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Everybody. So. I

0:46

had our great discussion Today was someone

0:49

I wanted to talk to. The

0:51

type of person I wanted to talk to

0:54

for a long time and in turn out

0:56

to be exactly the right person. James Walker

0:58

He's a nuclear physicist and Ceo of a

1:01

very interesting company called Nano Nuclear. and Nano

1:03

is making michael reactors that are nuclear reactors

1:05

that are portable. the can be moved around

1:07

on the back of trucks and this is

1:10

something I'm very interested in. Being interested in

1:12

the nexus in the relationship between energy. Environment.

1:16

And the amelioration of poverty. And

1:18

it seems to me that. Investigating.

1:21

The provision of. Low cost,

1:23

resilient, widely distributable nuclear

1:25

power as an alternative

1:27

to fossil fuels is.

1:31

Morally required, partly

1:33

because. We. Know we

1:35

know this isn't some. Wild.

1:37

Hypothesis that if you can make

1:39

people who are absolutely poverty stricken,

1:41

relatively rich, they start to care

1:43

about the environmental future, And so

1:46

what that means is the fastest

1:48

way to environmental sustenance. Sustainability is

1:50

by the amelioration of poverty, and

1:52

the best way to do that

1:54

is to provide low cost energy

1:56

and potentially the best way to

1:58

do that is. With. You.

2:00

For energy. And so I

2:03

think these guys are on the

2:05

cutting edge. So I talked to

2:07

James. Walker was extremely interesting, technical

2:09

and managerial background, military background as

2:11

well. About. Just. Exactly what they're

2:14

up to. That's. All part

2:16

person, so. You. Know welcome

2:18

aboard. right?

2:20

this walker James on. Your

2:23

Ceo of now no nuclear and you gotta

2:25

cool title i think head of reactor development.

2:27

That's a cool title. and I was looking

2:29

at your bio and in which is quite

2:32

a lot of fun. So. What?

2:34

Have we got here? Extensive experience in

2:36

engineering and project maintenance including mining, construction,

2:38

manufacturing, design, infrastructure and safety management. so

2:40

that's a lot of practical work and

2:42

earn so you know I'm very interested

2:45

in Talk To Today and so thank

2:47

you very much for agreeing to participate

2:49

in this. I've been following Nano Nuclear

2:51

on twitter for quite awhile and or

2:53

just give you some background so you

2:56

know why. Wanted to talk to means

2:58

I thought for years that it's utterly

3:00

insane that we're not pursuing nuclear energy

3:02

wake up at a rate that's as

3:04

fast as we can possibly move and

3:07

I have a lot of questions about

3:09

simplicity of designs and either probably stupid

3:11

questions to be frank, but no, I

3:13

have dogs to last them and hopefully

3:15

I won't be quite so stupid after

3:17

and on this conversation. So do you

3:20

want to start by telling everybody what

3:22

it is that you're up to with

3:24

Nano Nuclear and and why you think

3:26

what you're doing is plausible and. Possible.

3:29

Helpful and possibly revolutionary?

3:32

I mean you're Europe and Canada. Take

3:35

mining cites or a lot of

3:37

the day. I'm. A first

3:39

nation's newsies or in remote areas, all

3:41

these things are run on diesel powered,

3:43

you called substitute this outbreak the. Until

3:46

like wrecked his com o sea and and so you

3:48

got a mock. Thousands.

3:50

Of Money sites. Hundreds of remote

3:52

communities are going to use these.

3:55

Charging stations freebie vehicles you

3:58

tell essentially. these

4:00

remote power systems in the

4:02

middle of nowhere, and they would

4:04

power your communities or businesses for 15, 20

4:06

years. And

4:08

that's a wonderful business opportunity that's

4:11

never really been present before. And

4:13

that's why we pursued the micro-actors.

4:16

Okay, so let me get some terminology

4:18

straight so I understand exactly what we're

4:20

talking about here. So we

4:22

have large scale nuclear reactors in Ontario, and

4:24

they're planning to refurbish the Pickering site, which

4:26

is a new decision, I think that came

4:28

out actually last week, and

4:31

a good decision, thank God, we're not as dopey

4:33

as California or Germany, let's say. Now,

4:36

you talked about small modular reactors, and

4:38

I've looked into the molten salt technology

4:40

reactors and so forth, but you're differentiating

4:43

that down further to micro-reactors. So do

4:45

you wanna distinguish for us, draw

4:47

a distinction between a micro-reactor and a small

4:49

modular reactor? And can you tell us the

4:52

scale of power production, you know,

4:54

in house equivalents, let's say, a

4:56

standard reactor will power something like

4:58

a small city, if I understand,

5:01

if I've got my numbers aligned

5:04

properly, a small modular reactor, I'm not

5:06

sure about their power generating capacity, and

5:10

what exactly constitutes a micro-reactor? So

5:12

differentiate that for us. Absolutely,

5:14

so let's start with the conventional civil

5:16

power plant, because that's what everyone's familiar

5:18

with, because we've been using those for

5:21

decades. So those things are

5:23

powering cities and beyond. So usually

5:25

a significant portion of your

5:27

national group. And

5:31

that's in gigawatts, you know.

5:33

But when you shrink down to

5:36

an SMR, you're talking about something really between,

5:39

say 20 megawatts and about 300 megawatts.

5:42

And when you're getting up to about 300 megawatts, you're getting

5:44

up to quite a large. And

5:47

so that's really the definition

5:51

we can place in an SMR. A micro-reactor

5:53

really is anything between, well,

5:56

anything less than 20 megawatts. At

5:58

that point, you're dealing with... very small. Okay.

6:03

Yeah. And so that's where we are.

6:05

And we're at the low end of that because

6:07

we want to transport microreactors. Okay. So

6:09

let me, okay, let's zero in on the

6:11

microreactors now for a moment. And then we'll

6:13

talk about the technology. Okay. So when

6:16

I've been thinking about this, because I've been thinking

6:18

about the relationship between energy and the environment for

6:20

a long time. So when I've been thinking about

6:22

this, a number of things struck me. The first

6:24

is the absolute power density

6:26

of nuclear fuel, which is unsurpassed

6:28

by any standard except with perfect

6:31

fusion. And we're not at fusion levels yet.

6:33

Although I talked to someone about that recently,

6:35

and that'll be released quite soon. And

6:37

so then I thought, well, we've obviously

6:40

had something approximating microreactors

6:42

that are reliable for a very long

6:44

time because we've been using nuclear subs

6:47

for what, how long now? 70 years, is

6:49

it at least 70 years? Right.

6:52

I mean, so that's a long time and they

6:55

fit in a submarine. So they're not

6:57

very big and submarines move around. So

6:59

they're obviously portable and the people on

7:01

them don't die from radiation poison and

7:03

they can stay underwater forever. So, and

7:05

they're obviously extraordinarily reliable. So then

7:07

I keep thinking, well, why the

7:09

hell aren't they everywhere? And so

7:12

let's talk about everywhere for a minute.

7:14

I mean, there's some real advantages to

7:16

distributed systems. I would say you

7:18

pointed to the fact that they could be

7:20

used in isolated communities, but I'm also wondering,

7:22

it's like, well, why not a network grid

7:25

of microreactors as a substitute

7:27

for these multi-billion dollar massive

7:30

reactors that can, but don't

7:32

very often fail cataclysmically. And

7:34

so I mean, is there

7:37

as well as a market for

7:39

these isolated places that you describe,

7:41

is there the broader capacity of

7:43

making a resilient network power grid

7:45

that gives countries sovereignty over their

7:47

own power supply, but is also

7:50

has the advantages of like multiplicity

7:52

of provision, which, you know, I

7:54

mean, we have a distributed system for fossil fuel

7:56

and there's some real utility in that because if

7:58

part of it goes down. the rest of

8:00

it doesn't. And so tell me your

8:03

thoughts on those sorts of matters. Well,

8:05

it's interesting you bring that up because we

8:08

were recently at a conference in fact just

8:10

last week, and the representative of the Polish

8:12

government approaches about exactly this. And they

8:15

have a grid

8:17

system where certain shutdowns mean that

8:19

the whole grid gets lost. And so

8:22

they really come up with no real solutions this

8:24

apart from micro Xs, which they believe they could

8:27

space these accordingly so

8:29

that in the events of blackout

8:31

in a certain area, the grid

8:33

can be substituted with other power

8:35

sources along the way. And this

8:37

has a far more preferential solution

8:40

than say a big grid system or even

8:42

a diesel generator system, which is

8:44

actually less consistent and

8:47

requires the daily importation of diesel

8:49

just to maintain. Right, right, right.

8:51

Well, what these systems are, they

8:54

resilient to solar flares just out

8:56

of curiosity, because this is

8:58

also a concern, right? Because a solar

9:00

flare is about a once in a

9:02

century occurrence. And the fact that a solar

9:04

flare could take out our whole power

9:06

grid seems to me a lot more pervasive

9:09

and present a threat than this like

9:11

climate alarmism that we're short circuiting ourselves

9:13

about. So I know that

9:15

the distribution infrastructure

9:17

still might be susceptible to say

9:19

solar flare induced shocks, but what

9:21

about the reactors themselves? Well,

9:24

the good part about a reactor is

9:26

that it's almost entirely mechanical. Obviously you

9:28

can make the argument that the mechanics

9:30

can be very controlled by the electric.

9:34

But the truth of it is that like, the

9:36

reason why micro-actors are very safe

9:38

is that you say there was

9:41

a big solar flare and it knocked out the

9:43

electric and the mechanical systems all simultaneously failed. With

9:46

a micro-actor, you can't get the sort

9:48

of, the disaster

9:50

or the core

9:53

melt, which is the big

9:55

problem with a big civil class. Then you have

9:57

to, and the reason for that is that. It

10:00

can't generate enough heat, especially in our

10:02

designs, to actually melt the reactors. So

10:04

it passively goes. Right,

10:07

right. So it just shuts itself down.

10:10

And even then, say the uranium just keeps getting

10:12

hotter, that's fine. It just radiates heat out and

10:14

it's not going to melt. And it

10:17

doesn't matter. The worst thing that can happen

10:19

with a reactor is if, I don't know,

10:21

it's a coolant leak which leads to a core

10:23

overheat which leads to core melt, which can happen

10:25

in big reactors. I'm going to kill

10:27

anyone, but it's messy to clean up. Right, right.

10:30

But in a micro-acto, it's just passively cooled.

10:32

So say you did get that solar flare.

10:35

There's not a huge amount of electronics in it.

