WBD615 Audio Transcription
The Future of Nuclear Energy with Everett Redmond
Release date: Monday 6th February
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Everett Redmond. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Everett Redmond is a nuclear engineer working as the Senior Director of Fuel Affairs at Oklo. We discuss the enormous challenges and opportunities in renewing the US’s nuclear fleet over the next decade, Oklo’s development of fast nuclear reactors, and how such small modular nuclear reactors will soon become commonplace.
“You’re seeing a lot of support for nuclear now… I think the momentum behind nuclear is growing more and more with climate change… we’re in a very good path moving forward to build out a lot more nuclear to provide that zero carbon-emitting energy 24/7, 365.”
— Everett Redmond
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Morning, Everett. How are you?
Everett Redmond: Doing well. How you are?
Peter McCormack: I'm good, thank you. So, we make a Bitcoin show and one of the hottest topics over the last couple of years has been discussing energy, the energy mix, how bitcoiners can work with energy companies, with energy grids, and because of that, we've kind of ended up going down the energy rabbit hole and learning a lot about it.
We've made shows about solar power, we made a show yesterday about nuclear. So, despite the fact that you're like a hardened bitcoiner, you're a really great guest for our audience because nuclear is such a hot topic. So, as the audience won't know you, do you mind introducing yourself? Tell us a bit about your background and what you're doing now.
Everett Redmond: Sure thing. So, Everett Redmond, I'm a nuclear engineer by training. I work currently for a company called Oklo; we're developing a small liquid-metal-cooled fast reactor, so a microreactor. Prior to Oklo, and I started with Oklo in September 2022, prior to that I was with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association for the commercial nuclear power industry here in the US, was with them for 16 years and focused on advanced reactors. So, I've been interfacing with the advanced reactor community in the United States for quite some time. And then, prior to NEI, I was with the company, Holtec International, working on back end of the fuel cycle, dry cask storage systems for commercial and nuclear plants.
In my spare time, I do a lot of scuba diving, in fact teach scuba diving as well with a shop up in DC called Blue Planet Scuba.
Peter McCormack: Oh wow. I have never scuba dived.
Everett Redmond: You should give it a try.
Peter McCormack: Oh man. So, I've snorkelled. No, it's just one of those things I've never done; I've always felt it seems a little bit claustrophobic.
Everett Redmond: I have found that very few people actually have that issue, but what you can do if you find yourself at a resort sometime, you can do what we call a resort course, discover scuba diving. So, you'd go out with an instructor, they would take you down and you'd be with them the whole time, and you get to try it out, you won't go too deep, and just get the experience. Then, if you like it, you go on and get trained.
Peter McCormack: I think it's the whole mask and tank, it just kind of freaks me. Well, I say that, one of the things I have done is I've tried over the years to train myself to hold my breath longer; so, my record's 3 minutes, 5 seconds.
Everett Redmond: Okay, so you could do a lot of the free diving. We've got some friends who do free diving; I, personally, don't have any great interest in that, I'll take the air with me!
Peter McCormack: I had a little go at that in Turks; what are those shells at the bottom? I can't remember what they're called.
Danny Knowles: Like conchs, is it?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, conchs, yeah. But you get to a certain pressure and you get that sound in your head and you feel like everyone's closing in.
Everett Redmond: Well, you obviously have to equalise as you go down.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Everett Redmond: So, just like in the plane when you go up, you get a pressure change, and then you start coming down in the aeroplane, you have to clear your ears. So, you have to do the same thing when you scuba dive or snorkel.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, when you're holding your breath though you don't have much time to equalise.
Everett Redmond: That's true.
Peter McCormack: Also, when you're swimming about, you can't do 3 minutes, 5 seconds. 3 minutes, 5 seconds was still in a swimming pool with my kids tapping me on the shoulder every 15 seconds and not moving.
Everett Redmond: That's impressive.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's just a weird thing I do; I don't know why I do it, I'm a weirdo. Anyway, listen, welcome to the show. So, how did you get into nuclear; why nuclear? Was this an interest or was it…?
Everett Redmond: So, for me, when I went to college, it ended up being a great combination between mechanical engineering and physics. I'd had an interest in nuclear prior to that, but I didn't necessarily think that's what I'd major in, but it turned out I love it quite a bit. I tended to focus on what's called reactor physics, so core design sort of stuff. I'm not a thermal hydraulics person.
Peter McCormack: What does that mean?
Everett Redmond: So, thermal hydraulics is the fluid flow, heat and mass transfer sort of thing. So, I focus on, when I was doing the work anyway, was focused on core design, fuel assemblies, how they configured, and how the neutrons and stuff move around and get the reaction going.
Peter McCormack: I guess with a nuclear reactor there are lots of different specialisms that go into it.
Everett Redmond: Oh, yes.
Peter McCormack: The thing that surprised me yesterday when we discussed nuclear with Anthony Jared, when he told me he worked on the reactor on one of the aircraft carriers, I was like, "How many people work on that?" I was assuming he was going to say 20, 30; what was it, 400?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, 200 for each reactor I think he said.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Everett Redmond: That's impressive; I did not know that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that kind of blew my mind. So, we've had to go down this rabbit hole learning a lot more about nuclear, not even just for the podcast, in fairness. I live in the UK, you can probably tell from my accent, we have a real energy crisis at the moment, people can't afford to heat their homes, our energy bills have gone up 300%, 400%, 500%. We are reliant on other countries for our energy, a range of different ways we import it; I think we get, in part, nuclear power from France, I think we're importing liquid gas. I think there are a range of things we're doing, but we aren't self-sovereign with our own nuclear energy because we haven't invested in the infrastructure.
So, we've been trying to understand why have the green lobbyists been so successful in campaigning against nuclear energy, and the interview yesterday was great; I learnt a few things. I didn't know this, I didn't know nobody died at Fukushima, we were told that there was no statistical increase in cancers in Fukushima, nobody died at Three Mile Island, and 46 deaths were attributed to Chernobyl.
So, in terms of actual deaths related, I know the risk is different, but deaths related to nuclear energy, it's basically one mine collapse, and that's a crude way of putting it, but in lots of different parts of the energy sector, lots of other people have died in multiple ways. So, it feels like nuclear's been cast as this big scary way of producing energy, but actually, its safety streak's fairly good outside of Chernobyl.
Everett Redmond: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: So why do you think that's been?
Everett Redmond: Well, one of the issues, I think, is just radiation is something you don't see, you can't tell around -- I mean, the reality though is radiation's everywhere; there's naturally-occurring radiation as you get in an aeroplane and you fly across country or across the Atlantic, you're getting more radiation because you're physically closer to the sun.
