Welcome to Nuclear Matters from the Australian National University College of Systems and Society. I'm your host, Liz Williams, a nuclear physicist and nuclear systems discipline lead for the ANU School of Engineering. On today's episode, I'm talking all things nuclear security with Jasmine Diab. Jazz is the managing director of Global Nuclear Security Partners and president of Women
in Nuclear Australia. She is also a military veteran with a couple of decades of experience, thinking about how to secure nuclear technologies, both at home and abroad. I am personally fascinated by how experienced nuclear professionals grapple with changes in both technologies and geopolitics. I invited Jazz because I thought she could help me explore this in more depth. Long story short, she delivered. Let's listen in. Thank you so much, Jess, for joining us today on Nuclear Matters.
It's so wonderful to have you here today. Thanks for having me, Liz. I'm excited to be able to chat nuclear. with you. Yeah. I think this is the first time we're doing this kind of thing on a podcast format. Usually it's in the context of women in nuclear, I think. Yeah. Normally we nerd out with a group of women talking about nuclear. Yeah. So it's interesting that it's just you and I today. I know. Slightly different
dynamic. Let's dive right in though. You specialize in nuclear security and you have an interest in nuclear threat reduction and you are based in Australia, which doesn't have a civil nuclear industry. So I wanted to ask you how you came to specialize in nuclear security and how you ended up doing this work internationally. Bit of a weird career trajectory that I've had. I actually started out in the Australian Army. I did 22 years in uniform as a combat engineer
officer. My undergraduate degree was in nuclear physics and explosive chemistry. So things that you could really only use in a military context most of the time. Had a really great career in the Army, looking at threat reduction from an operational response. capability. And so I lived all around Australia and I've done some tours around the world focused on predominantly countering chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear
threats. And so when it came time for me to leave Army a couple of years ago, I got the tap on the shoulder from some colleagues over in the UK to get into nuclear security consulting. And so that's what I've done. 10, 12 years ago, I went and studied nuclear engineering, mainly to keep my nerd brain active. So I did that as a bit of a side hustle to get the technical understanding
of the engineering of nuclear facilities. And so being able to bring my experience from Army, my nuclear engineering together, I'm able to specialise that into... security and how we make sure material is being secured appropriately, but still being able to be used for peaceful purposes. Because ultimately, that's what excites me about nuclear is the peaceful use of nuclear. And Australia has always been pretty anti -nuclear weapons. We were a country that was used in weapons
testing in the 60s. And so I want to be able to use my skills to make sure that we can still use nuclear peacefully without proliferating the spread of weapons, all the information that leads to nuclear weapons and nuclear threats. So let's talk about some of those peaceful uses and how those are connected to some of the threats that you were just talking about. Can you give us a particular example of where nuclear technology for peaceful use might, if not properly secured,
lead to an issue down the line? Yeah, so we see that with any kind of nuclear reactor, whether it's a research reactor, a nuclear medicine production facility or a power generating reactor. Whether it's the fuel itself, not so much unused fuel.
Unused fuel is pretty stable in its natural form, but spent fuel, radioisotopes that come out of reactors, materials that a lot of threat groups like to be able to use to either create a credible weapon or in most cases, just create chaos and hysteria which gives them the outcome they want, which is terrorizing communities, governments, and just creating fear within a community or
country. And so what we really do is work with those facilities to make sure that... it's unattractive for threat forces to get their hands on that material because the loss of that material is actually quite catastrophic. And so we work to make sure that it can be done in a way that is cost effective because someone standing there with a gun at a door is quite expensive and it's a bit overbearing in most cases. So there are smarter ways we can secure material, make it
unattractive to be taken. And we work with facilities to tailor it for their their particular needs and each country varies as well. Big machine guns and towers in the US isn't as big of an issue as it would be here in Australia. If you had a huge machine gun tower outside a facility, let's say at Lucas Heights, for example, that would terrify the community. We have to be smarter and more nuanced in how we look at security for
each of these facilities and countries. So what does nuclear security encompass and how does it interact with nuclear safety in particular? Yeah, a great question because a lot of times people look at security in a siloed manner and think it's just about guns, gates and guards, which is a very, I guess, old school way of looking
at nuclear security. How we actually look at nuclear security is predominantly at how do you control and account for material to make sure only the right people have access to that material or information? leading to that and that it is being used in the appropriate manner and then disposed of in an appropriate manner as well.