10:38

It would be a fairly quick fix to go around

10:40

and put these things back in order, but they would

10:42

essentially just sit there until you came around to do

10:44

that fix. So it's a big

10:46

advantage. Okay, so that's another advantage on the

10:49

resilient side. Okay, so now I want to

10:51

delve, if you would, into other issues. So

10:53

let's say cost, availability, but

10:55

I'd also like to ask some really

10:58

stupid questions about the technology itself. So

11:00

I've been, and correct me any place I'm

11:02

wrong, and there might be many places like

11:05

that. I mean, so

11:07

you refine nuclear fuel and it

11:09

heats up of its own accord

11:11

as a consequence of radioactive fusion.

11:15

And then in a big reactor, you

11:17

use rods to dampen down the rate

11:19

at which the fission

11:23

action occurs so that it stays with

11:25

an acceptable bound. So let me ask

11:27

you really a basic, simple, technical question.

11:29

So I was thinking, well, what would

11:31

be the simplest possible source

11:34

of electricity that you could hypothetically

11:36

design if you were

11:38

using nuclear power? So I thought,

11:40

well, why not embed pellets of

11:42

enriched uranium or some other substance

11:44

inside molten lead balls

11:47

and calibrate the distribution of

11:49

the uranium pellets so that the balls

11:52

were basically red hot, but no hotter,

11:54

drop them in a bucket

11:56

of water, capture the steam

11:58

and run a generator. Okay, so like why

12:01

is that stupid because it seems the lead

12:03

seems to me to be something that's dense

12:05

and would shield I guess it

12:07

would get radioactive over time but

12:10

So that's a very simple design. So tell

12:12

me why that's a stupid design No,

12:15

I mean effectively what you've done is design

12:17

a basic react because like uranium

12:19

gets hot heat support Like the

12:21

only thing that's missing from your design is the

12:23

circulation of water So what you would want

12:25

to do is obviously move the hot water

12:27

right? Yeah, so that's

12:30

a simple we we have pumps we

12:32

could do that we have Okay,

12:35

so why aren't Extraordinarily

12:38

simple systems like I mean, I

12:40

know it's not simple to mine

12:42

and refine the uranium, you know

12:44

But why aren't extraordinarily simple systems

12:46

like that available? I think even

12:48

if heat sources for that matter

12:51

Well, i'll give you a good example. Actually, you

12:53

know that you remember the voyage, uh spacecraft

12:55

NASA launched it over there. I think on

12:57

the periphery of the solar system at the

12:59

moment and Essentially

13:01

all that's all that's powering those

13:03

is plutonium. It's um, basically

13:05

radiating heat and that's it It's like it's

13:08

like the jordan peterson reactor But

13:10

um, it's radiating heat and there's

13:12

like a thermo electric turbine on that just

13:14

converts some of that heat into electricity That's

13:17

it. That's and that's that's the totality of

13:19

it. So Um, that's

13:21

probably the most simple nuclear device nuclear

13:24

powered device you could get um,

13:26

but say with say with a lead

13:29

line uranium pellet like you've

13:31

described well Say

13:34

you have a place for your fuel and you're putting all

13:36

of the lead pellet in there Um,

13:38

that's going to obviously the lead is now occupying space fuel

13:40

could be so you might need to have a bit of a larger react

13:43

And if you have a bit of a larger react you need to

13:45

put a bit more fuel And then

13:47

you can get that runaway effect. Unfortunately,

13:50

the laws of physics keep pushing us

13:52

in certain design. Um decisions um

13:56

so That's I

13:58

think been the challenge and why my reactors

14:00

and SMRs

14:03

have never been done before is that

14:05

material science is now catching up. So

14:08

for instance you've actually described something

14:11

very close to a solution that a

14:14

lot of the big reactor companies are

14:16

coming up with called Trisotube, which is

14:21

uranium encased in certain

14:23

layers of lead.

14:30

So essentially you can't get the fuel melt

14:32

and they're essentially pellets that go into a

14:34

fuel space. Okay so that gives me some

14:36

sense. I'd like to kind of understand the

14:39

most basic possible model before

14:42

things become elaborated. So can

14:44

we walk a bit through your technology?

14:46

One of the things that struck me about

14:48

your technology was its portability on the back

14:50

of a truck. I can imagine

14:52

50,000 reasons why that might

14:55

be extremely useful but there's something that's kind

14:57

of cool about it too that you can

14:59

just trundle one of these things wherever it's

15:01

needed for emergencies, for backup

15:03

power and for remote communities,

15:05

which is obviously a mining site and so forth

15:07

as you pointed out, which is a big deal

15:09

in a place like Canada. Also

15:11

as far as I can tell would

15:14

open up the possibility especially in places

15:16

like the Northwest Territories for mining where

15:18

that's practically not feasible because you can't

15:20

build the bloody hydroelectric lines across 2,000

15:22

miles of tundra

15:24

to fire up a mine. But with this

15:27

provision of power then I was also thinking

15:29

it'd be pretty damn useful hypothetically on the

15:31

desalination front too because everybody's jumping up and

15:33

down about not having enough water which strikes me

15:36

as like abysmally foolish given that 70%

15:38

of the planet or something like

15:40

that is covered by water

15:43

some miles deep. So I don't think we're

15:45

gonna run out. So

15:47

walk me through that if you

15:49

would to the design of your

15:51

reactors and help me

15:53

also understand why they're not already everywhere.

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or enter code Jordan at checkout. Okay.

17:05

So with our reactors, as

17:08

you mentioned, we wanted them to be portable. It

17:10

was actually a business decision that speared that on

17:12

because we thought, well, if they

17:14

can fit within an ISO container, as an

17:16

example, then you could transport them by truck

17:19

or by train or by

17:21

just put it on the back of a maritime

17:23

vessel and you could ship these things anyway. You

17:25

could even effectively helicopter in. Now, when you

17:28

do that, you can straighten your design a little bit. So

17:30

you've got to work within the confines of an

17:32

ISO container. So you kind of end up with

17:34

almost a bath-shaped design.

17:38

So we have two technical teams,

17:40

one drawn principally out of scientists and

17:42

engineers out of University of Berkeley, California,

17:44

and the other out of University of

17:46

Cambridge. We gave them the same

17:48

MO, so it needs to be transportable. It needs to be a nice container.

17:51

It needs to be modular. It needs to

17:53

be able to passively cool, like we talked

17:55

about earlier. And they had different

17:57

solutions. So the universe.

18:00

team, they've

18:02

realized that if they take the coolant out and

18:05

you just have uranium conventional fuel

18:07

and it radiates through a solid

18:09

core, then you don't need

18:11

pumps for coolant at all. And then

18:14

the whole mechanical system shrinks right down.

18:17

So it's basically one

18:20

of the most basic designs you could probably make. Somebody

18:23

conducts a solid core and

18:25

then circulated air basically removes heat from

18:27

the periphery of that core to a

18:29

turbine. And that's pretty much it. Oh,

18:31

really? Really. So

18:34

you're not using liquid at all? You're not using liquid at all. Unless

18:36

you want to define air as

18:39

the liquid, but that's effectively their

18:41

solution. I think it's quite brilliant. I'm

18:44

bound to say that, but I do genuinely think that. And

18:47

the University of Cambridge's solution was

18:50

to take

18:53

a basic fuel form, uranium dioxide, fuel

18:55

rod and

18:58

surround it with a solar salt, but introduce

19:01

some heat into that system

19:03

to create a natural circulation. And then as

19:05

that circulates, the uranium keeps that

19:07

momentum going. And so then you can take the

19:10

pumps out and you can take the mechanical systems

19:12

out and the system shrinks right down. Okay. And

19:14

you said that was salt-based? That was salt-based, yes. So

19:17

it's like a sweet-smolting. Right, right, right. But

19:22

the salt isn't molten in that system. So

19:24

how is it or is it molten? How

19:26

is the heat transferred? So it

19:28

is essentially liquid. So it will start off

19:30

with the case of liquid. But as

19:32

you introduce heat, you create

19:35

that natural circulation and then the heat

19:37

of the uranium maintains that natural circulation

19:39

of salt. And now we'll remove

19:41

heat from the fuel rods, but then you can

19:43

remove heat to a turbine and so

19:45

forth. Right. And

19:47

so how is the turbine spun

19:50

with that system? With

19:52

that system, it's a thermo-electric.

19:55

So we're not going

19:57

to design these turbines. If

20:00

you think like a helicopter

20:02

turbine or something like that where

20:05

you're burning high-quality jet fuel to

20:07

generate heat and that heat is

20:09

essentially moving that turbine. The

20:12

good thing about turbines is they're

20:15

quite similar to each other. Right,

20:17

right. Well, they've been around for a long time,

20:19

so that's a well-established technology. Now, you also worked

20:21

for Rolls-Royce for a while if I got my

20:23

facts straight. I did. I was

20:25

Ministry of Defense. Actually, you mentioned

20:28

submarines earlier. That's how I got my start

20:30

in nuclear. I was involved in the construction of

20:33

manufacturing facilities to

20:35

produce reactor cores. But they took on the meter

20:37

Rolls-Royce where I worked as a physicist in

20:40

the design of the next generation of nuclear

20:42

reactors for the next generation of nuclear submarines.

20:45

I see, I see. Okay, so that's a

20:47

logical segue into the commercial market

20:49

that you're attempting to conquer now. How long

20:52

have you guys been in operation? Actually,

20:54

not very long. It was only really

20:56

about 2020 when we wanted to really

20:59

get the company going. I was number

21:01

two in the organization. We

21:05

came at it obviously from that background when

21:07

we were talking about why nuclear, why micro-axis.

21:12

But what was quite interesting is actually once we

21:14

got into the industry, we realized that the

21:17

US infrastructure, the nuclear infrastructure had kind of

21:19

atrophied a little bit. It

21:21

had done that because the US

21:23

could source enriched

21:25

material from Russia, weapons-grade

21:28

material. Then it could just

21:30

downblend that material for whatever

21:32

domestic need it wanted, whether that was

21:35

military or civil

21:37

power plants. That

21:39

allowed it essentially to not

21:42

have to renew a lot of its systems. When

21:44

we entered the nuclear

21:47

industry, it was kind of alarming that

21:49

we thought we would have major impediments

21:51

to actually launching a commercial company because

21:53

of these infrastructure problems. Actually,

21:56

this could be an opportunity. We're

21:58

looking to try and build our own fuel fabric. So

22:00

if you're our own deconversion,

22:02

so if you're our own

22:04

fuel transportation system, and hopefully

22:06

we could be part of this

22:09

renaissance of nuclear. Great, great.

22:11

Where are you located? So

22:13

the headquarters are in New York. So

22:16

I'm here, I'm actually here at the moment. But

22:19

I'm actually, I live in Canada, most

22:22

of the time. Where do

22:24

you live in Canada? Vancouver. And

22:27

have you had any contact, say, with

22:29

the government people in Saskatchewan? Because I

22:31

mean, as you no doubt know, Saskatchewan

22:33

has like uranium reserves that are, I

22:35

think, unparalleled in the world and that

22:37

don't really seem to be being utilized

22:40

all that efficiently. And so, I mean,

22:42

it's such insanity as far as I can tell. We

22:44

have this almost infinite power supply

22:47

at our hands. And yet we've

22:49

turned to solar and wind.

