TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Q1 - Early International Travels

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get into the nuclear space?

Joyce Connery: When Joyce Connery was in high school, she was planning on being a poet and going to Brown University. On the way to her interview at Brown, Connery missed the exit to Rhode Island and ended up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. She ended up majoring in international relations and Soviet studies at Tufts University. In 1991, Connery spent a semester studying at St. Petersburg in Russia, right after the coup and right before the Russian ruble crashed. After university, Connery served with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan, which is in the far out reaches of the Soviet Union and a newly independent country. Joyce Connery grew up in the suburbs of Boston, as part of the working class, and gravitated towards social studies and English in school. After working and saving up money, Connery joined her favorite teacher on a school trip to Russia, which was her first international experience.

Q2 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Peace Corps in Turkmenistan

Bret Kugelmass: What was something you took with you from your time in the Peace Corps?

Joyce Connery: Joyce Connery experienced a cultural adjustment upon returning to the U.S. from her time in Turkmenistan with the Peace Corps. Family and extended family was very important in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was having a cultural challenge in that they were trying to revive the Turkmen culture and get out from under the Soviet culture. Joyce Connery taught English to Turkmens at the medical institute, including a woman who was the Minister of Energy at the time and became the ambassador to the United Nations. Some Turkmens had never met an American before, so Connery tried to convey what it means to be an American and what the culture was like. Connery spoke Russian, but many of the students she taught only spoke Turkmen which brought frustration in communication. This experience colored science and technology conversations later on, in that some of her technical friends had a communication barrier and were able to explain what the system did, but couldn’t translate it into why. If you can’t start with the why, you aren’t going to get anybody to buy into your technology. Connery had learned how to communicate across cultures and brought that back to different U.S. cultures.

Q3 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Intro to Nuclear and Nonproliferation

Bret Kugelmass: What did you do after returning from Turkmenistan?

Joyce Connery: Joyce Connery returned to Boston from a couple years with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan and went back to graduate school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In between the first and second year, Connery applied to the State Department for an internship as a political officer. This program sent Connery to Kyrgyzstan, where she wrote her thesis on non-governmental organizations within Kyrgyzstan and some of the economic challenges they were facing as a geographically isolated country. After a summer in Kyrgyzstan, Connery continued to work on her thesis and attended an information seminar hosted by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Argonne National Labs looking for Russian-speaking applicants. The DOE was looking for people to work in nuclear nonproliferation in the former Soviet Union. She accepted a job offer and went to Argonne where she learned about nuclear physics, reactors, weapons, and nuclear in Russian language. The main focus of the group was export controls. Connery was sent to Kazakhstan, one of the largest Central Asian countries that borders Russia. When the Soviet Union broke up, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan were the three places where there were nuclear weapons. The president of Kazakhstan made the decision that he was going to give up his nuclear weapons and give them back to Russia, as he didn’t want his country to be a nuclear state. Kazakhstan’s president has been a champion of nonproliferation since this event.

Q4 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Nuclear Decommissioning in Kazakhstan

Bret Kugelmass: What has Kazakhstan’s relationship with nuclear been like over the years?

Joyce Connery: Joyce Connery went to Kazakhstan doing export controls, but didn’t work at the embassy at the time. She sat at the Kazakh Atomic Energy Commission, similar to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Connery helped people who are licensing technology to connect back to their nuclear national labs and find out how to export items. Connery was an employee of Argonne National Labs, not the State Department, but represented the nonpro community when U.S. delegation would come to town. When the Nunn-Lugar Act took hold, part of the goal was try and dismantle the weapons programs that were in the former Soviet republics, using tax money to create a more peaceful world by preventing proliferation and eliminating some infrastructure. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which reports of the Department of Defense, was one of the main mechanisms. The Defense Department had a big role in the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program and the Energy Department got involved because of their expertise in material production. DTRA had a presence in Kazakhstan. When other Americans from different parts of the government came through, Connery would go to the airport with the head of contracting services to pick them up and shared the zeitgeist for what was going on in Kazakhstan and offered her translation skills and knowledge of the Kazakhs. A group from Argonne West came to Almaty, Kazakhstan who had a connection to the BN-350 fast reactor, one of which was located in Aktau on the Caspian Sea. This small, sodium-cooled loop reactor was built to create plutonium for Russia’s nuclear weapons. After the break of the Soviet Union, this plant had 2 metric tons of plutonium that was 12 nautical miles from Iran with no security. The DOE had a big program to secure and repackage that material. The U.S. wanted to get rid of the reactor and the Kazakhstanis, champions of nonproliferation, agreed. The challenge was to irreversibly shut the reactor down. The team at Idaho National Labs were excited for the technical challenge and worked together with Congress, the Russians (the design agency came from Russia), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to create a decommissioning plan. Connery was hired to stay an extra year to be an on-the-ground liaison during the shutdown and to help them sell the plan to Congress.

Q5 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Nuclear Safety and Security

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get involved in the 123 agreements under the Bush administration?

Joyce Connery: After 9/11, it was all hands on deck for people involved in nonproliferation and Joyce Connery was working on securing small research reactors. She started to do some work on radiological sources, based on her past experience in Tajikistan working with IAEA to help understand how to look for orphaned sources. Before 9/11, nobody was looking at it as a security threat, only a safety threat. Connery worked with the materials protection and accounting program at the Department of Energy, which was bilateral work with Russia to secure their facilities. As a special assistant, Connery worked with the U.S. and Russia to create a strategic plan, sustainability plan, and a best practices program. The Bush administration approached the topic differently than the Obama administration, in that they did not want to go through the IAEA and created a global initiative to combat nuclear terrorism. Connery was asked to join the National Security Council on the North Korea portfolio. North Korea has a very specific nuclear nonproliferation problem involving an ongoing geopolitical conversation. She felt it was not the best match for her experience. Eight months later, she interviewed for the counterproliferation portfolio with the National Security Council. The job required coordination among the interagency to come up with policy options on specific issues, including 123 agreements and the IAEA's Additional Protocol. The IAEA has agreements for safeguards with countries to make sure their nuclear programs are not for weapons use and the Additional Protocol allows them to visit and look for fuel cycle activities outside of those parameters.

Q6 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Team USA Approach to Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: What is Team USA?

