TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Bret Kugelmass
So, we're here today with Dr. Bismark Tyobeka, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Nuclear Regulator, and I have to say, I can't tell you how excited I am to have someone in your position, who's come from a physics background and can explain to us his whole journey of how he got here. So Dr. Tyobeka, please, welcome to Titans of Nuclear.

Bismark Tyobeka
Thank you very much for having me, Bret. It's good to be here.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. So please tell me your journey. First, where'd you grow up? What town? What was it like?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, I was born in a village in the North West Province of South Africa. And my hometown really is what's called Rustenburg. It is one of the places that are very rich in platinum in the world. That's the Platinum Belt. So, my village is northeast of Rustenburg. So, that's where I was born and I grew up and took up my high school there in physics.

Bret Kugelmass
Was that area rich in engineering because of the industry that was involved? Did most the people who work there have a sense of heavy machinery and what goes into all that?

Bismark Tyobeka
No, actually, no, because, if you recall, those were the days of the apartheid system in South Africa. So most black people during that time were just there to provide labor to the platinum mines and most of this stuff would be shipped to bigger cities and then exported to other countries for further refining and processing. So, by and large, most of our parents worked in the mines those days were laborers in the mines.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow. So how did you get involved in a love for science?

Bismark Tyobeka
When I was still in the primary school, I used to have this school principal who was the one who was teaching us. At that time, it was called general science. He had this fascinating experiments, simple experiments, such as demonstrating conduction and convection, expansion of metals and the contraction of metals. Simple things like showing you how water can be in three phases: gas, liquid, and vapor. So that fascinated me quite a bit and I thought that there is even more exciting experiments that one would see if you continue this route in your school career. I certainly jump jumped into the bandwagon at the time.

Bret Kugelmass
Amazing. So, something about it just clicked for you.

Bismark Tyobeka
Yes, indeed.

Bret Kugelmass
And then, as you get deeper into physics and you learned about the different spaces, where did your interests go from there?

Bismark Tyobeka
You see, as we got deeper into physics, now, in high school, you had physics divided into two, the physical side, it was called physical science. But in it, you had a physics part and the chemistry side, I was more fascinated by the chemistry side, but still loved physics also. So when I went to university, I took up a Bachelor's degree in physics and chemistry, majored in both physics and chemistry and education, because I was also fascinated by teaching the sciences. I took a degree that had both physics, chemistry and education as majors. That took me four years to finish. As I went deeper into the different facets of physics, different facets of chemistry, I was completely undecided, on what to do or what not to do when I went deep into my graduate studies.

Bret Kugelmass
So what helped you figure it out?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, there was a gentleman at that time who was a very renowned medical physicist in our country. And he was one of the few black - well, at that time, he was the only one I knew who was black - so, he visited the university and he had this idea of starting a new Master's program called the Master's in Applied Radiation Science and Technology. Now, that, of course, had a lot of nuclear stuff in it. You had to learn your biology, you had to do some radiochemistry, you had to do some accelerative physics, you had to do nuclear physics itself. Plus, of course, I had had my taste of nuclear and atomic physics in my undergraduate when I was doing my Bachelor's degree. So ultimately, I got excited by this because I was fascinated by the study of atoms and the nucleus. And, of course, the proverbial story about nuclear bombs and all that, I thought, maybe this is something that one can pursue and see how interesting it becomes as you go deeper into it. So, I decided that when I finished my Bachelor's degree, I was going to be joining that master's program. We were the second cohort that took that program, so it was still very brand new. Most importantly, there was a lot of industry interest in this new program, because at that time his mantra was that we need to create a critical mass of skills in nuclear science and technology. Even though the country did not have an undergraduate studies in nuclear, that degree was broad enough to give everybody a head start to decide where you'd like to see yourself in the nuclear field. One of the modules in that master's program was reactor physics, which I found more and more interesting than the rest of them. I decided, well, I'm gonna follow this route and I'm going to write my- so it was a two year program and the first year is coursework. The second year you need to choose a research project and must be attached to some industry so that you could be supervised by experienced industrial partners to the university. I chose reactor physics. The good thing about that, we have a sprawling nuclear complex in this country called Necsa, the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, which had a lot of experience to be a reactor physicist, but of course, those days, it was all white people and they were not used to having black students. So we were the first cohort to be admitted to be supervised by this gentleman and I must say, it was a complex relationship, but we ended up getting along very well.

Bret Kugelmass
A complex relationship. Would you mind kind of tapping into that a little bit deeper to help us understand what are some of the nuances?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, first and foremost, today, the facility itself was a highly secured facility. If you think Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, for example, or Idaho National Laboratory in the United States, you think something of that nature, but what made this even more complex, was the fact that it was the hub of the manufacturing of South Africa's historical nuclear weapons. If you knew that, but South Africa had nuclear weapons.

Bret Kugelmass
Can you actually maybe take a small detour and teach us a little bit about the history of nuclear in South Africa? I mean, I know that they're probably maybe the only country that went from having nuclear weapons to giving them up. Is that right?

Bismark Tyobeka
That's correct. We're the only country in the world to date that has voluntarily decided to dismantle our nuclear weapons. What happens is that South Africa, has a long, long history in nuclear. In fact, it starts as far back as 1948, when this Atomic Energy Board called the AEB, was formed at that time, and it was formed with the idea of self-determination. The government at the time, the apartheid government, decided that the world's- they were under heavy sanctions. And they decided that we need to invest on our own initiatives, to build our own know how, and out of that was born the Necsa site, but this site progressively was built until - they even commissioned the SAFARI reactor, the research reactor that we still have in South Africa - I think it was in 1965, that they built this reactor. So it's quite old. But it's amongst the best utilized research reactors in the world, because it puts South Africa as the second biggest producer of medical radioisotopes because of this facility. You can tell that it means we have quite a huge repository of knowledge in the field of nuclear science and technology, in running research reactors, in the design of fuel, because we have our own fuel fabrication facility, on site, and so on, and so on. So, out of that was born this interest to start now spreading that know-how to the younger generation. At the time when the democratic changes came in the country, some of us had to be put in there so that we could learn how nuclear works, because you see, government also worried that we are technically still in a racial war with white people in this country those days. So, the government was worried that, well, if you don't have black people knowing exactly what is going on in that complex, we might as well shut it down, because they may use- you know, it might be used to subvert government, because there was this thing of nuclear weapons. But President Mandela, in those days, decided it was time to dismantle these, and, of course, to support the IAEA Atoms for Peace initiatives. I must also add that South Africa was the founding member in 1957, during the apartheid system, they were the founding members of the IAEA. So we've come a long, long way with the international nuclear community.

Bret Kugelmass
Do you feel a certain sense of responsibility? It seems to me like you played a very critical role, almost like the future of nuclear was, as you being one of the first generations being integrated into that complex, that it was almost your responsibility to be successful, to take leadership, otherwise, the country might lose the technology altogether. Did you have a sense of that in your younger days when you were in that program?

Bismark Tyobeka
Yes, indeed. You see, the gentleman who mentored us preached that to us on a daily basis, that the technology of nuclear power in this country is in your hands. We have a tool, a twin unit, a nuclear power station here called the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, and it was unheard of, of course, those days to get even closer to those facilities. So we had to go to the site of Koeberg and end at the visitor center where they would show us the video of how a nuclear power plant works and so on. Meanwhile, the nuclear power plant is just across the fence from where we were. So yeah, we felt that edge and that determination to succeed so that, ultimately, we are the ones on the other side of that as controlling things, you know.

Bret Kugelmass
But how did that make you feel personally? Did you feel like it was a lot of responsibility? And did it make you nervous or anxious? Or did you feel excited by the opportunity?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, it was a mix, it was a mixture of feelings. First, excited, because you felt like you've been put into a position that none of your fellow brothers have ever been exposed to before, here to study this complex technology. In fact, when we were chatting to friends, and they ask us, You are doing a Master's degree, what is that? What are you doing in what area? And I would say, Oh, in applied radiation science, they would say, Radiation? So, is this about bombs and so on? So, you felt immediately superior to disguise it as far as the understanding of complex issues was considered. So, that was also fascinating. But also there was this fear of the responsibility placed on you. It meant that you dare not fail. That alone also was causing a lot of stress that you have to make sure that you succeed at all costs.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. So, what was success for you? How did your journey proceed as you continued your career?

Bismark Tyobeka
When I completed that Master's degree, fortunately for me, that is when they have just started the pebble bed modular reactor project. I remember one gentleman coming from Eskom - which is our utility company, and that is the one that owns the nuclear power plants in this country and they were the owners of the PBMR technology at that time, also still are - so he came and he said, I'm looking for four people that I can sponsor to study nuclear engineering. Now, that to me was like, wow, nuclear engineering. Never heard of that. I know, nuclear physics, I know nuclear reactor physics. But nuclear engineering, no, I haven't, and I know of no school in this country that will teach you that. He said, Yeah, precisely. That's why we need to interview you and look at your grades so that you are able to be admitted to a school overseas. He mentioned MIT and I had never heard of MIT at that time. So I went out - Google was still the new thing at the time, I went and googled, I think - not even Google, I think it was Yahoo at the time - did a Yahoo search, and I found MIT and immediately I was very excited. I realized, Oh, nuclear engineering, there are many universities in the states that teaches it, in Germany, you have it, in France, and so on. But of course the constraint was that you needed to find a university in the English speaking world that would admit you. So, I was successful. I was interviewed and was successful for that bursary, and was consequently then onboarded as a PBMR company employee or slash, you could say, bursary, was called a scholarship, scholarship holder. I was given the liberty to look for universities and decide which one I wanted to go to. So I first applied to the University of Stuttgart, in Germany. And why? Because the pebble bed modular reactor design originated from Germany, and I thought it would be best to go get it from where it was cooked. But that didn't go well. First, the language was very difficult. And secondly, of course, the professor who handled my application felt very strongly that I did not have some foundation to make it at the University of Stuttgart. I was quite pained by that.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow.

Bismark Tyobeka
But once I decided that, you see, I needed to prove him wrong. Yeah. So, I looked for universities in the United States and the first one I came across was the University of Tennessee. I had discussions with some professors there, then Ohio State University, discussions with professors there, and then Penn State and University of Michigan. But I decided on Penn State, because first, there was one of my- who later on became my friends, was South African, who also by chance, was doing her Master's degree in nuclear engineering, so she encouraged me to come. And the professor there was quite happy with her performance, so therefore, he said, Now, if you think this gentleman would make it, I will happily admit him, because he meets our requirements. And then, of course, I joined Penn State, and the rest is history. I completed my Master's program there, fascinated by how the American system worked. And I did not imagine that as a Master's student that I would have such intensive coursework, more like an undergraduate. But I found it very important and very embracing for me, because I did not have the strong foundation. So a lot of coursework was important for me, even though I was already at an advanced degree level. And that helped me a lot. And finally, I wrote my Master's thesis on high temperature reactors, which is the pebble bed reactor. And of course, the agreement with my employer was that you are going to make sure that whatever you studied there is very much aligned to what we do here. So how I managed to come up with my Master's thesis, which looked really into the safety, how you model the safety, and you analyze the safety of high temperature reactors of the pebble bed type.

Bret Kugelmass
I want to ask you about that, just a comment first. I mean, I just think it's so amazing, the story that you told, and I think it shows a lot about your character, just the ability to face adversity, have someone strike you down almost and say, Oh, no, you're not good enough to come here. And your immediate reaction is not to put your tail between your legs and go home, your immediate reaction is, Oh, I'm going to show him and then succeed in another avenue. That is the sign of the true champions of our world. It's like a classic Greek story, almost, it's always the same thing.

Bismark Tyobeka
Indeed, and Bret, if you if you tend to know, it happened that during my journey as a graduate student in the United States, I came across this very same Professor in a number of conferences overseas and I was presenting conference papers in the same conference room where he was sitting and listening to me, trying to be smart, asking me difficult questions, and I gave him the right answers.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, that must have felt good. So, tell me, since this was the focus of your Master's thesis, maybe you can describe a little bit how the safety considerations change from a high temperature gas reactors, such as the pebble bed reactor, from the existing industry, which I believe the Koeberg is a PWR reactor.

Bismark Tyobeka
Yes, thank you very much for the question. Now, first, we must remember the design itself. The pebble bed reactor, the fuel is one of the mainstays of safety in a pebble bed reactor, because the fuel is designed in such a way that you have the pebbles, but inside the pebbles is embedded fuel kernels of uranium dioxide surrounded by a number of layers of silicon carbide and pyrolytic carbon and so on. That stuff is so hard and it can withstand very, very high temperatures. Now, that alone is equivalent to multiple barriers in a PWR, because the temperatures, in fact, in my analysis, we could simulate accidents that would raise the core temperature up to 2100 degrees Celsius, but you still could not cause core melt, you would perhaps damage a little bit of fuel, some few kernels, but you would not cause any fuel melt from those studies that were done.

Bret Kugelmass
And that comes from the properties of graphite, which is essentially just carbon and carbon can withstand very high temperatures?

Bismark Tyobeka
That is very correct, plus you have graphite reactors in the design of the fuel is not only the fuel itself, but this fuel is encapsulated inside graphite blocks that are quite thick. So the chances of radioactive gases being released from that set up are quite diminished. Of course, it relied on natural heat removal mechanisms such as convection, conduction and radiation. So you did not have to have a lot of forced heat removal from the from the system, you did not have to rely on engineered systems to remove the heat in case of an accident, it will just, over a number of days, remove the heat slowly. And I remember one of the simulations I did at that time was to simulate a depressurized lost of forced cooling accident in a pebble bed core. Once you run that simulation, you could watch your temperatures going very high and within 72, within a few, hours, it comes down slowly, because the core is beginning to cool itself. After about 72 hours, the power is back to zero, you are actually now waiting for the core to cool itself. What they were saying is that, at that time, there is very little human intervention if an accident happens in a high temperature reactor plant, than in PWRs.

Bret Kugelmass
I think it's a key insight. It seems like that's a key insight, remove the human from the system, it seems that humans are subject to mistakes. And if you can design a system to behave in a predictable manner without humans, then you have a more predictable net outcome of safety.

Bismark Tyobeka
That is correct. I think that was the major consideration. But that designed through simply the physics, the physics.

Bret Kugelmass
It's elegant.

Bismark Tyobeka
It's about heat removal and heat transferred.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. I love it. So, okay, so you developed an expertise in this space, there was a company and there was a broader effort in the country to try to commercialize this technology, correct?

Bismark Tyobeka
Yes.

Bret Kugelmass
And, what happened?

Bismark Tyobeka
So, we worked on this, but unfortunately, like any first-of-the-kind, there were many changes in the design as we went. No, let's optimize this. Let's optimize that. Oh, you know, scientists and engineers, if you put them together, and they think there is a bottomless pit of money to keep chopping and changing, they will never get things done.

Bret Kugelmass
It's a classic problem.

Bismark Tyobeka
They ultimately decided that you guys have not decided on what you want, we do not have money for this and therefore we will have to suspend this. So, that was unfortunately an effort that had to be shelved after so many people had been sent overseas to learn. We even at that time had ordered the pressure vessel for this reactor. It was ordered from Spain, it was shipped to South Africa, but by the time it got here, Government had said, Sorry, we're stopping. So yeah, that was the unfortunate.

Bret Kugelmass
I hate that. And that's a common problem, I feel. I'm a mechanical engineer. My friends are mostly engineers. I feel like we know this, we know it's a problem that we have, that we love to optimize, will over-optimize, we'll keep going back and say, Oh, if we could tweak this and make this a little bit better, and it almost takes a certain level of discipline, and I don't know what to do about it. Do you have an idea? Is it that you just bring in a disciplinarian to come in and just yell at the engineers and say, No, you have to make decisions?

Bismark Tyobeka
I think engineers and scientists do not make good project managers. At least I say, historically. You will see when you read my CV that, realizing that when I was at Penn State, I decided to enroll with a Colorado Technical University for a Master's degree in project management, because I realized that you can be a very good scientist or a good engineer. The thing is, you get fascinated by small things, as you say, Is this optimal, you have no sense of-

Bret Kugelmass
-the big picture.

