Claire and Dan explore whether nuclear power can truly help solve the climate crisis. They unpack the promise of small modular reactors, the reality of aging plants, and the long-term hope of fusion—balancing innovation, cost, and risk in one of energy's most polarizing debates. Hosts: Claire Broido Johnson and Dan Kammen
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00:00:03 --> 00:00:04 What's new with nuclear?
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 Is the world ready and should you be worried?
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 This is energy matters with Claire
00:00:10 --> 00:00:10 and Dan.
00:00:18 --> 00:00:19 All right.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:20 Thanks for joining today, Dan.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 I know this is one of your lovely, most favorite things to talk about.
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 Um, nuclear.
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 Lots of, lots of feelings about it.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:31 Let's talk about the background about why nuclear might be needed at first.
00:00:31 --> 00:00:31 Right?
00:00:31 --> 00:00:35 We know that global energy demands are expected to increase by 50 to a hundred
00:00:35 --> 00:00:40 percent by 2050 as stated by the energy information in, uh, administration.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:46 And industrial heat demands are projected to increase by 3.5 times by 2050.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 Says Roland Berger, is nuclear ready?
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 Are they gonna be, is nuclear gonna be able to solve all of our problems?
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 And you're right, there's a thousand different ways to enter this story.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:59 This episode's gonna be a bit of history and a bit of current events.
00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 We're gonna come back to nuclear again and again.
00:01:02 --> 00:01:07 But I guess if I were to frame the story back in the old days, like
00:01:07 --> 00:01:11 eight years ago, when we thought of the world as powered by coal.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 Oil, natural gas and nuclear.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:20 They were all what nerds called Baseload Technologies.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:21 They were more or less always on.
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 And so nuclear fit into that 'cause it was base load.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 You turn a reactor on, it's running.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 The world we're moving into is contested.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:35 There's people like me that believe it will be largely powered by renewables,
00:01:35 --> 00:01:37 which are so-called intermittent.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:40 Meaning we have this thing called daytime and nighttime.
00:01:40 --> 00:01:41 So solar's not always on.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:45 And we have wind, which is not always on, and I guess it's never
00:01:45 --> 00:01:46 on according to the president.
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 Um, and so nuclear.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:54 Has a different niche or a different market role in that old energy world
00:01:54 --> 00:01:59 and the new one and the whole energy landscape is trying to sort it out.
00:01:59 --> 00:02:03 I try to sort it out from the science, the climate story.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:06 You're trying to sort it out from the business story.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 Others are looking at the risks, others are looking at innovation.
00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 There's so many ways to think about it.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:16 We'll, each today give a little bit of our kind of personal history.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:20 But knowing this is the first of many we'll be doing on nuclear over the six.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:20 Absolutely.
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 And I think as we start thinking about nuclear, just to start with, you know,
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 if you talk to your mom or my mom, we, you know, they talk about Chernobyl
00:02:27 --> 00:02:32 and of course here is sh Shema and all of the problems in Three Mile Island.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:36 So how can we be so comfortable now that nuclear makes a lot of
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 sense and nuclear is here to stay.
00:02:38 --> 00:02:42 So I guess just a couple numbers, but if the numbers are less
00:02:42 --> 00:02:43 important than the concept.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 So if you think about it.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:49 We had no nuclear power plants in operation in 1955.
00:02:49 --> 00:02:53 The first nuclear power plant installed anywhere in the world
00:02:53 --> 00:02:54 was in Chip Port, Pennsylvania.
00:02:54 --> 00:02:59 It was actually a reactor that was taken directly from a nuclear
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01 submarine, and it was small.
00:03:01 --> 00:03:02 It was a pilot plant.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:08 It operated for a number of years quite successfully, and from that little pilot
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 in the fifties, here we are in 2025.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 With the risks and the accidents you just mentioned, but there's about
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 420 nuclear reactors in the world.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:22 About a hundred of them are in the US and about 60 are in France.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:23 So two, right.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:23 And
00:03:23 --> 00:03:27 60 is, I mean, France is 75% powered by nuclear.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:27 Yeah, right.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:29 So I was just doing the number of plants, right?
00:03:29 --> 00:03:29 Yeah.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:30 And so different countries, different amounts.
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 The US is about 20% powered by nuclear.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:38 Today, the world electricity is about 10%.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:43 So I'm just trying to set the landscape of from one in 1955 to
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 420, much, much bigger plants.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:51 Than that today, and for me, who does worry about the risk,
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 the end of life, the high cost.
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 Every single one of those 420 plants.
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 We'll have to be retired before mid-century.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:04 Some plants are gonna be retired at their scheduled lifetime.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 Others are gonna get lifetime extensions with different costs.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:12 And there's a whole bunch of exciting new technologies that different
00:04:12 --> 00:04:17 groups are promoting, and it's into that interesting, complicated jumble
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 that you and I kind of think about it from, I think different perspectives.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:21 Right.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:25 I think that's right because I, I think certainly the number of plants is, is
00:04:25 --> 00:04:30 important, but the gigawatts and looking at the gigawatts is important too.
00:04:30 --> 00:04:34 So the US, as I understand it, is looking to achieve on the order of 200
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 gigawatts of new nuclear buildout by 2050.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:38 And why is that?
00:04:38 --> 00:04:42 Because nuclear energy provides stable base load power requiring low land
00:04:42 --> 00:04:46 use and transmission line build out, and has really high capacity factors.
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 However, from the business side, it's all.
00:04:49 --> 00:04:53 Also very, very complicated because challenges with nuclear projects and
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 new builds include cost overruns.
00:04:56 --> 00:05:00 For example, US Vogel plant costs $30 billion instead of 14 billion.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:06 They're really long lead times supply chain delays, long and variable licensing
00:05:06 --> 00:05:12 timelines and concerns with nimbyism or not in my backyard, and spent fuel.