Joyce Connery: After working in the Bush administration, Joyce Connery transitioned to the Obama administration and worked on the nuclear security summit. She returned to the Department of Energy as the advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Energy for all things nuclear. Connery was there for Fukushima, which showed a shift in nuclear at the time. The Obama administration had been fairly friendly towards nuclear, but after Fukushima, people couldn't distinguish the headlines with the number of people killed and associated it with the Fukushima meltdown. The most positive aspect of that tragedy was how it brought multiple countries together. At one point, Japan was going to pass a law against all nuclear. They shut it all down and slowly brought nuclear back. In the U.S., the DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission started speaking to the American public. Nobody in the National Council of Economic Advisors energy group was monitoring nuclear, so Joyce Connery was put in the role. She decided to focus on international safety, due to pushback post-Fukushima, and worked with the Deputy Assistant Secretary to name an ambassador for the International Conference on Safety, giving the U.S. an equal voice in this setting. Connery also focused on the Team USA concept, recognizing that the competitive advantage France and Russia had was they had government backing, were vertically integrated, and could take care of nuclear from beginning to end. In the U.S., reactor technology vendors acted as a technology vendor and builders and financiers needed to be found. The government cannot dictate how the commercial sector works, but Connery took lessons learned from Kazakhstan where she witnessed multiple different U.S. organizations having different conversations with Kazakh leaders. Nuclear energy at the Department of Energy had some R&D resources and offered international cooperation. The Department of Commerce had the ability to connect companies to opportunities overseas. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has a small international program where they can provide assistance to an international regulator and Export-Import (EXIM) Bank was able to offer some services. Connery established some policy trade missions which combined companies and representatives from all of the development agencies to talk internationally about what they could offer and tried to find the best match.

Q7 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

Bret Kugelmass: How were you appointed chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board?

Joyce Connery: While Joyce Connery was working for the National Security Council (NSC), the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) from the White House called her to bring her policy background and experience to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which is a Senate-confirmed position. Connery left the NSC in June 2015 and spent some time in nuclear energy while waiting for her nomination to get approved, trying to avoid a conflict of interest with Defense project work. Connery went to the Armed Services Committee to sit in on hearing about the Iran deal and the late Senator John McCain called for a quorum to get her civilian nomination to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. When the Trump administration came in, Connery was flipped from chairman to board member so they could fill the position with a Republican.

Q8 - Titans of Nuclear: Joyce Connery | Keys to Nuclear Success

Bret Kugelmass: Where do you see the nuclear space and nuclear energy going?

Joyce Connery: Folks in the nuclear space have a tendency to talk to each other about stuff they already know. Because she has experience in nonproliferation, safety, energy, and deterrence in nuclear, Joyce Connery sees great conductivity and recognizes that it does the nuclear space no good to operate separately. There are synergies in how to get nuclear qualified materials, do quality assurance, and to get a supply chain that you can trust, which are all things that the nuclear weapons program and advanced reactors both need. The advances made in these spaces have multiple applications that are in the best interest for the country. Connery sees effects of climate change causing problems in the international space that could lead to tension, conflict, and nuclear challenges. There must be a way to get government, industry, communities, and Wall Street all working together to have a conversation about why we need nuclear. Industry and government tend to think in very short terms. The breakthrough to nuclear is thinking in bigger chunks of time and not worrying about the bottom line, but about the future.

1 - Energy and Environmental Journalism

Bret Kugelmass: How long have you been writing and researching in the climate and energy space?

Umair Irfan: Umair Irfan has been a reporter on climate and energy for close to six years. He has a Master’s degree in journalism, but his undergraduate degree is in biochemistry. Ifran liked the overlap between research and reporting, but reporting is more about trying to write a narrow subject for a broad audience. The ability to write about a diverse array of topics; if something peaks a reporter’s curiosity, they can do research and report on it and become an authority on a subject. When writing as a reporter, one must think about the reader. A reporter doesn’t know whether or not it has gotten traction until after it’s published. In academic writing, precision is extremely important. Reporters must present technical information without losing the audience. At Vox, reporters assume the audience is necessarily curious, but not necessarily plugged in or well-informed. Their job is to bridget the divide between people who are intelligent, but may not have been following the issues at a level that policymakers follow it. Irfan’s editor reads over his work and reviews it from the shoes of the audience to identify things that he assumes the reader already knows. Vox has a fair amount of metrics about what types of stories get traction, what search trends are, and make sure that the basic questions are explicitly answered in articles. Irfan works with one other reporter on climate and energy and answers to the general science editor, allowing a broad spectrum of research and writing.

2 - Explanatory Journalism at Vox

Bret Kugelmass: What was your slice of the pie when you were at Energy & Environment (E&E)?

Umair Irfan: While at E&E, Umair Ifran worked at a publication called ClimateWire, mainly climate focused, and covering the Department of Energy and technology. He aimed to find out if society could invent their way out of climate change. In journalism, a general question can be applied to any topic, or there may be an underlying question that informs a specific piece. There is not a technology-only answer to climate change. A lot of technology optimists will claim it is a political problem. If renewables were deployed or a large amount of nuclear energy was rolled out, a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions could be displaced, but the money has to come out of something else in order for that to happen. When Vox was launched in 2014, Umair Irfan was intrigued by the model of explaining the news or providing context or backdrop rather than simply trying to break information or deliver scoops. E&E was more of a newswire service in which reporters were trying to get the best, newest, original information. Vox tries to think more about the bigger picture and greater context and the style of writing is different. Vox does not have subscribers and is competing against the open internet, which creates a different set of pressures. The core of the Vox brand is explanatory journalism.

3 - Sourcing Information on Uranium Enrichment

Bret Kugelmass: Do you aim to have any of your articles be the definitive resource for a topic on the internet?

Umair Irfan: Umair Irfan leaves room to cover breaking news events or developments, but also chalks out topics in editorial meetings that are ready for full backdrop stories that act as definitive explainers. Vox tries to follow search trends, but also background interest in certain topics. A big, lengthy explainer presumes a high level of interest, but a low level of knowledge. The definitive articles tend to get better traction and more readers to engage with them over a longer period of time. Irfan recently wrote a definitive explainer on uranium enrichment. He knew there was going to be ongoing nuclear discussions with Iran and North Korea, creating a base level of interest. This led him to write an explainer that explains the ins and outs of enrichment at a technical level so the reader could understand why it is hard to intercept or obstruct, or why the provisions of the deal are significant. Knowing there is a level of demand means Irfan could invest more time in his article so it will stay relevant for a while. Occasionally, Vox will republish articles if they are relevant again to refresh a topic. Irfan did a lot of cold calling for his uranium article, including talking to exports who were involved in the nuclear negotiations or recommendations for advice from people adjacent to them. He also utilizes a lot of the current academic literature to find someone who has done the most interesting or most robust research on the high level topic. Irfan aims to be right when everybody else is wrong, or trying to be straightforward when everybody else is trying to be misleading.

4 - Climate Change and Market-Based Mechanisms

Bret Kugelmass: How do you deal with sources in the industry who might have inherent bias?

