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ENERGY: America’s Nuclear Revival is Here w/ Dr. Hash Hashemian
00:51:39
AI has reawakened interest in nuclear energy, but rebooting America’s nuclear age will take time and face challenges.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Hashemian
The state of nuclear in the United States is as follows. So we have 94 nuclear power plants that are operating and producing about 20% of US electricity. Nuclear is the second largest power generation in the United States even today. So we are building a series of new nuclear power plants. We call them small modular reactor or advanced nuclear reactors, SMRs and AMRs. We are also extending the life of, of the existing plants. So the plants in the United States are licensed to operate for 40 years initially, but you can extend that to 60 and 80, and I think about eight or 10 of them are now licensed to go to 80 years. And there is talks of running nuclear power plants to 100 years. So one of the things that people have to realize is that even though it's very expensive to build one, the fact that you can use it for 100 years, it pays for itself.
- [00:56]
Colin
Welcome back to the Block Space podcast, brought to you by CleanSpark. Nuclear energy is cool again, and we have AI to think for that. But we're also coming off of decades of stagnation in the industry following the threefold disasters at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile island that scared most of the developed world, including the US Away from nuclear energy. But now we're seeing a resurgence in nuclear energy and technology as AI data centers press demand onto regional grids across the US to discuss the current revival, we have Dr. Hashemian, the President of the American Nuclear Society, on today's show to discuss the current state of America's nuclear industry, where it is headed, and what barriers are in its way as the American nuclear sector sees its largest revival in some decades. If you're a nukehead, this show is for you. We'll be right back.
- [01:54]
Charlie
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- [02:00]
Colin
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- [02:01]
Charlie
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- [02:01]
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Colin
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Charlie
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- [02:43]
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- [02:59]
Charlie
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- [03:15]
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- [03:20]
Charlie
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- [03:26]
Colin
Dr. Hashemian, thank you so much for joining the Mining Pod. Sir, how you doing?
- [03:30]
Dr. Hashemian
I'm doing great. My pleasure, my friend, My pleasure.
- [03:34]
Colin
Yeah, so we, we touched base in Nims in Nashville in January and I regret that we couldn't do this in person, but everyone was really busy. But I thought you were the perfect person to come on to talk about this topic because I've been wanting to get a show done for the nuclear renaissance that we were experiencing in the US for some time. So before we get into the questions that I have today, could you please give our listeners a little bit of your background?
- [03:59]
Dr. Hashemian
Of course, of course. I am Hash Hashem Jan. Actually my name is Hashem Hashem Yan, but people call me Harsh. I came to United States from Iran about 50 years ago to go to school of Nuclear Engineering. At that time we had the government in Iran was planning to start a bunch of nuclear power plants so that they can sell the oil and use the nuclear for electricity generation. Then the government changed and the nuclear power program was stopped. So I stayed in the United States while I was a graduate student. I started this company called Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation. We call it ams. You're in the business of testing the control systems of nuclear power plants. Basically what we do, we make sure that if something happens in the reactor core, the plant gets to shut down as soon as possible. So we make sure the sensors are fast, the cables are fast and good, the electronics work properly. The rod control system, that is the brake that stops the reactor or work in few seconds. So from when something happens till you plant is to be shut down, should be something like 10 seconds or so. We make sure everything that creates that 10 second delay works properly. So that's what My company does. We do that in all the nuclear power plants in the United States and we do that in any US made plant in other countries. Now we have also started doing that in Russian made plants and sometimes Chinese made plants. So we are a global nuclear engineering company headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, with the agents in South Korea, in Europe, in other places.
- [05:52]
Colin
I have to say, as a native Tennessean, I very excited to still see eastern Tennessee hoisting the nuclear flag, so to speak, you know, as the bedrock of the nuclear movement in the us. With Oak Ridge, it's just very exciting to see that there's still a lot of development going on there.
- [06:12]
Dr. Hashemian
I forgot to mention, I'm also the sitting president of the American Nuclear Society. And so every month American Nuclear Society have a magazine called Nuclear News that comes out. And if you look at the Nuclear News for February edition, it rated the states in America as which one is ahead of everyone on nuclear deployment and development? And not. And Tennessee is the number one state in the United States in the development and deployment of nuclear energy. So we are very proud of that. As you know, Colin, there is about $12 billion already committed for development of nuclear fuel, building of nuclear reactors, all in Oak Ridge. So there's a lot going on in Tennessee, especially in Oak Ridge. We had a great governor that started an advisory committee. I was a member of that. There was 20 of us that advised the governor on that, on how to make Tennessee the center of nuclear energy in the United States. He put in $100 million behind that. And that also started. And of course, Department of Energy is doing a lot to boost the nuclear around the United States and especially in Tennessee.