00:05:12 --> 00:05:12 Right?
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 So there's, there's a whole host of things which are making it really
00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 complicated for business people to, to.
00:05:18 --> 00:05:19 To nail down.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:20 Yes, they do wanna invest in nuclear.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 Wait a second, Claire, you just said gigawatts.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:26 And I know we have some super energy nerds on, but we also have some
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 people just kind of breaking in.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:29 What is a gigawatt?
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 Why should we think in the units of gigawatts?
00:05:32 --> 00:05:32 Sure.
00:05:33 --> 00:05:33 What are we talking about here?
00:05:34 --> 00:05:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:35 Okay.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 So your typical light bulb is 75 watts, 50 watts, something like that.
00:05:38 --> 00:05:38 Right?
00:05:39 --> 00:05:43 A typical solar project on your roof might be 10 kilowatts,
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 or do that math for me, Dan.
00:05:46 --> 00:05:47 10 watts.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:48 10 watts, exactly right.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 And so a gigawatt is what then?
00:05:51 --> 00:05:52 It's 10 to the
00:05:52 --> 00:05:53 ninth watts.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:54 Exactly.
00:05:54 --> 00:05:54 So a
00:05:54 --> 00:05:58 billion watts is a gigawatt, and the way I think of it is not in
00:05:58 --> 00:06:00 kilowatts megawatts, gigawatts.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:04 What I think of is when you drive by a coal plant on the side of the road,
00:06:04 --> 00:06:09 if you ever do that anymore, those plants are typically a gigawatt in size
00:06:09 --> 00:06:10 or a thousand megawatts,
00:06:11 --> 00:06:11 right?
00:06:11 --> 00:06:18 Nuclear power plants come in two standard flavors historically, one gigawatt.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 And 1.5 gigawatts.
00:06:20 --> 00:06:27 So a thousand megawatts and 1500 megawatts are the standard size plants
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 we've been installing up to today.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:33 But there is something new on the horizon, and that's really
00:06:33 --> 00:06:34 gonna be the focus today.
00:06:34 --> 00:06:39 Absolutely right, but from the business side, there have been really very
00:06:39 --> 00:06:43 few investors and utilities ready to take the risks in nuclear, right?
00:06:43 --> 00:06:48 The industry needs a strong demand side pull, and customers willing
00:06:48 --> 00:06:52 to engage both from industrial sectors and grid operators.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:57 So the, you know, this is a very complex issue because it makes a lot
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 of sense to install solar, right?
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 For, we've had lots of episodes about that, but we're talking about
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 one megawatt, 10 megawatt, maybe up to a hundred megawatt projects.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 You're talking about a thousand megawatt projects just to start with.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:15 With all of these additional risks, like spent fuel, cost overruns, long lead
00:07:15 --> 00:07:16 times, all the things we've set above.
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 And the, you know, and the spent fuel is something that's huge.
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 So, Dan, tell me how are we, how are we gonna deal with this spent fuel issue?
00:07:23 --> 00:07:27 So this is really getting complicated because every country
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 has a different strategy, right?
00:07:29 --> 00:07:35 The US strategy was to build one centralized facility in Nevada,
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 and Nevada was chosen because.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:43 The voters or the politicians were either paid off or saw this as a job creator.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:47 We decided this would be in a place called Yucca Mountain.
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 Turned out it was not such a wise choice.
00:07:50 --> 00:07:56 The estimates for what the federal government spent on it range from 40
00:07:56 --> 00:08:02 billion to several hundred billion dollars, and it now is quite clear.
00:08:02 --> 00:08:06 We're not going to use it because of worries about water.
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 Intruding into what's supposed to be a secure site.
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 You don't want uranium and plutonium getting into the water system.
00:08:13 --> 00:08:19 And irony of ironies, less than a hundred miles away is a military
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 site where we store military uranium.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 But of course, we don't want to co-mingle commercial.
00:08:26 --> 00:08:29 Power plant, uranium and that military stuff.
00:08:29 --> 00:08:31 So we don't have a solution in the United States.
00:08:31 --> 00:08:32 Everyone knows it.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:36 And that means that at the hundred nuclear power plants, and by the way,
00:08:36 --> 00:08:41 when I say a hundred nuclear power plants in the us, they're at 67 sites.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:42 Some have several reactors.
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 So we've got those a hundred plants.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 Most of that fuel is now stored on site.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:52 In big oversized swimming pools in one of these things that when
00:08:52 --> 00:08:53 you say it, you slur your words.
00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 They're called spent fuel pools.
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 That's the US non strategy, Germany.
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 They wanted to put it in the ground in places that we could retrieve it
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 later when there was a better solution.
00:09:06 --> 00:09:10 Um, and then France and Japan said, well, that's valuable stuff.
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 We should reprocess it back into new fuel.
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 But we don't do that because if you reprocess it, you
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 make bomb grade plutonium.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:25 And so there are multiple challenges, so no one has a good solution.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:30 And just thank goodness we don't have too much.
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 Plutonium and uranium just kind of wandering around in various hands.
00:09:34 --> 00:09:37 There's been times like the fall of the Soviet Union where
00:09:37 --> 00:09:38 maybe some of it got loose.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:42 There's always a science fiction or a James Bond movie when someone's
00:09:42 --> 00:09:46 stealing it on a train, taking it to various countries that are pariahs.
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 So it is complicated.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:48 It's a long story.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:49 It's super
00:09:49 --> 00:09:49 complicated.
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 Well, and there's some entities that are making good money on it.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:55 Constellation being one of them.
00:09:55 --> 00:09:59 So Constellation has 21 nuclear power plants around the country.
