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A nuclear power renaissance for us all · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:07
  Mainstream media has betrayed our trust.
• 0:10
  Rather than tell us the whole story about the important issues of the day, they tell us only what they want us to hear.
• 0:16
  Your host, Tom Harris and Todd Royal will bring you the other side of the story.
• 0:27
  More and more these days, we're hearing that a nuclear renaissance is underway.
• 0:32
  That means an expansion of nuclear power to perhaps achieve the kind of goals that we had decades ago when the nuclear power industry started.
• 0:40
  So is this really happening?
• 0:42
  And what does it mean for America that we'll have more and more nuclear reactors?
• 0:46
  What are the main obstacles to be overcome?
• 0:49
  Is this really safe?
• 0:50
  Is it too expensive?
• 0:51
  All of these questions and more will be answered by my co-host, Todd Royal.
• 0:56
  Todd, of course, is a nuclear expert.
• 0:58
  And so, although he's not staying on the show for more than a few more episodes, he's actually the one to interview on this topic.
• 1:06
  So, Todd, it's great to have you back again.
• 1:08
  You're going to be staying with us for what, a couple more weeks, right?
• 1:12
  Yep.
• 1:12
  I think we're going to be able to go till about mid, yeah, like mid-April.
• 1:16
  So yeah, it's I've I've just I've loved my over a year and a half with you, and uh, but unfortunately, uh a new a new professional job and children and family is gonna is gonna take me is it's gonna take me away from you, which which makes me uh happy for all these new opportunities, but it makes me sad as well, you know, to not be able to be with you every week.
• 1:40
  Yeah, well, it's been a good team for the last year, that's for sure.
• 1:43
  It has absolutely so you know, this actually leads right into my first question, and that is uh what sort of work do you do related to nuclear power?
• 1:52
  Well, so I am with a firm called BP Capital.
• 1:55
  Uh it is a investment management and uh investment management, investment advisory, capital placement, capital raise firm in in uh Dallas, Texas.
• 2:06
  It was founded by uh the now deceased oil and gas billionaire T bean P-Boon Pickens.
• 2:13
  Oh, yeah.
• 2:14
  I I'm a I'm a partner in our firm in charge of our in charge of our nuclear power.
• 2:19
  Um, I'm also uh really I'm the guy who also runs our strategic consulting division.
• 2:25
  And so when things like Iran happen, uh they come to me and say, Okay, Todd, how does that affect our firm and our our firm and our practice, and how do how do you see nuclear power moving forward in kind of this nude geopolitical world?
• 2:42
  Yeah, no, so that's great.
• 2:43
  So the kind of questions I'm asking you are ones that you've probably thought about for a long time.
• 2:49
  Yeah, so can you tell us the difference between different types of nuclear reactors?
• 2:54
  Like in Canada, for example, I understand they don't have to enrich the uranium at all to run a can do reactor, but how much do you enrich in the United States?
• 3:04
  Uh typically we're at five percent.
• 3:05
  Then when whenever you can go to it's like five to ten percent, then you can do what I like to call the super unleaded of uh of nuclear fuels, which is called Halo, high SA, low enriched uranium goes up to 20%.
• 3:20
  Kind of your nirvana of reactors is what would be called a fast breeder reactor where you can actually use some people refer to it as nuclear waste.
• 3:28
  I refer to it as spent nuclear fuel, because when you're done with the current batch of nuclear fuel, only about five to ten percent of their uranium's even used.
• 3:39
  Ah, and so you have tens of billions of dollars of frankly, nuclear fuel sitting around all sorts of reactors in Canada, the United States, Russia, China, and other places that use um that use nuclear power.
• 3:57
  And so kind of your apex of nuclear fuel is going to be when you could do what's called a fast breeder reactor that can actually use uh spent nuclear fuel.
• 4:05
  Um wow, we'd have fuel for thousands of years then.
• 4:08
  Thousands of years.
• 4:09
  I mean, you truly would close the energy loop.
• 4:14
  So you my gosh, you've got hundreds, if not thousands of years of fuel just sitting, um, just sitting there.
• 4:22
  No, there's not a fast-breeder reactor that can go exclusively on spent nuclear fuel.
• 4:27
  But what you're really talking about is no longer eventually no longer having waste.
• 4:33
  So not only would you have an energy source that doesn't have any emissions while it's giving you the power to make electricity or process heat or steam or desalinization or hydrogen or co-generation or district heat, whatever the use case for the reactor, but now any of the quote-unquote nuclear waste that's sitting uh whether in a geological repository, a government facility, or in the United States' case, on the actual nuclear power plants themselves, they could be used in uh in a reactor.
• 5:08
  And then your reactor types are um there's a micro reactor, those typically can go from 500 kilowatts, something in literally the back of a pickup truck, to about 1.5 megawatts to even 10 megawatts for our viewer or listeners, megawatt typically means um I can a thousand people will get electricity.
• 5:31
  It's a little less these days, but for the purposes of our discussion, just say if one megawatt means 1,000 people or a thousand homes are going to get electricity.
• 5:42
  Um then you go up to what's called the SMRs or small module reactors, modular means the way you construct something.
• 5:50
  You as an engineer would appreciate this, where you construct all the components in a factory, and then you build it on site.
• 5:58
  Um the the goal is to lessen the time of construction and then you know how hard it is to build something from scratch, a particular nuclear power plant on site.
• 6:11
  Those typically go from let's call it 10 megawatts, some we'll say 100, all the way up to 300 megawatts.
• 6:19
  Uh the Rolls-Royce SMR SMRs at 474, though they're still calling it a Rolls-Royce SMR, though technically it doesn't really fit in the international energy agent uh pardon me, the international atomic energy agencies definition of an SMR.
• 6:36
  So an SMR, let's just say 10 megawatts, up to 300.
• 6:41
  Some people go to 175, some people go to 250, but the sweet spots kind of 300.
• 6:47
  And then you've got Rolls-Royce at 474, and then you have what's called your gigawatt scale reactors.
• 6:52
  That's what most reactors are in the world.
• 6:55
  They can be a pressurized water reactor, a light water reactor, uh, a boiling water reactor.
