquid.

[185] So it will start off as a solid.

[186] But as you introduce heat, you create that natural circulation and then the heat of the uranium maintains that natural circulation of soft and now we'll remove heat from the fuel rods that then you can remove heat to a turbine and so forth and so right and so how is the turbine how is the turbine spun with that system with that system it's it's a thermoelectric so we're not in the we're not going to design these turbines but you i mean if you think like a like a helicopter turbine or something like that way.

[187] You're burning high -quality jet fuel to generate heat, and that heat is essentially moving their turbine.

[188] They're very convinced.

[189] The good thing about turbines is they're quite similarly to each other.

[190] Right, right.

[191] Well, they've been around for a long time, so that's a well -established technology.

[192] Now, you also worked for Rolls -Royce for a while if I've got my facts straight.

[193] I did.

[194] So I was Ministry of Defense.

[195] Actually, you mentioned submarines earlier.

[196] That's how I got my start in nuclear.

[197] I was involved in the construction of manual.

[198] manufacturing facilities to produce reactor cores, but they seconded me to Rolls -Royce, where I worked as a physicist in the design of the next generation of nuclear reactors for the next generation nuclear submarines.

[199] I see.

[200] I see.

[201] Okay.

[202] So that's a logical segue into the commercial market that you're attempting to conquer now.

[203] How long have you guys been in operation?

[204] So actually, not very long.

[205] It was only really about 2020 when we wanted to really get the company going.

[206] And I was number two in the organization.

[207] And we came at it, obviously, from that background when we were talking about why nuclear, why microreactors.

[208] But what was quite interesting is actually once we got into the industry, we realized that the U .S. infrastructure, the nuclear infrastructure, had kind of atrophied a little bit.

[209] And it had done that because the U .S. could source enriched material from Russia, weapons -grade material and then it could just downblend that material for whatever domestic needed wanted whether that was military or civil power plants and that that allowed it essentially to be to not have to renew a lot of its system so when we entered the nuclear industry it was it was kind of alarming that we thought we would have major impediments to actually launching a commercial company because of these infrastructure problems so we we thought actually this could be an opportunity.

[210] So you're looking to try and build our own fuel fabrication facility, our own deconversion facility, or our own fuel transportation system.

[211] And hopefully, like, we could be part of, you know, this renaissance of nuclear.

[212] Where are you located?

[213] So the headquarters are in New York.

[214] So I'm here, I'm actually here at the moment.

[215] But I'm actually, I live in Canada, most of the time.

[216] Where do you live in Canada?

[217] Vancouver.

[218] And have you had any contact, say, with the government people in Saskatchewan?

[219] Because, I mean, as you no doubt know, Saskatchewan has, like, uranium reserves that are, I think, unparalleled in the world and that don't really seem to be being utilized all that efficiently.

[220] And so, I mean, it's such insanity, as far as I can tell.

[221] We have this almost infinite power supply at our hands.

[222] And yet, we've turned to solar and wind.

[223] We're trying to cobble together battery storage, which, as far as I can tell, isn't working that well at the moment.

[224] And so, well, so that was the other question I had is like another question I had.

[225] Why aren't these already everywhere?

[226] You pointed to transformation in material technology and alluded to the fact that maybe we're just at the point where this has become economically viable and scalable.

[227] Are there like regulatory problems?

[228] Are there problems of public perception as well that constitute impediments?

[229] I would say nuclear has suffered from the worst PR and that might be partly because governments have always been involved in the funding of these big installations and the government don't care about but like if I was to say to somebody you know if you nuclear is the safest of all energy force like even safer than if you look at deaths per gigawatt hour nuclear beats out wind and it beats out solar surprise right is the safest already and that's not not even considering that SMRs and microactors are still safer than new big civil power plants.

[230] Right, right.

[231] And, you know, things like Fukushima or Three Mile Island get brought up, but I have to point out that nobody died in those situations.

[232] And really, it's just a cleanup operation.

[233] I don't want to trivialize.

[234] But it's, I think it, human psychology is interesting.

[235] I think radiation might be more interesting.

[236] intimidating because it's a danger you can't see.

[237] And so you can't understand the magnitude of that danger consequently.

[238] It's not like a tiger in the room you can see and you can assess.

[239] And that maybe has been an impediment.

[240] Okay.

[241] Well, okay.

[242] So that's well, well, we can understand that.

[243] I mean, a huge part of the problem that any company has to solve is the marketing problem.

[244] That's often 85 % of the problem, even if it's a complex technical problem.

[245] And so then what about what about government impediment or other, like, sociological impediment, specifically to your progress?

[246] Where are you getting resistance and where are you seeing, like, a well -paved way forward?

[247] Well, the good part is that when we did see a lot of resistance, but resistance in the form of infrastructure not being in place.

[248] And just to take an example of another company, and they probably won't mind me saying this, is that New Scale were the first company to license an SMR.

[249] In fact, they're the only ones in the world to do that.

[250] But they became under fire because the costs of their megawatt generation was more than they thought it was.

[251] But to be fair to them, everything they had to do was first of its kind.

[252] And so the first pharmaceutical drug costs millions, and the second one costs nothing.

[253] And so they got penalized for that.

[254] But if there was an infrastructure in place within the country to support everything they did and manufacture the fuel and parts they needed, it would have been an order of magnitude cheaper for a start.

[255] And logically, nuclear should be the cheapest form of energy.

[256] But you have all your capital costs up front, which can really distort that picture.

[257] Right, right, right.

[258] In big projects, like 70 % of your overall costs might be financing costs related to that big upfront capital cost.

[259] Well, you know, one of the things, it seems to me that from a PR perspective, a marketing perspective, that there's a wide open field of opportunity on one side of this equation that I don't think has been well -combed.

[260] capitalized upon.

[261] First of all, I think you can make us, you already made a case for green, what would you say, that nuclear power is a very green form of energy, at least in principle, especially when it's safely delivered in the form that you're delivering it.

[262] And you made a case for reliability and portability and all that.

[263] But there's another case that's just begging to be made even additionally on the environmental front.

[264] And so the data is quite, clear that if you get people around the world up to the point where they're producing about $5 ,000 in U .S. dollars a year in GDP, they start to take a long -term view of the future.

[265] They become environmentally aware.

[266] And that's because they're not scrabbling around in the dirt, burning dung, trying to figure out where the next meal is coming from, and willing to burn up and eat everything around them so they don't starve.

[267] So it's clear that if you get people, We know that rich countries get cleaner.

[268] That's what happens.

[269] And we also think, at least, that absolute privation and poverty is bad because we really want starving people and stunted children and all the misery that goes along with that.