00:09:59 --> 00:10:03 And you know, of course they are saying nuclear is an essential part of carbon
00:10:03 --> 00:10:09 free solutions because it's carbon free, it's reliable balancing, which means it,
00:10:09 --> 00:10:14 you know, you can, it can be always on, it can grid balance and manage to ensure
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 a stable and reliable energy system.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:21 It can support higher deployment of variable wind and solar generation
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 without the need for backup capacity from fossil fuel generation.
00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 But Constellation is one of several companies that's, that's done very,
00:10:28 --> 00:10:34 very well with nuclear power plants in the, in, in, in the past many years.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:38 But not having a spent fuel solution, I mean, is this something that we as climate
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 change people want to support or not?
00:10:41 --> 00:10:41 Dan?
00:10:42 --> 00:10:47 So this is an area where environmentalists are as divided as we are divided.
00:10:47 --> 00:10:51 Left and right because some people say aligned a little bit with what you
00:10:51 --> 00:10:56 said, that nuclear is a nice compliment to these intermittent renewables.
00:10:56 --> 00:11:00 'cause it's always there and it's always available as long as the
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 plants aren't in some crisis.
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 Others on the kind of environmental left.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:09 Used to say, no, no, no, that's not true because nuclear
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 plants are very inflexible.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:15 Once you turn it on, it needs to operate at a certain level and just
00:11:15 --> 00:11:20 go and go, and that actually doesn't make space in the market for things
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 that come and go, like solar and wind.
00:11:23 --> 00:11:27 Now there are some technical things we'll get to in later episodes about can you
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 ramp your nuclear plant up and down?
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 Could you make hydrogen when the demand for electricity is low?
00:11:34 --> 00:11:35 Could you boil water?
00:11:35 --> 00:11:36 Could you pump water?
00:11:36 --> 00:11:37 There's a lot of things you could do.
00:11:38 --> 00:11:43 We're not doing those today, but I think the big issue is at least someone like
00:11:43 --> 00:11:47 me who has been studying nuclear, and I'm a professor of nuclear engineering for
00:11:47 --> 00:11:52 the last 20 years, where the plants we used to build were these big, big ones.
00:11:52 --> 00:11:56 These thousand megawatts, one gigawatt, 1.5 gigawatt.
00:11:57 --> 00:12:01 Now there's a new player on the horizon called small
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 modular nuclear reactors, SMRs.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:09 And there are companies with names like, um, new Scale and Terror Power.
00:12:09 --> 00:12:14 That is a Bill Gates company, Hitachi and ge, a whole bunch of these.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:19 And they wanna build nuclear power plants that are much smaller.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 Instead of being one gigawatt, there are plans for.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:26 Plants as small as, call it 70 megawatts, there's actually one company
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 that wants to build five megawatts.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:34 Believe them aside, there are 70 to 300 megawatts is kind of the sweet spot of
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 these reactors and the argument that the.
00:12:38 --> 00:12:42 Industrialists, the billionaires who are backing these companies
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 are making is interesting.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:50 It says, when we mass produce technologies, big pens, calculators,
00:12:50 --> 00:12:54 solar panels, whatever it is that the price comes down in a predictable way.
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 Something we'll talk about in a later episode.
00:12:57 --> 00:13:02 So the nuclear community that used to build these unique one-off facilities.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:08 Are saying we wanna get on the bandwagon of mass production and not only get
00:13:08 --> 00:13:13 on the bandwagon of mass production, but when a small nuclear core has
00:13:13 --> 00:13:18 been partially used up, we want the company to come take it back to their
00:13:18 --> 00:13:22 central facility, take out the rods, put in new ones, and send it back.
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 And so they're thinking about.
00:13:24 --> 00:13:30 A new modular world and it's got a lot of people, technologists, some
00:13:30 --> 00:13:35 economists really excited that these SMRs, these small modular nukes are
00:13:35 --> 00:13:36 going to be the wave of the future.
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 I am very skeptical, but some people just love it.
00:13:40 --> 00:13:45 Well, some people love it, and I think nuclear, especially these SMRs or small
00:13:45 --> 00:13:49 modular reactors are one of the most discussed topics with everyone from
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 startups to utilities to private equity.
00:13:51 --> 00:13:52 No question.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:57 My friend Brett Kaison at Teneo, who's the senior Vice President of Energy
00:13:57 --> 00:14:01 and Climate Innovation, there's a whole research group that's doing a ton of work
00:14:01 --> 00:14:05 on SMRs, I mean everything from financing models for new plants, to partnering with
00:14:05 --> 00:14:11 fusion developers to innovative supporting technology like a and I enabled regulatory
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 tools to accelerate development.
00:14:13 --> 00:14:17 All of these things are are at play and I think, you know, one
00:14:17 --> 00:14:21 of the reasons these SMRs are so interesting is because you could.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:26 Ostensibly reduce capital costs and land use and lead times for nuclear.
00:14:26 --> 00:14:30 But that's really sort of the elephant in the room, is that new nuclear
00:14:30 --> 00:14:34 needs to overcome licensing and supply chain chain challenges to,
00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 you know, come down the cost curve.
00:14:37 --> 00:14:38 So more about that for me.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:38 Yeah.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 So for me the issue is something else.
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43 Um, first of all, I don't think the land use is gonna be any smaller
00:14:43 --> 00:14:49 because if you take out a. One gigawatt plant and replace it with
00:14:49 --> 00:14:50 four or five of these small plants.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:53 You're still gonna space them out.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:58 And one company, um, uh, new scale thinks they'll all be underground,
00:14:58 --> 00:15:02 so they'll be safer against terrorism and other kinds of issues.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 And they'll have something we'll talk about later called passive safety.