• 7:02
  Typically, what most people say is probably the best reactor in the world is the can-do reactor in Canada.
• 7:09
  Wow, thank you.
• 7:11
  If if I were King Todd, I would build, I would be building can do reactors all over the world.
• 7:19
  And gigawatt for our listeners means about a million people are going to get electricity or a million homes.
• 7:27
  It's what you see in in large power plants in Canada, the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Bulgaria, the the power plant in Iran is a gigawatt scale, the one that's been hit.
• 7:42
  The the one in Ukraine, which is the largest one in largest one in Europe.
• 7:46
  I think that one's over eight gigawatts of power come from the Zappa uh Zappa Burita plant.
• 7:53
  So that's what that's kind of where you are.
• 7:56
  All of those large ones are based on water-cooled technology, meaning the reactor is cooled by water.
• 8:03
  And then finally, to throw the ball back to you here, the advanced reactors are what's called a generation four reactor.
• 8:10
  Those are non-water-cooled reactors.
• 8:13
  They can be cooled by high temperature gas, helium, molten salts, lead bismuth.
• 8:20
  And those typically, the reason you use one of those is they're smaller.
• 8:25
  They typically can be SMRs, they can be put in remote locations, manufacturings for steam process heat, and they they can get hotter than a gigawatt scale reactor, which gets to about 250 to 400 degrees Celsius.
• 8:42
  The goal is eventually that these advanced reactors will get all the way up to 950 degrees Celsius, 1200 degrees, 1600 degrees.
• 8:51
  And if if they reach, if they ever reach 1600 degrees, then that means you really can begin to quote unquote decarbonize and not use fossil fuels.
• 9:01
  And instead, I can use uh uh nuclear, you know, nuclear fission technology for, like I said, process heat, steam, desalinization, hydrogen, steel manufacturing, petrochemicals, all of those heavy industry that needs uh fossil fuels because they can reach uh those high heat levels that are needed for those products to be made.
• 9:24
  Yeah.
• 9:25
  So across the world, how many reactors would you see typically?
• 9:28
  I mean, uh what do it's about a thousand or something?
• 9:31
  Yeah, there's a little bit, there's a little over, I think there's a little over a thousand.
• 9:34
  The United States still leads the world.
• 9:36
  Uh we've got 92 in existence, and we have other ones coming online right now.
• 9:42
  The leading technology in the world is still the Westinghouse technology, the AP 1000, the South Koreans, uh, their reactors based off Westinghouse, the Chinese, uh the A, the A, I think it's the APR 1400, meaning it's 1.4 gigawatts.
• 10:00
  That's based off Westinghouse technology.
• 10:02
  Now, I will tell you, you can make the argument that the actual best builders, meaning from the moment I think about a nuclear power plant to the moment I decommission or really dealing with the spent fuel are the Russians.
• 10:16
  It falls under one company called called Razatom, Ruzatom, Rose Adams.
• 10:22
  It's R-O-S-A-T-O-M.
• 10:25
  It's owned by the it's owned by the Russian state.
• 10:28
  Some people will tell you it was founded by Vladimir Putin, but they are the absolute best in the world at financing them, building them the fuel for something like a can do reactor.
• 10:40
  Uh 20, I think it's over 25% of all American nuclear reactors get their fuel from Russia still.
• 10:47
  Really?
• 10:48
  Wow.
• 10:49
  All uh they are the global leaders in Halo.
• 10:53
  So any advanced reactor right now will not work unless you are unless you want to use uh Russian Halo fuel.
• 11:00
  What is Halo fuel?
• 11:02
  Halo is that what I said a moment ago, like a the super unleaded fuel of reactors, meaning these advanced reactors, because they're running at hotter temperatures, it is a different type of reactor.
• 11:15
  It needs to get it's hotter, it needs a different kind of fuel, and that's referred as a halo fuel high, I say low enriched uranium.
• 11:26
  The uranium is rich enriched to about 20%.
• 11:29
  It can come in triso form, it can come uh in in hate Halo form, but the fuel is essentially the way you really kind of look at it, is I've always thought like a can do is like regular fuel, then you've got your premium fuel, which is the you know, it's gonna be enriched like that five to ten percent range, and then you have your soup your super unleaded fuel, which is Halu or these advanced reactors, companies like taropower.
• 11:55
  I'm thinking of U.S.
• 11:56
  companies, TerraPower, Kairos Power, X Energy, Um, Valor Atomics, Terrestrial Energy, Natura resources.
• 12:04
  Um, these are companies that need this this Halo fuel for their advanced reactors, these are all non-water-cooled uh reactor technology uh companies.
• 12:16
  Yeah.
• 12:16
  So I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, okay.
• 12:18
  So why were the Iranians enriching fuel to 60%?
• 12:23
  They say it wasn't weapons.
• 12:25
  Do you think that has any credibility at all?
• 12:27
  Not a bit.
• 12:28
  I mean, we we certainly see that they were they were not telling the truth.
• 12:33
  They were lying.
• 12:35
  Whatever you may, whatever you may think about this, they didn't need to enrich it to that level.
• 12:41
  They're they're the same people that said we do not have long-range ballistic missiles, and yet last week they fired two missiles almost 4,000 miles at Diego Garcia.
• 12:51
  So I would not believe the Iranians if they if I was looking up at a sunny sky and they said it and they said the sun was brightly shining, I would still look at them cross-eyed and go, I don't believe you.
• 13:04
  Yeah, it's funny that they're American commentators on left-wing media who say, no, no, no, the Iranians were not trying to develop nuclear weapons.
• 13:11
  I mean, surely that's just wishful thinking.
• 13:14
  Well, it's wishful thinking.
• 13:16
  It's it's also unfortunately with American media and Western media, they're a bunch of liars.
• 13:22
  You can't believe them anymore.
• 13:23
  Because it's become it's such propaganda.
• 13:27
  You really gotta really value a person like Senator John Fetterman, who's going against his party and going against his own political future by saying he supports the attacks and he doesn't believe the Iranians when the rest of his entire party's become a you know, they really become a bunch of radical Jacobi, you know, Jacobans, they're they're radical socialists, these are radical non-assimilated people now.