[270] And so there's this opening, it seems to me, for people who are in a position to provide at scale inexpensive energy to say, look, we could feed the world's poor because there's a direct relationship between energy and wealth, like more direct than anything else.

[271] Energy equals wealth.

[272] And now we could make all the poor people in the world rich in a non -zero -sum manner.

[273] And as soon as we did that, they'd start to care about the environment.

[274] So like, where's, what's the problem with that?

[275] And well, and what do you think of that as a marketing campaign, let's say?

[276] Well, you've outlined our marketing campaign because when we were building up the company and we were making some very big connections, one of them, we were talking to some African diplomats.

[277] And they were mentioning to us, you know, one significant issue that Africa faces to the continent is that there's large sections of population that are completely removed from grid systems.

[278] And so that means diesel generators.

[279] But the problem there again is that you need a constant supply of diesel to be brought into those generators for them to run.

[280] So their supplies it's omitted.

[281] If you have a microreactor system, we touched on it earlier, like desalination plants, medical facilities.

[282] A microreactor could be put there and you've got 15 years.

[283] years of power for a community.

[284] And then it's consistent, too.

[285] And then you can have that $5 ,000 per capita wealth to create more long -term strategic thinking.

[286] And I've been to Africa enough and seen these poor areas to know that, like, when you're scrambling around in the dirt, your considerations are very short term because they have to be otherwise you're going to die.

[287] And so it's a situation that begets, you know, very.

[288] damaging decisions for the larger communities.

[289] Right, right.

[290] Well, that's the environmental cost of poverty.

[291] Like, we scream in the West all the time about the environmental cost of wealth.

[292] But the environmental cost of poverty is way higher, way higher.

[293] And so, and this is something I can't figure out.

[294] I cannot figure out why the Greens don't get this, because in principle, they're on the left.

[295] And the leftists, in principle, are on the side of the poor.

[296] But when it comes...

[297] But like, the thing is...

[298] is like, take Germany as example, like the green lobby got into essentially a position of power within that country.

[299] And they're effectively left with.

[300] And they were very, they heavily campaigned against nuclear to push for other renewable solutions.

[301] So they pushed heavily into wind and solar.

[302] But the result of that was that the country no longer could power itself.

[303] They had to buy power from, from Poland, which was manufactured by coal.

[304] And they had to power by and lignite, lignite coal, right?

[305] Not just coal, but the way.

[306] worst kind of cool.

[307] Yeah, I know, brilliant, brilliant.

[308] Which is incredibly polluting.

[309] And they also have to buy, ironically, energy from France, which was generated by nuclear power.

[310] So the costs the Germans went up for their power, and their carbon footprint went up.

[311] Right, right.

[312] So we want to, we want to dwell on that for a minute.

[313] So the consequence of the green movement in Germany was that power.

[314] Let's lay it out.

[315] Power is five times more expensive than it should have been.

[316] The Germans became reliant on fossil fuels to a degree that they weren't before, including reliant on Putin, which turned out to be a very bad idea, let's point out.

[317] Plus, and Germany is now in the throes of deindustrialization, so the poor are going to get a hell of a lot poor.

[318] And you might say, well, that's all worthwhile because we're so much greener, but the truth of the matter is, that Germany now has among the world's dirtiest energy per unit because of their idiotic policy.

[319] So they didn't just fail on the economic front entirely and make the poorer.

[320] They failed by their own standards because the bloody goal was to decrease pollution.

[321] And what they did instead was increase it per unit of energy and not just a little bit, a lot.

[322] And so this just bedevils me because I cannot put my finger on why it is.

[323] that the leftists are simultaneously pro -environment, pro -poor people, and anti -nuclear.

[324] It's like, sorry, guys, you don't get to have all three of them.

[325] You can have two.

[326] Yeah, I imagine there's a lot of posturing here.

[327] Yeah, yeah.

[328] It's not just Germany.

[329] You might say that, all right.

[330] Well, yes.

[331] But, like, as an example, like, I was working in Utah once, and I was this, I was working in this small little town, and there was a massive coal -powered plant there.

[332] And I was like, oh, so this powers Utah.

[333] and they're like, oh, no, we send all of this power straight to California.

[334] I was like, why?

[335] And they're like, well, they shut down a lot of their power plants.

[336] So they can claim that they've greased, essentially.

[337] But really, they're still powering their Teslers off coal that's being generated in Utah.

[338] And so it's the same kind of optics.

[339] Well, you know, Californians in Utah and the inhabitants, what are Utonians?

[340] I have no idea what you call people.

[341] from Utah.

[342] I have no idea.

[343] Anyways, you know that California and people from Utah, they don't breathe the same atmosphere.

[344] It's like China and the United States.

[345] Completely different air supply, as everyone knows.

[346] So, yeah, well, one of the reasons I like to talk to engineers is because they don't get to posture.

[347] Like, the thing that's cool about engineers is their stupid stuff either works or it doesn't.

[348] And it's very unforgiving.

[349] And so, you know, and, yeah, it's okay.

[350] The DEI people and the politically, correct types, they're going to take all you engineers out too, so you better get prepared.

[351] Well, as a black male, my days might be numbered.

[352] Yeah, plus you're an engineer, man. You've got a lot of things, a lot of strikes against you.

[353] So, okay, okay, so we've made a case for these small, these micro reactors.

[354] Now, I'd like to know, and you alluded to something quite interesting.

[355] You know, you said that when you first started to contemplate doing this in the American environment, you realized that there was a lot of industrial and infrastructure pieces that needed to be in place that had been allowed to decay because the Americans had had a reliable supply of fissile material from the Soviet Union as a consequence of its collapse.

[356] And so a lot of things were left to disintegrate, let's say, but now you've realized that that's also another economic opportunity.

[357] So it sounds to me like you guys are planning to build a, what would you say, from the ground up, enterprise that will allow for these microreactors to exist.

[358] So then I want to know where you are, how you came to that conclusion, where you are in that process.

[359] And then again, because I have a particular interest in Western Canada, I'm curious about, you know, how these ideas have been received in places like Saskatchewan.

[360] So I would say, there's like three questions there.

[361] Yep, yep, yep.

[362] So how these things have been received?

[363] Let's start with that one.

[364] So I think certain territories like Alberta have become very friendly to the idea of powering a lot of their remote industries, even the oil sand operations with nuclear power.

[365] Right, right, right, right.

[366] And that's an incredibly energy -intensive industry.

[367] And so there has been support voiced for the, And there's like an Invest Alberta program, which is looking actually to bring in SMRs.

[368] But that's not ubiquitous across the whole country.

[369] Like you don't, you wouldn't see the same receptiveness from, say, British Columbia, where I am currently.

[370] It's, it's, again, certain more industry -friendly provinces would drift in that sort of area.