Umair Irfan: Reporters can still talk to experts in a specific area, even if they might have an inherent bias, but with the caveat that this person has a vested interest in the problem that exists or a vested interest in trying to solve the problem. For every view, there will be someone who disagrees, and people who disagree have their own vested interest as well. Reporters have to keep in mind that, to an extent, everybody has an agenda and has an idea that they want to promote. Reporters can let themselves be convinced, especially after doing research themselves and being honest with their readers. Vox allows their reporters to have an opinion in their writing, as long as they are honest with their readers about content that is an opinion based on research. Umair Irfan finds himself going back and forth on many different topics after completing extensive research, such as the role of a market-based mechanism to fight climate change rather than a top-down approach. Top-down regulations for chlorofluorocarbons worked at an international level with a major treaty led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The Montreal Protocol was a big international agreement that Conservatives could get behind and it was not an ideological issue at that point; it was not partisan or tribal to the extent it is now. The Montreal Protocol has done more to avert heat trapping gases than any policy in the world. Climate change is getting more traction and tangential issues, like wildfires, are starting to come up more and get state officials and reporters talking about climate change.

5 - Social Justice Aspects of Climate Change

Bret Kugelmass: Do you have any opinions that you feel like only you and a small percentage of people feel, and do you pull punches because of that?

Umair Irfan: Umair Irfan doesn’t pull punches, but there are opinions he holds right now that he doesn’t know if he could substantiate with facts. Irfan has more than one view about nationalizing the nuclear industry to fight climate change in the United States. He doesn’t have the economics background to justify that opinion, but just requires a little more research. People that stand to suffer the most from climate change are the ones that contributed least to the problem. Addressing climate change at a global scale would also be a massive wealth redistribution. Moving money and resources from some countries that benefited most from fossil fuels would be moved into countries that are literally losing ground to rising sea levels or natural disasters. A lot of readers have already made up their mind about nuclear and throwing more information at people doesn’t necessarily change their mind, but may instead entrench their viewpoint. Anytime nuclear is written about, Irfan feels the ball is not advancing, so he tries to write something that would add something new to the nuclear discussion. Umair Irfan would like to learn more about the market side of nuclear to understand how energy markets work as they are now and how they can be improved. If externalities are politically priced in, Irfan wonders how can the market be restructured. Climate change has global consequences and every aspect of life will be influenced. The moral case is the strongest case, but is not talked about often enough.

1 - Early Activism Involvement

Bret Kugelmass: How did you first get involved in nuclear?

Paul Gunter: Paul Gunter’s original concerns about nuclear technology came out of the bomb. He had the opportunity to meet folks that were involved with the Golden Rule, which was a boat that sailed into the Enewetok testing site. They conducted civil disobedience at the testing site and were arrested, but railed the profile of the issue. Several years later, the Public Service Company of New Hampshire announced construction of the Seabrook Station nuclear power station located on a saltwater estuary. These two 1,150 megawatt Westinghouse reactors were going to take three billion gallons of water a day for the cooling systems and had 18’ diameter pipes that reached out into the Atlantic. There was a concern about the use of fissioning enriched uranium and those connections to nuclear weapons. Paul Gunter grew up in Detroit and studied special education at Northern Michigan University. When the Vietnam War came along, Gunter’s involvement as an activist interceded and he became a counselor to conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. He also was an activist for prison rights, leading to the connection between human rights and environmental protection. In 1976, Gunter’s activists involvement culminated in the formation of a group called the Clamshell Alliance, which published a declaration of nuclear resistance.

2 - Nuclear Resistance at Seabrook Station

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get involved in different activist groups?

Paul Gunter: Paul Gunter worked with non-profit organizations to get involved in different activist groups. He comes at the nuclear issue from a lay-person point of view and and education by experience. The Clamshell Alliance was the original anti-nuclear power organized citizen opposition group. Multiple interests found common denominators among multiple construction projects and raised questions about what they wanted energy policy to look like, especially as it relates to centralized power. Everybody wanted to see an energy future that would be reliable, safe, clean, affordable, and independent that provided access to not just one class of power generation. Nuclear power was seen as a concentration of power and influence, ultimately connected to the military-industrial complex which rang a lot of alarms for people. The central environmental issue of the Seabrook Station siting, located on an estuary, gave way to principal action. On August 1, 1976, the first formal rally was held in Hampton. Gunter saw a rapid mobilization of public concern and consensus that came together without the internet. The advent of renewables was on the horizon.

3 - Nuclear Proliferation

Bret Kugelmass: Was there a conversation leading up to the rally about what the electric company should build instead?

Paul Gunter: Solar and wind were the alternatives to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant. Nuclear was not a finished package and the idea of long-term radioactive waste management was a wide open question. The sense and vision of alternatives was a vision that was a counterpoint to the vision of nuclear power in which people were not convinced that a nuclear accident was incredible. Paul Gunter and the activist groups were still operating under a number of myths about nuclear power that, at a gut level, they didn’t buy. When deciding to spend his time as an activist protesting coal or nuclear, Gunter saw a connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Uranium is the currency of a coin whose flip sides are nuclear waste from power plants and nuclear weapons material. The enrichment process is all that separates nuclear power from nuclear weapons, so it’s a question of how to go about the enrichment process. A country’s intent to manage a peaceful atom had an ulterior motive to develop nuclear weapons. Centrifuges used in the enrichment process can be hidden from inspection and part of the enrichment strain can be diverted into a covert operation. North Korea signed the non-proliferation treaty and cooperated until they got what they wanted before breaking the handshake.

4 - Practicalities of Reprocessing Irradiated Fuel

Bret Kugelmass: How do enrichment facilities relate to nuclear power?

Paul Gunter: The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) predates the modern Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The American power industry was solicited for a white paper published in 1952 prior to Eisenhower’s speech before the United Nations about the peaceful atom. This collective paper described how the co-generation of heat generated from the nuclear weapons manufacturing industry, for the production of plutonium, could be made into electricity. The government and the American industry collaborated to co-generate electricity for security concerns. Reprocessing plutonium is a separation process from irradiated U-235 fuel. The solid is dissolved and the asset, plutonium-239, is pulled out and separated. Reprocessing irradiated fuel can be made more difficult, such as with pebble bed modular reactors in which enriched uranium is embedded in graphite and placed in a ceramic shell. Reprocessing civilian nuclear fuel to retrieve usable uranium and usable plutonium is within the realm of technology. Fast reactors may not be practical. Even small modular reactors (SMR’s) that are before the U.S. NRC are still light water pressurized reactors. The regulators right now aren’t willing to venture into other technologies. Some advanced designs are mirages and are being chased, but not developed due to practical matters.

5 - Effects of Radiation on the Human Body

Bret Kugelmass: Should we invest money in pursuing new nuclear technologies?

Paul Gunter: Nuclear technology has had its run in terms of the lion’s share of federal tax subsidies since 1948. Worldwide, 250,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste already exists. The agenda of the nuclear industry is to keep plowing forward with its production agenda, despite the fact that it never completed the waste management cycle. The volume or weight is not the concern, but the Curie count. The radioactive threat is invasive in terms of its ability to spread itself out equally over time. Radioactive waste is put underground and needs to be isolated from water. Humans have evolved in an atmosphere that has been in radiative balance. With the advent of man-made nuclear materials, the Curie count in the environment is being raised incrementally. Radioactivity becomes less by a process of disintegration, which represents the biological hazard. Uranium is as toxic as it is radiological. Radiation is carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic. The etiology of cancer can be multifaceted and synergistic and the effects of radiation on human cells are deleterious. The common acceptance in science is there is not safe exposure when talking about the full range. Columbia University did a study of Three Mile Island and found there was no statistical significance, but the University of North Carolina found statistical significance of cancer in Columbia University’s research.