• 13:55
  And so I wouldn't believe a word, whether it's MS now or CNN or I've heard some things from even CNBC where you go, that's that's not even true.
• 14:06
  Yeah, that there's no truth to that.
• 14:09
  You just hate Donald Trump and Republicans, and you don't give a damn what happens to anybody, just so as long as the U.S.
• 14:16
  Democratic Party or the Mark Carney parties of the world stay in power.
• 14:21
  Yeah.
• 14:21
  I think one of the problems is that people in Congress are allowed to have in their portfolio weapons investment.
• 14:28
  So I mean, you get people like Nancy Pelosi, I assume.
• 14:31
  I don't know her portfolio, but these people make money when there's wars, you know, when they have billions of dollars of weapons get shipped to the Ukraine.
• 14:40
  I mean, do you think that we should allow them to hold armament stock when they're actually making decisions to do with armament?
• 14:48
  Well, I think what I would do is I would allow them that you're not going to make any you would you can make no investments as long as you're in Congress.
• 14:56
  Good point.
• 14:57
  You would fall under the same insider trading laws as you and I would.
• 15:02
  You and I are not you and if you and I made some of the investments that Nancy Pelosi, but even in her defense, both parties do it.
• 15:12
  You and I would end up in prison.
• 15:14
  Our securities and exchange commission, um, we would be in prison for insider trading.
• 15:19
  Oh, absolutely we would.
• 15:20
  And so if if if I had my way, not only would you not hold that as long as you were a member of the U.S.
• 15:28
  Congress, you are not allowed to make one investment.
• 15:32
  Or everything you come to Congress with, that's what you have, and it all needs to stay into a blind trust.
• 15:39
  I know our topic is nuclear power, but I just want to say a little more about the Iran circumstance.
• 15:45
  I have arguments with family members who think that it was totally wrong to attack Iran.
• 15:50
  But if you waited uh another few months and then you started to attack Iran, or then you know they had nuclear weapons, we'd be in a far worse circumstance, wouldn't we?
• 16:00
  Well, I'll even I'll go a step further.
• 16:03
  Do you know the kind of the creed of uh the state of Israel?
• 16:09
  Like what is what what do they say in Israel?
• 16:14
  Not sure.
• 16:14
  I don't know.
• 16:15
  They say never again, meaning we will never again have a Holocaust happen to us.
• 16:22
  So any go look at any official doctrine of the entire Israeli state or the state of Israel, you will see constantly throughout a theme that says never again.
• 16:37
  We allowed ourselves to be slaughtered by the Nazis.
• 16:41
  We stood by like a bunch of naive sheep.
• 16:45
  We will never allow that to happen to us again.
• 16:48
  If you think about Iran, Tom, and you think about the threat it poses to Israel.
• 16:54
  I have said to other people I know, I go, do you think the Israelis are going to just sit around?
• 17:02
  And if you think they're gonna just sit around, then you think they're just going to allow Iran to get a bomb and shoot a bomb off at shoot a bomb at them, which the Iranians, the the mullahs have all said, we want to obliterate Israel, you know, from the river to the sea.
• 17:20
  We want to push them into the sea.
• 17:22
  Well, does nobody think, let's just let's let's let's you and I play this out.
• 17:26
  Let's say it's two years from now.
• 17:28
  I would say this to your family members.
• 17:30
  It's two years from now, and it's a Tuesday afternoon at 3 48, the Iranians fire off a nuclear weapon at Israel.
• 17:38
  Israel, let's say has two minutes to respond.
• 17:41
  I'm willing to bet that they've got early warning systems, and that immediately it's the world's worst kept secret that Israel has nuclear weapons.
• 17:50
  What if Israel then decided under that scenario, we're gonna fire off 20 nuclear weapons at Iran?
• 17:58
  I'll throw it to you.
• 18:00
  What do you think happens at that point?
• 18:02
  Well, you can end up with both countries a wasteland.
• 18:05
  I mean, you're gonna have nuclear holocaust in that region, and you're gonna end up with millions of people dying, and you know, totally ruined farmland for as far as you can see, you know, probably have having nuclear fallout across much of the Middle East, you know.
• 18:21
  And I think that what you'd end up have having is the possibility of a nuclear winter where it would even affect our crops, you know, if you had a major nuclear exchange between the two powers.
• 18:31
  So I mean, I don't think Israel really had any choice whatsoever, because the alternative is just to sit there and do nothing while they develop missiles and nuclear weapons that can literally destroy Israel.
• 18:43
  And they say right in their parliament in Iran, death to Israel.
• 18:47
  We're gonna so I mean, what are you gonna do?
• 18:49
  You know, in Canadian law, if I understand correctly, if somebody's about to shoot you with a gun, you have a right to shoot them first.
• 18:56
  Okay.
• 18:57
  Now that that's just a common sense.
• 18:59
  I mean, if somebody's gonna kill you, then you have to defend yourself.
• 19:03
  So I don't think no matter what you think of the causes of the war or who did what to who and who was right and who is justified.
• 19:09
  I think the bottom line is that the government of Israel had no choice, they had to destroy the capability of making nuclear weapons, or they were facing complete annihilation.
• 19:21
  You have, you know, you've talked to me like you know, your family members tend to, you've talked about on the show previously, you know, your family members tend to be more liberal.
• 19:30
  Oh, yeah.
• 19:31
  And so my like I would always want to say to them, okay, and and I'm I'm curious because I'm I'm gonna say this now, uh what they would say, what you think they would say.
• 19:42
  Okay, so if if Iran fires a nuclear weapon at Israel, because in their in in the Islamic the way they believe uh the Quran, if the world ends, the 12th Iman shows up, or their version of, you know, in Christianity, it would be when Jesus Christ shows up.
• 20:00
  In their version, it's the 12th Amman shows up.
• 20:03
  We've destroyed all enemies of Islam and you know, our version of paradise or utopia.
• 20:09
  We're gonna, you know, we get to see Allah or and or the 12th Amman.