Peter McCormack: Or eating a banana we found out yesterday.
Everett Redmond: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: We call it a radiation bar now!
Everett Redmond: Yeah, that's true as well, and then certain buildings that were made out of granite and things like that will have a little bit more natural radiation because of just what's in the rock, and then you live in places that are higher up, higher elevations, you get more radiation too, because again, you're closer to the sun. But at the end of the day, you can't see it, you can't feel it, so I think that's part of it, and what radiation can do is ultimately lead to some cancer, and cancer is scary for everyone.
Peter McCormack: Another thing that came out yesterday was the discussion around Chernobyl, and I can imagine for people like yourself, working in a modern nuclear industry, modern design, that any comparison to that is hugely frustrating; it's probably like comparing a Model T to a Tesla, even worse.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, there are a few things. The design of the plant was not able to withstand the accident that occurred, so that's a fundamental issue. The plants that we operate in the United States have containment buildings around them, they're designed to withstand the worst-case accidents.
The newer plants, like the one my company is working on, Oklo's working on, are much smaller, have more inherent safety features in them, and so they're more robust to begin with. But the other thing about Chernobyl, which was exceptionally frustrating and why the comparison is a bad one, is they basically took the operating manual and threw it out the window. So, they got themselves into a position that the plant could not withstand, and it shouldn't have been done.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that came up as well with Three Mile Island in that they didn't follow correct procedures.
Everett Redmond: I think with Three Mile Island, they ran into some challenges after the accident initiated, but not the same situation as Chernobyl; it's not a fair comparison between the two.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay, but it was still human error would you say?
Everett Redmond: Human error contributed to it, and then there were human factors. So, how do you deal with all of the information coming in; how are the control systems set up; how many alarms are going off; where is the information being presented; where are the panels? So, there's a huge effort that goes into -- if you think about an aeroplane and a cockpit, how do you lay out that information so that it's easiest for the pilot to access what they need when they need it?
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Everett Redmond: So, these where things that we've learnt in the nuclear industry over the years as well, and especially Three Mile Island; I helped with some of those human factors in terms of how the information's presented to you.
Peter McCormack: Then lastly, on Fukushima, what we learned was actually it was the position of the diesel generators were too low and that's what flooded which caused an issue there.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, Fukushima, the earthquake came along, the plant shut down just like normal, no problem, everything shut down, diesel generators kicked in, everything was great; then the tsunami came in and basically wiped out everything, all of the electrical equipment at the same time, just took it all out.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it was a really interesting thing to go through, and most of what we focused on yesterday was the safety side of things. I think today with you, we want to focus a little more on the innovation, what's happening, what's coming, but a good starting point is to understand where we're at. I know that, was it France, there are about 60 reactors?
Danny Knowles: I think 56.
Peter McCormack: 56 reactors. We know, in the UK, I think there are about three. What's the size of the fleet here in the US?
Everett Redmond: 92.
Peter McCormack: I like the fact they call it a fleet. We've heard a lot about the difficulty in trying to get new nuclear plants commissioned and also built; it takes a long time. What impact has that had in terms of the current fleet; is it aging to the point that some of these need decommissioning; what's the current status of the fleet?
Everett Redmond: So, reactors in the United States were originally licensed for 40 years, and then almost all of them had been extended to 60 years, and some of them, and more and more will be extended out to 80 years. So, we're going to operate the fleet here, for the most part, out to 80 years. Then, what we've seen, over time, is there were some shutdowns, premature shutdowns we call them, for economic reasons. So, in certain areas, dealing with wind and solar and transmission constraints created some economic challenges for them.
That dynamic's shifted a bit now and what we're seeing here in the United States is the fleet is going strong, we operate 24/7/365 and we operate for 18 to 24 months before we shut down for refuelling. And many of the plants will operate what we call breaker to breaker; so from the time they start up to the time they shut down, they're pretty much running at full power or close to full power.
Peter McCormack: Talk to me about refuelling.
Everett Redmond: So, refuelling, when we shut down a reactor, we take out about a third of the core right now for the existing fleet and then put that in a spent fuel pool, so basically a large pool of water. It sits there for a while, a few years, and then we move it into a dry cask storage system.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Anthony Jared brought up yesterday that in the smaller, newer reactors, these Generation IV reactors, that it's a possibility that you can take these fuel rods from the old aging fleet and they can still be used in the newer design.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, so let me talk about what we're doing at Oklo for a second.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, tell me.
Everett Redmond: So, our machine, as I said, is a liquid metal fast reactor, so it's designed to stay operational for a couple of decades without refuelling, so for one, extending out that time between when you need to refuel.
Peter McCormack: Just very quickly, how long does a refuelling process take?
Everett Redmond: So, for the fleet, they can get it done I'd say on average about 30 days. They bring in a lot of people to supplement the workforce, they lay out everything they need to do, and they go with it.
Peter McCormack: What happens during that 30 days; is there no power coming from --
Everett Redmond: That's correct.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so you have plan additional elsewhere power?
Everett Redmond: Yeah, for the grid, and here in the United States, most of the refuellings occur in the spring or the fall.
Peter McCormack: So you don't need the air conditioners and you don't need the heaters?
Everett Redmond: Correct. Yeah, you tend not to do it in the middle of the summer time.
Peter McCormack: Okay. Sorry, I'll let you carry back on.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, so for us, you were just talking about reusing of commercial fuel, so one of the things we are planning to do is recycling. So we're planning to take some of that spent fuel coming out of the existing fleet and then recycle it and use it as feedstock fuel for our reactors, and then eventually we'll also recycle the fuel coming out of our reactors. As I said, we have a fast reactor, so that has the capability to reuse that fuel in an efficient way.
Peter McCormack: Does that change the volume of the nuclear waste or just the makeup of it?
Everett Redmond: A little bit of both; so it changes the makeup of it in the sense that what you end up deposing of now are just what we call fission products. So right now, when spent fuel comes out of a reactor, it has in it uranium, plutonium, actinides, which are higher level elements that have the fission products; when we do the recycling, we're going to keep the major actinides and the transuranics together along with the uranium and plutonium, and so what'll be left are fission products. So, it does change the makeup of it a bit, and it does reduce the amount of waste.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. So, going back to the current fleet, a lot was made of, in California I think it was Gavin Newsom wanted to shut down their last reactor.
Everett Redmond: Diablo Canyon?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and they haven't.