- [07:33]
Colin
Yeah, and as I understand it, a French company, Orano, is planning to build an enrichment facility in East Tennessee, which will kind of give East Tennessee a full stack, kind of vertically integrated, you know, approach or supply chain for its nuclear base. But on that note, of Tennessee and some of these other leading states and what the Department of Energy is trying to do to revitalize America's nuclear industry, what would you say is the current state of the US's nuclear industry as we enter 2026?
- [08:04]
Dr. Hashemian
All right, so we are very careful not to call it a renaissance occurring, because last time we had a renaissance, it died out. So we don't call it renaissance anymore. We call it rebirth or resurgent. In Europe, I was in Europe recently, and they call it the spring of Nuclear. So the state of nuclear in the United States as follows. So we have 94 nuclear power plants. We had 110 we shot some of them down prematurely because the demand for electricity was not as high at that time. And there was other ways to generate the power that we needed. But about five years ago, or maybe even four years ago, everything changed in favor of nuclear power. So we have 94 nuclear power plants that are operating and producing about 20% of US electricity. People don't know that nuclear is the second largest source of power generation, electric power generation in the United States, even today. So we are building a series of new nuclear power plants. We call them small Modular reactor or advanced nuclear reactors, SMRs and AMRs. That's what's going on. We are also extending the life of the existing plants. So the plants in the United States are, are licensed to operate for 40 years initially, but you can extend that to 60 and 80. Almost all the operating nuclear power plants in the United States have been licensed to go to 60. And I think about eight or 10 of them are now licensed to go to 80 years. And there is talks of running nuclear power plants to hundred years. So one of the things that people have to realize is that even though it's very expensive to build one, the fact that you can use it for 100 years, it pays for itself.
- [10:01]
Colin
So I want to pull a chart up really quickly that I think speaks to what you were just saying about where, you know, how much electricity we get from nuclear. It is a huge chunk. But one of the things that I find very perplexing about this graph that kind of, you know, as someone who covers energy a lot, kind of just sends me for a spiral is, is our electricity generation in the U.S. kind of plateaus starting in the 2000s. And, and you can see, you know, nat, gas continues to eat up more of a chunk compared to coal. But things like nuclear seem to stagnate or even dip as we see in the 2000s. Why did we decommission those power plants? I know you mentioned lack of demand, but why not continue building those things? And what really kind of stalled America's nuclear build out kind of starting in the 2000s.
- [10:50]
Dr. Hashemian
At the time that they were, they were shut down, they couldn't make money. They were losing money of generating power with nuclear. So, so that all of that changed in the recent years. But the reason those 10 plants were shut down was economics. Some of them were also old and a couple of them and had the issue that if they tried to fix that issue, the cost would be so much. If that was today, none of those would have been shut down. In fact, a plant called Palisades in Michigan was shut down about seven or eight years ago. And a company called Holtec private company basically is, is bringing that plant back up. There is another plant called Duane Arnold that's bringing, they're working to bring that back up. So at the time that you're talking about the power demand and the economy of nuclear was not favorable. So the plants that could not make money, they were, they were shut down. In fact at one time, Colin, I own a nuclear engineering company so I really worry about this. At one time they were saying nuclear plants in the United States are going to go down from 100 nuclear power plant to 50. This is five or six years ago that we were thinking that our business is going to dwindle to very little. But everything changed three or four years ago because of the energy demand prompted by a lot of things. Economic activities post Covid and then the resurgence of AI and the need of the power, the data center for electricity have just really gave a big spike in the demand for electricity. And nuclear is back in business because of that. And of course the environmental benefits of nuclear was extremely publicized during the Biden administration. There's a conference, I don't know if you have been to it or not, Colin, called cop. It's an environmental conference. I was there. It was in Dubai in 2020 24. I was there. And they declared that the nuclear energy production in the world have to be increased by a factor of three in favor of the environment mostly in that conference. So the environmental benefit of nuclear was more recognized in the last five years due to Biden. And of course Trump is also good for that. So things have really worked in favor of nuclear and you have no other choice. I mean if you want to meet the demand of AI, if you want to use chat, GPT and everything, you can't have it all. I mean there are some issues that you have to worry about but there is no other choice. And nuclear is an eternal source of energy. You will never run out of it, especially if you do recycling which means that once you put the fuel, the fuel that is burned is a better fuel than the one you started it. If you do recycling of of nuclear waste and that would also reduces the amount of nuclear waste that you have to store. So there's a lot of benefits to it. With everything else there is some also risks but I think the risk are so small compared to other alternatives that it really makes sense.