[371] And I think, obviously, Toronto, well, the Ontario, the greater Toronto area came to the conclusion that nuclear had already provided a, substantial portion of the energy for the province, and they didn't want to substitute that for more fossil fuels.

[372] So they've gone back and invested in Canada actually has a pretty decent – I quite like the reactors they put together that can -do reactors.

[373] And they also – they almost generated their entire independent industry because they opted for designs that weren't being widely used across the world.

[374] So Canada is actually a very strong position to build out their own SMR industry if they invest properly now in doing that.

[375] Otherwise, they're going to suffer in the same way that the United States is suffering from getting going now.

[376] And another thing you mentioned is why we saw these problems.

[377] We saw big companies like, take tarot power.

[378] It's a big SMR company and it's backed by Bill Gates.

[379] So there's no shortage of money for this thing to get going.

[380] But they effectively could not find enough fuel to put into their reactors to complete the test.

[381] And we thought, that's very interesting.

[382] So what happened there?

[383] Well, they effectively had to shut down for two years.

[384] And that's the worst thing that can possibly happen because you just burn cash.

[385] And so they're probably going to burn through hundreds of millions of dollars.

[386] And so the advantage, you know, a wise man can learn from those stakes of others.

[387] So hopefully we just saw that and we thought, well, if we could, can't, we're not backed by Bill Gates, so we can't afford to make a hundred million dollar mistake like that, or a billion dollar mistake like that.

[388] And so really before we saw the US government realize that there was a significant problem, which very closely mirrored the Ukraine war when relationships began to become very strained.

[389] And they began pushing a lot of funding opportunities out there to build back their infrastructure.

[390] And they're doing that now, but it's still come a bit late.

[391] And so the advantage we had is we started doing that before these funding opportunities from the US government came out to build conversion facilities, deconversion facilities, fuel fabrication, enrichment facilities.

[392] Because otherwise, if Russia cut off the states now, and they are still through back channels dealing in supply of enriched uranium because the US can't afford to go without it.

[393] But they don't want to have those channels over before.

[394] They want to cut ties, but they can't do it.

[395] And you mentioned earlier that Germany lost sovereignty over itself partially because it couldn't power itself.

[396] It was reliant on Russian gas.

[397] Right.

[398] That's a situation no country really wants to be it.

[399] You want to be, have sovereign energy, absolutely.

[400] Otherwise, your diplomatic strength is completely got.

[401] Yeah, well, you'd think that no country would want that, but when you watch the policies that they're pursuing, a sensible person would conclude that that's exactly what they want.

[402] And I do believe that posturing has a very large amount to do with that, because almost all of the green idiocy is narcissistic posturing.

[403] It's the pretense of doing good without doing any of the actual work.

[404] Okay, so walk me through where you, okay, so explain to everybody who's watching and listening, how you, how you.

[405] you're involved right from the place where the uranium is still in the ore in the ground?

[406] Like, what has to happen at each step along the way so that the fuel actually gets to one of your reactors?

[407] And how is your company situated to make that happen?

[408] And where are you in that process?

[409] So, starting at the very basic uranium mining, you mentioned the Saskatchewan deposit.

[410] So you mine the uranium, but the ore is effectively not.

[411] very useful for any, but you subject that all to a leaching process and you create a yellow cake, which is essentially more concentrated uranium, that then would be shipped off for a conversion.

[412] Where we sit in that is that we've actually reached out to Central Asia where almost the majority of the world's uranium is currently being mined.

[413] It doesn't have to come from there.

[414] But say there are big deposits in like Wyoming and Saskatchewan that are not producing uranium readily now in enough quantities to meet the demand.

[415] And so it is coming from abroad.

[416] I believe those domestic deposits will be built up now that the uranium price is rising because like COP28 announces the necessity to triple nuclear energy by 2040 or whatever it is.

[417] So that is having an effect on the uranium price, which is encouraging mine development.

[418] But the problem with mining is that it can take five years from a greenfield deposit to get to a mine.

[419] And so you've always had that lag.

[420] And if the lag, if during that lag, the uranium price drops and that could even hit that mine even coming to commercial production.

[421] So it's, it's, there's a lot of risk associated with, you know, not having your own domestic facilities in place.

[422] So we have reached out to them.

[423] We do have an ability at the president's office within certain countries in Central Asia to source uranium directly if we should need it.

[424] And we've even talked with the largest uranium.

[425] any materials broker in the world to make sure that we have a supply of that because no business wants to make, wants to have the risk that you have all, you build all these facilities and reactors and manufacturing facilities, but the raw material that fuels all this isn't there.

[426] So that there's that component to it too.

[427] Well, do you worry, do you worry that you're dealing with these, like, say, Central Asian?

[428] Again, it brings me back to the same thing.

[429] Well, if you could have a resource in Wyoming or let's say in Saskatchewan, that seems to me to be a lot more geopolitically stable in any real sense than trying to source something halfway around the world in countries that are definitely not politically stable.

[430] And so why were you compelled to go seek out suppliers elsewhere?

[431] Well, it's the immediacy of supply.

[432] Like they are able to supply material now.

[433] And that is a major advantage over, we have a mine, and it's at even feasibility level.

[434] You still need to, to put the mine works in place, the processing plant in place.

[435] Processing plant from the uranium operation could be a quarter of a billion dollars and take three years to build.

[436] And so we want to make sure that...

[437] Does it have to take three years to build?

[438] I mean, you know, because things do move a lot.

[439] They could move a lot faster now than they once did.

[440] And I'm, you know, I also wonder, are there improvements in technology that are in the pipelines that would make it possible to do it in like a year instead of three years, if people actually decided they, you know, I mean, Germany built new natural gas importing terminals in months when they needed to.

[441] So like, we can actually move pretty quick if we decided it was a good idea.

[442] So, okay, so you said immediacy of supply.

[443] That's what drove you to Central Asia.

[444] But it would be better, perhaps, if there were domestic supplies that were at least in the pipelines, let's say.

[445] Domestic supply from Saskatchewan or Wyoming would be a lot better.

[446] Of course they would.

[447] There's no geopolitical, well, there's less geopolitical uncertainty.

[448] And, like, for instance, even in Central Asia, like, they do supply China and Russia still with the uranium that they need for their own programs, too.

[449] So you're competing against other countries which are potentially hostile to the states or Canada or places like that.

[450] And if they're looking to wage an economic war, we'll look for more exclusive contracts.

[451] And so you then are in a competing position for material you can't control.

[452] right seems like a bad yeah like from a geopolitical perspective that seems unwise let's put it that way so i can understand why you guys are doing it commercially because as you said you can't afford the delay and fair enough okay so now do you have a stable supply fundamentally can you get can you get moving with what you're doing we can so um the the the good part about what we're doing now is we've we've ensured that we have broken enough good relations with certain countries that we can source the material if you wanted.

