Nuclear Stages a Comeback

And just like nuclear got a bit more attention following the nineteen seventy three oil crisis, there are some parallels with how countries are talking about nuclear today in light of the volatility in the oil and natural gas markets. In the nineteen seventies, countries like France and Japan started to invest in nuclear, and today countries like Germany that have been much more focused on decommissioning nuclear as of late, are again discussing the potential that it has to produce

their reliance on oil and natural gas. So what many of us are wondering is will baseload power make a comeback, will it displace some of this flexible capacity that we've been using as of late, and will there be a nuclear renaissance and if there is, how might it look different?

This time? On today's show, we talk about a wide range of things happening in the nuclear industry, from potential technology breakthroughs with small nuclear power to geopolitical issues impacting the industry, and I wanted to know will there be enough uranium for an industry expansion should this happen? Well, we get to that, will the nuclear industry be able to ramp up quickly enough to alleviate the pressure caused

by commodities volatility? Well that too, so joining us today is Chris Gadomski, who is the lead nuclear analyst at b an e F. Those who want to read more of our analysis on nuclear and access our data, you can find it at the b NF research report Nuclear one h Market Outlook Unprecedented Opportunity, which is available for subscribers to download at b NF go on the Bloomberg terminal at b NF dot com, or on our mobile app.

As a reminder, b ANF does not provide investment or strategy advice, and we have a full disclaimer that's played at the very end of the show. Additionally, if you want to know when new switched on podcasts about the future of energy, transport and sustainability come out, well, make sure to subscribe to this show on whatever podcast player you're listening to us on now and now let's speak with Chris about nuclear power. Chris, thank you for joining

the show today. My pleasure. So we're here to talk about nuclear You're a resident nuclear expert at B andF, and things have been shifting more lately, I think in terms of sentiment and discussion, it's coming up all over again many times over. This is an established technology in the net zero carbon space that is discussed in spurts and starts. So why, in your opinion do you think that nuclear is very much back at the center of

the conversation. Well, there's a variety of reasons. We'll start with a whole net zero initiative that's going on around the world where people are looking for some options to complement the eppointment of renewable energy. And so my take is that net zero without fission or fusion is just

the conversation that involves a lot of hot air. So it is a very complementary technology to renewables, and I think that very important pathway to achieving that zero is to have nucular power in a variety of different technologies replacing the fossil fuels that are now a big part of the generation portfolio. Secondly, we were having an energy crisis in Europe and natural gas supplies are questionable for the foreseeable months, and people are looking at what types

of options that they can can look at. Germany has been contemplating more coal, if not relying more on coal, building more natural gas, and people are sort of asking, why are you going ahead and sort of tapping some very very high carbon sources of electricity when you still have several ginger lots of capacity online in Germany that can go head and be deployed beyond the scheduled closure in the second half of this year. And Thirdly, there's been a increase in the price of natural gas and

so now nuclear power is viewed to be competitive. And the perfect example of that is the recent legislation that's been passed in the United States in the Senate. Remains to be passed in the House, but we expect it to be passed in the House. Is that they're offering tax credits for nuclear provided that there is going to be a need for those nuclear power plants to rely in those tax credits to go ahead and realize or

become profitable. But I don't think that's going to be the case because the price of natural gas has gone so I in the in many markets in the US that those nuclear power plants will not need to have those production credit text credits to go ahead hand become profitable. Unlestie, there is a tremendous amount of innovation that has gone on in the energy sector. We've seen tremendous innovation and

we rule bowls. A less decade or so, we've seen the whole fracking revolution, and there's been very very little nuclear innovation. Now, however, we're starting to see nuclear innovation in the form of smaller reactors and advanced reactors that are changing in the discussion regarding the economics and safety and acceptability, social acceptability of this technology, as well as some new nuclear potentially coming online, not in the near term but at least being discussed. Is something we can

build in order to reduce dependency on natural gas. And you had some examples in the research note that actually you know, looked at it before getting on today that really highlighted that when nuclear power stations are shut down, oftentimes it's natural gas that actually fills that capacity in the background. At least immediately, maybe not necessarily in the

long term. So do you see new things being built given that you know some of the forecasts that we're looking at or showing that gas per this could remain high for a few years into the future. And is that enough time for new nuclear in Europe specifically or this is a real pain point. Do you think that there's enough I guess political will and even just time given how big these projects are for things to come

online order to meet that demand. Right, So, there's two categories of nuclear technology that we can broadly define, one being large giga watts size reactors. A perfect example would be the Hinkley Point see reactors. There one point six giga wats a piece that are being built presently and a decision has just been made by the UK to go ahead and move forward with the size well see reactor and we'll see if that actually transpires and goes forward.