- [14:15]
Colin
So you of mentioned there that you feel like the winds of the environmental pushback are changing for nuclear. You know We've seen in the last, I would say decade or so the green energy folks have not really embraced it. It's been considered a polluting energy source because they think that we can't really safely store the fuel. You've been in this game for a while. You think reliably those tailwinds are, or those headwinds are kind of changing into tailwinds and the environmental movement is starting to embrace.
- [14:44]
Dr. Hashemian
Yes, very true. There are environmental people that they're totally against nuclear, they were anti nuclear people that have turned their own company, not every one of them. There are still people who speak against the production and development of nuclear but the numbers have probably halved over the last five, six years.
- [15:04]
Colin
And you also mentioned in your last or second to last reply, Dwayne Arnold, the Google with next era is kind of playing leading the charge to restart that. We've also seen Microsoft sign a deal with Constellation to restart Three Mile Island. What do you make of these deals specifically these company led deals to restart these assets for data centers and the broad scheme of this rebooting of our nuclear industry.
- [15:28]
Dr. Hashemian
Right. So let's talk about Three Mile Island Unit 1. So the Unit 2 of course had an accident 1979 and was shut down permanently. Unit 2 was also shot. I mean Unit 1 was also shut down A few years ago. Microsoft through a PPA agreement with, with Constellation decided that the best thing to do is just to restart TMI1 and, and I think the work is going on 2030 I guess is when they are going to bring it back up. So the, and the reason Microsoft is behind this is because they need the power. And you have two choices. Either build a new nuclear power plant which takes a while or go get one that's already there and restart it. So that's why TMI is being restarted. So is Palisade, so is Dwayne Arnold, so is several other ones that are in the works. And we see Summer, which was a nuclear plant that was being built in South Carolina was had economic issue and some mismanagement and they spent $9 billion and then they stopped the construction of that plant. But now they're talking about building that backup and finishing it. It's going to be expensive but there's a lot of reversal of everything that we were hearing five years ago today in rebuilding nuclear power plants. The ones that we have that we shut down and new ones. Yeah.
- [16:57]
Colin
And as you said obviously them restarting one that's already completely constructed, much cheaper than building one outright. I always see these figures of how much it costs per megawatt to construct nuclear here versus say one of our geopolitical rivals like China. And it's much cheaper in China for a number of reasons obviously that some of them are not so good. Some of them maybe we could learn from what are the barriers standing in the way from building nuclear more cheaply in the United States.
- [17:27]
Dr. Hashemian
So historically when you ask that question, everybody blamed the regulators, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as overregulating. And also the fact that we are not as good as China is in building huge things at cost has been the barrier. But an advanced act and an act passed by the Congress about two years ago and also one of the executive orders have really started the process of making sure the regulations are, are done to make sure the safety of nuclear power plants are 100% preserved. But yet at the same time that red tape that doesn't add to the safety but generates a lot of work. For example, we have some issues, for example, radiation limits that are imposed on nuclear in some people's opinion, especially mine, is very strict and some people think it's not strict enough. But in my opinion it's very strict and causes a lot of cost overruns for nuclear. Basically you're supposed to have almost zero radiation and that's very difficult right to do. You have to put it up. And basically we are saying nuclear plants, radiation environment should be below background or near the background. That's pretty, pretty hard requirement that make the cost of a nuclear plant so high. The other thing is we've lost in this country over the last several decades our ability to build huge structure like the reactor vessel, for example, the reactor vessels that are being built for new nuclear power plants. Some of them are built in other countries, but they are gaining all of that back. I think you talked about executive order. The executive orders are a huge positive for the resurgence of nuclear energy in the United States and also for streamlining regulations in a way that the safety of plants are preserved 100% or even improved. But all the red tape that doesn't add to the safety but creates a lot of cost for nuclear power for no gains is being eliminated under the executive order from President Trump.
