E6: Nuclear Mailbag

25:06the fact that we've talked about a bunch, that the uranium supply chain is a little bit tricky and broken, has several ways to gain exposure. There's a spectrum based on your capital size, risk, and illiquidity tolerance, etc. For simplicity purposes, he'll discuss the public opportunities, though there are private, direct, and fund investments available. One global caveat, uranium is a highly volatile commodity with a very real left tail risk in the form of a nuclear meltdown. This is a very small risk, but it's real and would likely cause a large sell-off, so worth noting. One is to own physical uranium proxies via exchange-listed funds.

25:43Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, or Yellow Cake in London, there are some pros. They're reasonably liquid. They track the prices by uranium. And cons, which is they can trade to a large discount with no direct mechanism to close it, can experience equity volatility due to exchange trading or inclusion in ETFs. There are the Sprott Uranium Miners or URNM. For non-US investors, there are also versions available in Europe and Australia. The pro there is it's a pure play with exposure to equities and physical uranium. And the con is that it's volatile and less liquid for large investors. There's Global X URA.

26:17Pros, very liquid. Con, it's only 75 % pure play uranium and 25 % nuclear services. Sprott junior uranium miners, the pros are it's a liquid way to play the junior exploration and near-term producers. The con is that it's very volatile and companies here will require more capital and dilute equity owners. Then there's single-name stocks. You can use the ETF as a reference and start doing your own research. The pros are that it's potentially more upside if you can identify something in the ETF you'd like more. The cons are that they're highly idiosyncratic. There could be mining issues, management issues, risk of dilution, all of which can impact returns.

26:54There's also an emerging opportunity in the demand-driven nuclear renaissance. This is not quite as obvious as uranium and is more of a picks and shovels play. Service providers, companies constructing reactors, etc. Today, the primary option is to own individual securities, but they've created an index. The symbol on Bloomberg is N-U-K-Z-X, and we'll put a link in the show notes. An ETF tracking the index has been filed. It attempts to capture the entire supply chain from fuel to advanced reactors, service providers, and utilities. There's minimal mining exposure with only one stock with mining operations.

27:28So all of that, again, not investment advice, but an interesting way to think about how you might invest in nuclear in the public markets, if that's something that you're interested in. This next one, also an ex-comment from D.A. McCormick, Paki's brother. If we get energy right in the next 10 years, do any of the things we currently consider eco-friendly in our individual lives actually matter? I.e. recycling, paper straws, not using plastic bottles, et cetera. Paki, what do you make of this one? I mean, paper straws can get lost. If we never use a paper straw again, I'll be happy. I mean, to me, the way that I always think about it is there's this like the Sankey chart and there's different things.

28:08I mean, like pollution and waste are a different thing than energy usage and carbon being released into the atmosphere. We don't want a planet full of litter. We don't want fish and dolphins choking on the soda can holders. All of those things we don't want. But I do think the broader point of the question is that we major in the minors, so to speak, on a lot of things. We focus on these little paper straws while opposing nuclear. We have these like big, chunky energy solutions on the sources side. And then we kind of like spend all of our time thinking about the uses side. Like I turn off a light bulb and save like this tiny, tiny bit of energy.

28:47That's great if that's something that you want to prioritize in your life. But I think to me, the most important thing you can do is just put more clean energy on the grid cheaply. I think conservation is a bit of a dead end generally and really is like maybe something that people feel that they can control in their lives, but that really, really doesn't make that big an impact compared to just putting more nuclear or solar or whatever else your preferred clean energy sources online. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. There's a lot of penny wise, pound foolish type of environmental activism going on.

29:18And again, no problem with, you know, for any of us, I think if you want to use a paper straw, great, right? But I think the most important thing here is that we are cultivating an environment where we're constantly innovating, We're oriented around progress. We are deregulating where we can. So we're just not all tied up in all this red tape and all of that. If we can have an environment like that, we're just going to be moving so quickly towards things that are ultimately in the end, much more environmentally friendly and also positive for humanity and human flourishing. I think that's such a good way to put it.

