Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Doing nuclear right: A conversation with an architect of VC summer reopening, Jim Little

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Doing nuclear right: A conversation with an architect of VC summer reopening, Jim Little · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

0:15
Hello, this is Todd Royal.
0:17
I am your host of my the host of yes, geopower, energy, and real politics.
0:24
I've got a really special guest today.
0:26
His name is uh Jim Little.
0:28
I worked with Jim.
0:29
He was on the board of a firm that I work for called E4 Carolinas.
0:33
We're gonna talk about nuclear power, but here's where Jim's expertise, over 50 years of nuclear power experience.
0:40
He has been to many, many nuclear plants, traveled the world for nuclear power.
0:44
He's an executive.
0:46
But here's what we all really want to know about.
0:48
He is on the governor's appointed council for South Carolina.
0:51
And as we all know, VC Summer, the former troubled power plant, people went to jail over.
0:58
Well, Jim is on the governor's appointed council, and you can really credit Jim for getting this going again.
1:03
Him and the chair wrote a report a little over a year ago.
1:07
And here's where we are.
1:09
And I would say that the nuclear renaissance 2.0 that we're looking at, this is one of the pillars of this.
1:14
This is one of the architects of this.
1:16
This is one of the guys who said, This plan is okay.
1:20
Let's go open it.
1:21
Let's get the good people, South Carolina some power.
1:24
So with that, um, I bring on my guests, Jim Little.
1:27
Jim, thank you for being here.
1:28
Hey Todd, how are you?
1:30
I'm great.
1:31
It's good to see you.
1:33
Um I had the privilege of working with you as you as you were board member of V4 Carolinas, had the privilege of really learning a lot from you on nuclear power.
1:42
You're with the governor's appointed council of South Carolina, VC Summers reopening.
1:47
We had what seemed like a bit of a controversial bid process, but now we are full steam ahead to try to get VC Summer open.
1:54
Can you tell us about your work on the council?
1:57
Tell us about your work on really being one of the architects of pushing to reopen this and where we are with uh VC Summer, the half completed nuclear power plant in South Carolina, and the floor is all yours.
2:10
Well, it's uh been an interesting couple of years here.
2:14
Say the least.
2:15
You know, as you mentioned, I've been in nuclear a long time, over 50 years.
2:19
Okay.
2:20
But uh VC Summer is a very unique situation.
2:24
It's the case where you take a problem and you can turn it upside down, like I like to do and say, can this be an opportunity?
2:31
So can we take the failure of VC Summer and create a future with it?
2:36
Yeah, okay.
2:37
Now everybody knows why VC Summer failed.
2:40
Okay, lots of stuff.
2:41
There's a factor report on that on that sort of thing.
2:44
Weak weak construction plans, project management, contracts misaligned, incomplete detailed engineering, all that sort of stuff.
2:52
And it failed.
2:53
Okay.
2:53
Yeah.
2:54
So $9 billion on the South Carolina rate base with nothing to show for it except this partially completed nuclear plant.
3:02
So in September 24, uh 2024.
3:07
Uh I always thought, hey, look, you know, half a half a nuclear plant is better than none.
3:13
So we went down and expected to see just an abandoned situation.
3:18
And it really was, it looked like it had been stopped six months ago, not seven or eight years ago.
3:24
Wow.
3:25
So it was really surprising.
3:26
All the equipment's there in 14 warehouses, and just we said, hey, wait a minute, this might this nightmare might actually be turned into something good.
3:37
Okay.
3:37
You know, from $9 billion loss, 4,500 jobs lost, damaged reputations, people went to jail.
3:43
Okay.
3:44
Yeah.
3:45
So can you create a new opportunity?
3:47
Well, the new opportunity is this times have changed.
3:50
You know, this electrical demand increased is eight times the 15-year average, suddenly, boom.
3:54
Oh, a lot of it's data centers and E and AI, but also behind that strategically for the state of South Carolina was to attract new business.
4:02
Okay.
4:02
And if you don't have the power, they're not coming.
4:05
Yep.
4:06
And our forecast in South Carolina was about 5,000 megawatts short in the next five years.
4:11
Retiring coal plants, all aging assets.
4:14
Wait a minute.
4:15
We we're going to attract advanced manufacturing.
4:18
What are you going to power with?
4:19
You can't do that.
4:20
Can I give the audience a little perspective?
4:22
What you just said is so important.
4:23
Yeah.
4:24
So, guys, when he says 5,000 megawatts, we can also say 5,000 or 5 gigawatts.
4:30
What he's telling you is that the state of South Carolina needs enough needs enough electricity for 5 million people, or like five big cities.
4:39
Right.
4:39
That's just South Carolina.
4:41
The boom that is going on in the Southeast United States, we think it's North Carolina.
4:47
South Carolina is right there on the heels of North Carolina.
4:50
So I wanted to give some perspective of the thing you just said, which is so eye-opening and so incredible.
4:56
So please continue.
4:58
So to make this to serve this demand, where are we going to look?
5:02
Well, you're going to look at renewables, you can look at small modular reactors, but the renewables don't have the power density to do that.
5:09
The small modular reactors, new reactors, they won't be ready in time.
5:12
So I look at this looking at Virgil's summary, a very unique situation.
5:17
Taking something partially complete and finishing it, and you have an 80-year asset of 2200 megawatts.
5:23
It's unlike that anywhere in the United States.
5:26
And I'm talking about new generation, not gee, let's extend the life of three mile island.
5:32
Let's let's get Palisades running again.
5:34
This is new generation, an asset that'll run for eight years.
5:37
And as you know, nuclear is a very big business in the state of South Carolina, the economic study we did.
5:42
$9 billion a year economic benefit, 1.1 billion dollars a year in tax revenues for the state of South Carolina.
5:49
So you're adding to that.
5:50
46,000 employees in the state with an average wage 65% higher than the median of all the other occupations.
5:58
Wow.
5:58
This is a great asset.
6:00
So taking a look at that, going and look, checking those sites, going through all the locations and seeing 14 warehouses, air conditioned, you know, uh, you know, 26 acres of stored materials.
6:14
It's all there.
6:16
Most of the materials are there.
6:18
So we're not talking about long lead items.
6:20
It was stored there.
6:22
Two units, two nuclear units worth of equipment is stored there.
6:26
So the site felt paused, not abandoned at all.
6:29
And we didn't see any degradation and said, well, wait a minute.
6:32
What would the benefits be?
6:34
Wow, 4500 jobs, the economic benefit, that sort of stuff.
6:39
And we've got a completed set of uh AP 1000s at the Vogel site in Georgia, 90 90 miles away.
6:45
Oh, wait a minute.
6:47
We could take that experience and perhaps do that.
6:50
Okay, you know, those units are now commercial.
6:52
Okay.
6:53
It took a lot of money, okay.
6:54
Too much money to finish Vogel, right?
6:58
So could we use Vogel first of a kind experience uh as a solution for some?
7:04
Yes, partially, you know, you can use the hindsight uh doing that.
7:08
But remember, Vogel took seven more years and 20 billion dollars more.
7:11
So we don't want to repeat what Vogel did to finally stumble across the finish line.
7:16
Yeah, want to avoid what the problems were.