Bismark Tyobeka
-you know, the costs, you don't care about those things, you just keep going. And project management brings to bear those principles that you need, first and foremost, to plan your project so that you have the start and finish point. You must not fall into the critical path., so that we cannot keep tweaking what is supposedly on the critical path, because it blocks everything. You can play around with other things, but make sure that what's on the critical path is not hampered with. Therefore, proper planning is important. Then you need to be cognizant of the cost, because time is money. So the more you spend time on the project, the more it will cost invariably. Then, what's the point of the project quality? But of course, as you can imagine, scientists and engineers are sticklers for quality. But the problem is that we don't care about the cost and the time, we want the best quality out of it, which can actually be the disadvantage to the disadvantage of cost, and of time, and ultimately cost.

Bret Kugelmass
Oh, god, you're so right. And just hearing you say it is almost like painful. It's like cringe worthy, because there are so many projects that are amazing technologies, especially just in the nuclear sector alone, that if if they had learned those lessons, the lessons that you're espousing now, that we could have this magical array of new technologies in front of us and see this variety across the landscape of different ways that nuclear energy could manifest itself. But instead, we're like struggling to move things forward in the industry.

Bismark Tyobeka
Indeed, that is the big problem. But I think with time, and it's happening now, I think people are beginning to realize that we need to move with speed and agility to ensure that we do not miss the opportunities.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. Okay. So tell me, how did you come into the role that you're in today?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, the day the I finished my PhD, I came back to the to the PBMR, but at that time, it was already faltering in terms of funding by government. And I have opportunities. I have just been interviewed for a position in Lynchburg, Virginia, by Areva, as the nuclear engineer in one of the plants, in fact, it was not a plant, it was in their offices, the regional offices in Lynchburg. And then I decided, Okay, let me go back home. So I did not tell them, I'm not taking the offer. I came back home, I said, let them give me some time to think about it. Got here, and at that same time, I was also interviewed by the IAEA, and they were looking for a technical lead for gas-cooled reactors, gas-cooled reactor technology development in the nuclear power division. So, I had to make a decision to say, do I stay in the US? Or do I come back home, or to either change the landscape and go to Europe? So I decided to take the IAEA offer, precisely because I felt I lived in North America and I needed to work for a different landscape with even more diversity. So the IAEA, as you would know, is made up of almost 200 member states, you have 4000 plus staff members, from all kinds of cultural and religious and whatever backgrounds you can think about. So, I started there. I had a very, very good time there, in as far as the job is concerned, I worked for five years and eight months. And this opportunity came. I always felt that, ultimately, in the final analysis, I needed to come home and be seen to be contributing back to what the country gave me.

Bret Kugelmass
Especially given how you started, where you had this mission of leadership for your country at the very beginning of your career. It's almost like a perfect story. Once again, everything that you're saying sounds like a like a Greek myth, where you go out to explore the world. And then you come back with these new experiences and these new learnings and having had all of these adventures, and then you come back home and take up the mantle of almost what you were, dare I say, predestined to do?

Bismark Tyobeka
One thing that helped me a lot, also, was that when I was a student at the University here, I was a student leader for quite a number of years. So, I was involved in student leadership. In fact, I was the president of the Student Representative Council. I was the vice president for some time also. And I was also starting from the science faculty was the president of the Science Students Council. My leadership skills have been honed, right from my undergraduate years and before I even left the country, so I always had that zeal to put myself in the forefront and say, Okay, if no one can do it, I'll do it. When the opportunity came for Head of the nuclear regulator here, I said, I think I can do it and I'm going to give it my best. I was interviewed by video conference, sitting in Vienna. It took inordinately long for them to come back to me. And one day I had gone for vacation with my wife to Mykonos in Greece, one of the Greek islands. I received a call from the chairman of the board of the NRA said, Well, I'm happy to inform you that the minister has decided that we appoint you for the position. So, we hope you accept our offer. I said, Well, I'm on holiday now, so, that gives me even good reason to celebrate.

Bret Kugelmass
That's awesome. And part of the part of the skills that you had acquired that made you specifically qualified, when you were working at the IAEA, you specialized in the gas-cooled technology, but was it specifically safety concerns around that as well? Because the regulator is mostly about the safety of nuclear energy, did you pick up those skill sets in this international landscape, as well, at the IAEA?

Bismark Tyobeka
Yes, indeed. What I liked about the IAEA is that it is a very broad organization. When I went for the gas-cooled reactor unit there, I had a friend of mine - and I believe you interviewed her, Sama Bilboa-

Bret Kugelmass
-oh, she's coming up, she's gonna be on the show. I've met her many times. She's a delight. But she'll be on the show soon, I promise.

Bismark Tyobeka
Sama was the head of the water-cooled reactors technologies. And I was gas-cooled reactors. We were constantly working together, and there was another friend of ours from Indonesia, leading the small modular reactors. So you see, you had exposure to this plethora of technologies and all kinds of things about them: economics, environmental issues about them, maintainability, license ability, safety, proliferation issues about these designs, so it broadens your horizon. So you don't just talk about high temperature gas-cooled reactors, you can sit in a discussion panel and talk about small modular reactors, because, after all, the high temperature gas-cooled reactors is part of small modular reactors. So, you immediately become interested in all issues that affects more modular reactors that are not gas-cooled, for example, the light water, the cold ones, or the fast reactor SMRs, but additionally, now, it forces you to collaborate with your counterparts in the Safety Department, they have a huge department of nuclear safety, because they come and ask you, So this nuclear reactor design that you are touting, what do you think are the licensability issues? And then I say, why do we think it's licensable because of this, or this or this, and then they start to raise their safety issues. And then you begin to be engrossed in that kind of a back and forth. So, it forces you to know both design issues, operations issues, and of course, invariably, safety issues.

Bret Kugelmass
I feel like having the wide array of technologies in those discussions almost allows you to gain a better perspective, even on the technology that you are focused on, because it's almost not until you get to compare and contrast and see different temperatures and different materials and different pressures, and how these systems interact in other systems and to see the challenges there, then you get to then take those learnings and think, Oh, how can I apply them to this technology, and almost anticipate what might be some of the concerns before the technology is even manifested in real life?

Bismark Tyobeka
Oh, of course, exactly. Before you think you are ready to sell it to the world, you get challenged about aspects of it. Then you go back, because the IAEA had what we called a CRP, collaborative research project. So, also part of my job was to get in touch with member states that were interested in the technology, put them together, we define the particular area that we think needs further federal research and development in the technology itself ,and then we put a little bit of funding into it. They go into their web and then they come back, present the results, and we decide what is the consensus on this, and then we'll publish the results in what we call the tech docs. We look, for example, at things like fuel designs. Do we continue the uranium oxide fuels? Or what do we do? Do we want to go thorium fuels? Do we want to go plutonium, to burn plutonium in high temperature reactors? The Russians had this idea that there's so much of plutonium lying around and we can come up with a design called the deep burn concept, which is basically using the high temperature reactor to burn plutonium. Now you're reducing the waste volumes from plutonium, so that it doesn't fall into the hands of the bad guys, but still we are using that to produce electricity.

Bret Kugelmass
Amazing.

Bismark Tyobeka
Those kinds of ideas were floated around, and you could really, really get into interesting discussions. Ultimately, we would give them two years, three years to come with results after your research. And then we discuss and say, Okay, this is the consensus, then we publish this so that member states can then decide, ah, no this problem has been sorted, we can go ahead and select this technology for deployment, for example.

Bret Kugelmass
Cool, that is just so cool. So when you come back to the regulator, and now you've got this wide variety of experiences that prepares you for potential applicants, what does that look like? South Africa, I mean, they've already shown technical leadership, both in building a fully functioning commercial water based reactor, but also experimenting in different types of technologies, like the pebble bed. Now, what's happening? Are there potential new technologies, the next generation of nuclear technologies that are going to be coming to your desk to evaluate?

Bismark Tyobeka
Yeah, it's interesting times. In 2019, government decided to publish what was called to the IRP, Integrated Resource Plan for electricity. Now, that is a blueprint that tells you between now and 2030, what kinds of generation sources are going to contribute to the generation of electricity. Given the fact that you have a PWR whose life comes to an end in some time 2024, government have to decide on what's the future for nuclear. So first, Eskom has - the utility, the owner of the plant - has expressed the will to extend the life of the Koeberg nuclear power plant. Now, that on its own is a huge undertaking by them, but it is also a huge regulatory project for us. We need to ensure that everything is still fit for purpose, which is not need to be replaced safely. We have to make sure that quality in whatever new components that are being brought in for refurbishment, is up to speed with international standards. There's a lot, by the way, nowadays, of counterfeit items entering the nuclear market.

Bret Kugelmass
I don't know that.

Bismark Tyobeka
In Korea, there was the wires.

Bret Kugelmass
I heard about the wires in Korea, big mistake.

Bismark Tyobeka
Now, because the nuclear supply chain is quite tight, there may be a temptation for people to cut corners as far as quality is concerned. So, it is always the concern of the regulator to make sure that when we embark on this process of extending the life of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, we do it safely and securely. We make sure that they do it safely and securely. That is one big chunk of work. But if they get that right, in other words, if they ultimately convince us with their safety case, to give them a license, that means we'll extend the life of Koeberg by another 20 years.

Bret Kugelmass
Great.

Bismark Tyobeka
Now, over and above that, government has determined - well, almost about to determine - that they will be 2,500 megawatts from new nuclear, and that must start before 2030. In fact, the recent publication is that, by 2026 I think, we must start working, or 2023, we must start working towards that goal. In other words, selecting the technology and making all the preparatory plans so that come 2023, we either have to have one of those plants ready to connect to the grid, or just about to.

Bret Kugelmass
Does it have to be a government run initiative or are private vendors allowed to come forth and say, I'll supply 100 megawatts, I'll supply a gigawatt, I'll supply 500 megawatts, and different technologies come in to put together that 2,500?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, in South Africa, here nuclear is 100% government. But we are actually, by the way doing what we are saying by what we call the independent power producers. That is for everything else, but nuclear. So, nuclear is still 100% in the hands of government. But it's interesting that you asked that question, because the Minister of Energy was asked recently in Parliament in the media conference, So, where do you think the money will come from to build this, because the country faces a number of social economic challenges? And the minister said, No, we're not going to rule out private funds, private sector funds being injected into the project, so that a private company can also have shareholding in that nuclear project, but ultimately, government must be the majority shareholder. Now, I found that to be a very, very important shift in attitude turning in, you can say in policy to say that lets the people that can afford to invest, invest, but still maintain the majority shareholding. That way a nuclear power plant is what is more viable than expecting government to invest alone.

Bret Kugelmass
And then, how does it look from a regulatory perspective? Your guys' approach? Is it technology agnostic? Do you have a risk graded approach, do you have a performance based? What are the ways that you analyze a new reactor that might come in front of you?

Bismark Tyobeka
From first principles, we have regulations that are technology neutral. So in other words, if you come with a BWR, or a PWR, or a PBMR, our first tier of documents, which are regulations, would almost immediately accommodate that as long as you satisfy those requirements. A tier lower than that begins to guide you to the specifics. That's why we call them regulatory guides. So, if it is a high temperature reactor, we'll have specific guides for that. If it is an SMR traveling wave reactor, for example, we will have specific guides for that. Mostly, we are a non-prescriptive regulator, mostly performance-based. But there are a few areas where we may want to be prescriptive.

Bret Kugelmass
And are those guides hard and fast rules or is it that maybe the guide for the PBMR imagined a 100 megawatt PBMR, but someone brings to you a 10 megawatt PBMR. And so, the guide maybe doesn't make as much sense. Are they flexible in that way?

Bismark Tyobeka
Exactly. They are flexible. That's why I always say, they provide enough envelope for you to to play within, as long as you know where your boundaries are and the limits are satisfied. You can, as you say, instead of coming strict with 100, because we said 100 megawatts limit, we say, No, we'll actually give ourself a margin and make it a seventy-five megawatts unit. It will fit nicely within the envelope that we provide in our guides. The guides are exactly that, to guide you, not to prescribe to you.

Bret Kugelmass
Is your staff equipped and excited to license a first-of-a-kind? Or do they prefer that it be modeled in a different environment first?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, since 2008, before I came here, and during the advent of wanting to license the pebble bed reactor itself, the regulatory framework in this house have gone through a lot of revamping. We have benchmarked with international peers, we have almost reimagined most of our regulations to match the international safety standards, and we have developed a lot of regulatory guides over the years. We have developed a lot of the position papers, for example, on issues such as digital I&C nuclear power plants, severe accident management and nuclear power plants in light of the Fukushima accident, and so on. We we have prepared our regulatory framework for any eventuality of government's decision on a new technology. Now, coupled to that, of course, it's not only about the regulatory framework, it's about the expertise you see. So we have we have a young regulator with young people, probably our average age of staff here is less than 50 years, and that tells you we are quite young, maybe in the-

Bret Kugelmass
-in the nuclear sector, yeah.

Bismark Tyobeka
So we have exposed many of our staff members to many, many training opportunities, international exchange visits with other regulatory bodies. When I joined here, I think we had bilateral agreements with about four or five countries, but now we are probably going around nine or 10. We have since added countries such as Finland, which were not very well known in as far as the expertise nuclear is concerned. But we know that Finland, the STUK regulator today is the one that is now ultimately proud to say they are giving the license to operate to the alternative to a nuclear power plant, the Areva plant that has taken ages to finish in Finland. That experience is invaluable. And we start to form a cooperation and bilateral agreement with them to share those experiences. We continue to be very good friends with the French regulator, ASN, because, of course, we are currently running a French plant, French design. This is a Framatome plant that we're running. And so we continue to get regulatory experience feedback from them. Then the United States, of course, the biggest regulator in the world, the US NRC also are very close friends, whenever we think there are issues to compare notes, we think of them, we think of the French, we think of the British. So that also has helped a lot in relatively in a short space of time, increasing our expertise in preparing ourselves for ultimately handling any application that may arise for the nuclear build.

Bret Kugelmass
Amazing. So the answer is yes. So if someone came to you with a first-of-a-kind, you'd say yes, we can do this. And if we need a little bit of help, we'll call on one of our bilateral agreements and pull in some extra expertise.

Bismark Tyobeka
Indeed, including the IAEA, of course.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes, of course. And is there a sense of South Africa being a hub of expertise for the whole Southern African continent? Are there other countries around that say, We want nuclear energy too, we don't have the infrastructure in place, but will you, the South African regulator, license on our behalf, let's say Tanzania or something, and be our de facto regulator? Is that a possibility as well?

Bismark Tyobeka
Well, to start with, the regulatory authority is a sovereign authority. You cannot license for another country. But there exist cases where countries enter into agreements to say, We will use your regulations to license our power plant, because we think your regulations are mature. But of course, if they do, they have a duty to align those regulations with the local domestic law, because regulations are a subset of legislation. You need to ensure that there are other superior laws such as your nuclear law and the Constitution of your country are not inconsistent with our regulation. So, it is your duty to align those, but I don't encourage it. I think government must take ownership of the legal framework right from the nuclear law to the regulations and guides, but under circumstances that can be justified, maybe, a proper process needs to be followed so that, to then align, we can assist. You can then align with your local domestic laws. It has been done in Belarus, Belarussians have used the Russian regulations to license their Russian design and they are almost at the stage of commissioning, even, so many people operating. Bangladesh has done the same thing. They bought the Russian design, they didn't have the regulations, their job is more difficult because they don't speak Russian. Whereas Belarus, they understand the language. I always talk to my Bangladeshi friends that the regulator, called BAERA, and they always expressed this frustration to me that government was too quick to push this, now we have a problem because we need to move fast on adapting regulation regulations to our local conditions, then it is not an easy job, especially given the huge differences in the language. So yes, it can be done. But there are many, many problems with it, but it can happen.

Bret Kugelmass
That sounds like you have a lot of insight into this space. Do you continue to keep in touch with your international colleagues across the world? I know you mentioned the bilateral agreements. But are there other opportunities? I mean, obviously, prior to COVID, but now also that COVID is ending, where you get to engage with your international counterparts?

