The Atomic Show: Recent Episodes
Rod Adams - Atomic Insights
The Atomic Show Podcast includes interviews, roundtable discussions and atomic geeks all centered around the idea that nuclear energy is an amazing boon for human society.
The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is best known for its nuclear engineering and pioneering reactor testing programs. Somewhat lesser known is the Lab’s cutting edge research in all other energy sources including wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, biomass and batteries.
The Energy and Environment, Science & Technology (EES&T) Directorate, one of five directorates at the Lab, focuses its research on understanding available energy sources and melding them into coherent and maximally effective systems. The Directorate’s R&D programs seek to take advantage of the special characteristics each energy source adds to the mix.
Dr. Shannon Bragg-Sitton is INL’s Associate Laboratory Director in charge of the EES&T. She is a nuclear engineer by education and experience who initially focused on what she refers to as “nano-reactors.” Those devices, the smallest of which are no bigger than a kitchen trash can, are designed to serve space applications, either as planetary – or Lunar – power supplies or as propulsion sources.
During our conversation, Shannon described her career trajectory from being a student to working at NASA to being a professor at Texas A&M focused on space nuclear power. She described moving to the Idaho National Laboratory as a way to broaden her technical and leadership scope. She mentioned how that move was partially motivated by the challenge of being a tenure track professor while also having three “very young” children.
At INL, she branched out from her special interest in very small reactors and eventually found herself in charge of a division that developed concepts for micro grids that incorporate a wide variety of power sources in ways that maximized effectiveness and economy while still ensuring continuing reliability. She learned to appreciate the value and contributions from non nuclear power sources while never losing her passion for nuclear energy and its capabilities.
Her career advice boils down to a set of recommendations for young professionals:
- Maintain a questioning attitude,
- Be open to new opportunities,
- Be willing to get outside of their comfort zone
- Be able to adapt in the face of changing circumstances.
Aside: Shannon has a special interest in the development of young professionals in the nuclear industry. When we first met, she was part of a group of seven passionate professionals who were founding a group they called NA-YGN – North American Young Generation in Nuclear. At the time, the industry organizations were dominated by people in the north of 45 category. NA-YGN was aimed at people who were 35 or younger, but they made an exception for a 40+ blogger who shared their passion. End Aside.
We talked about the utility of energy storage, both in the form of electrical energy stored in a chemical battery and thermal energy stored in a system like the molten salt tanks associated with TerraPower’s Natrium power plant. We talked a bit about the rapid successes being achieved in micro reactors as part of the Reactor Pilot Program and we also talked about the way that a number of exiting developments at INL are helping to contribute to a growing economy in Idaho Falls.
As a long-time resident of Idaho Falls, Shannon expressed mixed emotions about the increased traffic and higher costs of living associated with new activities at INL, but came down on the side of being happy about the economic development. She also spoke passionately about Idaho as a wonderful place to live and to raise a family, especially if you like activities like hiking and camping.
You’ll enjoy the show.
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) was born in 1949 as the National Reactor Testing Station after the Atomic Energy Commission decided they needed a place to test controlled nuclear fission power systems. Before being taken over by the AEC, the land was controlled and used by the U.S. Navy to test refurbished weapons, up to and including the 16″ guns carried by battleships.
After a five decade long hiatus in building new reactors while also implementing a significant level of diversification into other research areas, the INL is regaining strength in its original purpose as a place to test and demonstrate complete nuclear reactor power plants. (The term “plant” is not really applicable to micro-reactors, but it will serve as a general term for now.)
This time through, the design, approval, construction and testing programs are not being led by a federal monopoly called the Atomic Energy Commission. It is not focused on developing reactors that can be used to test the ideas of scientists who don’t really care if anyone wants to buy the system they are developing.
Instead, the reactor development efforts underway and in planning for the future are more cooperative, distributed and commercially driven.
Josh Gillespie is the Chief Operating Officer of the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC). He visited the Atomic Show to talk about NRIC and its role in helping the Nuclear Renaissance gain traction and success.
NRIC was created in 2019 as a result of directives and authorizations contained in the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA). Its purpose is to build bridges that enable private sector organizations to work with national laboratory scientists and physical resources to cross the “valley of death” between good ideas and commercially viable products. It is tasked with preparing facilities to serve as test beds for new reactor development and testing and to develop sites where new facilities can be built.
Though it can be a challenge for any government organization – like a national lab – NRIC has been tasked to be able to operate at the speed of a start-up. It is taking strides in that direction, though it is still limited in speed by the federal government budget cycle.
Josh described how NRIC is working closely with the Department of Energy Idaho Operations Office which is directly responsible for the DOE 1271 authorization process for both reactors and supporting facilities – like those that are in the fuel supply chain or involved in radioactive materials testing and evaluation.
NRIC helps private sector companies develop their plans, find suitable facilities, prepare required submittals and engage in readiness reviews. NRIC’s reach extends beyond the boundaries of the Idaho National Laboratory; has been contracted to support several of the Reactor Pilot Program developers that have built or are building their reactors in Texas or Utah.
Josh described DOME as the crowning jewel of NRICs facilities. It once served as the containment dome for the highly successful but prematurely retired Experimental Breeder Reactor II, the remains of which are encased in concrete and grout in the basement and foundations of the existing facility. DOME is designed to be able to host a test reactor that might be exercised to its limits while still preventing any release of radioactive materials. Radiant Nuclear was selected as the first tenant of the DOME. It is scheduled to complete its operational testing and to remove its equipment from the facility in a year to make room for the next tenant.
Top shield covering Antares Mark-0 in RACE facilityNRIC played an important role in the success of the Reactor Pilot Program. It helped to find and repurpose facilities for Antares (RACE – Reactor and Criticality Experiment), Deployable Energy (NRAD – Neutron Radiography Reactor)
Aside: Bit of INL Trivia – The building that is now RACE housed the Army’s ML-1 reactor development program from the late 1950s until the program was ended in 1964. End Aside.
Josh described NRIC’s role in the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad as similar to that of a subdivision developer. A 2,000 acre plot has been allocated. NRIC is responsible for developing basic infrastructure, including roads and common utility systems. It will arrange for site characterization studies in preparation for environmental assessments. Private sector developers will lease their sites and contract for any additional services desired from an available menu. These include additional security and fire services.
There will be similar services offered to developers who are building on sites that are not INL; that part of the program is called Launch Pad – USA.
Josh is an Idaho native who is happy to be involved in creating a winning partnership between private sector companies and government/national lab organizations. He believes that the new developments will help Idaho National Lab continue to thrive and lead in nuclear energy development. He is excited about helping to deploy abundant sources of clean electricity and heat that will contribute to a bright future for Idaho, the U.S. and the rest of the world.
You’ll enjoy this show. Listen carefully and comment via X if desired.
MARVEL, a creative acronym meaning Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation, is a trail blazing reactor development program designed to help the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the nuclear industry remember how to build and operate small nuclear reactors for testing and demonstration. The program was initiated in 2020 and has created many opportunities to learn and improve.
The current MARVEL program lead, Dr. Abdalla Abou-Jaoude, joined me for Atomic Show #348 to talk about the program and its historic accomplishments. Even though the MARVEL reactor has not yet been completed, he and his team – both superiors and subordinates – consider the program to be a research and development success story.
MARVEL is a micro reactor designed to produce 85 kilowatts of thermal energy. Using Stirling engines, it will be able to produce approximately 20 kilowatts of electricity. That’s about the same generating capacity as a whole house generator for a 4,000 square foot American suburban home.
The reactor uses uranium-zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel rods with uranium enriched to less than 20% U-235 (HALEU). They are similar to those used in Triga research reactors. The reactor coolant is NaK (sodium potassium eutectic) that is naturally circulated through the reactor core and the system heat exchangers.
The early system design concept included directly-connected Stirling engines to convert reactor heat to electricity. That configuration was proven to be unworkable during a non nuclear thermal testing program called PCAT – Primary Coolant Apparatus Test. The Stirling engines vibrated enough to put the rest of the system at risk of rapid deterioration, so the design was changed to include a secondary, non radioactive NaK loop that then transferred its heat to a tertiary molten salt loop.
This choice allows the Stirling engines and the heat conversion system to be placed outside of the building. That design change had the added benefit of making it easier to use the MARVEL reactor system to test various direct heat applications; with the directly mounted engines, it would have been difficult to extract any product other than electricity.
A major benefit of a government funded research and development program like MARVEL is that it can provide widely accessible lessons learned. For a variety of commercial reasons, private sector programs are less likely to share what they have learned from their mistakes or dead end choices.
Private sector participants can be hesitant to be the first to move, especially in a field where everyone knows that the existing government approval process is a major barrier that needs to be improved. A government funded program has the ability to approach and overcome the barriers without incurring the risk that they are simply making the path easier and smoother for their competitors. The cliche “don’t fight city hall” applies; it’s a somewhat easier battle when you are part of the city hall machinery.
Abdalla explained how the MARVEL program leaders are happy to see how later projects are moving more quickly and even passing it to reach certain key development milestones. MARVEL leaders feel like they did their job by helping to exercise and improve the processes of review and approval. The program has also helped to give dozens of engineers more experience in the process of moving component and system designs off of computer screens and into real life fabrication.
Numerous entities from universities, governments and the private sector are queuing up to use MARVEL to test various concepts for taking advantage of nuclear fission heat. Some of the potential uses include desalination (especially produced water from oil and gas wells), hydrogen production, micro grids, remote operations and training AI for reactor control.
MARVEL is currently scheduled to achieve dry criticality in 2026. It should achieve full power operations in 2028. It is classified as a non capitalized asset, which limits its projected operating life to about 2 years. It has sufficient fuel to last longer if the decision is made to extend it past the two year point. Even if it operates a little longer, the plan is still to have it reach the decommissioning phase quickly enough to serve as a barrier breaker for that important life cycle phase.
You are sure to enjoy the show and to learn something in the process.
The U.S. military has a strong and growing interest in using small and micro nuclear reactors as a means of reducing logistics challenges and improving operational resilience. They like nuclear reactors for their ability to operate independently of the grid for years without needing any new fuel. Almost as important is their ability to be designed to retain byproducts and reduce heat signatures for improved stealth.
Dr. Jeff Waksman Is the U.S. Army’s go-to guy for pioneering nuclear energy projects. Though no military-related project can be completed by a single person, program success often rests on the effective leadership provided by a singularly skilled leader who combines organization, inspiration and deep knowledge of how to get things done in a purposely hierarchical system.
Before his current role for the Army, Waksman led Project Pele – the military’s first micro-reactor project in 50+ years – for the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office. He did well enough at that assignment to have been selected to lead a more expansive program to finally deliver nuclear fission capabilities to bases and units that need clean, reliable power that comes with a low logistics burden.
Fission’s characteristics are nothing new and the military’s interest dates to the earliest days of nuclear energy. The political, environmental and strategic situation has changed enough in the 50 years since the Army’s Nuclear Power development program was effectively cancelled to stimulate new efforts to address the economic and technical challenges that were never solved during the 1960s and 70s.
Waksman’s current role has the mouthful title of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (PDASA) for Installations, Energy and Environment (IE&E). Though only one of his responsibilities, he is the Army’s point person for a subsequent reactor development program called Project Janus.
Dr. Waksman joined me on Atomic Show #347 to discuss the lessons taught by Project Pele and to provide insights on how those lessons are being incorporated into subsequent programs, both civilian and military. We covered a variety of topics, including:
- Reasons why he was picked to lead Project Pele
- Direction provided to the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office regarding program outcomes
- Focus on building systems that work in the real world instead of just more models
- Challenges of fitting inside tightly constrained boundaries (C-17 transport plane)
- Limiting components – not surprisingly, it was the heat exchanger that transferred reactor heat from the coolant gas to the power conversion system
- Importance of balance of plant compared to reactor
- Streamlining Department of Energy approval process
- Economic value of competition
- Economic trade-offs with the potential to make TRISO a more economic fuel than other options
- Project Pele’s influence on Reactor Pilot Program
- Project Janus goals and status
- Stretch goal timeline that includes the first operating reactor supplying a military base by the end of 2028
- Expansion of the project beyond the Army to the Air Force and possibly the Navy
- Unquantified description of the possible magnitude of military reactor program
- Desire for military reactor program to stimulate a larger commercial reactor market
I learned a lot from the show. Dr. Waksman shares valuable experience, including ways to avoid some of the bruises that came with leading the first-of-a-kind project for a modern transportable nuclear reactor and the U.S.’s first nuclear project development project in decades. I hope this show will influence those who follow so that they can make their own mistakes instead of repeating those that have already been made and documented.
Shine Technologies is a unique nuclear fusion company.
The conventional path for nuclear fusion projects is to raise and spend billions of dollars and decades of research and development in efforts to successfully find a path over, around or through the technical barriers that have prevented nuclear fusion from becoming a large scale energy production source.
Until relatively recently, that path was almost completely dependent on government grants. In cases like the ITER – International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor – the effort has involved tens of billions of dollars (current estimate is $25 B), thousands of scientists, engineers, constructors and technicians and a construction schedule that stretches out over 29 years. The funding partnership includes six individual countries plus the European Union, which is supplying approximately 45% of the budget. Parts and materials for the project are being supplied by 35 different countries.
Greg Piefer, Shine Technologies CEO and Founder, chose a different path. He is a technical expert and fusion researcher who was inspired by the same dreams of unlimited fusion energy that drive others to study and work in the field, but he also has a commercial side that knows that investors, even governments, do not have the patience and the depth of resources needed to undertake and successfully complete projects whose characteristics are similar to ITER and don’t produce profits along the way.
He knew several known ways to stimulate and control a nuclear fusion reaction. The equipment used to produce those reactions doesn’t work fast enough to produce the energy needed to sustain the reaction and have enough left over to capture and sell to a commercial energy market. They are useful devices for teaching researchers about fusion and they are precise and reliable neutron generators for valuable tasks like remote logging of the materials in oil and gas wells.
Piefer’s valuable insight was that neutrons from fusion had special characteristics that could produce commercial value long before the equipment could produce energy at a competitive cost. He and the team that he inspired became convinced that they could create a sustainable path to commercial fusion energy by building, using and refining equipment and techniques that use fusion to produce neutrons for successively larger markets that require ever lower unit costs.
They established a four phase development program that remains their guiding development strategy. The first phase sells precise testing and measuring services that use Shine neutron generators where the neutrons supply their material penetrating power. Unlike the gamma rays used in conventional radiography – X-rays for materials and equipment – neutrons penetrate dense materials and are scattered by light elements. The critical nature of the components that benefit from neutron imaging leads customers to pay extraordinary prices for Shine’s specialized services. The neutrons produced by Shine’s imaging fusion devices sell for $100,000 – $1,000,000 per kilowatt-hour of energy released – which is a calculated metric derived from fusion reactions per second per dollar. (Those numbers do not have any misplaced zeros.)
The second phase, with a far larger Total Addressable Market (TAM), is medical radioisotope production. Using a process of continuous refinement and practice, Shine has been able to improve its devices to the point where they can profitably enter the market with neutrons that cost the equivalent of $100 per kWh (a factor of 1000 improvement over the first phase) that can be reduced to $20/kWh as the process is scaled up using their NRC licensed Chrysalis facility. That facility, located in Janesville, WI, was carefully sited next door to a regional airport that enables Shine’s medical isotopes to be rapidly delivered throughout the United States and competitively delivered almost anywhere.
Chrysalis is expected to be completed within the next two years. As Piefer describes during our conversation, it will be the highest capacity isotope production facility in the world. Piefer also described the invested effort that gives Shine the ability to produce isotopes that meet the stringent purity requirements for medical applications. The company’s radio chemistry skills are being exercised every day as they are already shipping isotopes created in a smaller facility.
The third step, which is still in the R&D phase is to use more capable Shine fusion devices that can produce neutrons for about $1/kWh to help recycle used nuclear fuel. During the conversation, we spent quite a bit of time talking about how this application will work. There are some nuances that are worth hearing.
The fourth step in the plan is to produce clean energy with a target price for neutrons of about $0.01-$0.02/kWh. That is the dream and the application that unlocks a TAM measured in the trillions of dollars.
Here is the company’s distillation of their four phase plan:
The framework: value per kilowatt-hour of fusion output
SHINE force-ranks fusion markets by unit economics, not market size — starting with the customers who pay the most per unit of fusion output, and using each market as commercial practice to drive costs down for the next. The metric: fusion reactions per second per dollar, a proxy for cost per kilowatt-hour.
The cost curve, by the numbers
- >$1,000,000 per kWh — what one deployed SHINE fusion system is worth to its customer: it scans every nuclear fuel rod the customer manufactures, and hasn’t skipped a beat since deployment.
- ~$100,000 per kWh — typical value in the testing market (e.g., neutron imaging of F-35 turbine blade cooling channels that only neutrons can see).
- ~$100 per kWh — where SHINE had to get costs to make medical isotope production work.
- ~$20 per kWh — expected for Chrysalis at full capacity, coming online in the next 18–24 months.
- ~$1 per kWh — the target for spent fuel recycling, feasible because the business stacks four revenue streams: recycling service fees, recycled uranium/plutonium fuel, separated isotopes, and electricity sold at market rates.
- 10–20¢ per kWh — typical value of electricity, the final market. From recycling, SHINE estimates roughly a factor of 10 remains to put pure fusion energy economically on the grid.
Disclosure: Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of Atomic Insights, is an investor in Shine Technologies. We believe their vision and their execution elevates their commercial prospects above a number of companies whose primary selling point is an attractive, but distant dream.
Deployable Energy is a young company with a guiding principle. They believe that nuclear energy should be a product, not a project. Founded in 2025 after a period of intensive study and design work, the company has developed a product branded as the Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB).
It’s a 1 MWe (3 MWth) micro reactor whose general features arise from a unique combination of nuclear fuel, reactor coolant and neutron moderator. The choices the company made arise from a desire to move fast using materials that are affordable and available for use today. That criteria requires the materials to be in commercial service from suppliers that can provide a price list or firm quote given delivery terms and conditions. Where appropriate, it also means that the materials are qualified for use in nuclear reactors and for exposure to neutron and gamma flux.
Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB) Steps of Utah Capitol Salt Lake CityUNB designers determined that they would use regular fuel – uranium enriched to < 5% U-235 and in the form of uranium dioxide (UO2) in sintered pellets mass manufactured by an established vendor. Zirconium alloy tubes separate the fuel from the coolant and moderator and retain fission products that might be released by the ceramic UO2 pellets during and after operation. The heat transfer fluid, more frequently referred to as reactor coolant, is inert helium gas that is blown through the core at high velocity and a pressure of approximately 50 bar (~725 psi). The neutron moderator is water at atmospheric pressure and a temperature that is roughly equal to residential hot water.
The reactor vessel that is needed to contain the chosen combination of functional core materials is small enough and light enough to be transported in the back of a short-bed American pick-up truck with a crew cab.
A full nuclear heat source system with transportation level shielding will fit into a 20 foot shipping container with a mass of about 20 tons. The additional shielding and physical protection layers added on site will add another 40 tons to the nuclear heat source portion of the system.
The system will be shielded with sufficient materials to reduce neutron and gamma radiation to below regulatory standards both during and after operation.
The pressurized helium will transfer the heat generated in the reactor to heat exchanger(s) where either water or supercritical CO2 will pick up the helium’s heat for either steam or hot sCO2 production. Steam or sCO2 will go to the balance of plant, which will be housed in a 40 foot transportation container. Depending on application, hot fluids can be used in industrial applications or used to turn turbine generators. The ultimate heat sink is the atmosphere with air coolers mounted on top of the balance of plant container. Many of Deployable Energy’s target customers and applications value low water use.
Unity Battery conceptual layoutKnowing that permissions required for construction, manufacturing, transportation and operating are key milestones, Deployable Energy began its pre-application engagement with the NRC in October 2025, within months of its corporate founding.
The company also began engaging with the Department of Energy regarding its initial demonstration unit. It wasn’t ready to compete for the Reactor Pilot Program, but it was one of four companies selected for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, which is the DOE’s follow-on to the foundational Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program. Deployable Energy plans to catch up to the Reactor Pilot Program participants and achieve initial criticality by July 4, 2026.