And there are discussions elsewhere in Europe, for example Poland. Poland has a huge coal problem. They need to go ahead and decarbonize if they are going to remain a member of the EU and good standing, and they're looking at six to nine giggle watts of large reactors, and they're also looking at some advanced smaller reactors that are available on the order of three hundred megawatts or less,

and so they're examining two sides of the equation. If they go ahead and pursue the large reactors, we should see them perhaps come online sometime I would imagine in

the middle of the thirties. If they decide to go ahead with the smaller reactors, I think that there is enough momentum building for certain technologies that are available in the three hundred megawatt range that could allow them to deliver solutions closer to But one has to remember that nuclear power is unique, and that it's burdened with incredible regulatory oversight and safety concerns and social worries and political opposition.

So the pathway to commercial operation of a nuclear power plan, especially in a new market, is very, very poonged, and it's running a gauntlet to go ahead and get those reactors up and running. So there is promise long term, but I would iagine that I would be a little bit optimistic if I said that these technologies are going to be ready as to address the mediate concerns of the energy issues in the next two or three years, and recently nuclear was included in the EU Green taxonomy.

Do you think that that is a sign that people are warming to it or do you think it will give any bolster to the industry or is it maybe that's relevant. Of course, we're very pleased to see nuclear recognized for its carbon free attributes, and I think it's a very positive development. It would certainly be much worse if it did not receive that categorization. But when you think about building a nuclear power plant, there's there's two

separate components. There is a policy initiative which allout calls pushing of the technology through policy so that it sets the stage for for acceptance. Then the other side of the equation is of the market pull the market drive to go ahead and actually build nuclear power plants. And you need both. You need a market setting the stage through policy, and you also need recognition by utilities large industrials to say we need this type of carbon free

technology to execute appropriately. Are net zero strategies or carbon free strategies, And so it's a push and a pull. You can push a string, but it's much more effective if you pull a string. And therefore we're looking at market demand, market pull from the nations and utilities in Europe and around the world. I recognize how important it is to sort of balance their deployment of renewables complementary

with advanced nuclear technologies. Now you mentioned new projects and namely and let's let's start with Poland, which does have a lot of coal fired power stations and this could really help them decarbonize their grit But of those projects, there are a number of contracts in place with the company Rosatum, which is Russian based, and with current sanctions are there many other companies and I guess which companies are those that are kind of pullis to potentially take

over those sorts of contracts if they can't go ahead with their existing manufacturer. So ross Atom is the leading export of nuclear technology in the world. They have somewhat like thirty five projects reactors underdevelopment in their pipeline right now, in excess of approximately a hundred thirty billion dollars worth of orders. We've seen the first defection as a result of the war in the Ukraine and that has been Finland.

Finland was on schedule to go ahead and start construction of a Russian reactor in Hai Kibi and it has decided not to go forward. We've also seen some turmoil and one of Russia's big markets, which is Turkey. Turkey's building four reactors over there, and there's been some maneuvering going for where there where. Russia has changed one of its contractors from a Turkish subsidiary to a holy On Russian subsidiary, and that raises a lot of questions regarding

the progress of that construction built. They are supposed to have the first reactor operating next year, in three in recognition of the hundredth anniversary of the turkiship I'll look there. And finally, there is some activity going on in Egypt. Egypt just announced in the last two or three weeks

that they have started construction on their reactor. That reactor has been under construction, under development, or rather underdevelopment for several years, so now finally, allegedly first nuclear concrete has been poured, which signifies the start of the technology. But the question then remains who could fill some of the gaps if there are further questions about some of the other markets. Among the thirty five reactors that may or may not go forward, Russia has a good hold on

the nuclear market, international market. In India, they have built two reactors and they're building two more and planning two more after that, and so the a p R are also being considered by the Indian government to go ahead

and build those. But one has to ask the question is that the EPR reactors, along with the Westinghouse AP one thousand reactors, are the most expensive reactors in the world, and why would a country like Poland or a country like India decide to go ahead and build these most expensive nuclear technologies when there are other options that are perhaps less expensive, less risky that they may want to consider.