Everett Redmond: That's correct.
Peter McCormack: So, was the reason to close it down not so much that it was aging, was that more of a political reason?
Everett Redmond: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And you would say that reactor's absolutely fine to carry on for another 20 years?
Everett Redmond: Yeah, in fact it is, for sure; they're planning to keep it operational for at least another five years beyond the lifetime. I would hope that that would go far further than that but yes, that plant is perfectly capable of continuing to operate, and that's political reasons over there.
Peter McCormack: Californians.
Everett Redmond: California, it's an internal issue.
Peter McCormack: You must bang your head against a wall though thinking, "What are you doing?!"
Everett Redmond: Yeah, it's frustrating a bit sometimes looking at how decisions are made, but that's true of everywhere.
Peter McCormack: These old reactors, is there any issue with recruitment of staff, like human resource, or is there plenty of people wanting to come into the industry?
Everett Redmond: So, that's a good question too. We, the industry as a whole, does a lot of work in terms of training workforce, and we interface with local colleges, community colleges, things like that, to help make sure that we have programmes in place to train the people we need.
Now, as we go forward and we build out more and more reactors in the United States, which I certainly hope we will do and expect that we will do, workforce is going to be an issue. We're going to need to get more people trained up to operate the reactors; construction workforce is a big deal. The amount of infrastructure that we are all going to need to build out is just going to be enormous. So, we think there could be, for example, in the United States, upwards of 160 GW of new nuclear built between now and 2050; that's an enormous number of machines.
Peter McCormack: What does that compare to the current fleet?
Everett Redmond: So, current fleet is about 90 GW.
Peter McCormack: So, what's that, about 150%, 160% increase? Yeah, wow, okay. In terms of the skills, you said for construction, but are those specialist construction skills?
Everett Redmond: Some yes, some no; it depends. So, what we're seeing with some of the newer reactor designs, like ours, we're moving into smaller machines; they're going to be easier to build, easier to construct and not be these megaprojects.
So, down in Georgia, we're completing two reactors, Vogtle 3 and 4, they're Westinghouse AP1000 plants, fabulous plants; so, AP1000s are currently operating in China. Southern Company should be bringing online these two plants this year down there, but they are megaprojects, huge projects, huge construction projects, and that's a challenge in the United States.
So, what you're seeing with small modular reactors, all of the advanced reactor companies are looking at smaller machines that will be easier to construct, move as much of that fabrication as we can back into a factory setting, and then just ship stuff to the site and install it.
Peter McCormack: Wow! Would it almost be the case that multiple locations could have almost identical reactors?
Everett Redmond: They should, yes.
Peter McCormack: They should?
Everett Redmond: Yeah, in fact the Vogtle 3 and 4, so you're going to see down there in Georgia at the Vogtle plant, they have currently 2 reactors operating, and then 3 and 4 are 100% identical.
Peter McCormack: Wow, okay. You said earlier that you worked for the trade association.
Everett Redmond: I did previously, yes.
Peter McCormack: The green lobbyists have been very effective at scaring people off of nuclear energy, especially in Europe. Germany tried to shut down, I think their last three reactors, they've had to keep them going.
Everett Redmond: Right.
Peter McCormack: Where do you think the nuclear industry itself has failed in countering their arguments? From everyone I've spoken to, actually the green lobbyists should probably be pro-nuclear because nuclear is the best opportunity we have to decarbonise.
Everett Redmond: You're seeing a lot right now, over the last few years, well not a few anymore, the last five to ten years, a big shift, with climate change and carbon reduction being the key challenge. You're seeing a lot of support for nuclear now, especially in the United States, with a number of the other organisations out there. So, I think the momentum behind nuclear's growing more and more with climate change, so I think we're in a very good path moving forward to build out a lot more nuclear to provide that zero-carbon-emitting energy 24/7/365.
Peter McCormack: So, you feel like there is a changing tide?
Everett Redmond: Oh, it's changed, the tide has changed. We're seeing a lot of activity going on in the United States; we've seen, with Congress here, bipartisan bills passed, huge support from the government. Just in the last two years, there was a bipartisan, the Infrastructure Act, Infrastructure Bill, and then the Inflation Reduction Act that was just passed last year; so, the Infrastructure Bill was the previous year. Both of those provide huge support for nuclear as well as other renewable sources, production tax credits and things like that.
Here in the United States, we have a programme, the Department of Energy has a programme called the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which was funded by Congress, and you're seeing two reactors that are going to be demonstrated by 2030, one in Wyoming, one in Washington State, by companies TerraPower in Wyoming and X-energy in Washington State. Then you see private entities like ours, Oklo, developing a reactor; we plan to have ours operational at Idaho National Laboratory in 2026. And then there are a number of other companies developing reactors that are going to be operational here in the US before 2030, and these are new designs.
Peter McCormack: Okay, we're going to get into that. Was it 160 GW you said that was going to come online?
Everett Redmond: That's what an estimate is; so, the nuclear industry, NEI went out and talked to its member companies and got an estimate of about 90 GWs of new nuclear that could be deployed between now and 2050. There have been some other estimates as high as 300 GWs of new nuclear, and so 160 GW or so is kind of a round number. But these are estimates, they're never accurate, but the point is you're seeing a lot of interest in building out new nuclear in addition to the fleet, which ultimately will have to be replaced.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and just to give the listeners some perspective and understanding, myself as well, 160 GWs, when you say that number, is that a daily amount, an annual amount?
Everett Redmond: So, when I say GWs, that's the amount of power being produced instantly, so it's the amount of power that's coming out of the plant.
Peter McCormack: At a constant rate?
Everett Redmond: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay, and so to give us an idea of perspective, what is the amount about that America needs, the amount of energy it needs to be produced?
Everett Redmond: Okay. So, I said that right now, the fleet in the United States produces about 90 GWs of power. We currently supply about 19% to 20% of the electricity in the US. So, of the US electricity consumption, 19% to 20% of that's nuclear, so you can kind of do the maths.
Peter McCormack: So, about 450?
Everett Redmond: Yeah, something like that probably.
Peter McCormack: Interesting. There has been a big decline in investment in nuclear over the last couple of decades, maybe not just now, but there had been a period of decline. In terms of regulation, how much did that contribute to the kind of decline in investment, and is regulation changing to help with new reactors coming online; again, more of a broader question, is the regulation now still too tight?