To learn more about Deployable Energy and their Unity Nuclear Battery, I talked with Bobby Gallagher, Deployable Energy’s CEO and Chief Technical Officer. Bobby’s background in the Australian military, oil and gas, shipbuilding, offshore development and successful technology start-up founder might seem to be a rather odd path towards designing a product using a nuclear fission heat source, but he explains how he arrived at his current position rather well.
During our discussion, Bobby described the decision criteria and process used to determine the UNB’s final combination of fuel, heat transfer fluid and moderator. He provided some of the historical background from other nuclear reactor designs that inspired the decisions.
But more of our conversation’s content was on the company’s choices related to manufacturing and deployment. We talked about Deployable Energy’s choice to put the center of its operations in Houston, Texas where the local manufacturing base for vessels, tanks, valves, tubes, skids, and other key components is well established and has been honed and expanded during the past several decades of world-leading “unconventional” oil and gas development.
Houston is an energy town with a deep understanding of the value and risks associated with providing power to the population. The city’s residents know how to manufacture, build and heavy equipment and they know how to create and finance innovative companies.
We had a fascinating conversation. I’m confident that you will learn something by listening to the show at least once. We no longer accept comments here for a number of reasons, but you can ask questions and make comments to @atomicrod on X.
There are few industries in the world that have a greater need for skilled communications than the nuclear industry. It’s a challenging technology to understand and to explain to those who are not really interested in the nitty gritty details. There is a significant portion of the industry that believes in silently going about its tasks, partly because there are so many parts of the field that are classified. The influence of the Silent Service is deep and wide within the nuclear sector.
There is a growing group that has a different point of view. They bring originality and experiences from outside of nuclear and are not constrained by the traditional tactics. Those newcomers aren’t starting from scratch, however. There are some experienced communicators who also have valuable thoughts and ideas that they are willing to share.
Jarret Adams, the founder of Full On Communications, has been professionally explaining the nuclear industry for more than
two decades. He has experienced and supported the ups while also figuring out how to respond and adapt to the downs.He started his career as a business journalist. He learned about the nuclear industry during a stint with the Nuclear Energy Institute. While there, he learned the value and the promise of nuclear energy and chose to realign his career to support and defend what was, at the time, a bruised sector with exciting potential for growth and for making positive contributions to humanity.
He took advantage of his facility with the French language as he moved over to Areva, which had ambitious plans for international growth during the first phase of the nuclear renaissance that continues today.
As prospects for immediate growth diminished as an extended period of low cost natural gas was combined with strongly negative public perceptions caused by the widely publicized damage at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Jarret departed from Areva to become the Communications Director in the UAE for an international public relations firm. He was part of the program that enabled the UAE to expeditiously create a capable nuclear industry where there wasn’t one before.
Following his time in the UAE, Jarret founded Full On Communications to provide services to a broader and more diverse set of customers in the nuclear industry.
We discussed the importance of story telling, the value of purchased media time to enable companies to tell their own stories and the importance of techniques like press releases to keep the public, the press and investors informed about both progress and hurdles.
Full On Communications recently celebrated its 10th Anniversary. Jarret and his team have contributed to many of the initiatives and actions that have combined to dramatically change the future prospects for nuclear energy development. They look forward to many more years of growth as the next stage of the nuclear renaissance continues to emerge.
Aalo Atomics is a three year old company that is focused on designing, manufacturing and deploying nuclear reactors. Their stated goal is to achieve an electricity production cost of less than $0.03 (3 cents) per kilowatt hour.
It’s moving fast. It built a 40,000 ft² pilot scale manufacturing plant in Austin, TX in just one year.
It plans to achieve initial criticality for Aalo-X, its first commercial scale reactor, in July 2026. That’s less than four months from now. The facility at the Idaho National Laboratory is completed, the reactor and primary systems have been installed. The reactor fuel is being manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuels in Wilmington, NC.
The few remaining steps include the Department of Energy’s issuance of the final Documented Safety Analysis, fuel receipt and fuel loading.
For many inside and outside the nuclear industry, Aalo’s pace seems to be almost impossible. Even for those who believe it is possible for nuclear systems to be designed, reviewed, licensed and constructed far faster than ever before, the accomplishments approach the incredible stage.
For Atomic Show #343, Yasir Arafat, Aalo’s co-founder and Chief Technical Officer enthusiastically shares his company’s story. He tells us how the company and its products were designed and manufactured with efficiency, ease and availability at the center of decision making.
The company also decided at a very early stage that it would do everything in its power to manufacture and assemble its machines, taking control of its own destiny wherever possible. He bragged – rightfully so – about the company’s ability to attract exceptional employees, stating their belief that a superstar can be as much as 10 times more productive than an average employee.
He described how the company has avoided adding management layers, saying that the team they have assembled does not need anyone to manage their performance.
He emphasized that Aalo had assembled a strong network of suppliers with shared motives that help to make the vision achievable. Raw materials, sensors, wiring harnesses and many other parts that aren’t at the top of mind are best purchased rather than built in house.
During the discussion, Yasir told stories from his 15-year career as a reactor design engineer at Westinghouse and Idaho National Laboratory that helped to shape his technical and managerial decision making. It’s evident that he has done a lot of personal “lesson learning” and is now applying those learnings with a high performing team.
Aalo’s inspiring vision and milestone execution track record have attracted a strong and growing number of risk-accepting investors. Nucleation Capital, the parent company of Atomic Insights and the Atomic Show podcast, has been one of those investors from a very early stage in the company.
LIS Technologies (LIST) is a young company with deep historical roots. CRISLA (Condensation Repression Isotope Selective Laser Activation), its laser isotope separation concept was developed and tested during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the leadership of Dr. Jeff Eerkens. Unfortunately, the path towards commercializing the technology hit a multi-decade detour as the result of terrible timing and a slow analytical process.
At the same time that the CRISLA development effort began producing intriguing results, there was a major effort to consume excess enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons complex. The solution was to convert that material into fuel so that it could be consumed in U.S. nuclear power plants.
The enriched uranium consumption program, known as “Megatons to Megawatts“, arguably made the world safer and provided significant benefits to American electricity consumers. Megatons to Megawatts also flooded the world’s enriched uranium market and eliminated investor interest in improving existing processes.
The CRISLA project was halted.
Just before the project was abruptly cancelled, the development team conducted several test runs and sent the produced samples out to be tested. The team was disbanded before the results came back. When they were finally available, they were filed in a place that wasn’t accessible to the development team. More than 20 years after the 1993 tests were conducted Jeff Eerkens, the team leader, learned that the technology that he and his team had built worked far better than they realized.
Christo Liebenberg, the current LIST President, visited the Atomic Show to share a more complete version of the above story. He tells us just how much better the enrichment results were compared to all other alternatives. He helps explain the importance and implications if successful commercial development can be achieved.
He explains how the equipment from the 1990s test was stored and recovered and he describes the success efforts to restore and improve the low pressure CO lasers at the heart of the system. He explains how LIST was formed and how it attracted the attention of Jay Yu, its Chairman, CEO, co-founder and initial investor.
Christo’s resume seems to have been designed to prepare him for the role of leading a laser isotope separation company. This is quoted from the LIST web site team page.
Mr Liebenberg started his career in the 1980’s at the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa where he later spearheaded the optimization of enrichment parameters of the Molecular Laser Isotope Separation (MLIS) process. By the end of the 1990’s his journey led him to Australia where he later joined Silex Systems Ltd as their Laser Manager, and continued this role at Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) in Wilmington, NC where he played a key role in the architecture of the Test Loop Facility. In 2012 he joined the research team at ASML where he was intricately involved with the R&D of state-of-the-art CO2 laser systems to generate EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet), used today to manufacture modern semiconductor chips.
We talked about the changes in the enrichment market and its growing need for both technological improvement and additional production capacity. The situation is far different today compared to what existed at the time CRISLA was initially shelved.
We ended our conversation with a personal inspiration story about Jeff Eerkens, the father of laser isotope enrichment. The great news is that he has lived long enough to participate in the process of developing his inventions.
I have no doubt that you will find this show to be informative and entertaining.
Ho Nieh, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, visited the Atomic Show for a wide ranging discussion about the agency, its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy, the importance of its mission to the energy future of the United States, the benefits of having organization led by a five person commission of decision makers and the ways in which the NRC is evolving to better serve the needs of the United States in an era of rapid technological change.
Chairman Nieh’s father worked as a nuclear qualified welder. His experiences during spring and fall outages were part of the inspiration for Nieh’s decision to pursue a career in nuclear engineering. He studied marine engineering at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy. That major was the closest thing to a nuclear engineering program available at the sometimes overlooked 5th service academy.
Chairman Nieh at Aalo Atomics Pilot factory – March 2026
(Used with permission from USNRC)Aside: (Everyone remembers the Military Academy, the Naval Academy (my personal favorite) and the Air Force Academy. Many know about the Coast Guard Academy. It’s less common to recall that the Merchant Marines play a vital role in the defense establishment and that they have their own service academy. End Aside.
Chairman Nieh told us about how he started his nuclear career as an instructor/operator at the S8G prototype at the Navy’s prototype site in West Milton, NY. He spent more than 4 years as a shift worker at the facility, likely having contact with 16 or more classes of trainees in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. After four plus years on rotating shifts, he was open to a suggestion from a former colleague to apply for a job as a resident inspector with the NRC. (Chairman Nieh is the first NRC Commissioner to have served as a resident inspector.)
At his service academy, Nieh was trained to seek roles of increasing responsibility where he could put his leadership training to its most effective use. His career on the NRC staff contains abundant evidence of choices made to deepen and broaden his capabilities as a leader in a complex and vital field.
Chairman Nieh described his appreciation of the skills, work ethic and depth of experience of his four fellow commissioners. It’s almost de rigueur for NRC commissioners to praise the collegiality of their Commission, but it sounded like he was describing an especially useful version of that descriptor is applicable to the current group.
We spoke about the agency’s evolving understanding of its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy and its growing understanding that the guiding language on that topic has always been included in Article 1 of the Atomic Energy Act. He acknowledged that there have been past leaders on the Commission and on the staff who felt that enabling was too “promotional” and wasn’t part of the NRC’s mission.
We spoke about the NRC’s very recent release of 10 CFR Part 53, the long-anticipated, new licensing framework whose creation was directed by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act of 2019. Though analysis of the final, 701-page rule is still in progress, the early returns show that it has generally succeeded in becoming a risk-informed, performance-based, technology-inclusive framework for designing and licensing new nuclear reactors.
Though the rule is still under review and the draft has not yet been made public, the Chairman Nieh described how NRC is close to completing another assigned task, this one directed by Executive Order 14300. The Commission is reconsidering the use of the linear, no threshold (LNT) radiation protection model and the associated regulatory requirement to take action to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), even when the doses involved are already many multiples below the regulatory limit.
Chairman Nieh emphasized that the agency is maintaining its historic independence and that there are no external forces that are going to detract it from its role in maintaining safety. He also describes how keeping reactors safe does not mean preventing them from being built and operated. The nation needs abundant, affordable, reliable, clean power. It needs nuclear plants that can be built on time and within budget and a regulator that will not inhibit the accomplishment of the goal for safe and abundant nuclear energy.
I think you will enjoy the show.
Energy is Life begins with an alternative timeline – Zion Lights describes what her life would be like if her parents had not made the decision to emigrate from their village in India to become factor workers in the burgeoning Manchester manufacturing area before she was born.
It’s a sobering and enlightening depiction of the daily struggle for sustenance and survival in a place that is plagued with dire energy poverty.
During her education and early career, Zion was deeply embedded in the environmental movement and accepted many of its tenants. But as she repeatedly heard her colleagues and associates idealize simple existence and express a desire to return to the land and the traditional ways, she began to ask hard questions. Did they have any idea what it was like for those people who were still living on the land using traditional, primitive technologies?
Her path of asking hard questions and looking for the best scientifically supportable answers to those questions soon led her to become a closeted nuclear energy supporter. She learned how useful the technology was, especially as a way to provide abundant energy while virtually eliminating immediately harmful air pollution and climate changing emissions. But she still traveled in the environmental circles and was sure that she would be ostracized if she openly expressed her conclusions.
She tested that thesis several times and received the response that she expected. One of her colleagues once asked “you aren’t pro-nuclear are you?”
At a key point in her journey of discovery she was employed as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, an aggressive antinuclear NGO taking direct action to capture the public’s attention. Its illogical but unfortunately common position was to be both opposed to emission-free nuclear energy while also focused on fighting climate change. After finding herself in situations where her choice was to speak truthfully or to do her assigned job, she left the antinuclear group to become a pronuclear advocate, speaker and author.
We talked about her life trajectory, her recent book, and her pursuit of an abundant future where all people have access to the energy resources that give them agency and enable them to flourish.
I expect that you will enjoy this episode.
Abandoned uranium mine waste has been a big deal for decades, but almost no one had an inkling about what we should do to solve the problem. The scale of the challenge is huge, with various estimates ranging between 1 and 8 billion tons of uranium mining waste rock spread over more than 10,000 sites, nearly all of which are in western states and Native American sovereign nations. The Navajo Nation is the jurisdiction with the biggest burden – a substantial portion of the waste is on Navajo lands and spread over 500 or more sites.
Some have dismissed or minimized the problem by pointing to the relatively low material concentrations and the low radiation doses emitted. But low concentrations multiplied by tens of millions of tons and thousands of sites calculates to distressingly large numbers. It’s also important to remember that the contaminating minerals of concern are heavy metals that might be lightly radioactive, but they also have a level of chemical toxicity that also causes negative health impacts on humans and animals.
Though billions of dollars have been allocated for cleaning up the waste piles, there hasn’t been much progress because the available solution set has been limited to on-site burial in engineered landfills or moving the material “somewhere else.”
The landfill option doesn’t remove the potential threat to groundwater and the barriers are designed to last about 100 years. The vast majority of the contaminating minerals will still be there after the designed barriers have deteriorated. There has been little or no success in finding suitable or agreeable places to take the waste and even if there were, the mass of material means that most of the available clean up funds would be consumed in transportation.
Not surprisingly, there has not been a shortage of large established contracting companies willing to be paid tens of millions of dollars to study the issue and move some dirt around.
Enter John Lee and Greyson Buckingham, a pair of innovative entrepreneurs. They recognized the scale of the problem and the importance of effective solutions. They developed a patented technology called High Pressure Slurry Ablation that separates the contaminating minerals – mostly uranium and radium 226 – from sand and rock and concentrates those minerals into about 20% of the mass of the input stream. The clean fraction can meet stringent NRC unrestricted release criteria while the fraction containing the minerals will have a high enough concentration to turn a pile of contaminated material into valuable ore.
John Lee, with deep experience and education in mining and materials processing, developed the initial idea for HPSA. Greyson Buckingham added his legal training, business acumen and political experience. They formed a company called Disa Technologies in 2018 and patiently began the process of refining their ideas into useful and reliable machinery. Additionally, they entered into a plodding process of obtaining permission to deploy their problem-solving technology in an environmentally beneficial and cost effective manner.
Starting with a state regulatory engagement in 2018, Disa Technologies was recently – September 30, 2025 – awarded a service provider’s license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That license comes with a significant, but reasonably achievable condition to demonstrate HPSA on a commercial scale before entering into wide deployment of multiple units. Though it took about half a decade of staff engagement and Commission decision-making to determine the proper licensing framework, the NRC was able to review Disa’s service provider license application in six months (March–September 2025).
During the regulatory engagement process, Disa Technologies developed strong alliances with political representatives from affected states, with leaders among the Native American nations and with communities that have been seeking solutions to the waste issue for decades. They also produced solid scientific evidence of the efficacy of their inventions and demonstrated it to the satisfaction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The saga is fascinating. For Atomic Show #339, I spoke with Greyson Buckingham about his company, its technology, the importance of cleaning up abandoned uranium mine (AUM) waste, the utility of HPSA in processing other critical mineral ores, the sometimes frustrating interactions with the NRC during period from 2020-2024 and the refreshingly competent and mission-oriented NRC that has been evolving during the past year.
Neither I nor Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights, have any financial interest in Disa as of January 5, 2025, the date that this post and the associated audio recording are released.
Oklo is rapidly becoming a household name, at least among households with members who pay attention to energy industry developments and/or the headliners in the financial press.
Oklo is in the process of designing and permitting a family of small modular reactors that it plans to own and operate to produce electricity, heat and isotopes that it will sell to its end customers under long term power purchase agreements (PPA).
The specific type of SMR that Oklo has chosen as the one with the best chance to economically meet its needs as a power and heat producer – over the long haul – is a liquid sodium cooled, fast neutron reactor designed to closely match the features and performance of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). That impressively successful demonstration reactor, which produced about 20 MWe, ran reliably for 30 years (1964-1994).
Oklo has stated that it intends to produce 15, 50 and 75 MWe versions of the system in order to best meet the needs of the customers it is aiming to serve.
An integral part of the Oklo vision is to recycle used nuclear fuel, the material that is often referred to as spent nuclear fuel or even “nuclear waste.” The fact that the material still contains about 90-95% of its initial potential energy is finally becoming common knowledge. Oklo believes that fast spectrum reactors are the technology that is best suited for converting used fuel materials into useful energy, and it also believes that affordably recycling fuel is essential to meeting its long term economic projections.
Architectural rendering of an Oklo Powerhouse – Used with permission from OkloPart of Oklo’s business model is focusing on community acceptance for its powerhouses. They are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to the point where Oklo powerhouse images are often used to illustrate articles about advanced nuclear energy that focus on other companies. The company has talked about designing the stations to be community gathering places and also talked about beneficially using waste heat for purposes like heating swimming pools or district heating systems.
For Atomic Show #338, I spoke with Craig Bealmear, Oklo’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Craig described his 30-year background in the energy industry, mostly working in finance and accounting for BP. He spent most of his career in their marketing arm selling gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to large customers, but also ran several commercial enterprises within the company.
We discussed Oklo’s experience as one of three publicly traded pure plays in advanced nuclear energy during a period when excitement about nuclear energy hit an inflection point and dramatically increased demand for a commodity in very short supply. (Note: The supply of publicly traded pure plays in nuclear has recently doubled, creating a situation that is testing the strength of the demand for those companies.)
We spoke about the company’s vision, its business model and the way that its business model drove the selection of liquid metal fast spectrum reactors. Oklo’s founders – Jake and Caroline DeWitt – were attracted to their ability to operate at near atmospheric pressure while achieving high enough temperatures to create steam at the conditions used by modern Rankine Cycle steam plants. They believed that characteristic, along with the impressive results of EBR-II passive safety tests, will allow them to reduce the portion of their systems that are classified as safety-related. Sodium has been proven to be chemically compatible with stainless steel over a long period of high temperature operation, a characteristic with cost reduction potential.
Of course, we also had to talk about the design and operating provisions needed to mitigate and minimize the impact of sodium’s well known chemical reactions with water and moist air. That characteristic requires almost as much attention to keeping the primary coolant system leak tight and reliably separated from the clean steam site of the plant as has always been invested in pressurized water reactors. Low pressures make fabrication of the primary coolant pressure boundary for sodium cooled reactors a little less challenging than it is for very high pressure water.
Early in its development, Oklo invested a substantial amount of time recovering data from the EBR-II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. Craig and I talked about the value that quality testing and design data and how Oklo’s investment in organizing, understanding and using that data gives it a valuable head start compared to others who also have access to the government’s results.
During its decade+ period of operation, Oklo has developed strong relations with the Department of Energy and its national labs. It has recently announced several partnerships with others that are interested in fuel recycling, uranium enrichment and fast spectrum/liquid metal cooled reactors. It is interested in the potential for supplying – or buying – materials and components when it is mutually beneficial.
As the CFO, Craig is working to mitigate some of the concerns he has with the “asset-intensive” nature of Oklo’s build, own and operate business model. We talked about several paths that Oklo might pursue to reduce the capital requirements.
Though Oklo has been interacting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2016, it is planning to take advantage of a recently reinvigorated capability for the Department of Energy to authorize the construction, operation and testing of pilot reactors. We spoke about DOE authorization as an interim step that can speed the process while enabling a later relicensing by the NRC for commercial operation. Oklo’s long term plan is to use repeated COLs under Part 52 with reactors manufactured under a manufacturing license.