29:53I mean, there's a couple of really great examples that I love here. One is just direct air capture, which we talked about with Valor Atomics. We'll talk about with Casey at Terraform Industries on the next episode. But this idea that this huge, huge, huge problem that we have, that there's too much carbon being released into the atmosphere, might actually just have a technological solution, which is if you have cheap enough energy and abundant enough energy, you just pull it right out of the air and either put it in rocks or do something productive with it. So that's the one. There's also this great book that if you haven't read it this deep into the season, you absolutely should.

30:25It's The Case for Nukes by Robert Zuberin. He also wrote The Case for Space and The Case for Mars, which were part of inspiring Elon and SpaceX and Delia Navarta to go start those space companies. It's like a great aggressive pro-nuclear fission and fusion book. And one of the points that he makes is at some point we get fusion advanced enough that you just shoot the plasma at like the landfills that we have and all the materials that we've used and you break them down back into their component elements and get to use it again his like big contention is that there are no natural resources other than human intelligence like everything in the ground is useless until we figure out how to use it and we can figure out how to kind of reuse as soon as we kind of get to that energy abundance and we get fusion that can just break everything down so if you want to recycle i mean you have to recycle it i think it's against the law not to in a lot of places to do that.

31:15But if you want to use paper straws, knock yourself out. But I think hopefully the goal that we're going for here is a world in which you don't have to worry about paper straws. Speaking of human intelligence and human ingenuity, we have a comment here from P. McCran on X. Let's get Palmer Lucky on. The latest episode segment of Pirate Wires was on nuclear weapons and how the U.S. went too far in turning nuclear off. And my response to that is come join us anytime, Palmer. Amen. Next one on X is Jack Calvin Ross. Interested to hear y 'all's thoughts on nuclear waste recycling and reuse. Seems huge, but can't tell if it's just a new shiny thing in the space.

31:54What do you think, Julia? Yeah, this is an interesting one. I think this is one of those distraction problems where, again, nice to have. We'd love to see more recycling. We'd love to see some of that innovation around even nuclear reactors themselves that can be run on waste. But we're missing the point here. We need to start building more nuclear power so we can get more clean energy online. As we know, and what we've talked about in some of our earlier episodes, nuclear waste itself leaves a very tiny footprint and hasn't harmed anyone since it's been around. So as we mentioned, the nuclear waste we've used in the U.S.

32:28over the past several decades can all fit on a football field and is stored on site in concrete casks. We have a great system to do it. To me, it's not a problem to prioritize solving right now when we're not even able to get new nuclear power plants online. So I would say it's a little bit of a shiny object distraction. That's a great answer. I love that we're doing it real here. I guess my one question would be, does it help maybe with approval? If you can say, I have this new plant and the thing that it does is it eats all the waste that you're worried about and uses it as fuel, do you think maybe the NRC or just Congress looks on that more favorably?

33:06I don't think it matters, actually. The NRC, well, first I'll say this, is that's a new design. So you're just talking about long, long timelines to even get something like that passed, right? The NRC hasn't regulated anything like that before. So there is a big hurdle, not to say it's not worth going for, but there's a huge hurdle there. And then the second thing is, again, that's not the issue that is stopping people in terms of being able to get licensed or to build something new. We have the waste issue relatively solved. I guess the one area where you're seeing this be an issue still is in California, for example, when they did try to pass the bill to overturn the moratorium on nuclear in California, the number one reason cited by the people who said no to it were saying we don't have a solution to nuclear waste.

33:55So there are some people who are still holding themselves back, I would say, on this topic. But in the macro sense, I think it's a small topic. I think we have a lot of other ways where we need to just be pushing the industry forward and shouldn't get bogged down in any waste questions. I love it. Trey Lauderdale, who's out there fighting the good fight and trying to extend Diablo Canyon and even expand Diablo Canyon, he asked us a question on X, which is, he'd love to see an episode on who are the leading investors in the space? How developed is the ecosystem of angels, early stage VC, late stage VC, PE, and strategics?