6 - Environmental Impacts of Energy Production

Bret Kugelmass: What’s the worst case scenario on what spent fuel has done in terms of human health?

Paul Gunter: A number of studies show that the routine emissions from operating nuclear power stations have consequences. There are over 60 studies that show a causal relationship between nuclear power operation and the proximity and duration of residency. Generally speaking, cancer incidence is on the rise. Cancer can be caused by radiation, chemicals, and environmental factors. Right now, renewables are going to have the least impact on human health. Any major energy project needs an environmental review. Six reactors have been shut down in the last five years and six more are going down in the next three years. More new generation capacity wind and solar are coming online than both fossil and fissile. Most of the U.S. electrical storage capacity has emerged in the last three years. Lithium used in batteries for large grid storage can go through a recycling process. There are shifts in the battery storage systems to safer, more reliable, and more efficient battery development. The world is in the middle of a huge paradigm shift as it relates to energy.

7 - Carbon Footprints of Energy Systems

Bret Kugelmass: Is the difference between the mass used in the nuclear world and the chemical world on six orders of magnitude?

Paul Gunter: Paul Gunter is unsure what the balance is between the chemical world and the nuclear world. The nuclear world is a chemical process as well. There is a difference between a nuclear power plant having an emergency planning zone going out 50 miles and the ability to operate solar power on top of a house. This is a paradigm in which wind, solar, efficiency, and conservation are now blossoming. The first large offshore wind development off of Martha’s Vineyard will provide over 1,150 megawatts of offshore wind electricity. According to Stanford University, there is enough electrical generation from offshore wind development along the cost from Virginia to Delaware to provide electricity for a third of the United States. One downside to wind and solar are the chemicals that need to be contained and safeguarded. However, they allow energy availability to be more independent and provides an opportunity for communities to be generators. The major difference between fossil, fissile, and renewables is the fact that there is no fuel cycle for the sun and the wind. The systems are essentially about harvesting and transmitting. Many composite studies have looked at the carbon footprint of coal, uranium, and wind, specifically the extraction industries for the materials for wind and solar. An on-shore wind farm has about eight grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour; solar has about 35 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour; coal is upwards of 750 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. Averaging out the 200 studies on the carbon footprint of uranium is about 60 grams CO2 per kilowatt hour. Policy needs to be directed towards making the world safer, cleaner, and affordable. This is done through renewable energy right now.

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1 - Introduction to Energy and Politics

Bret Kugelmass: Were you interested in energy issues since the beginning of your career?

Jeff Merrifield: Jeff Merrifield was a young Senate staffer working as a legislative assistant on energy issues for then U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey in the midst of licensing activities for Seabrook Station. Seabrook was having a hard time getting licensed because New Hampshire and Massachusetts bordered each other and a good portion of the 10-mile emergency evacuation zone was in Massachusetts. President Reagan wanted to reduce the emergency zone to two miles. Senator Humphrey was supportive of Seabrook but against reducing the emergency evacuation zone. The Senator asked Merrifield to put together materials to make the argument that reducing the zone was not a good idea. Jeff Merrifield grew up in New Hampshire, a state in which it is very easy to get politically involved, and caught the politics bug. Merrifield studied political science at Tufts University with the original goal of going into defense and foriegn policy. While Merrifield was working in the Senate, he also attended law school at Georgetown to study environmental law. This led him to work for McKenna & Cuneo, a law firm in D.C. working on environmental issues. When the Republicans retook the Senate in 1994, Merrifield worked for four years on the Senate Environment Committee trying to rewrite the Superfund law.

2 - Superfund Sites

Bret Kugelmass: What is a Superfund site and what issues were you looking at?

Jeff Merrifield: There is a site in New York called Love Canal where there was serious environmental contamination. The parties responsible for it were not able to pay the cost for clean up and, in the 1970’s, the U.S. became aware that there were a lot of abandoned hazardous waste sites that needed to be cleaned up. Congress passed the Superfund law which used a liability scheme to impose the cost of the clean-up on the many people who may have contributed to that site, under the theory of “polluter pays”. Jeff Merrifield spent four years drafting a 280-page bill to reform the Superfund law. As part of his duties, Merrifield investigated a variety of Superfund sites around the country. Under the provisions of the law at the time, owners of land could be held liable if contamination from another site migrated off-site and contaminated their clean land. Merrifield had a chance to visit Palo Verde Nuclear plant during one of his Superfund visits to Arizona, where he learned of a couple vacancies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He decided to reach out to past Senators he worked for to give their blessing for him to be considered for the role of commissioner at the NRC, which he did six months later.

3 - Nuclear Safety Culture

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get up to speed as a new commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)?

Jeff Merrifield: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates everything civilian wise cradle to grave when it comes to radioactive material and radium in the U.S. Jeff Merrifield had to learn about radioisotopes, the industrial use of isotopes, how nuclear units work, and how to regulate nuclear units. He wanted to be involved in everything the NRC did, going through a lot of training and traveling a lot, going to every nuclear station in North and South America and 30 of the 31 countries that had nuclear plants at the time. Merrifield also visited uranium mines, medical facilities, irradiation facilities, and facilities that produce medical isotopes. This gave Merrifield a much broader ability to advocate and he had to earn his credibility. The hardest thing the NRC was challenged with during Merrifield’s time at the NRC was the issues of nuclear safety culture. There was an incident at Davis-Besse Nuclear Station in which corrosion caused a large hole in the reactor vessel head. The NRC had a requirement for inspections of steam generator heads on a specific timeline. FirstEnergy, the utility that owned Davis-Besse, requested an extension for the inspection based on a technical assessment of why that would be valid. The Commission allowed them to go forward, only later to find out that there were indicators FirstEnergy obfuscated and there were indicators the NRC did not pick up on. Nuclear safety culture is hard to regulate and Merrifield advocated that the utility must craft and manage a safety culture, but that response was not received well. The NRC began to rethink safety culture and collaborated with power operations to make sure operators are doing so at the highest level of safety.

4 - Transition from NRC to Industry

Bret Kugelmass: How did you transition from the NRC into industry?

Jeff Merrifield: Jeff Merrifield made a conscious decision to leave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and join industry in order to learn outside of D.C. Merrifield was hired by The Shaw Group, an engineering and construction company, whose power operations were based in Charlotte, NC. Shaw had a 10% ownership in Westinghouse, were responsible for building the Vogtle AP-1000 units, and were also going to be key players in the construction of the Sanmen and Haiyang plants in China. Seven of the eight years Merrifield worked for The Shaw Group and its successor, Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I), in business development, specifically related to maintenance contracts and environmental contracting. Later on, Merrifield became responsible for all power business development, domestically and internationally, across multiple different energy sources including nuclear, natural gas, and coal. The low point for Merrifield was trying to sell a couple of coal units a company in the Philippines, which led him to leave CB&I and join Pillsbury Law in 2015 where he advises companies like ClearPath.