00:15:05 --> 00:15:08 Basically where gravity provides the coolant.
00:15:08 --> 00:15:14 If you have a problem, there's a lot of upside on paper, but to me, as a
00:15:14 --> 00:15:20 physicist, nuclear's problem in the past has not actually been the hardware.
00:15:21 --> 00:15:26 To me, nuclear's problem has been poor management sensors, people in the
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 control room reacting poorly to crises.
00:15:29 --> 00:15:33 That's exactly what happened both at Chernobyl and at Three Mile Island.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:37 It's a little different than what happened in Fukushima, where the.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:43 Earthquake tsunami overwhelmed the defenses that were built up at the
00:15:43 --> 00:15:47 plant and we all watch those plants at at Fukushima, one after the other
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 blow up as hydrogen built up in them.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:56 So for me, the challenge is that nuclear's issues is not technical, it's management.
00:15:56 --> 00:16:01 And I actually think that unless these, these small plants are super well
00:16:01 --> 00:16:07 managed and AI and other tools give us much better response to issues that.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:12 We're actually adding complication, not taking complication away by
00:16:12 --> 00:16:17 replacing one big plant with four or five smaller plants at the same site.
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 So that's a really interesting concept, but I think we're
00:16:20 --> 00:16:21 gonna have to agree to disagree.
00:16:21 --> 00:16:25 I, I, I don't think anybody knows the answer for sure, but traditional nuclear
00:16:25 --> 00:16:30 plants usually require around eight years for large reactors to be, uh, to be built.
00:16:30 --> 00:16:35 Some SMRs claim at least, that their technologies can be constructed in two to
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 three years or even less for micro reacts.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:43 But tell me, Dan, have any small modular reactors actually been
00:16:43 --> 00:16:44 installed in the United States today?
00:16:45 --> 00:16:46 No, but Right.
00:16:46 --> 00:16:47 If you're a pro.
00:16:47 --> 00:16:51 So, so if you're a pro-nuclear person, you'll say that is just a technicality
00:16:51 --> 00:16:58 because we have already respon built small modular nuclear reactors on
00:16:58 --> 00:17:03 aircraft carriers and ice breakers and a whole variety of, of, of,
00:17:04 --> 00:17:05 you know, kind of exotic features.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 And so the argument.
00:17:08 --> 00:17:14 Pro SMR Pro Small Modular Reactor is that we're not really doing that much new.
00:17:14 --> 00:17:16 We're just taking a technology.
00:17:16 --> 00:17:20 We know how to manage, making it better and smarter and
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 deploying it for commercial power.
00:17:22 --> 00:17:26 But zero today have been installed and in fact.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:32 The initial plans made by the two leading companies, new Scale and Terra Power
00:17:32 --> 00:17:37 have each changed dramatically as their initial contracts got pushed back and
00:17:37 --> 00:17:38 they looked more and more expensive.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:43 We've already seen one of the companies have their initial agreement
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 to build one in Utah get canceled?
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 Yes, because the cost went up by factor three.
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 Yeah, we, the new scale project, we've, all right, and we've also seen
00:17:52 --> 00:17:56 the test reactor that was supposed to be built at Idaho National Labs.
00:17:56 --> 00:18:03 A super safe site, notably in a red state, but at a current national research site,
00:18:03 --> 00:18:07 get delayed for what will happen now if you're pronuclear, you're gonna say
00:18:07 --> 00:18:12 these are just the teething, the, you know, the, the learning bits early on.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:15 In my view, they're more.
00:18:16 --> 00:18:17 Problematic.
00:18:17 --> 00:18:22 And when we had the initial plans for even the big, these gigawatt reactors,
00:18:22 --> 00:18:26 they also said 30 years ago, they would be built in two or three years.
00:18:26 --> 00:18:30 Some of them have been built in a decade at four times over cost.
00:18:31 --> 00:18:31 And so.
00:18:32 --> 00:18:36 I have yet to be convinced, but I'm hoping to be convinced that
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 SMRs will be a different story.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:40 I am not yet convinced.
00:18:40 --> 00:18:41 Convinced.
00:18:41 --> 00:18:41 Right.
00:18:41 --> 00:18:43 I mean, I, and I think the big thing about that, you're talking
00:18:43 --> 00:18:48 about it from a sort of professor academic perspective, from a capital.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 Sort of capital markets perspective, the capital cost for traditional
00:18:51 --> 00:18:56 nuclear still ranges from $8 a kilowatt to 14 a kilowatt, right?
00:18:56 --> 00:18:56 So way above solar.
00:18:56 --> 00:18:59 So lemme ask you this, so, so much higher than solar have been
00:18:59 --> 00:19:00 inside many nuclear power plants.
00:19:00 --> 00:19:05 How many have you been inside during operation two.
00:19:05 --> 00:19:05 Okay.
00:19:06 --> 00:19:13 So nuclear plants have relatively few relatively highly
00:19:13 --> 00:19:14 skilled operators in them.
00:19:15 --> 00:19:15 Yeah.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:16 And Wait,
00:19:16 --> 00:19:19 wait, you mean Homer Simpson is in all of the nuclear power plants,
00:19:19 --> 00:19:20 like my daughter would say, well, you
00:19:20 --> 00:19:25 know, I mean Homer, Homer in the glow is, is, you know, one aspect of the story.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:34 Um, but you know, nuclear plants to me are a little bit like police work in that
00:19:34 --> 00:19:39 they're operating and when everything is normal you can be, you know, having your
00:19:39 --> 00:19:43 donuts and sitting two cop cars side by side or a couple operators in the room.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:50 But when the blank hits the fan, it is a crisis and you are scrambling.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:56 And I have video classified and unclassified of people in
00:19:56 --> 00:19:59 control rooms freaking out.