22:51

We're trying to cobble together battery storage, which as far

22:54

as I can tell, isn't working that well at the

22:56

moment. And

23:00

so, that was the other question I had is like, another

23:03

question I had. Why aren't

23:05

these already everywhere? You pointed to transformation

23:08

in material technology and alluded to the

23:10

fact that maybe we're just at the

23:12

point where this has become economically

23:15

viable and scalable. Are

23:18

there like regulatory problems? Are there

23:20

problems of public perception as

23:22

well that constitute impediments? I

23:25

would say nuclear has suffered from the worst

23:27

PR. It might be

23:29

partly because governments have always

23:31

been involved in the

23:34

funding of these big installations and the

23:36

government don't care about that. But

23:39

like if I was to say to somebody, you know,

23:41

if nuclear is the safest of

23:43

all energy force, like even safer than,

23:46

if you look at deaths per gigawatt

23:48

hour, nuclear beats out wind and it

23:50

beats out solar. Right. It's

23:53

already in that, not even considering

23:55

that SMRs and microactors

23:57

still safer than new big civil

23:59

power. parts. And

24:01

you know, things like Fukushima or Three

24:03

Mile Island get brought up. But I

24:06

have to point out that nobody died

24:08

in those situations.

24:10

And really, it's just a

24:12

clean up operation. I don't want to trivialise.

24:15

But I

24:17

think human psychology

24:19

is interesting. I think radiation

24:23

might be intimidating because it's a danger

24:25

you can't see. And so

24:27

you can't understand the magnitude of that danger,

24:29

consequently. It's not like a tiger in the

24:31

room you can see, and you can assess.

24:34

And that maybe has been an impediment. Okay,

24:36

well, okay, so that's well, well, we can

24:38

understand that. I mean, a huge part of

24:41

the problem that any company has to solve

24:43

is the marketing problem. That's often 85% of

24:46

the problem, even if it's a complex technical

24:48

problem. And so then what about what

24:51

about government impediment or other,

24:53

like sociological impediment specifically to

24:56

your progress? Where

24:58

are you getting resistance? And where are you seeing a

25:01

well paved way forward? Well,

25:03

the good part is that when we did

25:06

see a lot of resistance, but resistance in

25:08

the form of infrastructure not being in place.

25:10

And just to take an example of another

25:12

company, and they probably won't mind me saying

25:14

this, is that NewScale were the first

25:17

company to license an SMR. In fact, they're

25:19

the only ones in the world to do

25:21

that. But they became under

25:23

fire because the costs of

25:26

their megawatt generation was more than they thought

25:28

it would. But to be fair to them, everything

25:31

they had to do was first of its kind. And

25:33

so the first pharmaceutical

25:35

drug costs millions and the

25:37

second one costs nothing. And

25:40

so they got penalized for that. But if

25:42

there was an infrastructure in place within the

25:44

country to support everything they did and manufacture

25:46

the fuel and parts they needed, it would

25:48

have been an order

25:50

of magnitude cheaper for a start. And logically,

25:54

nuclear should be the cheapest form of energy.

25:58

But you have all your capital costs up. cartridge can

26:00

really distort that picture. Right, right, right. In

26:02

big projects, like 70% of

26:05

your overall costs might be financing costs

26:07

related to that big upfront capital cost.

26:10

Well, you know, one of the things it seems to me that

26:13

from a PR perspective, a marketing perspective,

26:15

that there's a

26:17

wide open field of opportunity on one

26:19

side of this equation that I don't

26:21

think has been well capitalized upon. First

26:24

of all, I think you can make us, you

26:26

already made a case for green, what

26:30

would you say, for, that

26:32

nuclear power is a very green form

26:34

of energy, at least in principle, especially

26:36

when it's safely delivered in the form that

26:38

you're delivering it. And

26:41

you made a case for reliability and

26:43

portability and all that. But there's another

26:45

case that's just begging to be made,

26:48

even additionally on the environmental front. The

26:51

data is quite clear that if you get

26:54

people around the world up to

26:56

the point where they're producing about $5,000

26:58

in US dollars a

27:01

year in GDP, they start to take a long

27:03

term view of the future. They

27:05

become environmentally aware. And

27:08

that's because they're not scrabbling around in the dirt,

27:10

burning dung, trying to figure out where the

27:12

next meal is coming from and willing to burn

27:15

up and eat everything around them so

27:17

they don't starve. It's

27:20

clear that if you get people, we know that

27:22

rich countries get cleaner. That's

27:24

what happens. And so obvious, and

27:27

we also think at least that

27:29

absolute privation and poverty is bad

27:31

because we really want starving people

27:33

and stunted children and all

27:36

the misery that goes along with that. And

27:38

so there's this opening, it seems to me,

27:40

for people who are in a position to

27:42

provide at scale inexpensive

27:45

energy to say, look, we can

27:47

feed the world's poor because there's

27:49

a direct relationship between energy and

27:51

wealth, like more direct than anything else.

27:53

Energy equals wealth. And now

27:55

we can make all the poor people in the

27:58

world rich in a non-zero-sum manner. as

28:00

we did that, they'd start to care about

28:02

the environment. So like, where's the, what's the

28:04

problem with that? And, and, and well, and

28:06

what do you think of that as a

28:08

marketing campaign, let's say? Well, you've

28:11

outlined our marketing campaign

28:13

because, um, when we were

28:15

building up the company and we were making

28:17

some very big connections, one of them, we

28:19

were talking to some African diplomats and they

28:21

were mentioning to us, you know, one significant

28:24

issue that Africa faces in the continent is

28:26

that there's large sections of the population that

28:28

are completely removed from grids. And

28:30

so that means diesel generates. But

28:33

the problem there again, is that you need a

28:35

constant supply of diesel to be brought into those

28:37

generators. So their

28:40

supplies, it's missing. Um,

28:42

if you have a micro reactor system, um,

28:44

we touched on it earlier, like de salination

28:46

class medical facility, a micro reactor could be

28:48

put there and you've got 15 years of

28:50

power for a community and

28:53

then it's consistent too. Um,

28:55

and then you can have that

28:57

$5,000 per capita wealth to

29:00

create more long-term strategic thinking. And,

29:03

um, you know, I've been to Africa enough

29:05

and seen these, these poor areas to know

29:07

that like, when you're scrambling around in

29:10

the dirt, your considerations are very short

29:12

term because they have otherwise you're going to die.

29:15

And so it's, it's, it's a situation

29:17

that begets, you know, um,

29:19

you know, very damaging decisions for

29:22

the larger community. Right.

29:25

Right. Well, that's the, that's the environmental cost

29:27

of poverty. Like we, we scream in the

29:29

West all the time about the environmental cost

29:31

of wealth. But the

29:33

environmental cost of poverty is way higher,

29:35

way higher. And so, and this

29:37

is something I can't figure out. I cannot

29:39

figure out why the greens don't get this

29:41

because in principle, they're on the left and the

29:44

leftists in principle are on the side of

29:46

the poor. But when it

29:48

comes, but like

29:50

the thing is like, I take Germany as

29:52

example, like the green lobby got into essentially

29:54

a position of power within that country. And

29:57

they're effectively left with. Um, and.

30:00

They were heavily campaigned against nuclear to

30:03

push for other renewable solutions, so they

30:05

pushed heavily into wind and so forth.

30:08

But the result of that was that the country no

30:10

longer could power itself. It had to

30:12

power from Poland, which was

30:14

manufactured by coal. They had to

30:16

power by coal. And late night coal, right? Not

30:19

just coal, but the worst kind of coal. Brilliant,

30:22

brilliant. Which

30:24

is incredibly polluting. They

30:26

also had to buy, ironically,

30:31

energy from France, which was generated

30:33

by nuclear power. So the costs

30:35

of the Germans went up for

30:38

their power, and their carbon footprint

30:40

went up. Right, right. So

30:42

we want to dwell on that for a minute. So

30:44

the consequence of the Green Movement in

30:47

Germany was that power, let's lay it out,

30:49

power is five times more expensive than it

30:51

should have been. The Germans became

30:53

reliant on fossil fuels to a degree that

30:55

they weren't before, including reliant on Putin, which

30:58

turned out to be a very bad idea,

31:00

let's point out. Plus, and

31:03

Germany is now in the throes of deindustrialization, so

31:05

the poor are going to get a hell of

31:07

a lot poorer. And you might say,

31:09

well, that's all worthwhile because we're so much

31:11

greener. But the truth of the matter is,

31:14

is that Germany now has among the world's

31:16

dirtiest energy per unit because

31:18

of their idiotic policy. So they

31:20

didn't just fail on the economic

31:22

front entirely and make the poor

31:24

poorer. They failed by

31:26

their own standards because the bloody goal was

31:28

to decrease pollution. And what they did instead

31:31

was increase it per unit of energy and

31:33

not just a little bit, a lot. And

31:36

so this just bedevils me because

31:38

I cannot put

31:41

my finger on why it

31:43

is that the leftists are

31:46

simultaneously pro-environment, pro-poor people,

31:48

and anti-nuclear. Like sorry, guys, you don't

31:50

get to have all three of them.

31:53

You can have two. Yeah, I imagine

31:55

there's a lot of push-stream here. And

31:57

yeah, yeah. It's not just Germany. You might

31:59

say that already. Well, yes. But

32:02

as an example, I was working in Utah once,

32:04

and I was working in this small little town,

32:06

and there was a massive coal power plant there.

32:08

I was like, oh, so this power

32:11

is Utah. And they're like, oh, no, we send

32:13

all of this power straight to California. I was

32:15

like, why? And they're like, well, they

32:17

shut down a lot of their power plants. So

32:21

they can claim that they've greased, essentially.

32:25

But really, they're still powering

32:27

their Teslas off coal that's

32:30

being generated in Utah. And

32:32

so it's the same kind of... Can

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33:47

Well, you know Californians in Utah and the

33:50

inhabitants, what are you, you, you, you, you,

33:52

I have no idea what you call the

33:54

Utah. I

33:56

have no idea. Anyways, you

33:58

know that California and. people from Utah, they

34:01

don't breathe the same atmosphere. It's like China

34:03

and the United States, completely different air supply,

34:05

as everyone knows. So yeah, well, one of

34:07

the reasons I like to talk to engineers

34:09

is because they don't get to posture. Like

34:12

the thing that's cool about engineers is

34:14

their stupid stuff either works or it

34:16

doesn't. And it's very unforgiving. And so,

34:18

you know, and, and, yeah, it's okay,

34:20

the DEI people in this and the

34:22

the politically correct types, they're going to

34:24

take all you engineers out too. So

34:26

you better get prepared. Well, as a

34:28

one male, my days might be numbered.