So how it links to safety systems is really in the materials accounting and control of material in making sure that facilities are designed to allow for that movement to occur within a facility in an appropriate manner that it doesn't impact the operations and safety. of that facility because if you have impacts on operational use, people aren't going to follow them because we're human and we like doing things the easiest way possible. So it's making sure those systems work closely
together. But one of the big friction points we have when designing nuclear facilities between safety and security is in the event of a safety accident, let's say you want as many safety doors as possible to open up and allow people to run out and be safe and get to a control point. From a security perspective, all those doors, it's too much. You can't just let them unlock and
go. So it's where's the right balance to allow for a facility to be safe enough for individuals, but at the same time, provide enough security measures to allow access control. to material. And so it's finding that nice balance. And this is where my background with nuclear engineering comes in handy because I can understand both
sides of the fence. I can understand where safety is really paramount and you need to have the right safety features in place, but can also understand, hey, this has now become a security vulnerability and security needs to be taken into account in this circumstance. So it's a really fine balance, but it's I think it's something that the nuclear industry has been quite conscious about over at least the last five, six, seven
years. I think the Russian invasion in Ukraine really highlighted it as well, is that hey, security and safety have to work closely together if you want facilities to continue operating as designed in a way that allows the general public to be comfortable that they're still running. in a war zone, for example, or in a country that might be having some instability. That's actually a
really important question. I'm wondering, in your work, does what has been going on in Ukraine with Russia coming in and occupation of nuclear facilities, et cetera, is that influencing how you are advising clients, for instance, in terms of their security planning? Definitely. And we've done a little bit of work with Ukrainian critical infrastructure security forces to allow them to understand, OK, what are the crucial bits
that need to be guarded and protected? And how do you do that from a nuclear security perspective? Because there is so much they need to do to keep just everything running to survive. And a war zone is very different to a a country that might have just general instability, political instability. We're talking about very different threats here that have much more sophisticated capabilities and probably some quite targeted things they
would want to do to a nuclear facility. And we saw that with some of the Russian targeting of Zaprovitzia nuclear power plant. And so that's There are different challenges that the country in an active war zone needs to worry about from a nuclear security perspective. So that is something we do talk about with other clients, depending
on what country they're in. And this is where when we see a lot of emerging nuclear nations, which is right that they want to embark on a power program, but it is, hey, there is so much more to nuclear security. That's not just about the fence around the reactor site. What is the security culture in general in this country? Where do we see the vulnerabilities and those threats? And so what the IAEA has as best practice is what we call the design basis threat for each
country. Each country should have its own and internally to that it should have a design basis threat for civilian power plants, military nuclear uses. and that will tailor the kinds of threats that they need to protect against. And so that's the type of stuff we'll work with a facility with to say, hey, you don't need to really worry about an invasion from another country, but you do need to worry about insurgent activity, for example, or protestor, like violent protest activity
or outlaw motorcycle gangs. And each of those will vary depending on location, the country itself, and then the country's... general security culture and stance, which might mean some reactors have quite heavy handed nuclear security measures, some might not. I'm curious about how you think across a life cycle for that. I mean, obviously, when you're looking at safety for a nuclear reactor, even in the early stages of the design process, you're planning for that decommissioning and,
you know, waste handling in the long term. Security, it seems like It seems like you're looking at local conditions based on what you know about a country and the likely threats. But I'm wondering, I mean, those can change over time. How do you think through that? Or to what extent can you think through that, you know, for a given circumstance? Yes. So we design nuclear security systems against a probability of one so that it is guaranteed that this threat will happen to that facility.
And that allows you to, I guess, design worst case scenario. But That does get reviewed throughout the lifetime of that facility because, as you say, threats will change, the local environment
will change, and this is where we try to... If a facility is designed well at the start with its safety and security systems working closely together, then you shouldn't have too many large retrofit... requirements later down the lifetime of that facility, where we have seen facilities that have focused purely on safety at the start
and a little bit on security. When they get a couple of years down the track and something happens, they're having to go back and retrofit security systems, which is so costly and unnecessarily costly if you just design all those features in at the start to work with the safety system. So security is constantly getting reviewed, much like Safety systems are constantly getting reviewed. They'll get upgrades if technology is advanced.