We also talked about Atomic Alchemy and how the acquisition of that company fits Oklo’s future plans.
Counting Atomic Alchemy’s VIPER reactor, Oklo has three reactors in the DOE’s recently announced Reactor Pilot Program. The other two are Aurora-INL and Pluto. Aurora-INL is a 15 MWe version of Oklo’s powerhouse design while VIPER is a reactor that is optimized to produce high-demand isotopes. Very little information has been released about Pluto, but the project name offers a hint about one of its major design characteristics.
The company is actively pursuing all three reactor projects, but they intend to push hardest on one of the three to achieve critical operations by July 4, 2026. Kiewit is serving as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the Aurora-INL project.
One of the final topics we discussed was the company’s employee base. Oklo employs more than 200 people and has 45 openings listed on its job board. Either Jake or Caroline interviews every potential hire before they are added to the team.
We ran out of time before we could discuss topics like the manufacturing facility plans, the current progress of recycling efforts or the politics involved in moving the US away from the 50-year old de facto policy of avoiding fuel recycling.
Disclosure: My wife and I have a small position in Oklo. As Nov 19, 2025, It represents less than 1% of our net worth.
NexGen Energy is a uranium mining company that is nearing the end of a long transition from a successful exploration entity to a uranium producing company.
The company is in the final stages of hearings and approvals needed from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to allow it to begin constructing the mine infrastructure for its Rook 1 project. In a term that might be familiar to petroleum energy geologists, Rook 1 is a supergiant resource.
Aside: In the petroleum business, a supergiant field is one that contains at least 5 billion barrels of oil. There are more than 250 million pounds of uranium in the measured and indicated mineral resources in the Rook 1 project. Google’s Gemini says that one million pounds of natural uranium contains 31 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). It follows that 250 million pounds contains more than 7.5 billion BOE. End Aside.
The ore in the Arrow deposit part of Rook 1 has an exceedingly rare uranium concentration that is as high as 69% uranium oxide. On average, the deposit measures out at well over 3%.
Leigh Curyer, NexGen’s founder and CEO, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his company’s successful and continuing exploration program. We talked about the growing need for uranium fuel as the nuclear energy market expands, the tightness in the current supply chain and the impacts of a new production source that is planning to supply between 22% and 25% of the current annual uranium supply.
Curyer spoke about NexGen’s investments in planning and engineering a mine that balances the needs for profitable extraction, minimum environmental impacts and maximum community benefits. He described the company’s strategy of remediating impacts as the mining continues so that there is less to do once the mine closes.
If you are interested in uranium mining or if you are concerned about the sustainability of nuclear energy in terms of ensuring an adequate fuel supply, you will find this to be a fascinating conversation.
Dr. Hash Hashemian has been an inspiring leader in the nuclear industry for half a century. He was recently inaugurated as the President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) after serving for a year as the Vice President/President Elect.
His company, AMS Corporation, provides key services and products to nearly every nuclear power plant in the United States and a growing portion of those located outside of the United States. He founded AMS with a partner in 1977 and became the sole owner in 1986. Even though it is a relatively small company with an average head count of 100 people, AMS maintains a strong research and development organization. AMS employees, including Dr. Hashemian, have published hundreds of papers in academic journals and produced a significant body of original research.
Hash is a nuclear energy industry expert with an enormous breadth and depth of experience.
On this episode of the Atomic Show, we skimmed over a sampling of his knowledge of the industry. We talked about his visions and plans for the next year as the President of ANS, his view of the future of nuclear energy and our slightly differing views of the role that the government should play in getting a nuclear power plant building effort off of the ground.
We discussed Dr. Hashemian’s successful, inspiring effort to obtain not one, not two, but three PhD’s over a 10 year period while running a business and raising a family. Besides his incredible work ethic, he shared another tactic – he devoted the hours of 9:00 pm to 2:00 am to study each day during that decade.
Dr. Hashemian is a proud graduate of the University of Tennessee. His business is headquartered in Knoxville, not far from Oak Ridge. He is an active member of the East Tennessee nuclear industry, which currently includes 156 companies. We talked about Tennessee’s leadership within the industry, the investments that the state is making in maintaining its leadership and the special advantages of having Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 and legacy defense-related nuclear sites that are being cleaned and leveled. These sites provide large tracts of land that are available to nuclear-focused companies at attractive prices.
Colleges and universities in East Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and Roane State Community College are academic assets that are training engineers and technicians in fields relevant to the nuclear industry.
Dr. Hashemian reminded us that states like Texas and Virginia are also racing to be nuclear industry leaders.
We took advantage of Dr. Hashemian’s special knowledge of nuclear power plant instrumentation and control systems to discuss the reasons why the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet almost exclusively still uses analog protection and alarm systems.
We talked about some of the changing I & C needs for advanced reactors and the usefulness of a wide variety of sizes and configurations for nuclear energy facilities. Dr. Hashemian is a believer in an “all of the nuclear plant sizes above” catalog.
Dr. Hashemian also shared his nuclear energy origin story. Like several other prominent nuclear industry leaders, he grew up in Iran during the period when it was still ruled by the Shah of Iran. Throughout almost all of the 1970s, the Shah was pursuing a plan to build 20 large nuclear power plants to provide electricity to his rapidly modernizing country.
That plan was openly aimed at reducing Iran’s domestic oil and gas consumption so that more of those valuable products could be exported into the world market.
Aside: As Atomic Insights has said many times, nuclear fission heat can replace other sources of thermal energy including oil, gas and coal. That gives those whose wealth and power is sourced from combustion fuels a powerful incentive to shape public and political attitudes about their most capable competitive technology. End Aside.
The Shah’s government supported thousands of students – including Hash Hashemian – in programs to study nuclear science and engineering and other related fields in some of the best universities in the world. The expectation was that those student would return to Iran and help develop the Shah’s expansive nuclear power program.
After the Shah was overthrown, some of the students returned to Iran, but many – like Dr. Hashemian – chose to remain in the United States and build their lives and careers here.
Those enterprising, hard-working immigrants – first generation Americans – continue to play an important role in nuclear energy development. The second generation is also contributing their skills, work ethic and intellect.
You’ll enjoy this show. We’re sure of it.
Now a word from our sponsor.
As you’ll hear during the show, there is an intensifying interest in building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world. Customers are clamoring for power sources that are clean, abundant, reliable and affordable. Only nuclear energy has the potential to meet those criteria without regard to prevailing weather or geography.
The challenging, but addressable criteria is “affordable”. Some customers have needs that are so immediate, they are willing to pay a premium and even invest in product development.
Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of this show, is also investing in emerging companies – aka entrepreneurial ventures – that are developing technologies, processes and supporting systems designed to lower cost and reduce schedules. Nucleation Capital Fund I is structured to allow accredited investors – people with either $1 M of investable assets or $200 K in annual income – to become limited partners (LPs) and invest a portion of their portfolio in advanced nuclear energy ventures. The general partners in the fund invest alongside the LPs, giving them a strong vested interest in picking winners from a growing list of exciting customers.
If you’re interested in joining the journey, seizing the opportunity for strong returns and helping nuclear energy to develop, please visit the Nucleation Capital web site or contact us directly.
Blue Wave AI Labs has been creating and supplying artificial intelligence tools – mainly in the form of machine learning – to operating nuclear power plants since 2016. Their initial set of tools focused on improving boiling water reactor core reload designs.
The company was formed to address the chosen problem because it was a time consuming – aka expensive – data-driven task with a large number of variables, each with a significant amount of uncertainty that was mitigated by inserting large margins. Though operating with those large margins provided safety and operational reliability, the extra margins led to increased costs/reduced revenues in the form of higher than necessary enrichments, shorter refueling cycles and/or operating at a lower than rated power.
Jonathan Nistor is Blue Wave AI’s chief operating officer and one of its early employees. During his visit to the Atomic Show he provided a lot of deep technical details about addressing the challenges of designing BWR core reloads and also provided some insights into new directions that AI (artificial intelligence, not to be confused with Atomic Insights) can take to improve the operating efficiency of nuclear power plants.
We also talked extensively about the potential for AI to address difficult and time consuming documentation and review tasks that require reliable access to cited reference material, a comprehensive understanding of plant license basis and the requirements associated with license applications for both changes to operating reactors and initial license applications for new, advanced reactors.
We talked about the way that suppliers like Blue Wave AI meet the requirements for cyber security and how they protect their clients’s data for both security and proprietary reasons.
We also discussed the current state of acceptance for AI tools from the point of view of nuclear licensees and the regulators that oversee the industry.
This episode is a bit more technical than usual, so it should appeal to the hardcore geeks in the audience. But it’s also accessible to anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the challenges facing the operating fleet and the assistance that the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence can provide.
It’s important to point out that the nuclear industry is interested in AI tools that help humans do their job better, not in tools that result in machines driven by codes to make decisions that humans should be making.
Enjoy the show.
Standard Nuclear emerged from the start-up stealth mode in early June 2025 with the announcement of successfully raising $42 million from a group of venture capitalist led by Decisive Point with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Washington Harbour Partners, Welara, Fundomo and Crucible Capital.
Though Standard Nuclear is young enough to have a single page web site, it owns and operates the largest TRISO – tristructural isotopic – fuel production facility in the world outside of China. That facility was purchased during the Chapter 11 reorganization of Ultra Safe Nuclear (USNC), a formerly sprawling advanced nuclear company that outran its financing. Along with the facility, its equipment, land and operating procedures, Standard Nuclear acquired a fully functioning, dedicated team of TRISO nuclear fuel specialists.
As described in a June 11, 2025 article in the Wall Street Journal, the fuel manufacturing team at Standard Nuclear was so committed to the vision of becoming a globally important fuel supplier to the advanced nuclear sector that many of them worked for months without pay to keep their facility operational and sale-ready during the USNC bankruptcy proceedings.
Dr. Kurt Terrani, CEO of Standard Nuclear, is our guest for Atomic Show #333. We discuss his personal trajectory in becoming one of the world’s leading technical experts on TRISO fuel production and then becoming the corporate leader of one of the world’s leading TRISO fuel manufacturing companies.
TRISO particles with hand to show scaleKurt told us how the Standard Nuclear team began working together at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) program (funded by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.) The fuel development segment of that program both preceded and superseded the larger AGR program. In a rare example of long term, consistent planning supported by reasonably consistent funding, the TRISO fuel development and testing program was sustained through completion for nearly 20 years (2002-2021).
One output of the program was NREG-2246 – Fuel Qualification for Advanced Reactors – that provides license applicants that use TRISO in their design a standard path to analyze the fuel form to prove it meets radioactive retention barrier requirements for their particular design under projected operating and accident conditions.
We talked about the paradigm-shifting nature of building nuclear power systems where the radioactive material is retained in the fuel material at all anticipated reactor temperatures during normal operation or accident conditions. When license applicants earn NRC approval using NUREG-2246, their reactors are viewed as achieving functional containment that greatly lessens the boundary and safety system requirements for their complete nuclear heat source system.
With expensive fuel and reduced capital investment, nuclear cost accounts might shift to be something closer to those more commonly associated with natural gas fired turbines (either Rankine steam cycles or Brayton gas cycles). For TRISO reactors, nuclear becomes a fuel-dominated business. Nuclear energy designers recognize this shift and have been developing power systems that can economically respond to load changes to reduce fuel consumption during low demand/low price periods.
Terrani provides insights on TRISO fuel construction and on the processes required to produce the fuel to meet the stringent requirements. He describes the modular nature of the fabrication line and the methods used to maximize productive capacity for each line and the way that enterprise capacity is expanded to meet customer demand. We talk about the coating improvement paths and TRISO’s ability to use a variety of enrichments and fissile materials in the coated particles.
We discuss how the nearly infinite variations can introduce market and engineering challenges.
Terrani uses the analogy of automobiles and gasoline to illustrate his vision of many different brands of TRISO-based reactors using a limited menu of interchangeable fuel particles. Standard Nuclear”s name calls back to the time when John D. Rockefeller recognized that oil products would find larger markets if they were standardized so that equipment manufacturers could focus on their equipment with the confidence that there was a reliable supply of fuel with predictable characteristics.
That doesn’t mean that Standard Nuclear intends to produce only one kind of fuel, but it does mean that the company is working with as many developers as possible to create standards and prevent a high cost situation where every reactor line needs its own unique fuel. With standardization, TRISO fuels become a commodity whose costs steadily decline as billions to trillions of particles are produced.
If you are interested in the current state of TRISO manufacturing development and in the story of a dedicated team with a vision, you will enjoy this show.
Copenhagen Atomics is an ambitious Danish company with a bold, potentially world-changing vision. They’re driven by a goal of manufacturing one reactor per day from a high quality, certified factory. If they achieve that goal, they would be adding an additional 37 GW/year of heat to the global energy supply. They want to help make affordable, reliable, clean and abundant energy available to everyone on the planet.
Thomas Jam Pedersen is a co-founder and the CEO of Copenhagen Atomics. He recently visited the Atomic Show to describe his company, its history, its vision and its technology. He provided a wealth of information during a lengthy conversation and also shared a brief about the company, its facilities, its potential markets and the physical fabrication and testing units.
The company was founded by a group of four Danish engineers and businessmen with a complimentary set of valuable skills and experience. They were each “bitten by the thorium bug” through individual research starting in the late 2000s. They came to the decision to start a company about ten years ago through a series of meetings at Copenhagen bars and restaurants.
Copenhagen Atomics is developing a molten salt reactor that uses a kickstarter actinide fuel (U-233, U-235 or Pu-239) along with a thorium blanket and heavy water moderator to produce 100 MW of heat. The nuclear heat source system – including pumps, tanks, pipes, valves and the proprietary “onion core” reactor – fits into a standard shipping container. After 5 years of operation, the molten salt contains almost as much fissile material as it did when it was initially loaded into the fuel.
In the future, the fissile material inventory at the end of 5 years will be equal to, or slightly greater than it was at the beginning. The Waste Burner reactor will eventually become a thermal spectrum breeder reactor that adds to the world’s fissile material inventory.
The container and its included systems would be fully manufactured and tested at the factory, but it would be shipped to its destination with no loaded fuel using conventional shipping methods. The destination facility could use heat for a conventional steam power plant or it could use the heat for an application like manufacturing fertilizer or desalinating water.
In the current business model, the receiving facility would be erected by a customer that had contracted to purchase heat coming from the pre-fabricated reactor furnished by Copenhagen Atomics. The power plant design and construction would include a series of shielded “cocoons”, each with two meter thick walls and enough internal space for the container and a number of tanks and connections.
Each reactor would be inserted into a cocoon, loaded with fuel from tanks in the cocoon and connected to the receiving heat system using welded connections. The welding would be done by an automated system that is already under development and testing at Copenhagen Atomics’s 9,000 m² fabrication and testing facility in Copenhagen. (See photos in the company presentation.)
The containers and their included mechanical systems are fabricated out of conventional stainless steel and designed to be affordably replaced every five years. At the end of this operating life, they would be defueled and replaced with the fuel salt put into the new reactor. The old reactor would be stacked into a pre-existing storage facility at the power plant where it would remain for several decades to allow radioactive isotopes to decay.
After the containers have sufficiently cooled – from a radioactivity perspective – they could be recycled into materials for new reactors or compacted for storage at low level waste facilities.
Though Denmark does not allow the government to invest in nuclear power facilities, it has a respected regulator with many decades worth of experience in regulating radioactive materials and nuclear research facilities that include reactors. But Copenhagen Atomics’s current development path includes construction of an initial fissioning test reactor at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. That facility is currently planned to be completed in 2028, but that date can vary depending on a number of factors, including the time required to arrange appropriate financing.
Copenhagen Atomics is a company founded by practical engineers that know that real products require a vast amount of physical testing. They build parts – including tanks, pipes, valves, sensors and pumps – and assemble them into both partial and complete systems that allow them to test materials and performance at operating conditions. They started with non radioactive salts and are progressing to tests and demonstrations using non-fissile actinides and then to the actual fuel materials that will be used in commercial facilities.
So far, the company has accumulated 100,000 hours of actual system testing. They have developed refined test loops that are good enough to have been sold to other researchers working on molten salts. They have developed large scale salt production systems and gradually increased their production rates.
If all continues to progress, Copenhagen Atomics expects that its first commercial reactor unit will be operating in about 5 years. But Thomas Jam is a practical and patient man who realizes that there are lot of obstacles left to overcome.
Disclosure – Nucleation Capital is an investor in Copenhagen Atomics. We believe that the company’s vision is important, visionary and potentially valuable. We appreciate the iterative approach to design and manufacture; it is vital for teams designing something new to build, test, redesign and rebuilt as often as needed to produce refined products.
We think you will appreciate the opportunity to learn more about Copenhagen Atomics in a discussion that delves into some deeply technical issues.
The University of Illinois-Urbana Champagne (UIUC) is planning to build a uniquely capable micro reactor project on its campus. For decades, the university hosted a traditional research reactor that supported important research projects and provided operating experience. But, like the majority of university research reactors, it did not produce any useful heat or electricity.
Kronos MMR has a different focus. In its FAQ on the project, UIUC describes the purpose of the project as follows:
[The project will] shape the future of nuclear research, move [our] campus to a cleaner energy future, create unique educational opportunities for our students, and develop a skilled workforce ready to address the urgent need for carbon-free energy technologies across our country and beyond.
Caleb Brooks is an associate professor in the Grainger College of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also the Kronos MMR Project Lead. He visited the Atomic Show to describe the project, its goals and the impact that it is and will have on the campus and nearby communities.
The Kronos MMR is a full scale, but power-derated, version of Nano Nuclear Energy’s high temperature gas cooled reactor. In commercial use, the reactor will be able to produce 45 MW of thermal power (~15 MWe). As a campus-based research reactor, Kronos MMR will be limited to operating at 10 MW thermal, a little less than 25% of what the reactor core will be able to handle. That limit is based on the current power cap placed on reactors licensed by the NRC using the class 104(c) process.
The lower power will, logically enough, mean that the reactor core can run 4.5 times as long before needing to be refueled. If it is operated at the somewhat lower capacity factor expected in an academic environment compared to a commercial environment, the time between refuelings will be extended even further.
Dr. Brooks explained how the research reactor classification was chosen to help the Kronos project move faster than it would otherwise move under a class 103 commercial license process. The University began its official engagement with the NRC in May 2021.
Though we did not get into details about the business partner situation during the discussion, some readers might recall that the UIUC micro reactor program began as a partnership with the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation. That entity ran into financial difficulties and declared bankruptcy in 2024, after it had done a substantial amount of engineering and design work for its 45 MWth high temperature gas cooled reactor that it called MMR®.
Nano Nuclear Energy purchased the designs and other intellectual property associated with USNC’s MMR, including the projects that the company had begun. Nuclear News published an article in April 2025 titled UIUC and NANO Nuclear reboot plans for a FOAK research reactor that provides more details about the transition and the plans to move the project towards completion.
During our conversation, Caleb indicated that the transition had gone reasonable well, but that the uncertainty during the period leading up to and immediately following USNC’s collapse had added about 18 months to the initially envisioned project schedule.
One of the primary topics of our conversation was the effort that the University has undertaken to build public support for the project. Given the campus location, this will be a pioneering effort showing how small and micro reactor projects can be accepted and located very close to customers, including residential communities.
You will enjoy this show. I promise.
The Nuclear Company (TNC) describes itself as “a fleet-scale American nuclear deployment company.”
TNC is a young, visionary company driven by what business author Jim Collins describes as a BHAG – “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – in his best-selling book titled Built To Last. TNC’s intermediate goal is to deploy 6 large nuclear reactors in the U.S. while developing a complete platform that enables repeated projects using a design once, build many approach.
For a company that was just formed in 2023, that qualifies as an enormously audacious goal.
One of the examples Collins used for a BHAG was Boeing’s 1952 decision to build the 707 as one of the world’s first commercial jet aircraft. But at the time, Boeing was an established, profitable company whose head count had reached over 50,000 employees during WWII and that was still producing several different bombers for the Air Force, including the large, jet powered B52.
TNC’s leap seems to be substantially larger than the one that Boeing successfully made. But, with the right people forming the right teams and gathering the resources available, TNC’s goal might be possible. The Atomic Show first covered this intriguing company in August of 2024, about a month after the company exited a formative, quiet year, when Juliann Edwards, TNC’s Chief Development Officer, appeared as a guest on Atomic Show #319.
