Gener8

In this episode of Gener8, we dive into the world of academia and its perspectives around Nuclear Energy with Dr. Matt Bowen, Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Matt and Brett previously overlapped during their time at the Clean Air Task Force and Matt joins us to share his perspectives around his research as well as how his work has evolved and changed from his first days in DC, to his time at the Department of Energy, to the NGO world, and now to Academia. 

Our conversation with Matt begins with a look at the debates about nuclear energy’s inclusion in international financing structures as well as how nuclear focused nations (like South Korea, Russia, China, France, or the USA) differ in their support for technology export. After sharing more about CGEP and how Matt came to spend the last ~4 years there, our conversation turned to some specifics around US exports as we discussed the prospects for exporting US large nuclear power plant technology. From finance, we turned to another often-cited impediment for future nuclear deployments as well as broader support, nuclear waste management. Matt discussed some previous work he has written on the topic as well as any progress, or lack thereof, since writing before talking about future work Matt is anticipating around the role of regulatory bodies in the future of nuclear technology. After hitting three of the most commonly acknowledged challenges around nuclear deployments, Matt shared some additional perspectives as to what else might be holding things back and where we could apply pressure. 
  
We enjoyed this dive into the academic world of nuclear energy with Matt and we hope you find the conversation illuminating as well.

Welcome back for another episode of Gener8. Today, we're delving into a topic that seems to be permeating all the discussions around future advanced nuclear deployments, the Uranium fuel cycle. More specifically, we'll be focusing on High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), which is planned as the feedstock for the majority of future advanced nuclear technologies. Joining us is  Dr. Patrick White, Research Director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA), to share his expertise and insights on the topic as well as some of the results and findings of an October 2023 NIA paper on this very topic. 
  
Our conversation with Patrick kicks off by defining exactly what HALEU is, why it's a desirable choice for the future, and how it differs from the feedstock material used for fuel in existing reactors today. From there, we explore why HALEU poses a potential bottleneck for advanced reactor deployment, what international and market forces created this bottleneck, and where HALEU supply fits within the broader overall global nuclear fuel supply chain. Patrick shares insights on the economic challenges herein and what scale of investment was needed to address this challenge as well as where and how money is currently being applied. Patrick also provides insights about the current global market players and the role of state-run entities in this discussion before sharing a bit about the NIA’s origins, background, and experience base. To close our conversation, we turned away from HALEU and discuss NIA’s perspectives around the role of regulators in future nuclear deployments and where change is needed. 
  
We found this deep dive conversation with the NIA to be a comprehensive look at a confusing and niche, but extremely impactful, challenge for future nuclear deployments and we hope you enjoy it as well.

For this week’s Gener8 episode we turned our conversation to our neighbors to the North as we were joined by David Tyndall, Director of New Build Engineering, for Ontario Power Generation (OPG). OPG operates one for the largest low emissions electricity grids in the world and has recently announced plans for expanded deployment of new nuclear technology to increase their clean energy generation capacity. Dave joined us to share insights around how OPG has gotten where it is today, why they’re thinking about the future the way they are, and what challenges are on the horizons for them. 
  
Our conversation began with Dave offering some level-setting for us on what the electricity reliability and grid discussions are like in Canada as contrasted with some of the recent challenges the United States has faced in Texas, California, and elsewhere. We then discussed how OPG got to be so reliant on nuclear and hydroelectric energy sources as well as Dave’s personal history and experiences within the company. OPG is also currently engaged in one of the largest, most successful western nuclear projects in the world as it pursues refurbishment of some of its existing CANDU reactor assets, a multi-billion dollar, multi-year effort, and Dave shared insights as to what has driven OPG’s success therein. Finally, we closed our conversation out with a discussion around why newer advanced nuclear technology might be right for OPG and what collaboration looks like across other Canadian nuclear operators and governments. 
  
We learned a lot about why Ontario’s grid has evolved the way it has and where it might be going in the future and it’s a fascinating case study in how commitment and planning can lead to success. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Welcome back for another exciting episode of Gener8 as we dive into some aspects of the European energy picture by meeting with Kalev Kallemets, CEO of Fermi Energia. Fermi Energia was founded in 2019 by Kalev and several colleagues with the express goal to deploy advanced small modular nuclear technology in Estonia and recently announced technology selection with General Electric-Hitachi (press release linked here). 