Same sort of thing with nuclear security. If the technology advances, it can be upgraded to make it more reliable, more secure. Cyber security is probably a really great example of that, where digital systems need to constantly be upgraded and reviewed to make sure that external threat vectors can't target them. It is a constant review. You can't just design, build the facility and go, okay, it's secure for life. It's awesome. I wish. I wish it were that easy. That would
be really great. But unfortunately, people that like being in the threat game aren't really nice people, right? And they will try to alter how they target facilities. to exploit the vulnerabilities, right? Some of these threat forces, and especially when you talk about nation states that want to influence a facility, they're patient and they'll wait to find your vulnerabilities. And so it's making sure that you can understand the vulnerabilities before they do to put the right mechanisms in
place to reduce them. Yeah. This is making me think of Stuxnet. I'm wondering if you have any some like favorite lessons learned. Stuxnet is a really great example because it said whilst this facility might have had the perfect physical security measures in place, the fact that they were able to get access to the digital systems within this facility and exploit those digital systems to tweak them so that they weren't getting
the output in their enrichment. centrifuges that they were hoping and it took a long time to realize that meant that it had degraded the output of that facility and meant they took a lot longer for them to be able to get the amount of enriched uranium that they wanted to potentially use in a weapons program. And so that's why I think a lot of nuclear facilities and digital systems like that is a big vulnerability. How do you
reduce that? A lot of civilian nuclear power plants won't have a lot of their operational systems on the open net so that they can control those systems inside. That doesn't make them completely impenetrable. That now then puts the onus on the individuals in the operations room with access to those facilities that they have to be screened and they have to understand their
security requirements and be trusted. And that's why nuclear jobs often pay really well because they don't want you to be exploited by a threat force to offer money. You should be comfortable and happy enough in your job. So it's very intertwined. It's a big network of people and systems. Absolutely. It's complicated. It is. For those of you who aren't aware of Stuxnet, basically the idea was they wanted to target a physical system within
the enrichment facilities in Iran. And what they did was they put out a virus that only targeted those particular controllers. And that virus, they basically waited for it to be brought in on a USB stick inadvertently by staff members because the facility was not. on the network. It was set up to be a secure facility. And so eventually, of course, the USB stick came in because humans are humans. And that virus then caused physical damage to the facility itself.
This does bring up, for me, the question of how to deal with emerging technologies in nuclear and, in particular, the security implications of such technologies. And I remember a while back, we actually had a chat about this. I think we were talking about fusion energy in particular. And I was wondering, this is something you're
actively working on. Can you share some of the exciting developments in nuclear that we should be thinking about and planning for and what you and your colleagues are working on right now? Yeah, so there's some really interesting emerging technologies in nuclear that challenge our security and the nuclear safeguard system more broadly as well. And fusion is one of those technologies. There are lots of different ways people are conceptually
building fusion power reactors. Each of them have a similar sort of requirement, which is a different kind of radioisotope as the starter fuel to then get their reaction going and a requirement. predominantly on tritium to keep those reactions going as well. Now, what we really worry about in nuclear security is any radioisotope or uranium, plutonium that can be weaponized. That's really what we're trying to prevent. Things like tritium historically haven't been as high on the radar
because you didn't need a lot of it. in nuclear applications, whereas in fusion, you actually need a fair bit of tritium to keep your reaction going. A lot of tritium triggers a lot of stuff because tritium is often used as a starter for a weapon, a nuclear weapon, or it can be used in large components as a material that can be used to create fear in a... nuclear dirty bomb sense or radiological dispersion or exposure
device. And so whilst looking at some of these emerging technologies, it is getting a good understanding of, OK, what radioisotopes are being used in these technologies? What's their half life? What form do these come in? Are they in a material form that can be easily proliferated, stolen, sold? And if that's the case, how do we secure them? And if they're in a state that is really difficult to move, sell, shift around, then okay, so what are the ways we're making sure that we
can... keep it that way on a site. And I know a lot of the startup companies hate when I talk to them about nuclear security because a lot of people love fusion because, oh, there's no waste, there's no weaponizable material. You're like, look, as a bad person, you can weaponize anything. That's the problem with bad people. And so we want to prevent that from happening before commercialization of a lot of these technologies. So we understand the risks and vulnerabilities.