Bismark Tyobeka
I do, in fact, I am involved in a number of expert groups in the globally. I am a member of so called INSAG, International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, which is a group that advises the IAEA Director General on all nuclear safety issues, globally. I'm part of that. We hold meetings every April and every October. We will soon have, I think end of May, we'll have our meeting. I'm also a member of the MDEP, which is the Multinational Design Evaluation Program, which is made up of about 11, or 14 countries - I think 14 countries - that are looking into the advanced designs currently under construction, such as the AP-1000, the EPR, the Chinese Hualong reactor, the Korean 1400, and so on. That enables us to be able to look into the issues of maybe finding ways to standardize our approaches around a particular design. For example, if you have the UK, Argentina, South Africa, aspiring to build the Chinese Hualong design, then within the MDEP group, we have sub groups, even technical teams that look into design specific issues, so that they can formulate certain positions on those issues, and release what we call position papers that can be adopted by all those countries that want to build that reactor, and somehow put it into your regulations and your guides. And then it would make it easy for the vendor of that particular design, to sell their data in those countries, because all the issues are almost understood. But it is equally understood by those countries that want to build it. So I am part of that in MDEP. And I also am the chairman of the Regulatory Cooperation Forum, which has grown now to, I think, 15 members, mostly made up of countries that are planning to build nuclear power plants, and countries that are very experienced in regulating nuclear power plants. We call them provider countries and recipient countries. So would have, for example, recipient countries, we'll have Morocco, we have Ghana, you have Nigeria, you have Belarus itself. You have Bangladesh, you have Sudan, you have Poland, you have Vietnam. And then we also have those that have experienced countries such as the US, the UK, Finland, the Russian Federation, and the UK, and so on. It is that group that, under the auspices of the IAEA, of course, I chair that group, which is they have real time exchange of experience in safety issues in licensing issues, in a way, the big boys helping their younger brothers to pick up quickly in developing the nuclear safety and security frameworks. That's what we're doing.

Bret Kugelmass
That's amazing. As you talk about this, you know, what it made me think of like the International Space Station, where they're all of these countries, and the scientific, the best scientific minds are getting together and working with each other, and making the world a more collaborative place. One thing that I've gotten to love about this project and exploring the leaders of the nuclear industry, is to get exposure to the world and to get exposure to people working across country borders with each other for a common purpose, a common understanding, and it just makes me feel like a utopia is possible. Like when you see in Star Trek, in the future, when all of the countries of the world get together for scientific exploration. And we all feel like a common people and we put our differences aside, nuclear kind of gives me a window into that and wondering if you feel the same way.

Bismark Tyobeka
I do. I do. It's amazing how, for example, you can have in the RCF, the Russian Federation, working very, very closely with the US to help Belarus build a successful nuclear program. In the same environment, you have Iran, for example, as a member state of the IAEA that is working very closely with us in the RCF, working with the European Union, to assist Iran to making sure that its nuclear power program, the peaceful nuclear power program, is successful in a way that they can operate the reactor safely. So it it breaks borders somehow, as much as sometimes it builds borders again when issues of nuclear weapons are being discussed, but we're not for nuclear weapons. We are for nuclear for peaceful uses. And that's what we're strongly promoting, nuclear safety and nuclear security worldwide.

Bret Kugelmass
Dr. Bismark Tyobeka, can't end on a better note than that. Thank you so much for this conversation, for your insight, for your leadership, for being an ambassador. You're an ambassador for your country and for the entire sector. So, I just can't thank you enough. It's been an awesome conversation.

Bismark Tyobeka
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. I really enjoyed it. And I've really enjoyed watching your other guests in the program and I look forward to listening to other guests that are coming, my friend Sama Bilboa, and I will surely be watching that.

Bret Kugelmass
Awesome. All right.

Bismark Tyobeka
Thank you.

Bret Kugelmass
We are here today with Lars Roobol who's the Head of Measurement and Monitoring at the Dutch National Institute for the Public Health and the Environment. And really, one of the leading radiation experts in all the Netherlands. Lars, it's so great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Lars Roobol
Well, thanks for inviting me.

Bret Kugelmass
Absolutely.

Lars Roobol
I'm very excited about it.

Bret Kugelmass
You have a wealth of experience that myself and our whole audience wants to benefit from. But before we get into the work of the current day, perhaps you could take us back through your past and tell us, how did you get into this space?

Lars Roobol
Well, it all started when I was going to college. That was back in the 80s. I'm 55 years old now. And when I was doing one of my first exercise there, at the Leiden University in the Netherlands. That was in 1986. And you may know that, 35 years ago, we had that incident in Chernobyl.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes.

Lars Roobol
So I had access to all these radiation meters. And I went outside with my pal whom I was doing experiments with. And we could measure absolutely nothing. So we were like, Hey, what's going on?

Bret Kugelmass
Where's this radiation cloud?

Lars Roobol
Yeah. And of course, there are spots on earth where you really can find it. But in the Netherlands, you could only measure in the red with very sensitive equipment. And that was when I also first heard the name of the Institute where I'm working now, because those were the experts with these radiation gauges, that could measure it. So well, after that, I was doing some other stuff in physics. But about 10 years later, I was working on a University Institute where they had a particle accelerator and that is where I first encountered real radioactivity, and very studied all sorts of exotic particles.

Bret Kugelmass
Do you remember if I can ask you to take a step back even further, though? Do you remember even as a kid where you first got your interest in science and physics from? Did you read a lot of books on the topic? Did you watch shows? How did you become fascinated by this?

Lars Roobol
Yes, I was one of these sad kids that never left their room. And I was always reading books. And I really loved well, science, about dinosaurs and things that happened in the past. And I also wanted to know why things are working. And also how they were working. I was really interested in space - I was really excited about that, and really into science and into physics.

Bret Kugelmass
So when you get to see this particle accelerator, this is like stepping into the future almost?

Lars Roobol
Yes. Well, now I'm not doing real physics in a lab every day anymore. But every time when I visit some large institute where they have large things and they make a lot of noise and to hear, to hear a cooling water going down and to melt the oil of the pumps. And I really get excited again to take it back to my youth.

Bret Kugelmass
Yep. I feel the exact same way every time I stepped into a big facility. When I went out to CERN every time I just get like the tingly feelings just seeing the big equipment.

Lars Roobol
Yes, it's superb, it's like being a kid in a candy store.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, so tell me where did your career take you? Where did you decide to really kind of focus in on and become an expert?

Lars Roobol
After I worked at that Institute with the particle accelerator. I saw an advert that they were looking for a manager at the other side of the Netherlands. Well, at the other side of the Netherlands is not such a big deal. When you go East to West it's about two hours by car. And when you go North to South, it's three hours.

Bret Kugelmass
Amazing, amazing.

Lars Roobol
But there was a facility in a little town called Petten and they have a material test reactor. And they were looking for someone to lead their research facility. And also the facility where they make the radioactive medicine. And well, I thought that was very exciting, that was not only science, but you could do something with it.

Bret Kugelmass
Really applied, yeah.

Lars Roobol
And you could really help people. And well, therefore, I decided to work there and they also thought it would be a good idea that I came there. I worked at that facility and because they were working with a humongous amount of radiation, also the manager needed to be radiation experts. And you needed to know a lot about safety, about well, ISO stuff. And that was my first step in becoming an expert.

Bret Kugelmass
And when you say ISO, do you mean ISO like the qualification? Like the trade, the industry standard qualification? Or like isotopes?

Lars Roobol
No, really ISO 9001.

Bret Kugelmass
I see, right? Like these are standards on how things have to be built, essentially.

Lars Roobol
Yes, there are also standards for facilities making, well, they call them API's, active pharmaceutical ingredients. Then you go into the medical standards because you don't want all sorts of particles that don't belong there in this stuff you administer to people.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. Can you maybe give our audience a bit of an explanation on what the nuclear reactors have to do with nuclear medicine, overall? What's the relationship? I think, you know, most people still don't realize that the radio stuff that they get in their medical treatment, had to be created by man somehow, in some magical machine, that maybe they don't even know that there's a magical machine, maybe they think you just pull it from a tree or something. Can you explain to us what is all of this?

Lars Roobol
Yes, certainly, I can. Very many of the substances that we use, they are actually found in the 1940s and the early 1950s. And they were made using particle accelerators. But one of the substances is called technetium. And that is used for scans in people who have medical scans. Think about scans for cancer, for heart disease, coronary disease. It's a substance called technetium-99. And they're using that 50 million times a year, on patients all over the world. And it's called technetium because it doesn't exist on Earth. It really has to be made by man.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow.

Lars Roobol
And it was made in the 1940s in the US using a particle accelerator. And in the 1950s, people realized that they could make scans with it, and really images of what is going on inside the body.

Bret Kugelmass
And the basic way that this works is you ingest it and then it shines a light from the inside out is that how the concept is?

Lars Roobol
Well, basically, yes. It emits gamma radiation, and you have a gamma camera on the outside of the person. And the good thing you can do with it is that you can bind it to all sorts of biological substances. For example, sugar. And sugar finds its way inside your body and it goes to the muscles, so it can go to the heart muscle. But you can also bind it to another substance that goes to cancer cells. And there it can highlight a sliver of the cancer cells in the body. So some really cool stuff, but you need to have it in enormous amounts and up until now, particle accelerators could not make it in such large amounts. So, since the 1960s, reactors are making technetium. And they do that by bombarding uranium with neutrons - well, that is what reactors are very good at - and the uranium falls apart into two larger atoms. And about 6% of all the time it is a molybdenum atom, molybdenum-99, which is radioactive. And when it becomes radioactive, it becomes another atom, which is technetium-99.

Bret Kugelmass
So, inside nuclear reactors, we're creating a version of an atom that doesn't exist naturally. And the characteristics of this is that it emits this gamma radiation as a way to, let's say, stabilize itself, to go back to a more comfortable atomic state of being. We're taking advantage of that property, to hook it up to a sugar, to put it into the body, and then to highlight things that we want to find in order to diagnose people.

Lars Roobol
Exactly. And well, these are very exciting times for making such substances, because there's a lot of technical development going on also in the US. There's this company that is finding out another way of making technetium, but then using a very large particle accelerator. That's very exciting, because I think within five to 10 years, the way these substances are made, we'll see very new techniques and we are also still going to use reactors, I think, but we will also see these particle accelerators coming.

Bret Kugelmass
Now, how many of these reactors exist across the world today that are producing this vital element for medicine?

Lars Roobol
Well, when you look at the largest ones, there are about five to six.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, not that many for the whole world, for 50 million doses a unit.

Lars Roobol
No, and then there were some smaller ones that make it for local users. Most of them are in Europe. There was one in South Africa, one in Australia, and also in the US we see more and more of these facilities coming. Because in the US people think it's such a vital thing to have, you want to make it yourself also. Because when something happens and airplanes can't fly, then they're stuck in the US.

Bret Kugelmass
I see, like security of supply is an issue. And as far as I understand it, shelf life is also an issue. These things, from the moment that they're made, you have to get them to the hospital pretty quickly because the very property that we're utilizing them for, this disintegration almost, this emission of gamma radiation is the thing that transforms it from useful to not useful. So is that right? So is geography also important? How close we are to these reactors?

Lars Roobol
Yes. When you look at technetium, the amount of technetium you are holding in your hands is, so to speak, halves every six hours,

Bret Kugelmass
Okay. So time is really of the essence.

Lars Roobol
Yes, and therefore, it is very neat that this technetium is, so to speak, the daughter of molybdenum-99. because molybdenum-99 has a half-life of 66 hours.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay.

Lars Roobol
So that gives you enough time to fly it all around the world.

Lars Roobol
Well, there are very many of these medical radioisotopes. Some of them have half-lives of months or weeks. But there are also substances who have half-lives of minutes. So they need to be made active at the actual hospital by a particle accelerator. And then they are going to pace them almost directly.

Bret Kugelmass
Oh my god, which ones are these?

Bret Kugelmass
Got it.

Lars Roobol
These are called PET isotopes. A PET is a technique of making images of the body. And these ones are called to oxygen and carbon. But under radioactive versions of it, and these have shelf lives of minutes, only five minutes, 10 minutes.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow. And so the reactor that you started working at, the medical reactor, was this one of the smaller ones or one of the bigger ones in the world?

Lars Roobol
No, it was actually - well, there are lots of reactors who are smaller than that, that are university reactors. This one was a little bit bigger, but to give you an idea, it is a 50 megawatt reactor, 50 megawatt of heat.

Bret Kugelmass
That's pretty good. I'd say that's pretty substantial.

Lars Roobol
Yeah. So we do also have one university reactor in the Netherlands. And that is only two megawatts. But when you look at the full-size power plant, it's about 1000 megawatts. So that is more or less the state of things.

Bret Kugelmass
Got it. So what is like Netherlands' history and experience with nuclear technology overall? You do have a full-scale power plant, in addition to a couple of the research ones as well? And medical as well?

Lars Roobol
Yes, we do have one power plant. I wouldn't call it full scale nowadays. It was built in the early 70s and it's almost 500 megawatts.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, I still think that's big. I know, some of the big ones are the 1500 megawatts these days. But 500, it just seems like such a good size. To me, the 1500 ones, I understand the economies of scale of size, but those are big projects. The grid is not really built for that type of interaction. I'm a huge fan of the 500 megawatt ones.

Lars Roobol
Well, that is what we are realizing now, because we are building so many wind farms and solar PV, that actually in the 300 to 500 megawatts sizes are a bit better for the electricity grid than the 1500 megawatts are.

Bret Kugelmass
And then so maybe - and this might be too broad question, but see if you can answer for me - what do the Dutch people generally think of nuclear? If you if you've had this around for a while, and you've got leaders like, you know, scientific leaders like yourself that are that are pioneers in the medical field, and in the research reactor field, and your universities understand it, is there a general feeling overall of, Yeah, we understand nuclear, we like nuclear, or are there different feelings?

Lars Roobol
No, there are different feelings in the Netherlands. I would say now it's about 50/50 and it depends on where you live. When you live very near to the power plant, then very many people think, Well, it's okay. And maybe they've worked there. And they're used to it. And that is totally different from the parts of the country that are well, more or less empty. They don't have large scale industry. Depends on where you live.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, it depends on where you live, essentially. And then so what role have you played, just throughout your career, in terms of being an advocate or being an educator throughout your country on these topics?

Lars Roobol
Well, the institute I work at now, the RIVM, that is a government institute. And our role is to help people and also to advise them on all sorts of matters. There are very many people who are working on viruses at our institute. So our name is very big at this moment, because of the COVID-19 situation, but we also advise on all sorts of chemical substances, radiation, ionizing radiation, UV, cell phone radiation. But all the things people worry about.

Bret Kugelmass
Because your organization has such a broad mandate across all of these risk factors, are you able to take a balanced approach and explain relative risk? One thing that I found is a shortcoming of some of the organizations in the US that are just focused on radiation or just focused on nuclear protection is they either don't understand it, or they don't want to, or they don't feel like it's in their mandate to explain relative risk. Do you get to do that?

Lars Roobol
We do get to do that. But it's very difficult. And it is because there is also another effect, and that is the perception of the public. Take, for example, terrorism. Very many people think that terrorism is "this" likely to occur to you. In actual fact, it's "this" likely. And when you think about heart attacks, but I think, well, "this" is my risk of getting a heart attack. But in actual fact, it's "that" large. So relative risks are very difficult because people react to different things very differently.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes.

Lars Roobol
And radiation is one of the things that they think it's "this” big, and it's actually "that" big. .

Bret Kugelmass
One of the things, and tell me your opinion on this, because my opinion that I've developed over meeting with many experts in the space, is that in our effort to over explain, and to over protect people, in terms of knowledge, give them knowledge about radiation, we actually make it seem like a bigger deal than it is. We actually increase their perceived sense of risk, just by trying to explain to them over and over and over again. Have you found something similar or different?

Lars Roobol
Yes. We are now also doing research into public perception. And also in risk communication. And to give one example, when there was a fire, we used to warn the people with the message, Close your windows. And in our research, we found out that wasn't working in the Netherlands. Dutch people are rather stubborn. And when somebody tells him to do something, then they think Well, let's think about that again. And now we tell them something different. Now, the Fire Department says, smoke is not healthy, do not come in contact with smoke. And then people start thinking, Well, I might close the window.