7:19
So it wasn't FOAK is called first of a kind, but FOK and Vogel was finally one of a kind.
7:25
Okay.
7:27
So we've got to use some uh some situation going forward.
7:32
So there are some unique challenges at summer.
7:35
Equipment condition, there's the labor there.
7:37
We got to establish re-establish the license.
7:39
We need a new contracting model.
7:41
It's it's very complex.
7:42
Yep, and it's a new project.
7:44
It really is.
7:45
You're starting fresh with this inventory.
7:47
So you got to reconstruct those kind of things.
7:50
And so it's not gonna be easy.
7:52
It's gonna be a lot of hard work.
7:53
But I'll tell you the real thing, if you look at summer, why it failed.
7:58
It wasn't technological.
7:59
It really wasn't.
8:00
People, these reports read, oh, this wasn't ready in time.
8:03
Quite frankly, it was a psychological problem.
8:06
It was this this risk aversion, this fear of risk and uncertainty.
8:10
We always want, we always want things that are certain.
8:12
And so the whole structure of not calling time out when you should have called timeout, just keep going.
8:18
Yeah, people think if we stop.
8:20
Okay.
8:21
Uh the contracts that attempt to transfer risk, you can't transfer risk.
8:26
A contract is not a good risk management model.
8:28
A contract doesn't it fixes the blame.
8:32
Yeah.
8:33
So you've got to say, well, how could you fix this?
8:35
So we've got to reset the thing.
8:38
It isn't technological.
8:39
We went to the moon in 1969.
8:41
This isn't that hard.
8:42
Okay.
8:43
So if with the right construct going forward in the right team, uh we really pushed hard with the state of South Carolina, the governor's office, Santee Cooper, and making the world of this great potential.
8:57
And thankfully, they recognized it.
8:59
They really did and put out this bid.
9:01
Do you okay?
9:03
I'll get to the bid, but I thought you brought up something really important.
9:06
This risk aversion.
9:08
This why is it?
9:10
And I've actually again for the people just tuning in right now.
9:14
I've known I've professionally known Jim now for coming up on five years.
9:19
And really, when I first came on uh the research project that that I worked on on advanced nuclear technology that Jim oversaw and reviewed, and I would go to him a lot.
9:30
Tell me this, tell me this, tell me that.
9:32
But I've never heard you talk about this psychological issue.
9:35
Why do you think there's such a psychological issue with nuclear that we don't hear with coal plants or natural gas plants?
9:44
Oh renewables or a highway or a dam.
9:47
It's like, oh my god, nuclear.
9:51
Renewables are straightforward thing.
9:52
Solar panels, wind turbines, they're they're they're not complicated and complex.
9:57
Okay.
9:57
Nuclear of all of them is the most complex.
10:00
Situation.
10:00
Look at all the dimensions.
10:02
And so if you take that complexity, okay, now I dealt with this early in my career after Three Mile Island.
10:08
We're trying to help operators understand nuclear accidents.
10:11
And they got overwhelmed in Three Mile Island by what was going on.
10:16
And I was fortunate at that time to work with a cognitive psychologist, believe it or not, at Western House.
10:20
Okay.
10:21
He was a cognitive psychologist, and I learned a lot from him, and I learned about how we think is just as important in what we think.
10:30
Okay.
10:30
And he talked about this mindset that we're born from evolution that we're wired for survival.
10:37
And what's different is dangerous.
10:39
We crave certainty.
10:40
Matter of fact, engineers love equations.
10:42
Why?
10:43
Because they explain mysterious things, right?
10:46
And force equals mass times acceleration.
10:48
I always say engineers are very insecure people.
10:51
They need formulas to figure out things.
10:54
All right.
10:55
We love engineers of this program, though.
10:57
Right.
10:58
So and Jim's an engineer.
10:59
So there's so and uh and so if you can understand uh not only you know hindsight and foresight, but what I'll call mindsight, the ability to see how we make decisions, how biases and emotions, not logic can shape those choices.
11:17
They really can.
11:19
Okay.
11:19
So if you if you put that in place and say, well, why do we always want to transfer risk in these contracts?
11:26
Well, we don't want to be blamed, right?
11:28
We don't we don't want to be, wait a minute, we're gonna make it their problem.
11:32
I'm I'm just gonna stand back and wait for it, okay?
11:35
All right, and I get the contract, and I'm gonna read the contract and say, oh, this is all I have to do.
11:40
And the contract says, oh, if this doesn't happen, this happens.
11:43
This is gonna be bad for you, okay?
11:46
Unless you give me what you said.
11:48
And uh by the way, uh lump sum contract, uh, that's your problem.
11:52
You figure it out.
11:53
Uh, I don't have to worry about the uncertainties that you just price it in there.
11:57
Matter of fact, 21 years ago, this month, I had had dinner with a CEO of a Southern utility that was buying an AP 1000.
12:05
And he said to me, we're gonna buy an AP 1000.
12:08
I said, Well, it's really cool design.
12:11
And he said, Yes.
12:12
He said, we're gonna make it lump sum.
12:14
I said, I don't think that's a good idea.
12:16
And he said, Oh no, Jim, it's gonna, it's gonna fix the price.
12:19
I said, No, it's gonna fix the budget.
12:22
And I said, What's gonna happen is you're gonna try and tell your people that supplier, Westinghouse, and Shaw, whoever they are, don't look over the wall.
12:31
That's their problem.
12:33
So you won't see it coming.
12:34
Now, if you're a supplier, are you gonna go to the client and say, well, you know, uh, we're gonna we got a problem here?
12:39
You know, you're gonna try and just keep rolling, right?
12:42
Oh, sure.
12:43
And uh, here's a contract clause, and oh, this was unanticipated.
12:46
And that's exactly what happened, okay?
12:48
Is that it's the avoidance of risk.
12:50
So we're wired for a certainty, and that's nice, okay, because if you if you take about how you think about this thing, there's all these mysteries out in the world, and then we use some heuristics in this knowledge funnel to figure out hey, what happens if this happens and we figure things out and we develop algorithms, force equals mass times.
13:07
This works.
13:08
And so we solve puzzles with with algorithms, but the world is full of mysteries, not puzzles.
13:14
What's the difference between a mystery and a puzzle?
13:17
A puzzle is missing a piece, a mystery has too many.
13:20
So you've got to be curious.
13:22
You've got to, in a sense, be curious about these mysteries and say, what's affecting my my choices?
13:30
Yeah.
13:30
Okay.
13:31
Now, so everybody knows about failed projects.
13:34
Oh, Virgil Summer, that was failed, and this was canceled.
13:37
The big dig in Boston was a mess.
13:39
You need to look at successful mega mega projects.
13:42
He throw Terminal 5, an operating operating airport in London, okay?
13:49
All right, on schedule.
13:50
And up, okay, on schedule, complex project.
13:54
London Olympics 2012.
13:56
Oh, it was done right.
13:57
Oh, how about this one?
13:59
How about building four nuclear plants in the UAE on schedule on budget with a country that has no nuclear background and a cultural language difficulty?
14:08
How'd they do that?
14:09
Well, the real reason is they didn't avoid risk.
14:13
They sought it out.
14:15
They they modeled it and they put all the players in the same risk pool.