• 20:13
  So under that framework, so now you have that religious ideology going on.
• 20:19
  And Israel fires, let's say 10 nuclear weapons to to truly obliterate Iran forever.
• 20:25
  And I would, I would wonder what they would say when I go, okay, one fifth of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz along with natural gas.
• 20:35
  Uh, the fertilizer institute says over 20% of all nutrients needed for fertilizer and to make food stocks also pass through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormoose.
• 20:49
  So we know right there that over half the world is affected.
• 20:55
  Especially places like Japan that get over 90% of their oil through the Gulf of the United States.
• 21:00
  What would your family say to that?
• 21:02
  Would they say, hey, or let's say a liberal part, hey, Israel should just take one for the team.
• 21:08
  Let them self be obliterated.
• 21:10
  You know, it's interesting because my discussions with them.
• 21:13
  I admit to them, yes, it's good to look at the causes of this, and both sides have some fault.
• 21:19
  There's no question about it.
• 21:20
  But the first responsibility of any government, and in the in this case, the government of Israel, is to do what they can to prevent the destruction and death of their people.
• 21:29
  So the first the first level of decision making is we must stop our opponents from destroying us.
• 21:37
  That's the first level.
• 21:38
  Okay.
• 21:38
  I mean, if a truck is about to hit you because the driver hates you, you got to get out of the way.
• 21:43
  You don't stand there and say, hmm, why do they hate me?
• 21:46
  You know, I wonder if they had a bad night.
• 21:48
  No, you have to do immediate action just to survive.
• 21:52
  So, you know, I see on so many left-wing shows, radio shows, and I hear this discussion in my family.
• 21:58
  People are talking about what Israel did wrong and the philosophy, you know, as to whether or not Iran has a good point about you know being hating Israel.
• 22:07
  I say, yeah, but from the first order of business, so to speak, is defend the people of Israel against total destruction.
• 22:15
  In which case, they have absolutely no choice.
• 22:19
  Now, after the war is over, yeah, it makes sense to step back and say, now, why did this happen?
• 22:23
  How can we improve relations so it doesn't happen again?
• 22:27
  But to me, the government of Israel had no choice at all because their first order of business was to survive.
• 22:34
  And if you have a country that says we're going to destroy you, and we're developing the weapons to do it, and even the UN says they are, then you just simply have to destroy it.
• 22:43
  There's no question about it.
• 22:44
  And you know, people say, oh, but the stock market's affected, and you know, oil prices.
• 22:49
  That's nothing in comparison with a nuclear war.
• 22:52
  And that's that's exactly where we would go.
• 22:54
  Now, I think the big problem is that the left don't like to look at it that way.
• 22:58
  They like to look at what's morally correct, and they hate Trump.
• 23:01
  So everything that Trump does, of course, they're again they're against.
• 23:04
  But I don't think they like to really face the the absolute truth, and that is that Israel had no choice.
• 23:12
  No choice at all.
• 23:14
  Yeah, and and I think what I look at too is you you you made the point, which is what I come back to is what is going to happen when a nuclear exchange takes place.
• 23:28
  So the ball game is over.
• 23:30
  Like, just go back and look at what happened with bombs that aren't even close to the amount of power that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 23:40
  And and really at that point, you that was those were isolated cases.
• 23:45
  That was not affecting the entire global economy.
• 23:48
  You have a 21 mile choke point, uh, the Strait of Hormuz, where Amman mirrors Iran, where one fifth of all fossil fuel supplies go through, where how you feed the world goes through there.
• 24:03
  Um plastics, the majority of plastics go through there and and all the different things it makes for a modern economy.
• 24:11
  So when I hear a liberal person talk about that now, to me that you you are such an unserious person that I don't even listen to you anymore.
• 24:22
  I I just I it's um it's almost as if we both have children.
• 24:27
  And I always remember we used to laugh, my wife and I.
• 24:30
  We never said the terrible twos, it was always the four-year-old that was the toughest.
• 24:34
  Oh, okay.
• 24:35
  But uh I I actually called them, you know, you have the terrible twos.
• 24:39
  I called them the FU force.
• 24:43
  Yeah, exactly.
• 24:44
  They can walk, they can talk, but they have essentially no brain power, and they'll run right out into the middle of the street, or they'll grab a sharp knife, or they'll fall down the steps, or I mean they'll just do they're they're so hard to care for at that age, and it's exhausting.
• 25:02
  I look at people with those kind of arguments now and go, you can debate the merits of the United States doing this.
• 25:10
  But I would even tell somebody if you think Israel is going to sit back and allow this to happen.
• 25:17
  If they fire off a weapon at Israel, what do you think is going to happen if they decided to fire off a weapon at Germany to hit Americans, you know, um, at one of the largest bases in the world, the I think it's near Frankfurt.
• 25:32
  Yeah, it's near Frankfurt.
• 25:33
  So in other words, I would say to anybody, what do you think is gonna happen?
• 25:37
  Like what do you think then, oh so then the United States is gonna take it, Europe is gonna take it.
• 25:42
  In other words, you either deal with the shock right now of 120, 150 barrel oil.
• 25:51
  I would tell everybody you should band together and go in and obliterate Iran and stop this, because now, as a global economy, we are all connected.
• 26:01
  I don't care if you don't like the Chinese or not, you're dependent on them and they're dependent on us, and you're dependent on what comes from Vietnam or the Philippines or Malaysia or Saudi Arabia or Bulgaria in ways that we have never in the history of mankind ever been connected.
• 26:19
  So I look at it and go, eventually Israel would have fired off their weapons in defense once Iran fired their weapon at them.
• 26:27
  Oh, yeah, I think it'd be pretty quick.
• 26:29
  We have to go for a break now, Todd, but when we get back, I'd like to talk about some of the new technologies that are being developed in the nuclear power sector.
• 26:37
  You spoke about a few of them, but you were saying that this is a nuclear renaissance, and this is really great.
• 26:43
  So stay tuned, we'll be right back after the break.
• 26:45
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• 30:32
  So I'm back with my co-host Todd Royal, a nuclear power expert, and that's exactly what we're talking about today.