- [19:44]
Colin
We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner, a publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate powered entirely by self operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work and we are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and bitcoin@cleanspark.com so I'm glad you mentioned the Executive orders. I wanted to touch on that. So we'll double tap on that here. As I understand it, there are really, there are four pillars to these executive orders that Trump has issued for reviving nuclear energy in the US and perhaps maybe the biggest one is reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What do you think of that effort and what do you think should be done to reform it to speed up development and the construction of these nuclear power plants?
- [20:40]
Dr. Hashemian
Right. So that is it. Okay, there's that, the executive order and before that, the a law passed by Congress called advanced Law. Those two are geared toward streamlining regulations in a way that preserve the safety of nuclear power plants and get rid of unnecessary work that was imposed on nuclear industry. The nuclear industry, when it started, it was over regulated because we didn't know how safe it is. Right. So, and it is good that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was there to really, really make sure everything has been taken care of, be very, very conservative. Because when we started these nuclear power plants, we didn't know a lot of things that we know now. So because of the data, because of the history, because of the safety record of nuclear industry, now we can go back and say these stuff that we record, these things that we were doing were not necessary. We did them because we didn't know how things are going to work. Now that we know how things are going to work, let's not do this stuff that doesn't add anything to safety of nuclear power plants, but creates a lot of paperwork, a lot of red tape. And Trump executive order has really been effective, even though it's very new. So I'm friend with all the commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So David Wright, which was the commissioner head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission till two months ago, gave a great speech about how they are implementing the executive order, the advanced law, in a way that is in it maintaining the maximum amount of safety of nuclear power plant, like always, but getting rid of a lot of things and a lot of work that is not necessary that imposes cost and and burden on the nuclear power plant for absolutely no gain. Right. So the other thing you have to remember, call in the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission is recognized worldwide as the gold standard of nuclear regulations. Everybody follows, tries to follow the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission's thing. So we have a product called NRC that is the envy of the world in nuclear safety and nuclear regulations and we want to maintain that. And I think the way executive orders have been drafted and the advanced law has been drafted has been so perfect. Seriously, I'm so Glad they did that. And I'm so impressed by the people who wrote the executive orders and the advanced law and in a way that will preserve the safety of nuclear power plant to the maximum level that we like while reducing the red tape that is unnecessary. So that's going to be a huge boost to the, to the rise of nuclear power in the United States and maintaining of the existing fleet. And if you remember, look, nuclear power. They have almost 450 nuclear power plants operating in the whole world. Right. And we have had only three major accidents in the last eight years. That's an amazing record if you look at the amount of electricity that 450 nuclear power plant around the world has produced versus three accidents. Two of them was kind of preventable, sort of man made. And we have learned from that. And those kind of accidents are not going to happen. The one in, in Chernobyl was a completely dis bad design of that type of nuclear power. And those nuclear power have all been shut down. So we're not going to have a design that has that kind of flaw in it that can cause an accident like that. And that accident was actually cre happened because the people were running an experiment and the safety system of the plant was. Was disabled for the accident, for the experiment and the as. So, so, so basically we have had one accident that was essentially unpredictable and that was Fukushima in Japan. What happened in Japan was nobody could predict. So that was beyond a design basis accident, beyond the worst thing we could ever thought about. It happened so basically one accident in 450 nuclear power plants in 80 years. That's an amazing safety record by any standard.
- [25:01]
Colin
Especially when you look at the history of accidents at coal mines throughout throughout human history. Right.
- [25:08]
Dr. Hashemian
Chemical plants. You know, you had this Bhopal accident in India. Everybody remembers that. That was by far the worst. Much, much worse than anything that has. From the other hand, the nuclear accident have not caused a lot of radiation death in a short and long term. Except for Fukushima. That was just, you know, the work of nature.
- [25:30]
Colin
Yeah. And Elon Musk has famously said, give me a fish from the coast outside of the Fukushima power plant and I'll eat sushi with it. You know, it's. There are all of these misconceptions I think with nuclear and a lot of it is due to, I think, media framing and popular media. I think when a lot of Americans think nuclear energy, they think of the radioactive fish from the Simpsons. Right. Or they think of Homer operating a nuclear power plant. Right.