5 - Procurement of Westinghouse

Bret Kugelmass: What do you do within Pillsbury’s nuclear energy team?

Jeff Merrifield: Pillsbury has between 700-800 attorneys between approximately 20 global offices. Pillsbury has been involved in energy for a length of time and the nuclear practice is considered one of the crown jewels of the firm as a whole. One important issue the firm worked on was the private fuel storage facility. That facility became a model for interim fuel storage facilities. Over the last year and a half, Westinghouse went through bankruptcy proceedings and Pillsbury served as outside nuclear council for Brookfield, a large private equity firm that was the winning bidder to take over Westinghouse. Brookfield has been involved in energy assets for many years and is the largest shareholder in Vistra, a former Texas utility and has purchased other energy groups. Vistra owned Comanche Peak Nuclear Station, so Brookfield was very familiar with nuclear power. The CIFUS law requires various departments and agencies to review and approve foreign corporations who want to buy a majority state in certain key U.S. businesses. Brookfield had to go through CIFUS when purchasing Westinghouse.

6 - Benefits of Advanced Reactors

Bret Kugelmass: How did you first start thinking about advanced reactors?

Jeff Merrifield: Jeff Merrifield’s wife, Diana, had been watching advanced reactors for a time and brought it to his attention. His son is finishing up his training to be an apprentice welder to eventually go into nuclear welding. In Canada, where the Pickering and Darlington plants are being refurbished, one challenge will be having a sufficient number of nuclear trained welders to do the $20 billion worth of work in Ontario. This is the largest construction project underway right now, with the exception of Vogtle. Jeff Merrifield returned to D.C. and connected with David Blee with the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council. They talked about advanced reactors and came up with the notion for an advanced reactor task force. Merrifield is also an on-site advisor to X-energy, a developer of a high temperature gas pebble bed reactor and a fuel fabrication facility. Some current developers are very sophisticated, well-funded entities and others are startups that are not far from the conceptual phase. Reactor designs must be able to compete with combined-cycle natural gas plants and, with a larger amount of distributed power, a gigawatt size power plant doesn’t make sense anymore. These reactors have also generated interest from countries that are not currently nuclear power producers. They also produce production-grade industrial heat, which could be used for industrial processes or desalination. A very large nuclear power plant generates a lot of waste heat, requiring either a seaside location or an inland river or lake to provide a heat sink for the excess heat. Advanced designs may not need this ready access to water if they are combined with an air cooled style system, opening up new markets domestically and internationally. The UAE construction has gone well, but the challenge has been getting the skilled workforce trained and able to operate the nuclear plants. Pillsbury is also involved in the Akkuyu development in Turkey, which has four Russian Atomstroyexport reactors under construction.

7 - International Nuclear Climate

Bret Kugelmass: Where do you see some of the international interest moving forward in nuclear?

Jeff Merrifield: Many of the current news stories lead people to believe that nuclear power is on the decline. However, there are roughly 60 nuclear power plants under construction today. China’s desire is to have as many nuclear power stations as the U.S. by the mid-2030’s. India has a very active program underway that provides opportunities for U.S. countries to build plants. China is a very strong competitor which has a pressurized water reactor design that has roots in Westinghouse and Framatome, called Hualong One, and a derivation of the Westinghouse AP-1000 pressurized water reactor design called the CMP1400. Today, there is a lot greater diversity of opportunities for countries who want to buy nuclear units. Some of those competitors are state-owned enterprises that have the full financing backing of the government, including China, Russia, and others. This makes it tough for a Westinghouse or G.E. who doesn’t have the same level of financing. The development of advanced reactors fills a diverse need for nuclear power. Over the next 15 years, there will be a growth in countries that want to go ahead and build nuclear plants, but they may be smaller, advanced designs in different configurations. Advanced reactor development is a long game and requires financing, regulatory structure, government support, and design development. Lawyers can provide a useful service in identifying some of the roadblocks that may be out there and helping companies strategize how to overcome some of these challenges. One of the hindrances the nuclear industry has had is that it doesn’t communicate very well. Jeff Merrifield spent over two weeks doing about 100 interviews trying to explain to people what was going on in nuclear in a way that was effectively communicated and understood by the audience.

1 - After Fukushima

Bret Kugelmass: Tell me about your book, “After Fukushima”.

Andrew Daniels: There was a gap in terms of what you could read in nuclear power history and the story needed to be told. The book collects a compelling set of narratives that form their own stories, such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, nuclear economics, and pro- versus anti-nuclear debates. Andrew Daniels designed his book to be a pop history book aimed at someone who knows nothing about nuclear power and make it enticing to them. Nuclear power is the solution to air pollution. Air pollution is a straightforward enough topic that unites people no matter how they feel about climate change. Andrew Daniels spent a couple years researching for the book in order to be certain that he had good and valid information. Daniels, originally from Ottawa, also spent some time growing up in Rome and Japan. He speaks Japanese, French, and English fluently. Daniels’ current project is a book about how the world changed between 1989 and 2001. Most histories are nuclear power blind, so one of his objectives is to incorporate nuclear power and show how its adaptation, or lack thereof, has shaped the physical, social, and environmental history. Nuclear power is an uncomfortable subject for some people, so they don’t think about it and it perpetuates avoidance and denial about nuclear. Radiation had saved more lives than it had killed by the 1950’s because radiotherapy is an important tool for healing.

2 - Factors Impacting Public Perception of Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: How were you able to put together arguments after gathering a lot of information?

Andrew Daniels: A number of authors were so driven by what they wanted to say that they ended up giving a misleading story or an unbalanced viewpoint, which Andrew Daniels has struggled not to do. However, no historical perspective is free of bias. Nuclear power is huge in France and it has high rates of public acceptance, which comes from public education campaigns. Six million French citizens have visited nuclear power plants. French people were not inherently pro-nuclear and thought that nothing grew around nuclear power plants. After visiting the plants and learning that was not the case, regional plants became a point of pride. Germany used to have higher rates of nuclear acceptance, but this changed overnight after Chernobyl and the country is now one of the most anti-nuclear countries in Europe. Radiation is so exotic that people never habituate to it and they don’t realize it is always around us. Nuclear meltdowns are so rare that people fear them and view them as exceptional, life-changing events. Fukushima was a media circus in which the worst possible scenarios were focused on instead of the current safe state of the site. Reactions to nuclear power are primarily emotional, rather than logical. Daniels zeroed in on three major things that shape the way people feel about nuclear: nuclear accidents (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima), treatment in the media and the news, and the perceived connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

3 - Nuclear Export Competition

Bret Kugelmass: Despite the rhetoric and perceptions about the health of the nuclear industry, what nuclear work is going on around the world?