14:19
What's your risk is my risk.
14:21
And so we're all motivated to identify risk and solve them in.
14:25
Ah, okay.
14:26
That's the psychology.
14:28
So you got to have the hindsight, not to repeat things, the foresight to do this risk analysis and model really what would happen.
14:34
You've got to think bad thoughts to find good things.
14:37
And the thing you need to do that is you need mindsight that gives you the emotional intellect to deal with uncertainty and to look at those kinds of things without panicking and saying, write it in a contract.
14:49
That's not my problem.
14:51
Yep.
14:51
It's interesting that they did that.
14:53
Like you said, they are there all in together in the UAE.
14:56
They were all, I mean, it's almost like they became a one team.
14:59
We call it one team.
15:00
One team.
15:00
And there you go.
15:02
Okay.
15:02
I want to get back.
15:03
We're going to talk about risk further, but I want to talk about that with you as well.
15:07
Let's talk um the bid process.
15:10
Yeah.
15:10
So for the audience to know the AP 1000, that is the Westinghouse uh one gigawatt reactor.
15:17
That's what the Trump administration's put 80 billion dollars towards.
15:20
Right.
15:21
The United States, that's our big that's our big giant reactor versus what Jim said, the SMRs, small module reactors, smaller ones, there's a multitude of those companies.
15:30
So the bid process, you're part of this.
15:34
You're really you're one of the few that's positive.
15:38
You talk to the governor, you get Senator Lindsey Graham.
15:40
Right.
15:41
You get these guys that go, we got all this power needs.
15:43
I got 2.2 gigawatts of power sitting right over there.
15:46
Let's go do it.
15:48
Bit process, investment bank gets hired.
15:51
We all thought it was, if I remember correctly, Oppenheimer and the nuclear company and elemental power, these companies that are bidding to be the person to go build it.
16:01
Right.
16:01
What happened?
16:02
Because at the last minute, here comes Brookfield investment management.
16:06
Right.
16:06
Over a trillion dollars assets are in management, one of the largest commercial real estate firms, uh owners in the world.
16:13
Yep.
16:14
Massive company out of Canada.
16:15
Right.
16:16
Here they come in and they are on a rocket ship.
16:18
And the MOU's now been signed in 2.7 billion dollars to the ratepayers, and we're gonna share power with Santi Cooper.
16:25
Take us then on what happened that the nuclear company Elemental Power and Oppenheimer weren't a part of this, that Brookfield was chosen, and will those other three companies or pardon me banking companies be a part of it moving forward.
16:39
Well, if you think about the the advantage of completing this, that this was going to be done with private equity, not put back on the rate base.
16:47
So Santee Cooper's benefit is they're gonna get a claw back on that money in the rate base, they're gonna get power, okay?
16:53
And they're gonna see that billion couple of billion dollars back to them and a share of the power of 25% going for it.
16:58
So and they don't have to spend a dime.
17:01
Just you're along for the ride.
17:03
We're gonna all right.
17:04
So what's the new train you're gonna get on it?
17:05
It's gonna be private equity.
17:07
Okay, okay, and there's a lot of private equity right now in the energy business, a lot of private equity.
17:13
Yes, there is more a trillion dollars.
17:15
I was reading, committed private equity.
17:18
So this is good.
17:19
So if you look at the three, you know, project developers, Elemental and the Nuclear Company and Oppenheimer, and they're bidding for this thing.
17:28
Now they're project developers, okay?
17:30
But they're gonna need scale, they're gonna need engineering companies, they're gonna need Westinghouse to do this.
17:36
They're gonna need financing.
17:38
They don't come with their own financing all the time.
17:40
They got to attract investors in their project development company.
17:44
Okay.
17:45
The Brookfield Move was an answer to the prayer.
17:49
Okay, that was it.
17:51
First, they're committed to nuclear.
17:53
They bought Westinghouse out of bankruptcy.
17:55
Yep.
17:55
Okay, they own Westinghouse, okay.
17:58
So strategically, it's very important for Westinghouse to have another AP 1000 project, but a successful one.
18:07
Not a Vogel, not a Virgil Summer, not something that Chinese drove through, but can you do it?
18:13
Yeah, they're bidding for a project in Poland.
18:15
They lost out to the the Koreans of the Czech Republic, the Kransit Done UAE.
18:20
So this is really a uh uh a block in the middle of it that would allow them some continuity and be able to demonstrate here in the United States we can do a nuclear project.
18:31
And it opportunities it offs an opportunity for a fleet model.
18:36
Remember, all the people that applied for AP 1000s stepped back and it was just Southern Company and Scanner, Duke and others were signed up for AP 1000s.
18:45
Well, wait a minute.
18:46
Now, if they could, in a sense, join this effort and finish Virgil Summer and do nuclear right, okay, that would be the model to replicate these things.
18:57
Now the AP 1000 plants are identical.
19:00
They're not similar, they're identical.
19:02
Summer is identical to Vogel.
19:04
Ah, wait a minute.
19:06
So has this been done before?
19:07
Yes, it has.
19:08
It was done in the 1980s with the French and the Westinghouse resigned.
19:12
That's when I worked there.
19:13
Okay.
19:14
Okay.
19:14
Today, France is 80% nuclear.
19:18
So this fleet model and of scale, thousand megawatt plants, gigawatt plants, gigawatt plants.
19:24
Well, wait a minute.
19:25
And that's what attracted the administration to say, hey, wait a minute.
19:29
We got to get back in the game here.
19:31
Okay, because I believe what happened here is uh, in a sense, almost uh uh, you know, kind of ADD in the energy world.
19:47
Okay.
19:47
Oh, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this.
19:50
Oh, wind and solar and that.
19:52
And I'm not opposed to those things because I think the portfolio approach is the way the right way to go.
19:56
Stop arguing wind is no good and wind is better than nuclear.
20:00
Forget it.
20:00
They all have all their positions and roles.
20:03
Okay.
20:03
For example, the state of Texas.
20:05
A lot of wind, nuclear, fossil, you know, that portfolio kind of approach gives you resiliency.
20:10
So Brookfield coming in was with money on this process.
20:16
And the owner and the direction of Westinghouse gives a gives a strong backbone to these companies, Oppenheimer, the nuclear company elemental that need that control, okay, but also that expertise.
20:30
Okay.
20:30
Let me ask you this because you brought up something important and and you can explain it.
20:35
So when you said fleet, you know, you you this is the same the same reactor is going to get built at VC Summer that's already been built at Vogel.
20:44
Right.
20:44
Will you explain the term?
20:45
Because it's so important, and I know you will likely agree.
20:50
Standardization.
20:51
We hear that often.
20:52
When so when Jim says fleet, everybody, what he actually means is standardization.
20:57
So he's he's an engineer, they want certainty.
21:00
So Mr.
21:01
Engineer explain standardization for us.
21:04
Standardization basically is the model that uh is the process that reduces risk significantly from those first of a kind units to next of a kind units.
21:13
So you take that learning curve, and you can say we've done this before, all the improvements that we've made each time, each one successfully improved, and it shows, and it's been demonstrated even in nuclear construction, like for a baraca at uh St.
21:28
Lucy Unit 2 in Florida, that these these following units are much more efficiently done.