• 30:38
  And in particular, Todd, you were saying this is a nuclear power renaissance.
• 30:42
  So one of the main technologies, you mentioned some of them, but what's coming down the pipe?
• 30:47
  Because nuclear power has incredible potential if we truly seize the opportunity.
• 30:53
  Well, I would say the Trump administration and the former Biden administration are doing, have done and are doing as much vernicular since the Eisenhower Adams for Peace Plan.
• 31:04
  What you're seeing in the United States, which what what you are seeing globally, I mean, the Chinese are building, I believe it's 29 reactors as we speak, the Russians are reactors, the Americans, we are finally getting our act together.
• 31:19
  The Canadians have the um uh the OPG refurbishment, which just took place.
• 31:25
  You're also building the BWRX 300 small module reactor, currently the water-cooled reactors being built in Canada.
• 31:32
  There's talks to revitalize the can do program again.
• 31:37
  I love that.
• 31:37
  Yeah.
• 31:38
  Yeah.
• 31:38
  There's uh there's the brand new VC Summer that's getting rebuilt that's supposed to begin here in the next couple of years in South Carolina, and then the the U.S.
• 31:47
  Department of Energy is doing the um reactor pilot program for these advanced companies to use government facilities, fast tracking regulatory processes, government monies to get their reactors up and running.
• 32:01
  And I would say credit to the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I've been extremely critical of them.
• 32:07
  They seemingly are doing everything they can to modernize and to begin to give lower costs for regulatory approval, more solidified timelines, and to really say, can we look at new technologies in a year and a half to two years and go yes and go yes or no?
• 32:27
  Uh the regulatory approval's been really one of the one of the biggest things that's kept nuclear.
• 32:32
  This is this has all been political choices.
• 32:35
  And it happened because of people like Jane Fonda and environmental movements that um you had accidents.
• 32:42
  The the the biggest, most well-known one was three mile uh three mile island, also Chernobyl.
• 32:49
  Um HBO made a series about it, which was a complete fabrication and not one bit of that thing was truthful.
• 32:56
  What people don't realize about Chernobyl, it was just about the worst design imaginable.
• 33:01
  It was done under the old Soviet regime, so nobody from the West could get in there, but the reactors actually kept running after the meltdown.
• 33:10
  Oh, apparently it was human error as well.
• 33:12
  They actually didn't know what they were doing.
• 33:15
  Human error took place in Three Mile Island.
• 33:18
  I I think when you think about a renaissance, and that that can be an overused word, but I would, besides even a renaissance, I would call this a reality check because of the demands for power, because of the I've seen I I've actually have figures that have shown that over 500 gigawatts of power is going to be needed in the next 30 years.
• 33:39
  Yeah, largely for data data centers, right?
• 33:42
  Data centers, electrification, manufacturing, uh onshoring, and and also electric vehicles as well.
• 33:48
  People will buy electric vehicles.
• 33:50
  So you are seeing whether it's the gigawatt scale reactor or companies like TerraPower, Kairos Power, X Energy, Natura, New Scale, these Generation 4 companies are also coming to the forefront with projects.
• 34:05
  You're also seeing uh capital markets.
• 34:08
  People are putting billions of dollars into these companies, they're going public.
• 34:12
  So to not kind of overplay the Iran segment, but you you do have to realize that if everyone around the world currently was using nuclear power versus a fossil fuel, and I'm pro-fossil fuel, Alex Epstein's work is is revolutionary.
• 34:30
  But the one counter to that I would always tell anybody would be you've relied on a volatile part of the world for the stability of the global economy.
• 34:40
  Not only is that dumb, stupid, unwise goes against all ways to look at knowledge and decision making, you have an alternative, and that's nuclear power.
• 34:51
  And nothing is safer, nothing runs more, nothing gives greater economic impact and activity, nothing creates more jobs than a nuclear power plant within an energy within an energy framework.
• 35:05
  Um, the brand new power plant in Georgia, Vogel three and four, yes, grossly over budget, grossly over the timeline.
• 35:15
  So people can counter and tell me, well, look how horrible it was.
• 35:19
  You are correct.
• 35:20
  But I would look at somebody and say even though it was over 20 billion dollars over cost within 10 years, certainly 15 years, it will be net, it will be net cash flow positive, and that power plant will run for a hundred years.
• 35:37
  Yeah, is that right?
• 35:38
  So, how many are being built in the U.S.?
• 35:40
  That was two new ones you said.
• 35:42
  Oh, unfortunately, none are being built currently.
• 35:46
  None.
• 35:47
  And is it is it the regulatory barrier?
• 35:50
  It is.
• 35:50
  It is.
• 35:51
  It's the regulatory barrier, it is the environmental movement, it has been the Democratic Party and the environmental movement, have literally scared the hell out of people now since the mid-70s.
• 36:04
  And that's a and that's exactly, and that's exactly it's it's all a fear factor.
• 36:08
  That the best work on it has been Michael Schellenberg.
• 36:12
  Uh-huh.
• 36:12
  Michael is chronicled, he is given the history of the entire fear movement.
• 36:17
  And then I would also say the Breakthrough Institute does some of the best work currently on why you should use nuclear power.
• 36:25
  You know, if you believe in climate change, then you have to be pro-nuclear.
• 36:30
  Um Robert Bryce, who's talked about if you want an energy transition, it's gas to nuclear.
• 36:36
  You know, like it strikes me that using gas for electricity when you could use nuclear or could use coal for that matter.
• 36:44
  To me, that's almost like a reverse mitus touch.
• 36:47
  You're turning gold into lead, because I mean, natural gas is a special fuel for all sorts of purposes, you know.
• 36:54
  And I don't think we should be using it up just to create electricity, should we?
• 36:59
  Of course, it depends where you live.
• 37:01
  Depends where you live.
• 37:02
  If you're living on top of a natural gas uh, you know, fracking well, then yeah, sure, use it.
• 37:07
  But but I mean, surely the better source for electricity is the two ones we spoke spoken about earlier that store their power on site, which is nuclear and coal.
• 37:18
  Yeah.
• 37:18
  I I it it befuddles me.