Andrew Daniels: China is not a true exporting nation yet and they intended not to buy any foreigh technology, but they now have technology from five different countries. The Koreans have a fantastic export industry and is a top competitor. Every country trying to build their own technology inhibited the export trade by creating a distorted market, which hindered the development of a more efficient industry that spans multiple countries. The U.K. tried to promote their own reactors and built each plant entirely differently with different fuel and part requirements. France kept it simple and stuck to three U.S. designs, which allowed labor and parts to be moved around more easily. Some reactors perform better in export competitions where there is a real choice. However, a fair export competition is rare. Developing the same site and using the same technology makes things cheaper. In the 1960’s, there was a limited knowledge about how safely nuclear power would perform over thirty years, but the industry has only piled on more bizarre safety requirements, even as the big spending with big accidents has not taken place. The industry is catering to fears about the nuclear industry, hoping that, if they make the reactor safe enough, people will be convinced. However, the safer you make a plant, the more people are convinced that it’s dangerous. A nuclear power plant that melts down is safer than a fossil fuel plant that operates normally.

4 - Misperceptions about Public Opinion

Bret Kugelmass: What do you do to get people convinced that nuclear power is safe?

Andrew Daniels: The modern world is information-rich that is unparalleled in its history. Just as Fukushima changed people’s opinions quickly, people’s opinions about nuclear power could change by the end of the year. To compete for people’s attention, nuclear must be compelling and the most interesting messages must be crafted to be shared. Most people are pro-nuclear most of the time, except for in the period a year after a nuclear accident. However, they imagine that most people are anti-nuclear. There is a difference between what the public thinks, what experts think the public thinks, and what politicians think the public thinks. In France, there tends to be a notion to follow technocratic government. When the government came up with a plan to cut nuclear power from 75% down to 50%, they consulted a panel of experts who rejected the government’s plans because it was not physically possible. Imagining what the public wants and catering to those wants can result in some warped results and politics can heavily interfere in nuclear’s development. Anti-nuclear activists are counterproductive and are working against their environment.

5 - Models for Radiation Damage

Bret Kugelmass: How do you decide what’s right when you come upon conflicting information in nuclear?

Andrew Daniels: Andrew Daniels used his judgment when evaluating sources for his book, “After Fukushima”. This includes the reliability of the author, where their research comes from, and whether they include anecdotal information. Chernobyl was the most difficult event to sort through many conflicting accounts to get to the root of what really happened. Daniels detailed in his book why certain resources were rejected. The linear no-threshold (LNT) model correlates a low amount of radiation damage will scale with a large amount, but this model doesn’t reflect radiation observations. At low levels of radiation, cellular defenses kick in that reduce the effects of radiation. Cells remove mutated cells more quickly. The LNT model was adopted early on, assuming there was not enough knowledge about radiation that a conservative model needed to be used. With all the data and information available now, the LNT model is no longer considered accurate. Following this model causes more harm than it helps because it overestimates the damage of radiation and brings inordinate attention to safety that’s not warranted by actual improvements. Nuclear power plants use the Low As Reasonably Achievable (LARA) is considered a marker of success, but the levels are already so low that they are not making an impact and money spent to make improvements to the metric has no real benefit. Nuclear power is held up to an unreasonable standard.

1 - Path to Nuclear Engineering

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get interested in nuclear?

Margaret Harding: Margaret Harding graduated in high school in 1977, after a couple of oil embargos and there was a concern that something different needed to be done for electricity. Harding was a good mathematician and was the only girl in her high school’s computer club. She attended Iowa State University, which had just added a nuclear engineering undergraduate program to its graduate program. Iowa State was one of the Manhattan Project schools and Ames Lab figured out how to refine uranium into a metal. Nuclear was an interesting solution for energy, especially electricity, that seemed viable due to its density. Harding was the only female in her nuclear engineering graduating class of 1981. Three Mile Island occurred while she was in school, which led to the requirement for degreed engineers to be on-site during any significant maneuvers. Harding wanted to work in the nuclear design side of the industry, leading her to apply with vendors and National Labs. Her first position after graduation was with General Electric and Harding moved to San Jose, California, which was the center for G.E.’s technology expertise in nuclear. Margaret Harding’s started out working on core and fuel design for reactors.

2 - Boiling Water Reactor Physics

Bret Kugelmass: How did you decide core and fuel design was the aspect of a nuclear plant you wanted to work on?

Margaret Harding: Many of the jobs in the nuclear industry don’t require a degree in nuclear, but Margaret Harding was always interested in the physics of a nuclear plant. As a child, Harding took her father’s flute apart to clean it and successfully put it back together. As an adult, she also put together her own computers, which inspired her son to learn how to take apart computers and put them back together and led to his engineering degree. Harding was amazed by the concentration of neutrons in an area in a reactor. In school, the focus is concentrated on solid coolants and solid moderators, so pressurized water reactors are the favorite to study. Modeling phase changes are very difficult, but G.E. has very powerful tools to model these changes. Harding was also fascinated by G.E.’s boiling water reactors’ ability to oscillate power production. In physics, bubbles allows for the elimination of the secondary heat exchanger, which has been a major issue is many pressurized water reactors. In boiling water reactors, there are more voids and less water which slows the neutrons down so they are more likely hit a U-235 atom on the split. If the neutrons move faster, they are more likely to be absorbed by U-238 which will disintegrated into fissile plutonium-239. Lowering the flow at the beginning of the cycle moves voids to the top of the core, allowing build-up of plutonium at the core, producing more fuel and providing lower enrichment. Steam goes through a separator and dryer before moving to the turbine, in order to prevent wet steam from going through a high speed turbine.

3 - Tritium and Plutonium

Bret Kugelmass: Is tritium a concern in boiling water reactors?

Margaret Harding: All nuclear reactors generate tritium, which is a naturally occurring element in the ocean, but anti-nuclear people use tritium to drive fear into the local population. Margaret Harding was a national spokesperson for the American Nuclear Society (ANS) after Fukushima and did some coverage on tritiated water. Disposal of tritiated water is a political issue, not a technical one. Tritium is also used in a lot of products, but the supply is already much greater than the demand. As spokesperson for the ANS, Harding answered questions about the presence of plutonium at the Fukushima site. Due to the two atomic bombs that went off in Japan, an analysis had to be done to determine the mix of isotopes and Harding was fairly confident that it did not come from the reactors. Plutonium is not water soluble and doesn’t get picked up in steam, so it doesn’t move very well. Plutonium is only really dangerous if you ingest it. While at General Electric, bundles would be stored in the Bundle Forest where they would hang in open air. People were asked to wear gloves to avoid getting body oils on the fuel. Also, the main radiation off fresh uranium is alpha, which is stopped by clothing and gloves.

4 - International Collaboration in Commercial Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: What are some of the international considerations when thinking about nuclear fuel?