And you just put the right mechanisms in place to prevent them and allow that to be understood. And so fusion's a really exciting one. I love that because I get to understand more about different types of isotopes, which gets the nerd in me happy. Another space we're looking at is commercial maritime and floating nuclear power plants, because that presents a different kind of security challenge. The safety around maritime nuclear is well understood.
The US Navy, the British Navy, French navies have been using maritime nuclear for decades. And so safety is really well known around that. But often those reactors are pretty high enriched uranium. They're sealed units so you can't just open up a reactor core and take fuel and steal it, and you'd probably die if you gave that a go. But I don't recommend it. But it's, hey, these are vessels that could be out in the middle of nowhere, essentially. Who's now responsible
for the security of that? Is it the commercial shipping merchant? Is it the state that that vessel is flagged under? What does the response force look like? Because I'm pretty sure a lot of these commercial shipping merchants aren't going to now pay for an armed security force to live on these vessels. So what are some other more sophisticated ways we can secure material utilizing the technology we currently have, utilizing sensors and detectors and tracking tools to be
able to do that? And the joy of having a nuclear propelled... cargo vessel is you no longer need to hug the coastline where there are pirates. You can just sail really far away from them because you've got the speed, you've got the endurance. You no longer need to be a target for some of
these pirates. So that's a really fascinating one because it is a security problem that hasn't really been grappled with before because maritime has predominantly been in the defence space where they've been state -owned, military people on board, security's not a problem there because they're providing the security. They are the
security, yes. They are the security, yeah. So it's been, yeah, that's been a really interesting one because the carbon emissions from the maritime sector quite high globally because we rely on ships, especially here in Australia, all our stuff comes in by boat. If they've got the ability to decarbonize through how they propel their
vessels, that's a great thing for us. We just want to make sure that the material is being secured and handled appropriately and it's not creating another vector for the threat forces to be able to get their hands on material. Yeah. The tritium As I understand it also connects to fission reactors, at least for some of the fuel cycles for these facilities that would involve, for instance, transport of tritium, etc. Is that something that you think about when you're looking
at these things? Yeah, definitely. Transporter material is one of the more important aspects we look at for a facility because any material in transport is at risk and vulnerable. And there's a couple of case studies one pretty interesting one out of Mexico where a source was stolen off
a truck while it was in transit. And so how material is being transported and how it's been secured in transport and tracked by the right authorities is really important so that you can reduce the, I guess, access to that material and make it unattractive for them to take it as well. So yes, the movement of tritium between sites is an important one that we look at from a security perspective, much like any kind of radioisotope
being transported around. In terms of the maritime space, how big is the market for commercial maritime nuclear? Or do you have a sense of that? Is this growing? Where is this in terms of development? So this is growing and there are Organizations at the moment, so the one we're working with closely is called NEMO, the Nuclear Energy Maritime
Organization. It's a not -for -profit that is helping shipping companies, regulators, and licensing authorities understand the problem around nuclear propulsion in general from the maritime space. There are some pretty clear laws of the sea through the International Maritime Organization, but the stuff on nuclear was written in the 80s and is pretty outdated. And so working with that organization to say, OK, well, what is in the
realm of the possible? And this really comes from a responsibility and regulation side of the house. Where are these ships likely to be flagged? does that country have a legitimate nuclear regulator that is able to responsibly give a licence for a reactor on a vessel and make sure that those licence conditions are being
met whilst out at sea? The thing is with commercial maritime, this is big companies that have large amounts of money and so they are willing to... to throw money at this problem to see how it can work and working with small modular reactor startups to get maritime small modular reactors that are suitable. There's interesting concepts about does the ship buy the reactor and keep it forever? Is it a leasing arrangement? What happens with fuel? So there's so many questions
out there. It is figuring out What is the most viable and most responsible way to do this? And it will impact the shipping industry significantly because it will mean that ships that are flagged in countries like Tuvalu that have great tax breaks actually don't have a nuclear industry and might not be suitable for a nuclear propelled ship. So there's a lot of effort going into understanding
