November 16, 2023

E4: Fission Founders, Part 1: Manufacturing Nuclear

54 minutes

"Age of Miracles"

Key Takeaways

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What if we treated building nuclear more like a manufacturing challenge than a construction challenge? How could nuclear benefit from the tried-and-true methodologies of other large industrial industries like ship-building and oil and gas to make nuclear as cheap as solar and wind to produce?

In this episode – the first of two with leading nuclear fission startup founders – Packy and Julia talk to a new crop of nuclear entrepreneurs who are focused on manufacturing small modular reactors at scale. Drawing on best practices from very different industries like building reactors in shipyards or adapting the methods of offshore oil and gas rigs, these founders are taking a radically different approach from the incumbents in nuclear power plant construction. They’re focused on bringing the experience curves for building nuclear way down

But how will it actually work in practice? How do they balance pleasing regulators with innovating on new designs for more efficiency and manufacturability? How do they finance these businesses? What is the plan for connecting these power sources to the grid – or finding other “behind the meter” use cases? Tune in to go deep with the people turning theories about nuclear manufacturing into reality.

Thank you to this episode’s guests: Matt Slotkin, Nick Touran, Bret Kugelmass, Katherine Boyle, Josh Wolfe, and Jake DeWitte

Huge thank you to our sponsors:

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Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:

(00:00) Building a shipyard to manufacture nuclear reactors

(06:22) The experience curve

(11:00) Which industries can we steal ideas from?

(19:40) Blue Energy with Matt Slotkin

(25:10) Last Energy with Bret Kugelmass

(31:40) Good strategy, bad strategy

(38:41) Financing nuclear companies

(44:00) Oklo going public

(51:30) Recap

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.

Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg.

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