21:34
Lower costs, then take more cost to build them.
21:37
Better schedule, uncertain red, and then it attracts the investors.
21:41
Wait a minute.
21:41
I want I never want to be first, I want to be next, right?
21:45
So these utilities are very conservative.
21:48
Okay, they're very conservative because they have a socioeconomic model that says I will produce power for society reliable and resilient kind of rates in return for an 11 to 12% rate of return.
22:01
This is in the regulated kinds of environments, okay.
22:04
So they're not risky people that because they generate cash to pay dividends on stock.
22:09
They don't necessarily look for the increase, they're not stock traders, they're dividend producers.
22:14
Yep.
22:15
Okay, and they're tracking.
22:16
That's very important that want that return, you know.
22:19
We should talk about it.
22:20
It was it's the blue-haired ladies that get their their monthly dividend check.
22:23
Okay.
22:24
Sure.
22:24
I get if I know I'm buying that stock, I'm buying the Duke energies of the world, I get that bond, or I get that.
22:30
Kind of like that municipal bonds that people buy.
22:32
Man, here's my low risk and certainty because as I said before, we crave certainty.
22:37
We create live in the world of certainty.
22:40
So taking on a new project, wait a minute.
22:43
If I can go to a next to kind model, sign me up.
22:46
So back to this bid process.
22:48
Where do you see?
22:50
So Brookfield is tell us where we are with Brookfield now.
22:53
So that tell us so that contract gets executed.
22:56
So Brookfield had about a six-week process uh discussing with Santi Cooper what the various provisions were gonna be.
23:03
What was on the table was off the table.
23:05
You know, Santi Cooper, we're not spending any more money.
23:08
You know, this is this is on you.
23:10
Okay.
23:10
This is what we want.
23:12
We want a project development company in charge.
23:14
Okay, this can't be Westinghouse doing this thing alone.
23:17
We know how that didn't work out before Westinghouse was, and I worked there 25 years, is a design and manufacturing company.
23:26
It is not really a project execution company, as we've seen.
23:29
So you need a good project execution company.
23:32
Who's that who's that EPC content going to be?
23:34
Is it a bectel?
23:35
Is it a fluor?
23:36
Hey, you got to bring these partnerships and you can build this one model structure underneath it, and now we've got something cooking.
23:43
Okay.
23:44
So that's that's the dialogue that's going on right now.
23:46
They're going to probably take the next you know 12 to 18 months going through all check doing the due diligence on where's the equipment, how much of the equipment is there, where are the records?
23:56
What do I have to do in the licensing space?
23:58
What do I have to do in legal space?
24:00
Pretty complex.
24:01
Yep.
24:01
Uh, who's going to be the nuclear operator?
24:03
Is it it?
24:04
Could it be Dominion?
24:06
Could it be some other utility?
24:08
How would they operate?
24:09
Will there be uh relationship with the the brother over at Vogel in terms of you know they run that plant?
24:16
What lessons learned that they have in operations?
24:18
Can they share simulators?
24:20
Can they share operators?
24:21
Can we rely on their regulatory uh experience and adjudicated claims over there so we don't have to repeat that over again?
24:29
Yeah, so that's probably going to be the next 18 months.
24:33
Do you see like you know, and this is all public, anybody can find this.
24:39
The nuclear company got pretty upset that they that at the last minute Brookfield, but do you see Oppenheimer coming in to let's say provide some financing or more financing?
24:48
Do you see uh elemental power being the you know, let's say the project manager?
24:53
I'm setting all this up because we're gonna talk about risk here in the second half.
24:57
Yeah, but do we see do you see the nuclear company and elemental power and those guys being involved, or is it gonna be somebody like a Bechtel, a floor or someone else?
25:07
I think that's still up in the air.
25:09
I think there's conversations still going on with uh with the three of them, okay, and some of the EPC companies, and I haven't been privy to that, but the they have no decisions have really been made made yet about who the development company is gonna be.
25:23
Is it gonna be this guy, this guy, or a combination of them?
25:26
Okay, okay, or some other new entrant, who's the EPC provider.
25:30
There's different kinds of EPC companies.
25:32
Bechtel's, you know, done Wattsborough, they've done Vogel, but Bechtel's model is not one that jumps in and takes a lot of risk.
25:39
Okay.
25:40
Okay.
25:40
They don't.
25:41
They they're very good at risk management, they don't take it.
25:43
A lot of their work is done time and materials, okay, because they they came in to clean up Vogel.
25:49
Okay.
25:50
So you're not going to assume some kind of risk.
25:52
You're not going to repeat what the other ones did.
25:53
What's happening?
25:55
Do you say okay?
25:56
When do we think so?
25:57
We're in this bid process of Brookfield looking at everything right now.
26:01
Right.
26:01
Gonna figure it out.
26:02
We got to make some final investment decisions.
26:04
Right.
26:05
When do you when do you foresee construction beginning?
26:08
And when do we think the plant's going to start delivering juice to the good people of South Carolina?
26:14
In my estimate, I think before construction starts, it's probably going to be a two-year period.
26:20
Okay.
26:21
Everything nailed down.
26:22
And then you're probably going to have perhaps a four and a half to five year completion effort for the for the units.
26:28
Okay.
26:29
So we're looking at, let's just call it 2033.
26:34
Which about is the bridge.
26:35
Remember, I talked about that short five years.
26:37
Meanwhile, the state of South Carolina can't wait.
26:40
Okay.
26:41
But you know, the utilities in Dominion and Duke, they've extended the licenses of all the reactors in here and doing power upgrades and up rates on the existing fleet, plus, you know, this other activities.
26:52
There's, I think Santi Cooper is still uh pursuing uh combined cycle, you know, natural gas plant.
26:58
Okay.
26:58
So that's going on.
27:00
They may defer the shutdown of certain units that they were going to retire, like some coal units, they may keep those kind of things running.
27:07
And you've still got some solar uh stuff.
27:10
Not so much wind in the state, but some solar development.
27:12
Well, that's going to go on.
27:14
So I think I think it's important for the state of South Carolina to recognize look.
27:19
We did that economic study for the five states.
27:22
So the fertile crescent of nuclear ice started that term.
27:25
Yep.
27:25
Virginia, North, and South Carolina, uh, uh Georgia.
27:29
Georgia, Tennessee.
27:30
Yep.
27:30
And I'll tell you what I used in convincing South Carolina.
27:35
If you don't do it, it's going to go elsewhere.
27:37
Okay.
27:38
Exactly.
27:39
Virginia legislators putting a lot of money on the table.
27:42
Tennessee, a lot of money on the table.
27:44
Texas, the firm.
27:46
A lot of money on the table.
27:48
You're going to, you're going to, it'll pass you by.
27:50
Okay.
27:51
The business is going to go where it has the power.
27:54
Okay.
27:55
And I think the state recognizes this, hey, wait a minute.
27:58
We want to develop the economy here for the citizens of state of South Carolina, but also for the jobs and tax revenues and those kind of things.
28:06
They very much want to transition and not be so one-dimensional.
28:10
Agriculture is the biggest industry in South Carolina.
28:12
But what about advanced manufacturing?
28:14
You've got Boeing in the state.
28:15
You've got Google in the state.
28:16
Wait a minute.