Everett Redmond: Well, I'm not going to say it's too tight, you need strong regulations. We have a very robust regulatory system in the United States, a very safe operating fleet in the United States, and that's a joint effort between the regulator and the industry. Now, where the challenge comes in is becoming efficient in doing the regulatory procedures, licensing new reactors efficiently, giving credit where credit is due for new designs that are more inherently safe than the existing fleet.
The investment right now in new nuclear is enormous. It's hard for me to comment about previous investment, but right now the investment going on in new nuclear in just enormous, and the regulator is trying to get prepared; there's more work to be done there to become more efficient there. To me, I'm convinced that each of the designs out there, ours and the others, will be able to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US, and in fact there's an application in front of NRC right now that they're going to finish up in about 24 months, so it's for a test reactor, not a commercial reactor; so I'm convinced the NRC can do it.
Now, where the challenge comes in down the road is, talking about that 160 GWs or so, you're looking at 300 reactors or more that need to be built, and that's just for electricity; how does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission get efficient to be able to do that many machines? How does the regulatory system throughout the world be able to become efficient enough to license the number of machines that we need to actually combat climate change?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so what are the parts of the regulatory system that perhaps slow things down; is it finding locations? You're almost saying it has to modernise.
Everett Redmond: Yeah. So right now, reviews take 24 to 36 months depending on the type of design that's out there.
Peter McCormack: That's a review of the design of the reactor?
Everett Redmond: Correct.
Peter McCormack: But if that is approved, would a nuclear location have to be reviewed again?
Everett Redmond: So, this is part of what needs to be looked at is can we do things more efficiently?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Everett Redmond: Environmental issues are obviously a valid concern everywhere; you need to look at the appropriate environmental things, but can you streamline that effort, especially as you get down to smaller machines? Can you streamline the environmental reviews; can you streamline the safety reviews for subsequent machines? So, you license the first one, then you do the second one, third one, fourth one, fifth one, tenth one; how can we take advantage of what we've already done in a very efficient way?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because two to three years for the licence is a long time.
Everett Redmond: It is.
Peter McCormack: It would seem ludicrous if you're creating the IKEA of nuclear reactors to actually go through that again. Do you know how long it takes once they find a location?
Everett Redmond: So, let me come at it this way, if we look at the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program that DoE's put in, and this is a very efficient programme, so the two companies were chosen in 2020, they plan to be operational in 2027, 2028 or by 2030, so you tend to look at about a decade from the time you say go and have a sight to the time you have a reactor up and running; that's going to be reduced quite a bit.
By the way, I should have said this earlier, we're designing machines that are up to 15 MW electric, whereas the Vogtle plants are like 1,100 MW electric, so we're designing small machines. We believe we can build those in about a year.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so when you say when you've got go on the site, but I kind of want to understand the entire timescale. So, say a city is considering a new reactor and they have to find a site, so it's almost just from the point of going, "Okay, we want a reactor", is it then 15 years or is it 12 years?
Everett Redmond: You say you want a reactor, okay, then you have to find a site; that's probably not going to take too long to do because you'll know what the infrastructure is, you'll look at things like transmission, distribution, stuff like that, how you're going to connect it up to the grid. So, you find your site, then you'll have to prepare the licence application that goes into NRC.
So, you pick the company that already has the design, you still have to prepare a licence application to go into the NRC, that's probably a year, a year and a half. Then from there, you go on and put it in front of NRC; you're looking two to three years now, hopefully two years or less to get that done. Then you start construction, depending on the plant design, something like ours, you're looking at about a year, others you could be looking two to four years; so, you can see how that timeframe goes out.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I see. I guess there would be a different constraint on you if they streamlined everything and they could move to the point where they give you the nod and a reactor can be up in a year. If you suddenly got an order yourself for like 10 to 15 of them, how do you, as a company, resource that? There would be constraints on the company themself.
Everett Redmond: Well, of course, but it's not like you're going to have this instantaneously; you're going to see it coming.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Everett Redmond: So, we're engaged with multiple potential customers out there and looking at what their needs are and understanding them. But to your point, we all have to scale up as necessary to be able to deliver the machines, and that's a challenge for the industry as a whole.
Peter McCormack: We do know when there is a need, governments can scale; when they suddenly require a vaccine or they suddenly require masks or they suddenly require the aviation industry to shut down, we have seen governments react very quickly to a pressing need. Now, if the government believes there is a pressing need to decarbonise the atmosphere, then I think the incentive there is to happen.
Everett Redmond: The incentive, that would help. There's a huge incentive right now for private companies to move forward, and private companies I think can scale up faster than the government can.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Everett Redmond: And companies like ours are doing that. What you're also seeing, and this is where it gets kind of interesting for a second, so we've been talking about electricity generation, so nuclear can do more than just electricity, so you're looking at chemical industries, oil industries that need a lot of process heat. So right now, they create process heat; process heat is basically steam, high temperature steam. They do that by burning fossil fuels, natural gas, for example. Well, they need to decarbonise, so they're going to have to move to something else, and to do that, to create process steam, process heat, you're not going to be able to really use wind or solar, so nuclear's a great opportunity there.
Last year, Dow Chemical made an announcement that it's teaming up with X-energy to do an X-energy reactor to do process heat for them, and so they're looking at solving their carbon emissions challenges with nuclear, and you're seeing it in other industries as well.
Peter McCormack: There's one question I've not asked about nuclear before where it kind of comes to mind right now when you talk about the reactors producing steam; does this mean the reactors have a high demand for water or is the steam recycled?
Everett Redmond: So right now, the way electricity is done, with the existing fleet, you have water that flows through the reactor, it gets heated up, it goes to a steam generator, it creates steam. So you have cold water that comes into the steam generator, it gets heated up by the water from the reactor, turns to steam, goes to the turbine, rotates the turbine, you get electricity. Then that water is cooled back down, that steam's cooled back down into water, so those two loops, if you will, are closed.
We do use a body of water, a lake, a river or cooling towers, for example, to do that condensing back, condense that steam back to water. Some of the newer designs can use forced air to do that condensation, so the water usage can be actually quite minimal.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Danny Knowles: Is that why they're often by the sea?
Everett Redmond: Yes, that's a lot of cases because you would have to have to some sort of way to condense that steam back round to water, so they'd need to be near a body of water or have a cooling tower, which of course still needs to have water associated with it. NuScale, for example, is going to build a reactor out at Idaho National Laboratory and that's going to use air to condense the steam back to water. And out west, here in the US, water consumption is a huge issue.
Peter McCormack: Yes.
Everett Redmond: It's a big issue for every place in the world, but for us, it's a major problem.
Peter McCormack: Because just the size of the country and the amount of people that live inland and the amount of people who live quite a distance from water resources?