34:30

So plus, you're an

34:32

engineer, man, you've got a lot of things,

34:34

a lot of strikes against you. So okay,

34:36

okay, so, so we've we've

34:39

made a case for for, for

34:41

these small, these micro reactors. Now I'd like

34:44

to know, and you

34:46

you alluded to something quite interesting, you know,

34:48

you said that when you first started to

34:50

contemplate doing this in the American environment, you

34:52

realized that there was a lot of a

34:56

lot of industrial and infrastructure pieces that needed

34:59

to be in place that had been allowed

35:01

to decay because the Americans had had a

35:03

reliable supply of fissile material from the Soviet

35:05

Union as a consequence of its collapse. And

35:07

so a lot of things were left to

35:10

disintegrate, let's say, but now you've realized that

35:13

that's also another economic opportunity. So it sounds

35:15

to me like you guys are planning to

35:17

build a, what would you say

35:19

from the ground up enterprise

35:21

that will allow for these micro reactors

35:24

to exist. So then I want

35:26

to know where you are, how

35:28

you came to that conclusion, conclusion where

35:30

you are in that process. And then

35:33

again, because I have a particular interest

35:35

in Western Canada, I'm curious about, you

35:37

know, how these ideas have

35:39

been received in places like Saskatchewan.

35:42

So I would say there's

35:47

a three questions. Yep, yep, yep. So

35:52

how, how these things have been

35:54

received? Like, let's start with that

35:57

one. So yeah, I

35:59

think certainly territories like Alberta become very

36:01

friendly to the idea of powering a

36:03

lot of their remote industries, even

36:06

the oil sands operations with nuclear

36:08

power. Right, right, right, right. That's

36:11

an incredibly energy-intensive industry. There

36:17

has been support voiced

36:19

for that, and there's an Invest Alberta

36:21

program, which is looking actually to bring

36:23

in SMRs, but that's not

36:25

ubiquitous across the whole country. You

36:28

wouldn't see the same receptiveness from, say, British

36:31

Columbia, where I am currently. Again,

36:36

certain more industry-friendly provinces would drift

36:39

in that area. I

36:42

think obviously Toronto, well, the greater Toronto

36:44

area came to the conclusion that nuclear

36:47

had already provided a substantial

36:50

portion of the energy to

36:52

the province, and they

36:54

didn't want to substitute that for more fossil

36:58

fuels. They've

37:01

gone back and invested in this. Canada actually

37:03

has a pretty decent, I quite like the

37:06

reactors they put together, the Can-Do reactors. They

37:11

almost generated their entire independent industry because

37:14

they opted for designs that weren't being

37:16

widely used across the world. Canada

37:19

is actually in a very strong position to

37:21

build out their own SMR industry. If they

37:24

invest properly now in

37:27

doing that, otherwise, they're

37:29

going to suffer in the same way that the

37:31

United States is suffering from getting going now. Another

37:35

thing you mentioned is

37:37

why we saw these problems. We

37:40

saw big companies like, say, Terrapower.

37:43

It's a big SMR company, and it's backed

37:45

by Bill Gates. It's no shortage

37:47

of money for this thing to get going, but

37:50

they effectively could not find

37:52

enough fuel to put into their reactors to

37:55

complete the test work. We thought,

37:57

hmm, that's very interesting. them

38:00

there. Well, they effectively had to shut down for

38:02

two years. That's the

38:04

worst thing that can possibly happen because you just

38:06

burn cash. They're probably going

38:08

to burn through hundreds of millions of

38:11

dollars. The advantage, a wise man can learn

38:13

from those stakes

38:15

with others. Hopefully, we just saw

38:17

that and we thought,

38:19

well, we're not backed by Bill Gates,

38:21

so we can't afford to make a

38:23

$100 million mistake like that or a

38:26

billion dollar mistake like that. Really,

38:30

before we saw the US government

38:32

realize that there was a significant

38:34

problem, which very closely mirrored

38:36

the Ukraine war when relationships began

38:38

to become very strange, and

38:41

they began pushing a lot of funding

38:43

opportunities out there to build back their infrastructure.

38:45

They're doing that now, but

38:47

it's still come a bit late. The

38:51

advantage we had as we started doing that

38:53

before these funding opportunities from

38:55

the US government came out to

38:57

build conversion

38:59

facilities, deconversion facilities, fuel

39:01

fabrication, enrichment facilities. Otherwise,

39:04

if Russia cut off

39:06

the states now and they

39:09

are still through back channels dealing in the

39:11

supply of rich uranium because the US can't

39:14

afford to go without it, but

39:16

they don't want to have

39:18

those channels open anymore. They

39:20

want to cut ties, but they can't do it.

39:23

You mentioned earlier that Germany lost

39:26

sovereignty over itself partially because it

39:29

couldn't power itself. It was reliant

39:31

on Russian gas. That's a

39:33

situation no country really wants to

39:35

be. You want to have sovereign

39:37

energy, absolutely.

39:39

Otherwise, your diplomatic strength

39:41

is completely gone. Well,

39:44

you'd think that no country would want that,

39:46

but when you wanted the policies that they're

39:48

pursuing, a sensible person would

39:50

conclude that that's exactly what they want.

39:53

I do believe that posturing has a

39:56

very large amount to do with that because almost

39:58

all of the green idiocy is narcissistic

40:01

posturing. It's the pretense of doing

40:03

good without doing any of the

40:05

actual work. Okay, so walk me

40:07

through where you are. Okay,

40:09

so explain to everybody who's watching and listening how

40:13

you're involved right from the place

40:16

where the uranium is still in the

40:18

ore in the ground. Like

40:20

what has to happen at each step

40:22

along the way so that the fuel

40:24

actually gets to one of your reactors

40:26

and how is

40:29

your company situated to make that happen

40:31

and where are you in that process?

40:34

So starting at the very

40:36

basic uranium mining, you mentioned the Saskatchewan

40:38

deposit. So you

40:40

mine the uranium, but the ore is

40:42

effectively not very useful for any, but

40:44

you subject that ore

40:46

to a leaching process and you create a

40:48

yellow cape, which is essentially more

40:51

concentrated uranium that then would

40:53

be shipped off for a conversion. Where

40:55

we sit in that is that we've

40:58

actually reached out to Central

41:00

Asia where almost the majority

41:02

of the world's uranium is currently being mined. It

41:04

doesn't have to come from there. But

41:07

say there are big deposits in

41:09

like Wyoming and Saskatchewan that are

41:11

not producing uranium readily now in

41:13

enough quantities to meet the

41:15

demand. And so it is coming from abroad. I

41:18

believe those domestic deposits will be

41:20

built up now that the uranium price is

41:22

rising, which is like COP28 announces

41:25

trip for the necessity to triple nuclear

41:27

energy by 2040 or whatever it is.

41:31

So that is having an effect on

41:33

the uranium price, which is encouraging mine

41:35

development. But the problem with mining

41:37

is that it can take five

41:39

years from a greenfield deposit to get

41:42

to a mine. And so

41:44

you always have that lag and if

41:46

the lag, if during that lag, the

41:49

uranium price drops and that can even hit that

41:51

mining incoming to commercial production. So

41:55

there's a lot of risk associated with not having

41:57

your own domestic So

42:02

we have reached out to them. We do have

42:04

an ability at the President's office within certain countries

42:06

in Central Asia to source uranium directly if we

42:08

need it. And we've even

42:10

talked with the largest uranium materials broker in

42:12

the world to make sure that we have

42:15

a supplier because no

42:17

business wants to have

42:19

the risk that you build

42:21

all these facilities and reactors and manufacturing

42:24

facilities, but the raw material that

42:26

fuels all this isn't there. So

42:28

that there's that component to it too.

42:30

Well, do you worry that you're dealing

42:32

with these, like, say Central Asian? Say

42:34

again, it brings me back to

42:37

the same thing. Well, if you

42:39

could have a resource in Wyoming or

42:41

let's say in Saskatchewan, that seems to

42:43

me to be a lot more geopolitically

42:45

stable in any real sense than trying

42:47

to source something halfway around the world

42:49

in countries that are definitely not politically

42:51

stable. And so

42:53

why were you compelled to go seek

42:55

out suppliers elsewhere?

42:58

Well, it's the immediacy of

43:01

supply. Like, they are able to supply

43:03

material now. And that is

43:05

a major advantage over, we

43:07

have a mine and it's at even feasibility

43:09

level. You still need to put the

43:11

mine works in place, the processing plant in place.

43:14

Processing plant from uranium operation

43:16

could be a quarter of a billion dollars

43:18

and take three years to build. And so

43:21

we want to make sure that. Does

43:23

it have to take three years to

43:26

build? I mean, you know, because things

43:28

do move a lot. They could move a

43:30

lot faster now than they once did. And

43:32

I'm, you know, I also wonder are there

43:34

improvements in technology that are in the pipelines

43:37

that would make it possible to do it

43:39

in like a year instead of three years

43:41

if people actually decided they, you know, I

43:43

mean, Germany built new natural gas importing terminals

43:45

in months when they needed to. So

43:48

like we can actually move pretty quick if we decided it

43:50

was a good idea. So okay,

43:53

so you said immediacy of supply. That's

43:56

what drove you to Central Asia, but it

43:58

would be better perhaps if. there

44:00

were domestic supplies that were at least in

44:02

the pipelines, let's say. Domestic

44:04

supply from Saskatchewan or Wyoming would be,

44:07

would be a lot better. Of

44:09

course they would. There's, there's, there's

44:11

no geopolitical, well there's less geopolitical

44:13

uncertainty. Um, and

44:16

like, for instance, even in central

44:18

Asia, like they do supply China and Russia

44:20

still with the uranium that they need for

44:22

their own programs too. So you're competing against

44:25

other countries which are potentially hostile to

44:28

the States or Canada or places like that.

44:30

And if they're looking to wage and

44:33

economic war, we'll look for more excluded contracts. And

44:35

so you then are in a competing position for

44:38

material you can't control. Right. Seems like

44:40

a bad, yeah. Like from a geopolitical

44:42

perspective, that seems unwise. Let's put it

44:44

that way. So I can understand why

44:46

you guys are doing it commercially because

44:48

as you said, you can't afford the

44:50

delay and fair enough. Okay.