- [25:54]
Dr. Hashemian
Those are, those are the Reasons. And one other thing, call. And since you brought that up, we have to be careful to call nuclear energy energy and nuclear power. Because when we say nuclear power, some people mistake that with nuclear weapons. So we are talking about nuclear energy. But there is another aspect to nuclear and that nuclear defense, nuclear weapons. Right. So that the mixing of the two, some people like for example, I have a new friend and she told me she thought of nuclear as the only use of nuclear is to make nuclear bombs. She had no idea. And this is an engineer educated person doesn't, didn't know that nuclear power is also responsible for 20% of the 1 every 5 lights in this room is powered by nuclear. So people have to really be educated that there is two aspects of it. Nuclear energy that generates electricity and nuclear power that that produces nuclear defense equipment and facilities.
- [27:01]
Colin
I want to just double back on the executive orders for just one thing to highlight. You mentioned that they've already been well received and they are helping spur development by cutting some useless red tape. Are there any examples that come to mind as paragons for why this executive order is long overdue to help reduce that red tape?
- [27:19]
Dr. Hashemian
Yes. So the nuclear industry has been, has been complaining about red tape for a long, long time. And in fact we had a conference of the American Nuclear Society called Next. It was in Atlanta last year. About a thousand people came to it. We have another one coming up. And in that conference I actually interviewed the nuclear industry executives and it was only a few months after the advanced law has gone into effect. And I asked him, I said, do you see a big difference in the way NRC looks at things? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission looks at things and regulates. And they all said that these are the nuclear executive. They all said that there is almost a reversal of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was looking at how to deal with utilities generated in nuclear electricity. And they were all impressed. The ones I talked to to. I'm not sure everybody is like that. The one I talked to were very impressed with that manslaughter consequence of reducing red tape that does not add to the safety but creates costs that are not necessary. And the executive orders are new. But when you talk to the industry people, they, they say they already see the benefit. And we have a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman. He's also very good at what he does. He worked at the NRC for 20 years. So President Trump put another guy, David Wright, who was before him, was great, very experienced guy, did a great job of interpreting and implementing the advanced law and starting to implement the executive orders. David Wright did that. He was the previous chairman and Ho Ni, which is the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. President Trump put him on about two months ago, a month or so ago and he has work in there nuclear industry Nuclear regulatory commission for 20 years. So he the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today is in the hand of some of the best people that you can have in terms of experience and, and knowledge and, and policy to really make sure that the cost of nuclear is not increased by regulation. That doesn't add to the safety of nuclear program. So yes, the answer is the executive order and the advanced law has been long overdue. And thank God they are here because they are going to really do a lot for existing plants as well as the new nuclear power plants being built.
- [29:47]
Colin
Is there anything else you would like to see on the policy and legal front for nuclear to help spur this innovation along?
- [29:56]
Dr. Hashemian
So I have been saying for, for the last three, four years that if the United States does not want to be we get behind China in nuclear power development and deployment, the United States government is going to have to come in with a lot of money. And I'm talking about not 10 billion here and 20 billion there. They have done a lot of that, which is great. And I'm talking about half a trillion dollar or a trillion 500 billion to start with. And the reason I say that is because there is a lot of risk for private people or utilities to engage on development and deployment of nuclear power plants. And China's nuclear power, France nuclear power, the ones that are very successful are all government. You compare nuclear industry with airline industry. United States, as great of a country that is as wonderful of a place it is to live, has some of the worst airlines in the world. And you go to other countries that are very small compared to United States. The economies are not even one tenth of the United States. And their airlines are so much better because their airlines is government sponsor, government subsidized or government owned. So I'm not saying the nuclear industry should be owned by government. But I think to get ahead of China we need a lot. But I tell you that over the last six months to a year my dishes have been met by the US Government. For example, Trump has done a great job negotiating deals like for example with Japan, is investing $550 billion in the U.S. bunch of that is going to nuclear. So my wishes for the government stepping in with money is being met partially, not fully, but partially. China is still going gangbuster with nuclear. And if you don't do anything big and fast we are going to get behind.
- [32:04]
Colin
Yeah. They are plowing money into basically anything that generates electricity right now. I mean coal build outs, solar, nuclear, you name it. China is like you said, going gangbusters. And a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that. Well, it's what you said. They have a state run. Everything is state run in China, more or less. Right. And the, and the state has a monopoly on allocating resources to just about anything they want. But I, I can't help but think that they also have the industrial base for it. Right. And going back to what you were saying about there being some snags for producing certain equipment and components for nuclear reactors. What other choke points are there in the nuclear supply chain that we would need to solve before we can really rev this thing up?