• 37:22
  It makes me so angry, Tom, that we even we have allowed the Jane Fondas, the Tom Steyers, the Michael Bloombergs, Al Gore, the Al Gores, that fool who's the brand new mayor of New York.
• 37:36
  We've allowed me whether a radical Muslim or a radical environmentalist or a radical leftist to go against physics, engineering, and just flat out common sense.
• 37:49
  Imagine if the United States, or imagine if Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan.
• 37:56
  Imagine if imagine if Japan, the entire country was being powered by nuclear power and also by um coal.
• 38:07
  Would they be freaking out right now about Iran?
• 38:10
  Of course not.
• 38:11
  Would the Europeans who have been captured by the likes of Ed Milibrand and radical greens, you know, these these people who were communists and radicals and people who should have no say in anything if they were doing their own mining for their own oil and natural gas, whether the North Sheet, the North Sea or on the European continent, would you would you need Qatari natural gas and American natural gas that is anywhere between four to 9x to even 10x more expensive than if you did it yourself?
• 38:49
  It there's no logic in it.
• 38:51
  It it's that like we've said you've said the climate scare and the climate cult has completely enveloped our world.
• 38:59
  Yeah, yeah.
• 39:00
  And it is good though that we are seeing fight back, and certainly in the United States with Trump.
• 39:05
  I think Trump, you know, a lot of people may not like him, but I think the bottom line, he's done a huge service to the whole Western world because he said things that are absolutely true, making it easier for other politicians to say things that are not quite as severe, but nevertheless correct.
• 39:21
  And and you know, this whole issue of safety.
• 39:24
  I mean, it I always found it ironic that after Chernobyl, it was American reactors that were hamstrung that weren't built.
• 39:32
  The Russians, as you say, continued to operate the other three reactors at Chernobyl, and yet the American reactors could not melt down in the way that Chernobyl did because they didn't have the same kind of moderators and other things.
• 39:45
  But but so yeah, it's the safety fear, but how safe is nuclear?
• 39:50
  I mean, how many people have died from radiation from nuclear reactors in North America?
• 39:56
  I have seen figure, I've seen figures that have said more people have died from.
• 40:00
  From wind turbines than they have from a nuclear reactor fallout.
• 40:02
  Yeah.
• 40:03
  Well, one of my profs in one of my profs in university said that the number is zero.
• 40:08
  He said, Yeah, you get some people fall off a scaffolding or during construction or killed.
• 40:13
  But he said the number of people have died because of radiation poisoning or whatever at nuclear reactors is zero.
• 40:20
  He said, none.
• 40:21
  Absolutely none.
• 40:22
  And you were referencing in a previous show that when you went on tours of reactors, you felt amazingly safe.
• 40:29
  I I it is the safest, cleanest thing I've ever seen.
• 40:33
  I I mean, I think what was so stunning to me when somebody said you get radiation just in the natural world, and particularly in their mountains, you get it from eating a banana, you get more radiation on an airplane than you do at a nuclear power plant.
• 40:49
  Yeah.
• 40:49
  When I think about safety, and let I I do want to be very sensitive to people who go, okay, then you get a nuclear reactor built in your backyard.
• 40:58
  And I go, okay, I would.
• 41:00
  Yeah, because the world's about trade-offs, but but here's when you think about safety.
• 41:05
  I work for a gentleman named uh Ken Canavand and uh brilliant man has been in the nuclear industry 40 plus years, had been with Westinghouse, had been with um electric power research institute, and he told us, he told me a story one time, and I'm and if Ken ever hears this, Ken, I'm I'm I'm gonna butcher the story, so pardon me.
• 41:26
  If you think about three mile island, okay, one of the reactors had a meltdown.
• 41:32
  If I recall correctly, Ken said that like once a year, you essentially you essentially open the door, you go into the reactor where it melted down, you look at where it's contained, and you literally check a box and you walk out.
• 41:46
  And I think Ken has done that before.
• 41:48
  You also know how safe nuclear is.
• 41:51
  Microsoft is buying the other reactor that hasn't melted down.
• 41:56
  It is three mile end.
• 41:58
  Yeah, it's now going to be called Crane Clean Energy Center, and they're literally bringing the reactor back.
• 42:05
  So I I would always tell anybody, okay, an accident occurred.
• 42:10
  There's been a response.
• 42:12
  The INPO was created to specifically, you know, take get rid of human errors.
• 42:18
  But do we continue to fly on airplanes though they crash?
• 42:22
  Of course we do.
• 42:23
  Do we continue to use hydroelectric dams, though one in particular in China killed upwards of anywhere between 25,000 250,000 people?
• 42:31
  Of course we do.
• 42:32
  Wow.
• 42:33
  But what you see is how safe it actually is that the reactor, yes, it began to melt down.
• 42:39
  But the brilliance of engineers like yourself put forth a containment building.
• 42:44
  It's still being contained, and Microsoft came in and said, you know, we need some power for this data center.
• 42:52
  So we're gonna buy that power out of that reactor, and we're gonna we're gonna pay double for what actually it would be normally charged for it.
• 43:00
  In other words, Microsoft, which has been a leader, you know, a leading DEI, ESG, global warming, greenwashing, climate virtue.
• 43:12
  I mean, the ultimate of virtue signaling big tech companies and and Bill Gates and all of his climate nonsense.
• 43:20
  My Microsoft Tom came in and said, Yeah, we think it's fine.
• 43:27
  We want that reactor.
• 43:28
  But that shows you if the ultimate left-wing MSN MSNBC Nymous now loving company goes, yeah, we're fine.
• 43:41
  We think it's perfectly safe.
• 43:42
  That makes me go, these things are perfectly safe, and everything an environmentalist says is a bunch of nonsense.
• 43:49
  I don't believe a word you say.
• 43:52
  Well, I'll give you a funny example of how I don't think the environmentalists in many cases even believe it themselves.
• 43:58
  The Galileo spacecraft is run by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, that's the RTGs.
• 44:04
  And as they decay, they produce heat, and that's used with thermocouples to make energy for the spacecraft.