44:53

So now, do you have a stable supply

44:55

fundamentally? Can you get, can you get moving

44:57

with what you're doing? You can. So, um,

45:00

the, the good part about what

45:02

we're doing now is we've ensured that we

45:04

have broken enough good relations with certain countries

45:06

that we can source the material. If you

45:09

want it, we're not in

45:11

the business of enrichment, but we could

45:13

do things like conversion and get it into a,

45:15

uh, uranium hexafluoride gas, which

45:17

can go to a licensed enrichment company,

45:19

like, um, a Rano or

45:22

Centris and they could enrich the material for

45:24

us. And one thing, so

45:26

what's the relationship between the gas and the

45:29

yellow cake? So what you want

45:31

to do with yellow cake is what, once it's

45:33

been concentrated by that leaching process is that you,

45:36

it's easier to enrich a gas,

45:39

um, uh, than it

45:41

is say say yellow cake, which, which you

45:43

could use a centrifugal system, but, um,

45:46

yeah, but gas is certainly a lot

45:48

easier to remove. And so, um,

45:52

if you would take the yellow cake and you

45:54

would expose it to several

45:56

chemical processes, turn it into

45:58

uranium hexafluoride. And

46:00

it's actually the enrichment companies

46:03

will enrich uranium hexafluoride to

46:06

produce, well,

46:08

whatever you want. So

46:11

enriched to whatever level the

46:13

customer needs it. But at that point,

46:15

it actually needs to be deconverted back

46:17

to a solid. Oh, yeah.

46:20

So our company actually wants to build

46:22

out that infrastructure for the country too.

46:25

So take that uranium

46:27

hexafluoride, convert it to dioxides,

46:30

hydrides, sorry,

46:32

uranium dioxide, uranium hydride, uranium

46:34

metal, whatever the market

46:36

will need. Because that's

46:38

one element. And then fabrication is the ability

46:41

to tailor it to

46:43

the specific reactor. So essentially fashion

46:45

it into dimensions, composition, mold

46:48

it with zirconium, whatever they want. And

46:50

then sell that. The final

46:53

part of what we want to do is build

46:55

out a transportation company. So

46:57

we can actually transport that around North America too. How

47:01

would you transport it? So we've

47:04

actually been spending about a year doing this. But

47:07

we've got a patented

47:09

technology now for a

47:11

cask system that can transport the most

47:13

amount of enriched

47:16

material, so helium material. So it's enriched

47:18

up to almost 20% around North America.

47:21

And we're just in the process of getting that license

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48:29

so you've been working on

48:32

solving the transportation problem. What

48:34

are the problems associated with transport

48:36

that you've had to solve and

48:39

how did you solve those? The

48:41

fundamental problem with transport is that

48:43

you cannot have Uranium critically configured.

48:50

Uranium is only actually really radioactive if you push

48:52

it all together. It's just the basis of a

48:54

bomb. If you push it together, then it

48:57

triggers itself more and it sets off

48:59

a chain reaction and the reactivity creates

49:02

the heat. Effectively,

49:04

for road regulations,

49:06

you have to store the material in

49:08

a structured way to make sure

49:10

it's not printed, but it doesn't

49:13

end there. There's a lot of

49:15

other regulations surrounding that. Is it

49:17

going to be hit by a plane or a missile or

49:19

is it going to fall underwater or is it going to

49:21

fall or what are the

49:23

heat conditions? Can it be cold? Can it be

49:25

warm? You've got to make all these

49:27

safety scenarios. Designing a

49:29

transportation car that fits within a truck that

49:32

can move a lot of material by road

49:34

is a bit of an engineering challenge, but

49:38

I don't think it's that difficult.

49:40

It's certainly something that

49:43

has not been in place previously because

49:46

for SMRs and microactors, the Uranium

49:48

is enriched slightly more. Because it's

49:50

enriched slightly more, you need a

49:52

completely new car system. That's where we thought, oh,

49:55

we'll jump on that and build that

49:57

out. That way, we're going to have a good time. When

50:00

the industry does take off the SMR

50:02

micro-reactor, we will have the transportation able

50:04

to move fuel for all the SMR.

50:06

Okay, so does that mean, I see,

50:08

so that means that your transportation system

50:10

in principle is not only designed to

50:12

service your micro-reactors, but to be expanded

50:14

to service these slightly larger reactors, the

50:16

SMRs. Yeah, the good part is- And that's

50:18

the plan. Yeah, that's the plan. So,

50:21

we don't, I mean, we're not

50:23

in the business where we want the other competitors

50:25

to fail. If they win, we'll win. Right, yes,

50:27

yes, right, absolutely. The right

50:29

number of competitors isn't zero. No,

50:32

exactly. Yeah, yeah. And also,

50:34

we want them to succeed because they'll

50:36

build out the infrastructure, they'll generate more money

50:38

within the companies for this industry, and we'll

50:41

be beneficiaries of that too. They

50:43

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

50:45

want to fabricate fuel, we'll fabricate it for them. Even

50:47

if they outsell our reactors, it's fine. Right,

50:50

so you can also

50:52

be in on their success in that

50:54

situation too. Okay, so that's cool. Okay,

50:56

so you said you've got a

50:59

supply, at least at the moment in Central

51:01

Asia, that gets reduced by

51:04

leaching to yellow cake. The yellow cake

51:06

is transformed into uranium

51:08

hydro- what's the name of the data? Hexafluoride,

51:11

uranium hexafluoride. That

51:14

can be concentrated and then

51:16

converted back into about 20%. You

51:19

said- Uh-huh. And so, why

51:21

20% and then what- and you

51:24

can transport it at 20% and you can

51:26

do that safely. And you can do that

51:28

by rail, by ship, by car, or

51:30

by train. And

51:34

so now you have the 20% enriched

51:36

material. What do you do with that when

51:38

you get it to where it's supposed to go? So

51:41

it depends where it's going. So

51:43

if it's going to- if it's

51:46

the 20% enriched uranium hexafluoride, that'll

51:48

need to be converted into uranium

51:51

dioxide, hydride, or whatever fuel form

51:53

you want to effectively- Oh,

51:55

so are you transporting the gas? Well,

51:58

we don't want to- I don't want to- be

52:00

preempted me. Okay, that's fine. But

52:03

actually, no, it's fine. We do want to

52:05

branch, take our cost and modify it so

52:08

it can move gas. I

52:10

see. Okay. The anticipation is that

52:12

currently, we

52:14

are building out a deconversion plan to

52:16

be able to convert that gas into

52:18

other forms. And then when they're in

52:21

other forms, it's

52:23

easier to fabricate into the

52:25

final uranium form that the

52:27

customers might want. Okay, okay,

52:30

okay. And how far

52:32

along are you when you're

52:34

thinking pessimistically in

52:37

solving these? Because you've got a bunch

52:39

of problems as you laid out. You've

52:41

got the supply problem, which you seem

52:43

to have solved. Now you've got the

52:45

transportation problem, which is also a huge

52:47

opportunity. So that's cool because that gives

52:49

you multi-dimensional access to the market. You've

52:51

got the transportation problem. And it sounds

52:53

like that's twofold. There's a technical element.

52:56

There's a regulatory element. I

52:58

suppose there's going to be a public relations element to

53:00

that too, but whatever. Okay, so now you can move

53:02

the stuff around. Now you've got these deconversion

53:05

plants that are going to help you

53:07

formulate the fuel you need to run

53:09

your reactors. And then you have the

53:11

problem of building the reactors and getting

53:13

them to where they're supposed to go.

53:15

So four streams of problems that have

53:17

to move together somewhat simultaneously. How

53:19

far along are you on each of those

53:22

streams? So if there's

53:24

a pessimistic timeline, I

53:27

mean, we've been working at this for a fair amount of

53:29

time. I would say that the first line

53:32

of business that we anticipate being

53:34

commercially ready to deploy

53:36

would probably be the transportation actually. Because

53:40

we have the patented technology.

53:42

We've already approached the licensing

53:45

company to do the

53:47

licensing for us. And we've actually brought in

53:49

the former executives of, I don't

53:51

want to say the name, but the largest transportation

53:54

company in the world, which might give it

53:56

away. But we've brought in some of the

53:59

former executives from their organization to build

54:01

out the company around the technology.

54:04

I believe that might be the first

54:06

commercially deployable business. The timeline

54:08

on that probably looks like finish

54:11

the licensing hopefully

54:13

sometime next year, and

54:17

then the build-out of the manufacturing

54:19

facility to produce the cask as

54:22

well as the infrastructure

54:25

around the cask to fit into trucks and things like

54:27

that. We'll do that simultaneously,

54:29

probably finish that sometime about 2026. Hopefully

54:35

in 2026, 2027, we would

54:37

have a commercial vehicle ready

54:39

to start moving material around North

54:41

America. That would be like... Okay,

54:44

so that's pretty fast. Okay, well... Yeah, that's quite

54:46

a thing to do. If you

54:48

were optimistic, what would you say? Oh,

54:51

I would say hopefully the licensing runs all

54:53

smoothly while that's going on. We build out

54:55

the manufacturing facilities. We have them finished next

54:58

year. Then we're

55:00

in a position to begin initially

55:02

deploying vehicles that can move enriched

55:06

material up to 20% around the country. Maybe

55:09

I shave two years off that if I'm super

55:11

optimistic. Okay, so that

55:13

goes into range. Okay,

55:15

so now if you had the opportunity

55:17

to work with a state or provincial

55:20

legislature that was helpful in

55:22

every way they possibly could be,

55:24

what would that look like? What

55:27

would you need from them? Is there

55:29

anything you need from a particular local

55:31

jurisdiction that would speed what you're doing

55:33

along? I would say the big

55:35

thing on that topic is that the

55:38

regulatory process just for any

55:40

reactor, microactors, SMR, or big

55:42

civil power plant is probably

55:45

at minimum four years. Oh

55:47

yeah, that's just no good. That's

55:49

terrible. It's probably my think. They're

55:52

probably going to see this podcast and

55:54

be angry with me. I think they're

55:56

trying to apply a civil power plant's

55:58

regulatory framework to a microactoring. Yeah,

56:00

it's a different product and it's

56:02

almost its own regulatory framework to

56:04

be designed. So

56:07

you'd need a legislature that was willing

56:10

to consider the fact that this

56:12

isn't the same old industry. Yes,

56:16

it's a new product, it's a new

56:18

industry and essentially all new technologies and

56:20

if they were to design some

56:23

sort of regulatory framework that just looked

56:25

at safety

56:27

criteria for where these things could deploy like

56:30

met certain seismic conditions or temperature

56:33

constraints or ranges, then

56:35

the reactor would

56:37

be approved for deploying anywhere as

56:39

long as it met this criteria.

56:41

I think if it really allowed

56:44

for one the deployment of these things

56:46

absolutely everywhere and

56:48

it would really be a

56:50

much faster process because they're also much more basic.

56:54

I mean it's come about because of

56:56

advances in technology but the technology

56:58

itself, once it's built, it's more basic

57:00

than the... Right, right, right, right. Well,

57:02

so do you have a jurisdiction

57:06

with whom you're having productive discussions

57:08

that is simultaneously capable of understanding

57:11

that this is a new technological

57:13

front? That would be hypothetically willing.