[453] We're not in the business of enrichment, but we could do things like conversion and get it into a uranium hexafluoride gas, which can go to a licensed enrichment company like Arano or Centrus, and they could enrich the material for us.

[454] From gas.

[455] So what's the relationship between the gas and the yellow cake?

[456] So what you want to do with yellow cake is once it's been concentrated by that leaching process, is that you, it's easier to enrich a gas than it is, say, yellow cake, which you could use a centrifugal system, but gas is certainly a lot easier to maneuver.

[457] And so if you would take the yellow cake and you would expose it to several chemical processes to turn it into uranium hexafluoride.

[458] And it's actually the enrichment companies will enrich uranium hexaflora to produce, well, whatever you want.

[459] So enriched to whatever the customer needs it.

[460] But at that point, it actually needs to be deconverted back to a solid.

[461] Oh, yeah.

[462] So our company actually wants to build out that infrastructure for the country too.

[463] So take that uranium hexafluoride, convert it to dioxide, convert it to dioxide.

[464] hydride, sorry, uranium dioxide, uranium hydroxide, uranium metal, whatever the market will need.

[465] So that's one element.

[466] And then fabrication facility to tailor it for the specific reactor.

[467] So essentially fashion it into dimensions, composition, mold it with zoconium, whatever they want, and then sell that.

[468] And the final part of what we want to do is build out a transportation company so we can actually transport that around North America too.

[469] How would you transport it?

[470] So we've actually been spending about a year doing this, but we've got a patented technology now for a cask system that can transport the most amount of enriched material, so HALU material, so it's enriched up to almost 20 % around North America.

[471] And we're just in the process of getting that license now with the regulator.

[472] Okay, so that's, okay, so you've been working on solving the transportation.

[473] problem.

[474] And so what are the problems associated with transport that you've had to solve?

[475] And how did you solve those?

[476] So the fundamental problem with transport is that you cannot have uranium critically configured.

[477] And what I mean by that is if you if you if you have uranium is only actually really radioactive if you push it all together, which is the basis of a bomb.

[478] If you push it together then it be it triggers itself more and it sets off a chain reaction and it's the reactivity creates the heat.

[479] So effectively for road regulations, you have to store the material in a structured way to make sure it's not printed.

[480] But it doesn't end there.

[481] There's a lot of other regulations surrounding that.

[482] So is it going to be hit by a plane or a misfortune?

[483] Or is it going to fall under water?

[484] Or is it going to fall?

[485] What are the heat conditions?

[486] Can it be cold?

[487] Can it be warm?

[488] And you've got to make all of these safety scenarios.

[489] So designing a transatlantic transportation cask that fits within a truck that can move a lot of material by road is a bit of an engineering challenge, but I don't think it's that difficult, but it's certainly something that has not been in place previously because for SMRs and microactors, the uranium is enriched slightly more.

[490] And because it's enriched slightly more, you need a completely new cask system.

[491] And so that's where we thought, oh, we'll jump on that and build that out.

[492] And that way, when the industry does take off the SMR microreactivity, we'll have the transportation able to move fuel for all the ESS.

[493] So, okay, so does that mean, I see, so that means that your transportation system in principle is not only designed to service your microreactors, but to be expanded to service these slightly larger reactors, the SMRs.

[494] Yeah, the good part is.

[495] And that's the plan.

[496] Yeah, that's the plan.

[497] So we don't, I mean, we're not in the business where we want the other competitors to fail.

[498] If they win, we'll win.

[499] Right, yes, yes, right.

[500] Absolutely.

[501] Yeah, the right number of competitors isn't zero.

[502] No, exactly.

[503] And also, we want them to succeed because they'll build out the infrastructure, they'll generate more money within the country for this industry, and we'll be beneficiaries of that too.

[504] They want to move fuel, we'll help them move fuel.

[505] They want to fabricate fuel, we'll fabricate it for them.

[506] Even if they outsell our reactors, it's fine.

[507] Right.

[508] So you can also be in on their success in that situation too.

[509] Okay, so that's cool.

[510] Okay, so you said, you've got to supply, at least at the moment in Central Asia, that gets reduced to by leaching to yellow cake.

[511] The yellow cake is transformed into uranium hydro, hydro, what's the name of the gas?

[512] Hexifluoride, hexafloid, uranium hexafluoride.

[513] That can be concentrated and then converted back into about 20%.

[514] You said, and so why 20 %?

[515] And you can transport it at 20 % and you can do that.

[516] safely.

[517] And you can do that by rail, by ship, by car, or by train.

[518] And so now you have the 20 % enriched material.

[519] What do you do with that when you get it to where it's supposed to go?

[520] So it depends where it's going.

[521] So if it's going to, if it's the 20 % enriched uranium hexafluoride, that'll need to be converted into uranium dioxide, hydride, or whatever fuel form you want.

[522] So are you transporting the gas?

[523] Well, we don't want to, I don't want to speak preemptively.

[524] Okay, well, that's fine.

[525] But actually, no, it's fine.

[526] We do want to branch, take our cask and modify it so it can move gas.

[527] I see.

[528] Okay, okay.

[529] The anticipation is that currently we are building out a deconversion plan to be able to convert that gas into other forms.

[530] And then when they're in other forms, it's easier to fabricate.

[531] into the final uranium form that the customers might want.

[532] Okay, okay, okay.

[533] And how far along are you when you're thinking pessimistically in solving these, because you've got a bunch of problems, as you laid out, you've got the supply problem, which you seem to have solved.

[534] Now you've got the transportation problem, which is also a huge opportunity, so that's cool, because that gives you multidimensional access to the market.

[535] You've got the transportation problem.

[536] And it sounds like that's twofold.

[537] There's a technical element.

[538] There's a regulatory element.

[539] I suppose there's going to be a public relations element to that too.

[540] But whatever.

[541] Okay, so now you can move the stuff around.

[542] Now you've got these deconversion plants that are going to help you formulate the fuel you need to run your reactors.

[543] And then you have the problem of building the reactors and getting them to where they're supposed to go.

[544] So four streams of problems that have to move together somewhat simultaneously, how far along are you on each of those streams?

[545] So, if it was a pessimistic timeline, I would say, I mean, we've been working at this for a fair amount of time.

[546] I would say that the first line of business that we anticipate being commercially ready to deploy would probably be the transportation, actually, because we have the patented technology.

[547] We've already approached the licensing company to, a regulator to do the licensing for us.