The Koreans offer a success story and that they built four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates very successfully. They're operating several of them, and their success story and perhaps they have demonstrated the ability of Korean companies who operate in a hostile environmentally hostile environments, very hot that desert, very very strenuous working conditions, but to deliver and build

on time and more or less on budget. That has not been the case with some of the Western vendors in France, Finland and the United States and now apparently also in the UK. Where that project to Hinkley See is running to some cost overruns. Part of it is to blame for COVID, but it's also that we've lost the large components of the workforce, many of whom have retired, and so we don't have the workforce that can go ahead and build out some of these technologies now for

a very short break stay with us. So you mentioned different countries, and I guess they would be then state owned companies that are involved in this, or they largely private companies that are filling I guess the other seventy percent of new build. Well, you have China, India, and Korea leading the charge to new nuclear construction the world right now, with perhaps just close to or more than

of the new reactors being built in the world. So there's a large participation of the state ownership in all those markets over there, and so I think it's probably a very very necessary component for building these large react there's around the world. That's not the case necessarily with the small reactors that are being developed and being commercialized by General Electric, Tachi, by Rose Royce, by Whole Tech, by New Scale, by terror Power, which is owned by

Bill Gates. So there's a lot of other private sector ventures that are offering smaller technology, less expensive technology in that the cost couple of billion as opposed to tens of billions, and perhaps provides an easier pathway to commercialization than some of the large reactors. Well, so let's talk about that. So you mentioned that small is potentially less expensive.

I mean, obviously the project for a small project in theory would be less expensive than for a big project, but the price per gig wad hour is it also lower? And is it competitive with other technologies like coal or dare I say, wind and solar? You know, what are some of the economic benefits and how much cheaper is small nuclear compared to some of these larger infrastructure projects.

We have tried to do some analysis on this, and we always run onto the same problem is that we don't have a hard case of a small module reactor or an advanced you can react to having the built and having very very good costs data on the construction of those things. So a lot of what the industry relies on is estimates from the manufacturers and vendors saying this is what the technology is going to cost. So we are a little bit wary of using them and

projecting how expensive they're going to be. But the general electric Tachi reactors are going to be competitive, we believe with the existing technologies, and it remains to be seen how effective they'll will be in actually building and constructing

and delivering these technologies, which are very promising. Development for that technology is that you have several utilities in Canada opting for that technology, and you have Poland interested in that technology, and other countries in Eastern Europe interested in that technology. And that suggests that you're building up a supply chain and the demand for that technology where that you will be able to reach enter a kind costs as opposed to first of a kind cost sooner than later.

And so that can's promised that maybe not the first one will be competitive, but certainly once they're after should be certainly competitor, but closely competitive to some of the existing technologies. Otherwise it's not a market for them to pursue. Do we have an idea for how long that they will take to come online. So there's a lot of talk about first reactors coming in a line on before

the turn of the decade. Those are very very optimistic in my personal opinion, but that's the goals have been set by the US government and the Canadian government to go ahead and reach that eight time frame to go ahead and deliver the first commercial reactors. I think that's optimistic, but I think shortly thereafter we should be able to

have those reactors. Now. Resumably, all the safety concerns and the policy you know, hoops that you mentioned that one must jump through in order to make sure to get these on the grid probably are not going to be reduced for the small to large. Is that a fair assumption, because you're still going to have these extended timelines for the policy arm of things to move through in order to be comfortable with all the safety checks on a project,

regardless of size. You know, we were operating in a post Fukushima environment for the last ten eleven years, and the regulatory bodies, the industry society has been very, very wary of new nuclear construction, existing operation of new nuclear construction, and we've seen several reactors closed, not necessarily for economic reasons, but also for political reasons and also perhaps for social

concerns and economics as well. So the nuclear industry needs to be on to the challenge that they need to go build advanced reactors that society is comfortable with with their safety and economic performance, and that they are an appropriate complement to replace the natural gas and fosil other fossil fuel technologies that society wants to depart in the context of a net zero aspirations and goals. So tell

me a bit. You mentioned reactors in North America, they're back being discussed and potentially brought online before and then recently there's been some big movement in the US, in particular the Inflation Reduction Act. Can you just quickly outline where nuclear falls in there, and you know what that might mean for this industry. The Inflation Reduction Act offers a production tax credit for the nuclear power plants that kicks in if the market rates for electricity are very

very low. We are seeing as a result of very high natural gas prices that the market rates should be significantly higher than when the ark a text of that bill, you know, figured out that this is the level where support will kick in. So I think that those a lot of the nuclear reactors will now operate in the black because of the higher naturally as prices which they're competing.