28:17
We want a diversity of jobs.
28:19
Okay.
28:19
We don't want our kids leaving here.
28:20
Okay.
28:21
We want them to stay here.
28:23
So I think South Carolina's recognizing this opportunity.
28:26
Remind everybody, because I need you to remind, and then we've got to take our break.
28:30
And then on the second half, we're going to talk about nuclear risk and really get into this where you talked about, man, you got to go search out these problems.
28:39
And because if you don't, they're going to find you.
28:41
Remind everyone your nuclear power in the state, how many jobs are because of it, how much taxes are being uh generated because of it, and the and just the economic impact that we know of.
28:53
Well, we from that study we found out the state of South Carolina benefits from nuclear in the state, over $9 billion a year.
29:00
Economic contribution.
29:02
1.1 billion dollars a year of tax revenues, and that's just for the existing operations.
29:07
46,000 employees with a wage 65% higher than the median of the other wages in the state.
29:15
Where would you rather be?
29:16
Okay, here's what we're gonna do.
29:17
We're gonna take a break.
29:18
Uh I am with Jim Little.
29:19
He is on the governor's appointed council uh for South Carolina.
29:23
He has also been a 50-year, 50 plus year nuclear power executive with Westinghouse for 25 years.
29:30
Uh this is Todd Royal.
29:31
This is geopower, energy, and real politics.
29:34
We will be back here in just a moment.
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30:52
Well, I challenge you to find a broader array of great voices, a deeper bench of experience or a more dedicated collection of passionate patriots than here on America Outloud dot news.
31:09
Now is our time, my fellow Americans.
31:13
America Outlaw dot news, liberty and justice for all.
31:22
Hello, this is Todd Royal.
31:24
We're back for our second half of Geopower, Energy, and Real Politics.
31:27
And uh Jim Little was we were chatting a little bit over the break.
31:30
We were talking about submarines and risk, and I'm gonna hand it over to him because what you guys, what I want us as an audience to realize is that nuclear power can work.
31:40
This is a gentleman who knows it as well as anybody.
31:42
I love what he said in the first half.
31:44
We've been to the moon, we can build these nuclear power plants.
31:47
But Jim, you have focused intensely, and you've been a leading voice on risk.
31:54
What do you really mean by that?
31:55
You brought out in the first half, like uh Barack and UAE, and they were all in it together, and they thought about the risk.
32:02
When thinking about VC about V VC Summer, what do you mean with all the risk?
32:09
Well, I think for me personally, uh, risk goes back to, in a sense, my background.
32:16
You know, when you you know, a couple of engineering degrees, and you find out that uh technical companies, utilities, reactor vendors, uh they love engineering, they love you know technology and that sort of stuff.
32:28
And you find out what they're not typically trained on are really kind of two things.
32:32
What I'll call the the psychological things I referred to earlier about avoidance and that kind of stuff.
32:38
And I was lucky enough in that career to work with a with a cognitive psychologist.
32:42
And the other one is uh is the whole subject of risk.
32:44
Okay.
32:45
Now I was fortunate enough early in my career to actually work on probabilistic risk assessment studies of nuclear reactors.
32:53
You know, really most three mile island, right?
32:56
What what causes meltdowns?
32:58
Let's do this sort of stuff.
33:00
And you find out that we actually did the first probabilistic risk assessments for two nuclear plants, the Zion plant, okay, and the point plant was called the zip study, the near site studies, nuclear plants near Chicago, nuclear plants near New York City.
33:16
And we're saying, okay, well, you know, we designed all these reactors, a loss of coolant accident, the pipe breaks in half, and see, nothing happens.
33:24
And you know, we did these real acid tests to show, you know, you know, battleship in the desert kinds of things, you know how robust these designs were.
33:32
And so we when we modeled in probabilistic risk assessment, we did it, we did event trees and consequence analysis and probability scenarios in RAN, these Monte Carlo.
33:43
Yeah, I was gonna say Monte Carlo scenarios, all that stuff.
33:45
And what we found out was kind of surprising.
33:47
Right?
33:48
What was it?
33:48
That the risk in nuclear power plants had nothing to do with the reactor, it was out there in the balance of plant.
33:55
Did the diesel generator equal that in?
33:57
Was that did that always start on time?
33:59
When that operator is supposed to move this valve during it during emergency, did he turn the right valve?
34:04
Did he do remember to do that?
34:06
And and the alarm went off the we were allowing that the operator will make the right decision within 30 minutes.
34:12
Well, what if he didn't?
34:13
Okay.
34:13
So what happened at Three Mile Island was that they were confused.
34:16
You had all these alarms and lights going off the control room.
34:19
Oh my god, figure out what sort of happened.
34:22
So you found out that the real driver for risk was out there in little, not the not the big bang, you know, battleship, but little things cascading in combination.
34:33
Okay.
34:34
So the reactor itself is just fine.
34:36
Robust as hell.
34:37
And so the difference between being robust and fragile and being anti-fragile.
34:45
Okay, I don't care.
34:46
I want resilience.
34:48
So you look at this thing, we and a lot of insights went into redesigning the AP 1000.
34:54
Took advantage of a lot of that that insight from those studies.
34:59
Matter of fact, most people think the AP1000 is a recent design.
35:02
The design of the AP 1000 started in 1982.
35:06
Okay.
35:07
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
35:08
Oh, oh 82, this began.
35:10
Yes.
35:11
82.
35:12
It was a joint effort with Mitsubishi on the advanced plant reactor.
35:15
Then it evolved.
35:16
Mitsubishi went their own way, and Westinghouse kept developing.
35:18
But a lot of the features in the AP 1000 came from the insights from those studies.
35:23
Let's not leave the the refueling water storage tank outside.
35:27
Let's put it inside containment so we don't have to switch over these valves, it'll automatically do that.
35:32
Okay, let's let's have some things that passively uh generate so it doesn't need a motor to do it.
35:36
You know, we'll drain, use gravity, we'll do this, we'll do that.
35:39
Yeah, so yeah, yeah.
35:40
Great stuff, okay?
35:41
Yeah.
35:42
So let me ask you.
35:42
So we look at a project.
35:45
What's a project meltdown?
35:46
Oh, we know what one is.
35:47
It was virtual summer, right?
35:49
Yeah.
35:49
Is a project an event tree?
35:51
Does it have consequences and probabilities?
35:54
Yeah.
35:54
Do you have you modeled that?
35:57
Or do you just say, no, here's the contract, and if that happens, this will be the liquidated damages, right?
36:03
No.
36:04
If you model these things, you can find out what really drives the risk of that could affect project execution.
36:11
You want to be a student of this.
36:13
You don't want to fear it, you want to explore it.
36:15
Okay.
36:16
To navigate risk, you have to know where it is.
36:18
Yep.
36:18
Okay.
36:19
And you have to test your assumptions.
36:21
If I move my assumption and the result doesn't change, I can leave it as an assumption.
36:25
But if I move my result and the result goes crazy, I have to do something with assumption.
36:30
I have to do one of two things.
36:31
I have to make the assumption effect, right?
36:34
Or I have to reduce my reliance on that assumption.
36:40
So really, you we can all say, and I'm being very general here, but the American nuclear industry, you have one heck of a product in the AP1000.