[548] And we've actually brought in the former executives of, I don't want to say the name, but, the largest transportation company in the world, which might give it away, but we've brought in some of the former executives from their organization to build out the company around the technology.

[549] And so I believe that might be the first commercially deployable business.

[550] The timeline on that probably looks like finish the licensing, hopefully sometime next year, and then the build -out of the manufacturing facility to produce the tasks, as well as the infrastructure around the casks to fit them to trucks and things like that, we'll do that simultaneously, probably finish that sometime of about 2026.

[551] Hopefully, in 2026, 27, we would have a commercial vehicle ready to start moving material around North America.

[552] That would be like pessimistic.

[553] Okay, so that's pretty fast.

[554] Okay, well, as a pessimistic view, and if you were, if you were optimistic, what would you say?

[555] Oh, I would say hopefully the licensing runs all smoothly.

[556] While that's going on, we build out the manufacturing facilities, we have them finish next year, and then we're in a position to begin initially deploying vehicles that can move enriched material up to 20 % around the country.

[557] So maybe I shaved two years off that if I'm super optimistic.

[558] Okay, so that gives us a range.

[559] Okay, so now if you had the opportunity to work with a state or provincial legislature that was like helpful in every way they possibly could be, what would that look like?

[560] What would you need from them?

[561] Is there anything you need from like a particular local jurisdiction that would speed what you're doing along?

[562] I would say the big thing on that topic is that the regulatory process just for any reactor, microreactor SMR or big civil power plant, is probably at minimum four years.

[563] Oh yeah, that's just no good.

[564] That's terrible.

[565] That's terrible.

[566] The problem I think, and they're probably going to see this podcast and be angry with me, but I think they're trying to apply a civil power plant's regulatory framework to a microreactor.

[567] Yeah.

[568] It's a different product, and it almost has its own regulatory framework to be designed.

[569] So you'd need a legislature that was willing to consider the fact that this isn't the same old industry.

[570] Yes.

[571] Yeah, it's a new product.

[572] It's a new industry.

[573] and it's essentially all new technologies.

[574] And if they were to design some sort of regulatory framework that just looked at, say, safety criteria for where these things could deploy, like met certain seismic conditions or temperature constraints or ranges, then the reactor would be approved for deploying anywhere as long as it met this criteria.

[575] I think if they did that, right, right, right.

[576] If it really allow, for one, the deployment of these things absolutely everywhere, and it would really be a much faster process because they're also much more basic.

[577] I mean, it's come about because of advances in technology, but the technology itself, once it's built, it's more basic than the...

[578] Right, right, right, right.

[579] Well, so do you have a jurisdiction with whom you're having productive discussions that is simultaneously capable of understanding that this is a new technological front?

[580] That would be hypothetically willing, I mean, because the economic opportunities here are extreme, if it's done right.

[581] And so you'd think, if you were optimistic, that there might be a legislature somewhere in the 50 states and the United States and the 12 places that this could happen in Canada that might be open to such an opportunity.

[582] I mean, are you having productive discussions with people who could conceivably clear away the regulatory hurdles?

[583] So we have obviously made contact with the Department of Energy in the States.

[584] and we've obviously broached this topic that this is something that should be considered.

[585] It's not that they're unaware that this might be a good idea, too.

[586] It's just they also need funding to implement new legislation or get approvals from Congress or how it works in the state.

[587] And there's good bipartisan support in the states for nuclear, but it still needs to go through the approval process where you get the Senate signing off.

[588] And they do need funding to put this new regulatory framework.

[589] framework into when they give it to a regulation like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, it can design that new framework and it needs to obviously employ people to do that.

[590] Well, what kind of funding is necessary to do that?

[591] I'm trying to get a real handle on the impediments, you know, because the advantages are so stark and obvious.

[592] And we've done some pretty extraordinary things on the idiot wind and solar front and in relatively short order.

[593] So you wouldn't think that this is impossible.

[594] So, like, what sort of funding is necessary?

[595] If you're starting a new regulatory enterprise, essentially from scratch, designed around this new technology, I don't understand the necessity for this great expense and spending of time.

[596] No, I think, really, it could be done, if I'm honest, it could be done very, very quick.

[597] I think the problem is that, say, like a department of energy, they run into needing more funding to create a smaller department to design a framework, and then they could be waiting on that funding.

[598] for a long time as government debated.

[599] But actually, if government were very in favor of it, I was sure on both sides of the aisle, there would be general support for just a small amount of my...

[600] Okay, so let me ask you another practical question.

[601] If I said, do you have a 20 -page document that would outline an intelligible regulatory framework that you could hand to a legislator who was positively predisposed to you?

[602] Like, do you guys have that?

[603] Because, you know, one of the easiest ways to get people to say yes, to anything, is to make it extremely easy for them.

[604] Right.

[605] And to provide them with us, exactly, exactly.

[606] Because if you're saying, well, you have to whip up a regulatory structure from scratch and you have to take all the political risk, they're going to say, yeah, five years from now.

[607] And we'll let other people do it, and it'll take forever.

[608] But if you can hand them a tailor -made solution, essentially, I know that runs you into the problem of, you know, government industry collusion.

[609] But that's a secondary problem, as far as I'm concerned.

[610] because this isn't collusion it's joint effort to move forward something that would be of great benefit to people and if it happens to be of benefit to your company it's also going to be of benefit to many of the other companies that you described too so do you have a set of proposals at hand that you could supply to an interested legislative party yes I mean to be honest that would take us a few weeks just to put together like a proper well that's not long few weeks isn't long, you know, because I can imagine some people who might be interested in taking a look at something like that.

[611] Oh, well, look, if they were very interested, I'd be very interested in that conversation.

[612] And we, our scientists, would be very happy to prepare a formal document that outlines a proposal for how these things could be, like, it would have to be a very high -level thing, but I know you need to put it down.

[613] But essentially, the criteria for approving the safety of these things for deployment en masse to different locations.

[614] And it is very different because like a big civil power plant, you have a site regulation process where it has to be site -specific and you tailor your safety case for that specific site.

[615] From the reactor, you wouldn't do that.

[616] It would be a different process where there is a safety criteria that you need to meet.

[617] But as long as the site meets that safety criteria, the reactor can deploy that.

[618] So it's fundamentally different.

[619] Right, right, right, right.

[620] Well, this is exactly, it seems to me that this is exactly the sort of thing that has to be dealt with in the kind of detail that legislators would appreciate so that that differentiation is not only made conceptually, but made in a manner that would be credible to, like, investigative news reporters and so forth, and people who are skeptical about this.

[621] But, I mean, I do know that technical problems are one thing, and obviously you guys are capable of solving them, but it's very, very easy for a whole industry to fall into a mess of red tape and never get out.

[622] And certainly that's happened on the nuclear side of things.