Everett Redmond: Right, and we've seen the Colorado River is running very, very low, so we've got some huge challenges.
Peter McCormack: Okay, let's learn a little bit more about these fast reactors that you've talked about. In terms of land space, because you say they're much smaller, in terms of land space, how much do they need and what is that in comparison to a traditional reactor?
Everett Redmond: So, it depends on the size of the reactor. So, our reactor, which I've said is up to about 15 MW electric, we're looking at less than half an acre to build a plant on, so not much. The Vogtle 3 and 4 plants, which are 1,100 GW electric, I don't know how many acres they need but it's not a great deal, certainly not compared to say the amount of land you would need for a comparable wind or solar.
Peter McCormack: Of course, yeah. Are there restrictions about how close you can be to homes?
Everett Redmond: That all comes into the environmental considerations, so there are no firm restrictions on how close you can be. So, research reactors at universities are sitting in cities in many cases.
Peter McCormack: I hadn't even thought about research reactors.
Everett Redmond: Oh yeah, they're there.
Peter McCormack: I guess, if it's safe for people to work at these -- is there any increased risk to somebody working…?
Everett Redmond: No.
Peter McCormack: Zero?
Everett Redmond: No.
Peter McCormack: So, if you can work there, you can live there. Some people won't want to live near one.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, most of the reactors in the United States have tended to be built in less populated areas, but that's not going to be case necessarily moving forward.
Peter McCormack: Okay. So, in terms of your design, it goes up to 15 MW?
Everett Redmond: We're up to 15 MW electric.
Peter McCormack: Do you have a single design that has a range of output it can do or is it multiple designs?
Everett Redmond: So right now, we're focusing on kind of a single design, but you're looking at what the customer wants, we're looking at what the market needs.
Danny Knowles: What does 15 MWs mean; how many people can that provide power for?
Everett Redmond: So, the average home in the United States uses about 1.2 kW, so 15 MWs, I'd have to do the maths; so 15 MWs, 15,000 divided by 1.2, so somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 to 15,000 homes.
Danny Knowles: Okay. So, you'd need multiple in every city?
Everett Redmond: Yeah. Our reactor's not necessarily going to be used to power a large city, our reactor's going to be used by different customers that need something. So, let's use Bitcoin as a good example; I'm going to refer to them generically as datacentres because it's computationally intensive, so you have a certain amount of power that you need there, a reactor like ours could potentially supply all of that power that you need.
Datacentres need varying amounts of power, and so depending on the company and what their desires are and what their needs are, the reactor like ours could fit that. Also smaller locations, remote locations for example, where you bring in diesel fuel, that use less power could be powered by us; military bases are another good example.
Peter McCormack: Okay. It seems like you're servicing more the private sector and you would suit maybe Google could be a customer.
Everett Redmond: Absolutely, something like that. So, you have the large utilities, like Southern Company that's building the two Vogtle plants, so they provide power to everyone as a whole. You're seeing a lot of companies now that want to look at securing their own power, and so not be relying upon the grid. You're seeing the Department of Defense thinking about that for military bases as well, so not being reliant upon the grid, being self-sustaining, and companies like ours, with our 15 MW reactor, could provide that power.
Peter McCormack: And I guess someone like Tesla, who have moved to Texas, there was a big issue with Texas a year ago, was it?
Everett Redmond: No, a couple of years ago; you're talking about the winter storm?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, I guess they'll be saying, "Well, we could de-risk this for us". Is it cost-effective for them as well?
Everett Redmond: So, our machine is going to be able to be cost-effective relative to what's currently provided. So, we also are approaching this from a unique perspective of a build, don't operate model. So, we're going to build the reactors, operate them and then sell power; that's a little bit different than the other companies. But at the end of the day, all of the nuclear companies are developing machines that will be cost-effective.
Peter McCormack: So, say if it was a Tesla, they wouldn't buy the reactor from you, they would buy the power output from the reactor from you?
Everett Redmond: In our case, yes; in another case, they probably could buy the power directly from somebody else and they have another person that operates a reactor.
Peter McCormack: Can you talk about how much one of these costs to construct?
Everett Redmond: No, not really. It's hard for me to answer that question at the moment.
Peter McCormack: I don't know if we're talking about $100 million, $1 billion, $10 billion.
Everett Redmond: So, for something like small reactors, microreactors as they're called, less than 15 MW electric, you're going to be looking in the hundreds of millions.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we should get one, Danny!
Everett Redmond: Something like the Vogtle plants are in the billions.
Peter McCormack: These are private nuclear reactors for private businesses; does anything like this exist now or is everything just largescale reactors providing the grid?
Everett Redmond: Right now, in the United States, it's largescale reactors providing the grid. You have a lot of research reactors, small reactors that are operating at universities and national laboratories. The military, the Navy has microreactors that are powering its ships, aircraft carriers and submarines.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's fascinating, it's a whole new business model.
Everett Redmond: It is, and you're seeing this because of the climate conversation, the climate change. The urgency associated with that is driving companies to look at new solutions; they need to decarbonise their operations. The oil sector needs to decarbonise its operations; there's still going to be a need for oil going forward, no doubt about that, but they need to decarbonise the manner in which they extract that oil out of the ground and they process it, and so nuclear can do that too.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we still need oil for planes, but if we can get to a point where we're not burning oil for --
Everett Redmond: You're still going to need it for things like plastics and stuff like that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think it's getting away from burning oil to power the grid.
Everett Redmond: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: That kind of thing seems very wasteful.
Everett Redmond: To be honest, oil's not used a great deal for powering the grid, certainly not in the US; that's coal, natural gas, wind, solar, hydro, nuclear.
Peter McCormack: I guess if we get away from coal as well and natural gas.
Everett Redmond: Coal is dropping, natural gas is -- so right now, in the US, 20% of the electricity is nuclear, about 20% of it is renewables, and that's a combination of --
Danny Knowles: This is the UK, there may be something like this for the US but I don't know.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, there is. So, let me see here, 18% is other sources, so you're 13% nuclear, 47% renewables. So, in the US, we're 20% renewables, 20% nuclear and then the remainder is split between coal and natural gas.
Danny Knowles: We've got a lot of transfers there as well though, so I guess probably the stuff from France is nuclear, you'd imagine.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, and for us, we do import, so states like New York will import from Canada, but for the most part, we generate what we have.
Peter McCormack: 13% nuclear. What would the definition of renewable be; no waste?
Danny Knowles: I don't know what that would be, especially not in their context; I don't know what they mean.