Bret Kugelmass
I see. Yes, give people a little bit of credit. Let them come to their own conclusions. Treat people like they're smart. And then they'll act in the right way, as opposed to being oppressive and overburdensome and telling people, Here's what you have to do. And then you kind of put them on the defensive and then you make them act, you know, maybe not in their best interest. I see this across all spaces. Yeah. Well, no, it's good to know that the Dutch people are stubborn, I call it you know, it's healthy skepticism.

Lars Roobol
And now we're also doing that with radiation. Some years ago, there were these iodine pills that were given to the people. That was a political decision that everybody within a range of, well, a certain amount of kilometres, from a nuclear power plant, they were offered these iodine pills so they could take them during an accident. And they first did some research asking 1000 people, What do you want to know? And what do you think about radiation? And by doing that research, we could make a website telling people what to think about their worries, and we could really address the worries they had. And we do that more and more now. And I think it's a very exciting research.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, amazing. Okay, so you ask people what they think, instead of just telling them what to think. The revolutionary. No, I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing how wrong so many times we've gotten it in the past. In some places, we still get it wrong. But I love that, I love the approach that you're taking. I love the approach that your country and your culture takes now in terms of giving people a little bit of benefit of the doubt, treating them like they're intelligent, and actually engaging with them. I love it.

Lars Roobol
Yes. And well, that is what I also have done. Well, in my career, I always thought that, it doesn't work when you have a polarized debate. For example, about that we're not to build a nuclear power plant, to really be the advocate. I really believe that when you give people honest information, and let them decide for themselves, that they will do the right thing.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes, treat people like adults, even kids, I think even we should treat kids like adults, and they'll act like adults. So tell me about that. Tell me about with nuclear energy. So you developed this long career with specialty expertise in radiation and medical technologies. And now you're at the Institute, your local institute of radiation protection. But when did nuclear energy come into your view? And what were your opinions on it? And where do you see it fitting overall?

Lars Roobol
Yes, well, these are, of course, my personal opinions, because I can't speak for the government of the Netherlands. They are forming a new government right now. And it's a little bit exciting for me., which side of the coin will come up? The politics are such that, there is a chance that the new government will decide to build a new power plant. But it could also form another government because we have a multi-party system. And there could also be parties involved that are very much opposed to power,

Bret Kugelmass
And which are which, just because I don't know your political system, I don't think most of our audience does, either. Can you just what are the names of the parties even?

Lars Roobol
Well, the largest one is called VVD, and that is a modestly right wing party. And that has been in government for 10 years now. It is mostly such that the parties that formed the government, they are center or center-left, center-right. And nowadays, we need for parties to get enough votes in the parliaments to form a government. Last elections we had over 30 political parties.

Bret Kugelmass
Oh my god, what are you guys Italy all of a sudden?

Lars Roobol
And now, when you look at our Parliament, we have 17 different political parties. So political is really a lot more difficult than it was in the 1980s, where there were less parties.

Bret Kugelmass
And the way that it works in your system, since it's so fragmented, it's harder to get a majority of votes together to take any action. And that's why these Coalitions are so important?

Lars Roobol
Yes. When we would've adopted the US system, then for the party I mentioned, VVD, they would get all of the seats almost. But because we have a direct election, so it's one vote one seat in Parliament. Well, the landscape is totally different.

Bret Kugelmass
I see, it's not a winner-take-all system like ours is, got it.

Lars Roobol
So when you get 1/10 of the votes, you get 1/10 of the seats in Parliament.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, so the government is being formed - I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'll assume that within a few months, it will happen - and then what happens for nuclear energy, specifically? Does there have to be a vote cast? Or is it just a general policy? If the right coalition takes control, we'll just know that the general policy is pro-nuclear? Or are there specific actions that need to be taken for nuclear?

Lars Roobol
Of course, the issue at stake is that we are emitting too much CO2. And we need to do something about that. And we need to do it fast.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes.

Lars Roobol
So, what is already going on is that we're investing in those techniques to get CO2 down. So we're building a lot of wind farms, also on the sea. We're building a lot of solar PV. And we are okay until 2030, then things are moving in the right direction. But then we have only done the easy part. And by the easy part, I mean, we are not selling any cars anymore that are moving on fossil fuel, these are all going to be electric cars. And our electricity system will be reasonably low carbon. But then you also have the industry and you have a lot of other things in the economy wanting more electrical power, wanting substances that they need to use in their chemical processes. And these also have to be made with some sort of energy. And what we're going to decide in the Netherlands during this Cabinet is what will the next step be? And nuclear power is one of the options.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. And- go ahead, please.

Lars Roobol
Yeah. And it depends on the lines. So the political parties that form governments together, which way it goes so it's really more political decision.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. And then so let's say the political parties decide that they want it, what happens then? Is it a state-backed system or are vendors just invited to come into the country and become independent power producers? What type of market and market forces exist to then- let's say the decision in theory in principle is made, Yes, more nuclear. What are the other structures in place that would allow for or encouraged nuclear development to occur?

Lars Roobol
This is a very good question. People high up in this state are thinking very hard about that. Because you can say, well we want all vendors are welcome. That didn't happen with the wind parks that we built, because builders need some sort of certainty that they're doing a good investment. And we were not doing very well in the Netherlands in the past 15 years. Because about 15 years ago, we started building new coal plants. And now 10-15 years later, we're saying, Well, what about closing them? And these builders, they are not very happy about that, of course,

Bret Kugelmass
I see. What you're saying is, 15 years ago, the government invited coal to be built. And people assumed that they were going to finance these projects on a 40-year timescale or so. And halfway through that 40-year timescale, they're being told, no, this is not part of the plan anymore. It scares other developers that might want to come in and do something similar for clean energy.

Lars Roobol
And therefore, with wind parks and solar PV, we have got this subsidy scheme in the Netherlands, that, people who are sellers of electricity, when the actual hour to hour price of electricity is lower than a certain amount, they get subsidized for the difference of that. And we have also auctions of wind parks, so there is some certain space where you can build a wind park, they even make a license for you. And then you can make a bid. And that works very well with solar PV and wind. And right now, our government is doing some research on what will invite builders of nuclear, what do they need to really come onto the market.

Bret Kugelmass
And then, let's say that they do that survey, and they kind of come up with a plan. And maybe even then, you know, create the right rules and market rules in place to make that happen. What else is left, let's say structurally, that needs to be in place for reactor developers to come to the Netherlands? Do you guys have a nuclear regulator that is trained up on new nuclear technologies? What about that aspect?

Lars Roobol
Yeah, we do have a regulator. And well, like in very many countries, the last 30 years there wasn't much building activity going on. So they know something about the power plants that are existing now. Of course, they keep an eye on what is going on in the rest of the world. But I think what is needed is that when some party will want to build a reactor, that also there for the regulator, that they need to build up certain knowledge about that type of reactor. And of course, they're very skillful people. And well, I know that they will do a very good job. But it's something you have to take into account.

Bret Kugelmass
I mean, I like the fact that you guys already have a 50 megawatt research reactor because many of the new designs that are coming out, are about that size. The small reactors, some of the SMRs are big. Okay, let's put those aside. But there's a whole other class of reactors that are actually small, or sometimes they call them micro reactors. And I feel like any country that successfully oversees a research reactor program should have all of the institutional knowledge to be able to evaluate these new designs because frankly, they're a lot smaller and smaller is just easier to deal with. Am I right in assuming that?

Lars Roobol
Yes. But of course, they are also more advanced than things that were built in the 70s. So and of course, people do their homework and they keep up with the new techniques. But of course it's well those safety wise it is better dealing with the 300 megawatt plant then with the 1500 megawatt one.

Bret Kugelmass
Probably even easier with a 10 or 20 megawatt?

Lars Roobol
Oh, yeah, certainly.

Bret Kugelmass
And we should also mention that there's another project going on in the Netherlands, the POLIS project, is that right? What's going on there? Are they building it? Is it a new design? What is that?

Lars Roobol
Well, up until now, it is a proposal to build a reactor of the order of 100 megawatt in the same facility where I have worked in Petten. And that is because the reactor with which these medical isotopes are made now will be phased out one day,

Bret Kugelmass
I see. So they just want to be ready for when that happens.

Lars Roobol
Yes. The old reactor, the reactor that we have now, is what was built in the mid-60s. So when you want to continue that work, then you need to start planning,

Bret Kugelmass
I see, and just on that topic, though, what is it that prevents a reactor from continuing on indefinitely in the sense of swapping out components, swapping out core, swapping out fuels, swapping out heat exchangers, swapping up pumps. Is there any theoretical reason why we can't just indefinitely extend the life of reactors one piece at a time?

Lars Roobol
For that type of reactor, no. When you look at the nuclear power plant, then it has this- well, it's actually a large metal vat which is closed. And that is what builds up the pressure with which you make the steam eventually. And that large vessel is being bombarded by neutrons. And that alters the mechanical properties of that vessel. And ultimately, then it needs to be renewed. So for power plants, it's really too expensive to renew that vessel. But with an open pool reactor, it's open at the top, you can look into the water and see the reactor giving off its nice blue light. And sometimes it can be economically done to renew that vessel. And in the Netherlands, it was done about 30 years ago. And it is really like owning a car that is getting a bit older. So it needs a new exhaust pipe and then it needs new tires. And it is just a matter of economics and whether you love that car, or not, whether or not you do it.

Bret Kugelmass
So tell me about what else is next. If we're looking forward into the future, we've done a nice little overview of the existing technologies that your country is familiar with, your background and experience, the organization that you're at now. Tell me what's coming next. And we've spoken about the KPMG survey that's going to advise the government and a little bit about the framework that needs to take place, but what do you see if you were to put on your magic cap looking forward? What do you see happening and maybe what are some extra things that we might need to change or take action for to encourage the future that you want?

Lars Roobol
Okay, that's a very exciting question. I can answer in a couple of ways. First, I see more work coming for me at my Institute. For either they're going to decide that they want new power plants, and then they will come to our institute with all sorts of all sorts of questions about safety, about radiation, and so on and so forth, or they will decide not to build it. And then it's going to be time to deal with our radioactive waste. And then they also will come to me with questions about safety and radiation protection and so on and so forth. So, that is a good thing for my Institute and for me also. But let me also give the more serious answer. I would love to see within the coming 10 years, that we can do something about the system of radiation protection. And there are a couple of things there. One way, one thing is the way we prepare ourselves for incidents and accidents. And in the past years, there was some very exciting research about whether the evacuations in Chernobyl and Fukushima, really were unnecessary,

Bret Kugelmass
Really were necessary. That's a nice way of putting it. Do you mean, if they did more harm than good?

Lars Roobol
Well, that is what we know now. But I have also done a lot of exercises about incidents. And I know how hard it is, when you know only half of what is going on, to really make the right decision. So I really don't want to say anything nasty about the people in Chernobyl and Fukushima, because they did their utmost. But what we have learned now, is that really, these evacuations did more harm than they did good. And we are also doing research into that at my Institute.

Bret Kugelmass
And what becomes of this research, because to me, I actually think that research that you just mentioned, is probably one of the most important things in the entire nuclear sector to get right and then to get that information out there. Once your research is complete, once it's conducted, how is it going to be disseminated and implemented in regulations across the world?

Lars Roobol
Yes, that's a difficult thing, of course, because we are a tiny country and most of these rules are made on a very high level at the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN. And how can we, as a small country, influence all of the world? And we think that we can best do that at a scientific level? Yes, because at a scientific level, you can make more impact by talking to your peers, your fellow scientists in all of the world. You can write articles about it, and people can read that. And the idea is that these ideas will be incorporated over time. Also in the thinking of other countries. Then it's time to return to the IAEA level and make some real political decisions there.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. It's very frustrating to me, because I think that if the result of your research is what I think it might be, based on the conversations that I've had, that evacuations are not the proper course of action, in the case of an accident - especially in light water reactor where, after Fukushima, we understand what happens, we understand where the radionuclides go, we understand how much is dispersed and its potential impact on people - if we decide that is truly the case, that we should not be doing evacuations, then I think that the impact that that would have on public perception would be positive, too, because that's why people- though, if you ask people why maybe they don't want nuclear, it's not because they're really afraid of radiation, it's afraid that they're going to be kicked out of their homes. You know, that's what people don't want. People don't want their lives to be ruined, and people don't really think much about the medicine, the medical attributes of radiation. And so if we can just get that off the table, if we can just say, listen, no matter what, nobody's going to ask you to leave your home, then I think people would like nuclear more.

Bret Kugelmass
Hmm. Yes. That makes me think about research we have done recently around a large chemical plant in the Netherlands. And there we have asked many people that they feel safe, because these plants emit a tiny amount of chemicals. And what some people do in the surrounding things is they start to worry.

Bret Kugelmass
When you ask them, if they feel safe, you're saying? That's when they start to worry?

Lars Roobol
Yes. Then even more so. But we'll do firstly, some articles on websites or in the local newspaper. And then people from a government institution like me, come and ask them whether they feel safe, well, then it's making it even worse. But when you look at it scientifically, the chemicals emitted, which they inhale, then they have a very small risk. But because of the worrying of what's going on in their heads, they actually are at more risk, because, well, people who worry, they start to smoke more, they turn to alcohol. They are leading the less healthy life. And that is what we also saw in Fukushima, very many of these people, they got taken out of their homes. They were losing their work, the people they met every day, their neighborhood was gone. So the suicide rate went up, alcoholism went up. Well, also things that are not healthy for people begin to appear. And those are secondary effects of the evacuation. And, well, that's a very sad thing. And when we could have let them live there, then maybe they were a little bit more at risk because of the radiation. But because they still have their sports, their cinema, their neighbors, and so on and so forth. I think they would lead net healthier lives.

Bret Kugelmass
One more technical question. And then after that, I'll give you just the final word. Just because I don't get to ask too many people this and it's always a topic of interest to me: does your organization conduct or review the literature on low dose radiation studies? And if there's a threshold or no threshold?

Bret Kugelmass
Oh, yes. I do even have a PhD student working on that.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay. Maybe I'd be able to interview them as well, at some point. That's a topic of great interest to me.

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. He's finished in about half a year. So I could give you an email. Perfect. But it's a very interesting subject. You want me to tell something about it?

Bret Kugelmass
Just a quick maybe, just a few minutes on it, if you wouldn't mind?

Bret Kugelmass
Yes. Well, but we know about the effects of ionizing radiation, we know only at high dose and at high dose rate.

Bret Kugelmass
And what is high dose and high dose rate, if you could just give me some units to think about?

Lars Roobol
Dose is measured in millisieverts in Europe and about 100 millisieverts is a high dose. And well, a tenth of a millisieverts for an hour or one millisieverts for an hour typically is considered a rather high dose rate. Because when you look at nature, for around where we live and the soil and the air we get about one millisieverts per year. So that's very much lower. And it is unknown at low dose rate and at low dose, what the effect is and therefore we assume that also low dose could, in theory, give the effect that you get cancer, for example, but we can't see it statistically, because I have ionizing radiation is not very good at giving people cancer.

Bret Kugelmass
Right. It's not a very potent carcinogen is what we're saying.

Lars Roobol
But the exact amount.

Bret Kugelmass
The ionizing radiation, yeah. Compared to many other things that we deal with, like oxygen.

Lars Roobol
Yes, to eating an apple. But we're doing research into how low dose rates and low dose can have an impact. And we're looking, for example, at people getting a CT scan. That's a medical dose, and it's supposed to be more good than it does bad. But is a theory that could give you some adverse effects in 10 to 15 years time. And what we're looking at with this PhD student is whether we can match our theories with things we see going on in cell cultures. And we get a dose to those cells and see what happens there. And then the goal is to figure out what then will happen in humans. And well, it's not finished yet. So it can't tell you any of the results. But it looks like that at low dose that the risk is lower than at high dose.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay. And that could be a whole other episode. So we'll push that aside. All right, final word is on you. What message would you like to leave our audience with?

Lars Roobol
Yeah, that's a difficult one. Well, one of the messages I can give the audience is that the world would be a lot better place if we could learn to deal with our fear of radiation. And that I mean, is that the most adverse effect we see in day to day life, that are the effects of fear, and not the effects of ionizing radiation. And when we learn to love it a little bit more, then we can open up to this wonderful technology that we have.

Bret Kugelmass
Lars Roobol, couldn't end on a better note than that. Thank you so much for sharing your time, insight, expertise and wisdom with us.

Lars Roobol
Well, you're very welcome.