36:51
This is a resilient, robust engine.
36:54
Why don't you use the technology on your design on your projects?
36:58
Hello.
36:59
And so if you want to navigate the topography of risk, you gotta know what it looks like.
37:04
You have to think bad thoughts to find good things.
37:07
And it's counterintuitive, isn't it?
37:09
We talked about cognitive biases.
37:11
Yep, it's different as dangerous.
37:12
I don't want to talk about that.
37:13
I'm gonna move that on the country.
37:15
No, no.
37:16
You put all the people in that same room in a one-team environment, and you explore risk, right?
37:20
You think bad thoughts, and you say, Oh, what about this?
37:23
What about this?
37:23
What about this?
37:24
You know, how did Solenberger land the plane?
37:28
You know why?
37:28
He was a student of aircraft crashes.
37:31
He was a fighter pilot that had been that had been shot at.
37:36
And he'd also been a he'd been a glider pilot as well.
37:38
So he knew we're going on the Hudson, right?
37:42
Here's where we're going.
37:44
He did thought those scenarios out.
37:46
He was calm in the face of that, right?
37:48
Yep.
37:48
Yep.
37:49
It was like, you know, we're not going to Teterborough.
37:51
Okay.
37:52
We're going to put it down.
37:53
Okay.
37:54
I bet the guy's a fascinating guy.
37:56
Oh, I'm a student of failure.
37:58
Right?
37:59
So, did Barack because you brought this up in the first half?
38:03
Uh and if I'm saying it wrong, please correct me.
38:07
Um, the four plants that were built for for the audience, there were four reactors that were built.
38:12
That's based.
38:13
It's the it's the South Korean design.
38:15
It really has come from Westinghouse.
38:17
It came from combustion engineering, which was later bought by Westinghouse, right?
38:20
Okay.
38:21
In the 1980s.
38:22
Okay, so they build these four reactors in the UAE, where we have cultural differences, language differences.
38:29
We're in the middle of the Fakotka Desert.
38:31
It's 100 and 100.
38:32
No nuclear background.
38:34
No nuclear background, and they build these things on time, on budget, and now they want to.
38:38
I've read they they'd like to build four more.
38:41
They're getting 25% of all their electricity now from that one plant.
38:44
Right.
38:45
What did they do from a risk?
38:47
How did they do this?
38:48
They took an existing design that had been built in Korea and they replicated it in in the UAE.
38:54
And then the risk, what did they?
38:56
You said they got everybody in the same room and everybody's on the same contract, and everybody's in this together.
39:01
How did they have first of a kind design, but what they had was one team.
39:06
Look, you can screw up an old design.
39:08
Okay, you can screw it up by having all this finger pointing and avoidance of responsibility and blame.
39:14
They had the benefits of a of a design that have been implemented in the Korea in Korea.
39:19
They didn't have first of a kind technology risk, but they had first of a kind project.
39:24
Would you say it's first of kind project risk?
39:26
Hell yeah.
39:27
Yeah.
39:28
Country, language, culture, background.
39:30
Wait a minute.
39:31
And so they put this one team together.
39:33
They brought in experts from the from the United States, quite a few, people that had been in, you know, kind of my generation.
39:39
Hey, what you need to be thinking about.
39:41
And you and quite frankly, questions are more important than answers.
39:47
This this interrogatories, these continual questions, and what if scenarios you can find some of the answers.
39:54
You gotta find people that are skilled at asking questions.
39:57
What about this?
39:58
What about that?
40:00
Why is this?
40:00
Why couldn't that what could fail here?
40:03
And that's that lets you explore things.
40:05
Okay.
40:06
That lets you go back from puzzles up into mysteries.
40:10
Okay.
40:10
All right.
40:11
Saying, look, what did you prune off from those mysteries and your heuristics to come up with your formulas that would be valuable now or could happen that you never had saw happen before?
40:20
You know, they you know, Vejad do I've no never seen this before, right?
40:25
George Carlin, right?
40:26
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:27
Yeah.
40:28
Right?
40:28
Yeah, dude.
40:29
There you go.
40:30
So you think about this, you know.
40:32
Yep.
40:34
Do you think this is going to be done then for VC Summer?
40:37
So what you're describing.
40:40
That takes an emotionally mature person, emotionally mature project to go.
40:45
Do you think that's what you're describing?
40:47
Which which is hard.
40:48
Well, that's what we're telling.
40:49
That's what we're telling a state.
40:51
That's what we're telling, you know, that I'm telling people, you know, whether it's you know, elemental or Oppenheimer or others, hey, you you've got to do this.
41:00
Okay.
41:00
Got it.
41:01
I've given talks on this saying, hey, wait a minute, you know, look at look at uh in Canada, okay.
41:08
They just did a project up the Darlington Reefer.
41:11
They had a one team on schedule on budget.
41:14
Right?
41:15
They did it, okay.
41:16
Oh, people think, oh, wait a minute, this one team thing.
41:19
I said, wait a minute.
41:20
I'm gonna what's the last nuclear project done in the United States?
41:24
When was it?
41:25
Most people don't know because they're not old enough.
41:27
It was St.
41:28
Lucy Unit 2 by Bill Derrickson, and what he did was they'd had a hurricane on this site, they knocked down the cranes according to unit two on schedule and a bunch of how did he do that?
41:38
He created a one-team environment.
41:40
Well matter of fact, there's a guy from a basco, they were the architect engineer at that time, and they're all integrated with Florida Party Light in one team, one team.
41:48
I'm not kidding, all inlaced.
41:50
And he wrote a paper called Doing Doing Nuclear Right.
41:53
It was written in 1984.
41:55
Okay.
41:57
Wait, wait, 40 years ago.
41:59
I'm gonna put this in the show notes, 1984, doing nuclear right.
42:02
And who wrote it?
42:03
Leo Sicaris.
42:05
Leo Sicaris.
42:07
Right from Vasco.
42:09
And I and it is like a scanned document.
42:11
I said, Oh, here's a recent report.
42:14
And people said, now look at the date.
42:15
It is 40 years ago.
42:17
Okay, you can do this.
42:18
Okay.
42:20
I'm not trying to be simplistic here, but really I'd love to explain what you mean by the one team.
42:27
Because what the reason I'm asking this is that in our society now, yeah, you know, and it drives me nuts.
42:33
We're all lone wolves.
42:34
Jim, I'm gonna live my best life.
42:37
Not how can we live our best life together?
42:39
But you know, uh you know, go look at the rocks institution.
42:43
Are you crushing it today, Jim?
42:45
Are you living your best life?
42:46
No, no, look, it look, people use this word collaboration too loosely, okay?
42:51
And I always give people my definition of what collaboration is.
42:55
Okay, when you coordinate, you share information.
42:59
When you cooperate, you share resources, but when you collaborate, you have identical goals, identical.
43:05
Okay.
43:05
So if you're the reactor vendor, your success is tied not to the contract, but the successful completion of the project, no matter and for the other players.
43:16
So if I've got the EPC provider there, and it's failing, we go over and help him.
43:22
Okay, tell people what an EPC is, please.
43:25
Engineer procure construct.
43:26
That's a typical we used to call them architect engineers in the old days.
