Stranded

Can nuclear power plants be built more like products, and less like one-off megaprojects?

In this episode of Stranded, Marie Espitalier-Noël speaks with Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of TerraPraxis and managing partner at LucidCatalyst, about what it would take to make nuclear construction faster, more predictable and ultimately financeable. The conversation begins with a striking finding from the Nuclear Cost Drivers study: the enormous gap between successful nuclear programmes and recent high-cost Western projects cannot be explained by reactor technology alone. Design completion, experienced delivery organisations, construction sequencing and repetition matter just as much.

Marie and Kirsty explore whether small modular reactors genuinely solve this problem, or simply place smaller reactors inside conventional megaprojects. They discuss what nuclear could learn from automotive platforms, aircraft manufacturing and shipyards, and how open architectures could allow industrial customers to buy standardised energy systems rather than commission bespoke plants.

The episode also examines the commercial models emerging around advanced nuclear: hyperscaler demand, X-energy, Aalo Atomics, Blue Energy’s shipyard manufacturing and gas-to-nuclear strategy, and TerraPraxis’ work to repower coal plants while reusing sites, grid connections and local infrastructure. Finally, they compare the US financing ecosystem with Europe’s fragmented approach, and ask what institutions such as the EIB and other development banks would need to do to make advanced nuclear investable at scale.

Chapters

00:00 — Introduction
00:49 — Kirsty Gogan, TerraPraxis and LucidCatalyst
03:19 — Why nuclear construction costs diverge
08:45 — Lessons from Vogtle, Flamanville, Hinkley and Barakah
11:47 — Do small modular reactors solve the cost problem?
14:19 — Building nuclear plants as repeatable products
18:44 — Open architecture and industrial energy users
22:07 — Where investors are placing value
24:54 — Hyperscalers and the limits of demand signals
29:50 — Technical milestones versus scalable delivery
32:58 — Blue Energy’s shipyard and gas-to-nuclear model
36:37 — Repowering coal plants and reusing infrastructure
41:44 — The US ecosystem and Europe’s deployment gap
43:22 — A European financing instrument for nuclear
47:00 — How Kirsty’s thinking about nuclear changed
50:04 — What advanced nuclear could achieve by 2036

Resources

• ETI Nuclear Cost Drivers Project
• Open Architecture Nuclear Integration Framework
• TerraPraxis REPOWER
• Blue Energy
• LucidCatalyst
• TerraPraxis

Stranded explores the technologies, business models and investment decisions shaping the climate transitio, and the gap between what technology can deliver and what capital is prepared to finance.

Hosted by Marie Espitalier-Noël.

Conversations on climate, capital, and what gets left behind.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/fugu-vibes/plastic-world

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Fervo Energy's May 2026 IPO was the largest clean-energy listing on record, and the market read it as proof that enhanced geothermal works. Thomas Giehm, Investment Manager at Underground Ventures, Europe's only VC fund dedicated to geothermal technology, invests one layer beneath developers like Fervo: the drilling tools, downhole electronics, and completion technology that have to perform before any well produces power. From that seat, he separates what the IPO actually validates, investor appetite for firm clean power and a demonstrated cost curve on a still-small well count, from what remains open: whether a 35% learning rate holds across thousands of wells drilled into deeper, hotter rock.

We trace geothermal's borrowed playbook from shale, the one place that analogy breaks, and why Europe, despite real geothermal resources, hasn't produced its own Fervo yet. We close on what a background in commodity trading sees in an energy bet that a traditional VC might miss, and one early belief about geothermal Thomas has had to revise.

In this episode:

• 02:42 — Origin story: commodity trading to geothermal, via a cold email to Torsten Kolind
• 05:02 — What the Fervo IPO actually validates, and what it doesn't
• 10:45 — The picks-and-shovels thesis: why back the tech layer, not the developers
• 16:23 — Mapping the five-segment value chain, and a new name in it: Terraferno
• 23:04 — The ten-year cost curve: which technologies actually bend it
• 31:38 — Could Europe build its own Fervo?
• 41:19 — Personal: what a trader's instinct sees, and one early belief revised

Links:

• Fervo Energy S-1 / IPO prospectus (Nasdaq: FRVO)
• Underground Ventures — ugventures.com

Guest: Thomas Giehm, Investment Manager at Underground Ventures.

Stranded is a podcast on climate finance and the energy transition: what it costs, who carries the risk, and what gets left behind. New episodes every three weeks. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/fugu-vibes/plastic-world

License code: I7WGHXOEFDBOSVI8