TNC summarizes its strategy as follows:
The Nuclear Company’s approach can be articulated through our four-pronged strategy:
- Fleet-Scale Deployment: We are building at fleet scale, not project scale, enabling us to capture significant efficiency gains and cost savings, and enabling the reshoring of American industry.
- Broad Industry Coalition: Fleet scale requires a broad coalition of industry partners for successful project planning and execution. We build that coalition to scale.
- Comprehensive Program Management: We synergy-capture program management applicable across existing and new deployments.
- Public-Private Partnerships: We leverage federal, state, and local government engagement and support along with industry to re-establish a US commercial nuclear leadership position.
For this episode of the Atomic Show, I spoke with Joe Klecha, TNC’s Chief Nuclear Officer (CNO), to learn more about how the company plans to achieve its initial BHAG while establishing the foundation for future growth.
Joe has a deep well of practical knowledge accumulated during a lengthy career as an on-site, walk-around manager. He told me how the most important job of management is to enable skilled subordinates to perform with as little friction as possible. (I’m paraphrasing here.). For a site-level, project manager that translates into ensuring that crafts people arrive on prepared work front with all of the necessary tools and documentation.
A key focus for The Nuclear Company is to avoid paper processing. Most listeners will be amazed to hear Joe talk about the wagon loads of paper that accompanied much of the work done at Vogtle 3 & 4.
We talked about the value of well crafted contracts that properly share risk among contributing entities while also establishing a system of progress payments and milestones that give all participants a shared goal. Joe told me about the exceptional team TNC is building and the way it is rapidly gathering interested and committed partners.
Joe displayed his broad reach of technical knowledge during our conversation, providing a point of view that is rarely found in audio commentary by people whose expertise is mostly based on academic research, computer aide design or computational model simulations. We talked about concrete, steel, rebar, interfaces, managing multiple work fronts, the importance of addressing worker density, ways to improve workforce productivity, evaluating sites, finding and incentivizing capable suppliers, and building contractor teams.
I’m still in the willing to be, but not yet convinced camp regarding TNC’s chances for success. Given where we are today, the chances are better than they were two years ago when the company founders were developing their BHAG. But they still have a very long road to travel and the competition is already heating up.
Avoiding ending on a down note, my conversation with Joe Klecha left me more enthusiastic than I was before about their progress and their opportunities.
Please listen to this show. It will provide a unique point of view regarding the lessons America has learned so far about building new nuclear plants in the 21st century.
The Honorable Dr. Kathryn Huff is an associate professor in the nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the director of the Advanced Reactor Fuels laboratory and currently specializes in nuclear reactor core neutronics and multi-physics modeling.
She served as the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy from May of 2022 through May of 2024.
We talked about her tenure at the Department of Energy and the somewhat jarring transition from being a university professor with frequent contact with undergraduate students to running a bureaucratic agency inside the Washington beltway. We chatted about the Byzantine and somewhat plodding nature of the federal budgetary process and the reasons why the process was designed to insert a certain amount of deliberative reviews and second checks before making decisions, especially when they carried large monetary implications.
We paid a little extra attention to the process of implementing the Congressional appropriation of $2.72 B for the Domestic Low Enriched Uranium Supply Chain.
We discussed some of the more enjoyable aspects of her position, including the opportunities to teach both decision makers and staff members about the utility of nuclear energy and some of the reasons why it is such a fascinating and important scientific, technological and economic topic. We spoke about her visits to national labs, universities and international centers of nuclear energy research and development.
She mentioned that the opportunity to host students and other groups of young people was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of her job. She appreciated the opportunity to share some of her excitement about nuclear energy.
We also talked about several recent Executive Orders with the potential for significant impact on energy in general and nuclear energy more specifically.
One of the Executive Orders that we discussed does not include the word “energy” in its title or anywhere in its text, but it holds the potential to make an impact on the future of nuclear energy development. Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies addresses the independence of certain agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, within the Executive Branch of the federal government. The NRC’s independence has often been described as a major component of its effectiveness as a regulatory body.
Dr. Huff joined with two colleagues to publish a commentary in Scientific American about the possible implications of reducing the NRC’s independence. On the Atomic Show, she offered her perspective and provided some concerns worth thinking about.
I hope you enjoy this episode. Please participate in the comment discussion, but be aware that comments will be closed sometime after they’ve been open for two weeks.
Aalo Atomics is a two year old micro reactor company founded by Matt Loszak, a serial entrepreneur, and Yasir Arafat, a skilled nuclear engineer who previously lead the DOE’s MARVEL advanced micro-reactor demonstration project.
Note: At Nucleation Capital, we were impressed enough with the company and the team to add it to our growing portfolio of advanced nuclear energy companies.
Matt Loszak, Aalo’s CEO, visited the Atomic Show to discuss his company’s current plans, its evolved power plant design, its progress towards becoming a reactor manufacturing company and the process by which it selected its initial target customer base and devised a product aimed directly at serving their needs.
The initial Aalo plan was to scale up and commercialize the MARVEL reactor concept, taking advantage of its rapid progress and projected early operation. A variety of circumstances have combined to delay the MARVEL project by at least 1-2 years. With that delay, the idea of using MARVEL data as part of the licensing basis for Aalo became less viable.
As a result of additional market and supply chain influences, Aalo has made significant changes to the original, MARVEL-based design.
Aalo’s has designed a sodium cooled thermal reactor with both a primary and a secondary sodium loop. The reactor fuel is uranium dioxide with enrichment of 5-10%, putting it into the category of LEU+. The fuel form will be as close to available commercial reactor fuel as possible.
The secondary sodium loop will include a double tube heat steam generator that will produce steam at approximately 500℃. The optimized power plant design for Aalo’s initial customer base of large data centers is called the Aalo Pod. It will include 5 reactor steam generating systems each capable of supplying about 25 MWth. The output of all five steam supply systems will be combined to supply a single 50 MWe steam turbine.
Activity inside Aalo’s Austin, TX factory (Mar 2025)The steam turbine selected for the system will be one that has a reasonably flat operating curve over a range of steam flows so that it can efficiently supply electricity even if one or more of the reactors is shutdown for maintenance/refueling.
The company has focused on designing its system to be readily manufactured and efficiently assembled. Aalo moved into a 40,000 ft² industrial building in Austin, Texas in August of 2024 and it is now outfitting that building to be a pilot line manufacturing facility for its initial units. The company has scheduled a grand opening ceremony for the factory in early April 2025. Moving fast is a core part of its commercialization roadmap.
Aalo has purchased a plot of land in or near Austin and plans to build a non-nuclear heated prototype facility where it can perform a number of sodium and heat transfer tests.
It has obtained permission to follow a DOE authorization path to obtain permission to build and operate its nuclear prototype reactor on a site at the Idaho National Laboratory near the facilities that once were home to the Experimental Breeder Reactor II and are now the DOE’s DOME (Demonstration of Microreactors Experiments) test site.
It is one of four reactor vendors (along with Terrestrial Energy, Natura and Kairos) selected to build a small and micro reactor hub on the Rellis Campus of Texas A&M. Eventually, the site owners envision that the total power generating capacity at the site will be approximately 1 GWe from a significant number of nuclear power plants.
You can learn more details about Aalo Atomics and Matt Loszak by listening to the show. As always, comments are welcome, though the comment window will close in about 2 weeks. (A site that has been on the web as long as Atomic Insights attracts a lot of spam attempts.)
Deep Isolation is one of Nucleation Capital’s more impactful portfolio companies because its technology can enable greater success for most of the rest of the companies – and for the entire nuclear energy sector.
The company has been developing, testing and refining its systematic approach to nuclear waste disposal for a decade. Despite the fact that it is addressing one of the few remaining items that limits the acceptance of nuclear energy and its ability to rapidly expand to supply the clean firm power that our industrial society needs to thrive, few people have heard of the company. Even fewer include its technology in the discussions surrounding the inevitable question in nuclear energy discussions “What do we do with the waste?”
Deep Isolation is founded on a brilliant technical inspiration by Dr. Richard Muller. Recognized the commercial potential of the invention Muller teamed up with his daughter, Elizabeth Muller to transform the idea into a venture . They realized that deep geologic disposal is a nearly universally accepted – among scientific and technical experts – method to permanently dispose of high level radioactive materials.
Muller recognized that one significant challenge was the difficulty of siting and building conventional mined repositories. These repositories would need to meet completely different criteria that those that governed traditional materials and fuels mines, making reuse of existing mines difficult, if not impossible. Specially created mines producing no commercially valuable materials would be extraordinarily expensive to develop.
The cost of creating mined repositories stimulated most nations to plan for one or very few repositories, adding to the political cost and the transportation cost associated with siting and operating the repository.
Muller’s brilliant solution to these challenges was to take advantage of the fact that tens of thousands of very deep holes were being drilled every year by the established oil and gas industry. Not only were those holes being bored several thousand feet deep – well below all existing aquifers, but also the drillers had invented and refined techniques for gradually bending the holes into a horizontal direction.
These horizontal borings – often called “laterals” – are used in the hydrocarbon extraction business to gain access to far more extensive volumes of fuel-containing rock. For purposes of radioactive waste disposal, the laterals provide a large volume into which containers of high level waste – in a variety of forms – can be placed and isolated for millions of years.
As a result of drilling tens of thousands of wells in a highly competitive business, the drilling industry has become very skilled at creating high-quality, cost-effective tools and efficiently employing them. The resulting technology ecosystem can be efficiently used in a modular, distributed fashion, enabling multiple, strategically sited repositories. That allows waste to be permanently stored near where it was generated. This concept will lower transportation costs while addressing several legitimate political objections.
Rod Baltzer, the CEO of Deep Isolation, visited the Atomic Show for episode #327. We discussed the above in even greater detail. I believe you will find the show to be valuable and informative. Please use the comment section to ask questions or engage in discussion. Comments will close in 2 weeks.
Jigar Shah has had a lengthy career as an energy industry entrepreneur and strategic thinker. He founded Sun Edison and helped to create a new model for deploying solar power systems. He was part of the Carbon War Room and then founded Generate Capital to provide loans to proven technologies that had not yet achieved commercial scale. He was a member of the Energy Gang during its formative years as a podcast with a formidable listener base.
Following his success in the commercial sector, Jigar was appointed to be the Director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office (LPO). He started at LPO in March of 2021, soon after the start of the Biden Administration, and served until January of 2025. During those years, the loan granting capacity of the LPO grew from $40 B to $400 B, primarily as a result of provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
During our conversation, we focused on the efforts that the LPO made to improve the nuclear industry’s capability to develop and complete large, complex projects involving both public and private financing. We discussed how America seemed to have lost its ability to build big things and what could be done to regain that ability.
We talked about the DOE liftoff reports and other efforts to guide the nuclear industry towards a more sustainable and successful development model. We discussed the various sizes of reactors being developed and the ways that a variety of sizes can open new markets and also provide vital practice in building successful nuclear projects.
You’ll want to listen to the whole show if you are curious about Jigar’s next endeavors. An early reveal is that he has returned to podcasting at Open Circuit, joining Katherine Hamilton and Stephen Lacey, his former colleagues on The Energy Gang.
After many years as an independent journalist with an antinuclear bent, Marco Visscher began questioning his long-held beliefs. He realized that the accepted alternatives to fossil fuel were not actually reducing fossil fuel use so much as they were limiting the rate at which it was increasing. He began acknowledging that nuclear energy was a large source of CO2-free power that was worth a deeper look than he had been giving it.
As he moved past the information sources that had provided his animosity towards nuclear, he found out that there was a deeper, more interesting story to tell about the power source and its history.
He decided there was a book in what he was learning. That book, initially published in Dutch in 2022, is called The Power of Nuclear; The Rise, Fall and Return of Our Mightiest Energy Source. In late 2024, the book was published in English. As longtime readers might imagine, my favorite part of that subtile is the “Return” part.
Aside: Encouraging and participating in the return of nuclear energy growth is the focus of my professional life, both at Atomic Insights and in my role as a managing partner at Nucleation Capital. End Aside.
In some ways, the arc of Visscher’s book reminds me of the narrative arc of Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now. It starts with the history of radiation and the development of the atomic bomb and ends in the modern era with the recognition that nuclear energy offers a clean and capable new energy source that might gradually displace fossil fuels and their dominance in our society.
During our discussion we talked about nuclear energy opposition, the role of nuclear fear, the inability of the nuclear industry to effectively communicate its positive story, other energy alternatives and the potential to achieve the tripling of nuclear capacity that has been envisioned by a growing group of countries led by the U.S. the UK, France, South Korea and Japan..
Aside: After reviewing the show, I realized that I should apologize to both listeners and to Mr. Visscher. I spent way too much time talking about the involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation in creating the basis for the “no safe dose” of radiation model and its effect on public fears. It’s an interesting part of nuclear energy’s history, but there are many other important stories worth telling. End Aside.
Jay Hakes, an accomplished author and historian, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his recently published book, Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush. Sometimes referred to as “the untold story of climate change,” Hake’s book is an enlightening jaunt through a history discovered during long days in archives and Presidential libraries.
Though some of the most vocal proponents of climate change action tell a history story about a public and political understanding that begins sometime during the 1980s, with the actions of people like James Hansen, the truth that Hakes discovered was that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter and their staffs knew there was a growing body of science indicating that increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2 was a significant problem.
Hakes and I talk about the period when scientists were actively trying to determine if the atmosphere was warming or cooling and the long term confusion, some of it purposeful, that has resulted from a debate that was generally resolved by the end of the 1970s.
We spoke about the odd period during the Carter Administration when there was both significant concern about the risks of atmospheric CO2 and an active program to increase coal consumption while slowing nuclear energy development to a crawl. Interestingly, Carter gave the power generation industry a chance to defend nuclear power before he produced his energy plan, but there is no evidence that the industry even mentioned nuclear’s lack of air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.
Hakes’s research showed that much of the early science and political communications about climate change originated from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). His research also showed that the AEC involvement led to a lengthy period when groups that classified themselves as part of the Environmental Movement took little or no interest in effectively addressing climate change. They believed it was something that only nuclear cheerleaders cared about.
Sadly, we now face a bit of an opposite problem. Some vocal nuclear proponents have come to the conclusion that climate change can’t be much of a problem since so many of its activists remain adamantly opposed to using nuclear energy as a powerful tool in the effort to limit the impact of climate change.
Like many nuclear energy supporters, I believe we lost a lot of time and added a much larger quantity of CO2 to the atmosphere than we would have if we had continued deploying nuclear power systems. The solution to that lost time, however, is to press forward.
Julie Kozeracki was the lead author for a U.S. Department of Energy strategy document titled Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear published in September 2024. The document was the result of a multi-agency, multi-lab effort to update a previously issued report.
During our conversation, Kozeracki described how the report was informed by changes in the market, by a study of experiences from other countries and other industries, and by a growing recognition of the importance of design completion in enabling cost and schedule adherence.
We talked about the utility of an expanding catalog of nuclear fission power systems that can meet the needs of a more diverse customer base and also the relatively new trend of increasing electricity demand led most prominently by data center expansion but also by electrification efforts for heating, transportation and industrial uses.
As others have noted, this edition of the advanced nuclear liftoff report makes a clear and compelling case for including large modern light water reactors – including, but not limited to the AP1000 – in the definition of “advanced nuclear”. But clear and compelling does not equal exclusive; the report also makes a good case for the fact that the market has room for a variety of reactor sizes and capabilities to meet the wide range of power demands of a diverse universe of customers.
Note for readers: We are breaking a long tradition at Atomic Insights. Bot activity has convinced us to disable comments.
Westinghouse’s eVinci is a 15 MWth, 5 MWe micro reactor. Westinghouse often refers to it as a nuclear battery.
Unlike conventional nuclear power plants, eVinci uses no water and doesn’t produce steam. The eVinci is not “just another way to boil water.”
There are no pumps in the system that moves heat out of the reactor. Instead, the system uses ~24′ long heat pipes to transfer fission heat to a heat exchanger.
That device serves the same function as a combustor (burner) in a fossil fuel heated Brayton cycle gas turbine. Atmospheric air is compressed and sent through the heat exchanger where it gets hotter and more energetic. That hot, compressed gas gets expanded through a turbine, causing it to rotate. The rotating turbine is connected to a generator that produces electricity with an efficiency of about 33%.
An eVinci will use an open air Brayton cycle gas turbine like those that are in a wide range of commercial applications. Gas turbines are not only well-understood devices, but they have a diverse supply chain and an experienced workforce with tens of thousands of builders, operators and maintainers. They are often manufactured by the thousands.
In another departure from the conventional way of doing things, eVinci uses rotating control drums instead of insertable control rods to adjust core reactivity and operating temperature. Shutdown rods are used during transport and to provide a secondary means of shutdown.
The fuel is TRISO coated particle fuel with high assay, low enriched uranium in the particles. The reactor operates in the thermal neutron spectrum with graphite as the moderator. The core isn’t in a pressurized fluid.
With its simple controls, small size and passive safety case, the eVinci is designed to be able to operate autonomously. Each core will last eight years or more.
Leah Crider, Westinghouse’s Vice President of Commercial Operations to the eVinci micro reactor, visited the Atomic Show to provide a system overview and to answer questions about the reactor, its history, its future, its applications and its potential impact on the energy market.
I think you’ll learn something from this show. Please participate in the comments and let us know what you think, especially if you have questions that were not addressed during the show.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit on September 16, 2024 to Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build a molten salt research reactor. This marked the first university research reactor approval in 30 years. It is the first liquid fuel reactor ever approved for construction by the NRC and only the second advanced reactor approved since the NRC was created in 1974.
Aside: The first advanced reactor construction permit was issued to Kairos for its Hermes in December 2023. End Aside
Natura Resources is the technology supplier for the important new facility. Andrew Harmon, Natura Resources Vice President of Operations and Business Development visited the Atomic Show to fill in some of the backstory about the project origins, the decision to pursue a research reactor as a step towards their ultimate goal of supplying a large number of factory-produced 100 MWe molten salt reactors, some of the major successes and challenges along the way and the level of community support that the project has attracted.
Developing a major new technology in a heavily regulated industry takes more time and resources than many might imagine. In this case, it involved a consortium that includes four major university partners, an enthusiastic group of local donors, a driven energy entrepreneur with a career spent moving expeditiously and safely, a supportive Department of Energy and a growing team of innovative engineers and developers. It also required significant cooperation and engagement with the NRC.
I’ll stop there and let Andrew fill in the details. I think you will enjoy this show. Please participate in the comment section. Respectful discussion and debate are welcome.
Urenco is one of the few companies in the world that enriches uranium. It’s one of an even smaller group of enrichers that aren’t owned by the Russian, Chinese or Iranian governments. It plays a key role in the western world’s nuclear fuel cycle.
That role became even more important after February, 2022.
With the increasingly firm prospects of a long term increase in demand for its foundational product of low enriched uranium (LEU) and a looming demand for new enrichment products like LEU+ (low enriched uranium that has greater than 5% and less than 10% U-235 content) and HALEU (high assay, low enriched uranium with U-236 concentration of 10-20%) Urenco has embarked on a program to expand its capacity.
Like most other nuclear industry participants, Urenco is a conservative company that carefully considers its investments before adding capacity that might not be needed. The nature of its production technology – incredibly sophisticated centrifuges that can spin continuously for decades if not excessively cycled – encourages even more caution in the direction of ensuring that there is demand before investing many millions into new production capacity.
Magnus Mori, Urenco’s head of marketing and technical sales, visited the Atomic Show to provide greater insights and details about Urenco’s history and unusual ownership structure, the factors that influence its investment decisions and the prospects that the company sees for future demand for its products. He explained the material flows into an out of an enrichment facility, including the actual compound that are handled at various stages of the process.
We spoke about the UK government’s support for new production capacity and its decision to invest in a new enrichment plant to produce HALEU. We even spoke about new businesses that use centrifuges to produce valuable medical, research and industrial materials that are not part of the nuclear energy fuel cycle.
I think you’ll enjoy this show. You might even learn some new details about the nuclear fuel cycle. Please participate in the comments.