the regulations and the challenges. once we've got that well understood, then I think it'll be pretty quick to get to a concept and operational state to do that because there is an impetus from the international commercial maritime to reduce their carbon emissions and their reliance on oil predominantly in their shipping because it costs them a lot of money and we're trying
to be greener. in how we approach things. I am curious about how the work that you're doing for NEMO might impact international regulations with regards to nuclear maritime. I do want to know what is the connection there? Do you put out information for international regulatory
authorities to consider? Yeah, so it's working with the IMO, the International Maritime Organization, who's responsible for all the laws and regulations out at sea, and in this case, also working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to make sure that they are also comfortable with the concept of this going forward. Because whilst the IAEA is not a regulator as such, like the IMO kind of is, it still needs to be... given the warm and fuzzies that this is responsible
use of nuclear technology. Because if you don't have the IAEA on board, then other states aren't going to follow, right? Yeah, they're a key stakeholder. They are a very key stakeholder. So it's really working with those two big organizations in the first instance to make sure that, hey, these
plans are suitable. and appropriate and manageable, because there will be safeguards elements to this that the IAEA will need to be deeply involved in and will change how they do safeguards in its current, I guess, land -based static facility kind of perspective. So it's working with them to make sure if everybody is comfortable with this conceptually, now how do we operationalise
it? I find it really exciting because I don't think there's many other industries, aviation is probably the only other one in the world that has such rigorous international regulatory requirements, that being able to impact that and influence that is quite exciting because hopefully we can see commercial maritime being done successfully
and peacefully into the future. I think that's a really, it'd be a great way to reduce operational costs of commercial shipping, which hopefully means things cost a little bit less to move around
the world. My thought is that we in Australia right now are thinking about how to manage visits from or more visits, I should say, from nuclear submarines, for instance, and we're thinking about things like what about how do we handle the waste that's going to be produced through the maintenance process, etc. If you're thinking about maritime nuclear and you're thinking about,
you know, doing that at a commercial scale. globally, are there things that countries need to be thinking about now with regards to preparing for that kind of shift? Yeah, definitely. I think countries that already have nuclear regulators and an industry need to be conscious that some of these regulations need to be reviewed and updated and working with the technology provider to make sure that they're working well together, not just very rigid, enforced
regulations. That will stifle the ability to grow this kind of industry. And I think we're going to learn a lot from the increase in visiting nuclear ships, developing our own... nuclear submarine capability that will force us to understand, OK, how do we regulate something at sea? And yes, this is from a defence context, and it will be very different to commercial. But we can learn those lessons and the challenges and put that into a maritime context, which I think is really
exciting for the Australian regulators. Hopefully our pans are as no. like that challenge, because this puts it clearly in their space, not in the defence regulator space, but it allows those regulators to work closely together, which is what we should see anyway from regulatory bodies in the nuclear space. Absolutely. So our PANZA is our civil safety regulator and ASNO is our... Well, they do both civil and defence security
and safeguards regulation. for those of you who are not across all of the acronyms in the school, there are many of them. Should get better at spelling out the acronyms. I almost feel like I should release a like cheat sheet with this
podcast sometimes. The lexicon. Well, there's one topic I wanted to specifically ask you about, but I do a lot of work on artificial intelligence and I do have conversations on a semi -regular basis about the increase in the availability of sensors and basically just information of all kinds that you can then combine and use both
for good and for not so good, let's say. I'm wondering how you think about the technologies that you might be using for tracking from that perspective, from the perspective of, well, they can be used for useful purposes for security. They can be used to help improve the safety and security of a system, but they can also be used problematically. And how do you think through that? Yeah, so I think there's lots of opportunities
for AI in the nuclear security space. Maybe not so much for operational facilities, but when we talk about decommissioned facilities or long -term waste and disposal sites, the ability to use sensors to track and alert and alarm when there is any change occurring within those sites or facilities. I think there's a really great way for AI to help do that, which reduces costs
to those sites. because often the largest cost to a disposal site or a decommissioned site that's sitting laying dormant is insecurity forces. And so any way that you can supplement human with some digital systems reduces the costs. And I think the technology is getting to a point where you can get some assurance that you are getting some decent output there. There are risks