Everett Redmond: So, renewables have a tendency to mean wind, solar, hydroelectric or maybe even biomass. It's unfortunate; nuclear is carbon free, just like those other energy sources are, we should all be treated the same. What we're seeing in the United States now is finally you're seeing legislation, like the Inflation Reduction Act, that treat all of them the same, so looking at production tax credits that cover clean energy sources, not renewables.
Peter McCormack: Some would argue it's not clean because of the nuclear waste, which we'll get to.
Danny Knowles: This is actually a good way to put in context the GW hours because the current demand in the UK is 40 GWs, so it's like 5 times the amount of power that the UK demands right now will be coming online in nuclear; is that right?
Peter McCormack: Four times.
Everett Redmond: So your demand is 30 GWs, 40 GWs, and I said right now in the US, we generate about 90 GWs with nuclear.
Danny Knowles: Right.
Everett Redmond: So we're generating considerably more than what your country needs as a whole.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think charts like this are misleading, I think charts like this are not helping us because the term "renewable", I don't know if you could argue that nuclear is renewable, but maybe you could certainly argue nuclear is green. You can definitely argue zero carbon, and I think that would be better, fossil fuel or carbon, zero carbon. What's biomass; is that low carbon?
Danny Knowles: I really don't know.
Everett Redmond: I'm not an expert on it, but I think the idea is you have biomass material that had captured carbon and then when you burn it, you're releasing carbon, so you're neutral, carbon neutral.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so you probably just want to have carbon, zero carbon -- dude, I don't know; this is emotive, fossil fuels is emotive because they've been demonised, renewables is emotive because it's for environmentalists, and other sources it's confused; whereas, if this was a practical chart based on the goals of decarbonising the world, then you would just want to separate them from carbon, carbon to zero carbon.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, agreed.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Everett Redmond: And within that, you could do different designations, because you're seeing right now also moving away from coal to natural gas, that's a carbon reduction, so natural gas tends to be less carbon-emitting than coal does.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. It's just somebody needs to do a better job of this; you'd know who'd be good at that, that Alex Epstein guy, he'd be pretty good at that. And those transfers, you kind of want to know. I wonder how much that transfers has gone up; is there any timescale to this?
Danny Knowles: This is live, I don't know; oh here you go, past week.
Everett Redmond: It's all fascinating.
Peter McCormack: So, I want to see transfers over the past year.
Danny Knowles: So we've actually given power to France over the last year.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Danny Knowles: That's interesting.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Okay, so go to that transfers chart; what's the red line on that?
Danny Knowles: France.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, look at that, and then --
Danny Knowles: So, maybe that's when their nuclear fleet was being repaired.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, they did have a number of shutdowns; I think that's for maintenance.
Peter McCormack: So, we're sending power to France and then look at that red line shoot up right at the end of the year, Danny.
Danny Knowles: That's probably when, I guess, their nuclear came back online; I would imagine it's the cheapest place to get transfers from because they're close.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's also at the end of the year, where everything changed. See, that's going, what, November 2022; where that's lowest dip, November 2022?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, end of November.
Peter McCormack: From November 2022 to where's the peak?
Danny Knowles: End of the year.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's that requirement that we suddenly had. Interesting. So, can you tell me a little bit about, and this is more for my own fascination, how a reactor works; how does it do its job?
Everett Redmond: Sure. So, reactors use uranium, and uranium, when you dig it out of the ground, it has primarily two, we call isotopes, two versions of uranium; one called uranium-235, one called uranium-238. Uranium-235 is 0.7% of the uranium when you dig it out of the ground, so we need to enrich that, increase the amount of U-235. So, for a reactor like ours, we need to take it up to about 20%, U-235, the remainder being U-238 in simple terms. The fleet currently takes it up about 5% and then the remainder's U-238.
Peter McCormack: How do you do that; how do you enrich it?
Everett Redmond: So, I'll start from scratch. When you dig it out of the ground, it ends up being a form called yellowcake; you may have heard that term.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I have.
Everett Redmond: That's because it basically looks like yellow powder. Then you ship that off to what we call a conversion facility where you take it and you convert it into a gas called uranium hexafluoride. Then you take that gas and you send it to an enrichment facility which typically uses centrifuges, so a salad spinner like you would have at home to get the water out, basically that's what a centrifuge is; you run the gas in, it spins it really fast and then the heavier atoms, like the U-238, and the difference is minimal between U-238 and U-235, three neutrons, but it'll move to the outside a little bit and you can separate out and then you can enrich up the U-235, so, basically a giant salad spinner, if you will, centrifuge.
Peter McCormack: Is the uranium dangerous when it's mined?
Everett Redmond: No, not from a radiation perspective, no, not at all.
Peter McCormack: How the hell do they figure this out? "See that yellow stuff in the ground, if we spin it in this centrifuge, we can use it to make nuclear energy"!
Everett Redmond: Yeah, it's impressive. So, then we take it after this, enriched we take it to a fuel fabrication facility and we create fuel assemblies.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Everett Redmond: So, fuel assemblies are basically we'll have fuel pellets, so we'll have little pellets of uranium dioxide in tubes of metal, zircaloy tubes. You take a bunch of those tubes and they're, at the end of the day, about the size of a pencil, a little bit bigger than a pencil; you put a bunch of those tubes together in what we call an assembly, so a square assembly with a bunch of tubes in them, and then put those in the reactor.
Now, in the reactor, what happens is you have neutrons that will hit the uranium-235 atom and then split it, fission it, so the uranium-235 atom will split into two pieces and you'll get off of it two or three neutrons that come out. And then what you need is one of those neutrons to go on and split another uranium-235 atom to create that chain reaction; that's the fission process. So when that happens, then as it fissions, it creates a lot of heat, the heat is what heats up the water, so the uranium dioxide pellets in the tubes get hot. That heat is transferred over to the water, the coolant, which then goes over to the steam generator.
Peter McCormack: If you could see it, is anything visually happening?
Everett Redmond: No, you cannot see the reaction occurring.
Peter McCormack: So, those fuel rods go down into the water but all the reactions are happening above?
Everett Redmond: So, a fuel assembly for a commercial light water reactor is about 14 feet long; 12 feet of that is what we call the active fuel zone. So, you have the fuel assemblies that go into the water, into the reactor, and then within that 12-foot active fuel zone is where the reaction occurs.
Peter McCormack: Okay, but the simple science of this is you're heating up rods.
Everett Redmond: And that heats up a coolant.