[623] And so that's just not good.

[624] And it's, once I see, I realized, I worked, I'm ashamed to admit this to some degree, but I worked on a panel years ago, 10 years ago, something like that, which was one of the early UN documents on sustainability.

[625] And I worked on that for about two years.

[626] And I learned a lot about how such things were made, how such sausage was made, let's put it that way.

[627] But I also learned a lot about the nexus between energy and environment.

[628] And one of the things that really, and economics, one of the things that really struck me, and I never forgot it, was the fact that as soon as you make people rich, they start to care about the environment.

[629] And I thought, oh my God, that's such a wonderful thing to learn because it means that we could deal with the problem of absolute poverty and we could deal with environmental sustainability in the same way.

[630] Okay, what's key?

[631] It's clear what's key.

[632] It's easy.

[633] It's cheap energy.

[634] period.

[635] And so, okay, so then the next question is, well, where are the available energy sources?

[636] And obviously one answer to that is with continued use of fossil fuel.

[637] But we see the geopolitical trouble that's laid in front of us because of that.

[638] And there are problems of pollution, although especially with coal, although they're not as grotesque as they've been made out to be.

[639] But nuclear, you think nuclear, I mean, I read, tell me if this is true, I read that part of the reason that nuclear is safer than solar is because people fall off the roof all the time installing solar panels and falling is actually like the fifth leading cause of death it's no joke right so falling is really hard on people but it's true and also if you look at wind power too there's a significant number of falls that are generated by the installation of these things and they need constant maintenance which means there is a constant stream of people going up and down these things, which is why would I make sure...

[640] They're a stupid solution.

[641] Low energy, density, they're not a good solution.

[642] And solar, I mean, one of the things I've really watched in the last five years, say, as these big solar and wind projects come on, especially in Alberta, because I've been watching the Alberta power situation.

[643] It's like the price of electricity goes to infinite on windless and sunless days.

[644] Okay, infinite is a bad price.

[645] That's a very bad price.

[646] And you can't have an unreliable grid.

[647] That doesn't work.

[648] And I don't see a solution to that.

[649] I mean, tell me if I've got this wrong.

[650] So my understanding is that the fundamental problem with a renewable grid is the phasic nature of the power.

[651] And because it's phasic, you have to have backup.

[652] It's like, well, it can't be nuclear because it takes too long for them to get online, at least in their current form.

[653] So you have to have natural gas and fossil fuel backup or coal.

[654] And if you have to have the backup, then why not just use the systems?

[655] Because you're not going to build two parallel systems.

[656] Like, who in the right Germans would do that?

[657] And that's insane.

[658] You know, one of the things I thought was funny when I first moved to Canada is that I was actually living up in Yelenite from Northwest Territories for a few months.

[659] And it's an interesting place to live for a little while.

[660] But someone mentioned that the whole city was powered on diesel.

[661] I said, that's crazy.

[662] This is a city of like, I can't remember, it's 40 ,000.

[663] people or something like that.

[664] It was fairly significant.

[665] And I was like, why?

[666] And they're like, oh, the dam is broken.

[667] I was like, can't they fix the dam?

[668] It's like, well, they can't really.

[669] Like, it's blocked up and it's winter.

[670] It's difficult to get people up there.

[671] And so we're just running off diesel generators.

[672] As far as I know, it's still running off those diesel generators.

[673] And I was there six or seven years ago.

[674] So think how much diesel does.

[675] Well, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix, especially if the government has to be.

[676] Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely, absolutely.

[677] And so, right, right.

[678] Well, and Yellowknife is isolated.

[679] And so the fact that all that diesel has to be brought in, all that means is that it's really, really expensive to live in Yellowknife.

[680] That's the outcome.

[681] Yeah, there was another, there was another province.

[682] I think it was in Yellowknife, too.

[683] They were talking to us about, it was a community about 800 people, one of the First Nations settlements up there.

[684] And the outline of the diesel alone, if you ignore the logistics and manpower and the cost of the generators, was $10 million alone, but just the diesel by itself were 800 people for a year.

[685] And I thought, well, that's crazy.

[686] That's an enormous expense for just 800 people.

[687] Right, right, right.

[688] No, that's right.

[689] Well, there's many crazy things going on.

[690] And there are all that posturing that you described, combined with a tremendous technological ignorance of the most stellar sort, means that we are putting it in place solutions that cause way more problems than they solve.

[691] This just isn't acceptable.

[692] It's not acceptable.

[693] And look, I never want to denigrate fossil fuels too much because I believe they're definitely.

[694] have a place, and they've been of enormous asset to humanity.

[695] And people talk about zero, as in going to zero.

[696] Yeah, that's insane.

[697] That's completely insane.

[698] It's also just not practical.

[699] Even if you were to stop all power by, what about textile industry or the downstream products of the fossil fuel industry, plastics, you're never going to eliminate them complete.

[700] And so it's foolish.

[701] Not without eliminating a lot of people.

[702] Yes.

[703] Yes, yes.

[704] Yes, and that seems to be the plan.

[705] Well, you can imagine a world where we used fossil fuels as a basis for chemical production, like fertilizer, for example, because we're not going to substitute nuclear for fertilizer, right?

[706] There's no one solution for every aspect of humanity is very complex existence, but everything could have a very well -fitted place.

[707] And to be honest, my correctors are in a much better position to power remote communities like Yellowknives than diesel.

[708] Whereas, obviously, nuclear is never going to replace, you know, fossil fuels for producing fertilizers.

[709] Right, right, right, right.

[710] Well, and we shouldn't be burning, arguably, we shouldn't be burning up our fossil fuels when we need it for chemical stock.

[711] I mean, that seems to me. So why not, okay, so let's be optimistic here for a minute.

[712] So let's imagine that you cleared the regulatory hurdles.

[713] And now you've managed to transport your fissile material safely, and you can start building these reactors.

[714] Okay, now, and people clue in, and we can start to build a resilient power grid as a consequence.

[715] Now, you can start manufacturing at scale, right, in principle.

[716] So how much, how uniform a product are you making at the microreactor level?

[717] Like, is this something this assembly line manufacturer?

[718] And can you drive down the cost with volume?

[719] Yeah, so this is actually it, is that the economy of scale here is the real, benefits.

[720] So if you're producing two or three of these a year, it's very expensive.

[721] But if you produce 100 of these, it actually gets very cheap.

[722] And the good thing about micro reactors, which has not been possible before, is that it allows for very easy manufacturing because they're simple enough to do.

[723] So there's no reason why you can't have a production line and just 3D prints these things.

[724] And then the costs come down very quickly.

[725] And then you are cheaper than diesel generator.