43:30
Okay, that's what they do.
43:32
They take a design like a Westinghouse AP 1000 and they engineer it.
43:36
Most people don't know what engineering really is.
43:39
Engineering is taking design and saying, okay, how much pipe do I need?
43:43
Where's it gonna go?
43:44
How do I support it?
43:46
Okay, what's it weigh?
43:47
How do I size these things?
43:48
How much concrete and rebar do I need?
43:50
That's engineering.
43:52
Got it.
43:52
Okay, engineering is not design.
43:54
Design is Jim Little back in 1973, drawing lines on a piece of paper, how a reactor is supposed to work and writing calculations.
44:01
That was design work.
44:02
Okay.
44:03
What's the what's the P of procurement?
44:04
So we got the engineering.
44:06
You've got to buy all these materials, right?
44:07
I got to buy my stuff.
44:09
I've got to buy concrete, I gotta buy rebar, I gotta talk to a steel mill.
44:12
I need uh, you know, I need rebar here, I need structural steel here, I need electrical suppliers, I need cables, I need pumps.
44:20
I've got to I've got to make all these pieces, you know.
44:22
Westinghouse says I need a pump that does this big, I gotta go find that pump.
44:26
And then construction, obviously, then the Bechtels Jacobs or the former Shaw.
44:31
I gotta have somebody's gotta go there.
44:33
I've got to have labor agreements, I gotta work with unions, okay.
44:36
Uh I got steam fitters, I got you know, uh concrete workers, I I've got electrical, I you know, IUE, I've got to deal with these unions.
44:45
And then who agreement who you know, you hear this fancy term now, project management.
44:50
So who manages all that?
44:52
Let's just be fancy and go, then who's the project manager doing all that?
44:56
Well, there wasn't one when you look at virtual summer, they're all doing this.
45:02
So the one team thing is that the PMO, the project management office is populated with people from the participants, the reactor vendor, the PC contractor, the utility people, they're all in that.
45:16
So the one team is is the project management organization.
45:20
Wow.
45:21
Okay.
45:21
And you say that we we you you're you're beating this.
45:25
It's really dumb, but it's been it's doable.
45:27
I gave examples of non-nuclear ones that are pretty sophisticated and complicated.
45:31
Heathrow, London Olympics, you know.
45:34
I mean, you know, Darlington.
45:36
I mean, it's it's doable, but you've got to have the fortitude, in a sense, I'll use this the psychological courage to go do it.
45:45
Yep.
45:45
Okay, look, these are big lifts.
45:47
Nuclear is a big the challenge with nuclear, it's it's front loaded, all the costs are up front.
45:54
So and once you get the plant build at skiing, but you gotta climb the mountain first so you can ski.
45:58
And then it's very big, and you're gonna have the forty, and you know there's uncertainty these things, things happen.
46:04
Okay, I mean you promised your board that this is gonna cost six billion dollars and it comes in at seven, is that a failure?
46:12
Well, wait a minute, you told us, and these boards are very conservative.
46:16
Wait a minute, we want to minimize the risk to the shareholders, and there's this there's a psychology in boards of directors, some of them that don't have a long view, they're they're preserving the status quo.
46:27
Sure, and you know, most people use you cannot preserve the status quo.
46:32
It's a it's a fallacy.
46:33
Matter of fact, you know, I went to a high school that was very classical oriented.
46:38
I I took I studied Latin for four years, and the still status quo was taken out of a Latin phrase out of context.
46:45
The phrase is status quo, race errant ontebellum.
46:48
The condition of things before the war, it's that pause before the war.
46:54
Okay, yeah, it's the it's it's the quiet before dawn, okay?
46:59
You can't preserve it, okay.
47:01
So if you're playing this preserve the status quo, eventually conditions catch up with you and stuff happens, right?
47:10
So you've got to, if you want to you want to be a victim of change, or do you want to be the change maker?
47:16
Okay, I've got uh I I want to throw something at you because I know you're gonna understand this well.
47:22
So we always hear right now the Chinese can build nuclear better than than the Americans, they can build and they can build and they can build.
47:29
Um but correct me for wrong here.
47:33
My understanding, so the American AP 1000 design was essentially sold to the Chinese, which is now the APC 1400, what that means everyone is that unit can give 1.4 gigawatts.
47:45
CPR CPR 1000 C Pair.
47:48
Okay, when they did Sanman Nuclear Power Plant, you know, they started it around, I think it was 0809, they basically connected the grid around 1819.
47:58
But my understanding was that thing took just as long as Vogel when you did all the engineering and all the front end, and they had all sorts of problems.
48:10
So, in other words, we the vaunted Chinese had just as many problems.
48:16
Supposedly they're finally getting it down to about five years.
48:20
But I've read things recently going five years is maybe it's six or seven, maybe it's four.
48:26
But in other words, Jim, I think it is it fair to say in these first of a con projects, or these big projects, even in an authoritarian nation that says Jim and Todd, you're gonna go build a nuclear power plant, whether you like it or not, you're gonna put that rebar in for the rest of your life.
48:42
But didn't they also have problems when they were first building their version of the AP 1000?
48:49
Is that true or not true?
48:51
It might be a little bit of an overstatement, and I'll tell you why.
48:54
Remember, because you had Westinghouse and Shaw over there in China with a design that really wasn't complete.
49:00
Yep, so a lot of it really was first of a kind, and it wasn't just because the Chinese were doing it, okay, it was first of a kind.
49:07
What the Chinese brought to bear was uh they didn't worry about lawsuits or anything like that, you know, more labor, let's go.
49:13
They those their way through it, they really did, okay.
49:17
Uh, and so you have that state control, you don't have a lot of interveners, you don't have NEPA policies and lawsuits, and that doesn't happen.
49:26
State money, boom, let's go.
49:28
So I think that the state literally dragged that project, you know, through the mud.
49:34
It really did, okay.
49:35
And it was the first one, okay.
49:37
Yeah, so now do they have the scale to repeat those things?
49:40
Absolutely, absolutely.
49:42
Can they replicate things?
49:43
Yes, I used to say in in China the strategic weapon was the Xerox machine.
49:48
They can take a good idea and replicate it.
49:50
They're very good at doing it, okay.
49:52
I mean, you know, I spent a lot of time in China.
49:55
Okay, matter of fact, I was actually advising CNN C that Chinese.
50:00
Utility in their dealings with Westinghouse.
50:03
Okay.
50:04
What was West Name saying to you?
50:05
Because I was a Westinghouse guy, okay, in my career.
50:08
And saying, okay, you should be thinking about this.
50:10
You'd be thinking about it.
50:11
We didn't want them to fail.
50:12
Okay.
50:13
Yep.
50:13
All right.
50:14
Because an American company and that sort of thing is before they went bankrupt.
50:18
And the scale of what they can do in China is amazing because of this system that they have.
50:25
I mean, I I one time uh was in Shanghai, and I took a I had to get to the airport, okay.
50:32
And the way to get to the airport is on a maglev train, okay, that goes 230 miles an hour and takes you to the airport in 20 minutes from Shanghai to the airport.
50:42
It's not a mag lift train operating in the United States.
50:45
This was their was their urban transport to the airport.
50:48
Okay.
50:49
And it's it's amazing.