Our conversation with Kalev began with painting a picture of the current electricity and energy landscape in Eastern Europe, following Russian aggressive wartime activities, as well as the role of cost, reliability, and numerous other factors in affecting the energy picture. As a nation that shares a border with Russia, Estonia faces unique energy concerns that have been thrown completely out of balance in the last 12-18 months on the international stage and Kalev helped share his on-the-ground impressions. Subsequently, we explored the role of nuclear energy in these discussions as well as the origins of Fermi Energia and Kalev’s role therein. Kalev also offered his perspective around how to assess promises and assumptions in a nuclear industry that has both a damaged track record and a lack of comparables, what happens next for the project in Estonia, how to collaborate with neighbors across state boundaries, and what remaining obstacles and barriers remain between now and final project deployment. 
 
We found this conversation gave a very detailed look at the unique energy challenges of nations in Eastern Europe and how nuclear energy plays a role in those discussions. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

Today’s episode of Gener8 features a discussion focused on traditional energy and fossil extraction and the future role that nuclear energy might play in supporting the current backbone of our global economy. Joining us today from  National Oilwell Varco (NOV), one of this country’s leading gas and oil field equipment manufacturers, are  Nick Morriss, Commercialization Director in Renewables, and Tim Williamson, Senior Director for Enterprise Data Architecture & Governance. Together, they delve into the motivations and strategies behind considering nuclear energy to meet NOV and their customer's evolving energy needs. 

We begin the conversation by learning about NOV’s preliminary discussions and interest in nuclear energy, which combined with Tim and Nick’s personal experiences, led to direct engagement with NOV’s customers on understanding the potential opportunities in the space. Tim and Nick share progress they've made on a multi-year study that NOV and their customers are engaged in and what kind of questions their customers hope to better understand with this study. We then dove into the challenges and other factors that could limit this opportunity and what existing features of the oil and gas industries lend themselves to consider utilizing nuclear energy. Nick and Tim also shared the impact the study is having within executive leadership teams, what NOV’s future role might look like around nuclear energy deployment, and finally, what the role of the federal and state governments have in this discussion. 

We have been watching NOV's activities in this area for almost as long as they’ve been engaged on the topic and we hope that you find this synopsis of their process and thinking as fascinating as we did.

Industrial energy use can sometimes seem like a multi-faceted and hard to explore topic. Today’s episode aims to shed light on an intrinsic part of global industry, steam. Addison Stark, Co-Founder and CEO of AtmosZero, joined us to take a journey around "the world’s most important working fluid," as Addison calls it, and explore how AtmosZero aims to support adoption of electricity to displace unabated fossil fuel use for producing industrial steam. 
 
Addison helped set the stage for our conversation by sharing a bit about steam’s role in global industry and the challenges around moving away from coal and natural gas to adopt electric solutions, both in the past and today. Our conversation then turned to Addison’s background and AtmosZero’s approach and history as we learned about why heat pumps might play a role in industrial steam. We also discussed AtmosZero’s first project, a collaboration with New Belgium Brewing in Colorado, as well as the motivations and makeup of those involved. We closed our discussion focused on gaining a better understanding of the economics around this sort of technology adoption as well as where the conversation around industrial heat and steam may be going next. 
 
We learned a lot about industrial steam chatting with Addison this week and hope you enjoy our dive into this often times ignored pillar of our economy.

For this episode of Gener8 we are joined by speakers from two organizations focused on supporting clean energy deployment in industrial applications.  Kreshka Young, North America Business Director for Energy & Climate at Dow, and Dr. Ben Reinke, Vice President of Global Business Development at X-Energy, chatted with Jeff Tillery and I about a first-of-a-kind domestic project to demonstrate advanced nuclear technology at a petrochemical plant in Seadrift, TX. While nuclear energy has been used for non-grid based applications before, the scale and scope of the project being undertaken by these two companies is novel for the United States.  
  