and vulnerabilities, as you mentioned, too. that can be a way that a sophisticated threat actor can influence the information that's being fed to a response force or a security operation center. And so how do we ensure that those systems are being regularly checked and tested and not vulnerable
to external influences? I think that there is a way that we can we can nuance that and we can be a bit smart and there are some sites globally that I think will be really great case studies for us to be able to do that and test it with
the risk not being so extreme. I think we're a little way off doing that on operational sites where the material in use is quite spicy, I guess, as opposed to facilities where the material, like in a in a long -term disposal site, it is packaged in a way that makes it very difficult for someone to get their hands on the material they want. So it is really about just reducing access. And I think there are AI tools and systems that can be used to help. Probably part of that
security architecture. But again, this is shifting mindsets of regulators that you're not just laying out the templated security plan of a fence and a gun and a gate. you're doing something that's a bit more nuanced and the assurances might be a little bit different. And I don't think different is bad. I think that's actually great for us to evolve the capabilities. I find that quite
exciting. Yeah, it is. It's an interesting research problem in the sense that you're talking about assurance and there is an interplay between like the human actors within the facility that are charged with making sure that these facilities stay secure. and the AI tools that they might be using to do that. And I'm wondering, is that a discussion that is happening in your field
right now? Yeah, it is. It is. And we are looking a lot towards academia to see what's in the realm of the possible and potentially, could you have a fully autonomous, secured site that robotics could be the responders or different kind of sensors trigger different kind of responses and that the humans in the loop might be delayed for a really big response, but it gives them time to get their traps, whatever threat actor has got to that site through other mechanisms.
I think that is stuff we talk about and think about a lot. It is what country and facility is willing to take the plunge and do that. Unfortunately, I don't think it's Australia. I don't think the risk appetite is there. But I think there are some countries around Europe that would look to this as a viable thing to try. And as I was saying before, it would be on sites that are lower risk from an access to material perspective, like a waste site, like a decommissioned dormant
site. Well, we could do that and improve the concept. Because that's a big deterrent to threat actors as well. Who's not terrified of the rise of the robots? They're much scarier than human security forces. Yeah, why scarier? You can distract a human with something shiny. A robot doesn't
care about that. Let's go to Australia. I'm wondering, I mean, we've talked about the maritime case, but I'm wondering if given Australia's somewhat unique history with nuclear technologies, how engaged we are likely to be in these kinds of things. What roles do you think we should be playing in these conversations? So this is where I'm really torn because there are so many amazing
nuclear startups in Australia. We've got some clever people that are developing technologies for things like nuclear batteries, so maritime nuclear reactors, the fusion reactors. But they get to a point where they can no longer do their research and build their prototypes here in Australia due to our laws and legislations. And then we
lose them. They go offshore and they will take this technology and they will do that overseas, which is heartbreaking because we could be a really great player in the emerging tech space in nuclear globally and within our region. And what frustrates me from the nuclear security perspective is this is where we could understand some of the nuclear security challenges and help support our regional partners to lift their nuclear security as they take on some of these emerging
technologies. And I'll use small modular reactors as an example here. There are countries within our region, the Indo -Pacific region, that are seriously considering small modular reactors because it's perfect for them as island nations to help reduce their carbon emissions, but to just have electricity because a lot of them don't
have reliable electricity. So we could be a really great player in helping support that so that we can have strong nuclear security network around our region protecting Australia's borders too. But I think that some of our politics around nuclear technology really limits our ability
to do that, which is really unfortunate. And I'd like to see us to be a bit more active in that space because we already have the young talent creating these amazing emerging technologies that are understanding what this technology looks like that can help shape how we can secure that and do it responsibly within our region. So I think no matter what side of the fence people sit on for civilian power in Australia, that
doesn't matter. Our ability to use our clever people to help develop future nuclear technologies. is there we need to keep them and use that use that knowledge for good. It just breaks my heart when I meet these young people that are so excited and they get to a point and I've seen it with a couple of really great technologies and they go move overseas because that's the only way that they can get their technology off the ground.