00:20:00 --> 00:20:04 Over things that looked after the fact, like pretty small issues.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:11 And so I am hopeful, but I am skeptical and I do not believe the current story,
00:20:11 --> 00:20:15 that smaller, faster is gonna be the case.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:20 One nuclear accident can ruin your whole day, remains true.
00:20:20 --> 00:20:22 Whether it's one of these big gigawatt plants or one of
00:20:22 --> 00:20:24 these small modular plants.
00:20:24 --> 00:20:27 And we're gonna get some people who absolutely hate that statement, um,
00:20:27 --> 00:20:28 in their responses to this episode.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:30 I hope so.
00:20:30 --> 00:20:30 Yeah.
00:20:30 --> 00:20:35 Which is a good reminder that please come to us at Energy Matters world with
00:20:35 --> 00:20:39 your comments and suggestions because we care a lot about trying to make sure that
00:20:39 --> 00:20:43 we've got more folks of all different stripes and, and from all different sides
00:20:43 --> 00:20:47 of the spectrum coming and communicating with us because really what we wanna
00:20:47 --> 00:20:49 get to, neither of us need to be right.
00:20:49 --> 00:20:53 We wanna get to the right answers with, with facts and with real data.
00:20:53 --> 00:20:55 Um, and lemme contradict myself too, so.
00:20:56 --> 00:21:01 When I say there's no SMRs installed in the United States, well in Russia,
00:21:02 --> 00:21:09 they have already taken existing nuclear icebreakers and sent those
00:21:09 --> 00:21:11 ships to Russian Arctic ports.
00:21:12 --> 00:21:18 Had the ship sit in the harbor, connect up the power lines of the city to the
00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 ship and send power into the city.
00:21:20 --> 00:21:27 And so that is essentially the Russian version of what these nuclear companies,
00:21:27 --> 00:21:31 the GEs, Hitachis, Westinghouse, new scale tear powers want to do.
00:21:31 --> 00:21:36 They want use trucks or rail lines to move the nuclear cores back and forth.
00:21:36 --> 00:21:39 Russia's already doing it at small scale in the Arctic.
00:21:39 --> 00:21:40 That's really interesting.
00:21:41 --> 00:21:44 I wonder what their costs are because if we get back to the cost for just
00:21:44 --> 00:21:47 a second, for all of us who are geeks and not geeks, I mean, I think one
00:21:47 --> 00:21:50 of the things you have to think about when you think about energy broadly
00:21:50 --> 00:21:52 is the total cost of energy over time.
00:21:52 --> 00:21:57 As, and as I've mentioned before, the Lazar levelized cost of energy
00:21:57 --> 00:22:00 comparison is really, really helpful because it looks at.
00:22:00 --> 00:22:04 Not just the installation cost, but the operations and maintenance
00:22:04 --> 00:22:05 cost of the system over time.
00:22:05 --> 00:22:09 And so, at least in their June of 2025 report, and we'll put the
00:22:09 --> 00:22:14 link at Energy Matters World, the, you know, commercial, industrial,
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 solar costs, you know, less than.
00:22:18 --> 00:22:22 $200 a megawatt hour, whereas, you know, and sometimes as low as $80 a
00:22:22 --> 00:22:29 megawatt hour, US nuclear is easily $140 a megawatt hour up to $220 a
00:22:29 --> 00:22:31 megawatt an hour, and even higher.
00:22:31 --> 00:22:31 Right.
00:22:31 --> 00:22:35 And some of the, as you mentioned before, some of the plants that didn't go well.
00:22:35 --> 00:22:38 Are in the thousands per hour.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 So right there are some huge numbers.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:45 So my lab just published a paper that we'll also put on the website
00:22:45 --> 00:22:51 in Nature Magazine, the end of July of 2025, where we looked at the
00:22:51 --> 00:22:56 cost curves, the cost trajectories of US nuclear, French nuclear.
00:22:57 --> 00:23:01 Chinese Nuclear and South Korea nuclear, and what you find is that
00:23:01 --> 00:23:06 the most expensive plants of any of those locations are US plants.
00:23:07 --> 00:23:10 Built or commissioned over the last 30 years.
00:23:11 --> 00:23:15 The second most expensive are French plants and French standardize
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 their designs more than the US did.
00:23:18 --> 00:23:24 The least cost are Chinese plants, and just above that is Korean plants.
00:23:24 --> 00:23:30 And of course the big footnote is both the US and France have some new.
00:23:30 --> 00:23:35 But mainly old plants, whereas South Korea and China have only new plants.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:38 And what we see in the data is that.
00:23:40 --> 00:23:45 Newer plants in the west are much more expensive than our simpler, older models.
00:23:45 --> 00:23:51 And so are we seeing in South Korea and China just the tip of the nuclear iceberg?
00:23:51 --> 00:23:54 They're just new plants, so they're cheaper, or are we
00:23:54 --> 00:23:57 seeing actually lower cost?
00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 These small modular people will say, we're gonna learn all the good
00:24:00 --> 00:24:02 lessons from China and South Korea.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05 We're gonna build smaller, modular, cheaper plants.
00:24:06 --> 00:24:07 There's other skeptics out there.
00:24:07 --> 00:24:12 I can name several Emory Lovens, maybe myself and others who are not
00:24:12 --> 00:24:18 yet convinced that they will remain cheap in South Korea and China as
00:24:18 --> 00:24:20 they build more and more plants.
00:24:20 --> 00:24:25 So we are talking hypotheticals, we're talking hopes and aspirations,
00:24:25 --> 00:24:27 you know, hopes and dreams.
00:24:27 --> 00:24:32 We're gonna find out and it's gonna make some people rich and some people bankrupt.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:37 Well, and I mean, as important as that, it's a bunch of people could die, right?