And so there's some hypothesis that there's going to be very very little production tax credit available to the nuclear power industry because they're now operating against competition which has much higher rates than they have historically in the past.

In the longer term, and and you know, you're welcome to pick whatever year you think he's appropriate, but in the medium to longer term, you know what percentage of overall energy do you think nuclear really will end up occupying, because we still do when thinking about decarbonizing the grid, thinking about even at low prices for solar and wind capacity, you still have to create backup options, be that gas, be that battery storage, and then maybe nuclear, maybe be

slow energy in there could provide some buffer for other clean technologies. Do you see kind of higher or low in terms of where you think nuclear might go? I think I get into the International Atomic Energy Agency provides low points high points, and there's a huge spread over there between the low point and high point of the future of nuclear, which I don't think is is very very helpful for utility planners to go ahead and understand

how nuclear may fit into their particular generation portfolio. There is a question I asked one time the chairman of the board of a major US utility which was a big coal burner, and I asked them what premium does. Is the utility willing to pay to diversify their generation portfolio. At the time, natural gas build out was all the rage, and you continue to build out natural gas, but then at one point you need to sort of say we're overweighted with natural gas and we need to consider another

type of technology just to bounce it. And in fact, if you continue to hold out all the natural gas because it was the cheapest option ten years ago or eight years ago, now you're in a troublesome situation because the price of natural gas has has dramatically increased. So there is going to be a place for lots of renewables, some fossil fuel, and some nuclear technology, whether it's fishing or fusion, to go ahead and bounce out of utilities portfolio.

And so I think that there is a place for nutritive play distinct role as a complement to renewables and efforts for utilities states countries to decarbonize their electric power sector. Just recently, we've had a very very promising development and that one of the u S advanced reactor companies has signed an agreement with Dow Chemical to go ahead and provide their technology to decarbonize some of the processes that that Dow Chemical has, for which Dow Chemical has a

very high carbon footprint. So now we're besides the utilities, were also seeing industrial companies saying, hey, listen, we need to decarbonize it, and we would like to serve embrace nuclear technology, advanced nucle technology, and we see this as a pathway to help us reduce our carbon footmen going forward.

So it's not only utilities where there's a market, but these smaller, safer nuclear power plants offer another opportunity for industrial scale decarbonization as well, which is a very very positive and interesting development that's just happened in the last few days. Okay, so you're saying, whether it be nuclear fission infusion, what do you mean by that? All the nuclear power plants that operate today are fission reactors where

they're splitting heavy metals. Okay, And there is in recent years increased interest in developing fusion technology, which is joining fusing together very light elements and reneleases four times as much energy as the fission process, and it has a lot of other advantages. You don't have the legacy spect fuel that you don't have meltdown, and so there's a lot of interest in that technology. And we've seen investment in private fusion companies in twenty nineteen and twenty hover

around three million dollars each year. In twenty one we saw that jump to two and a half billion dollars. And so we have philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, oil companies, of rody industrial companies looking at placing a bet on fusion technology because they think that it will have a role in power generation portfolios in the future as well.

Just in the last two weeks or so, we've had about seven hundred fifty million dollars committed to two different fusion companies, private fusing companies in the UK and in the US, and we anticipate this year at least a billion dollars of investment oft of the high of last year. But I may be very very conservative because there's a lot of momentum in fusion technology which could be a complement as well to the deployment of renewables around the world. So, Chris,

how long have you been covering nuclear. I've covered nuclear longer than I like to admit probably twenty years have been revolved in producing reports and research in nuclear markets. So in all that time, have you seen this level of interest in the fusion space. No. I think fusion the last few years has seen the tremendous uptick in

in in fusion space. And one of the advantages of fusion spaces that you can go onto and to visit several different fusion companies and see the reactors, see the prototypes, climb on them. And we have a tremendous amount of support from high net worth individuals. Companies that Goldman Sachs, Google, the Sovereign Well from Singapore, several other companies are all developing or pursuing an interest in fusion for for the future.