It would be good if we could do a better job of I think raising awareness of the fact that they're There we can pretend that there is a hard border around Australia where we don't have to think about nuclear but as you said we have neighbors who are thinking about it we have in around the globe pledges to increase the use of nuclear and in other nations energy mix and they those those things can and likely will down the line impact us and Australia has a history
of playing a strong role in for instance the safeguards community and so How do you think we could move the needle on that in terms of how we see our involvement in that kind of work outside of small pockets who are already engaged
within Australian nuclear? Yeah, so I think it's remaining engaged in the safeguard space and the nuclear security space globally as these emerging technologies come out and being able to support our regional partners in setting up the right security and safeguards frameworks to do that. IAEA is really good at supporting safety cases around technology, but not necessarily as strong in supporting security and safeguards because as the external verification, they can't
really do that. It's hard to play both sides. But we could do that. We can support our regional partners because at the end of the day, it's about peaceful technology being used across the globe. We sometimes need to put our bias aside and support some of our neighbours so that they can benefit from peaceful nuclear. I mean, we've done it for 17 years with a research reactor. We have some really great lessons. It'd be a shame for us not to continue being engaged in
that space. Is there anything that you've been working on lately that you want to share with our listeners that maybe we haven't touched on yet? I guess the thing that excites me, and this is again my nerdy side playing out, is the role that potentially micro reactors could take around the globe for either small nation states or small mine sites. So I live in Western Australia. We have quite a large mining community. A lot of that community is still on. diesel -powered generators
or gas turbines. And I think what microreactors could do into the future is fascinating. That comes with its own security challenges. So this is the stuff that I kind of think about when I'm thinking about, hey, what's something that could be cool into the future here in WA? But how do you also ensure that it's being used responsibly? Because you're not going to have a staff of reactor operators. like running a shipping container
size reactor, that's just unrealistic. So that's something that I guess personally spend a bit of time thinking about and conceptualizing because I see it as something that's pretty cool and interesting, a bit different. Do you have a favorite microreactor pilot project or design project? So I've been watching Project Pele out of the US Army. for quite a while now. I find that fascinating and maybe it's because I've come from an army background because they've designed this for
deployable power and energy. You go to a place that's been devastated by a natural disaster and power is often a really big challenge. Rock up with it. shipping container that has a microreactor on there, and you've been able to power a whole city. Like, that's pretty cool. So Project Pelé is one that I've been watching, and that's predominantly looking at the Westinghouse -Evinci microreactor, which is pretty cool. The Koreans have a really cool one as well. Smart 100, I think, is what
they've named that. And there's a few I'm keeping an eye on. I like microreactors. I think they're really great. Well, we can put a link or two in the show notes for people to check those out. Is there anything else you wanted to say anything about? You can tell people a little bit about Women in Nuclear, for instance. We mentioned that. Yeah. So Women in Nuclear is a global organization of professionals that believe in diversity and
inclusion in the workforce. But it is an amazing network of professionals across all facets of nuclear and radiological technology. So as a bit of a nuclear tourist, if I want to travel somewhere, I'll reach out to one of my women in nuclear global friends and say, Hey, I'm coming here. Can we check this out? And it's an amazing network here in Australia. We have our own chapter women in nuclear Australia. We are across the
whole of Australia. I think less Tassie. I don't think we have a member in Tassie yet and we need to get one. Look at that. Yeah. You Tass must have some sort of nuclear program there. But we are a network of professionals of any gender that work in the nuclear industry. And what we try to do is encourage young people for nuclear careers through networking and role modeling.
And then for the rest of us that are just working in the industry is be able to have this amazing network of professionals to bounce ideas off to support one another. I think one of our most popular things we do is we have a newsletter every month and it has links to lots of different jobs and opportunities and we get access to various scholarships for short courses or activities. And so that's something we can provide our members. And it's free to join. You just jump on the website
and join. And I love it. It's my village. That's how I met you, Liz. We have lots of chats through Women in Nuclear and some of my closest friends are Women in Nuclear colleagues, because we can have great chats about everything from nuclear stuff through to having to deal with some really difficult individual in the workplace. Everyone needs a community that they can bring those things
to. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I will put a link to Women in Nuclear Australia also in the notes that go with this show so that you can go have a look. And if you are interested, you are also welcome to join. So thank you so much, Jazz. I really appreciated this conversation. I learned so much from you. And I'm really glad because I feel like I know a lot more about what you do now. And so I'll get to nerd out with you a bit more in future conversations. Awesome.
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