00:24:37 --> 00:24:37 That's right.
00:24:37 --> 00:24:40 I mean, if you have a really bad accident here, this is a huge thing.
00:24:40 --> 00:24:42 You're not gonna die from solar system.
00:24:42 --> 00:24:42 Right, right now.
00:24:43 --> 00:24:43 It.
00:24:43 --> 00:24:46 So I've, I've been pretty negative on nuclear so far.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:47 Yes, you have.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 Would I rather live next to a nuclear plant or a coal plant?
00:24:50 --> 00:24:52 I choose the nuclear plant every day of the week.
00:24:53 --> 00:24:53 Right.
00:24:53 --> 00:24:55 That's always such a hard part of the conversation because when people
00:24:55 --> 00:24:57 say, well, let's honest, right?
00:24:57 --> 00:24:57 Yeah.
00:24:57 --> 00:24:58 Oh yeah, for sure.
00:24:58 --> 00:24:58 Right.
00:24:58 --> 00:24:59 When you talk about.
00:25:00 --> 00:25:01 Well, I don't wanna, I don't want solar.
00:25:01 --> 00:25:03 It's ugly, or I don't want offshore wind.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:04 It's ugly.
00:25:04 --> 00:25:06 Then the response is, okay, so do you wanna continue
00:25:06 --> 00:25:07 your coal-fired power plant?
00:25:07 --> 00:25:09 You know, because that's the only other solution.
00:25:09 --> 00:25:12 And that's, you know, that's sort of the tragedy of the commons and everything
00:25:12 --> 00:25:15 you talk about about environmental science from the beginning of time.
00:25:15 --> 00:25:16 Like, I just want it to be the way it is.
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 Well, the way it is isn't great.
00:25:19 --> 00:25:23 Um, so I got up, right, so I got up today and I went outside for my morning
00:25:23 --> 00:25:29 run and we were having a spill of solar power and it's called a sunny day.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:30 Right.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:34 You have a spill of nuclear power and it's not called a sunny day, right?
00:25:34 --> 00:25:35 Yeah, no, for sure.
00:25:35 --> 00:25:38 So the risks, now, they may be low probability, but
00:25:38 --> 00:25:40 they are high consequence.
00:25:41 --> 00:25:41 Very high
00:25:41 --> 00:25:42 consequence,
00:25:42 --> 00:25:42 yeah.
00:25:43 --> 00:25:43 Yeah.
00:25:43 --> 00:25:47 And I mean, I wanna underscore this whole licensing of new technologies
00:25:47 --> 00:25:52 and developing supply chains and securing a customer base.
00:25:52 --> 00:25:55 You know, those are not for the weak of heart.
00:25:55 --> 00:25:58 Those are all really complicated things to do in the business world.
00:25:58 --> 00:25:58 Yeah.
00:25:58 --> 00:26:03 So we know for example, that, and again, this is gonna sound anti-nuclear.
00:26:03 --> 00:26:07 It's not meant to be, we know that solar and battery projects
00:26:07 --> 00:26:12 can come in, and many do come in under budget, ahead of schedule.
00:26:12 --> 00:26:17 We do not have any examples of significant nuclear plants ever coming in.
00:26:18 --> 00:26:20 Under budget ahead of schedule in the west.
00:26:20 --> 00:26:23 That doesn't mean it won't happen in the future, but we have no track
00:26:23 --> 00:26:28 record of that because these plants are complicated and big, and that's
00:26:28 --> 00:26:32 one of the arguments that these small modular communities using.
00:26:32 --> 00:26:35 And I know someone's gonna jump in and say, well, Dan, you're not
00:26:35 --> 00:26:39 talking about thorium plants and liquid metal and fast reactor.
00:26:39 --> 00:26:40 We'll get to those in later episodes.
00:26:40 --> 00:26:42 But just talking about these.
00:26:42 --> 00:26:47 SMRs that are essentially scaled down conventional plants with some
00:26:47 --> 00:26:49 better sensors and better feedback.
00:26:49 --> 00:26:54 They are not novel except for they're smaller.
00:26:54 --> 00:26:58 Although the US has not built a new nuclear plant essentially
00:26:58 --> 00:27:03 in 30 years until this long, long delayed VO plan in Georgia.
00:27:04 --> 00:27:07 This is gonna be a new step where hopefully new technology
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 is gonna help to some extent.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:11 I'm skeptical.
00:27:11 --> 00:27:15 If you're a proponent, you're not skeptical, you're optimistic.
00:27:15 --> 00:27:21 So the, the concerns, the battle lines, whatever you wanna call it, are out there.
00:27:21 --> 00:27:23 There's a lot of promise, there's a lot of hype.
00:27:23 --> 00:27:24 Well, there's been a lot
00:27:24 --> 00:27:27 of promise and hype and that, and for, for decades.
00:27:27 --> 00:27:27 Right.
00:27:27 --> 00:27:28 And absolutely.
00:27:28 --> 00:27:32 And at this point, new nuclear, the new nuclear sector has to convince.
00:27:33 --> 00:27:38 Risk averse utilities and customers about profitability of projects and show
00:27:38 --> 00:27:42 that new nuclear technologies will be competitive sources of power and safe.
00:27:42 --> 00:27:43 Compared to pretty natural
00:27:44 --> 00:27:44 now.
00:27:44 --> 00:27:51 Now that said, from Obama to Biden to Trump, we have now seen a significant push
00:27:51 --> 00:27:57 on both the Democratic and Republican side to fold new nuclear into the energy mix.