The Nuclear Company exited a period of operating in “stealth mode” about a month ago. That exit was sufficiently well planned and executed that it is likely that Atomic Insights readers have already heard of the company.
The Nuclear Company was incorporated a year ago. Its founding team has been working diligently to build the relationships and agreements needed to accomplish their self-assigned task. The company has a goal to build an initial fleet of reactors with a capacity of 6 GWe. Those reactors will be built by a consistent team, financed using a structure whose outline will be disclosed in the coming months and using a design that has successfully completed an NRC design certification review AND has been built at least once somewhere in the world.
The company is also focused on sites that have already been through the early site permit process. Their project regulatory path is close to what was initially envisioned for an entity using the one-step Part 52 process. Choose a design that has been reviewed and approved, match it with a site that has been permitted and obtain a COL based on those two development steps.
The company also recognizes the acceleration opportunity associated with using existing COLs.
Juliann Edwards is the company’s chief development officer. She has extensive experience and contacts within the nuclear industry and currently serves as the US chairman for Women in Nuclear. I first met her when we were both working for B&W on the mPower reactor project more than a decade ago.
Juliann visited this show to tell us more about The Nuclear Company, focusing on its history, people, vision and accomplishments so far.
The vision and goals are aggressive and ambitious. But they don’t require any new scientific discoveries or technological inventions. That feature doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it a little more achievable in a realistically chosen time frame. Sufficient resources – time, talent and treasure – must be invested, but the end result seems valuable enough to attract a starting critical mass.
Brian Gitt, the Business Development lead at Oklo, visited the Atomic Show to describe his employer’s business model and current prospects.
Oklo is an advanced fission and fuel recycling company with an expansive vision for becoming a competitive clean energy supplier. It plans to provide heat and/or electricity as a service from a fleet of small fission power plants that it owns, operates and maintains.
Oklo recently became a public company through a SPAC merger with AltC, a special purpose acquisition company led by Sam Altman, a venture capital investor and the founder and CEO at OpenAI.
Oklo was founded in 2013 by Jake DeWitt and Caroline Cochran, two MIT nuclear engineering graduates with a vision for building a company that could manufacture and operate smaller, simpler reactors.
Recognizing that nuclear engineering skills are not the only ingredient needed to build a company, Oklo founders made an early decision to participate in an entrepreneurial immersion training program at Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator and seed stage venture capital funder.
Their unique business proposition for clean energy development was compelling enough to attract serious interest from Sam Altman, who was then serving as the president at Y Combinator. He became one of the company’s earliest investors and began serving as the company Chairman.
As Gitt describes, Oklo has spent the past decade preparing for the growth in clean energy demand that is coming from both the energy transition and the growing use of energy for applications like high performance data centers for applications like artificial intelligence (AI). The company also sees huge opportunities in clean energy for materials production, mining and increased manufacturing in places outside of China.
For more details, you’re going to have to listen to the show. Please participate in the comment section discussion. I expect that many listeners will find this to be a valuable use of their time.
Disclosure: I have a long position in Oklo’s publicly traded stock in my personal portfolio.
Atomic Canyon is a six month old company that is developing AI tools to improve the efficiency of routine tasks associated with developing, licensing, building, owning and operating nuclear plants. Their first product, called Neutron, uses AI to modernize searching the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 52 million page collection of publicly available documents that are currently accessible through the somewhat cumbersome Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Trey Lauderdale, Atomic Canyon’s founder, spent the first 15 years of his career in the digital medicine field. At an inflection point in his career, with the freedom to live anywhere, he created a decision matrix to help him and his wife choose a place to live and raise their two young sons. San Luis Obispo, CA earned the highest score, with an excellent public education system as one of the contributing factors.
After finding their home and moving towards closing the purchase, Trey and his wife learned via real estate disclosure documents that they would be living within 10 miles of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. As members of a generation who learned most of what they new about nuclear energy from The Simpsons, they were initially leery.
But they quickly realized that the plant’s skilled, dedicated and well compensated employees and its property tax payments were major reasons that the schools and other aspects of the community had earned such high scores on the “place to raise our children” decision matrix.
After becoming a member of the community and conversing with local nuclear professionals, Trey decided to learn as much as he could about nuclear energy and the nuclear industry. He recognized that he and his skilled colleagues could build tools that could address obstacles that slowed work and added costs.
Atomic Canyon has just announced a cooperative project with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that will train ORNL’s Frontier – currently the world’s fastest supercomputer, capable of more than a quintillion calculations per second – how to understand nuclear terminology. The resulting model will not be trained on proprietary or safety related information on the design and operation of nuclear power, but it will help analyzing the deep library of regulatory guides, inspection reports, and other publicly available documents to assist in increasing safety and accountability.
The products (models) created by the partnership will be open source and available to become part of the toolbox for other developers.
Trey and I had a fascinating conversation. I think you will agree.
Left to right in photo: Trey Lauderdale, Atomic Canyon CEO Kristian Kielhofner, Atomic Canyon CTO Richard Klafter, Atomic Canyon Lead AI Architect Tom Evans, ORNL Research Scientist Photo Credit: Genevieve Martin, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Knox News provides a local perspective on Atomic Canyon’s project using Frontier: AI for nuclear plants? ORNL supercomputer’s new task is no sci-fi – it’s a clean energy win
Emmet Penney is an unlikely, but effective pronuclear advocate. He earned his degrees in fine arts and great books and worked for several years as a professional poet – along with working in a bookstore as a way to keep paying the bills.
He gradually transitioned from poetry into writing thoughtful essays on a variety of topics. One of those pieces caught the attention of Michael Shellenberger and began the process of converting Emmet into a passionate, erudite pronuclear advocate who reads voraciously about all topics that interest him. That attribute has given him a remarkable depth of understanding about the nuclear industry, its history and its prospects that is not complicated by the detailed engineering education that often leads to confusing public communications.
Emmet and I engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on such diverse topics as why the Environmental Movement chose to take action that was harmful to the environment by focusing its attentions against nuclear energy and how the republican notion of an economy of small holders conflicted with the liberal notion of rapid technological progress and corporate management. (Notice that words like “environment”, “republican” and “liberal” that are written with lower case letters do not mean the same thing as when written with capital letters.)
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and expect that you will find it engaging as well.
Doug Sandridge, Oil and Gas Executive for NuclearDoug Sandridge is a lifelong oil and gas guy whose father was a geological engineer. While he was growing up, Doug lived a significant portion of his life overseas as his father’s job took the family to several different locations. When it was time to go to college, Doug returned to the United State to attend the University of Oklahoma. He took a brief detour into architecture, but by his second year he shifted his focus to engineering and petroleum-related topics.
During the past 40 years, he has pursued a career as a land man, which requires a blend of technical skills, specific legal acumen, negotiating expertise and real estate development. His career was inspired by his father, but he has also been dedicated to the task of finding and producing the affordable fuels that power our modern way of life.
In recent years he has begun advocating for nuclear energy after realizing that the industry was in trouble and closing plants that he had passively assumed would operate through their natural end of life. Although he had briefly declared his major to be nuclear engineering when transitioning away from architecture, he had spent his career not really thinking much about nuclear one way or another.
He linked up with the Save Diablo Canyon movement as a way to continue his education and do something positive. When he learned that other nuclear advocates were a bit wary of an oil and gas executive and heard some stating that the oil and gas industry had been working against nuclear for many years, he started an effort to mobilize other oil and gas leaders to declare their support of nuclear power.
The first result of his effort was the publication of a letter titled Declaration of Oil and Gas Executives for Nuclear Power. That letter was initially published on March 28, 2023. That date is probably not accidental; it was the 44th anniversary of the Three Mile Island event.
As you might notice, Atomic Insights is a little late to the response party for this important step forward. Mr. Sandridge has already appeared on several podcasts to discuss his letter, including Robert Bryce’s Power Hungry and Emmet Penny’s Nuclear Barbarians. Perhaps the first podcast to notice Doug’s intriguing background for a pro-nuclear advocate was Irina Slav on Energy. That interview was published more than two years ago.
Unlike those terrific podcasts, Atomic Insights has a long established reputation as a reference for instances in which fossil fuel interests – a term that is far broader than the term “oil and gas companies” – have worked openly or behind the scenes to slow or stop nuclear energy development.
We acknowledge that the vast majority of the people that work in oil and gas are not antinuclear, the term “fossil fuel interests” largely refers to people at the very top of organizations, the ones that create strategies and take market-focused actions. It also refers to people like Vladimir Putin and other global leaders that are almost completely dependent on the wealth and power provided by controlling fossil fuels and who consistently seek to adjust the energy supply-demand balance to provide outsized financial returns and other geopolitical goals.
Doug and I had a terrific conversation. I think you will enjoy the opportunity to learn more about the petroleum industry and the ways that it has recently begun making tangible steps towards nuclear energy as a source of power for their energy intensive production processes and as a technology that offers them a path for profitably transitioning to a clean energy economy.
Doug publishes a Substack called Energy Ruminations. Please visit to find his unique perspective on energy issues.
James Krellenstein is a physicist, consultant and nuclear energy historian. He is currently employed as a senior advisor to Global Health Strategies. He started up their decarbonization practice with an emphasis on nuclear energy along with renewables. He was the lead author on GEH’s report on ways to reduce global dependence on Russia for necessary supplies of enriched uranium.
He had the unusual and fortunate experience of growing up with a father who was a nuclear engineer turned nuclear financial specialist and a grandfather who ran a custom manufacturing machinery production facility. Both were the kind of professionals that enjoyed their work enough to “bring it home” for discussions around the dinner table and while engaging in bonding activities like fishing and camping.
(I know what that is like from both sides of the parent/grandparent/child relationship.)
James has become a bit of an “overnight sensation” in the world of pronuclear podcasting most notably with repeat appearances on Dr. Chris Keefer’s Decouple Podcast and Age of Miracles, hosted by Packy McCormick and Julia DeWahl. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the US nuclear industry and a unique perspective on current and future actions needed to restore its prominence.
I was motivated to invite him for a chat after listening to his thoughts on the relationship between reactor size and the cost of produced electricity.
We talked about the need for a larger catalog of options that can meet the needs of a wider variety of customers, the advantages of larger sizes in producing bulk electricity in grids and markets that can accommodate the output, and the differences between seeing reactors as a product that might be manufactured or seeing them as a “stick-built” factory that produces a bulk commodity.
Though our emphasis and perspectives are different, we hold similar points of view. Our conclusions for prioritization vary considerably.
I think you will learn something from this show and hope that you will take the time to share your thoughts on the topics discussed. Though there are many who dismiss the importance of conversation and discussion compared to concrete action that gets things done, it’s hard to successfully complete the latter without responsible and involved people engaging in the former.
Stefano Buono is a physicist and the successful founder of Advanced Accelerator Applications, a multibillion dollar company that pioneered the use of several therapeutic medical isotopes. After making several people very rich, including himself, he sold the medical isotope business and returned to his early 1990s field of study – nuclear fission reactors using molten lead as a coolant.
About two years ago, Stefano Buono and some of his colleagues and associates founded newcleo, a company with Italian roots based in the UK. Last year, newcleo ran two successful rounds of start-up funding that netted the company a total of €400 M. After passing through several important milestones, it is raising a subsequent round with a target of €1 B for continued development and for a state-of-the-art fuel manufacturing plant.
Dr. Buono visited the Atomic Show to share his insights on the paths to success as an entrepreneur in a deeply technical and undervalued field and on the role that timing – both planned and fortunate – plays in business success. He is convinced that it is a good time to be building a nuclear fission energy company.
Lead cooling for reactors has a long history with some demonstrated success. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union operated a class of submarines called the Alfa class, which were famously the fastest and deepest diving submarines in the world at the time. Seven subs were completed and operated with both impressive performance and technical issues that limited their reliability and service life.
The reactors in those submarines were metal cooled thermal reactors using lead-bismuth eutectic for cooling and beryllium for moderation.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent economic conditions halted most lead cooled reactor development in Russia, but it resulted in a diaspora of Soviet scientists and engineers that stimulated research and development of the technology in Europe, especially in Italy and Sweden.
For several reasons, the lead cooled reactor community moved from lead-bismuth towards pure lead and away from beryllium moderation.
Compared to water, lead is virtually invisible to neutrons, letting fission neutrons remain in the fast spectrum. Fast neutrons will fission all actinide materials, allowing reactors to advantageously consume the long-lived components of used nuclear fuel and to breed new fuel from fertile materials like Uranium 238.
Lead remains in liquid form at temperatures far above reactor operating temperatures, eliminating the need to pressurize the coolant system. Compared to sodium, the molten metal that has been used more frequently by reactor designers, lead is not subject to explosive or flammable reactions if it comes in contact with water or air. Though sodium-cooled reactor designers have devised ways to ensure safe use of their chosen fuel, the techniques require additional systems and components that add cost.
Newcleo – France, Lyon Portraits d’entrepriseOne disadvantage of lead has limited its attractiveness as a coolant. At the temperatures of interest for a reactor, corrosion rates in contact with stainless steel can cause operational problems. For the Alfa class submarines, corrosion products created some clogging issues – mainly in small diameter piping like that found in steam generators.
newcleo, Stefano’s company, is taking advantage of research and development conducted during the 40+ years since the Alfa’s were designed and operated. That research and testing has proven several different techniques that can be used to limit the effects of corrosion and that also offer the opportunity for future improvements that will enable even higher operating temperatures in subsequent reactor models.
During Atomic Show #313, we talked about advantages and challenges of lead cooling, the use of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, the company’s phased technology development program, its licensing strategy, its options for initial deployment and the reasons that now is a great time to be developing nuclear fission power systems in Europe.
This show should provide plenty of food for thought. Please participate in the discussion using the comment features here.
Zeno Power makes cost-effective radioisotope power systems (RPS) for some of the most challenging environments in the solar system. Its systems use a proprietary package that allows a wider variety of isotopes to perform functions previously reserved for Pu-238, a rare isotope that is slowly produced at great expense.
What is the value of RPS?RPS’s produce power and/or heat by usefully capturing the energy released when radioactive materials decay. Diminishing quantities of heat are produced as the materials release their alpha, beta and/or gamma emissions, with the production rate being governed by the half life of the isotope. It is a power source that is predictable as time; it can neither be accelerated nor decelerated.
By continuously producing useful power for decades at a time without a break, radioisotopes have enabled exploration of the most distant reaches of our solar system while remaining capable of relaying their findings back to Earth. It is a well established technology that has been used since the very beginning of the Atomic Age.
The majority of the radioisotope power supplies that have powered past space missions have used Pu-238, a marvelously capable isotope. It has an 87-year half life and decays with a pure, easily shielded, high-energy alpha particle. Unfortunately, it is slowly produced in specialized reactors and needs expensive processing and refinement. As a result, Pu-238 costs tens of millions of dollars per kilogram. It is only available for the most carefully screened mission applications.
The Strontium-90 optionStrontium-90 has good characteristics as a heat source for RPS. It has a 28.1-year half life and it decays with an energetic beta emission that is reasonably easy to shield.
With its relatively high specific heat generation, Sr-90 has been used in the past for terrestrial applications, but its decay produces occasional gamma radiation in addition to the dominant, heat-producing beta emission. Additionally, as the high energy beta interacts with conventional shielding materials, it produces bremsstrahlung radiations that must also be shielded. As a result Sr-90-based power systems require enough shielding to make them too heavy to launch into space.
Sr-90 RPS have been used to power remote light houses, underwater sensors, navigational buoys and remote weather monitors. Alternative, lower-cost power sources have gradually replaced Sr-90 RPS for each of those applications.
By the 1990s, the US had stopped producing Sr-90 RPS and was decommissioning the systems that had been deployed. A 2009 paper titled End of an Era and Closing the Circle – Disposal of Strontium-90 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators contains a statement that almost sounds like a eulogy. “This unique and creative use of nuclear technology is fading into obscurity and soon will be forever a thing of the past.”
Times have changed. With a dramatically growing business of satellites plus lunar and planetary exploration, there is a crying need for reliable power supplies that are more affordable and more available than the ones that need Pu-238. Sr-90 is still available and it still has the physical properties that attracted early developers, but the technology for capturing the energy needed improvement before it could be considered a solution for the growing market.
Zeno Power’s RPS developmentDuring the 2016-2018 period, a trio of Vanderbilt students joined with a professor to find a useful product meeting the needs of identified customers. They wanted to be entrepreneurs and all of them loved science, engineering and creating cool things. They realized early that successful companies produced products that met customer needs at a price they were willing to pay. Any other creations were mere science projects.
Their market research led them to a decision to develop mission-capable radioisotope power systems that could take advantage of isotopes that were more available and more affordable than Pu-238. Strontium-90 (Sr-90), an isotope with a track record as a viable source material for RPS was an obvious starting point. Sr-90 is much more available than Pu-238; it is near the top of the yield curve of radioactive by-products produced in all fission reactors.
Zeno Power’s innovation is a proprietary shielding system that substantially reduces the system weight of an RPS that uses isotopes with a significant gamma component associated with their decay. There are other isotopes with differing characteristics that might eventually be useful in an expanding universe of applications.
Tyler Bernstein, CEO of Zeno Power, visited the Atomic Show to describe his company’s history, products, ethos and mission.
During the relatively short period since its founding, Zeno Power has captured the attention of the space industry and the Department of Energy. With concrete evidence of that interest is has convinced investors that has a clear line of sight to being a growing, profitable company. It has made a few contract announcements already. Tyler promised us that there are more to come in the near future. When the time is right, he will return to provide additional information.
I’m sure you will enjoy this episode. Please participate in the comment section. Questions are always welcome. If you like what you hear, please provide a review on your podcast application(s) of choice.
Mary Jo Rogers is a trained clinical psychologist who developed her interest workforce safety cultures and leadership in the nuclear power sector while consulting and working for ComEd (later Exelon). At the time she began her work, ComEd was a perennially under-performing utility with new leaders that were committed to turning it into the best...
In the past few years, there has been a strong revival of interest in using nuclear fission energy to power space travel and planetary exploration. There have also been new developments in radioisotope thermal generators that will make them more widely available with greater energy density. Though there has been interest in using nuclear energy...
Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University. He writes about energy, economies and the way that energy sources have influenced modern societies and economies. One of his first books was Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (2013) which is very briefly described as follows: Looking beyond the usual culprits, “Lifeblood”...
Alyssa Hayes is a leader in the pro-nuclear movement. She is a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee and she has been interested in policy making and politics since interning with her local representative when she was 14 years old. She was involved in the successful efforts to save four nuclear...
Mark Nelson has been traveling the world in an effort to help create a sustainable pronuclear movement. His focus includes both saving existing plants and encouraging the construction of new reactor in areas that have operating reactors, those that have shut down their nuclear plants and in countries that have never operated nuclear plants.
We spoke in depth about the German nuclear exit, the French turn away from nuclear with a subsequent return, the potential for Belgium to keep at least some of its reactors, and the exciting possibility that Italy might decide to build new nuclear power systems more than 30 years after it closed its nuclear power plants.
We discussed the UAE’s impressive success as a nuclear newcomer, South Korea’s return to nuclear construction, Japan’s growing interest in recovering its domestic nuclear industry while improving on its potential to export nuclear products, and efforts in the Philippines to begin operating the Bataan nuclear reactor while also building the foundation for a new nuclear industry.
We spoke about the growing fragility of the electric grid, the effects of the differently regulated grids on nuclear power plants, and the disconnect between hourly electricity pricing and decadal decisions to build and operate resilient, reliable power plants along with a robust transmission system.
We talked about the growing acceptance of the importance of nuclear and the belief among many energy system experts that it is an absolute necessity if the world is going to meet its CO2 reduction goals and commitments.
I’m sure you will enjoy this episode. Mark is a passionate speaker with a gift for providing vivid descriptions.
The comment section on this site is at least as valuable as the originally posted content. Please share your thoughts and engage in the discussion.
Westinghouse, one of the world’s first nuclear power plant vendors, recently announced a new small modular reactor (SMR) design called the AP300. It is described as a simplified version of the AP1000, four of which are currently operating in China and two of which are in the final stages of operational testing in Georgia, United States. Six additional AP1000s are under construction.