- [32:49]
Dr. Hashemian
Well, my, so there is a lot of. First of all, let me add something to the China in addition to what you very correctly articulated. The reason that they are more successful, not more successful, but could be more successful than the United States is that they don't pay for the development of anything. They copy everything. So the United States is extremely generous. This country, we, all the work that we do in all these 17 national lab, in all these universities, we put it out in public, most of it in public domain and they just look at it and so they don't pay for any development. Right. They also, you, you know, they are my customers that work in China. So we did the commissioning test of the four American nuclear power plants that they build. But you only work for them one time because after that they will copy everything you did. So that's another huge benefit to the fact that, you know, they don't pay billions and billions of dollars for developing technologies. They just find out who has done it where and they'll just find a way to, to copy that. You know, I don't know the legalities of those. And the United States does everything we can through the export control measures to make sure our technologies are not taken advantage. But, but, but it's very hard to keep them from. So that's another thing that helps them a lot. So what was your question? I forgot.
- [34:18]
Colin
What other choke points are there in the US Specifically on, on the supply chain side for getting nuclear reactors off the ground?
- [34:26]
Dr. Hashemian
Well, we, we are behind on, on. We haven't built nuclear power plants for many years. I mean we built a Vogel just a few years ago and tried to build pieces. So we have lost a lot of the supply chain that was there to supply stuff and everything. So reactor vessel for example, you know, that's one, one problem not President Trump is doing things that may lead to the bringing all that, that manufacturing expertise back to United States. Other things such as, you know, transformers. They talk about the shortage of transformers. Some of the big stuff that electric electrical equipment, they are behind on that on workforce is also a problem. But that's being. Being really handled a lot by, by the infusion, a lot of money by the government into the university programs and national labs and other things. I, my person, My personal opinion Colin, is that if you start building them, I think these things will fall in place. That's my. I, I think you go build. Try to build the nuclear power plants, the supply chain with, with. With comp. So I'm not worried about. Many people are, but I personally am not worried about supply chain as much or workforce. I think we just got to start building plants and those things will fall in place.
- [35:58]
Colin
One thing I would ask with that you're not at all worried about how to put this. It almost seems like the industrial bases for these things will be competing with the end customers for the nuclear energy. That is AI data centers. Right. They'll be coming into these areas and the AI data centers will be sucking up a lot of this energy. It's also why you need that energy for industrial capacity as well. I mean we've seen this play out in Germany. They demolished their nuclear power plants. They had to revert to coal. It's much more expensive for them because they don't actually produce that much coal. And now their industrial base is crumbling. Do you see a tension between the industrial base and the data center side of things for this?
- [36:38]
Dr. Hashemian
I haven't heard that. No, I have. That's the first time. That's a good point. But I have not really heard that. So I really can't comment on that. I really think US has proven time and time again that if you want to do something big, we'll do it. And I think if you are going to build nuclear power plants, supply chain and workforce is going to fall in place automatically. And a lot is being done already, especially on the workforce development. There's so much going on on development of workforce with nuclear power. The only risk there is that what if you don't build? What if there is an accident and it stopped the momentum? What are all these people that are, that are being trained to come to nuclear going to do? So you've got to balance those things against, against the potential risk that is there. Remember, all of this stuff can slow down or cool off completely if you have a major accident anywhere in the world, not just in the United States. So there is risk involved. So we got to be. So supply chain are not going to start doing stuff hoping that you build nuclear power plant. You start building up and we are going to bring what you need.
- [37:49]
Colin
And I think Tennessee is a testament to that. Absolutely. When you look at the and when you look at the activity going on there with the French company coming in and to build a enrichment facility, when you look at the fact that they are planning a small modular reactor in the TVA region, are there any other states that you think are really well positioned to take their nuclear capacity up a notch?