57:15

I mean because the economic opportunities

57:17

here are extreme if it's done

57:19

right and so you'd think if

57:23

you were optimistic that there might be a legislature

57:25

somewhere in the 50 states in the United

57:27

States and the 12 places that this could

57:29

happen in Canada that might be open to such

57:31

an opportunity. I mean are

57:33

you having productive discussions with people who

57:35

could conceivably clear away the regulatory hurdles?

57:38

So we have obviously made contact with

57:40

the Department of Energy in the States and

57:43

we've obviously broached this topic that this is

57:46

something that should be considered. It's not that

57:48

they're unaware that this might be a good

57:50

idea too, it's just they also need

57:52

funding to implement new legislation or

57:55

get approvals from Congress or

57:57

however it works in the States and there's

57:59

good bipartisan... and support in the states for nuclear, but

58:02

it still needs to go

58:04

through the approval process where

58:07

you get the Senate signing off. They

58:10

do need funding to put this new regulatory framework

58:13

in, so when they give it to a regulation

58:15

like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, it

58:17

can design that new framework. It

58:20

needs to obviously employ people to do that. Well,

58:22

what kind of funding is necessary to

58:25

do that? I'm trying to get a

58:27

real handle on the impediments, because the

58:29

advantages are so stark

58:31

and obvious. We've done

58:33

some pretty extraordinary things on the

58:35

idiot wind and solar front, in

58:38

relatively short order. You

58:40

wouldn't think that this is impossible.

58:43

What sort of funding is necessary if you're

58:45

starting a new

58:47

regulatory enterprise, essentially from scratch,

58:50

designed around this new technology? I

58:52

don't understand the necessity for this

58:54

great expense and spending of

58:56

time. No, I think really it

58:59

could be done, if I'm honest, it

59:01

could be done very, very quickly. I think the problem

59:03

is that, say,

59:05

like a Department of Energy, they run into

59:07

needing more funding to create a smaller department's

59:09

design of framework, and then they could be

59:11

waiting on that funding for a long time

59:14

as government debates it. But

59:16

actually, if government were very in favor of it,

59:18

I'm sure on both sides of the aisle, there

59:20

would be general support, just a small amount. Okay,

59:22

so let me ask you another practical question. If

59:26

I said, do you

59:28

have a 20-page document that would

59:30

outline an intelligible regulatory framework that

59:32

you could hand to a legislator

59:35

who was positively predisposed to

59:37

you? Do you guys have

59:39

that? Because one of the easiest ways to

59:41

get people to say yes to anything is

59:44

to make it extremely easy for them. To

59:47

provide them with this. Exactly. Because

59:49

if you're saying, well, you have to whip

59:51

up a regulatory structure from scratch, and you

59:53

have to take all the political risks, they're

59:55

going to say, yeah, five years from now,

59:58

and we'll let other people do it. and

1:00:00

it'll take forever. But if you could hand

1:00:02

them a tailor-made solution, essentially, I know that

1:00:04

runs you into the problem of, you know,

1:00:07

government industry collusion, but that's a secondary problem

1:00:09

as far as I'm concerned, because

1:00:11

this isn't collusion, it's joint, it's

1:00:14

joint effort to move forward something that would be of

1:00:16

great benefit to people, you know, and if so, and

1:00:18

if it happens to be of benefit to your company,

1:00:20

it's also gonna be of benefit to many of the other

1:00:23

companies that you described too. So do you

1:00:25

have a set of proposals

1:00:27

at hand that you could

1:00:29

supply to an interested legislative

1:00:31

party? Yes, I mean, to

1:00:33

be honest, that would take us a

1:00:35

few weeks just to put together, like a

1:00:38

proper- Okay, well, that's not long, a few

1:00:40

weeks is long, you know, because

1:00:42

I can imagine some people who might be

1:00:44

interested in taking a look at something like

1:00:46

that. Oh, well, look, if they were very

1:00:48

interested, I'd be very interested in that conversation,

1:00:51

and we, our scientists, would be very happy

1:00:53

to prepare a formal document that outlines a

1:00:55

proposal for how these things could be, like

1:00:58

it would have to be a very high level thing, but

1:01:01

I know you need to put

1:01:03

it down, but essentially, the criteria

1:01:05

for approving the safety of these

1:01:07

things for deployment on mass to

1:01:09

different locations, and it is very

1:01:11

different because, like a big civil power

1:01:14

plant, you have a

1:01:16

site regulation process where they, it has

1:01:18

to be site-specific, and you tailor your

1:01:22

safety case for that specific site. Yeah, yeah.

1:01:25

So you wouldn't do that. It would be a

1:01:27

different process where there is a safety

1:01:29

criteria that you need to meet, but

1:01:31

as long as the site meets that safety

1:01:33

criteria, the reactor can deploy that. So it's

1:01:37

fundamentally different. Right. Starting

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1:02:42

right, right, right. Well, this is exactly, it seems

1:02:44

to me that this is exactly the sort of

1:02:46

thing that has to be dealt

1:02:49

with in the kind of

1:02:51

detail that legislators would appreciate so

1:02:53

that that differentiation is not only

1:02:55

made conceptually but made in a

1:02:57

manner that would be credible to

1:02:59

investigative news reporters and so forth

1:03:01

and people who are skeptical about

1:03:03

this. But I mean,

1:03:05

I do know that technical

1:03:07

problems are one thing and obviously you guys are

1:03:10

capable of solving them, but it's

1:03:12

very, very easy for a whole industry to

1:03:14

fall into a mess of red

1:03:16

tape and never get out. And certainly that's

1:03:18

happened on the nuclear side of things. And

1:03:20

so that's just not good. And it's once

1:03:24

I see, I realized I worked, I'm

1:03:27

ashamed to admit this to some degree, but

1:03:29

I worked on a panel years ago, 10

1:03:31

years ago, something like that, which was one

1:03:33

of the early UN documents on sustainability. And

1:03:35

I worked on that for about two years. And I

1:03:38

learned a lot about how such things were

1:03:40

made, how such sausage was made, let's put

1:03:42

it that way. But I also

1:03:44

learned a lot about the nexus between energy and involvement

1:03:46

and one of the things that really, and economics, one

1:03:48

of the things that really struck me and I never

1:03:50

forgot it was the fact that as soon as

1:03:52

you make people rich, they start to care about the

1:03:55

environment. And I thought, oh my

1:03:57

God, that's such a wonderful thing to learn because

1:03:59

it means that we can deal with

1:04:01

the problem of absolute poverty and we can

1:04:03

deal with environmental sustainability in the same way.

1:04:06

Okay, what's key? Clear what's

1:04:08

key. It's easy, it's cheap

1:04:10

energy, period. And so, okay,

1:04:12

so then the next question is, well,

1:04:14

where are the available energy sources? And

1:04:16

obviously one answer to that is with

1:04:18

continued use of fossil fuel. But we

1:04:20

see the geopolitical trouble that's laid in

1:04:23

front of us because of that. And

1:04:25

there are problems of pollution, although especially

1:04:27

with coal, although they're not as grotesque

1:04:29

as they've been made out to be.

1:04:31

But nuclear, you think nuclear, I

1:04:34

mean, I read, tell me if this is true. I

1:04:37

read that part of the reason that nuclear is safer

1:04:40

than solar is

1:04:42

because people fall off the roof all

1:04:45

the time installing solar panels. And falling is actually

1:04:47

like the fifth leading cause of death. It's no

1:04:49

joke, right? So, falling is really hard on people.

1:04:51

And I don't mean to laugh at it, but

1:04:54

it's true. And also if you look at wind

1:04:56

power too, there's a significant number

1:04:58

of falls that are generated by the installation

1:05:00

of these things. And they need constant maintenance,

1:05:02

which means there is a constant

1:05:04

stream of people going up and down these things.

1:05:06

Which is why would I make

1:05:08

sure that people- Well, they're a stupid

1:05:11

solution. The low energy density,

1:05:13

like they're not a good solution. And

1:05:15

solar, I mean, one of the things

1:05:17

I've really watched in the last five

1:05:19

years, say, as these big solar and

1:05:21

wind projects come on, especially in Alberta,

1:05:23

because I've been watching the Alberta power

1:05:25

situation, it's like the price of

1:05:27

electricity goes to infinite on windless

1:05:29

and sunless days. Okay, infinite is

1:05:31

a bad price. That's a very

1:05:33

bad price. And you can't have

1:05:36

unreliable, you can't have an unreliable,

1:05:39

reliable grid. That doesn't work. So,

1:05:41

and I don't see a solution to that. I mean, tell

1:05:44

me if I've got this wrong. So my

1:05:46

understanding is that fundamental, the fundamental problem with

1:05:48

a renewable grid is the phasic nature of

1:05:50

the power. And because it's phasic, you have

1:05:52

to have backup and

1:05:55

it's like, well, it can't be nuclear because it takes too long

1:05:57

for them to get online, at least in their current form. So

1:05:59

you have... to have natural gas and

1:06:01

fossil fuel backup or coal. And if you

1:06:03

have to have the backup, then

1:06:05

why not just use the systems? Because you're

1:06:08

not going to build two parallel systems. Like

1:06:10

who in the right Germans would do that?

1:06:13

You know, and that's insane. You

1:06:15

know, one of the things I thought was funny

1:06:17

when I first moved to Canada is that I

1:06:19

was actually living up in Yedonai, Northwest Territories, for

1:06:21

a few months. An interesting place to live for

1:06:23

a little while. But

1:06:26

someone mentioned that the whole city was

1:06:28

powered on diesel. I said, that's

1:06:30

crazy. This is a city of like, I can't

1:06:33

remember, 40,000 people or something like that. It

1:06:35

was fairly significant. And I was

1:06:37

like, why? And they're like, oh, the dam is broken. I

1:06:39

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

1:06:41

like, well, they can't really. Like it's blocked

1:06:43

up and it's winter and it's difficult to get people

1:06:45

up there. And so we're just running off diesel generators.

1:06:48

As far as I know, it's still running off those

1:06:50

diesel generators. And like I was there six or seven

1:06:52

years ago. So

1:06:54

I think how much diesel that's doing.

1:06:57

Well, there's nothing more permanent than a

1:06:59

temporary fix, especially if the government has

1:07:01

to be absolutely, absolutely. And so. Right.

1:07:03

Right. Well, and yellow knife is

1:07:05

isolated. And so the fact that all that

1:07:07

diesel has to be brought in, all that

1:07:10

means is that it's really, really expensive to

1:07:12

live in yellow knife. That's the outcome. Yeah,

1:07:15

there was another there was another problem. I think

1:07:17

it was in yellow knife, too. They were talking

1:07:19

to us about it was a community of about

1:07:21

800 people. One

1:07:23

of the First Nations settlements up there. The

1:07:26

outline of the diesel alone, if you ignore

1:07:29

the logistics and manpower and the cost of

1:07:31

generators, was $10 million

1:07:33

alone. Just the diesel

1:07:35

by itself were 800 people for a year.