Bret Kugelmass
So we are here today with Dan Stout, the Director of Nuclear Technology Innovation at TVA. Dan, welcome to Titans of Nuclear.

Dan Stout
Oh, thank you. Thank you, Bret. Appreciate it.

Bret Kugelmass
It's great to have you on the show. Of course, I've been reading about all the great work that you've been doing. But before we get into that, and your current work and understanding SMRs, maybe we could just talk about you and how you got into the space. You grew up through the Navy program, right?

Dan Stout
I did, I went to the Naval Academy and then served in the submarine force about six years. I qualified on three different reactor designs while in the Navy, so that got my start. And then I stayed nuclear. I worked in the uranium enrichment business for about 15 years. And again, in a technology innovation kind of area, I've worked on four different uranium enrichment technologies.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow, what are the different uranium enrichment technologies?

Dan Stout
Gaseous diffusion is the old one that was the backbone in the United States, but then shut down. I worked on AVLIS, which is an atomic laser process, SILEX, which is a molecular laser process, and then gas centrifuges.

Bret Kugelmass
And gas centrifuges - that's got to be the one that's used most commonly now. Right?

Dan Stout
Correct.

Bret Kugelmass
And the main advantages between gas centrifuges and gaseous diffusion, the old technology - is it just energy input? What are the big differences?

Dan Stout
Yeah, gaseous diffusion was capital intensive and energy intensive. So it had high capital and high operating cost. Centrifuges have high capital costs, but lower operating cost. Got it. And the centrifuge technology, I mean, you know, we hear about it sometimes in the news,, something spinning. You see these person-sized canisters lined up across, you know, football fields worth of area. Am I thinking about the right stuff here?

Dan Stout
You are, you are. And they come in different sizes. You know, Russia basically had a smaller design and the United States evolved to a very large design, but they all work on the same principles.

Bret Kugelmass
And who manages that? Is there like one place in the world where it's mostly done or does each country have their own set of centrifuges?

Dan Stout
It's very sensitive technology, so there's generally tight controls over it. So Russia, China now have their own developed technologies. Commercially, Urenco is the leader of a European base, but they also have a facility in the US. And then residual from USEC, now Centrus, they have a technology that's based upon DOE's design and they're working on demonstrating that.

Bret Kugelmass
As I understand it, the nuclear fuel is kind of like a commodity market, where each stage of it, from the mining to the enrichment, can kind of just be purchased like a commodity, and these things, I guess, they know how to move around from factory to factory, but the person who wants to acquire the enriched uranium at the end of the day, you know, they can essentially, you know, put it in an order and the things all happen. Is that an accurate description?

Dan Stout
Yeah, pretty much, you know, the mining, the enrichment, the conversion - they pretty much are commodities, fungible commodities. Some of the suppliers like to view their value-add as a product, and so how things are packaged and bundled is slightly different. But the material itself is a commodity.

Bret Kugelmass
One thing I've been dying to ask an expert in the space, and this is a perfect time, the current cap on enrichment is 4.95%. Where did they come up with that number? Why is that what's okay? And 6% is not quite okay. What's going on there?

Dan Stout
We could spend a whole hour on that. But,, it kind of evolved. And there's a lot of institutional barriers, whether it's transportation package limitations, or, you know, lots of NRC licensing codes for criticality safety, or lots of reasons. So, after many, many years of it being the limit, it became a limit.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. Not because there's any fundamental reason that 6% is bad. It's just the whole supply chain, and best practices are built out for the equipment configured to go up to 5%. So the investment hurdle to get 6% on might be pretty significant.

Dan Stout
Exactly. I mean, that barrier will be broken at some point. But it's a matter of these institutional things being broken down bit by bit, or some entity, you know, making an order for a large quantity, and then all the commercial solutions will prevail.

Bret Kugelmass
Ah, market driven.

Dan Stout
Yeah, pieces and parts are being addressed. I know enrichers have gone above five, I know fabricators have gone above five and their licensing and so forth. So it's happening.

Bret Kugelmass
And, at the end of the day - because I know a lot of the startups out there want to use, let's say up to 20%, which I still think is classified as low enrichment.

Dan Stout
It's called high-assay, low-enriched uranium, so up to 20.

Bret Kugelmass
And the advantages that they see in that are just better characteristics for the geometry and material selection in their core. Are we able to use those same centrifuges in order to get that high? Or do we need to switch to a laser based system?

Dan Stout
The same centrifuges can be used, it's how you configure them and plumb the gas. You need to stage them vertically and feed in a higher enrichment level to take it to the next step. So, you know, centrifuges and gas diffusion, it's all about staging, to continue to step up the enrichment levels.

Bret Kugelmass
I see, and that's because at the end of the day, you're separating out the U-235 from the U-238 and you do this in a piecewise fashion, since they're chemically identical and they're so similar in every respect, other than that little bit of weight. That's what we're taking advantage of essentially, in the centrifugal process. And that's just a little bit by bit to eke out that extra level of separation. Is that accurate?

Dan Stout
Yeah. And, you know, in theory on the laser processes, you might be able to have the the energy or the laser being absorbed only by one of the isotopes, but you might be able to be a little more efficient from that alone, relative to the gaseous diffusion and gas centrifuge where you're physically handling all of the material, all of the mass and so there's things like that that are important to the developers and enrichment.

Bret Kugelmass
Cool. And then whatever happened to the laser stuff?

Dan Stout
AVLIS was shut down, and it was really hard. It's dealing with molten uranium, highly corrosive, very high temperatures. So it was hard to come up with a system that could have high reliability long term. You know, SILEX, which is now Global Laser Enrichment, you know, it's still in development, so I don't know the details.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, so you spent a large part of your career in this enrichment process, what came next for you?

Dan Stout
Department of Energy. I got recruited to go there and serve. And so it was an opportunity to serve the country, I was responsible for the back end of the fuel cycle. You know, reprocessing, recycling. They use fuel, it was kind of a startup program. My role was more involved with interfacing with the industry on different designs and capabilities, to - should the country make it a policy priority to get back into the recycling business - what that would look like?

Bret Kugelmass
And what are the pros and cons of recycling?

Dan Stout
Well, one of the pros is you can get to reuse a lot of that energy that's still in used fuel. The biggest con is it's pretty expensive. You're handling materials that are highly radioactive, and after its fission, you got a lot of different elements, and how to separate out the ones that you want to remove and retain the ones that are valuable for generating energy again, and dealing with all those waste streams that come out of a process that does that, it's hard to do. There's also the ability to misuse such a process. It could be misused, for proliferation of nuclear weapons, that kind of thing. And so there's pretty stringent controls needed for safeguards and security. So those are the big cons. The other thing and just a pure economics, uranium is pretty abundant.

Bret Kugelmass
As abundant as tin.

Dan Stout
Well, it's abundant, it's in seawater. You could mine it out of seawater and you kind of know what the cost of that is. And, you know, reprocessing and recycling the used fuel, getting value out of the recovered material, it has to be better than mining it out of seawater for it to make economic sense. And then who knows?

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, I think a lot of this always comes down to the economics at the end of the day. And with the recycling, one thing that I've never understood - and maybe you can tell me, because I'm still always hunting around for answers. When I've got kind of an idea about something, I want to see if people thought about it before. I never understood, why don't they just take the spent fuel and just throw it in a crucible of some sort and it heats itself up,. Why wouldn't everything just kind of separate out over time in like nice, neat layers and then just kind of vent out the radioactive gases into a nice little canister, you can scrape off or wash off the liquids, you scrape off one solid layer after another and then you're just left with whichever layer you want. Is that something that was ever discussed?

Dan Stout
Yeah. I don't know when this was, probably in the 90s. But there was a company called Molten Metal Technology and that was their concept. I think they went bankrupt, I don't know. Yeah, it's definitely been thought about. And, you know, there is some technical merit to that concept, right. But the devil's in the detail, you know. What kind of bad reactions could take place, what kind of crucible can contain the temperatures and, what kind of gases are coming off, what kind of process and system do I need to wrap around such a process? You know, so good question. I don't know the answer. But there was work done in that space.

Bret Kugelmass
Well, you're the first person to point me to it. So I'll definitely have to track someone down from that organization to get a whole interview with them.

Dan Stout
Sounds good.

Bret Kugelmass
That's great. Yeah. So what led you to your work at TVA?

Dan Stout
So, while I was at the Department of Energy, TVA had some interest in what the department was doing on recycling used fuel. And so I made some contacts. They recruited me to join the TVA team, I think it was 2009. So I've been with TVA now, for a little over 12 years. It wasn't long after I got here, the opportunity to work in new nuclear came about and so, 2012 on, I've been responsible for our new nuclear activity.

Bret Kugelmass
Cool. Okay. Well, I really want to dig into that. But before we do, can you just tell me a little bit about the history of TVA? What is TVA?

Dan Stout
It was created in 1933. Part of the New Deal. It was a public power model with the focus on helping to bring electricity to an impoverished area of the Tennessee Valley. And, you know, to provide not only electricity, but also protect the environment and provide for economic development. And protecting the environment included things like controlling the Tennessee River, which had lots of floods. And so we put in place a series of dams and provide flood control. And we do that today. In fact, you know, last year, we estimated we avoided over a billion dollars of flood damage. We continue to win industry awards for economic development activities that we do in collaboration with our local power companies who are partners in providing the electricity to the companies and the citizens of the Tennessee Valley.

Bret Kugelmass
And it's pseudo government owned, or what's the relationship with the federal government?

Dan Stout
We're 100% US government, but we get our money, our revenues from electric bills. You know, it's almost in its entirety, it's the electric bills that provide for all of our costs. And we operate as a nonprofit. We do provide these additional services that are a little above and beyond what other utilities do in terms of flood control and environmental protection. And we support recreation in the Tennessee Valley, you know, access to the river system, and things like that, that are part of this economic development, environmental stewardship, and low cost reliable and affordable electricity.

Bret Kugelmass
I mean, I love that all those things are paired together, because so often energy has some relationship with the natural environment. Listen, I'm all for free markets and capitalism, but sometimes you do want the government to protect certain things, you know, like things that are good for the common good. And the environment is one of those things. And so it seems actually a natural pairing to have this specific relationship. Has the TVA model been replicated elsewhere throughout the country? I can't imagine the Tennessee Valley is the only area where power and the environment come into potential partnership and conflict with each other.

Dan Stout
Well, there is no other model quite like ours. There are a couple similar. You have the Bonneville Power Administration out West, which is an arm of the Department of Energy and some others that, you know, I'm not an expert on what the differences are, but there's the Western Area Power Authority. So there's some other authorities that are somewhat similar, but TVA is unique.

Bret Kugelmass
And because it's closely tied to the federal government, does that mean it can be a sandbox or a testing ground for other government energy related activities? Like if the DOE wanted to pilot something, whether it's nuclear or whether it's anything - carbon capture or some sort of high voltage, renewable power line or something - is that type of relationship in place where it's like, okay, we're going to TVA and we're just gonna do it there.

Dan Stout
The opportunity is there. I mean, TVA is an independent agency. We do have a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed board of directors and then a full time Chief Executive Officer that makes the day to day decisions of how TVA works. And there is opportunity for us to work in collaboration with other government agencies. And we do that. We have been supporting national defense in a number of areas. One example is tritium production that's used to support the Department of Defense, where we use our nuclear reactors to help in the generation of tritium and, and support that kind of activity.

Bret Kugelmass
Cool. Okay. So there's precedent. I mean, that's a great start. So all right, now, let's get to the meat that everyone wants to hear about. SMRs, what you've been doing with SMRs? And maybe, you know, as we were alluding to, is it possible that- I know it is in the best interest of the government to promote the development of SMRs. I mean, is there conversation about using TVA as a testing ground for this?

Dan Stout
Well, absolutely. You know, TVA has been making progress on activities in that space, we did prepare an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on a site, Clinch River Site, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And the approach we took is plant parameter envelope. So it's a flexible approach that can accommodate more than one reactor, more than one design. And the NRC issued that permit in December 2019. Yeah, it had a couple of unique elements within it. One of them is our unique approach to emergency planning.

Bret Kugelmass
Tell me about it.

Dan Stout
Well, we thought it was important to challenge the regulator with how the significant improvements in safety and how that could be realized in a manner that continues to protect public health and safety as the highest priority, but recognizes that that can be done without larger emergency planning zones. And so, you know, we thought that it should be a function of the dose to the public, as was the basis for large emergency planning zones. And, you know, if that we could do the calculation and show that the dose was, you know, meeting the regulation or better at a location closer in the design, that that ought to be the basis. And so we put that forward in our application. And when we were doing the preparation, we learned that there's a breakpoint on, if you can get to the site boundary, then the programs that are needed for off site activities, they can go away.

Bret Kugelmass
When you say get to the site boundary, you mean if you can keep the maximum anticipated dose under a certain threshold at the site boundary, is that you're talking about?

Dan Stout
Yeah, yeah. So you're basically-

Bret Kugelmass
And what is that like, though, is that like 25 rem or something?

Dan Stout
Well, it's complicated, but a lot of it comes down to one rem, but there's other criteria, 25 and so forth. The same bases that are used for protecting the public beyond 10 miles from a large nuclear plant, you can use that same basis at the site boundary. If you can demonstrate to the regulator that the safety to the public beyond the site boundary is similar to what you have beyond 10 miles from a large plant, then there's no need for- we do all kinds of activities to protect the public within 10 miles of our large plants. But beyond 10 miles, there's still things that are done and part of our plans, but it's a lot less. What we learned is that you're actually protecting the public better. Let me talk about Fukushima briefly. There are some international studies that have shown that the impacts to the public from the evacuation, a lot of that was due to the evacuation itself. If you compared that to what kind of exposures and health impacts would have occurred if the people had not evacuated, there are impacts. And it's possible that there were unnecessary evacuations that lead to more adverse health impacts. So, you know, an evacuation is a big deal from a public health and safety perspective, and avoiding unnecessary evacuations is actually an improvement in protecting your public. Those are hard conversations to have. We worked really hard with the state, with the locals, there were meetings with the federal agencies involved in emergency planning. And it's a hard conversation to have, but we had those. We had the residents around the plant, one of the things we did, we had a barbecue. Hamburgers and hot dogs, me and my team were out there meeting with the locals, and we sent a letter to everybody that lived within a mile and a half of the plant and had all kinds of conversations with locals, learned a lot of things.

Bret Kugelmass
And this is, which plant is this?

Dan Stout
Clinch River Site.

Bret Kugelmass
And so there's a plant already on Clinch River? No, no, this was part of our planning for the early site permit at Clinch River.

Bret Kugelmass
Got it. And so how is Clinch River chosen out of all the area that TVA manages?

Dan Stout
There's a very detailed site selection report in our application. But it's a good location, in terms of, it has access to water, it's in a community with strong public support, there's good access to transmission. It's right beside the Department of Energy's facility that uses about 100 megawatts of electricity. And it was a good location.

Bret Kugelmass
That's awesome. Okay, so you picked that location, you had your barbecues, you got public buy in, and then put together a whole package, submit it to the NRC and then they give you the approval?

Dan Stout
Yes, just like that.

Bret Kugelmass
I'm sure it was a lot harder and a lot more expensive. But an amazing success story, because in our country, we don't get to hear too many great success stories around nuclear making progress. I mean, nuclear is a success story every single day that it operates because of its low environmental impact, low carbon footprint, you know, clean, steady power, baseload generation, energy security, those can just go on and on and on and on. So there's always a success story. But you don't hear about the steady state success stories. And we don't get too many ‘something new happens’ success stories. So this is probably the most exciting thing that's happened in US nuclear in the last decade, maybe.

Dan Stout
Well, I appreciate that. We're happy with that, but we’ve got a long way to go before we have electrons on the grid.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, so tell me, what are the next steps? Because I want to see this happen. I want to see some SMRs built. What do you got to do?

Dan Stout
Well, the next step would be getting- we kind of view the early site permits, kind of like a zoning permit, you know, and then you got to get the construction permit. And, and so that's next and you have two options there. You can get a combined operating license, COLA, or you can get a construction permit. You know, the construction permit requires a little less detail on the design and enables moving forward a little earlier. The combined license requires more detail, especially about the operating license and the programs that you need for that. Either of those would work and can use the early site permit information within them. So that's the next step. And then if we went with the construction permit approach, there would be a subsequent operating license, but the construction permit, that's about a two year task for us with an existing early site permit. And then the NRC review and approval of that, probably another two years. And so construction, that's still at least four years away.