- [38:13]
Dr. Hashemian
Other states? No, a lot of states are, you know they're. Michigan is building the palace, rebuilding the Palisade Constellation is looking at even bringing some of their debt plan back up. Yeah, there is a lot going on. Tennessee's ahead because Tennessee has a lot of ingredients. We have seven nuclear power plants in Tennessee and Alabama but we have the national lab, we have the Y12 which is a weapon complex but that feeds a little bit into nuclear. So we got the second best university nuclear university in the country here. So we are a very comprehensive nuclear ecosystem here in Tennessee now. But if you take a place like Illinois, Chicago, Illinois power, 50% of it comes from nuclear energy. So nuclear is really good in a lot of places. The reason Tennessee was, was recognized as the, as the center is of new nuclear development. Orano is one that you talked about which is doing this five and a half billion dollar investment. By the way, I was in Europe a few months ago and just talked to the head of the number one Orano man and I asked him about this project in Okraja and he said it's all contingent of $900 million investment by the Department of Energy. He said if we don't get that money we cannot build this five and a half billion. Fortunately that money was approved so that five and a half billion dollar investment is going to happen by France. In fact I'm going to go to Iran headquarter where they do the enrichment and all here as the president of the American Nuclear Society to look at how these things are done. So to answer your question, Tennessee is unique because we covered the whole spectrum of nuclear. But other states are also good because they either have a lot of nuclear power plants such as Illinois or they are looking to bring nuclear power plants down up that they're dead. So it's going, going basically nationwide. Our competitions are Virginia, Texas is doing a lot Texas is doing really good. Texas is a big competition for a, for, for Tennessee in terms of new nuclear development and deployment.
- [40:33]
Colin
Texas, Tennessee rivalry runs deep. Especially with two popping cities like Nashville and Austin and the fact that the original UT is in Knoxville and not in Austin. A couple more questions doctor and then we'll get you out of here. What are your thoughts on small modular reactors as being a good solution to really rev up development more quickly than we have in the past I've heard mixed comments from people in the energy community about their efficacy. Where do you land?
- [41:01]
Dr. Hashemian
Right. So what you've heard is, is true and it's sort of new. About three years ago we thought nobody will build a big nuclear power plants anymore. Well, that thing has changed because of few things. The small modular reactors were supposed to be online the first group of them by 2020 or 2022 at the latest. But we are talking about 2020, 20, 30 or later. So we are very late in the small modular reactor community delivering on the promises that hey, we are going to have one operating. You know the advantage of them, you can put them next to where you need them. You don't need power lines. You have don't, you don't need to put it on the grid. There is a lot of advantage. That's why data centers are, are so hungry for SMRs. Because you can build one next to a data center. You don't need wires and just put the power and amazingly enough these data centers can gobble up 50, 100, 200, 500 megawatt or half a gigawatt of electricity. So that's the advantage. But I want to make think one, one thing very clear for the, for your audience then you talk smart. You got to remember there's two type of SMRs. Water cooled SMRs and non water cooled decimals. The non water cooled decimals are called advanced reactors. Advanced modular reactor amrs. All right, people don't understand those are harder to build. Those are bigger technologies we have, we don't, we haven't done that. The water cooled SMRs such as NuSCATE, such as GE300 that's being built to be built a clinch river or have been have been done before and are easier to do and are cheaper to do. The new ones that are built that are cooled by gas or by liquid metal or liquid salt are different. So there are two, those are a little bit further out. They are probably 10 years out. The water cooled reactors are probably five to six years out. So there's two type of SMRs you have to worry about. One is water cooled that are simpler and one is being built in Canada. We are going to build one like that here in Clint river and by TVA most likely. There is several of them that are being talked. Remember Kairos? Kairos you and I talked about that is building two nuclear power plant. Two nuclear power plant is being built. Small nuclear power plants are being built in Oak Ridge. People don't know that. You go over there, he says really we are building small nuclear power plants in Oakley. Two of them by Kairos Terra Power. Bill Gates company is building one in Wyoming. So we are doing that. But these things are going to take longer. The ones that are not water cooled,
- [43:49]
Colin
you're saying the Bill Gates one, right? Because that's a sodium reactor, am I right?
- [43:53]
Dr. Hashemian
Gilgames have 2, 2 type 1. The one that called Matrim that they are building. It's a good design. They had a storage of. It has some amazing feature. And the Kairos ones are really also way ahead of time compared to what I was thinking that the advanced reactor can be deployed. So they may even come online before go reactors. But I doubt it.
- [44:19]
Colin
Just one last question on this before my closing one. Why has this taken so long? You mentioned 2020, 2022 as a projected timeline for a lot of these first ones and it hasn't come to pass. What's the reason for that, do you think?