In a May 4, 2023 press release, Westinghouse summarized the AP300 as follows:
Westinghouse Electric Company today launched its newest nuclear technology, the AP300™ small modular reactor (SMR), a 300-MWe single-loop pressurized water reactor. The AP300 SMR design is scaled from the advanced, proven AP1000® reactor and is the only SMR truly based on an Nth-of-a-kind operating plant.
The AP300 SMR is an ultra-compact, modular-constructed unit that leverages the innovation and operational knowledge of the global AP1000 fleet. It will utilize identical AP1000 technology, to include major equipment, structural components, passive safety, proven fuel, and I&C systems. The AP300 will bring to bear a mature supply chain, constructability lessons learned, fast load-follow capabilities and proven O&M procedures and best practices from 18 reactor years of safe AP1000 operations.
Westinghouse Unveils Game-Changing AP300™ Small Modular Reactor for Mid-Sized Nuclear Technology
In a Nuclear Engineering International article Westinghouse President & CEO Patrick Fragman expanded on the press release statement.
It is using the DNA of the AP1000 in terms of technology.” It “has unique advantages in terms of robustness of the safety case, simplicity of the design, with huge implications in terms of costs and time to construct and obviously an ease of deployment because, with the AP1000 being already deployed, the AP300 SMR will leverage the existing supply chain, the existing design, the existing licensing pedigree”. Fragman described it as “no more and no less than an AP1000 with one loop instead of two loops”. This means it is reusing a majority of components, systems, equipment. “The fuel is identical, the constructability lessons are identical,” he said.
Westinghouse launches AP300 small modular reactor
That description sounded exciting and intriguing. Though the advertised power capacity would be approximately one quarter of the power output of the AP1000, it seemed that the plant would be an easier-to-construct version that could sail through licensing and require a modest detailed engineering effort. It would be a design that was familiar to those who had already completed one or more AP1000 units.
There was a fair amount of discussion among engineers and other nuclear advocates on Twitter about the plant’s equipment choices, its status as an SMR and the announced timeline for design certification and operational deployment.
The Westinghouse press release also informed the world that Dr. Rita Baranwal, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy, would lead the development of the AP300 as the Senior Vice President of Westinghouse’s Energy Systems business unit.
Rita and I have known each other for a long time, having often attended the same advanced reactor conferences and American Nuclear Society meetings. I invited her to the Atomic Show to tell us more about the AP300, Westinghouse’s plan to certify the design and the expected timeline for deployment. We also discussed general customer interest, though the company is not yet ready to name names.
As she explained, the term “identical AP1000 technology” means something different from what I assumed. It does not mean interchangeable parts in the tradition of mass manufacturing of significantly different automobile models with exactly the same engine and chassis. It means equipment with identical design concepts that is redesigned and retooled with the goal of optimized cost and performance at new operating parameters. Changing a design and the tooling used to manufacture that design is not always a smooth process.
This decision helps to explain Westinghouse’s recently announced pre-application regulatory engagement plan, which establishes a design certification goal date of 2027 and a full construction and operating license by the end of the decade. Given the heritage of a design certification for the AP600 and 18 revisions to the certified AP1000, it was surprising to learn that Westinghouse planned to invest a significant period of time in a pre-application engagement with the NRC. Usually those engagements are designed to familiarize the regulator with designs using new fuels, new coolants and new safety cases.
Under current plans, the first AP300 will be up and running by the end of 2033, approximately a decade from now. That timeline is, dependent on Westinghouse landing a sufficient number of customers to justify the costs of establishing production capabilities for the newly designed plant and the unique equipment it will require.
As is often the case, Dan Yurman at Neutron Bytes published a comprehensive article about the AP300 that provides some of the same information I learned from talking with Dr. Barnawal.
Your comments and discussions are a major part of the value this publication brings to the nuclear energy space. Please participate.
PS – During our discussion, I asked Dr. Baranwal to compare the safety-related footprint of the AP300 (0.4 acres) to that of the AP1000 (0.75 acres). (She did not have the numbers at her fingertips, so her team provided them immediately after the call was over.)
On Apr 28, the much anticipated film, Nuclear Now, will premier in selected theaters in New York, Sedona and Los Angeles. It will remain available in those venues for a week. On May 1, 2023, the film will be shown at 350 theaters across the US and Canada.
The film is co-written by Oliver Stone and Joshua Goldstein. Here is a blurb about the film.
Nuclear Now takes viewers on an educational and thought-provoking journey with legendary director Oliver Stone, as he explores the powerful impact of nuclear energy. The looming climate crisis remains unresolved, and the volume of carbon-free electricity needed over the next 30 years is almost unimaginable. This insightful documentary aims to remove the fears associated with nuclear energy and highlight the sustainability and affordability it can bring in the pursuit of restoring the world’s ecosystems and economies.
I spoke with Oliver and Joshua to delve more deeply into the reasons why they are so passionate about their self-assigned task to correct long held beliefs about nuclear energy. We talk about their personal journeys from being reflexively opposed to nuclear energy to become committed proponents that see nuclear as an important tool for mankind.
Paraphrasing one of Oliver’s observations from our discussion, nuclear energy is a gift, perhaps the greatest gift ever given to man. It is currently one of our greatest missed opportunities. Paraphrasing Joshua, nuclear has proven that it can scale, and scale quickly to make a major contribution towards reducing man-made CO2 while producing high quality, abundant energy.
You can find a list of theaters that will be showing the film here. Almost all of the showings will be on Nuclear Now Day (May 1, 2023), but there are exceptions to this general rule in San Luis Obispo, Breckenridge, Fairfield, Idaho Falls, Martha’s Vineyard, Minneapolis, Columbus, and Dallas.
There is a pretty good chance of finding a venue in most metropolitan areas. Digital versions will be widely available sometime during the summer of 2023.
Here is the Nuclear Now trailer. At the 0:46 mark, you will see and hear me saying one of my favorite words.
Disclosure: I play a modest role in Nuclear Now as one of the interviewed experts.
Dr. Leonard Rodberg spent most of his adult life being opposed to nuclear energy. A half a dozen years ago, he abruptly changed his mind. Ever since, he has been a strong and vocal advocate for the increased use of nuclear energy. On Atomic Show #304 Len and I discuss his education, career, his changing attitudes towards nuclear energy and the important role that nuclear will play in enabling a transition away from carbon dioxide-emitting power sources.
Len is one of the founding members of a small, loud and proud pronuclear group named Nuclear New York. The group came together at the time that Governor Cuomo was approaching the fulfillment of an old political promise to close the Indian Point nuclear plant. Immediately before the two-unit facility started shutting down, it supplied more than 25% of all electricity to the downstate region of New York, home to 8-10 million people. None of that electricity released CO2 as a byproduct of its creation.
Though politicians had promised that the plant’s output would be replaced by clean power sources, the reality that Len and his associates discovered and worked hard to expose was that the New York government understood that most of the replacement electricity would be produced by two newly constructed natural gas fired power stations located on the same side of a significant transmission bottleneck as Indian Point was.
The experience gained in the belated effort to save Indian Point led Nuclear NY (@NuclearNY) to begin building larger alliances and to participate in additional efforts to support nuclear energy.
I learned about Len’s efforts when exposed to his presentation about the unreal assumptions contained in New York’s current plan for a transition to a clean energy system. His talk, given to to a group of fellow Queens College/CUNY retirees, provides a concise, well-illustrated case for the need to overtly include more nuclear energy to make the ambitious emissions reduction goals described in the plan closer to being achievable.
NYISO’s plan currently places a substantial burden on an undefined power source with characteristics that match some of advanced nuclear fission’s unique attributes. The plan calls that power source Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources (DEFRs). Since the plan also expects offshore wind, a power source that is currently supplying exactly 0 kilowatt-hours to New York’s grid, to grow to a 20% share of the market by 2040, DEFRs might need to play an even larger role than the NYISO acknowledges.
Extracted from NYISO Power Trends 2022Along with Green Nuclear Deal and the Clean Energy Jobs Coalition of New York, Nuclear New York produced a report titled Bright Future: A more reliable and responsible climate plan for New York that blazes a different path than the one officially described by the state government.
Did I mention that Len is 90 years old? He’s still learning new tricks and is contributing to the continuing education of his fellow citizens.
I hope you enjoy the show. Please participate in the discussion here to provide feedback and support.
Rendering of Last Energy’s 20 MWe installations (Last Energy)Last Energy is an innovative new company governed by a philosophy of avoiding the invention of anything that has not been done before. They have created a business that is laser focused on building, owning and operating small (20 MWe), modular pressurized water reactors and selling the electricity they produce under long term power purchase agreements.
On Atomic Show #303, Bret Kugelmass, the founder, president and CEO of Last Energy describes the path he took from earning a masters degree in robotics at Stanford, through the founding and operation of a successful drone company, to a highly respected podcast, through a non profit think tank and into a utility company that has designed a nuclear power plant that can begin operating as early as 2025 with commercial scale repetition starting almost immediately.
Where some believe that nuclear fission requires highly specialized equipment, Last Energy has found that pressure vessels, pumps, piping, heat exchangers and valves of similarly high quality standards are widely available from experienced, commercial suppliers. Their systems, structures and components (SSC) use well-accepted ASME codes and standards and are often identical to the SSC that have been used for decades in chemical processing, oil and gas, and other industrial applications.
Last Energy has chosen a small number of initial deployment locations, specifically in the UK, Romania and Poland. They are aiming to supply power to major industrial consumers that need somewhere between 20 and 100 MWe. They will connect to their customers “behind the meter”. From the customer point of view, Last Energy power will look and act like the electricity they currently purchase from their local utility company.
Last Energy systems will have approximately 2 m diameter pressure vessels that can accommodate full length fuel assemblies and standard control rods with proven drive mechanisms mounted on the reactor head. There will be fewer assemblies in the core, and they will be replaced as a whole unit every 6 years. Each plant will have a single steam generator and coolant pump.
Kugelmass explains the reasons behind the company philosophy and design choices. He provides a good summary of their business model and their driving motivations.
One aspect of Last Energy’s plans should motivate US politicians to modify our current export control regime. Even though their plants are designed to be well within the production capability of US manufacturers, the company is studiously avoiding the production of any nuclear component in the US. Export control processes are too burdensome to be economically justifiable.
I hope you enjoy the show and participate in the conversation.
Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear AssociationDr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association, visited the Atomic Show to provide an international perspective on the revival in interest in nuclear energy deployment.
As the head of the organization that represents the global nuclear industry, provides education about all matters related to using nuclear technologies, and lobbies for recognition of the value that nuclear energy provides, she is uniquely able to describe what the world is thinking about building and operating a wide variety of nuclear energy generating systems.
Dr. Bilbao y Leon shared valuable messages from her conversations with world leaders during the recent Conference of the Parties in Egypt (COP27) .
“A very important dimension of decarbonization tends to be forgotten. When we are looking at the global north as in developed countries obviously we are focused on decarbonization, reducing emissions, energy efficiency, being more cost effective and more effective in how we use the energy that we do have.That is the transition that we are looking towards – cleaner energy. But when we are looking to the global south, their energy transition goes from no energy to energy.”
“You have a lot of countries saying, ok people. Yes, we want to decarbonize, yes we want to use our resources as effectively as possible, but we also – and foremost – want to achieve the standard of living that you guys are already enjoying.”
“More and more countries, particularly in the global south, are realizing that nuclear is truly – or could be potentially – a game changer when it comes to providing abundant, clean, affordable 24 x 7 energy – not electricity, energy – for everybody.” Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association
We talked about the utility of small modular reactors (SMR) in bringing nuclear energy benefits to a broader selection of energy consumers – a term that includes all of us.
Aside: Our conversation took a personal side trip to a time when Sama Bilbao y Leon, then a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, was intrigued by a “crazy” talk describing the benefits of nuclear systems small enough to be called atomic engines. End Aside.
We talked about the process that countries undertake when they choose to develop the capability to own and operate nuclear power plants. We speculated on nuclear energy’s potential to provide the kind of “leapfrog” advance demonstrated by mobile phone technology.
We also talked about ways to respond to inaccurate arguments claiming that there are no small modular reactors operating or that they are untested and unproven technologies.
Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon brings a diverse resume to her job. She started her professional career as a nuclear safety engineer with Dominion, a major utility with a large nuclear plant operating arm, became an associate professor of nuclear engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University – where she played a leading role in establishing a new nuclear engineering degree program – and served in a variety of leadership positions at international organizations like the IAEA and the NEA.
She holds a PhD and master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin Madison,, a master’s (Energy Technologies) and bachelor’s (Mechanical Engineering) degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
I hope you enjoyed the show. Please participate in a conversation about the topics discussed. It would also be helpful and appreciated if you could take the time to provide a review of the Atomic Show on your podcast app of choice.
The nuclear energy policy landscape in the US has changed significantly during the past 5 years. Once seen as an issue with enormous differences between the political parties, it has become one of the few topics on which both parties can have a civil discussion and agree on many key provisions in supportive legislation.
Matt Crozat: NEI, Executive Director for Strategy and Policy
Matt Crozat is the Nuclear Energy Institute's Executive Director for Strategy and Policy Development. He and his supporting team have played a role in helping Representatives, Senators and their key staff members to understand the value supplied by operating nuclear plants and the advanced nuclear power systems that are being developed.
Some of the progress began with efforts at the state level and then proceeded to capture the attention of the national level politicians and leaders.
We talked about the strong financial support provided to operating plants to keep them economically viable and about the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that will encourage and reward the deployers of new nuclear power plants.
We talked about the results of an NEI survey of companies that own and operate the existing nuclear fleet that provided an intriguingly large number of expected new capacity additions between now and 2050. (Spoiler alert: Though representing a limited portion of the potential buyers, those companies expect to add enough reactors to double current nuclear generating capacity by 2050.)
From: "The Path to Decarbonization:Overview of the Demand for New Nuclear." With permission from NE
Efforts to ensure capable supply chains and workforce development for that kind of growth have begun, but there is a lot of work remaining to be done. We discussed the importance of committed orders to convince suppliers that investments will produce product sales and the importance of jobs to ensure that workers are convinced to invest in developing their skills and education.
An important topic in our discussion was the importance of a consistent, steady effort and the extreme cost and vulnerability that can be imposed by wide swings in support that lead to bumpy, halting efforts.
We talked a bit about the potential that one or more of the companies that already own issued and active combined licenses for AP1000s may recognize that their decision matrix has changed in the past 2 years, with dramatic movements upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine and then again upon passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
I'd wager that construction on those project could be organized to begin within about two years from the time the corporate board is convinced that is an investment worth the time and resources involved.
For reasons of fairness and not leaving anyone out of the mentions, we did not discuss the numerous organizations and individuals that helped achieve the successful change in the policy landscape.
I hope you enjoy the episode. Please participate in the discussion here with comments, questions and suggestions.
Dr. Lindsay Krall is a geochemist currently working on projects characterizing the behavior of radioactive isotopes that will eventually be stored in a deep geologic repository being designed in Sweden for construction within the next decade. During a three year post doctoral period she worked under a MacArthur Foundation grant program to study the projected […]
Dr. Chris Keefer is one of the busiest and most successful nuclear energy advocates working today. He is a Canadian emergency room doctor, the founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, the founder and host of the Decouple podcast, the founder of Decouple Media, and the founder and President of Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE). And […]
Reactor Internals by Marcus Seidl
Marcus Seidl is a German nuclear professional who received his PhD in nuclear physics in 2002, a year after his home country decided that it would exit nuclear energy in favor of investing in a large roll out of renewable energy sources.
He has worked for German utility companies, for a vendor erecting a state-of-the-art high neutron flux research reactor, and is now employed by PreusseneElektra as a nuclear physicist. He also teaches part time at Technische Universität München | TUM · Department of Nuclear Engineering.
During our discussion, any opinions he expressed were his alone. He does not represent his employers.
As a researcher, he recently started a project called Unique Safety Features and Licensing Requirements of Small Modular Reactors | Frontiers Research Topic (frontiersin.org). A self-described "traditional utility guy" he considers any reactor that generates considerably less than 4,000 MWth to be a smaller reactors.
During our pre-show correspondence, Marcus shared the following commentary explaining his interest in researching safety and licensing of smaller reactors and reasons why they address particular challenges associated with conventional extra-large reactors.
I am a traditional utility guy – which means that every reactor which generates noticeably less than 4000MWth is a “small” reactor. Especially in the US there is a distinction between small modular reactors, micro reactors and advanced reactors. From my perspective they are all “small”. In part this adjective is also justified because most of these designs are expected to be mass produced or consist of prefabricated modules and hence cannot be of the same size as a traditional LWR.
The reason why I initiated the ‘special research’ topic: the issue of energy security and climate change are two important factors which currently favor nuclear: it is a compact source of energy (you can easily build up strategic fuel reserves) and it has a small CO2 footprint. So, why are we waiting? Why are there still doubts that nuclear power can help solve these issues? It is not the sole solution, it is not a silver bullet, but it can be part of the solution. From a conservative utility perspective traditional LWRs would be the most reliable bet. For some reasons big, complicated infrastructure projects are out-of-favor today. SMRs have many new design details and confidence must be built that they are safer, more reliable and easier to license.
Therefore the “research topic” intends to put current research into perspective: we have great experience from many years of traditional LWR operation, we have learned from earlier, advanced reactor concepts and today we have many modern engineering tools. This should be a good basis to fulfill the promises of the next generation of reactors. In my opinion it is important to understand the history of reactor development, to demonstrate that compared to earlier designs and methods we justifiably can be more confident to bring the technology to its next level. And SMRs are not just scaled down versions of bigger plants. They are small in order to make the core damage frequency much smaller than that of their bigger brothers.
As a scientist I am a fan of radical honesty and transparency: reactors are just machines which are an optimized solution for a specific problem. Certainly, there will be failures and setbacks. If a machine encounters conditions for which it was not optimized, it likely will fail. Compared to the risks our fathers took more than 50 years ago, we are now in a much better position. This is why I am optimistic that a new generation of reactors and higher safety standards are possible. Nevertheless, these are complex technological products and they are full of surprises and also “small” reactors will not fully fulfill expectations. No reason to worry, this is the way evolution works: engineering is a sequence of problems,
Krusty Core showing heat pipe arrangement
Patrick McClure and David Poston successfully developed, obtained funding, constructed and operated a new atomic fission power source that produced useful quantities of electricity during the period from 2014-2018. That puts them into a rarified, perhaps unique position. Few US-based technologists have been through that process in the past 40 years.
Aside: Without some way to frame the statement so it excludes the US Navy it isn't accurate to say no one else has accomplished this feat. End Aside
Patrick and David – and their supporting team – developed and operated the Kilopower reactor, also known as KRUSTY. That name comes from a creatively framed acronym – Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY.
The proposed application for the system is to produce power for space missions that cannot be accomplished using either solar collectors or radioisotope thermal generators. The former imposes operational constraints with both intermittency factors and increasing distance from the sun. The later uses rare isotopes with limited heat production that constrain individual power devices to a thermal output of approximately 300 W when the device is new.
In brief, Krusty was a tiny reactor that was operated at a power level of 5 kWth to produce the equivalent of 1 kWe using Stirling Engines qualified for space travel. Heat pipes arranged around a solid UMO alloy annular core transferred heat from the reactor to the hot end of the Stirling engines. The cold side of the engines were designed to radiate heat into the vacuum of space. Reactor reactivity was adjusted using a movable beryllium reflector on the outside of the core. A boron carbide rod in the center of the annular core provided a second means of controlling the reactor. The core was 10 inches tall and had an outside diameter of 4 inches. The center annulus for 2 inches in diameter.
Aside: Past tense is the accurate way to describe Krusty. The system, including the core used, no longer exists. End Aside.
The program cost $18 M and took 3.5 years from initiation to final testing. It was funded partly by NASA and partly by NNSA.
We will be publishing a more detailed description of the technology and the development process in the near future, but for now, please listen to the show. If the audio program stimulates questions or comments, please join in a conversation here.
If you are intensely curious and cannot wait for our coming post, you can learn more about Krusty by visiting Space Nukes Technical Papers.
Julia Pyke, Director of Finance, Sizewell C
Sizewell C is a project to build a 3,200 MWe power station consisting of two EPR units on the site that currently hosts a single large pressurized water reactor (Sizewell B). With the exception of site-specific foundations and structures, the new power station will be a copy of the station currently under construction at Hinkley Point C.