1:07:38

And I thought, well, that's crazy. Like that's

1:07:41

an enormous expense for just 800

1:07:43

people. Right.

1:07:45

Right. Right. No, that's right. It's well, there's

1:07:47

many crazy things going on. And

1:07:51

there are all that posturing

1:07:53

that you described combined with

1:07:55

a tremendous technological ignorance of

1:07:58

the most stellar source. means that

1:08:01

we are putting it in place

1:08:03

solutions that cause way more problems

1:08:06

than they solve. This just isn't

1:08:08

acceptable. It's not acceptable

1:08:10

and look I never want to denigrate

1:08:12

fossil fuels too much because I believe

1:08:14

they have a place and they've been

1:08:16

of enormous asset to humanity and people

1:08:19

talk about zero as in

1:08:21

going to... Yeah that's insane, that's completely insane.

1:08:25

It's also just not practical. Even

1:08:27

if you were to stop all power by...

1:08:29

about textile industry or the

1:08:32

downstream products of the

1:08:34

fossil fuel and cheap plastics, you're

1:08:36

never going to eliminate them completely. And

1:08:39

so it's foolish... Not without eliminating a

1:08:41

lot of people. Yes,

1:08:43

yes, yes. And that seems to be the plan. Well,

1:08:46

you can imagine a world where

1:08:48

we use fossil fuels as chemical

1:08:50

as a basis for chemical production like

1:08:53

fertilizer, for example, because we're not going

1:08:55

to substitute nuclear for fertilizer. Right? So

1:08:57

but... Yeah, there's no one

1:08:59

solution for every aspect of humanity. It's

1:09:02

very complex existence, but everything could have

1:09:04

a very well-sitted

1:09:06

place. And to be honest, micro-correctors

1:09:08

are in a much better position to

1:09:10

power remote communities like Yellowknife than

1:09:12

diesel. Whereas obviously,

1:09:15

nuclear is never going to

1:09:17

replace fossil fuels for producing fertilizer.

1:09:19

Right, right, right. Well, and

1:09:22

we shouldn't be burning... Arguably, we

1:09:24

shouldn't be burning up our fossil fuels when

1:09:26

we need it for chemical stock. I

1:09:29

mean, that seems to me... So why not?

1:09:31

OK, so let's be optimistic here for a

1:09:33

minute. So let's imagine that

1:09:35

you cleared the regulatory hurdles and now

1:09:37

you managed to

1:09:39

transport your fissile material safely and

1:09:42

you can start building these reactors.

1:09:44

OK, now... And people clue in

1:09:46

and we can start to build

1:09:48

a resilient power grid as

1:09:51

a consequence. Now, you can start manufacturing

1:09:53

at scale, right, in

1:09:55

principle. So how much... How

1:09:58

uniform a product... are

1:10:00

you making at the microreactor level?

1:10:02

Like is this something, this assembly

1:10:04

line manufacturer? And can you

1:10:06

drive down the cost with volume? Yeah,

1:10:09

so this is actually it. The

1:10:12

economy of scale here is the real benefit.

1:10:14

So if you're producing two or three of

1:10:16

these a year, it's very expensive. It

1:10:20

actually gets very cheap. And the

1:10:22

good thing about microreactors, which has not

1:10:24

been possible before, is that it allows

1:10:26

for very easy manufacturing because they're simple

1:10:28

enough to do. So there's no

1:10:30

reason why you can't have a production line and just 3D

1:10:32

print these things. And

1:10:35

then the costs

1:10:37

come down very quickly. And then you

1:10:40

are cheaper than diesel generator. And once you

1:10:42

are cheaper than diesel generator, and that will

1:10:44

take a few years, to be fair. But

1:10:47

once you do get to that point, there

1:10:50

will be no real logical

1:10:52

reason to use anything but microreactors

1:10:54

in these remote locations, mining sites.

1:10:57

Okay, well, let's go be okay. Let's

1:10:59

expand beyond that. So now let's assume that

1:11:01

you can use this printing technology that you

1:11:03

described. And you said economies

1:11:06

of scale start to kick in at how many reactors

1:11:08

a year? I would

1:11:10

say actually really about 15. And

1:11:13

then that sort of point is coming on. I don't

1:11:15

reckon. It's actually very low. In fact, I

1:11:17

think the Idaho National Laboratory concluded that it

1:11:20

was something like nine. I don't want to

1:11:22

miss... Okay, okay. So it's a very low...

1:11:24

Okay, so let's expand our vision momentarily and

1:11:26

say that you could produce a thousand of

1:11:28

these things a year and

1:11:31

that they were distributed widely enough

1:11:33

to start putting some resilient backbone

1:11:35

into the power supply and start

1:11:38

to substitute for natural gas and

1:11:40

for coal while we could start with coal. Okay,

1:11:43

so if

1:11:46

everything went as well as could possibly

1:11:48

be expected on this front, how

1:11:52

far down do you think you could drive the price

1:11:54

of energy? Like compared to

1:11:56

what it is now? Well, I

1:11:58

mean, that's very interesting. because if

1:12:00

the oil infrastructure was in place and

1:12:02

you had domestic production of uranium, and

1:12:06

we upgraded our enrichment facilities domestically,

1:12:08

which we currently don't have, and

1:12:11

you were mass manufacturing these things, I'd

1:12:14

hate to put a price on it.

1:12:16

But there's no reason why you can't

1:12:18

keep optimizing that system to keep making

1:12:20

it incrementally cheaper. So even though... Right.

1:12:22

Okay. So you're driving down the price?

1:12:25

You're driving down it. SMRs,

1:12:27

it's not our business, but those guys,

1:12:29

their costs will also fall commensurately with

1:12:32

how hard they're falling to, because there's

1:12:34

no reason why they can't mass manufacture those

1:12:37

things to be major components of a major

1:12:39

grid system. So it's a more

1:12:41

robust system that's getting cheaper all the

1:12:44

time. There's no reason why that couldn't have the beneficial

1:12:46

effect. Well,

1:12:49

that's ridiculously exciting, all of that.

1:12:51

And so, yeah, well, seriously, seriously,

1:12:53

I mean, that's such an optimistic possibility.

1:12:55

Okay, well, let's be smart about this.

1:12:57

Let's talk about downsides. Now, we talked

1:13:00

about the fact that people are afraid

1:13:02

of nuclear technology. Now, in

1:13:04

principle, that could be handled with

1:13:06

a marketing strategy that wasn't based

1:13:08

on lies, that provided accurate

1:13:11

information about the fact that this was

1:13:13

essentially a new technological approach. And that

1:13:15

could go in lockstep with the provision

1:13:17

of the legislative material. You

1:13:19

can imagine a parallel campaign. So that

1:13:21

seems to me to be a solvable

1:13:23

problem. Now, okay, some terrorist

1:13:25

hijacks one of your trucks. How about

1:13:27

that? So the

1:13:30

assumption there is they're going to turn this into

1:13:32

some sort of way, or

1:13:34

spill it. Let's

1:13:37

think about how they would have to do that. So if

1:13:41

they were to seize your microreactor or your SMR,

1:13:44

the problem they have is that the uranium is

1:13:46

not enriched to a weapons grade level. So they

1:13:49

can't make it flow up. And it's also alloyed.

1:13:51

So they'd have to build a

1:13:53

multi billion dollar facility, chemical

1:13:55

plant to recover

1:13:57

the uranium and separate it from the animal. Um,

1:14:00

and then okay, so that seems that

1:14:03

okay. So so that's just not a

1:14:05

danger What about what about what about

1:14:07

stealing one of your trucks and threatening

1:14:09

people publicly with like radiation? I

1:14:11

know look I already understand. I I want to put

1:14:13

this in context because it seems to me that Anybody

1:14:16

who hijacked a propane truck would be in a

1:14:18

pretty good position to cause a lot of mayhem

1:14:20

So and you know or derail

1:14:23

a derail a train that that is

1:14:25

carrying fossil fuel So we have plenty

1:14:27

of risk like that already in the

1:14:29

system. So do you where do you see? Where

1:14:32

if anywhere do you see? The

1:14:35

kind of risk to the public that could

1:14:37

be could be leveraged by someone crooked who

1:14:40

wanted to cause trouble Was

1:14:43

oh just just to touch on that quickly if they if

1:14:45

they seized it The problem they have

1:14:47

is people use the examples of the things like dirty

1:14:49

bombs, which is where you attach. Yeah But

1:14:53

the that's the problem with a reactor uranium

1:14:55

is It's not going to explode

1:14:57

if you Reactors can't blow

1:14:59

up for a start like they're not enriched to a

1:15:02

suitable level enough if you were to take the uranium

1:15:04

out of it And strap it to a bomb the

1:15:06

most dangerous thing is the bombs that

1:15:08

you've made not the uranium around them actually

1:15:11

Right. I right if you blow

1:15:13

up uranium it becomes less dangerous

1:15:15

because you've separated the material So

1:15:18

it's going to react less with itself and become

1:15:20

right So you can

1:15:22

imagine that you could imagine that

1:15:24

as a public relations disaster fundamentally

1:15:27

Because you can imagine how that would be

1:15:29

played up But but again, I don't think

1:15:31

that puts you in a category That's any

1:15:33

different than you know People who are moving

1:15:35

fossil fuel from place to place because that's

1:15:37

that's more risky That's at least as no,

1:15:39

it's more risky because it's much more explosive.

1:15:41

It's much more explosive It's dirty actually

1:15:43

like obviously which you had a dirty bomb You'd have

1:15:46

to pick up the pieces of uranium No one's going

1:15:48

to get hurt but like it's still you'd

1:15:50

need to maybe cordon off for a micro act maybe a hundred

1:15:54

100 meters either way, but it's still not very

1:15:56

great. Say the bp oil still I think some

1:15:58

of the effects are still being felt So it's

1:16:01

a lot cleaner of peanut

1:16:03

butter. Right. I

1:16:06

think it's tricky. I

1:16:08

don't want to sound like it's all perfect,

1:16:10

but you know, what's the terrorist going

1:16:12

to do with a microactical? It's his house. That

1:16:17

is a good advertising campaign, right? Yeah,

1:16:20

it's a microactical. He's

1:16:22

your house. Right, right, right.

1:16:25

All right. Well, okay. So now, let's

1:16:27

see. We've covered

1:16:30

timeline. We've covered your process,

1:16:32

essentially. Okay, maybe we could

1:16:34

talk a little bit more about the microreactor

1:16:36

technology, per se. So what

1:16:40

is it about the technology that makes

1:16:42

it amenable to mass manufacture, and

1:16:45

why does that drive the price down?