00:27:57 --> 00:28:03 And so from the White House to the Department of Energy to the Federal
00:28:03 --> 00:28:09 Energy Regulatory Commission, the ferc, there is now a. Kind of a pretty
00:28:09 --> 00:28:12 good alignment of support in theory.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:15 Doesn't mean that all the financial and regulatory hurdles are all
00:28:15 --> 00:28:20 worked out, but we are in a pronuclear regulatory environment,
00:28:20 --> 00:28:22 whereas 15 years ago we were not.
00:28:22 --> 00:28:24 And just to say, as a Californian.
00:28:25 --> 00:28:29 At one point, the plan for California was to have a nuclear plant
00:28:29 --> 00:28:31 every 20 miles along the coast.
00:28:31 --> 00:28:35 When Jerry Brown was governor the first time in the seventies when he
00:28:35 --> 00:28:40 was Governor Moonbeam, um, dating Linda Ronstadt and various things, that was
00:28:40 --> 00:28:42 the point when California decided.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:47 We will not build any new nuclear plants until we have a better waste
00:28:47 --> 00:28:49 solution, which we still don't have.
00:28:49 --> 00:28:54 So California, instead of having one every 20 miles along a 700 mile long
00:28:54 --> 00:28:58 coastline, California is down to one.
00:28:59 --> 00:29:03 Operating plant with the dubious name, Diablo Canyon, devil's
00:29:03 --> 00:29:08 Canyon, and it's a plant that was almost literally built backwards
00:29:08 --> 00:29:10 because someone flipped the plans.
00:29:10 --> 00:29:12 The prices are huge.
00:29:13 --> 00:29:14 Pacific Gas and Electric.
00:29:14 --> 00:29:17 The operating utility is still paying a debt on it.
00:29:17 --> 00:29:21 And after many, many complicated back and forths, California agreed
00:29:21 --> 00:29:26 to extend the life of that plant to 2030, but absolutely no more.
00:29:27 --> 00:29:27 Right.
00:29:28 --> 00:29:29 It's very interesting.
00:29:29 --> 00:29:33 Now, we've talked a lot, sort of danced around the fact that small modular
00:29:33 --> 00:29:36 reactors are very, very similar to technologies to the ones that you've
00:29:37 --> 00:29:42 nuclear power plants that you've seen, you know, nine Mile point or Calvert Cliffs.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:45 But I wanna get into talking to a nuclear engineers.
00:29:45 --> 00:29:49 A very good way to start this is tell me more about fusion.
00:29:49 --> 00:29:49 Right.
00:29:49 --> 00:29:53 I have my friend Rick Needham, who's at Commonwealth Fusion.
00:29:53 --> 00:29:56 We have, there's a lot of people with a lot of promise for fusion.
00:29:56 --> 00:29:59 Tell me more about what on earth is going on in the 2020s with fusion.
00:29:59 --> 00:30:02 So, just to be clear, as anyone who's gonna write in, who's
00:30:02 --> 00:30:06 pro-nuclear is gonna say, well, Dan, you are not a nuclear engineer.
00:30:06 --> 00:30:08 You might be a professor of nuclear engineering, but you
00:30:08 --> 00:30:10 are a physicist and you think.
00:30:10 --> 00:30:11 Physics talk.
00:30:11 --> 00:30:14 So we are gonna do a whole episodes on fusion.
00:30:15 --> 00:30:21 And full disclosure, I am part of a fusion company, so biases are clear.
00:30:21 --> 00:30:23 My company is called Alpha Ring.
00:30:23 --> 00:30:26 So in my view, in 2070.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:33 We are likely to see fusion as a dominant form of energy.
00:30:33 --> 00:30:38 Um, right now there is only one facility on the planet that is doing
00:30:38 --> 00:30:40 what I'll call terrestrial fusion.
00:30:40 --> 00:30:43 It's in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
00:30:43 --> 00:30:45 They have 196 lasers.
00:30:46 --> 00:30:49 Focused on a target the size of a pencil eraser.
00:30:49 --> 00:30:53 It's actually a little bit of fuel wrapped in gold foil.
00:30:53 --> 00:30:59 They have gotten that to Fuse and they are now getting three to four
00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 times more power out than they put in.
00:31:02 --> 00:31:07 It is not a prototype nuclear fusion reactor.
00:31:07 --> 00:31:10 It is a demonstration that we can do on the surface of the earth.
00:31:10 --> 00:31:11 What happens in the sun?
00:31:12 --> 00:31:18 But I believe for a whole bunch of reasons that by 2070 this will be a big part
00:31:18 --> 00:31:23 of our energy mix and you will not find many people that agree with me on that.
00:31:24 --> 00:31:25 And what you mean by that.
00:31:25 --> 00:31:29 And I hope that we put a whole bunch more information on our Energy
00:31:29 --> 00:31:33 Matters World website, because there's fusion I find incredibly complicated.
00:31:33 --> 00:31:37 But what, uh, tell us more about it because what you're saying is
00:31:37 --> 00:31:42 that the world will be 70% powered by Fusion in 2070, but half of
00:31:42 --> 00:31:44 that will be 93 million miles away.
00:31:44 --> 00:31:45 Right.
00:31:45 --> 00:31:45 So my
00:31:45 --> 00:31:46 tagline is exactly that.
00:31:46 --> 00:31:50 So 93 million miles away, that's how far it's from Earth to the Sun.
00:31:51 --> 00:31:57 So what I'm saying in Nerd Star Trek speak is that I think that we have 0%
00:31:57 --> 00:31:59 of our electricity today from fusion.
00:31:59 --> 00:32:06 I think in 2070 it'll go from zero to 35% roughly, and another
00:32:06 --> 00:32:08 35% call it a third and a third.
00:32:09 --> 00:32:11 Another third will be from solar power from the sun.
00:32:11 --> 00:32:14 That's fusion, but it happens to be 93 million miles away.