• 44:10
  Anyway, the environmentalists didn't want it to launch because they were afraid that it would, you know, spacecraft would blow up and it would spread radioactive waste all over.
• 44:20
  Well, the funny thing is, of course, it's ridiculous because it's actually in these modules, and they said even a space shuttle challenger type disaster where the whole thing exploded and it was like in just pieces everywhere, it would not break the small containers that contain the plutonium in this case.
• 44:36
  Anyway, the funny thing is to show that the environmentalists didn't really even believe what they were saying.
• 44:41
  They went to court and a judge judged, he said, Yeah, it's safe.
• 44:45
  It's completely safe.
• 44:46
  Even if the rocket blows up, it's not going to spread radioactive waste anywhere.
• 44:50
  Well, when they went to the protests, they put their children right in the front, closest to the launch, so they get good uh media coverage.
• 44:58
  So people were saying to them, look, if you're you're so convinced that this is dangerous, why are your children in the front row of the protest?
• 45:07
  So I think in many cases they simply don't believe it themselves.
• 45:10
  It almost makes me wonder if they're Luddites and simply don't want us to have you know inexhaustible power.
• 45:17
  I mean, is that one of their goals?
• 45:19
  Oh, I think it is.
• 45:20
  I I think every environmentalist now, every single one of these groups, every single one of these, I think you have two things.
• 45:26
  I think all these billionaires who fund this stuff, you know, the Walton uh family now is in on it, you know, the people who founded Walmart, the daughters in particular have become these left-wing radicals, Steve Jobs' uh widow is a left-wing radical, and then you got the Michael Bloomberg's and the George sources.
• 45:44
  I think what these people think is they want to be gods, they want to be worshipped.
• 45:48
  So if I destroy the world, you know, chaos leads to control, I'm the billionaire, so you have to worship me, right?
• 45:54
  You know, like the few the old feudal systems in the dark ages and middle ages, you know, my lord, my lord, you're being worshipped.
• 46:01
  So they have a godlike syndrome.
• 46:03
  So they don't they don't want limitless almost free, almost free energy, you know.
• 46:09
  And then I think when you look at uh environmental organizations, well, they are they're radicals, they think they think you know, Mother Earth and blah, blah, blah.
• 46:20
  They they do all that mother earth nonsense.
• 46:23
  Yeah.
• 46:24
  And so they're they're degrowth people, they're degrowth, they're anti-human, they want people dead, they want the world to return back to its natural state.
• 46:34
  They're just, I mean, Tom, they're they're they're simple, they're simpletons, but they're evil simpletons who are no-nothings.
• 46:42
  And they just and you know, Michael Crichton, who did Jurassic Park, of course, he wrote a book called State of Fear.
• 46:49
  And in that book, he shows what would happen if in fact you went back to nature.
• 46:54
  And it's pretty damn bad.
• 46:56
  So, Todd, I mean, I think that they're completely impractical.
• 47:00
  And you know, I think we should be very glad that we live in an age that we do right now.
• 47:04
  There's a book called The Other Side of History, okay, and that book is on audible, it's a very good book, and it talks about what it was like to be a common person in different eras in history, okay, in medieval times or in ancient Roman times or whatever.
• 47:19
  And by the end of the book, and I can't remember the author's name, but it's on Audible.
• 47:23
  I'll put a link to it under the podcast.
• 47:25
  It's a very good book to listen to.
• 47:28
  He concludes that if you're old or sick, the best time to be alive is right now.
• 47:33
  Because we have the ability to save people.
• 47:36
  I mean, I had a hard stamp put in 10 years ago.
• 47:38
  I guess I'd be dead otherwise, you know.
• 47:40
  So I mean, yeah, now it's a great time to be alive, but people constantly beat the drum of negativity.
• 47:47
  And nuclear power is a great example of them doing that, where we this is a wonderful energy source.
• 47:53
  Zero people have died from radioactive poisoning, much as I like coal.
• 47:57
  You can't claim the same thing for coal, you know.
• 48:00
  I mean, you have to mine the coal and you have to get it out of the ground.
• 48:03
  Um, I just had a couple more questions concerning energy before we end the show.
• 48:07
  And that is how secure is our supply of uranium when it comes to it, because of course, right now, the United States is very fortunate, only 2% of their oil comes from the Persian Gulf.
• 48:19
  But a lot of countries like Japan, uh, yeah, they're getting 90% of their natural gas and oil from the Persian Gulf.
• 48:26
  What about if they had uranium?
• 48:28
  Like, are the sources of uranium secure?
• 48:32
  No.
• 48:33
  Um, because of environmentalists.
• 48:35
  Uh because we have allowed environmentalists to not do any mining, permitting regular regulatory reform in the United States, Europe, Canada.
• 48:47
  Most of your uranium is in places, Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, but radical environmental leftists are running those countries, running your country.
• 48:57
  In other words, it is there.
• 49:00
  It's get the but this is all political choices.
• 49:04
  Uh-huh.
• 49:05
  So is the United States have much uranium?
• 49:07
  Oh, sure, they do.
• 49:08
  But go try to it, it's it's it's getting the mines up and running.
• 49:13
  Can you take on the left-wing judges, the ACLU?
• 49:17
  You know, remember that these environmental organizations like the Sierra Club will be backed by billionaire left-wing law firms and judges.
• 49:27
  So they can just tie things up in litigation.
• 49:29
  There's plenty of uranium.
• 49:31
  You can go to the Department of Energy if you were to Google, you know, compare uranium to oil, natural gas, or coal.
• 49:39
  Uranium is about 1600 times more energy dense than natural gas.
• 49:46
  It takes like a swimming pool full of natural gas or like uh, you know, a handful of uranium when it comes to energy density.
• 49:54
  And so I would tell anybody uranium is God's gift to mankind.
• 50:02
  But again, these are all political choices.
• 50:06
  These are this is the U.S.
• 50:08
  Democratic Party, the European Greens, the Mark Carney Canadians, the folks in Australia, New Zealand.
• 50:17
  There's plenty of uranium.
• 50:18
  It's you know it's getting over the politics to go get it.
• 50:22
  Yeah.
