00:03:26 · Ty Morse
[00:03:26] S0: Yeah. There's this interesting dynamic where there's this executive order about basically turning on... A bunch of startups are going to turn on reactors by July 4 or aiming to, but I haven't heard a lot of discussion about what happens next. Like what are the biggest bottlenecks over the next five years after this thing happens? Like what does the scale up look like? So let's talk about that.
00:03:47 · Chris Wright
[00:03:47] S1: Yeah, so this Saturday will be the one year anniversary of those four presidential executive orders that basically said we're going to get the nuclear chain moving again. We're going to fix our regulatory regime. We're going to fix our supply chain. We're going to fix the Department of Energy and enable innovation, enable entrepreneurs like Scott and General Matter to get going, to re stand up the supply chain, make nuclear reality in The U. S. Again. But can we do it? Absolutely. And we have a lot of things going on. So you mentioned the test reactor program. Yeah, we have 11 test reactors that are in sort of a fast track program to stand up and go critical. We'll have reactors critical before July 4. These reactors, this will be the first time in forty years a non light water reactor is turned on in The United States. You weren't born the last time this happened, but that will happen in the next few weeks. And there are Nuclear Regulatory Commission individuals seconded to the Department of Energy team. So they're working next door to us as we're permitting and getting these reactors moving in a test mode. But all of those companies are getting their systems watched, observed by the NRC. They're starting their regulatory process to get approval for electric generation. So first we're going to run them in test reactor mode. Not going to sell electricity out of them, but that's a great first step. That's construction, that's testing the nuclear systems, That's seeing the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeing all of that. That's opening the pathway for them to rapidly commercialize.
00:05:22 · Scott Nolan, Ty Morse
[00:05:22] S2: Yeah, think a lot of the tests are going to be criticality tests. Some will be full power. The point is these reactors will be able to prove how they operate and that the operations match the models. And I think that data, a lot of them are planning to use in their licenses, go into NRC licenses. You receive that in the next calendar year or two. And then I think from there, it's scale up. And a lot of them have contracted those deployments and who they'll be scaling up with, where they'll be scaling up. I think, to your question, we see that end of this decade. We see the first real commercial deployments, '28, '29, then we see it ramp from there. So I think when it's really, really moving the needle in a big way is the start of the next decade. [00:06:03] S0: I know that for you, it's gonna be basically 2030 when the first manufacturing plant comes online for HALEU. And before that, we don't really have, like, the necessary fuel to run a bunch of small modular reactors. So what is it gonna look like for the next five years as power demand just completely ramps, and yet we don't necessarily have the reactors to turn on in that time frame?
00:06:25 · Chris Wright
[00:06:25] S1: Well, two quick... Two questions. On the fuel, we will have HALEU to bridge the reactors that are doing it. That's coming from the Department of Energy. It's either down blended, highly enriched uranium that was produced for the weapons program or it's plutonium that's mixed with uranium. We are making and will deliver over 20 tons of HALEU fuel to bridge us from where we are today till we have this great American capacity from multiple companies enriching in The United States. You're right, there's a bridge there, but we have fuel for that bridge. That will not hold back the nuclear renaissance. But are you also talking about data centers? Now we're going to power data And centers in the next five of course that's a different question. And maybe back to where we started, you know, number one of course is just stop digging the hole or stop closing power plants that have been closed prematurely that are there to supply reliable, affordable electricity. We do have a nuclear restart that'll happen this summer. The Palisades nuclear power plant in Southwestern Michigan was shut down just a few years ago for political reasons. Yeah, we're ending our nuclear. That plant has restart program. It's been relicensed by the NRC. It'll be running and providing nearly a gigawatt of power by late this summer. That's an adder. The famous 3 Mile Island reactor has been renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. That reactor will be back online sometime next year. And we have reasonable hopes that the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa will also be back on power maybe in 'twenty eight. So there's, in round numbers, three gigawatts of new electricity that's coming from nuclear from plants we already built. We've got, as you know, small modular reactors, but for data centers and industrializing of our country, this sort of rapid electricity demand you talked about, in the short run the dominant source of new dispatchable electricity capacity is natural gas and we have a furious rate of construction right now on existing natural gas plants. We have up rate programs on existing natural gas plants about how to get 10% more out of them. We have up rate programs on nuclear plants. Use a little different fuel, you can get more energy out of those.
00:08:37 · Chris Wright
We have a lot of solar still coming on, and if you pair it with batteries and a meaningful amount of storage, it can help with demand load peaks, at least in the summertime. Not very helpful in the wintertime in northern states. So ultimately, the only way forward with the American dream and reindustrialization of our country is to build massive amounts of dispatchable, meaning it works whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining or the temperature is ideal. It works in all conditions. Cause electricity is different than filling up car, your gas tank. You can do that when you want. You can find the cheap gasoline and load it in. An electricity grid, at every moment, we have to match supply and demand. And so the critical thing for an electricity grid is its deliverability at peak demand time. As we're talking right here today in a nice pleasant afternoon, mild weather across the country, we have hundreds of gigawatts of spare capacity. That's more data centers that we're going to build in the next five or ten years because we don't have enough money to build more than that in the next five years. Hundreds of gigawatts. But we can't put all those data centers if we had them online today because when it gets really hot in the summer, when it gets really cold in the winter, everything else is going to draw so much power. It's just the excess capacity at peak demand. That's what delivers. Do you want to understand our grid? Don't look at the average numbers of electricity different sources generate. They're irrelevant. What matters is those hours of peak demand time. And I'll give one example and then I'll stop talking. We had a very cold weather system called Fern the last week of January this year. 22 Eastern United States really had their electricity and heating systems tested to the limit. Ragged edge of blackout in many states. Fortunately, common sense operating policies, we allowed people to turn on backup generators, we waived emission rules, run all your plants all out, a little more emissions to keep the lights on and people alive and plants running. That shouldn't be a hard trade off to make but it has not been made in the past. As I mentioned already, we stopped the closure of 17 gigawatts of coal plants. Had we not done that, hundreds of Americans likely would have frozen in late January this year. That's a chilling thought to me.
00:10:56 · Chris Wright
But to give one example, in New England, January 27 in the evening was their peak demand time. We zoom in and we look at that few hours. Where did that electricity come from? 2% of their electricity came from wind, solar, and batteries combined. 2%. So if you look average over the year, well, a lot more, but that doesn't matter. Are you there at peak demand time? 3% came from burning trash and wood. 50% more than wind, solar, and batteries combined. We got a little less than 10% from imported hydro from Canada, but really what kept the lights on in New England is what keeps the lights on across the country, which is nuclear power that was rock steady throughout the whole storm, natural gas and coal plants ramped up to increase their output and meet that peak demand time. Now New England's got a crazy problem and that they thought they hated fossil fuels for a while even though their economies entirely run on them and they have blocked natural gas new pipelines from getting to New England. So at peak demand time, New England's actual number one source of electricity was burning oil. Crazy. Much more expensive, dirtier burn, higher greenhouse gas burn as well if that's your thing. But that's because they have to have dual fuel plants because when it gets really cold, the natural gas capacity they have mostly goes to home heating and they burn a whole bunch of oil. We had to get emergency barges up there and trucks and do everything to keep the lights on. But keeping the American electricity guy reliable is maybe my most critical job I have. Maybe our nuclear weapon stockpile is number one, electricity grid is number two. But to this future you're talking about, yes, we have to not just barely scrape by today, we need to grow it again. But we can do that.