And it's promising because there are several different technological approaches to fusion. It's just not one type of tocomac energy. There's a lot of variety of approaches, different approaches, different technologies that can go ahead and deliver that, which is the sign of a very very healthy industry that there's lots of approaches and lots of capital starting to flow in and we anticipate that we'll see a steady stream

and fusion coming forward. Fusion is something that also is in a timeframe of some companies suggesting that they'll have something to show in the second half of this decade. But as far as my thinking is, it's probably before we'll see a viable commercial fusion reactor. I hope I'm wrong. I'm hoping it's easier. But it's a complex technology and there's a lot of mildstones yet to be accomplished and realized.

But momentum is there, the messer interests there, and it's something that represents some different advantages than fishing, for example, So it's something that's worthwhile pursuing and also has a role to play in the future. And with all of this financing behind it, is it ultimately a race towards a breakthrough technology that will end up being the dominant technology or do you think it will continue to be

a varied space. In terms of how fusion is a French from a tex standpoint, there's three different major avenues for development of fusion technology. There's the Eater facility, which I visited last week in the south of France, which has thirty two or thirty three countries involved in in collaboration to develop this technology, and it's a big, massive industrial project in the thirty billion dollar range, but it's

a research facility developing that. But this is a sort of international commitment to go ahead and develop this technology. Had to share the expertise with everyone who's involved. The second avenue is there's a lot of national programs that are being developed. The Koreans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the UK, the US all have national programs that are developing their specifically funded to go ahead and prove out fusion technology and learn from the lessons that will be deployed taken

away from the eater facility. And the third avenue and when that's probably most interesting is the private sector development and entrepreneurs, sovereign wealth funds, philanthropists, billionaires are all looking and spending money to commercialize these technologies, and the focus there is not so much on research, but the focus is on a commercial product with which to generate electricity.

So the combination of the three different avenues to commercialization of fusion technologies, where I think, is very very exciting and hopefully we'll have some very pleasant results in the years ahead to report. Before I pivot to another topic, is there anything else you wanted to say on fusion,

it's very, very challenging. But a lot of people describe it as the holy Grail of energy production, and I'm not saying that that's the case, but it is a very interesting technology, a very very challenging one, and I hope that all the companies and all the investors will be main focused so that they can deliver a commercially viable projects sooner than later. Now for a very short break, stay with us, So let's talk a little bit about uranium.

Stay on some of the costs here. There's been a fair amount of volatility in uranium, and we as a business do look at commodity prices as they really underpinned a lot of the industries that we're talking about in other respects. So it's you know, intrinsically linked what has been going on with uranium recently. So if you go back to the two thousand five or so, uranium was

trading close to a hundred fifty dollars a pound. That was following the passage of the Energy Policy Act of two thousan five in the US, which provided some incentives for nuclear power, and at the time there was a lot of financial speculation interest in the market and drove

up the price significantly higher. And then came along came Fukushima, and Fukushima sort of tanked the market because everybody is now worried that nuclear power is going to be out as a result of this, this few terrible accident over there.

In the meantime, though, before Fukushima happened and after the high price in two and five period, there was a tremendous amount of increase in uranium and many many companies started additional mining efforts, started new mines, increased production of mines. And so what happened in two thousand eleven when the demand for uranium slowed significantly in the prospect of new bill tempered somewhat, you had a lot of production that was coming online. So the rannium market was oversupplied. Since

two thousand and eleven. Many of the Japanese utilities, for example, were on a taker pay contracts, so they had contracted from long term uranium purchases, but they weren't operating the nuclear power plants. You went from fifty four nuclear power plants operating in Japan on March one, two thousand and eleven two none of them operating a year later, and so they still had to buy and commit to the

purchasing that uranium. So you had an oversupply campac in the marketplace which has been sort of now winded down, and it drove down the price of uranium to less than thirty dollars at the beginning of one. In the middle of one, we saw some financial speculation interest come into the marketplace and made some long term purchases of uranium for inspeculative basis, and that drove the price up to nearly fifty bucks in them in the middle of

October of last year. It traded back and forth between fifty and forty bucks for the next several months, and then with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, uranium spiked

and went up to nearly over sixty dollars. And that was a recognition that perhaps because of all the energy sanctions that were being talked about, there was some anticipation among financial investors that, you know, uranium would be a good commodity to hold onto for the future because we anticipate that this war could drive a lot of interest in purchasing, deployment of more nuclear reactors and consumption of uranium.