1:16:47

And where are you in the manufacturing

1:16:49

process? Okay, so the good part

1:16:51

is that, like, if you think about those

1:16:53

big civil power plants, they're huge. They take

1:16:55

up, I don't know, 30

1:16:58

city blocks. They're absolutely enormous. But

1:17:00

there's an enormous quantity of

1:17:02

mechanical components, pumps,

1:17:04

all sorts of systems that go into that,

1:17:07

as it should be. That's fine. But as you

1:17:09

shrink down to SMR and you shrink down to

1:17:11

microdirectors, a lot of that goes away. And

1:17:14

we actually, say, one of our reactors

1:17:16

have hardly any mechanical components at

1:17:19

all. And so then

1:17:21

you can get to the point where you

1:17:24

can 3D print these, which you couldn't do

1:17:26

for more complicated mechanical systems, where it's a

1:17:28

bit more finished. And

1:17:30

that does allow for mass production of

1:17:32

these things, whereas mass production from larger

1:17:35

machinery that's more intricate becomes

1:17:38

harder. You can obviously

1:17:40

still 3D print components and piece them together,

1:17:43

but there's still a lot more engineering

1:17:46

work and

1:17:48

human involvement that would be necessary to compete

1:17:51

those. Whereas a lot of that can

1:17:53

be automated, I think, as

1:17:56

you get simpler and simpler. From

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indo.com with code PODCAST. Well,

1:18:13

so you pointed to something very

1:18:15

interesting there, which we kind of

1:18:17

brushed over, is that you basically

1:18:20

said something approximating almost no moving

1:18:22

parts. Okay, and that's not

1:18:24

something that should be brushed over because that's quite

1:18:27

remarkable because the fewer moving parts, the fewer things

1:18:29

that can go wrong. So that's

1:18:31

a big deal, but that's also simpler,

1:18:33

more understandable. It's more marketable

1:18:35

too because people can understand it. But

1:18:38

also, as you

1:18:40

pointed out, it's much more manufacturable. So

1:18:43

to what degree have you reduced the

1:18:46

moving part complexity? Like

1:18:48

when you say there's virtually no moving

1:18:50

parts, how many parts are there fundamentally?

1:18:53

So I would say, take our Zootreactors as an example.

1:18:56

That's a bit further along. There

1:18:58

are moving parts, say, control rods that are

1:19:00

inserted into the core, and control rods are

1:19:02

to moderate the reactivity. So they go in,

1:19:04

they eat up neutrons, it comes with this

1:19:07

reactive. And that's how you control power, essentially,

1:19:09

as well. So that is a moving part,

1:19:11

and that does require a moving system. But

1:19:15

it does need fewer safety mechanisms

1:19:18

involved in a much larger reactor

1:19:20

because a much larger reactor

1:19:22

or an SMR will have the

1:19:25

ability to overheat and have a core melt, or

1:19:27

cool at last, and a core melt, which

1:19:30

then leads to the reactor being essentially destroyed

1:19:32

and needing to be cleaned up. Like

1:19:35

you got in Fukushima when that

1:19:37

reactor essentially melts, and then you just

1:19:39

have to spray it with water. That really

1:19:41

can't happen with a micro-acto because it can't

1:19:43

overheat to a point where it will melt.

1:19:46

And so you don't need any plums and

1:19:48

systems in place. Wasn't

1:19:52

it a safety system that went

1:19:54

wrong that caused the Three Mile

1:19:56

Island? I

1:19:58

read that it was like a safety control. camera

1:20:00

that broke off and got lodged in an exhaust

1:20:03

pipe, something which is horribly

1:20:05

dismally comical. Dismally comical, exactly. And

1:20:10

this is the

1:20:12

problem is, you still need sensors and

1:20:14

things like that within a reactor so

1:20:16

you know how to operate. So you

1:20:19

can tell what's happening, and then

1:20:21

obviously you can modify the controls

1:20:23

accordingly. So there are systems inside

1:20:25

a reactor that could fall off.

1:20:27

Three Mile Islands, obviously, something was

1:20:30

dislodged and affected the flow and

1:20:32

then created effectively a runaway effect

1:20:34

when it did call out. And then you

1:20:36

did have a good time. Right, right, right.

1:20:38

But again, like Three Mile Island, no one

1:20:40

died in that kind of operation. But it's

1:20:42

bad PR, certainly. Yes, yes, yes. Well,

1:20:45

then that's a problem. I mean,

1:20:47

that's pollution in the space

1:20:49

of public opinion, and that's not trivial. Okay,

1:20:53

so let's recap here, just

1:20:55

for a summary for everybody watching and listening. And

1:20:57

then maybe as a closing, see if you have

1:21:00

anything to add to it. So

1:21:03

there's plenty of uranium. It's

1:21:05

a very, very dense fuel source. It

1:21:07

needs to be mined and

1:21:09

transformed into yellow cake. And that has

1:21:12

to be further refined into uranium. Oh,

1:21:15

now I forgot the damn name

1:21:17

again. Hexafluoride. Hexafluoride. Hexafluoride.

1:21:20

Hexafluoride. That can

1:21:22

be refined further into the raw material

1:21:24

for the

1:21:27

power source for your micro reactors. Now we talked

1:21:29

about what a micro reactor is. It's

1:21:32

very easily transportable. Doesn't

1:21:34

require, which also is something we didn't talk

1:21:36

about, which is extremely important. That also means

1:21:39

that you don't have to produce the kinds

1:21:41

of transmission lines to move the power from

1:21:43

place to place, which are also hyper expensive

1:21:45

and require a lot of maintenance. That's a

1:21:48

huge advantage. Okay, so you have these micro reactors.

1:21:50

They're under 20... How many watts? 20

1:21:53

megawatts? Under 20 megawatts. Right,

1:21:56

and you've built them reliably enough so that

1:21:58

they can be just transported on. site

1:22:00

as long as the site meets a

1:22:02

variety of minimal preconditions. And so this

1:22:04

is going to be superb for isolated

1:22:06

communities or mining enterprises, etc. But

1:22:08

in principle, these could be networked together

1:22:11

to provide a very resilient, reliable and

1:22:13

increasingly low cost universal power

1:22:15

grid, which would enable us to

1:22:17

free up fossil fuels for use

1:22:19

as chemical precursors, let's

1:22:21

say. That's a wonderful summary. Absolutely. And

1:22:23

there's no reason why I come to

1:22:26

that. Some countries are examining

1:22:28

doing exactly that. Like I mentioned, Poland

1:22:30

was already examining doing that just

1:22:32

to make the grid more

1:22:35

resilient, more robust, and eventually cheaper.

1:22:37

Right. So that would be the start. You could

1:22:39

imagine these things littered around in some

1:22:42

ways as backup for the current grid,

1:22:44

right? So that to increase its resiliency,

1:22:46

but as they become cheaper and more

1:22:48

reliable and more tested, even in the

1:22:50

public market, then they just

1:22:52

start replacing pieces of the grid. Yes,

1:22:55

exactly. And like, there's no reason why it's a

1:22:57

bit of country can't try this like slowly transition

1:22:59

in that direction. It doesn't have to be immediate.

1:23:01

It doesn't need to be triggered. It shouldn't be

1:23:03

immediate, shouldn't be immediate, because there's going to be

1:23:05

problems that are marked rise that you don't understand

1:23:08

until you try to do it. So

1:23:10

it should start locally. And then, well, absolutely.

1:23:12

I mean, that's the problem with

1:23:15

like net zero by 2030. It's

1:23:17

like, no, how about we don't stampede

1:23:19

off a cliff like linked arm and

1:23:21

arm, you know, maybe that's a bad

1:23:23

idea. Like, like it certainly is. Okay,

1:23:25

well, that's extremely cool. All

1:23:27

of that. And so now,

1:23:29

is there anything you want to tell people that

1:23:31

we didn't get to on this side of the of

1:23:34

the interview? I mean, the good thing

1:23:36

is, I mean, you covered a lot. And like,

1:23:38

obviously, your, your understanding

1:23:40

is very quick on

1:23:42

the nuclear industry as a whole. I

1:23:45

would say, I mean, holistically

1:23:47

speaking, I just think it's best to

1:23:49

communicate that this is a, this

1:23:53

could be extremely beneficial for mankind, generally.

1:23:55

And I, I can

1:23:57

obviously talk about the company and everything like that. But

1:23:59

I think, yeah. Now, ultimately, the probably

1:24:01

more important message is that this

1:24:04

could enfranchise billions

1:24:06

of people around the world, provide that

1:24:09

energy. I think you put it best

1:24:11

when you said that if you give people access

1:24:14

to energy, you lift them out of poverty, and then

1:24:16

they become more concerned with the environment. If

1:24:19

you really care about the environment, you should

1:24:21

try and lift people out of poverty. Right,

1:24:23

exactly. That's a great closing note. That's right.

1:24:26

If you really care about the environment, as well

1:24:28

as people, let's say, because maybe we could include

1:24:30

them in the environment, then you do everything you

1:24:33

can to lift them out of poverty. And

1:24:35

then with no whole spark, right, that's the

1:24:37

number one moral imperative. Right,

1:24:40

I mean, even the climate, look, even

1:24:42

the climate apocalypse mongers use

1:24:45

the safety and well-being of future

1:24:47

generations as the rationale for their

1:24:49

moralizing. So there's no way out of

1:24:52

that conundrum. It's like, no, how about we help the

1:24:54

people who are alive right now? Look,

1:24:57

I have children of my own, and I worry

1:24:59

about them all the time. I wonder what kind

1:25:01

of wealth they're going to inherit. I

1:25:03

would like that wealth to be one where they have

1:25:05

access to energy and poverty was far more

1:25:08

scarce and not an impending

1:25:11

risk. So I

1:25:13

have a duty to the future to try and make it

1:25:16

a little bit better. Resilient

1:25:18

wealth, resilient wealth. That would

1:25:20

be great. That's a wonderful phrase. If

1:25:23

we could build a sort of resilient wealth,

1:25:25

and look, wealth is very energy dependent. And

1:25:28

so, yeah, they're the same thing, man, for

1:25:30

all intents and purposes, because energy is work.

1:25:33

And work is wealth. So like end

1:25:35

of argument, fundamentally. I think

1:25:37

the fundamental things to progress mankind, as long

1:25:39

as it can feed itself and it can

1:25:41

power itself, then we should have a relatively

1:25:44

decent future that can incrementally keep

1:25:46

improving, hopefully. Yes, that's the goal. That

1:25:48

would exactly be the goal. That's right.

1:25:50

Incrementally improving in an intelligent manner that

1:25:53

feeds on itself. Yes, exactly. It's a

1:25:55

good definition of heaven, as far as

1:25:57

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