00:03:05 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:03:05] S1: As you know, when people talk about small modular reactors, the modularity is that you can mass produce it in a factory rather than needing to build it custom on a site, and you have a bunch of shipping containers that you hook up. [00:03:14] S0: Exactly. More or less. Trying to minimize the construction aspect of the project. [00:03:18] S1: Yes. Okay. But both... So where do you... Diablo Canyon, where do they get their enriched uranium? From existing suppliers, that's [00:03:27] S0: a combination of Russia and Europe. So in The US we get about a quarter from Russia still imported, that's gonna keep going until 2028. And then the rest from European providers, that's France, and then a European consortium called Urenco. [00:03:42] S1: Does The US mine uranium? We do, small quantities. So the problem you're trying to address is that uranium is mined in The US or Canada. It is then shipped across an ocean to be enriched and then ultimately shipped back as fuel? [00:03:56] S0: More or less. Yeah. Yeah. So most of US supply will come from Kazakhstan and Canada. And then where it's turned into a gas varies. [00:04:04] S1: Got it. And I presume if you talk to a nuclear startup that wants to get 19% enriched uranium, they... I mean, they agree with you on the kind of the geopolitics of this. It's... You know, it'd be valuable to onshore this stuff, but they probably have more acute problems that you're solving beyond just, it would be good to re onshore the supply chain.
00:04:04 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:04:04] S1: Got it. And I presume if you talk to a nuclear startup that wants to get 19% enriched uranium, they... I mean, they agree with you on the kind of the geopolitics of this. It's... You know, it'd be valuable to onshore this stuff, but they probably have more acute problems that you're solving beyond just, it would be good to re onshore the supply chain. [00:04:24] S0: Right. For them, it's mostly about availability. So as they think about their very first deployments and then scaling up in the early 2030s to tens of deployments it's all about where are we going to get the enriched uranium, the 19.75% enriched uranium also called HALEU, High Assay Low Enriched Uranium. So that's all about availability. That was the first problem that I heard of and that was the question of okay only Russia makes this today commercially. How are we going to import it? In mid-twenty twenty four Congress passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. That ban goes into effect 01/01/2028. Right now they're still importing under a waiver but 01/01/2028 that ends and so all these companies are wondering who's going to produce HALEU. And so our first mission as a provider is produce HALEU before the end of the decade for all these reactors. Part two is bringing the cost down. So that'll be the other big lever that we work on. [00:05:26] S1: How is this regulated? Can you give us the map of enriched uranium? Where does weapons grade uranium start to happen? And, yeah, who do you have to work with as regulator for all this?
00:05:26 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:05:26] S1: How is this regulated? Can you give us the map of enriched uranium? Where does weapons grade uranium start to happen? And, yeah, who do you have to work with as regulator for all this? [00:05:36] S0: Yeah, so if you're doing commercial sales of nuclear power or fuel that's going to go through the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In The US that's your regulator. If you are selling to the government there's potential Department of Energy paths or if you're an R and D reactor you could go through a DOE path. But it's primarily NRC if you're doing commercial operations. [00:05:58] S1: How have they been to deal with? Great, [00:06:00] S0: great. So the, you know, like I said, I think the investment community, the startup community, the whole tech community historically has just heard, Oh, the NRC is really difficult, or something. [00:06:12] S1: Yeah, the NRC is a bad brand. [00:06:13] S0: Yeah, that would be the blame is often placed in the NRC. I actually don't think it's deserved. They've been great to work with. Ultimately they care about two things, safety and security and then there's an environmental consideration as well and so all their licensing focuses on those things. This was the answer we got from the SMR company that I knew. We asked them Hey, how hard is it to get the NRC licensing? And they said, It's pretty straightforward. You do the safety analysis, you do the security analysis, you show low environmental impact and it's a straightforward process. It's it's a lot of paperwork and analysis, but it's doable.
00:06:13 · Scott Nolan, John Collison
[00:06:13] S0: Yeah, that would be the blame is often placed in the NRC. I actually don't think it's deserved. They've been great to work with. Ultimately they care about two things, safety and security and then there's an environmental consideration as well and so all their licensing focuses on those things. This was the answer we got from the SMR company that I knew. We asked them Hey, how hard is it to get the NRC licensing? And they said, It's pretty straightforward. You do the safety analysis, you do the security analysis, you show low environmental impact and it's a straightforward process. It's it's a lot of paperwork and analysis, but it's doable. [00:06:51] S1: Can you give us a bit of a map of nuclear reactor designs? So the traditional designs, installed in plants operating today, and then you're talking about these newer startups that are pursuing SMR type approaches. And I presume, like, there are a bunch of different technical approaches there. But can you just ground us in what And everyone's trying to presumably, there's some even that don't use uranium as a fuel, so they're outside of the scope for you, but are maybe relevant to this discussion.
00:06:51 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:06:51] S1: Can you give us a bit of a map of nuclear reactor designs? So the traditional designs, installed in plants operating today, and then you're talking about these newer startups that are pursuing SMR type approaches. And I presume, like, there are a bunch of different technical approaches there. But can you just ground us in what And everyone's trying to presumably, there's some even that don't use uranium as a fuel, so they're outside of the scope for you, but are maybe relevant to this discussion. [00:07:19] S0: Yep, so most of The US grid, virtually all of it runs on light water reactors. These are reactors with uranium enriched to low enriched uranium levels, LEU levels three to 5% enrichment. That goes into the core and your moderator and your coolant is water, just regular water. And so that's most reactors on the grid. You end up with a pressurized steam line, large dome covering the reactor that's part of the large construction project that leads to the billions in cost per reactor. [00:07:55] S1: Is the large dome covering the... [00:07:58] S0: That's a containment dome. [00:07:59] S1: I see, Yeah. [00:08:00] S0: Yeah. So in the case of an accident, in the case of loss of cooling, that's meant to do containment of any radiological material. [00:08:06] S1: I see. [00:08:06] S0: Yeah. Yeah. So the reactor is not actually that large. It's it's a much larger dome covering the reactor. [00:08:12] S1: Why does the containment dome need to be so big?
00:08:12 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:08:12] S1: Why does the containment dome need to be so big? [00:08:15] S0: Mostly for the most extreme accident scenarios. Just making sure the thickness is there, the internal volumes are there. [00:08:23] S1: I see. Yeah. Yeah. It's small on the inside. It's just very thick. [00:08:26] S0: Smaller. Yeah. Smaller. Yeah. [00:08:28] S1: Okay, so that's a traditional light water reactor design. Yeah. How about the startups? [00:08:33] S0: Nearly all of them are focused on going modular, bringing the size down, bringing your core size down. So let's go to stranded demand centers and let's serve those demand centers and let's go containerized or even smaller than that. You're going to be using HALEU in that very small format. Again, that's the 19.75% enriched. Smaller core, smaller format. So now we're talking about fuel formats but they often go hand in hand with the reactor design. [00:08:57] S1: But why do those two things go together? Which pieces? The smaller core and highly enriched uranium.