That fell fifth the middle of April till below fifty dollars and it's traded in arrange in the high fordis ever since then at I saw earlier today, And so there is a increase doubling of the price uranium over the last year, but it's not as high as it was a couple of months ago. New minds are coming online. There is going to be more demand for uranium coming forward.

But it's a very interesting market to follow, and I'm sort of surprised that it's more or less had gone back and forth in the high forties for a while, but that makes sense because more uranium markets minds are coming online and production is increasing and inventories have been reduced.

There was a significant amount of uncovered demand for uranium, meaning that utilities did not buy the uranium that they needed to buy prior to the war in Ukraine, and so that provided the impetus for for higher uranium prices and to miss them among uranium producers. That there's going to be some hope and improve conditions for the uranium

producers and miners around the world. Quite possibly a basic question, but how difficult is it to extract this three uranium and essentially you know, with maintaining a supply and demand bonds. Let's say small scale nuclear goes really well and actually these projects end up taking off at some point in the next couple of decades, Is it possible that we will have enough uranium or are there very limited supplies? Now?

I don't think that there is concerned that there's not going to be enough uranium to supply the immediate needs of the nuclear power industry in the foreseeable future. Some of the advanced reactive technology is much more efficient in burning up the uranium and therefore will use uranium more efficiently, so they'll have more electrical generation for the same amount of uranium has started in the fuel. So I think in the near term there is perhaps rightfully so will

be increased in the price of uranium. But electricity generated from natural gas is dependent from the price of the natural gas. The price of nuclear power electricity is dependent perhaps maybe a ten to fourteen on the price of uranium. So we can upstand una an increase in the price of uranium without having a dramastically negative effect on the price of We're not going to near term gonna be

running out of uranium. And secondly, one has to recognize that, whereas the price of nuclear generated electricity so ending a bit like the way we began. But instead of focusing in on why everyone else is talking about nuclear what are some of the things that stand out to you. One of the most important things that I see right now happening the market is really very interesting, is the

sea change in the public perception of nuclear power. You have three stalwarth states nations in Germany, California, and Japan, which were very much opposed to nuclear power, and we're seeing to see that opposition to the nuclear power of being sort of reduced or shell for the time being. Whether or not it's a permanent or temporary situation, it's

hard to say. Germany, in the wake of Fukushima, was committed to closing all of its nuclear power plants by two In our analysis we suggested that he will continue to go ahead and close those reactors at the end of this year, but there's been a tremendous amount of opposition to doing so because they are safe and we can continue using them and they'll help reduce the burden of the higher electricity prices on the German people by

keeping them operating for a while. If you have a situation where those reactors are in fact allowed to operate beyond the end of two it's a sea change in the thinking going on in in Germany and that all of a sudden, we need to have these reactors to hedge against the crisis of the higher energy prices. And a good energy policy involves not only delivering clean energy, but delivering clean energy at a recental price, and nuclear can play a very very effective role in doing so.

Situation in California is very much the same, where there was a political decision and close the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants, the last two nuclear power plants in the state of California, and it was done because the decision was made perhaps politically, I don't think so economically, but decision was made to close those nuclear power plants and

to go all in on renewables and other technologies. And so now there's a lot of um question marks because there's been policy coming from the US government suggesting that will provide some funds for those utilities who operate nuclear power plants who are thinking about perhaps closing them. And that's a very significant anti nuclear state which perhaps has going to rethink the use of nuclear power, not only for power generation but also for desalination of water. That

plans for that nuclear plant only two reactors. Their initial plans were for six reactors, one of which was entirely

going to be dedicated for desalination. And in Japan you went from fifty four reactors to zero reactors to about ten operating reactors, nine or ten operating reactors now and they're being burdened tremendously by the high natural gas prices, and so there is an effort to go ahead and speed the return of several of those reactors to generating electricity to put less pressure on the pricing of electricity