Like Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C will be capable of supplying approximately 7% of the UK's annual electricity requirement. It will be able to run at full power for 90% (or more) of the hours in the year.
By following Hinkley Point, Sizewell will be a much less risky project. Trades have been trained, construction kinks have been worked out, supply chains have been created, managers have gained experience, and designs have been completed and tested. As a result of this "derisking" (using the lingo of project managers) Sizewell C will be a more affordable endeavor that should begin saving customers money from the time it first begins operating.
But that expectation is unlikely to be fulfilled if the project has to be financed in the same way as Hinkley Point C, where the long construction duration and the inability to recover financing costs during construction has resulted in a situation where 70% or more of the total project cost is paid out in interest and return on investor risk capital.
On this episode of the Atomic Show, Julia Pyke, the Director of Finance for the Sizewell C project, explains how the regulated asset base (RAB) model will enable Sizewell C to be economically financed and built.
In the weeks since we recorded this episode of the Atomic Show, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has increased the importance of making it possible for Sizewell C participants to reach a final investment decision. Approval of the RAB model will be a major step forward in moving this project towards completion.
It is a shovel-ready project that will help fill growing vulnerabilities in the UK's energy supply. It's not a quick fix, but it will be a durable one.
Please participate in the discussion here. I hope you enjoy the show.
The Assay is a media project of the 121 Group, based in Hong Kong, that serves investors, fund managers and analysts who are involved with and/or investing in a wide range of mining ventures. As part of their efforts to bring a greater understanding of the complex markets that control the prospects of mining ventures, […]
Liz Muller, CEO Deep Isolation
Deep Isolation is a young company developing solutions for "the nuclear waste issue." They have built their solution option based on highly developed technologies used in the oil and gas drilling sector.
Several decades ago, after discussing and evaluating several options, the world's scientific and political communities came to a general consensus around the notion that certain categories of byproducts from nuclear technologies in power, industry, medicine and defense should be permanently isolated from the human environment in deep geological formations.
Nearly all of the specific solution concepts evolving from that consensus involved large mined repositories. As envisioned in most countries, deep geologic repositories would be large enough to store a large portion of their waste. They planned to develop just one or a very small number of repositories.
For many reasons, most countries have had difficulty implementing their envisioned solution. Only a handful have progressed to the point of choosing a location and only one, Finland, is nearing the point of commissioning their facility and starting to dispose of their nuclear waste.
Addressing nuclear waste using oil and gas drilling technology
About a half a dozen years ago, Richard and Elizabeth Muller looked at the world's nuclear waste problem through a new lens. Richard knew about the rapid developments in drilling technologies that had enabled the US natural gas industry to become most productive supplier in the world.
He thought about the ability to steer drill bits into selected layers of rock and about the long horizontal laterals being created, some with lengths measured in miles. It seem to Richard and Liz that modern drilling techniques could be applied to reduce the complexity of developing mined repositories for nuclear waste.
Additional research led the pair to form Deep Isolation, a world leader in the concept of using directional drilling to create small modular repositories (SMRs, if you will) that could be a right-sized solution for countries with small waste inventories and for distributed solutions in countries with large inventories.
One of the major advantages of using distributed deep boreholes is that they can be developed in locations that minimize the number of ton-miles needed to move the material from its current safe resting place to a permanent (but retrievable) disposal location.
Transportation is not only costly, but it's an activity that provides opponents with multiple opportunities to interfere, insert delays, add costs and tie up processes in legal battles.
Developing a complete solution set
Deep Isolation knows that many of the challenges that have slowed the development of nuclear waste repositories will not disappear as a result of their technological development. It's not a magic wand that will eliminate opposition or convince communities that they should meekly accept the role of storing used nuclear fuel – aka nuclear waste.
They recognize that one or more deep boreholes are only components of a complete solution.
Though steadily developing the physical and technical capacity to license and build modular repositories, Deep Isolation is focusing on engagement activities that will build trust, understanding and perhaps acceptance. In the best case, full understanding and trust could result in open invitations from a welcoming community that sees benefits in hosting their facilities.
Deep Isolation is engaged with communities, NGOs, national and local governments. They've completed several studies and have more underway. They are in discussions about the potential of a multinational demonstration that is more comprehensive than the demonstration they completed in 2019.
This is the second Atomic Show featuring Liz Muller. While reviewing some of the basics of her company and their technological solutions, this show focused more on providing an update of ...
Mikal Boe, courtesy of Core Power
Mikal Boe has spent 30 years in and around the commercial shipping industry. Several years ago, he began wondering how his industry was going to meet the increasingly stringent rules for air pollution and CO2 production that were being implemented by governing regulators, especially the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
His extensive technical research led him to recognize that nuclear energy was the only available technology that could supply the power and energy requirements for competitive ships and also meet ever tightening regulations on their emissions.
But he also recognized that moving from the established technology of efficient, rugged, well-proven diesel engines was going to take time and would only happen if founded on solid groundwork. Included in that evaluation was an understanding of the need for open, honest, and inclusive conversations with a wide range of stakeholders.
Founded in 2018, Core Power is focused on commercializing nuclear energy products that customers want to buy because they are the best available solution to their needs. Cost plays a role, but so does capability, acceptability, environmental footprint, and longevity. Core Power's leaders have determined that the technology that is best positioned to meet the needs of their target market is the molten chloride fast reactor.
In partnership with TerraPower as the technical lead and Southern Company as an experienced owner/operator, Core Power is participating in the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor project.
Under a Risk Reduction grant in the US DOE's Advanced Demonstration Reactor Program (ADRP), the team will be developing and constructing a Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) a zero or low power reactor using the materials and salt mixtures that will be used in full scale products.
On this episode, Mikal Boe explains how he and his team made their choices and how they plan to take a step by step approach to achieving their goal of giving the commercial shipping industry a viable, competitive nuclear propulsion option.
When you listen, you will hear Mikal describing what might initially appear to be a counterintuitive initial step in the process of demonstrating and refining ships using nuclear propulsion to its full advantage.
One aspect of their plan must be emphasized – it involves a dramatic change in the current model of crewing, building, and maintaining ocean going vessels. Even though their overall costs will win many competitive battles, the accounts that make up those costs will be substantially shifted and prioritized.
Comments are always appreciated.
Disclosure: Nucleation Capital –where I am a managing partner – is so enthused about Core Power's prospects for success that we joined their recent fundraising round as the only participating venture capital fund. (There were several larger investors that are not venture capital funds.)
Robert Bryce talking about Power Hungry
Robert Bryce is an admired journalist, book author, filmmaker, public speaker, Congressional witness and podcaster who has focused on energy, power and its implications for mankind's prosperity. In his free time, he loves to watch birds.
He recognizes that electricity is the lifeblood of modernity. He is saddened by knowing that there are billions of humans on Earth who have such limited access to electricity that their consumption each year is less than an average American refrigerator.
Starting with Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego and the Death of Enron in early 2004, Robert has published six books on energy with the latest being A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. He wrote that last book while he was also recording and producing Juice: How Electricity Explains the World.
He would like everyone to watch his movie and has made it freely available through several outlets. He also asks that people buy his books – he excuses everyone from reading the books as long as they buy them.
In June of 2020, Robert started the Power Hungry podcast and continues to release new episodes with fascinating guests at a furious pace.
Robert and I talk about his work, his passions, and the difficulty of writing a book and creating a movie at the same time. We talked about his recent testimony at Congressional hearings about the growing fragility of our energy system due to what our mutual friend, Meredith Angwin, has labeled the fatal trifecta of energy policy decisions – oo much reliance on imports, too much reliance on gas and too much reliance on renewables.
I think you will enjoy this discussion. Please leave a comment and engage in discussion about the important points that Robert made.
PS - there is a point in the show when Robert turns the tables and begins to interview me about recent progress at Nucleation Capital. We are bullish about the growing recognition that nuclear energy is a vital tool and that advanced nuclear energy development is an enormous opportunity for solving many sticky problems.
Andrew Crabtree is a former professional rugby player and banker who decided to transition to the nuclear industry in 2007. He had recognized that the banking industry was going to be in for a rough time. In other words, he was able to read the handwriting on the wall just before the financial crisis that everyone else began to notice by mid 2008.
Andrew tells us about his choice to get into nuclear, skills he brought from banking and professional rugby and about his recognition of the professionally welcoming nature of the nuclear technology profession.
He describes what motivated him to create Get Into Nuclear, initially as a web site but now a growing and vibrant community that provides visitors with abundant information and employers with ways to reach prospective employees.
As a UK-based nuclear project manager who has also spent a good deal of time working in other European countries, Andrew has seen a number of different nuclear programs. He is happy to be working in a country that has an active program for building new reactors, event though his personal career path has involved more decommissioning support work than work in supporting new nuclear power stations.
He praises the work of young generation groups, the Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG), the Nuclear Industry Association – UK (NIAUK) and individuals who are investing time, energy and money into telling others about nuclear energy and the benefits it brings to people, regions, countries and humanity.
We hope you enjoy this show. It's been far too long since the last Atomic Show. As always, your comments are appreciated. We wouldn't bother to do this show if we thought that no one was listening.
Fermi Energia is an Estonian company whose mission is to provide its home country with an independent, clean, safe and affordable electricity production system by 2035. That system will be anchored by base supply from small modular nuclear reactors.
It is a lofty mission for a small company in a country whose land mass and population is roughly the size of the state of Maine and whose current electricity supply system is dependent on oil oil shale burning power plants with a small, rapidly varying portion of energy from wind turbines.
On the web page where Fermi Energia explains why it believes Estonia needs nuclear, there is a graph of its wind power generation as measured each hour during 2018 and an explanation for the mismatch between this pattern and electricity consumption.
Kalev Kallemets, born and raised in the Estonian countryside during its days as a Soviet satellite, has a keen understanding of his country's history and its people. He has significant experience as a political leader and broad education in engineering and business.
He joined me for lively, informative and entertaining Atomic Show.
Kallemets has gathered a compact group of like-minded people; there are about a dozen members of the team. They working with numerous partners to create an fertile environment for new nuclear plant development, including a regulatory system and strong public interest and acceptance of nuclear energy.
They are leading with the benefits, but also helping people to understand the responsibilities that come with becoming a country whose power comes from atomic fission.
Fermi Energia is led by people who have a keen understanding of the value of nuclear energy and a realization that there are a wide range of technological capabilities under development. The four currently leading the evaluation process are GE-Hitachi's BWRX-300, NuScale's NuScale Power Module, Terrestrial Energy's IMSR, and a high temperature gas reactor being developed by Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC).
The company knows that no matter which technological choice is made, the key to success will be the planning and development effort that must be invested to create effective projects with the kind of social license needed to support superior cost and schedule performance.
One measure of Fermi Energia's early success is its recent social media-enabled fund raising round to provide the seed capital needed for the important planning stage. Kalev describes how the early goal for its Funderbeam campaign was doubled to €1 million after they obtained an early indication of interest in their development effort.
When that campaign was officially opened, it was completely subscribed in less than an hour. That indication of real, committed interest led the company to double its goal again before closing the finance round with what it considers to be an adequately strong balance sheet.
The successful financial raise has not changed the company's frugal spending habits; the founders have a keen sense of corporate responsibility and personal ownership. They know they still have a long way to go before they are producing revenue from the products of the nuclear power systems they are planning to build.
During Atomic Show 291, Kalev talks about the Estonian energy supply situation, its relationships with its Baltic neighbors, the importance of Lithuanian and Poland, the still fresh memory of Soviet occupation, and the vision of a clean, safe, affordable, secure, and reliable power system anchored by modern atomic power stations.
As always, I encourage you to comment, ask questions, and engage in productive discussion. I think you will enjoy hearing Kalev talk about his company's exciting efforts to produce a bright future for his country.
Nuclear energy professionals are credible sources of information about a powerful technology that can help address climate change and contribute to humanity's development.
Voices of Nuclear is an international non-profit group that seeks to empower nuclear supporters, both professionals in the industry and allies outside of the industry, with tools, organization and effective messages.
Myrto Tripathi, the founder and chair of Voices of Nuclear, visited the Atomic Show to tell us more about her group and its efforts to tell the nuclear energy story.
She describes the current situation in Europe, where there are a handful of new reactors under construction, there are numerous reactors being closed and there is a solid front of opposition from several prominent EU member states – particularly Austria and Germany.
She explains how the European reaction to the Fukushima event – now almost ten years ago – helped to convince her to leave a successful career in the nuclear industry to play a bigger part in the civil society discussion about its role, especially in light of the growing threat of climate change.
She talks about the role of young people, primarily under the age of 35, in bringing their vibrant, optimistic energy to the Voices and she discusses the challenges that her group faces in obtaining necessary and useful financial support from the established industry.
She also mentioned the importance of retired people in sharing their stories about pride in their life's work in developing and operating clean nuclear generation facilities.
We spoke at length about the successful, well-funded and carefully planned efforts by nuclear energy opponents to spread misinformation and fake news about nuclear and how those efforts have helped to silence nuclear energy supporters.
We spoke about the disappointing state of public misunderstanding as illustrated by a recent poll taken in France in which 86% of the respondents between 18-34 years old said they believed that nuclear energy contributed to the problem of climate change.
With their diligent efforts over a number of decades, nuclear opponents effectively created a "taboo" around nuclear. They made it politically and economically costly for ambitious leaders in both government and in commercial enterprises outside of nuclear to publicly take a supportive position.
One reason I invited Myrto to be a guest on the Atomic Show was that I sense there are many in the US who believe that the nuclear grass is greener on the other side of the Atlantic. At the moment, the situation in Europe is tenuous and could use a strong public engagement effort.
Voices of Nuclear is working hard to be a positive part of that effort. They have a base of talented volunteers, but they could use all the additional support anyone wants to offer. It would be especially useful, if your time is more constrained than your resources, to support their efforts financially.
Myrto did not ask me to say that and might even be a little mad at me for making the statement, but changing people's minds isn't easy or cheap.
Please join in the conversation.
Pro-nuclear advocates generally agree that there is a large and growing need for new nuclear power plants to meet energy demands with less impact on the planet and its atmosphere.
There is frequent, sometimes passionate discussion about the most appropriate reactor sizes, technologies and specific uses.
Atomic Show #289 is a lively discussion among some of the world's most focused experts on the topic of nuclear plant costs and the relationship of costs to sizes and deployment concepts.
Guests include:
Kirsty Gogan - co-founder of Energy for Humanity, Managing Director of Lucid Catalyst and Co-Founder of TERRAPRAXISEric Ingersoll - co-founder of Lucid Catalyst and co-founder of TerrapraxisNick Touran - creator of WhatisNuclear.com and advanced reactor design engineerChris Keefer - President of Canadians for Nuclear, founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, host of the Decouple podcast and the We CANDU It PodcastJessica Lovering, co-founder and co-Executive Director of Good Energy Collective
We reached several conclusions.
Nuclear can be expensive but it doesn't have to be expensiveSeries building programs can successfully reduce construction and manufacturing costsSeries building programs that keep crews together on the same site for unit runs of 4, 8 or even more units have an established history of success.Factory manufacturing is an intriguing prospect that might best be applied to nuclear plants by using shipyards for production and delivery.Seismic isolation techniques can enable systems to be more location agnostic and limit the amount of redesign required for new locations.There is room for innovation and new ideas in nuclear.Smaller nuclear systems can make the technology more accessible and more widely acceptable. Long held beliefs about nuclear in terms of risks, public acceptance, and needs for isolation and security deserve to be challenged.Some believe that the more experience you have with nuclear, the better you will appreciate its benefits and capabilities.
Your comments and reactions are welcome and add value to this publication.
Per Peterson in R-Lab with ETUDE, the scaled water test version of the Engineering Test Unit now in construction in AlbuquerqueImage provided by Kairos Power
Kairos Power Is developing a truly new nuclear fission power technology. Their KP-FHR (Kairos Power - Fluoride Salt Cooled, High Temperature Reactor) combines the solid fuel form usually associated with gas-cooled reactors with the fluoride molten salt often associated with fluid-fuel reactors.
For Atomic Show #288, my guest was Dr. Per Peterson, Kairos Power's chief nuclear officer (CNO). Per explained the technical logic leading his company to make its ground-breaking choices.
Before describing process of making technical choices, Per provided a brief summary of the KP-FHR technological development history. The FHR originated in a conversation with MIT's Dr. Charles Forsberg and later became the subject of an integrated research program between MIT, University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Peterson's academic home at University of California's Berkeley campus.
As Per was careful to point out, the program was primarily funded with Department of Energy (DOE) academic research grants and involved a number of both graduate and undergraduate research students from each of the participating institutions.
This type of project grant program is aimed at giving students practical design experience and providing purpose for experiments, equipment design and testing. Sometimes, as in the case of the FHR, members of the research team recognize that they have a product that can be commercialized because it has characteristics that are superior to similar products in the market.
Three members of the FHR integrated research project team, Per Peterson, Ed Blandford, and Mike Laufer founded Kairos Power in 2016 as a venture-funded Silicon Valley company to refine their ideas and commercialize the technology they had helped to develop within the academic setting.
In 2018, I talked with Ed Blandford and Per about Kairos Power, this show is part of my promise to provide updates on an intermittent basis.
Brief description of the KP-FHR
The nuclear fission heart of the KP-FHR is a pebble-bed reactor with 4 cm diameter fuel elements that each contain thousands of TRISO fuel particles in a graphite matrix. Fission heat generated in the reactor is moved by a pumped flow of fluoride salts through a heat exchanger that transfers the fission heat into nitrate salts similar to those used in concentrated solar thermal power systems.
The nitrate salt is pumped through a second heat exchanger (steam generator) that functions as a water boiler to produce steam with temperature of 585 ℃ and pressure of 19 MPa. As Per explained, that combination of temperature and pressure is equal to the most modern coal fired steam plants.
In fluoride salt the fuel elements have a slight positive buoyancy. To provide long operating periods without a large amount of excess reactivity at the beginning of core life, the KP-FHR includes an online fueling system that removes pebbles at the top of the core and replaces them with fresh or slightly used pebbles at the bottom.
The pebbles move slowly and have very low frictional contact with each other in the bath of molten salt. The reactor operating temperature is approximately 1000 ℃ lower than the temperature at which the TRISO fuel particles would begin releasing even small quantities of fission products, giving the reactor a broad thermal margin. As Per described it, the pebbles are so relaxed that they are almost meditating during their residence time in the molten salt.
What happened to the gas turbine concept?
Some listeners might remember that Kairos Power initially planned to use a Brayton cycle heat conversion system with the potential for using natural gas co-firing to produce peak power. Like many academic ideas, the system that looked good on paper or on computer screens turned out to be more complex and difficult to dev...
X-Energy is the lead recipient for one of two industry groups selected to receive $80 M in Department of Energy (DOE) funding as part of a public-private partnership program to demonstrate advanced nuclear power plants on an aggressive time table.
Its primary partner in the endeavor is Energy Northwest, which currently owns and operates the Columbia Generating Station in eastern Washington. Energy Northwest will be the owner and operator of the demonstration power station, which will consist of a four-unit installation of X-Energy's Xe-100 high temperature gas cooled reactor.
Each unit is designed to produce 80 MWe, resulting in a power station output of 320 MWe.
Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program
The award is part of the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which also includes two additional development pathways with longer horizons. The $80 M in FY 2021 funds is a down payment that will provide funds for completing detailed design work and beginning the licensing process.
Future appropriations will be required to complete the projects; the funding opportunity announcement for the program included an award ceiling of $4 B to be shared among three different development pathways.
For Atomic Show #287, I spoke with Darren Gale, X-Energy's Vice President for Commercial Operations. Darren is the company executive with direct responsibility for executing the company's contract with the Department of Energy and delivering on the promise to design, license and construct an advanced nuclear reactor power plant.
The ADRP has an aggressive target date for beginning to deliver electricity to the grid is the end of 2027. During our conversation, Darren explained how his company is positioned to deliver on its promise.
Xe-100 Design history
We spoke about how X-Energy has been working on its high temperature pebble bed reactor design for more than a decade. X-Energy was founded in 2009 by Kam Ghaffarian, a successful entrepreneur who founded Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT) in 1984. Dr. Ghaffarian remains the owner of X-Energy, but is being joined by additional investors.