00:32:14 --> 00:32:18 So fusion is actually the simplest form.
00:32:18 --> 00:32:19 It's just very difficult.
00:32:19 --> 00:32:23 What you have to do is you have to crush together two hydrogen atoms.
00:32:24 --> 00:32:28 Hydrogen being the most common atom in the universe, A molecule
00:32:28 --> 00:32:29 in the universe or atom.
00:32:29 --> 00:32:31 'cause it's just, just one.
00:32:31 --> 00:32:34 But you can do heavier versions.
00:32:34 --> 00:32:38 So deuterium and tritium, heavy water is a version that's easier
00:32:38 --> 00:32:40 to fuse than simple hydrogen.
00:32:41 --> 00:32:45 And so I think that we will be making a lot of progress here because
00:32:45 --> 00:32:49 we have more than 50 companies that are doing interesting stuff.
00:32:50 --> 00:32:51 And the old joke.
00:32:52 --> 00:32:57 That fusion is 50 years away and it's been 50 years away for 50 years,
00:32:57 --> 00:32:59 meaning it's not making progress.
00:32:59 --> 00:33:05 That all changed in 2022 when the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, 40
00:33:05 --> 00:33:09 miles outside San Francisco achieved fusion with a net positive gain.
00:33:10 --> 00:33:14 And they have been making steady progress, getting the gains up to 400%.
00:33:14 --> 00:33:19 So four times more energy out than in, and they're just progressing.
00:33:19 --> 00:33:23 The problem is they have to recharge their capacitors, their batteries
00:33:23 --> 00:33:27 for a couple days to have enough energy to do another fusion shot.
00:33:29 --> 00:33:30 So they've got a long way to go to be.
00:33:30 --> 00:33:31 Okay, so back up
00:33:31 --> 00:33:32 for a second.
00:33:32 --> 00:33:37 That's a, I was gonna say, so, so all of these new fusion companies, I mean,
00:33:37 --> 00:33:43 how far away are they from actually making energy that you or I could use?
00:33:43 --> 00:33:46 Well, they'll all tell you different things, but you mentioned one
00:33:46 --> 00:33:51 Commonwealth Fusion in, in, in Massachusetts, they have a huge amount
00:33:51 --> 00:33:54 of money from US and Italian investors.
00:33:55 --> 00:34:00 They said that they would have their plant working in early 2026.
00:34:00 --> 00:34:02 They still may make that goal.
00:34:02 --> 00:34:06 There is a bigger version in Korea called K Star.
00:34:06 --> 00:34:10 They have already achieved the highest temperature ever achieved
00:34:10 --> 00:34:14 on the surface of the Earth, which is a requirement for fusion.
00:34:14 --> 00:34:15 There is a very.
00:34:15 --> 00:34:17 Promising Chinese fusion plant.
00:34:18 --> 00:34:21 There is a joint European called eater.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:28 There are a number of candidates to do, not the 196 laser version in Livermore,
00:34:28 --> 00:34:32 but what is considered more traditional fusion called a magnetic bottle.
00:34:32 --> 00:34:37 A tomac where you basically have a magnetic field, kind of like in
00:34:37 --> 00:34:38 one of those Terminator movies.
00:34:38 --> 00:34:43 You adjust the field, you keep the plasma, which is the highly excited
00:34:43 --> 00:34:46 ionized atoms in a magnetic bottle.
00:34:46 --> 00:34:50 And to me, that seems like the easiest version.
00:34:51 --> 00:34:55 And AI and machine learning have made this far more workable than
00:34:55 --> 00:34:57 10 years ago because you need.
00:34:57 --> 00:35:02 Fast reacting smart systems, and that's what AI is.
00:35:02 --> 00:35:06 So I actually think one of those plants, the German plant, the
00:35:06 --> 00:35:12 Cambridge plant, the South Korean, will likely achieve their fusion in 2026.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:14 That's really interesting.
00:35:14 --> 00:35:14 Okay.
00:35:14 --> 00:35:18 And just to be really clear, what's happening with fusion is
00:35:18 --> 00:35:21 separate and apart from these small modular reactors, correct?
00:35:21 --> 00:35:22 Totally.
00:35:22 --> 00:35:22 Right.
00:35:22 --> 00:35:22 So totally right.
00:35:22 --> 00:35:28 So I debated a recent I, I did, I just debated secretary, former Secretary of
00:35:28 --> 00:35:30 Energy and Nobel Laureate Steve Chu.
00:35:31 --> 00:35:35 I said, I think we will have one or more of these fusion companies.
00:35:36 --> 00:35:42 Making power at a prototype, a pilot facility that is putting power onto
00:35:42 --> 00:35:45 the grid, whether it's just at a national lab or somewhere else.
00:35:45 --> 00:35:47 I think we'll have that within decade.
00:35:47 --> 00:35:51 And he said, huh, Dan, you are just ridiculously optimistic.
00:35:51 --> 00:35:55 Arrogantly optimistic, if you will, and I think it's gonna be 20 or more years.
00:35:55 --> 00:35:55 Wow.
00:35:55 --> 00:35:57 I think I'm gonna win that bet.
00:35:57 --> 00:35:58 But he thinks he's gonna win that bet.
00:35:58 --> 00:35:58 And
00:35:59 --> 00:35:59 we'll see.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:00 We'll see.
00:36:01 --> 00:36:01 Okay.
00:36:01 --> 00:36:02 And we'll
00:36:02 --> 00:36:05 come back to this in a future episode of Energy Matters.
00:36:05 --> 00:36:05 Yep.
00:36:05 --> 00:36:06 All right.
00:36:06 --> 00:36:08 To learn more, go to Energy matters.world.
00:36:08 --> 00:36:09 Thank you for listening.