50:50
You go in Beijing, you go in Shanghai, you go, oh my God, do they have problems?
50:54
Absolutely, they're problems.
50:55
Okay.
50:55
All right.
50:56
But they have this ability to do that.
50:58
If you look at states that push through policy, let's take a democratic one.
51:05
Let's take France, for example.
51:06
They did the, you know, De Gaulle in 1973 after the oil shock says, oh, we're not doing this again.
51:11
We have no natural resources.
51:12
We don't have coal.
51:13
We don't have oil.
51:14
Our economy depends on energy.
51:15
We need nuclear, and we're going to quit screwing around.
51:17
We're going to buy Westinghouse three loop plants.
51:19
Boom.
51:19
And we formed the Framatome Company, 49% owned by Westinghouse, 51% owned by the French.
51:25
Go.
51:26
Okay.
51:26
And they replicated the standalone business today.
51:29
Westinghouse eventually was divested out of that thing.
51:32
They licensed Framatome to go do that.
51:34
Okay.
51:35
And they've done very, very well.
51:37
Okay.
51:38
Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
51:40
We tried that.
51:41
I ran West Valley to decommission that commercial facility that shut down.
51:44
Jimmy Carter kind of killed the reprocessing business in 1976, right?
51:49
The Agnes plant, which was built and never run down near Barnville, South Carolina.
51:54
I was down there the other day.
51:55
It's sitting there.
51:57
Canceled in 76.
51:58
The French took their nuclear weapons processing facility and commercialized it.
52:03
And today the France recycles its spent nuclear fuel and generates mixed oxide fuel for other countries.
52:09
So policy is real important.
52:11
Not getting attention deficit disorder, not letting politics get in the way of this and this and this, and what's what's hot, what's not, the flavor of the month thing.
52:20
Yep.
52:20
He determined to do it because they knew that energy was so important, important to them, and they knew that a reliable supply of nuclear fuel was really important.
52:29
We don't want to be dependent on other countries.
52:34
90% of uranium that comes out of reactors is never used.
52:38
Yeah.
52:38
Okay, because in a sense, utilities United States rent the fuel.
52:42
They take 10% out and say, government pick it up from the Atomic Energy Act in 1954.
52:47
We're the only country that doesn't close the loop.
52:50
Right?
52:50
There's this valuable uranium.
52:52
Oh, but that's too hard.
52:53
The government's taking it for free.
52:54
Let's go.
52:55
Yeah.
52:56
Okay.
52:56
And we never mind, Yucca Mountain.
52:58
They're paying us to store it.
52:59
This is even this is a good deal for us.
53:01
So it's closing the loop.
53:03
It's getting getting policy down and sticking with it and saying, look, this is what we have to do.
53:08
Whether it's energy policy, environmental policy, you gotta you gotta follow through.
53:13
And I'm getting into a little bit of geopolitics here with you.
53:16
Do you does it frustrate you though when people will be negative about nuclear?
53:23
Well, the United States can't do it, Russia does.
53:25
They can't do what China does.
53:27
Um does it frustrate you because my retorts have always been well.
53:32
If you have an authoritarian society, um, and you can just say this is what we're going to do no matter what.
53:40
And if you have no environmental loss, if you have no um the money that would be spent on a social program, Rose Adams in Russia, we're gonna use that to go finance nuclear power plants to to further our geopolitical goals globally.
53:57
Does it frustrate you when you hear this kind of negativity against U.S.
54:01
nuclear?
54:02
Because I've always pictured you as being so not just pro-nuclear, but pro-United States nuclear and pro we can get this done nuclear.
54:11
Yeah, I guess it's one of these things.
54:13
Look, the United States didn't have to do it, okay.
54:16
Along comes shell gas, right?
54:18
We had the growth, the the demand growth was cut in half by two factors, okay.
54:23
One factor was energy efficiency, okay?
54:28
Now, energy efficiency labels, you've seen that, that kind of thing.
54:32
Okay, and the other one is that our economy changed from the heavy industry to the service industry.
54:36
So that was all offshore for lower cost, labor and in Asia and other countries, that's great.
54:41
We'll offshore that stuff, and you know, buy it on Amazon, go to Walmart, that's great stuff.
54:46
And who wants to work in a steel factory?
54:48
Nobody, okay.
54:49
I mean, I lived in Pittsburgh from the steel era to, you know, it's not a steel country anymore, not a steel city anymore, right?
54:56
So those two things kind of fly along comes shale gas, you know, almost too cheap to measure.
55:01
That's great.
55:02
So you didn't have to do it, okay.
55:04
Can we do nuclear?
55:05
Absolutely we can do nuclear.
55:06
I pointed out it's not a technical problem, okay?
55:09
It's uh, you know, do you have the emotional fortitude to make it happen?
55:13
Do you do you have the policy behind that?
55:15
Now, here's the beauty of nuclear in the United States.
55:18
It's got bipartisan support.
55:20
It's probably one of the only things the United States where you can get a Republican and Democrat in the room and they'll agree to nuclear for different reasons.
55:28
They'll agree to it.
55:29
Make America great again, make energy security, and it's better than drill drip baby drill because we produce more crude oil than Saudi Arabia.
55:36
We don't need to drill more oil, there's plenty of it, right?
55:39
But you want energy security, that's really good stuff, okay.
55:42
The Democrats, greenhouse gases, environmental, uh, low-cost energy, job creation, okay, skilled trades.
55:51
Oh, this is all we can agree on, okay.
55:54
I mean, I you know, I've been in South Carolina quite a while.
55:57
And believe it or not, Lindsey Graham, uh, and uh, oh, who's the Bill?
56:03
What's his name?
56:04
I just Bill, the minority whip on Congress.
56:09
Bill uh Clyburn, Jim Clyburn.
56:11
Okay, Lindsay Graham and Jim Clyburn actually agree on this.
56:15
Actually, on nuclear power.
56:17
Absolutely.
56:18
Well, look at their state, big nuclear industry right here.
56:20
They agree on this stuff.
56:21
They don't argue about nuclear.
56:23
They don't.
56:24
They love nuclear, they're gonna be they're in the same room together on the side.
56:26
So where would you rather be than right here, right now?
56:28
Okay.
56:29
Yeah.
56:29
The demand is increasing, okay.
56:32
Nuclear's got a nice play to it.
56:34
We've got lessons learned, okay.
56:36
Get an opportunity to do this right.
56:38
I mean, this Virgil Summer project can be the key to the future if done right in a different way.
56:46
Did you think it was a good, and I've only got you for a few more minutes here, but were you impressed, happy, felt the policy when the Trump administration gave the 80, you know, allocated the 80 billion towards the AP 1000 projects?
57:01
It's positive, but it's gonna happen anyway.
57:04
It's gonna happen anyway.
57:05
Listen, Jim, thanks again.
57:07
This is Todd Royal.
57:08
I am the host of uh Geopower, Energy and Real Politics.
57:12
My guest today has been Jim Little, 50 plus year nuclear power executive, governor's appointed council, South Carolina, and on and on and on.
57:21
Jim, again, thank you so much.
57:23
Welcome.
57:23
And and my to my dear audience, God bless.
57:26
I hope you enjoyed this.
57:27
Thank you so much.