- [44:33]
Dr. Hashemian
That's a very good question. So about 10 years ago or 15 years ago, when people who had the wisdom of thinking that the demand is going to be like this in 2025, 2026, start on development of small modular reactors and then when they, they start smelling that they are right about the demand going up to this level, they start saying okay, we're going to build one and put it on, on the grid in 2020. They didn't because they just didn't. They, they. They were slow, they had money problems. They had. Because everybody was looking for government to come in. We had a government loan office called LPO loan program office and they were dealing with those. There was a lot of issues with money issues with other things and they were. The demand was not as, as clear as it is today. So they kind of took their time. But we also in the nuclear industry have to be careful going forward not to over promise and under deliver. We are guilty of telling the public we are going to have nuclear power plants, new nuclear power plants, some more operating in 2020 or 2022. And every year saying well it's going to be 2023, not 2020. Now we're talking about 2030. So I advise the nuclear industry today that do not over promise and under so that we don't lose the public confidence. I think 2030 is a good, good year to think about having some SMRs, maybe AMRs on the operating by maybe Kairos and TerraPower and GE and NuScale and those companies.
- [46:22]
Colin
All right Dr. This has been a great conversation close, gotta throw you a fast one. How far out do you think we are from fusion and building onto that Are there any other, are there any other technologies that are bleeding edge right now in nuclear that you're really excited about? So kind of a two part question.
- [46:41]
Dr. Hashemian
Well on the fusion. So there's a lot more happening in the fusion today both on by private industry coming to fusion and the academic community. And there's a lot of talk about fusion being able to produce real electricity for regular use in matter of year for five or six years or maybe even sooner. So we're talking fusion companies and fusion private and other companies are talking a lot optimist more optimistically today about the potential of fusion actually producing power. My view is that those estimates are pretty optimistic and I think fusion is going to deliver but I think it's going to be further than five or 10 years when it's going to really deliver experimental fusion. A little fusion here and there is going to happen between now and no and and and and in the next few years. But real fusion at the level that we need in my opinion is a few decades away. So that's my vision. But I'm very impressed with how much progress have been made in fusion. In fact the next a conference of national conference of the American Nuclear Society which I am organizing and running is going to be in Denver, Colorado. I, I invited the head of ether, the largest fusion experiment in the world that is in France. He's going to come as one of my key keynote speakers. I also invited the head of the Princeton Plasma Laboratory to come and speak. The reason I'm doing that is because I want to give visibility to fusion because it deserves it and we need to kind of nurture it so that 30 years from now we have fusion electricity. So my thing is that if you don't do all the things we are doing today, we'll never have fusion. So some people who talk against fusion have to realize that if you, if you don't do anything, if you don't spend the kind of money that we are spending today and we should spend more, you're never going to have fusion. But if you really keep it up, we are going to have fusion in a few decades in a, in a major thing a small fusion is going to happen sooner. With respect to what are the best thing I want to see, I want to see progress in recycling of nuclear fuel. France is doing that is illegal in the United States to recycle. But I think this administration is looking at that. So Jimmy Carter made recycling of nuclear nuclear fuel spend nuclear fuel illegal. The reason for that is because you can, you can take plutonium out of it and make bombs from it. And that's why it's illegal in the United states as of 50 years, 40 years ago, 50 years ago when, when Carter made it illegal. But this administration is looking up up of making it legal. And therefore, for example, OKLO is is putting a $1.7 billion nuclear recycling plant in Oak Ridge. So if you start recycling, that's one thing I like to see happen. The other thing the other ways of enriching nuclear fuel. So there's many ways. One by centrifuge. There are other ways that are companies that are here and in other parts of the world working on trying to find other ways of enriching nuclear fuel, getting their stuff from the ground and making it suitable to more powerful for use in nuclear. Those are the technologies in nuclear that I like to see accelerate in advancement.
- [50:19]
Colin
Dr. Hashimian, thank you so much for joining. This was a really enlightening conversation for me. You know, we might have to have you back on the next year or so, do a check in, see how some of these projects are going because it's a super exciting time. So thank you for joining us.
- [50:33]
Dr. Hashemian
Of course, I look forward to that. Thank you. Carlo.
- [50:37]
Charlie
Foreign hey, this is Charlie and Colin from Block Space Media and you're listening to the Block Space Podcast, a show about emerging tech in Bitcoin, AI, energy and markets.
- [50:52]
Colin
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- [51:16]
Charlie
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- [51:29]
Colin
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