Bret Kugelmass
Why should it take so long? Is it just because a vendor doesn't have a design quite ready yet? I mean, if a vendor had a design ready to go, what would it take to get that permit in place?

Dan Stout
It's a good question. I mean, does it really need to take that long versus what has it historically taken? Right? And so the dates that I just threw out there two years, two years, that's pushing the NRC to be more nimble and more aggressive than they have traditionally been. And frankly, the NRC has been doing a great job of improving on their schedules and their schedule discipline. But it's still long. Does it need to be that long, who knows?

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, cuz one of the things that I love about the SMR story- Listen, I actually like the big reactors, too. I mean, they produce a lot of power for not that much material consumption or footprint. But one of the ideas that I love about SMRs is that they could perhaps qualify for reduced risk envelope, there's not as much heat, you don't need as much coolant. There's just a lot, you don't need as big a containment. There's just a lot of stuff that I feel like could be used to present to the NRC to say, can we treat this differently than the big reactors? Can we just all acknowledge upfront that the reason that we go through all this intense scrutiny of big reactor is because of perceived big consequences? I could argue with that, too. But let's just give them the perceived big consequences. But with the SMRs, you could argue that we're in a totally different consequence envelope. I know you've put so much thought into this, what really needs to be demonstrated to demonstrate the safety of an SMR if we're talking, you know -and I'm saying really small, I'm not talking like 300 megawatt SMR, I'm talking like 10 megawatt, and you could maybe call them micro reactors, there are a lot of companies out there that want to do this - what do we really need to show to prove the safety of a 10 megawatt SMR?

Dan Stout
I mean, it's really about providing benefit to society and protecting society from the hazard imbalance. That's the tricky part. So I don't envy the NRC, their challenge of making sure that they're protecting public health and safety, but resisting the temptation to ask for and demand the detail and the testing that large plants warrant, that small plants dont. When I say small plants - safer designs. And that level of detail is the key to the time and cost associated with licensing.

Bret Kugelmass
Would you guys offer to - given you guys have gone through that, you had NRC experience, got the early site permit, you have operating experience, you have several reactors operating - is TVA looking to help some of the new vendors get through the NRC program, are they offering financial support, intellectual support? What's TVA's level of participation in this?

Dan Stout
It's tough for utilities to bear significant risk. There are utilities in public power markets where the competition is stiff, the markets don't allow for long term thinking. And so they don't have big R&D budgets to go help. In the regulated markets, the public utility commissions often don't allow the utility to get any kind of return on R&D kind of activities. We've evolved in the United States to this structure where utilities aren't afforded the opportunity to do pure R&D or take high risks. TVA with its public power model can be a little more forward leaning in that space, but not a lot. As we look at new technologies, and we assess the economics, and the risks - that's of the product itself, but also the team and the risk associated with the successful execution - we've been continuously evaluating the different options over the prior four years. And we concluded that the lightwater SMRs have reached the point where they're ready to move on to that next stage of demonstration. The reactors that use other coolants, we still have some concern over the risks, particularly on fuel.

Bret Kugelmass
And when you say risk, you mean economic risk, you don't mean like safety risks, right?

Dan Stout
Correct. I mean, economic risks, uncertainty associated with the schedule and the cost. And so, if you look at the fuel component itself, enrichment levels, shipping containers, the manufacturing, predictability in supply chain. And speaking of supply chain, I mean, a lot of the new designs, don't have supply chains. The whole establishment of a supply chain is a big undertaking. And then the licensing pathway and the confidence in the predictability of that. And so we see a clear distinction between the light water SMRs and the non-lights. So that's where we're at today. And that becomes important from a business perspective as well, because there's increasing urgency to reduce carbon emissions. As the urgency to reduce carbon emissions increases, that leads you to make your decision sooner rather than later on which technology type and that you assess the risks today. Now, we like some of the new technology designs a lot, you know, they have potential to have better economics. You know, if you think about the major drivers on economics, they have to do with the pressure of the system, the temperature of the system, the power density. And you know, if you can come up with a design that is low pressure, high temperature, high power density, you'd have much greater likelihood that you're going to have less concrete and steel and something more economical.

Bret Kugelmass
Yep. No, I love the first principles thinking. I mean, my team went through a similar exercise. I mean, of course we got to benefit from you and people like you and reading all of your reports. But we've come to similar conclusions from a first principles analysis, you can see what will drive costs in the system, even if you haven't necessarily built the whole thing out. And we've narrowed it all down to its simplicity, supply chain, constructability, you know, the boring things, not reactor design, which everyone seems to want to do, but doesn't seem to be the most influential factor in the overall cost of your system.

Dan Stout
Right? That's right. And then you know, there's the size, and there's lots of things to consider in the best size. When you get really, really big, mega project risk becomes a real thing, and the ability to manage that many moving parts or the risk consequence of messing up in one area. So mega project risk is something to avoid. Now you get too small, you have part count. You got too many parts and components for each individual unit. The sweet spot is probably in the 200 to 400 megawatt range where you can get your balance of plant essentially off the shelf. And you take advantage of that economies of scale on the balance of plant, which is a huge chunk of the cost.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, it's funny to hear you say that, we came to literally the exact same conclusion in terms of size as well. One of the things that I want to hear your opinion on, because one of the things that we figured is that, while the sweet spot is probably that 200 to 400, in terms of just getting a project off the ground, going smaller, might be easier. You're not going to be as cost effective, your LCOE is going to go up, but you know what, nuclear is so, the fuel is cheap compared to other thermal power sources. So you got a little bit of extra room to play with anyway. So why not produce a sub optimal system that's just a little smaller, a little simpler, a little easier to get the pipes in, the parts in, load the steam generator into a normal sized building? Have you guys considered that as well, saying, you know, actually, we'd almost prefer something that's sub 100 megawatts, even though we know the ideal is 200 to 400.

Dan Stout
Yes, and no. From a utility perspective, or a TVA perspective, we have to operate within our governance parameters. We do least cost planning, we do an integrated resource plan, and we look at our alternatives. If you're too sub optimum, how, or why can we invest in it? Right? If it's the least cost option and good enough, because it's low risk, it's a simplified, robust design that you have high confidence with low risk. That's cool. But is it still a low cost? And in other words, can we go invest in that? One of the things with new nuclear - it gets back to your earlier question that I didn't answer right - I think there should be public private partnership in first of a kind in nuclear. And so if the federal government, taxpayer, were to bear the lion's share of the first of the kind risk, at TVA, if we can protect our rates, our electric bills that pay for our operation, that balance can be achieved. Then TVA has a role to play in first of a kind demonstration.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. It seems to me like a good justification could be made that investing in one of these small systems, even if the project doesn't work out all together, won't lead to any increase really in what the ratepayer pay is just because it's a small project relative to the overall expenses. But if it does work out, and the reward is so great, because then you've got a model that you can replicate throughout your network in order to significantly reduce costs moving forward. So it seems like a low risk, high reward payoff which, to me, checks the box for a great investment.

Dan Stout
I agree. I mean, you got to have confidence at the nth of a kind is going to be economical.

Bret Kugelmass
So if the vendor wants to come to you and make a pitch, how would they do it?

Dan Stout
I've got my email. You know my phone number. We actually are embarking on a TVA environmental review process. We went through a public scoping and March 1st we had a public meeting. Now we're in the process of developing a draft environmental impact statement. And it's for a nuclear technology park at the Clinch River site. And-

Bret Kugelmass
Awesome.

Dan Stout
-you know, within our 800 megawatts of our early site permit, we see the opportunity to demonstrate more than one reactor, more than one design. But but it has to be packaged ready, design mature, reasonable risk, and we got to have the contractual approach that's going to protect the ratepayer of the Tennessee Valley, and if we can, within those guidelines, if a project can be bundled, makes good sense to get the demonstration done, that's what we hope to use our site for.

Bret Kugelmass
Amazing. Okay, so that's TVA. And your site? Actually, one more question just on the physical characteristics of the site itself. So you're permitted for up to 800 megawatts chopped up into different SMRs. What is the land area that this park encompasses, how many acreage do you guys have?

Dan Stout
It's about 935 acres of area where we can do things. We've kind of broken it into two distinct areas within that 935 acres where you have the better topography and characterization. So that's what we're looking at, how to use area one how to use area two, do we want to do both? And then there are some other elements that, you know, before we get into decision making, which isn't the future, do you really want to be managing two or three at the exact same time? It's important for TVA. We view it as very important that you have successful project execution, that delivering on cost and schedule to establish confidence in subsequent projects and from the investment community, we've got to make improvements in that area. TVA is spending a lot of time and a lot of analysis and a lot of planning to make sure that when we pull the trigger on execution, that we can do it in a manner that achieves those results and helps the industry gain credibility and confidence from the investment community and for subsequent projects.

Bret Kugelmass
And what about grid integration? Oftentimes, it's left up to, if there's an independent power producer that tries to connect to the grid, they've got to pay all these fees to literally connect the wires to the local substation. Would TVA handle that for a new nuclear vendor?

Dan Stout
Yes, that is our business and the Clinch River site's at a good location for connecting. We have 500 kV transmission and 161 kV transmission that are on site. So the substation and the connection to those is something we're prepared to do.

Bret Kugelmass
And as far as various licensing paths, go, I mean, my team has been trying to understand - for these SMRs and for the first of a kind deployment - what the various options are, if it's possible, instead of going through the traditional commercial NRC framework, if it makes sense to apply almost like a research reactor, given the innovative nature of a first of a kind SMR. Perhaps the research reactor methodology is a little bit more lightweight is there the potential of - because DOE has their own licensing infrastructure, such as that they used for the Versatile Test Reactor - is it possible that DOE could lease part of your land to make it technically DOE land so it can still be in part of your technology park, but they've got the authority to be the licensor of record? Is any of that possible?

Dan Stout
I suppose it's possible. It probably would go the other way better. I mean, one of the risks that everybody ultimately needs to address is NRC licensing. And so if you get a DOE license, you still have that risk remaining on NRC license. With our early site permit on our land, we do have a pathway that's probably actually more streamlined than if DOE were to start from scratch on different land.

Bret Kugelmass
Got it.

Dan Stout
But at the end of the day, I could envision that we could give the land to DOE, and the D&D liability of that test reactor. So maybe there's some opportunity there where that could continue to service DOE into the future.

Bret Kugelmass
Got it. And when you said D&D, is that decommissioning and - okay, go it.

Dan Stout
Now that's one of the things that a utility needs to think about on one of these smaller test reactors that really doesn't make much revenue. The D&D cost alone might be as much as all the revenue that you get from something really small.

Bret Kugelmass
I see because the D&D revenue is not proportionate to power output, it's just a fixed rate or something, is that the idea?

Dan Stout
We don't know.There's some uncertainty on what you're going to have to pay in advance for your decontamination decommissioning. And then what's the ultimate cost of the waste associated with an advanced reactor? You know, so fuel forms are different. Again, we have a good handle on light water fuel. Fewer unknowns on lightwater. With advanced reactors and different fuels, there's more unknown. Especially on the disposal side.

Bret Kugelmass
And underground, talk to me about underground, I saw on your website, scoured your website and all your documentation, I noticed that you mentioned one of the advantages of SMRs is underground. Can you maybe talk to me about that and help me understand? You know, digging underground can be expensive also. Can you help me balance the cost and the benefit of siting something underground?

Dan Stout
Yeah, I think it definitely helps with safeguard security, aircraft impact, those kinds of things, in your analyses to dose for emergency planning zone, things like that, there are some benefits. But in terms of costs, great point. We are very interested in advanced construction methods, participating in a project that isn't yet underway, to do vertical shaft boring. Some of the technologies and techniques they're used in the non nuclear area, I see that as a great opportunity to expedite construction and reduce cost and if you if you can do a vertical shaft boring and avoid the need for a bathtub type excavation, the amount of dirt paneling and engineered backfill and stuff is significant.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah.

Dan Stout
You know, and those types of technologies are used to make a tunnel underneath the English Channel or a subway system, you name it. Are they safe? Well, you know, you have people in cars under tunnels every day. We got work to do to enable the NRC inspections where the building wall meets the basement and all that. So I am hopeful that there will be a demonstration and work done with the regulator and to reduce the risks on that kind of advanced construction method, which is one of the keys to keeping the cost down for solving this whole thing.

Bret Kugelmass
Yep, absolutely. And then what else excites you about some of the technology and innovation coming down the pike?

Dan Stout
Advanced manufacturing, it's wonderful. I can see all kinds of opportunities on how that might improve on cost and schedule. At TVA, we did work with Oak Ridge National Lab and Framatome and we did use 3d printing, make a channel faster, put it in Browns Ferry. We're right now actively looking for our next part, and our next challenge trying to ratchet up and get something more significant to safety and challenge the regulator to get comfortable with moving along in additive manufacturing and its application in nuclear. I think artificial intelligence and machine learning, is going to revolutionize a lot of things in the economy, but in nuclear, the ability to move from how we do preventative maintenance today and to capture the data and to be able to analyze the data and use a digital twin. And that excites me, I think that there's a lot of opportunity to actually achieve the efficient operations and maintenance cost, using these techniques and putting the right processes and systems in place upfront. If you look today at the US nuclear fleet, how many warehouses are there and supply chains, and how many parts are there that, if if you were able to truly standardize your plant design, if you're able to put in place an Amazon Prime for maintaining, we can get so much more efficient than what we are today. And so those things excite me. And I think that the intersection of the artificial intelligence, machine learning and a commitment of like minded owners to that vision is gonna lead to the efficient O&M in the long run.

Bret Kugelmass
Awesome. And as we wrap up here today, Dan, can you just tell us in your words, why is nuclear important?

Dan Stout
Well, it's one of those technologies that has tremendous power generation capability. We have been using it for a long time. When you make your electricity in a manner that's clean and reliable, the world prospers, you're able to make a significant difference in carbon reduction. You know, if that's important to you, well, that's the way to do it. And if you look at carbon emissions, you know, almost 70% is transportation, and heat and, nuclear is a way to enable the electricity sector to be electrified, be 100% carbon free, or get towards 100% carbon free while keeping costs reasonable, which enables you to electrify the transportation sector and the heating sector, and truly make meaningful change long term. So I you know, it's a great technology to see it deployed broadly and help the United States and the world prosper.

Bret Kugelmass
Dan Stout. Thank you so much.

Dan Stout
Thank you.

Bret Kugelmass
So we are here today with Björn Peters, who's a European energy project finance expert and founders of Peters Coll. Björn, welcome to the show.

Björn Peters
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

Bret Kugelmass
So I'd love to just start off by learning about your background. I mean, I know that you've got a history in finance as it relates to clean energy projects, maybe you can take us back to the beginning and introduce us to how you first got started in that space.

Björn Peters
Well, actually, there was a youth science competition in 1984, when I took part, creating or inventing with a friend to sort of a new model of a wind power plant. So that actually brought me to the energy space. I later studied physics. And it took quite a while because until I came back to really doing something in energy markets professionally, first I, I did a PhD in brain sciences. And I was a consultant with McKinsey and Company for two years. And my first real job, I call it was with the organise organizer of the German exchange, financial market exchange. And they were building or they had built the first steps, let's say for of the European energy exchange. And our CEO, said that this is actually quite a success. So let's do it for all other commodity markets as well. And so analyzed about 30-40 different commodity markets with all their ramifications. So it's, it's really interesting to dig into a commodity markets, it is very much what kind of commodities. Well, it went from iron and steel products, via telecommunication markets, voice minutes are traded, of course, all the natural commodities and metals, we had one study of them of the copper market and the nickel and zinc and so on. And so the colored metals. And until one project was advertisement slots, in newspapers site, there was a sort of new commodities added. So it was really an exciting time.

Bret Kugelmass
And what's the goal of this type of analysis is to just to essentially predict where the price is going to be for these commodities.