Margaret Harding: The first nuclear technologies were developed in the United States during World War II and were being driven towards a weapon to stop the war, not knowing where it would be deployed. Controlled reactions were already being run in Chicago. Post-World War II, the initial Atomic Energy Act said only the military could utilize nuclear technology. President Eisenhower was looking for a way to change the pat of nuclear technology. He stood up in the United Nations and introduced Atoms for Peace, calling for global interactions and international efforts, even before the U.S. had commercial nuclear technology and efforts. Eisenhower’s Cabinet wrote the 1954 version of the Atomic Energy Act, which said you can’t cooperate without the permission of the Atomic Energy Commission. This allowed U.S. commercial entities to dabble in nuclear technology; until this point, the purview was the Navy. Westinghouse decided to do pressurized water reactors (PWR’s) and G.E. decided to pursue boiling water reactors (BWR’s). The government was pushing nuclear reactors at the point to have other options besides coal and subsidized early reactors. So many reactors were built near Pittsburgh because it was the center of steel production. They needed to figure out how to stop burning so much coal in the region for steel production because it was turning the city black. U.S. companies started partnering with France, England, and Japan. Japan, like France, has no natural resources and was importing coal and gas. Today, nuclear becomes a national asset in many countries.

5 - Nuclear Export via Part 810

Bret Kugelmass: Does there a right level of control beyond the political side of nuclear and into the engineering side of nuclear?

Margaret Harding: To some degree, there is a right level of control on the engineering side of nuclear. General Electric built two reactors in India in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Terapur 1 and 2. India had a nuclear explosion, causing the U.S. to go up arms. G.E. was pushed out of India, but they were still allowed to send self service implementation letters to India to notify them of technical problems and solutions identified for the reactors. In nuclear, an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere, so everyone must be kept operating safely. China isn’t good about protecting intellectual property, but we want to make sure they are safe. Part 810 is an outgrowth of the Atomic Energy Act. There are criteria for how to get permission for developing nuclear and the U.S. has bilateral agreements for most countries that are big in the nuclear realm to provide general permission to operate. Other countries require specific authorization, which the U.S. is willing to provide to ensure programs are developed safely and prevent other leading countries from building those relationships. The touchpoint with nuclear power plants is the fuel and outage maintenance work. Some countries can’t afford to build a big light water reactor and don’t have the grid to support it, so they may be looking at small modular reactors (SMR’s). Per Part 810, the U.S. can’t sell a reactor until a 123 agreement exists between the countries. In order to get conversations going to get a 123, companies can go do public marketing in other countries. Giving the government a sense of what the industry is interested in gives a target for 123 agreements. The Commerce Department trade division has trade representatives in a lot of countries who will happily set up meetings with the right people for free. Countries first need to build an infrastructure, which is laid out in the International Atomic Energy Agency steps to building a nuclear power plant. Companies owned by governments are less interested in profit, but more interested in jobs and relationships. Countries like Russia are willing to cut off energy to countries they operate in to get what they want.

6 - Electricity Market Control

Bret Kugelmass: Why are countries interested in buying Russian reactors?

Margaret Harding: Some countries don’t have financing to build their own reactors and the Russians offer a sweet deal in building, owning, and operating reactors. When Ukraine abandoned their Russian satellite state and wanted to join the European Union, Russia cut off the fuel supply to the Russian-built reactors in Ukraine. Through the United Nations and other policies, the world is less prone to aggressive land grabs. Humans still like to control and be bigger than they are, not by taking land anymore, but in other ways. China convinced Sri Lanka to build a second port. Sri Lanka couldn’t afford the payments to China, who had financed the construction of the port, so China now owns the port. Electricity should not be considered a private market. When power outages occur, such as in Puerto Rico, people die and lives are disrupted. Water is not considered a private market, but is a government-run entity because clean water is considered a basic necessity of life. Electricity should fall into this same category. Electricity used to be a cost-plus market with oversight by the Public Utility Commission. The current model is market-based, so independent power producers can bid wherever they are happy. Nuclear plants struggle in these markets because natural gas can be or not be available and wind and solar are preferentially chosen. Nuclear plants are funded as a base load due to the economics of plant revenue.

7 - Rethinking Electricity Infrastructure

Bret Kugelmass: Why can’t nuclear get “must-run” laws like renewables?

Margaret Harding: Some states have begun to rethink a clean portfolio standard as opposed to a renewable portfolio standard. Nuclear is just as good as the renewables in low-carbon energy production. Nuclear was left out because supporters of renewables saw that nuclear power would overwhelm the clean energy production standard for the grid and renewables would never be called on. The issue of climate change needs to be recognized as a critical issue on a country basis and a global basis. The United States should set the example of producing electricity without carbon. The infrastructure of the current plant designs were intended to be temporary because they were easier to build and initially operate. Rickover liked water because it was easy to run in the ocean and the more advanced coolant reactors - sodium, molten salt, high temperature gas - were more difficult to develop initially. Electricity should be considered a fundamental for life. People should have electricity when they need it on a reliable basis. Voltage regulation is also a big deal in production of clean energy. The U.S. has gotten complacent about electricity and the country needs to rethink how it approaches energy production and distribution.

1 - Introduction to CANDU Reactors

Bret Kugelmass: How did you get involved in the nuclear space?

Milton Caplan: Milton Caplan was born and raised in Montreal and attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York where he became a nuclear engineer. His first job was at Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited, which was the federally owned vendor for the CANDU type nuclear power plant. Canada was a very early player in nuclear and, when they were deciding which technology to go with, they chose a technology that would match the industrial development in the country at the time. Canada pursued an option that used natural uranium fuel because there was no enrichment capability in the country. The country wanted a very neutron efficient solution and the CANDU design has been very successful over the years. CANDU reactors have been sold to India, Pakistan, Argentina, Korea, China, and Romania. Milton Caplan started his nuclear career in the early 1980’s doing safety performance and attended night school to obtain his MBA, leading him to move into the marketing side of nuclear. He responded to new international bids for nuclear power plant and was involved with possible new projects domestically and abroad. In the early 1990’s, Caplan was the commercial lead for the negotiations for the Wolsong 3 & 4 reactors in South Korea, which was a turning point in his career. The Korean model is very logical, sensical, and deliverable-focused and was completely different than the Western construction model.

2 - Owner, Operator, and Vendor Relationships in Nuclear

Bret Kugelmass: What is it like to get a country to buy a pair of reactors?