The design is mature and the company has been engaging with the NRC for several years. It expects to be able to submit a license application within the next year or two; part of the uncertainty includes determining the most appropriate and streamlined licensing pathway.
The Xe-100 is a helium-cooled, high temperature pebble bed reactor that has a number of similarities to the Chinese HTR-PM. They share a common heritage tracing back through the South African HTGR program and to the German AVR demonstration reactor.
As Darren explains, the Xe-100 includes a number of refinements in its fuel design and in its fuel handling system that enable more efficient fuel use.
Another design difference is that each Xe-100 reactor/steam generator modules are connected to its own Rankine cycle steam turbine. In the HTR-PM design, two reactor/steam generator modules feed a single larger turbine.
The 80 MWe power output selection was influenced, in part, by the availability of off-the-shelf steam turbine power plants. Unlike light water reactors, the Xe-100 will produce steam at temperatures (565 ℃) and pressures (16.5 MPa) used in modern supercritical steam systems.
Like the HTR-PM, Xe-100 reactors are continuously fueled while operating, eliminating the need to schedule refueling outages. There will still be a need to periodically shut down the reactor for inspections and steam turbine maintenance. X-Energy expects that there will be more requirements during the early years of operation while the company and the regulator gain experience and understanding of operational effects.
Eventually, though, the company expects to achieve somewhat higher than average availability than conventional reactors that require unavoidable outages for refueling.
Project location
The project will be built in eastern Washington...
Chris Wright is the CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services, which recently became the second largest US company performing the work of drilling and completing oil and gas wells in shale formations.
He is a leader in the field of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling, having been involved in the revolutionary technology development since the days when George Mitchell was stubbornly experimenting in the Barnett Shale.
Among those who focus on the energy industry and attempt to understand its current situation in order to gain some insights into the future, the growing natural gas supply in the US gets a lot of attention. Cheap natural gas gets credit for a steady drop in annual US CO2 emissions as it has pushed a growing amount of coal out of the market.
That same product – cheap natural gas – has also been blamed for reducing revenues enough at a number of existing nuclear plants to push their owners into closing the plants for economic reasons. Despite successful efforts to reduce operating costs at those plants, shrinking top-line revenue from selling electricity into low-priced wholesale markets means they do not make enough money to meet corporate goals.
After hearing Chris Wright on Robert Bryce's excellent Power Hungry podcast, I realized it would be worthwhile to invite him onto the Atomic Show to provide a deeper explanation of the revolution in natural gas production.
Chris gets into some deep technical details about how technology has dramatically improved in his field. He explains how competition and a relentless focus on providing a better product has driven that improvement.
He is justifiably proud of the benefits that his industry has provided to the world, but he also provides some important support and advice to people who are working to improve nuclear fission energy.
It might surprise many, including some of Chris's colleagues, to learn that Chris describes himself as a huge supporter of nuclear fission energy. He provides some compliments and some tough love for those of us who are working to improve the technology's chances of competing and serving customer needs.
I think you will thoroughly enjoy listening to Chris's thoughts about energy and its importance for human development and prosperity.
As always, I'm interested in hearing what you think. I'm pretty sure this show will provoke some deep thinking in what might be completely new directions, so I'd like you to share some of those thoughts.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a stretch goal of completing its next research and test reactor by the end of 2025. It has assembled a team that includes several other major universities, national labs, and industrial partners.
It has selected the MMRTM, a product that is being developed by USNC (Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation), for its ability to meet most of a long list of important attributes that will support a wide range of university research and development goals.
For this Atomic Show, I spoke with Dr. Katy Huff, Dr. Caleb Brooks – both of whom are on the UIUC engineering faculty – and Mark Mitchell, the USNC executive leading the MMR development program.
They explained the history of their visionary project and provided the basis for their firm belief that they can license and build a new research and test reactor within the next five years.
Why does UIUC need a new reactor?
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has a long tradition of leadership and innovation in nuclear science, technology and engineering. For 38 years (1960-1998) it proudly operated the Triga-Mark II research reactor to support student development and to contribute to the advancement of nuclear science and technology.
But that valuable asset was, like so many US research reactors, decommissioned during the Dark Ages of US nuclear power development in the 1990s.
By the end of that decade, student enrollment in nuclear engineering and science majors had dropped to near the fiducial level, there were few, if any prospects for new nuclear power projects, and federal support for nuclear research had been completely eliminated in during several budget cycles.
Universities didn't see any reason to keep supporting research reactors, so they shut them down.
But concerns about fossil fuel sustainability and climate change have helped to renew global interest in nuclear energy development and deployment. Students are again selecting nuclear focused majors and are developing new ideas about ways to use nuclear technologies to improve the human condition.
Even though student interest in nuclear has been growing in the US for at least 15 years, university research reactor shutdowns have continued and no new ones have been built.
Leaders in nuclear at UIUC decided several years ago that they need to take aggressive action to address the growing challenge of increasing student population and fewer physical reactors for them to use in their education, research and professional development programs.
Why the MMR? Why now?
University research reactors have always been modest in their thermal power capability, and they have generally been designed with passive safety features that make them appropriate for student learning and management.
Even though the 15 MWth MMR is designed to provide useful power and electricity, it is also designed to be extremely safe without operator action. With its molten salt heat storage separating the nuclear reactor heat source from the adjacent plant heat conversion system, it is also designed for flexibly shifting its production from electricity to heat or to other useful products.
That flexibility is attractive to a large university that has a variety of student research endeavors along with a large physical plant that includes on-campus power and heat generation. Like many US universities, UIUC has a district heating system that supplies more than 200 buildings with steam heat. The total load during winter months is more than 50 MWth.
In addition, the university power plant supplies 50-75 MWe from a growing assortment of renewable energy systems as well as the coal and natural gas that provide the majority of the power.
UIUC students have expressed a great deal of interest in moving their university away from fossil fuels and have targeted their campus steam and power supply as something that needs an emission-free replacement.
Meredith Angwin has become an authority on the arcane topic of governing electric grids in the United States. She's concerned and thinks others will may share her concern when they recognize there is a key missing element in grid governance.
There is no organization or individual that is responsible for making sure that electricity is generated, transmitted and delivered to customers.
Various organizations, often with competing or conflicting interests, have shared responsibility for different parts of the system that includes generators, transformers, switchyards, transmission lines, distribution lines and billing systems, but "the market" has been assigned the responsibility of supplying wholesale electricity.
And that market is not the free market, but instead is a hybrid that is governed by an ever changing stack of layered rules where many of the important decisions are made by participant groups that do not include customers or even enabled representatives of customers.
A growing portion of the grid's electricity is dependent on free, but uncontrolled natural flows. Another portion comes from generators whose fuel is delivered by capacity-limited pipes in a "just in time fashion." When the natural flows are interrupted or something interferes in the pipelines's capability to deliver fuel, generators stop producing power.
There are processes that can be called into action, but costs can skyrocket in times of scarcity. Some market players thrive in times of crisis and have few incentives to ensure those crises never arise.
Meredith has produced an accessible, clearly written book that reveals important aspects of a complex topic. It deserves to be on the reading list for people who are interested in electricity.
It belongs in the library of every congressional and senatorial office. At least one person in each staff should be assigned the task of reading it and preparing a report for their member.
Governors and state level legislators might want incorporate lessons revealed in the book and reconsider their decisions to rely more heavily on markets than on well-regulated monopolies with an obligation to serve.
Meredith is a delightful guest who brings the wisdom of a long and productive professional career to her writing and speaking engagements. I'm pretty sure you are going to like this show.
As always, I invite you to participate in the discussion thread.
Jessica Lovering, Rachel Slaybaugh, and Suzy Baker founded and lead Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that is actively "building the progressive case for nuclear energy as an essential part of the broader climate change agenda."
Inspired by the dynamic leaders and new organizations that are successfully making the case that addressing climate change is an imperative that demands immediate action, they determined that now is the time to build coalitions and join forces with others who share similar concerns.
They recognized that nuclear energy is often left out of discussions, and they believed that needed to change. They have each been studying and working in nuclear energy fields for a decade or two and understand that it is fundamentally capable of supplying the clean, abundant, reliable and affordable energy that should be more equitably available to everyone.
But they also recognized that "nuclear" needed to look very different from the image that it currently creates when the word is spoken or written.
Not only is there a need for additional new technologies and designs that make nuclear energy accessible to broader applications and a greater diversity of customers, but methods used to talk about nuclear energy need to be improved and modified to suit current times. Old ways of doing things need to be altered in recognition of past failures, real and perceived.
Though they believe there is a continuing role for large nuclear power plants that can serve the needs of densely populated cities, they also know that the spectrum of communities and customers is so large that it demands a wide variety of solutions.
They are devising and promoting new ways of engaging with people who might eventually choose to use nuclear technology to address their energy needs. But before that happens, they have to learn, trust and accept. They want to help create situations that have better chances of success because entire communities are supportive and encouraging.
Good Energy Collective was officially launched in August 2020, but it has been busily publishing reports, stimulating discussions and developing coalitions. Its leaders do not believe there is any time to waste. They are highly motivated to make rapid changes that will enable a better story to be told about the future of nuclear energy.
Please listen carefully to these amazing women tell their story and share their plans to modernize nuclear energy products, projects and perceptions.
Dr. Chris Keefer
Chris Keefer is the creator and host of the Decouple Podcast. He is an emergency room doctor whose activist bent and desire to make the world a better place has led him to become a nuclear energy proponent.
Chris is the founder and a director of an organization called Doctors for Nuclear Energy.
One of his biggest current efforts is serving as the co-director of #SavePickering, an initiative open to all who want to save and refurbish the Pickering nuclear power plant in his native Ontario.
That plant is a 6 unit facility currently rated at just under 3 GWe. It is one of the primary tools enabling Ontario to have one of the cleanest electricity grids in the world, with almost no contributions from any fossil fuels.
But it is currently scheduled to be closed. As is often the case in North America, most of Pickering's electricity production will be replaced by generators that burn natural gas.
Chris and I chatted about our shared interests in nuclear energy, protecting nature and empowering humans to achieve greater prosperity. We agreed that increasing access to clean, reliable, abundant electricity is a key to achieving our goals.
I think you will enjoy the show. Please let us know what you think by participating in the comment thread.
Paris Ortiz-Wines Global Coordinator, Stand Up for Nuclear
Paris Ortiz-Wines wants you to Stand Up for Nuclear Energy. She is the global coordinator for the annual, month-long event that includes actions in several dozen locations around the world.
On this episode of the Atomic Show, Paris explains how she came to be a pro-nuclear activist, why she believes nuclear energy is an important enabler of human prosperity, and why she believes that technology and prosperity are good for both people and the environment.
I think you will enjoy our conversation. I trust it will inspire you to learn more about the actions that are happening all around the globe. Even if you must do it from your home, please Stand Up For Nuclear and show your support of this important technology.
Zion Lights
Zion Lights is a formally trained science communicator, author of a carefully researched book titled The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting, and an experienced environmental activist who worked for a year as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.
About a month ago, she began openly advocating for an expansion of nuclear energy as a major tool in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Her conversion wasn't sudden, she spent about a decade independently learning about the value of nuclear energy.
Even after she had decided that nuclear was far safer and more important than she had been taught to believe, she was careful about openly advocating for the technology. That was something that just wasn't done by her peers and close associates.
While still a member of the Green Party, she realized that curiosity about nuclear energy was almost taboo. That realization led her to almost immediately leave the party because she did not understand why such an important topic could not even be discussed.
With a growing sense of unease about the directions taken by some of her fellow members of Extinction Rebellion, Zion decided to leave the organization. Coincident with her separation from XR, she and Michael Shellenberger had several widely separated conversations. Eventually she accepted Shellenberger's offer to become director of a newly-formed UK branch of Environmental Progress.
Zion and Michael have determined that the UK is an important center of nuclear energy industrial development. She is bringing her experience, education and passion to the task of spreading good news about nuclear power.
We had a wide ranging discussion about her journey from a firmly entrenched member of the Green Party, activist environmental organizations and even an environmental alarmist to become a vocal proponent of using nuclear fission to enable clean prosperity.
Please join in the discussion and welcome Zion Lights to the community of pro-nuclear advocates and technological optimists.
Michael Shellenberger's new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All has provoked numerous reactions and conversations. It is a carefully researched, 400 page work where 25% of the book is endnotes that document sources for the statements in the book.
Michael is a stranger to the "go along to get along" mode of thinking, writing and speaking. By clearly stating his positions, he generates strong reactions among those who either agree or disagree.
His book documents extensive travels and deep conversations that have led him draw challenging conclusions about many current issues.
He asserts that nuclear weapons are not going to be abandoned. He believes that those who focus their concerns on those horrific devices should be doing everything they can to prevent their use instead of expending effort in a fruitless pursuit of a nuclear weapons-free world.
An important part of reducing risk for nuclear weapons use is to continue to promote development and eliminate scarcity wherever possible.
He notes that cities, factories and increasingly productive agriculture are a proven part of lightening human impacts on the natural environment. They concentrate people and allow more space for nature to flourish. They are also the means by which currently wealthy nations have become wealthy; denying those useful development paths to poor nations solidifies poverty.
He asserts that vegetarianism is an ideology or religion that is strongly influenced by a disgust reaction and that its importance for stabilizing climate has been exaggerated.
He acknowledges that competitors have played a role in the war against the atom, but he believes most campaigners are sincere even if they have been misinformed or misled by their peer groups to fear nuclear energy and radiation. (I maintain that money is far more important than ideology, but there is always room for different opinions.)
Michael is a thinker, a researcher and a writer who makes a strong case for environmental humanism.
He acknowledges that human society has many issues that need to be forthrightly addresses by the best available means, but he is firm in his conclusion that it is counter productive to attempt to stimulate action by frightening people with exaggerated scenarios not backed by solid science.
Please join in the discussion. As always, your comments are welcome.
Global First Power (GFP), Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) recently announced that they had formed a joint venture called Global First Power Limited Partnership. That venture will build, own and operate an installation called the Micro Modular Reactor (MMR™) at the Chalk River Laboratories site.
MMR™ nuclear plant
Mark Mitchell and Eric MGoey joined as guests on Atomic Show #278 to provide depth and background information about the technology and the project that was not included in the press release.
Mark is USNC's director for the MMR project. Eric wears two hats, one at GFP and one at OPG. For GFP, he is the director of outreach and communications. For OPG, he is the director of remote power generation.
We talked about the project's genesis and the joint venture's mission of proving through doing that the system design can be licensed, manufactured, assembled and operated in a cost-competitive way.
Eric provided a brief overview about OPG. He explained that it is committed to providing clean, reliable power both to grid-connected customers and to customers in areas that are not connected to the grid. He described how OPG has a current charter to serve markets throughout Canada and into the United States, and how it hopes that the MMR project will open new markets to the company.
For this first of a kind project, the MMR is a 15 MWth, 5 MWe power system with essentially two main plants. The nuclear plant is a helium-cooled, fission reactor-heated system that circulates helium through a heat exchanger. The adjacent plant is a conventional steam plant that circulates water through a heat exchanger/boiler and a steam turbine/condenser.
Between the two plants is a molten salt heat storage system that acts to buffer heat supply and steam demand. It gets heated by helium that has passed through the reactor. Hot molten salt transfers heat to boil water, creating high pressure steam to turn the turbine.
This arrangement allows the supplied grid to rapidly respond to load changes while enabling operators and control systems to vary reactor power output in a more gradual and efficient manner.
The reactor heat source differs from other high temperature gas reactors. It uses the same Triso coated particle fuel often chosen for gas cooled reactors and some molten salt cooled systems. Instead of using a random graphite matrix material to produce fuel elements from Triso particles the MMR uses USNC's patented Fully Ceramic Microencapsulated (FCM) fuel.
That innovation replaces random graphite with densely packed silicon carbide (SiC) as the matrix used to produce fuel elements. According to corporate literature on this feature, FCM fuels can retain fission products without failures at temperatures approaching 2000 C.
MMRs are designed to operate for 20 years between fuel system replacements.
While we talked a bit about the technological specifics, most of my conversation with Mark and Eric revolved around business considerations, the importance of developing manufacturing competence, the importance of effective cost controls and the importance of transparent engagement with regulators and potential customers.
Your participation in the comment thread is always welcome. If questions arise that need more details, I will seek assistance from the show guests.
I hope you enjoy listening.
Simon Wakter is a strongly pro-nuclear engineer in a country that passed a referendum officially phasing out nuclear energy since several years before he was born. He has to round up to be called a thirty-something.
Simon works in the nuclear energy branch of AFRY, a well-established 17,000 employee, all-of-the-above. engineering company that recently adopted a new brand name.
During this show we talked about his research and professional work investigating new markets for smaller nuclear power systems, his interest in risk management and analysis, his participation as an active member of the young generations group of the European Nuclear Society, and his work as the editor of a newsletter that covers nuclear energy from a Nordic perspective.
We talked about the complicated political history of nuclear energy developments in Sweden, delved into the sources of antinuclear activities, and chatted about recent improvements in nuclear energy acceptability as a powerful tool to address climate change and energy poverty.
Simon is young man who appreciates the importance of abundant clean energy in helping humans to develop their full potential. He is enthusiastic about technological advances that are revisiting some aging and possibly obsolete assumptions about the limitations of nuclear energy's contributions.
I enjoyed this conversation and hope you do as well.
Please provide your comments and suggestions.
HolosGen has attacked the nuclear power plant cost and schedule challenge from the opposite direction chosen by many nuclear reactor developers. Claiming to be agnostic about the reactor specifics – as long as it produces reliable heat in a small-enough configuration – HolosGen founder Claudio Filippone decided to focus on radical improvements to the “balance of plant.”
Filippone worked for a decade as a consultant specializing in power production systems. He is both a nuclear engineer and an electrical engineer with the skills required to address a wide variety of systems and challenges. His advice was valued and sought after, allowing him to accumulate both ideas and resources.
He began the groundwork for HolosGen in 2008 and incorporated the company in 2017.
During his time as a consultant, he recognized that “the balance of plant” outside of the nuclear portions of a power plant represented 70-80% of the initial capital cost and a similar portion of the ongoing operations and maintenance costs. That was his inspiration for choosing to focus on radically improving that section of the system.
As the submarine sound silencing saying goes, “attack the big noise first.”
The fundamental choice enabling dramatic improvement was to abandon the Rankine (steam) cycle and switch to the Brayton (gas turbine) cycle.
He worked with visionaries inside the US Army’s technical branches to gather requirements for mobile generators that could safely and reliably operate under extreme conditions. The challenging requirements included resistance to focused kinetic attacks.
By choosing to meet performance requirements provided by one of the toughest customers available, Filippone and his HolosGen team have produced a design concept that can be manufactured and delivered to almost any customer in any location.
HolosGen quad in a box.
Copyright HolosGen. Used with permission
The integrated power production system can fit inside of an ISO standard 40 foot long container. It will come in a number of different sizes depending on customer needs. One version will have a designed power capacity of 10 MWe.
Filippone credits the ARPA-E Meinter program for helping HoloGen to achieve rapid progress in a radically new direction.
He has hired a team of creative, aggressive, dedicated engineers, machinists and technicians – mostly fresh out of school or the military – and carefully trained them with a program that includes a healthy dose of hands-on work with functional components.
He has inspired them with a vision and a mission to fundamentally change the way that nuclear energy can be put to useful work for society.
The machines that he and his team have produced – and they have produced several functional prototypes – are modern, closed Brayton Cycle heat engines that use high-speed compressors and expanders that are coupled electrically, not mechanically.
That configuration enables modern control systems to finely balance the compressor output with the turbine input, maximizing thermal efficiency over a wide range of power outputs.
They will work with a variety of gases, including helium, nitrogen and supercritical CO2.
Filippone has engaged the advisory services of Charles (Chip) Martin, a deeply experienced and well-connected nuclear professional. Immediately prior to joining HoloGen, Chip was the Glenn T. Seaborg Science and Engineering Policy Fellow for the American Nuclear Society.
Dr. Filippone and Chip Martin joined me for a fascinating and detailed conversation about their integrated nuclear power system in a box.
The show is a bit longer than normal, but I think you will find listening to it will be a valuable investment of your time.
As always, comments are welcome.