Björn Peters
Well, that was what I learned much later that this is actually the type of analysis that we were doing was exactly leading to answering those questions. But we at that time, we didn't answer. I asked that question. It was all about market design. In general terms, it's who has got, who needs? And who's in between? Yes, and how do they interact? And is are there services that we can provide to make them trade more efficiently? Yes. And, and with this analysis, actually, it's exactly what commodity analysis are doing on a daily basis. But we got it, I believe in this cooperation between somebody coming from the natural science background and my boss was an economist, and he knew everything about all types of trading and of price setting and price formation mechanisms. So I think we got quite far in in analysis tools for all sorts of commodity markets.

Bret Kugelmass
And then so where did that lead did you get your first introduction to energy there as one of the commodities or did energy come later in life?

Björn Peters
It came a little later, so we did. This was not a terrible success, because most markets, actually, it was the time of the b2b bubble. Some of the older might remember, it was the end of the 90s, that you just needed to create a b2b marketplace, business to business marketplace. And you got you got lots of startup, venture capital, and so on. But none of it actually worked. So it came back onto the the established exchanges. And that was a move that we, we didn't see at the time, I believe. And so we close down this venture and I stayed in financial markets learn a little bit about the background. My first real commodity product was a gold fund that actually securitizes the rite of delivery of one gram of gold. That product is nowadays 12 billion euros. So it's not that big, but but as an employee, you have no benefits whatsoever. So I'm, I'm really parted there. But, but I am still quite proud actually, of that as a first success. That was nearly 15 years ago. And then afterwards, I joined a subsidiary, the asset management arm actually, of Deutsche Bank. And then it was in a closed end fund department. And I went there explicitly in order to, to contribute to the energy transition, but in the ways of financing it.

Bret Kugelmass
And so what is asset management exactly? I think our audience understands, you know, about your project financing, at least peripherally in the energy space. But is asset management more broad than that? What's under the asset management bucket?

Björn Peters
Well, asset management essentially is investing in a fiduciary role. Other people's money, so your clients money. And this, there's stock. So in the stock exchange, many of the customers do trading on the markets are actually funds to who manage these assets, these financial assets, and there is one branch that is closed end funds were the real, that invest into the real economy directly in terms of project.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, so closed ends. And funds is a subset of asset management that directly deals with like real world stuff, like building a train rail, or building a bridge or a highway or a power plant.

Björn Peters
Or a power plant. Yeah. So we've had hydro power plants in our in our portfolio. Actually, I started out, of course, trying to find and solar and wind power plants. But that was a funny story. Because in wind, what people usually know if they know about wind energy, is that if you're wrong in the, in the wind prediction, every 10%, you're wrong. In average wind speed, you're 30% wrong in in the, in the capital gains. So in the in the harvest of power.

Bret Kugelmass
Why is that? Can you break that out a little bit more? Why does it grow from 10% to 30%?

Björn Peters
Because there's a third power dependency of wind capacity as a function of wind speed. So this, so double, or twice, the wind speed means eight times the wind power, you can transform to electricity. And that is something that you really need to know, because it's a it's a source of, of risk in the wind power business. And many of the project managers who came to me had two beautiful calculations with 80% debt on it and 20% equity. And it was quite expensive at the time, it's not that it was 1 or 2%. In interest, it was more 5, 6, 7%. And that meant if you're wrong by 10% of the wind speed you you earn 30% less money and you're broke, if if this is not managed well. Yeah. And I said, well, let's do it a bit, a little bit more risk adjusted. And then in particular, I was always joking with those guys that the they have a very asymmetric risk return ratio, because all the return was to them and all the risk was to my investors. And this was certainly nothing I could have accepted. So you walked away and found other people who were silly enough to invest into it.

Bret Kugelmass
This is you're saying the banks had the asymmetric return?

Björn Peters
No, the project developer, the project came to me as a as an asset manager, and or as a bank, I mean that it was similar. And sometimes it was insurance companies have bought those projects. That means a project developer goes to some place, make sure that as critic says that the land is there, that the checks for the for the for the average wind speed and the wind profile, and then walks up to a wind power producer, windmill producer, and says, Well, here, I want to buy 10 of your pure windmills, and what are the conditions? And and then this is a package that they approach with an investor. Yeah. And the investor as administrator.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. And so yeah, tell me about when you said asymmetric return, you got my ears picking up because I'd like to really understand what the risk return profile is, for the various parties involved, the developer that you were just mentioning that packages all together, the equity component, which is another financial institution, but that like literally opens the project. And then the debt provider, which offers debt, which offers alone but gets the project, if it fails, is that that's the distinction, essentially, on these early projects. Yeah. Who did you see as being the biggest beneficiary, you're saying, not the banks, you were at the banks, and it wasn't looking good for the banks.

Björn Peters
Yeah. Now, the biggest beneficiary clearly were the project developers because they sold the project at a fixed price, and could take out all the produce the profit they owned, or they earned in one moment.

Bret Kugelmass
And they sold it to who they sold it to the equity owner?

Björn Peters
Exactly

Bret Kugelmass
Got it

Björn Peters
And sometimes they were in collaboration with the banks, or we approached banks, for a bank financing of those 10, 50 to 80%, we like more 60%, but not 80%. And, and now, the risk moves, then if it's in your hand, and you've bought it, you have acquired it, then all the construction cost probably is all construction risk is probably gone because it's producing assets. So the depend only then on the the quantity you can produce the number of kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. And its price, the price is most often fixed by law in this domain, and not in the usual power plant business, but in wind and solar farms.

Bret Kugelmass
So when you say, when you say it's fixed by law, do you mean that someone has signed a private contract like a PPA? Or do you mean that the government in certain places has said no, this is all you're getting? This is what exactly what you're gonna get paid for power whether you like it or not?

Björn Peters
Yeah. Now, that's actually a European thing that started out in Germany, it was about the feed in tariff system. Yeah, I know that you're in the US, you have more tax credit system. So it works a little bit differently. Over here most countries have adopted a feed in tariff. So that is fixed by law or in similar. Yeah, government controlled processes, right.

Bret Kugelmass
And when the government is dictating the price, not the market, is what you're saying.

Björn Peters
Exactly. And it was meant to the price had to be high enough that the quantity of solar and wind power built had to increase every year. That was the the ramp up financing of this technology. And Germany paid about half of the learning curve, at least in solar energy. I'm not sure for for wind energy, it's probably a little less but for solar energy. And that was it. And so the my first projects in 2008, that I that made it to my desk, were about for six to eight euros per watt, or six to 8000 euros per kilowatt installed capacity. And nowadays it's it's 10% of it. Yeah, crazy. And really any good price decline.

Bret Kugelmass
Do you have any insight as to why the German government was the one to kind of pioneer this feed in tariff system for clean energy? And why solar? I mean, Germany's not very sunny, right?

Björn Peters
No, it isn't. There has been very old movements, intellectual movements are so in the technological part. There were a couple of people in the 1920s, who promoted wind power, solar wasn't developed at the time. And for example, Heidegger, Martin Heidegger, the philosopher, he was speculating about the flow, and you could extract from the flow, the energy, but only if it is volatize. So he didn't like hydro power, he liked only wind power at the time, because it made it meant that people had to be poor energy poor. And that is what something he promoted. Yes, there is actually a continuous movement, actually, from those more Nazi philosophers and economists, gradually been taken these thoughts, not intentionally, but by gradually taken over by the green movement in the 1960s, and 70s. And you can, you can observe this. And then there were people in the 1970s, who promoted this, or he who invented the the energy transitions or Energiwende in German, coined that term, and said, we need to move away from all the terminal power and and the only thing that's accepted is solar and wind power.

Bret Kugelmass
So it's almost like this this Energiewende that this program is almost like the latest iteration of like a purist mentality, the Germans, like, they needed an outlet for that purism sense. And they found it in these environmental movements.

Björn Peters
Yeah, because I think there's lots of this natural romanticism, that that is still there. And it's, to my humble opinion, it is really has always had a devastating impact on on German thinking. And, and even when you go back what I mean, the roots of historic roots have been in the late 19th century. And from these historic roots, you see, two three intellectual movements, so youth movement, that that when you had to go out into nature and learn to survive on a on very simple terms. One was another one was anthroposophy. And this in connection with with homeopathy. So it has said it was because everything is connected, and so only then you understand that even one molecule in a liter of water has still lots of impact on your health. So that is, it is hard to conceive why people believe it that. Well, and the third one, of course, was was the fascism. I mean, that's that in this direct causes, and for example, Hitler, or this Nazi Party, didn't have to invent the everything they still had to they simply had to pick up lots of thoughts from those other movements. And they were popular, and they were in particular popular about among academics. So if you look into the election results in late, early 1930s, so just before the third reich, the you had huge poll results for the for the NSDAP, Nazi Party, in towns like like Tübingen, Freiburg, Muenster, getting in where where nowadays, they're very strong on green, and they used to be so that it's the old university cities. Wow.

Bret Kugelmass
Wow. It's such an interesting history lesson. And so okay, so yeah, so you were tying it to how this how we're seeing this today and how there's this German movement towards the, towards the promotion of the renewable energy sources, they created this energy vendor program, which is a national program to help promote this. And then so obviously, this leads to a lot of odd economic opportunities for different industries over time. So maybe tell me a little bit more about some of the other things that you saw? Yes, you're on the back. kingside you got to see some of these projects up front. And then what came next in your career?

Björn Peters
Well indeed, when I when I saw that wind power was floored by construction so the the project developers yep the day they provided far too risky projects, I'll as per impairment looking very much into solar energy and I saw that there was an imbalance of feed in tariffs, they hadn't been reduced for a number of years. And I knew there had to be a shortcoming. And I didn't want to have projects in that very moment. So I wanted the bank not to invest into into solar energy. And just a few months later, so I was very lucky with that analysis. The it was fully confirmed. So Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic lowered their their their tariffs for existing projects. So in without telling people in advance, so they were investing far too much. And many of those funds went broke. But not my customers, fortunately. And what I actually was then doing was investing into hydro power. I like this very much. I mean, it's it's a very stable source of energy. If you can build it in a way that it's very much environmentally friendly. And we were hiring the best parties for for knowing that. It was It is not a great for for lots of fish. So that that was very important to us. And we we built actually bought 30-35 hydropower plants across Europe. So starting from Norway, by Albania a little bit Austria a little bit Turkey.

Bret Kugelmass
I mean, that's quite a few projects. And how big are these? Are these anywhere from 10 megawatts to 100 megawatts or bigger?

Björn Peters
Much smaller, much smaller. It was between two and 25 megawatt.

Bret Kugelmass
Okay, great. Alright. So yeah, small hydro projects. But yeah. And then what constrains that? Is it just citing at the end of the day that after you've taken up all the available locations, there's just no more places that you can build new hydro projects?

Björn Peters
Exactly. So that, for example, the turkey in Turkey did a huge survey of all possible locations in the country of Turkey, where to build hydropower plants, it was about 700 projects, and 200 of them had already been built. So it was a very clear market. You could apply for one of those or two or three or five of those projects, but then it was certain that they would become more and more scarce. And of course, you were trying to find the most beneficial projects and start with them.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, economics becoming tougher and tougher. But it's not like there's a lot of innovation in the hydro space. Right? It's, it's not like with wind or solar, where we've seen the cost curves come down so drastically, that as they come down, you can open up what would have been unprofitable sites before. With hydro, that's probably not the case. Right? There's not going to be much change in efficiency, you know, from generation to generation of hydro plan is there.

Björn Peters
No, I mean, it's a very old technology, the very first power stations ever were hydropower stations. Yeah, it started in early in the second half of the 19th century. And of course, there has been lots of optimization going in from taken aside, but still, you sometimes find tricks to increase the average efficiency by 0.11%, which doesn't sound great, but over a 60 or 80 years lifespan to have 0.1% more power to sell. Yeah, that's actually something.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. Yeah. Though, I can also imagine that I mean, it's just like the cost of capital to it's like, you know, what, if the currency isn't as great or the labor prices are more expensive at the start of the project, if that increases your project costs by 20 or 30%, that also has like a long lived effect on the overall plan economics, right?

Björn Peters
Yeah. Yeah, but you paid so it's, it's a capital intensive business, all three of them. And so at the at the very end, it's you need to control the construction cost, and hope for for good power prices because in hydropower, you usually don't get free. In tariffs unless it's in countries where there is no hydropower projects. But in those kinds where we were, we realized we had to rely on the power markets. And so it is a bit on the power price and the leverage bit even.

Bret Kugelmass
And is there an opportunity of retrofitting hydro projects to become pumped storage is almost like a way to arbitrage the market by giving them that like energy storage capability as well. Is that is that a growing industry?

Björn Peters
No, no, not at all. I mean, some, it's already very rare that you have a storage system with a natural inflow, as a lake or so well, on the other side of the lake, you build a hydropower plant, and you might be able to change the lake level by one or two meters. And then we have a storage reservoir, we have some of those projects in our portfolio, I still say our portfolio, of course, I've left it, it feels like its own portfolio. And for some, in Norway, you have huge lakes of this type. And go enormous amounts of storage capacity, but in order to have pumped storage, you need to have some water to pump up hills. And these these these lakes are mostly situated quite close to the to the sea. So you would have to pump up the saline waters. And and that is, of course, not compatible with all that lifts that is living there. So you don't do it.

Bret Kugelmass
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So after you left Deutsche Bank, where to next?

Björn Peters
Well, the the observation, I made it, Deutsche Bank and what gave me the impulse to move on was related to hydro power. It was in one year, I was getting four pumped hydro projects on my table. And it was really, it was stunning that what once had been a cash cow was then ending up at a desk of facility banker because usually, these energy, utilities, they know exactly what to do and where to earn the money. So there was something smelling. Yeah. And I dig into into this economies of storage, and didn't find any literature on it. So, I had to do the analysis myself, and I thought if they come to me, it has to be about something about the weather. So, the statistics of weather must be must have some properties that make hydro power pumped hydro power plants unprofitable. And so I acquired data from weather data from a university in a neighboring University, and we made a project to analyze analyze the statistics of weather. And we found out something that was deeply disturbing, because you realize, if you take just German as Germany as a copper plate, and more or less infinite amount of solar and wind energy, and, and that need to combine it with storage in order to always be able to deliver on the demand, as with the load curve, of course, constant demand, then you find out that you need about 2000 times the capacity of all pumped storage in order to do so. Oh my god, storage is the only type of storage that works. And with this message I anyhow, I was always sent to two big energy conferences, they like bankers speaking about this subject, for some reason. And and I was coping with this message. So this energy transition, it sounds nice, but it will fail on the on the storage requirements. Yep. And it was so surprising to me that I could surprise those people and impress these people. Because it's you, as a as a lay man, you would think that the the people in the, from the energy utilities that they know all about this, but nobody really had asked that question.

Bret Kugelmass
It's surprising. I mean, I find across the board and less, you know, for most people, they're happy with just kind of doing their job. So whatever their job is, hey, make this project work do this thing. It's rare that people will go that extra mile to try to disprove, like the theory upon which their like job actually stands. And so it doesn't actually surprise me that you were introducing a new concept to this cohort.

Björn Peters
Okay. But actually it I, it gave me the impulse to look elsewhere decided. So I had always been a fan of solar and wind energy and the energy transition in the years before. But then I understood that there has to be something else. And I started writing about energy policies. I had my I created my own blog, soon after I was out of the, out of Deutsche Bank. And, and this got quite popular, so it had several 1000s of readers every week. So I was really surprised. But apparently, this this view of someone coming from natural sciences, but deeply involved in the economics of the thing. Probably, there was a new angle on it so that people can learn. And my goal was, my grandfather was a was a priest, and I had him as it as an idol. So and I wanted to, to speak to, to the to the audience in a way that they really understand it, that they are taking where they currently are, and then move to new thoughts. And I had one simple idea every week, and try to bring this into the market and do let's say, take out one break each week from the wall of the energy transition. Until it it's it stumbles by itself. And actually, I was quite proud when I when I heard sometimes politician speak and taking up exactly my argument, right? Yeah, probably they never have ever written it. Read my column by my articles. But there are ideas out there told them in their simple words. And so it got it got transmitted, then to the right, guys. Yeah. So. So for the for those people coming from from the conservative, liberal side, I'm pretty sure that 90% of the parliamentary is of the members of parliament in Berlin know exactly that the energy transition transition has failed. And it's just the question how to communicate this in a face keeping manner. And it's very difficult for them because they all the political parties have been part of the energy transition. And it's not that easy to to get across it, or to move to the next step, then.