in the country in Japan. So those are three markets which are pretty much against nuclear power, which are now softening their their stance on that. If you go back a year, the Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York was closed down, and I'll put from the nuclear our plant is larger, being replaced by natural gas. And we can see now that the price of natural gas has gone through the roof, making the price of electricity for people in the New York Metropolitanaria Horse who

are customers of content has increased significantly. And that's not good energy policy to have such a large jump, Plus the emissions are gone up significantly as well. Just this morning, in the middle of a heat wave in New York, there were announcements that there's perhaps brownouts in parts of Brooklyn. They're going to exist today in the n plus heat

that it's going through the area. I think people are starting to realize that nuclear has a role to play and electrical power generation in certain markets or in many markets,

and we just see a lot of interest there. So this for a variety of reasons, net zero aspirations, COP twenty six war in Ukraine, high natural gas prices, mustering, the hot summer, All of these things are are combined timing to get people to consider that perhaps, you know, we should not throw new europe technologies out the window

because they have a role to play. Of course, beyond the things that we've already addressed today, and what are some of the other things that are happening in the industry that you just want to make sure that everyone knows about. One of the things that the nuclear industry has to respond to this unprecedented opportunity that exists in

front of it right now. The nuclear industry has fumbled the ball on a few occasions, and there are several examples in the US and in Europe that the construction time to build the nuclear power plants in the US approaching over ten years, and the actual start and stopping of a to eight one thousand projects in South Carolina a few years back. I mean, the perception of the nuclear power industry has is that they can't build and manage large projects effectively, and that the label that's a

placed on nuclear powers that they're uneconomic. You know, in Europe you have projects that are under construction since two thousand five. In Finland that reactors just come online. Still some operating challenges there. In France, they started building that reactor, their e p R in two thousand and seven, there's still a year or two away from getting that operating. And so none of these reactors have um good solve economic performance associated with their construction. That is something that

the nuclear power industry needs to change. The cost of generating of building nuclear power plants is much lower in a place like China because they built six and them at a time at one location, and they have a train workforce and they can very effectively deliver significantly less expensive nuclear power. That has to change in the Western Europe and in the United States. We need to proceed and build nuclear power plants and deliver them in generate

electricity without the economic nightmare labor attached to them. And that's a very very important thing. And I think that the new technologies represents several safety advantages. They're smaller, some of them don't operate with pressure vessel because they're operating on one atmosphere, and so therefore that it makes a lot of sense for some of these reactors to to go ahead and deliver and and displace some of the coal technology that is that is still operating in this country.

So it's a viable pathway going forward. The nuclear industry has to respond and rise to the occasion deliver, and until they do so, then they'll have this very negative connotation applied to them. And we have seen more coal flary power stations come on as a result of the really high natural gas prices at the moment. And do you think that that is ultimately the real displacement opportunity

for nuclear in the space that it occupies. I think that in the compronization of the electrical power sector in the United States, and Europe is going to require replacing the baseload technology that is now currently supplied by coal plants and natural gas plan and I think that that's the opportunity, the sweet spot for the nuclear power industry

to address in the power generation sector. Providing industrial process heat to industry is another sweet spot for the nuclear power industry to go ahead and address, and we're already seeing some developments with Dow Chemical partnering with x Energy to go ahead and deliver products to allow for nuclear

industrial processing to in order to decarbonize. And there's also a lot of talk of using nuclear to produce hydrogen, and that's something that may make some sense in certain specific areas industrial complexes where the physical requirements of storing

and transporting hydrogen do not become prohibitively expensive. So if you can have a nuclear power plant produce the hydrogen and deliver it quickly to the market without extensive storage and transport costs, it also makes a lot of opportunities for there. So nuclear technology is a very very technology.

There's a lot of power in the atom and splitting the atom, fusing atoms, and so it's something that is it's a very technology and it has issues like many other technologies has issues, and the nuclear industry has to sort of rebrand itself to certain extent, saying that we not only have a carbon free technology, but we have a carbon free technology that employs a lot of people,

that is safe and can compliment the increasing deployment of renewables. So, Chris, thank you so much for coming and getting us up to speed on so many different things that are happening all over the world in the nuclear space. And I know each one of these you could probably spend an hour show drilling down on. So thank you for taking us through this crash course and sharing with us today right well, happy to do so at any time. Today's episode of Switched On was edited by Rex Warner of

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