• 50:23
  And one thing Trump is doing very well is he's get trying to get rid of a lot of the unnecessary regulations, isn't he?
• 50:29
  Yeah.
• 50:29
  Oh, he absolutely is.
• 50:30
  And uh I don't know.
• 50:33
  Uh because right now Russia has plenty of uranium.
• 50:37
  And um we we should be mining everything.
• 50:40
  But but I would also tell you we should be mining every rare earth metal and mineral we can find.
• 50:45
  So um I'm for permitting reform.
• 50:48
  Yeah, I'll give you an example of how politics interferes with reality based on engineering and science.
• 50:54
  In Canada, there was something called the Seaborne Commission, and they were looking at whether it was safe to store radioactive waste from reactors, power reactors, deep in the Canadian Shield.
• 51:04
  And they concluded it was very safe.
• 51:06
  And I'll give you an example of how safe the can do reactor bundle when it's used.
• 51:11
  You only have to contain it for four centuries before you could hold it in your hands.
• 51:16
  Okay, four centuries.
• 51:18
  Now they were going to bury the reactor cores, you know, the actual used bundles.
• 51:23
  They were going to bury them deep in the Canadian Shield.
• 51:25
  The Canadian Shield has not moved in hundreds of millions of years.
• 51:29
  Okay.
• 51:30
  So holding a reactor bundle, it's 400 years later, it's safe in a rock formation a mile underground that's stable for hundreds of, it's like nothing.
• 51:41
  It's zero.
• 51:42
  You know, like the chances of this escaping is is absolutely nothing.
• 51:46
  And they concluded that the Seaborne Commission concluded, yes, this would be a very safe way to permanently dispose of nuclear waste.
• 51:54
  But they concluded it wasn't politically safe because the public thought it was dangerous, even though it was clearly not.
• 52:01
  And so none of the towns that were nearby where they were going to put the radioactive waste were supporting it.
• 52:07
  So the government never went ahead with deep disposal in the Canadian Shield because of politics.
• 52:13
  So instead, instead, while it's not terribly dangerous on the surface, it's certainly more dangerous on the surface than a mile underground in the Canadian Shield.
• 52:22
  So they have a solution that has somewhat more dangerous than if they just gone ahead with building the deep disposal.
• 52:30
  It's oh I I kid you not, I'm coming to the point where I truly think that all the world's problems truly stem.
• 52:39
  I mean, outside of sicknesses and accidents, but most of our problems now stem from the left wing, whether the US Democratic Party, the Mark Carneys of the world that are aligned with these radical environmentalists and the media and academia and lawyers who want to stop everything, have no progress because it's all about fear and some ridiculous nirvana utopia version of the earth that that just doesn't exist.
• 53:11
  No, it certainly doesn't it isn't true.
• 53:14
  My last question goes back to what you were saying originally about these two reactors coming online in Georgia, the fact that they cost a lot more than expected.
• 53:23
  This is what some people who understand the safety of nuclear power, understand, you know, that it's a wonderful energy source that could power humanity uh essentially forever in our terms.
• 53:34
  Um, but they're concerned about cost.
• 53:36
  So will the cost come down?
• 53:38
  Because right now building reactors is a very expensive endeavor.
• 53:41
  Is it mainly because of the regulations?
• 53:43
  Like what about the cost?
• 53:46
  Um, right now they do need to come down, and that's a real concern.
• 53:51
  Uh my counter to that though is if you're that concerned about emissions, then you'll get better at it.
• 53:57
  We did find out that while Vogel three was horribly over budget and over timeline, number four came in at a much better efficiency.
• 54:07
  So you're also dealing with a first of a kind versus now an nth of a kind.
• 54:12
  Yes, the more you build them, the lower the cost.
• 54:16
  Absolutely, but like any there's also an interesting um study, I think it was done by McKinsey or maybe like MIT or somebody that that talks about there's a book as well, and I'm sorry, Tom, I can't remember either, that once you hit infrastructure projects over one billion dollars, that it's almost universal, there's going to be cost uh overruns and uh cost and uh and budget, and the only way to lower that is to continue to do it.
• 54:46
  So that's the answer then.
• 54:48
  The reactors become well, it'd be like building one car on the assembly line.
• 54:53
  Exactly it would cost you five million dollars, but you build lots of them.
• 54:57
  So part of the answer to making them more reasonably priced is to build lots of them.
• 55:03
  Exactly.
• 55:04
  Um yeah, so that that's a real concern.
• 55:07
  But when you look at Vogel three and four, I think the cost of four and the efficiency was uh upwards of 40 percent, like it meaning it was 40% faster to build it with 40% less less cost.
• 55:21
  Yeah, for sure.
• 55:22
  It is.
• 55:23
  It's like you don't just build one car, you continue to build them.
• 55:27
  Yeah, for sure.
• 55:28
  So so it sounds like the future is nuclear.
• 55:31
  If you look far enough into the future, we'll eventually be mostly nuclear.
• 55:35
  That's your conclusion.
• 55:36
  Um, and I would say if you truly want energy security, or let's just say if you really want energy and electricity security, if you're someone that actually believes in climate change and you think we're uncontrollably warming, um, you're scaring your children, you think we're all gonna die, boil to death, uh, more hurricanes, more extreme heat droughts, wars, famines, etc., then you only have two answers.
• 56:01
  It's either a coal-fired plant, because I can store the coal on site, or better yet, a nuclear power plant, because I can have a uh endless supply of uranium, and during the time that it's uh creating its electricity, there's no emissions.
• 56:16
  So I think for energy security uh and environmental healthiness, there's only one answer, and that's nuclear power.
• 56:23
  Right, right.
• 56:24
  And more people got to say it and not be afraid of the environmental left of you know, they're they're just nuts.
• 56:29
  And we have to say they're nuts too, because this is this is the safest form of power and the most reliable, as for sure.
• 56:36
  Absolutely.
• 56:36
  So Todd, thanks so much for being my interviewee today.
• 56:41
  And I look forward to our next show.
• 56:43
  So this is Tom Harris and Todd Royal signing out from the other side of the story.