Bret Kugelmass
So what is the next step?

Björn Peters
Well, what I'm promoting is that we need some sort of ecological realism. First of all, we need to acknowledge the huge challenges on the ecological but as well on the social side. And then derive those policies that are really successful in in tackling those those challenges. And, after a long learning curve, I learned that certainly there won't be any energy transition without nuclear energy. Simply because you consume far less commodities, you consume far less space. And we need to concentrate ourselves on less space, in order to hand back as much space as possible to nature itself. And so because natural habitats are much more resilient to any type of stress, so they can usually handle lots of stress. So droughts, fires, storms, so everything that is related to climate change. If If, if there's natural habitats, they usually are resilient against this first,

Bret Kugelmass
And what was your first introduction to nuclear? How did it even come across your radar? And what made it so I understand what makes it very compelling to you that the small size, the small ecological footprint, small material consumption, but how did you like Where was it? Who was telling you this? How did you find out about this? What research did you do?

Björn Peters
Actually, it was, it was quite funny because I initially my column I was sometimes writing about nuclear, but in a more critical mode. So I said, well, of course with this unsolved nuclear waste problem, you can't really justify and then I got very, very, very friendly letters from quite senior people. So in their 90s sometimes But at least in their 80s, so the veterans of the old nuclear energy space, and they were explaining our Dr. Peters, that's very interesting what you say, but have you considered this and look into this? And maybe maybe you might change your mind? And, and I mean, I'm, I'm a natural scientist, I have to change my mind in favor of better arguments. Yes. And I was then gradually correcting myself publicly. Yeah. And and giving room to those thoughts. And that, that got somehow a spiral. So I learned much more about nuclear energy and how relevant or irrelevant, so the liquid waste problem may might be, or, as all these arguments, and of course, is this always the same five arguments against nuclear against nuclear energy? And if you look deeper into it, you see, it's all that it's, it's really, it's irrelevant.

Bret Kugelmass
I know that the waste one is so funny. It's like waste actually isn't that dangerous, and has never hurt anyone ever. And there's not profit per unit of energy deliver by orders of magnitude. So easily the greatest waste ever created from anything ever oh, and by the way, it gives off heat. So great, that could even be a power source a little battery, or who knows. But it's like, it's like the greatest gift anyone could have ever received from a back end of an energy system nuclear waste, and yet it is branded as like the like, the argument against it, or the go to argument against it. It's just it's so nuts. It is.

Björn Peters
Yeah. And so there was a god more and more a fan of morality, the more I learned about it, and I felt a little bit of shame, actually, because, I mean, I'm a physicist, I've never learned anything reasonable about nuclear energy, except that it exists. But so in our nuclear physics course, we had maybe five minutes on nuclear efficient. I mean, it was ridiculous. And I didn't know anything. And I even grew up just at five miles from as the crow flies from from a nuclear power station. And I didn't know anything about it. Yeah. So strange, but he did his lack of interest. Yeah. That is probably one of the major sources of, of this, this this public attitude against nuclear power.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's almost like a curse. It takes up so little room has such a small ecological footprint. And because of that, it goes unnoticed. And because it goes unnoticed, it's not appreciate. Okay, so you started to learn about it, then what? What happened next?

Björn Peters
Well, then I I got invited to Amsterdam by Michael Shellenberger I actually, I don't know how he, he learned from from in what I was doing. He proposed it, I have to ask him once. And and I was then in that room in Amsterdam, and Michael Shellenberger is, is a very good mentor for such a group is really, really skilled in this is, and we had really good discussions, and he made sure everybody's heard. And I believe I brought two things to the table. Most of the guys in the room were, firstly, mostly motivated by climate change, and said, I want to do something against climate change. My mission is broader. I think climate change certainly is one of the problems. But if you look at the 17 UN development goals, for sustainable development, climate change is just one of 17 Yeah, and there's so much more that we have to solve in order to make a good make good life happen on the planet, both socially and ecologically that you shouldn't over emphasize.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I mean, I first came to you appreciate nuclear through a climate change lens as well. But the more that I learned about energy in general, and the same thing like UN sustainability goals, it's like, okay, well, why don't why is climate change that's a big problem. It's such a big problem because it's negative impacts on on people. And then you've got all these other goals which if you solve them you're also you know, solving the negative impacts on people problem, you know, everything from energy poverty, to air pollution, to just you know, access to water, all of these things. And it turns out nuclear can do all of those.

Björn Peters
That's pretty much it. Once I have yours, I get a I had to give a speech on the on sustainability and, and I realized that you have to group these UN Development Goals into three categories. One is the predecessor, so One that drives everything else. And energy is one of it. And then you have the the ecological and social goals. So access to water, health care, whatever housing, clean, clean air, clean water, clean soil, of course. And then you have subsequent goals that are solved automatically if you handle all the other challenges and climate changes just in that last category.

Bret Kugelmass
Yep. Yep. So yes, so what came next for you?

Björn Peters
Well, the second thing, that that was important, I believe, to the nuclear pride coalition was that our friends are often on the conservative side, and most of 35 or 37 people or something like that, in the room where it left these people, and so very much impressed by socialism and whatever. And I was one of very few people who, who don't believe in socialism. So I, for whatever reason, but but the the German middle way of social market order, is, I believe, still believe, really, the sweet spot of economies of how to organize an economy.

Bret Kugelmass
And what does that mean, exactly? That's where the government plays a role to help define and craft markets, but then markets do the rest.

Björn Peters
Yeah, that's probably a very good way of describing it. So you have to have a strong government in order to be a judge in the market, but not be the market. Got it. And it is mostly about cartels. So you want to avoid monopolies and an illicit cartels, that that then that rip off the the customer.

Bret Kugelmass
Right, because cartels are anti market in a certain sense. They're a market inefficiency. Yeah.

Björn Peters
And when, and I believe that the most important ingredient is the rule of law, so that everybody from the most poor to the most rich, one person in a society, they, when they come to court, they actually are treated the same way, no matter how much they are able to spend the lawyers and so on.

Bret Kugelmass
So okay, so you had a couple of differences, you know, you brought a couple different things to this group. And then so what does that turn into?

Björn Peters
Well, actually, I was quite happy that he was picked up by most of them. So we are now much more open in this pronuclear movement to link with essentially all types of political movements as long as they are they are positive for for nuclear energy, and the environment on the same plane.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah. And does does nuclear have a future in Germany? I mean, I know you guys built out a whole bunch of plants, Siemens, you know, big company built plants. But then, you know, the around 2011, you know, laws were passed, plants are being shut down. I'm sure you guys still have maybe a half dozen. I don't know still operating but scheduled to be closed? Is that is a permanent? Is it forever? Is that it? Or it can that might maybe change?

Björn Peters
Well, I of course, I'm fighting for the remaining six power stations that they that they can keep running. But actually there's currently no, with one exception, no political party who is willing to really demand this openly.

Bret Kugelmass
Why are they afraid of that?

Björn Peters
Well, probably most countries, journalists are typically left wingers. And the politicians from the liberal and the conservative parties. Were conservative parties a little bit different, but the Liberal Party, most of the people within the party are pro nuclear, but they don't dare to speak up. The higher they come in their ranks, and in the Conservative Party, they have bet fiercely on the energy transition. And they need a face keeping way out. And what they are telling me is okay, okay, we would like to change all this, but we can't do it by ourselves. There has to be an external shock. And one of the one of the possible shocks would be blackout or long brown out such as like, like the one you faced in Texas, for example.

Bret Kugelmass
That's less likely to happen just because Germany is so interconnected to all of its nuclear neighbors. It's almost as if you know, if it can pull nuclear from all the surrounding countries, there's more inherent stability.

Björn Peters
I wouldn't too much agree on it. If you look at the balances, for example, in January 2017, we had such a famous long, cold doldrum 10 days without solar and wind energy, essentially only 5% of the installed capacity. And we were still exporting power to France rely because it was really cold, it was dark people switched on their light. People in particular in France were heating with with the power, because it usually you need a heating system only for a few days in the year. So you don't install something very expensive and the radiator is the most cheap, the cheapest heating system. So everybody is heating with power, power prices go up, power becomes scarce. And so now take this situation situation from 2017, only six years later, January 2023. The nuclear phase out will have happened. And we will have decommissioned a number of coal power plants that now in the same situation we have we won't have enough power in our system. But we can't expect France for example, to sell power to us, because they will need it for themselves.

Bret Kugelmass
I see. So the last system last time a shock might have happened. There was still enough backup or there's still enough power a bit to be deployed, wishing the next time, there's not going to be enough.

Björn Peters
Exactly. We've seen this already. So we have had many situations in the last year, where we imported five to 10 gigawatts, which is wonderful if everybody has this best capacity, but it was it was the current lockdown times. So all the No, no power station was really running at full capacity. But take an upswing in the economy and the cold winter day, and the cold winter week without solar and wind energy. And we shouldn't forget whether it's correlated across all Europe. So if it's dark, and gray here, it will be the same thing in Paris, maybe even in Madrid. So there's there's the likelihood that there's not enough power in the grid is increasing every year with all these Germans phased out.

Bret Kugelmass
But But what I still don't see, I don't see a good, good outcome then because so let's say the the nuclear gets shut down. And it takes that and a bad blackout for them to learn their lesson. Well, it's too late and nuclear shut down. And it's not so easy to start it back up in many places. It's not that it's physically difficult. It said it's almost like structurally and legally and operationally too difficult to start it back up, and especially if you've already started tearing down a plant. So what what to do what happens? Well,

Björn Peters
I think it would be lots of success, if we could just stop the decommissioning and know that not the decommissioning of the power plants but deconstruction of the power plants demolishing, it's a simple act of pure vandalism if you take it. So that that because these power plants, they are operating at full speed for 30 years now. And with the goal, for example, has reached as the first power plant on the globe, 400 terawatt hour production last year. And so it's a totally insane to demolish these things. But the point is, if we said the one first goal is, of course, to stop the decommissioning phase out, but if we don't manage to do so, we could secondly, ask for stopping the demolishing of the power plant so they could theoretically go back to service. And that's exactly what they're doing with coal power. Actually, coal power plant, there was one of the larger power coal power plants that went off the grid at first of January this year, and already on the eighth of January, it had to get back to power. It was so ridiculous. I mean, there is there is this hypocrisy in in climate policies that they they they don't care for no matter of amount of coal being being being burned up for for power. But if it's about nuclear energy, Oh, I'm so afraid. Okay. It must go wrong. It's so ridiculous. Yeah,

Bret Kugelmass
No, it doesn't. It's terrible. But maybe give me some insight and with the imminent shutdown, and then of the remaining six plants, but already, you know, who knows? How many were shut down? What are the workers have to say about this? And the companies? I just don't understand, like the nuclear industry and like the services and nuclear services industry, I mean, I, I'm making a number up, but there has to be at least 10,000 20,000 50,000 people whose jobs are directly affected by this, why are they not marching on the streets, I don't understand that if they're gonna lose their jobs. And the economic, you know, and like the town being an economic hub around a power plant, I just don't understand why these people don't come out and and show that they're our constituents, and have a nuclear pride and bring that to the political party. Why Why don't we have an army of, of nuclear workers participating?

Björn Peters
Well, let's start at the top. I mean, the board members of those, as a supervisory board members of the big power utilities are typically politicians. So they are working on on a on a on a political agenda, not on an economic agenda. The board members from the executive board, so you know, you know, in general, we have a board that is split into two, one is supervising, then there's the executive management. They're employed by those politicians, except in the in the supervisory board. And they try to do their best. And they I mean, it has been a national control a state controlled industry for a century. So it is nothing really new to them. If this was an interim phase between mid 90s. And maybe 10 years ago, that this looked like a little bit more like a private sector. But they're used to following a political agenda. And if it's building windmills, they do it. The interesting part of it is they do it, but not in Germany. So RWE, for example, has built lots of renewable energy in whatsoever countries, but not so much in Germany. And then the level below, okay, they have to make a career. So they don't speak up. And only at the very lowest level, you find people who still support us, and dare to speak up. But it is against their employers interest. So they want to finish the phase out quietly. And of course, if you if you've earned enough money, you're 60 years old, then this probably a good move. I mean, your your villa in the mountains won't be won't be in danger. If you just follow the political plan and everything I see that being bought off with retirement packages assigned. Yeah, yeah. And so that's, that's, it's really a shame. It's a shame. And it's, I feel so pity because of course, there are young people who who learn to run a nuclear reactor and nowadays, and they will all lose their job. And of course, they are frustrated. And they've essentially no no perspective of others than then demolishing something that works could work very nicely.

Bret Kugelmass
Yeah, yeah, I know. And another problem that I found in even in the US nuclear industry, are these decommissioning funds, or another way to buy off the employees, they say, Okay, well, you're gonna lose your jobs operating the power plant, but you know, or at least at the company level, some companies is, stands to make money from the decommissioning from the tearing down, there's a there's a, there's an incentive, there's a profit motive. And the government sometimes, you know, pays for it or the rate payer pays for it. It's just so crazy. structures are set up, such that the poor ratepayer instead of getting clean paying for clean energy, they're paying for demolition of clean energy, they don't even know. But that buys everyone off that keeps everyone quiet for until they're all gone. And then you can't do anything.

Björn Peters
Yeah, it's appalling, but it's the way it is.

Bret Kugelmass
So how do you see this changing? What what's your vision for the future where this can all be turned around?

Björn Peters
Well, do. You know of course, that I'm part of the founding team of dual fluid technology, that's the only nuclear reactor that has been developed in in Germany, of the generation four plus. And more and more people learn from us and we are in the middle of a financing round. So it's always time where you connect as much as possible to the to the audience and to the to the citizens and many people Know that we are handling nuclear waste, that there is no nuclear waste that it's it's raw material for the next generation of nuclear power stations, that these molten salt or molten metal reactors are inherently safe. So there is no super dangerous explosion possible by physics. So you use the the law of physics in order to make it work smoothly, you could build it in the middle of an industrial center, and it's a bit town without any problems, you have to switch fuel all 20 years, instead of all 18 months, and use all isotopes of uranium. So you stretch the fuel for millions of years, so to truly renewable energy. And, of course, when people learn about us, they start asking questions. And we've seen this. And the more devastating the energy policy actually is. And with the first blackout, I mean, it will it was most certainly have given the yield to a situation where the political decisions change very quickly. So politically, public policymaking is a very nonlinear process. So all, all everybody follows one idea. And it can be just one big event and you follow another ideas. That is what I'm counting on. And it will be certainly not long after January 23.

Bret Kugelmass
And so is that the idea that you're going to build up this technology, this company in preparation for a shift in political and public opinion? And then when that happens, you'll be ready to go and ready to deploy in Germany? Is the idea to deploy in Germany?

Björn Peters
Well, actually, we can't. We can't bet on Germany for the company that we founded. It is more about the global market. And we have founded ourselves now I founded the company now in Canada, because we don't trust Germany to provide a political, stable, stable political environment. We're really developing, going through all the development steps that are necessary.

Bret Kugelmass
Yep. Okay, well, any last words to leave our audience with as we wrap up today?

Björn Peters
Well, actually, I, there's one topic that's really important to me. And that is, how do you design energy policies, and many people in the OECD countries believe you can just impose carbon taxes or everything else that makes energy expensive. But I think that this is deeply, deeply wrong. Most carbon emissions stemmed from countries like India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, many African countries are developing very well. And they couldn't afford a strategy that makes energy expensive. They have to have cheap sources, and of cheap, cheap sources of energy, but hopefully cheap sources of clean energy. And that's why I'm really deeply convinced that with solar and wind energy that has to be structurally, always more expensive, because of the storage you need, or the backup systems you need. You're paying twice the at least twice the energy bill. It is it is a flawed concept. They will always have their roll because it's cheap to produce. But to rely on it, it does work. So the only source where I believe we have a chance to developing a cheap source of clean energy, that's nuclear energy. And it's why I've changed to this sector and I hope it will work out.

Bret Kugelmass
Bjorn Peters, thank you so much for your time and your insight. Really appreciate coming on the show.

Björn Peters
Yeah, it was great fun, thank you.