Peter McCormack: That heats up a coolant, and that creates steam that powers a turbine.
Everett Redmond: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: It doesn't sound like a complicated bit of kit, but when you look at a nuclear reactor, it's huge; what's everything that's going into that, then?
Everett Redmond: Well, you have a lot of safety systems and things like that.
Peter McCormack: Is that what it is?
Everett Redmond: And in the case of the water-cooled reactors, they're under very high pressure. We have two versions of reactors in the United States we call pressurised water reactors or boiling water reactors; in both cases, they are very high pressure. In the case of the pressurised water reactor, the water in the core never boils, so it just remains solid but it's very hot. It's like if you had a pressure cooker on your stove or the one pot or something where you keep everything under pressure and the water doesn't boil inside; it's the same concept except much higher pressure. In a boiling water reactor, we let the water boil a bit and produce the steam in the top portion of the reactor, however it's still under high pressure.
Now, for some of the new designs, like the one we're working on, liquid metal, we're operating at basically atmospheric pressure; I don't need to keep things at high pressure, I'm operating at atmospheric pressure. As a result, I don't need large pressure-retaining systems.
Peter McCormack: When I was looking into aircrafts, I believe most aircrafts have now like seven redundancy systems in place to ensure that, whatever happens, that plane can keep flying; is that similar with a nuclear reactor, a number of redundancy systems?
Everett Redmond: I don't know the exact number, but there are definitely redundancy systems throughout.
Peter McCormack: What are the main safety features of a nuclear -- what are the things that you have to prepare for?
Everett Redmond: Well, you have to prepare for loss of heat sink, so where you're not able to reject the heat, so you have to be able to deal with that, and that's probably your primary issue. You have to deal with natural disasters, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and stuff like that .
Peter McCormack: But the heat sink, that was the issue that happened at Chernobyl, right?
Everett Redmond: Fukushima.
Peter McCormack: Fukushima?
Everett Redmond: Yeah, so when the tsunami came in and wiped out everything they had no more active cooling on the reactor.
Peter McCormack: Oh, cooling. So, the overheat creates the pressure that can cause the blow-off event.
Everett Redmond: The overheat resulted in water boiling in the reactor and steam production. So, for machines like ours and some of other advanced reactors, you're never going to get in that situation because they can go indefinitely without operator intervention.
Peter McCormack: Excellent. In terms of waste, that's another concern that people bring up; this was one that I was confused about yesterday with Anthony. He said, was it a year, the can thing; was it a year or in your lifetime?
Danny Knowles: No, that was in your lifetime, he said the amount of nuclear waste one person produces would fit in a can of coke or whatever.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. But I was like, "Okay, but the current population of the US is 320 million whatever, that's 320 million cans of coke, but every year, new people are being born". So, when you start to talk in hundreds of millions, like one on its own's not a lot, it feels like a lot of waste.
Everett Redmond: All of the waste that's been generated, spent fuel I should say, that's been generated in the United States could sit on an American football field at about probably less than ten yards deep.
Peter McCormack: Oh really?
Everett Redmond: It's not, at the end of the day, that much material because it is so energy dense in terms of the amount of power that you get out of it relative to the amount of, say, coal or natural gas that's got to be burned. I don't know those statistics off the top of my head, but if you go to NEI's website, nei.org, you can find comparisons between how much power comes out of one pellet of uranium verses how many barrels of oil versus things like that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he did say the waste from coal is a lot higher.
Everett Redmond: You have a lot of waste that comes out, yes.
Peter McCormack: You mentioned earlier that you worked on casket…
Everett Redmond: I worked on dry cask storage systems, so basically the containers that we put the -- we actually call it used fuel instead of spent fuel because we're going to be able to be reusing it -- the containers that we put the used fuel in to sit on site after they come out of the spent fuel pool.
Peter McCormack: So, that's the kind of thing that would become part of dealing with the waste ongoing?
Everett Redmond: Yeah. So basically on the back end of the fuel cycle right now, you operate the reactor when you shut down and you go into a refuelling. You pull fuel assemblies out, the ones that you're going to discharge, you pull them out, you put them into a spent fuel pool. They sit there for maybe five years, then they come out of the spent fuel pool and they go into a dry cask storage system. So, what is a dry cask storage system?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. See if you can find one, Danny.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, actually, you can pull one up pretty easily there; it's basically a steel cylinder. Inside of it, there's going to be what we call a basket; that's actually the same as what's in the spent fuel pool. So, think of an egg crate where you have a structure and you put the eggs in, this is going to be a metal structure and you're going to put the fuel assemblies in it. Yeah, those are some good images of quite a few different kinds.
The canister goes then inside of what we call an overpack. So, the overpack can be steel, concrete or a mix of steel and concrete, concrete's cheap and easy and a great radiation shield, and then it just sits there. It's passively safe, there are no active systems in it, there are no moving parts in this. There will be some airflow, so entry points for air to come in, say at the bottom, go past the container to remove heat and come out the top, but it just sits there.
Peter McCormack: Okay, and its goal is to just block radiation?
Everett Redmond: Correct, and let the fuel sit there until such time as a repository, deep geologic repository is open, and you'll move that fuel to the deep geologic repository and ultimately dispose of it.
Peter McCormack: Do those sites already exist?
Everett Redmond: So, in the United States, no, we don't have one.
Peter McCormack: Who do you send it to?
Everett Redmond: Right now, it stays at the site.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Everett Redmond: So ultimately, the federal government in the United States, ultimately, the federal government's going to take it and dispose of it, or companies like ours are going to take some of that fuel and then recycle it, and then that waste would ultimately go to a deep geologic repository. But countries, Finland for example, and Sweden, both are making great progress on deep geologic repositories right now.
Peter McCormack: So, explain what that is, a deep geological repository; I can tell what it is from the description, but what is the work that's going into this?
Everett Redmond: So, a deep geologic repository's basically tunnels in the earth at certain depths where you will store the material you want to store, and then you put it in there and then you close it off and you leave it.
Peter McCormack: This was all discussed in The Fifth Risk.
Danny Knowles: Was it?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, I read this book called The Fifth Risk, which I brought up on the show a bunch of times, but this was one of the jobs that the federal government does and that you would want them to do.
Everett Redmond: The federal government certainly is a good organisation to do it, and there's a private company called Deep Isolation which is actually looking at deep geologic disposal using borehole technology, so there are some private entities looking into this as well.
Peter McCormack: What about in the seabed?