[726] And once you are cheaper than diesel generator, and that will take a few years, to be fair.

[727] But once you do get to that point, there will be no real logical reason to use anything but microactors in these remote locations, mining sites.

[728] Okay, well, let's go be, okay, let's expand beyond that.

[729] So now let's assume that you can use this printing technology that you described.

[730] And you said the scale, the economies of scale start to kick in at how many reactors a year?

[731] I would say, actually, really, about 15.

[732] And then that sort of points to become on the economic.

[733] It's actually very low.

[734] In fact, I think Idaho National Laboratory concluded that it was something like nine.

[735] I don't want to miss...

[736] Okay, okay.

[737] So it's very low.

[738] Okay, so let's expand our vision momentary and say that you could produce a thousand of these things a year and that they were distributed widely enough to start putting some back, resilient backbone into the power supply and start to substitute for, for natural gas and for coal.

[739] Well, we could start with coal.

[740] Okay, so what, if everything went as well as could possibly be expected on this front, how far down do you think you could drive the price of energy?

[741] Like compared to what it is now?

[742] Well, I mean, that's very interesting because if the oil infrastructure was in place and you had domestic production of uranium, and we upgraded our enrichment facilities, but domestically, which we currently don't have.

[743] And you're mass manufacturing these things.

[744] I mean, I'd hate to put a price on it, but there's no reason why you can't keep optimizing that system to keep making it incrementally cheaper.

[745] So even though...

[746] Right, okay, so you're driving down the price.

[747] You're driving down it.

[748] To be SMRs, it's not our business, but those guys, their costs will also fall commensurately with how arts are falling too, because there's no reason why they can't mass manufacture those things to be major components of a major grid system.

[749] So it's a more robust system that's getting cheaper all the time.

[750] There's no reason why that couldn't have the beneficial effect.

[751] Well, that's ridiculously exciting, all of that.

[752] And so, yeah, well, seriously, seriously, I mean, that's such an optimistic possibility.

[753] Okay, well, let's be smart about this.

[754] Let's talk about downsides.

[755] Now, we talked about the fact that people are afraid of nuclear technology.

[756] Now, in principle, that could be handled with a marketing strategy that wasn't based on lies that provided accurate information about the fact that this was essentially a new technological approach, and that could go in lockstep with the provision of the legislative material.

[757] You can imagine a parallel campaign.

[758] So that seems to me to be a solvable problem.

[759] Now, okay, some terrorist hijacks one of your trucks.

[760] How about that?

[761] So the assumption there is that they're going to turn this into some sort of weapon.

[762] Or spill it.

[763] Or spill it.

[764] So let's think about how they would have to do that.

[765] So if they were to seize your microreactor or your SMR, the problem they have is that the uranium is not enriched to a weapons grade level, so they can't make it flow up.

[766] And it's also alloy.

[767] So they'd have to build a multi -billion dollar facility chemical plant to recover the uranium and separate it from the alloy.

[768] Okay, so that seems that, okay, so that's just not a, a danger?

[769] What about stealing one of your trucks and threatening people publicly with radiation?

[770] I know, look, I already understand, I want to put this in context, because it seems to me that anybody who hijacked a propane truck would be in a pretty good position to cause a lot of mayhem.

[771] So, and, you know, or derail a train that is carrying fossil fuel.

[772] So we have plenty of risk like that already in the system.

[773] So do you, where do you see, where, if anywhere, do you see, the kind of risk to the public that could be leveraged by someone crooked who wanted to cause trouble.

[774] Just to touch on that quickly, if they seized it, the problem they have, people use examples of the things like dirty bombs, which is where you attach.

[775] Yeah, yeah.

[776] But the problem with the reactor uranium is that it's not going to explode if you, reactors can't blow up for a start.

[777] Like they're not enriched to a suitable level enough.

[778] If you were to take the uranium out of it and strap it to a bomb, the most dangerous thing is the bomb that you've made, not the uranium around the bomb.

[779] Actually, ironically, if you blow up uranium, it becomes less dangerous because you've separated the material, so it's going to react less with itself and become correct.

[780] So you can imagine that as a public relations disaster fundamentally, because you can imagine how that would be played up.

[781] But again, I don't think that puts you in a category that's any different than, you know, people who are moving fossil fuel from place to place, because that's more risky.

[782] That's at least as, no, it's more risky because it's much more explosive.

[783] It's much more explosive, and it's dirtier, actually.

[784] Like, obviously, if you had a dirty bomb, you'd have to pick up the pieces of uranium.

[785] No one's going to get hurt, but, like, it's still, you'd need to maybe cordon off for a microag, maybe 100 meters either way, but it's still not very bad.

[786] I say the BP oil spill, I think some of the effects that are still being felt.

[787] So it's a lot of cleaner or cleanup operation.

[788] Right, right, right.

[789] I think it's tricky.

[790] I don't want to sound like it's all perfect.

[791] But, you know, what's a terrorist going to do with a microactive bottle from his house?

[792] You know, it's...

[793] That is a good advertising campaign, right?

[794] Yeah, exactly.

[795] You're a microreactor, heat your house.

[796] Right, right, right.

[797] All right, well, okay, so now, let's see.

[798] We've covered timeline.

[799] We've covered your process, essentially.

[800] Okay, maybe we can talk a little bit more about the microreactor technology per se.

[801] So what is it about the technology that makes it amenable to mass manufacture?

[802] And why does that drive the price down?

[803] And where are you in the manufacturing process?

[804] Okay, so the good part is that, like, if you think about those big civil power parts, they're huge.

[805] They take up, I don't know, 30 city blocks, they're absolutely enormous.

[806] But there's an enormous quantity of mechanical components, pumps, all sorts of systems that go into that.

[807] And as it should be, that's fine.

[808] But as you shrink down to SMR and you shrink down to microreactors, a lot of that goes away.

[809] And we actually in, say, one of our reactors have hardly any mechanical components at all.

[810] And so then you can get to the point where you can 3D print these, which you couldn't do for more complicated mechanical systems where it's a bit more finicky.

[811] And that does allow for mass production of these things, whereas mass production for larger machinery that's more intricate, becomes harder.

[812] You can obviously still 3D print components and piece them together, but there's still a lot more engineering work and human involvement that would be necessary to compete those, whereas a lot of that can be automated, I think, as you get simpler and simpler.

[813] Well, so you've pointed to something very interesting there, which we've kind of brushed over, is that you basically said something approximating, almost no moving parts.

[814] Okay, and that's not something that should be brushed over because that's quite remarkable, because the fewer moving parts, the fewer things that can go wrong, so that's a big deal.

[815] But that's also simpler, more understandable.

[816] It's more marketable, too, because people can understand it.