Milton Caplan: South Korea was very well structured and it was not competitive; they had already decided they would build additional Canadian reactors. After receiving the Request for Proposal, the response must not take exception for the sake of taking exception and it must be very consistent. Milton Caplan was part of the Korean Wolsong 3 & 4 negotiations, which were a huge thing for the Candian industry. Caplan made it an important part of his career development that he wanted to lead the negotiations at a high level for the next two units in Korea. When this came about in 1998, Caplan did not lead the negotiations, which was devastating to him. Caplan took this as an opportunity to recognize the importance of the commercial side of the industry. The non-technical aspects are very important in structuring and making projects succeed. People in the industry get focused on the technical aspects, not the commercial aspects. Nuclear plants are not a research project; they are industrial facilities that produce electricity reliably and economically. When writing the requirements document, buyers should get away from being focused on the design aspects and instead understand that you are buying everything you need from the vendor to run the plant. The owner and operator of a plant also owns the risk. The owner should help and support the vendor if there are difficulties or issues, because it will always be less costly to help solve a problem than to fight over whose responsibility it is. If the vendor fails, the owner fails. There is not one nuclear design that operates better than another; it is all about operating equipment effectively and reliably.

3 - Bruce Power Plant Refurbishment

Bret Kugelmass: What kind of projects do you work on as a consultant and independent verifier?

Milton Caplan: From 2013 to 2015, Milton Caplan led the negotiations of the counterparty in Ontario, the independent electricity system operator, for the Bruce Power refurbishment and implementation agreement. The Bruce Nuclear Power Plant is on Lake Huron and is the largest operating plant in the world right now at 6,300 MW in total. In the late 1990’s, when Ontario Hydro was restructured, the decision was made to shut down the Pickering A station and the Bruce A station and focus on the newer stations. In 2002, British Energy came in and created Bruce Power; at the time, only Bruce B was operating. Bruce Power looked at the idle Bruce A station and determined units 3 & 4 could be restarted for not too much money and operate for a few years before they needed a refurbishment. Around 2005, the Ontario government wanted to get rid of coal. Bringing back Bruce units 1 & 2 would replace the coal power. Ontario and the owner agreed on a price of energy and decided to refurbish all the A units 1, 2, 3 & 4. Units 1 & 2 were refurbished, albeit over budget and over schedule, and so the owner thought of innovative ways to extend the life cycle of units 3 & 4 in order to postpone refurbishment. Milton Caplan got involved when the owner needed to refurbish the B units, which was wrapped into the refurbishment for A units 3 & 4.

4 - Risks of Long Term Nuclear Refurbishment

Bret Kugelmass: What lessons were carried forward from the initial refurbishment that went over schedule and over budget?

Milton Caplan: The most important lesson was about looking at the timing of refurbishment and trying to do things in steps, rather than doing it all at once. The strike price is very sensitive to when the refurbishment is done. It is impossible to get someone to provide a fixed price for six refurbishments, the last of which won’t start until 2030. Instead, the price of energy was adjusted each time they started a new refurbishment. If the price is above some threshold, the government has a right to halt the continuation of the work. This structure is incredibly transparent which allows the counterparty, the system operator, to see everything as it is developed going forward. Transparency incentivizes appropriate behavior. If unrealistic risks are put on one party, you pay for it and the risk isn’t manageable anyways. Building in flexibility made the relationship a win-win. The objective is not to drive the other to fail, but to support each other for success. The first Bruce unit is going down in 2020, which was only supposed to last until 2018. The Canadian regulatory structure allows for life year extensions of three or five years, compared to the U.S. 20 year extensions. Canada developed a structure which had a single vendor, a single utility, and single regulator. Caplan is currently performing independent oversight on the Darlington refurbishment project, which is currently on-time and on-budget. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has stayed on top of their vendors and helped them when they needed help, and pushed them when they needed to make changes. Having strong, capable senior managers to lead this projects is key. Future leaders must continue to be developed through continual projects, like the refurbishment projects.

5 - World Nuclear University

Bret Kugelmass: What is the World Nuclear University and what do you teach there?

Milton Caplan: The World Nuclear University is a virtual organization that was established in 2003. It is partially owned by the nuclear industry, the World Nuclear Association and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), and partially owned by the government, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The idea was to create a network of networks to bring some level of nuclear education across the world to get the community together to talk about the key issues. Their flagship program is a six-week summer institute which brings in 80-100 young future leaders to focus on the commercial side of nuclear and key issues affecting decision making. Milton Caplan teaches economics at the summer institute, but is more involved in teaching a short course that is taught in four to six countries every year. Over three days, the speakers cover topics like economics, law, transport, and fuel. This brings together people from government, industry, and students to network with each other. Milton Caplan lectures on nuclear economics and nuclear project structuring and financing. Economics is how competitive the price of energy from that plant compared to other alternatives. Financing is not an input, but instead an outcome. There is a lot of money in the world looking where to go if you have a good project.

6 - Nuclear Project Financing Structures

Bret Kugelmass: Is successful project financing creating a bridge between capital available and opportunity in the electricity market?

Milton Caplan: Projects must be economic, but the risks have to be manageable to attract money. Success is all about structuring and managing risk. Nuclear projects are difficult because they are relatively capital intensive and have long project schedules, leaving the capital at risk for a long period of time. Milton Caplan manages a blog on his website, www.mzconsultinginc.com, in which he focuses on something thoughtful centered around the industry, such as communications or thoughts about events in a certain area of the world. Caplan recently wrote about the cost of getting capital down. A tremendous amount of money can be saved on the cost of energy by bringing the cost of capital down. Structure must mitigate risk and keep the cost of capital down. The question is how to find a structure in which risks are shared more equitably; it may cost too much to put all the risk on one party. One model considered in the U.K. was a regulated asset-base model which would bring the cost down. There are a number of small modular reactor (SMR) initiatives in Canada. The federal government, through Natural Resources Canada, is creating an SMR roadmap which looks at how to implement SMR’s in the Canadian space while getting Canadian industry involved.

7 - Small Modular Reactor Markets in Canada

Bret Kugelmass: Is Canada looking at connecting small modular reactors to the grid?

Milton Caplan: One market segment for small modular reactors (SMR’s) is connected to the grid in which utilities buy small plants instead of large plants. A second market segment is heavy industry, which includes remote mining sites, the oil sands, and other extraction industries. A third market segment is remote communities in the far North, which includes indigenous communities. Canada has all three market segments and become a good test bed. Different SMR designs may be chosen for the different markets based on load requirements. The Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories has offered up their sites to developers to build a demonstration SMR on their licensed sites. A request for interest received many responses from vendors and others. The next step of the process was to ask vendors if they were interested in building a plant at their site, of which four have responded yes. Projecting the future is pretty much impossible since the world changes. China and Russia are now leading the most vibrant parts of the global nuclear industry. The future world cannot be powered without nuclear power. Electricity demand in the West is growing slowly, but the dependence on electricity is growing quickly. Economic, reliable, clean, and low-carbon energy is needed and the solution can’t be all renewables. In the history of energy, society has always moved forward with more energy dense sources. As the world urbanizes and living in higher density areas, lower density energy can’t be used to meet the energy needs. After access to clean water, getting access to energy is one of the important things that helps lift people out of poverty. To communicate to people about nuclear, there need to be reasons that people become interested in listening about the benefits of nuclear.