Everett Redmond: That has certainly been looked at in the past; that brings in a whole lot of other political considerations.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I just can't see a scenario where it would ever happen, even if it was proven to be 100% safe; I think people would have too much fear about it.
Everett Redmond: Safety is not the concern there, it's going to be more of the political challenges, and I don't begin to understand territorial waters, international waters and all that stuff.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Can you tell me anything about fusion? You'll probably know more than I do, but I've been following it with great interest. I saw the recent advancement where they said that they'd, for the first time, got more power out than they put in.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, so that's the Lawrence Livermore facility which uses lasers to hit a small pellet if you will, and they got a little bit more power out of the fusion reaction than the amount of, if I get this correct, the amount of energy that the lasers imparted upon it. Now, you still needed a whole lot more power to generate the whole facility, operate the facility.
Peter McCormack: Of course, yeah.
Everett Redmond: So, at the end of the day, you didn't generate, I don't think, more power than what was truly gone into it, but more power came out of the fusion than the lasers imparted upon it. The fusion industry's fascinating, but the big issue with fusion is we don't know if it ultimately will work.
Peter McCormack: What are the barriers they think that will stop it working; is it amount of plasma holding something at that heat?
Everett Redmond: So you're having to, in simple terms for a second, recreate the conditions of the Sun, because the Sun is a giant fusion machine, and so you need to create that condition, and you could do it a couple of different ways. You have to get that immense amount of heat which will permit your typically deuterium and tritium atoms to fuse together and then they'll release energy; they also release a number of neutrons when they do that, but they'll release the energy that way, but you have to get that immense heat.
Now, one of the things that's enabled fusion right now, it's been a great advancement for fusion over the last, say, decade or more, has been the advancements in laser technology and advancements in superconducting magnets and things like that. So, you need to have magnetic fields, for example, in some cases, not all, magnetic fields to control the reaction and heat it up. I'm not a fusion expert, but the number of companies doing fusion is enormous.
Peter McCormack: Well, compared to me, you're a fusion expert. Do you think they'll do it?
Everett Redmond: I think we'll know a lot more within the next ten years; I think, within this decade, we'll have some very good ideas whether it's going to be viable or not.
Peter McCormack: There's a massive amount of investment going into it.
Everett Redmond: There is, and there are a lot of companies; the UK has at least one or two companies doing it, Canada does, the US has a number of companies doing it.
Peter McCormack: Do you have any friends in fusion? We'd love to talk to one.
Everett Redmond: I do actually.
Peter McCormack: We might tap you up for that.
Everett Redmond: Yeah, put you in contact with some. And then there's an entire association; so, I mentioned the Nuclear Energy Institute which I worked at, the trade association for the commercial nuclear power industry, there's also the Fusion Industry Association in the US.
Peter McCormack: If fusion is successful, there's a chance that that, over a long enough timeframe, ends the fission industry because it's lower risk, right?
Everett Redmond: So, there is some waste that comes out but not the same.
Peter McCormack: What kind of waste?
Everett Redmond: Well, at the end of the day, as I mentioned, when you have fusion, typically, not all the time, not everybody's design, but most of the designs will use deuterium and tritium, and as a result, you get neutrons out. Neutrons will activate material, so you'll get some radioactive material from the structures around it, but you don't get the by-products that you do from fission, because in fission, we're splitting the atom, creating what we call fission products that are radioactive; in fusion, you're just combining two things. So, it is less waste but as I said, at the end of the day, we have to prove it works, and then --
Peter McCormack: Commercialise it.
Everett Redmond: Exactly, you have to make a machine that is commercially viable. So, it's one thing to prove it, like they did at Livermore, and get a little bit more energy out than they put in, it's a whole different ballgame to then take it and commercialise it.
Peter McCormack: 50 years?
Everett Redmond: Like I said, I think we'll know a lot more within this decade.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, all right. Well, look, it's been super fascinating. I really just want to end on asking what's coming in the future; is there new innovation coming in nuclear that we haven't talked about, things we should be looking out for?
Everett Redmond: Yeah. So let me just hit on a few of the things that are occurring in the United States for a second here. So, my company designed the 15 MW liquid metal fast reactor we're going to deploy at Idaho National Laboratory. You've got the Department of Defense working on a project called Project Pele which will be a mobile reactor, much smaller, less in a MW range, also to be built at Idaho National Laboratory. And then we have a couple of larger projects, like TerraPower and X-energy.
TerraPower's a liquid metal fast reactor, much larger though, about 345 MW electric. What's neat about them is they're going to attach to it a molten salt thermal storage system. So they're going to be able to peak out at about 500 MW electric, say, when the solar goes offline; and when solar's online, they put less than 345 MW electric on the grid and use the rest to heat up thermal storage.
Then you've got a company, X-energy, designing a pebble-bed high-temperature gas reactor, so you've got pebbles instead of the fuel rods I talked about. And then we have a company, Kairos, doing molten salt, so they're using molten salt instead of liquid metal or water or gas for the coolant, and they're going to build a test reactor down in Oak Ridge.
We're likely to be the first, planning to be the first commercial machine up and running in 2026, but the amount of activity is huge. And then there's GE Hitachi doing their small modular reactor, boiling water reactor, planning to build up in Canada by 2030. And then NuScale, with their light water reactor SMR, planning to build at Idaho National Laboratory. I think I've covered just about everything, but it's a lot of activity between now and 2030.
The one thing I would like to just leave with is the amount of innovation in this sector is enormous, and the amount of interest and growth is enormous. In the United States, you've seen it, bipartisan support from the government level. You're seeing government support in countries like Canada, the UK is focusing heavily on it now too, and you're seeing a lot of this develop more with small modular reactors. And the small modular reactors really offer that opportunity for flexibility in size deployment as well as easier to build, cheaper to build; and the fact that you're building something that's smaller in terms of power production means less capital cost to begin with, and then moving some of that construction in the factory reduces costs further.
The other thing is, and I touched on this a little bit before, is we're going to see a huge interest in energy sectors outside of just electricity, so desalination, process heat, hydrogen production, hydrogen for say fuel cell vehicles instead of electricity, hydrogen for decarbonising say the steel industry; nuclear can do a lot of this, and it's going to.
Peter McCormack: Fascinating. Okay, if people want to find out more, where you would like to send them to?
Everett Redmond: You can take a look at the Nuclear Energy Institute's website, nei.org; it's a good place to start in the United States. And then from there, you can get connected with other companies, like ours, Oklo, oklo.com, and other entities.
Peter McCormack: This was absolutely fascinating. Everett, thank you so much.
Everett Redmond: My pleasure.