Our conversation started with what drivers and forces propelled the initial discussions around the project and how those preliminary conversations survived beyond the point that many other such endeavors have fizzled out in infancy. We delved into some of the aspects of power generation at industrial sites and why this particular technology is enticing before turning our conversation to the scale of federal and local support for the project and how that impacts the overall risk profile. From there, we turned to overall economics as well as regulatory issues for deployment and whether those were a limiting factor in seeing the project come to fruition. Our conversation also touched on operational and staffing concerns for Dow as well as the potential for consideration of further demonstrations in the future. Providing reliable energy for industrial applications is becoming more and more challenging every day and learning more about this project helps us understand how society might tackle these issues in the future. 

We look forward to watching success and progress at Seadrift. We were fascinated by the discussion with Kreshka and Ben and hope you will be too.

We were excited to host  Dr. Shannon Bragg-Sitton to dive into the world of hydrogen production and integrated energy systems. Shannon serves as the Director of the Integrated Energy & Storage Systems Division at the Idaho National Laboratory. Her division is on the cutting edge of what our future energy systems could look like and conducts important research and development activities to make sure that future is achievable. As a nuclear engineer by training as well as a former NASA employee and College Professor, Shannon brings a unique and wide-ranging breadth of experience to her role. We were excited to explore the challenges and opportunities of integrating new technologies and energy sources into our economy.
 
Our conversation with Shannon begins with hydrogen, including what the technologies will look like that might play a role in providing affordable new sources of zero emissions fuels and how Idaho National Laboratory and the DOE are working to support deployment of those technologies. We then turn to the government's focus on hydrogen hubs and their transformational role in the discussion around future hydrogen production. We explore the economics around hydrogen and the key for near and long-term successes in adoption of more hydrogen as well as what those successes might look like. We also discuss what aspects of our economy could benefit from integrating these new resources most before closing out with a discussion on where the future of integrated energy systems goes beyond hydrogen. For further information, the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap plan is linked here.  

We greatly enjoyed chatting with Shannon about hydrogen (with a bit of nuclear energy interwoven throughout) and look forward to hearing more about her division’s successes in the future.

As you enjoy the holiday week with your friends and family, we wanted to share with you a discussion with a small, independent micro-reactor developer that could be on the road to some of the first commercial advanced nuclear deployments in this country.  Oklo’s founders, Dr. Jacob Dewitte, CEO, and Caroline Cochran, COO, were kind enough to join us for a discussion around the world of microreactors, Oklo’s plans for deployment, and the broader challenges overall. Veriten has enjoyed getting to know the Oklo team through CERAWeek and other activities over the last year and wanted to share some of their unique perspectives, approaches, and experiences with you all. 
  
Jeff and I began our conversation with Jacob and Caroline around their recent first-of-a kind submission with the NRC and its subsequent unfortunate rejection. Sharing their thoughts around how things have changed since then and what they plan to do differently, we also turned to just how burdensome the regulatory process has been overall for their deployment plans and how Oklo’s plans to blend the roles of owner, operator, and vendor impacts their goals and potential customers. We also dove into how a small team with an aggressive approach can achieve success versus some of the much larger and more established organizations and learned what Oklo sees as their biggest challenges and obstacles. We hope that you enjoy hearing from Jacob and Caroline as much as we did and we look forward to hearing more about their success in the future.

Today’s show continued our discussions around the future of electricity and grid reliability as we were joined by Eric Holdsworth, Managing Director of Clean Energy and Environmental Policy for the Edison Electric Institute (EEI). EEI’s members generate electricity that powers the homes of over 200 million Americans and Eric joined to share perspectives from years of supporting policy needs and advocacy for EEI members.  

EEI members' climate and carbon reduction goals permeated our conversation throughout and also started our discussion as we explored the challenges facing utilities and our grid in meeting these aggressive decarbonization commitments. Eric then shared some perspectives around what the industry and EEI members are most focused on to move forward the adoption of clean energy technology and introduced us to the Carbon Free Technology Initiative, a policy development process and set of policy recommendations around clean energy technology that saw adoption in the Inflation Reduction Act and other recent legislation. Eric then shared a bit about EEI itself and the motivations driving EEI and its members before our conversation pivoted to the reliability challenges of today, as well as tomorrow, and how to combat them. We closed our conversation with shifting from the utility mindset to the consumer one and trying to understand what best role ratepayers and the average citizen can play in helping combat reliability challenges as well as supporting adoption of new clean technologies.