[817] But also, as you pointed out, it's much more manufacturable.

[818] So to what degree have you reduced the moving part complexity?

[819] Like when you say there's virtually no moving parts, how many parts are there fundamentally?

[820] So I would say take our Zeus reactors as an example, that's a bit further along.

[821] There are moving parts, say control rods that are inserted into the core, and control rods are to moderate the reactivity.

[822] So they go in, they eat up nutrients, If it comes less reactive.

[823] And that's how you control power essentially as well.

[824] So that is a moving part and that does require a mechanism.

[825] But it does need fewer safety mechanisms involved in a much larger reactor because a much larger reactor or an SMR will have the ability to overheat and have a core melt or cool at loss and a core melt, which then leads to the reactor being essentially destroyed and needing to be cleaned up.

[826] like you got him Fukushima when that reactor essentially melted and then you just had to spray it with water that really can't happen with a microreactor because it can't overheat to a point where it will melt and so you don't need any problems and systems in place in case...

[827] Wasn't it a safety system that went wrong that caused the three mile island?

[828] I read that it was like a safety camera that broke off and got lodged in a exhaust pipe something which is, you know, horribly dismaly comical.

[829] Dismally comical, exactly.

[830] And this is the problem is like you still need sensors and things like that within a reactor so you know how to operate.

[831] So, you know, you can tell what's happening and then obviously modify the controls accordingly.

[832] So there are systems inside a reactor that could fall off.

[833] In Three Mile Islands, obviously, something was dislodged and affected the flow and then create it effectively a runaway effect when it did come out.

[834] And then you did have a...

[835] Right, right, right, right.

[836] But again, like Three Mile Island, no one died in that kind of operation, but it's bad, it's bad PR, certainly.

[837] Yes, yes, yes.

[838] Well, and that's a problem.

[839] I mean, that's pollution in the public's, in the space of public opinion, and that's not trivial.

[840] Okay, so let's recap here, just for a summary for everybody watching and listening, and then maybe as a closing, see if you have anything to add to it.

[841] So there's plenty of uranium.

[842] It's a very, very dense fuel source.

[843] It needs to be mined and transformed into yellow cake, and that has to be further refined into uranium.

[844] Oh, now I forgot the damn gas name again.

[845] Hexifloride.

[846] Hexifluoride.

[847] Hexifluoride.

[848] Hexifloride.

[849] And then that can be refined further into the raw material for the power source for your microreactors.

[850] Now we talked about what a microreactor is.

[851] is it's very easily transportable, doesn't require, which also, something we didn't talk about, which is extremely important, that also means that you don't have to produce the kinds of transmission lines to move the power from place to place, which are also hyper -expensive and require a lot of maintenance.

[852] That's a huge advantage.

[853] Okay, so you have these microactors.

[854] They're under 20, how many watts?

[855] 20 megawatts?

[856] Under 20 megawatts.

[857] Right, and you've built them reliably enough so that they can be just transported on site, as long as the site meets a variety of minimal preconditions.

[858] And so this is going to be superb for isolated communities or mining enterprises, et cetera.

[859] But in principle, these could be networked together to provide a very resilient, reliable, and increasingly low -cost universal power grid, which would enable us to free up fossil fuels for use as chemical precursors, let's say.

[860] That's a wonderful summary.

[861] Absolutely.

[862] And there's no reason why some countries are examining doing exactly that.

[863] Like I mentioned, Poland was already examining doing that, just to make it the grid more resilient, more robust, and eventually cheaper.

[864] Right, so that would be the start.

[865] You could imagine these things littered around in some ways as backup for the current grid, right?

[866] So to increase its resiliency, but as they become cheaper and more reliable and more tested, even in the public market, then they just start replacing pieces of the grid.

[867] Yes, exactly.

[868] And there's no reason why a developed country can't try this like, slowly transition in that direction.

[869] It doesn't have to be immediate.

[870] It doesn't need to be trillions of infrastructure spending.

[871] It shouldn't be immediate.

[872] Shouldn't be immediate because there's going to be problems that arise that you don't understand until you try to do it.

[873] So it should start locally.

[874] Well, absolutely.

[875] I mean, that's the problem with like net zero by 2030.

[876] It's like, no. How about we don't stampede off a cliff, like linked arm and arm, you know?

[877] Maybe that's a bad idea like it certainly is.

[878] Okay, well, that's extremely cool, all of that.

[879] And so now, is there anything you want to tell people that we didn't get to on this side of the interview?

[880] I mean, the good thing, I mean, you covered a lot.

[881] And, like, obviously, your understanding is very quick on the nuclear industry as a whole.

[882] I would say, I mean, holistically speaking, I just think it's best to communicate that this is a, this could be extremely beneficial for mankind generally.

[883] And I could obviously talk about the company and everything like that, but I think ultimately the probably more important message is that this could enfranchise billions of people around the world provide that energy.

[884] And I think you put it best when you said that, you know, if you give people access to energy, you lift them out of poverty and then they become more concerned with the environment.

[885] If you really care about the environment, you should try and lift people out of poverty.

[886] Right, exactly.

[887] It's a great closing note.

[888] Right.

[889] If you really care about the environment, as well as people, let's say, because maybe we could include them in the environment, then you do everything you can to lift them out of poverty.

[890] And then with no holds part, right, that's the number one moral imperative.

[891] Right.

[892] I mean, even the climate, look, even the climate apocalypse mongers use the safety and well -being of future generations as the rationale for their moralizing.

[893] So there's no way out of that conundrum.

[894] It's like, no, how about we help the people who are alive right now?

[895] How about we do that?

[896] And look, I have children of my own, and I worry about them all the time.

[897] I wonder what kind of world they're going to inherit.

[898] And I would like that world to be one where they had access to energy, and they were, and poverty was far more scarce and not an impending risk.

[899] So I have a duty to the future to try and make it a little bit better.

[900] Resilient wealth.

[901] That would be great.

[902] That's a wonderful phrase.

[903] It's like if we could be held in some sort of resilient wealth.

[904] And look, wealth is very energy dependent.

[905] And so...

[906] Yeah, yeah, they're the same thing, man, for all intents and purposes.

[907] Because energy is work.

[908] And work is wealth.

[909] So, like, end of argument, fundamentally.

[910] Like, I think the fundamental things to progress mankind, as long as it can feed itself and it can power itself, then we should have a relatively decent future that can incrementally keep improving, hopefully.

[911] Yes, that's the goal.

[912] That would exactly be the goal.

[913] That's right.

[914] Incrementally improving in an intelligence.

[915] manner that feeds on itself.

[916] Yes, exactly.

[917] It's a good definition of heaven as far as I'm concerned.

[918] All right.

[919] So that's...