34:29You just actually got off a fundraising process for a nuclear company. So give us a little bit of an overview of the landscape. Yeah, I love this question. I mean, nuclear is having a resurgence right now over the last several years, maybe about a decade or so. Many companies have started up, but this is not a category that's massive, right? And you almost wouldn't want to see like hundreds upon hundreds of companies because because then we might be spreading ourselves a bit too thin in terms of talent and other things. I would say it's kind of a niche within the hard tech category. And there are some people who are going directly at nuclear as a category.

35:06Rod, who we've had on the show, has nucleation capital, which is entirely focused on the nuclear industry. And you get some great benefits of, you know, when you're really deep on a topic, you are very well informed coming into analyzing companies and making decisions on investing. So that's a niche to be in, but most investors have nuclear as one part of a larger portfolio. Sometimes it's a larger portfolio that's exclusively hard tech focused, or like, for example, A16Z's American dynamism portfolio. They have nuclear as part of a broader category there. And then there are others who are generalist investors who are just starting to get more interested in the hard tech category and including nuclear in there.

35:48So I think we see a range, but broadly, nuclear is going to be one of many across a portfolio. I love that. Yeah. I think Rod and then we had Catherine obviously talk about the way that she sees the world of energy, where Catherine thinks that it's a category that kind of supports one absolutely massive winner. Whereas Rod explicitly told us that he thinks that it's a category where there's going to be a lot of different types of reactors and sizes serving different end markets. And so that's kind of two different philosophical approaches. I think fund size also matters, right, for American Dynamism at A16Z.

36:21They're probably trying to look for these really, really big companies that can kind of own the market. And for someone like Rod at Nucleation Capital, focused on nuclear with a smaller fund, you can get these pretty good outcomes across a bunch of different categories. But the space is so early, it seems like there's a lot left to be worked out. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, this next question is from Michelle Kanze on X. What's the policy playbook in the West to shift investments from renewables to nuclear? Let's turn it over to Brett Rampal. He used to do nuclear policy over at Clean Air Task Force.

36:52I'm Brett Rampal. I'm the Director of Nuclear and Power Strategies at Veriton and also the Chief Technical Analyst at Segre Capital Management. Today's best sort of policy levers to consider around enticing investment in nuclear energy are really some of the same things the industry and advocates have been asking for for decades. Equal consideration with other clean energy technologies in a more even playing field. The recent passage of technology-inclusive clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, really changed the calculus for many investors considering the nuclear space.

37:27And we've seen announcements and commitments from companies directly in response to these new incentives. These tax credits throw future nuclear energy technology projects in the same hopper as other clean energy technologies, and on top of the IRA tax credits for existing nuclear power plants, really changes the entire landscape of thinking around nuclear energy. However, beyond continuing to seek and improve and try to gain that more even playing field, numerous other policy areas remain that could be addressed to support increased investment in Western nuclear projects, such as supporting domestic and global uranium enrichment and conversion capacity to limit Russian involvement in Western fuel cycle activities, support for the development of nuclear fuel manufacturing, as well as additional nuclear supply chain manufacturing activities, meaningful action on spent nuclear fuel management, support for domestic nuclear research reactor capabilities for testing and qualifying future nuclear technologies, cooperative policy across the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, NASA, and other government entities currently engaging in nuclear energy demonstration activities to share lessons learned as well as potential resources, cooperative policy across international borders to limit serial regulatory burdens as well as the regulatory burdens of newcomer nations.

39:00And finally, but not least, oversight and additional support for already under development domestic regulatory frameworks for future nuclear technologies. These are just several examples of strong policy levers that could be handled and thrown that could entice more investment for nuclear energy. All right. At Miss Murph on X is giving us a layup to start. You're at a dinner party with interesting and interested people. No one is deeply knowledgeable about nuclear per se. Someone comments nuclear is bad because nuclear waste is bad. What is your single sentence reply? Nuclear waste has a tiny footprint the size of a football field for all of the waste we've ever generated in the U.S.

39:48in the past few decades, and we have a playbook to manage it on-site at power plants and it's never caused anyone any harm. That was a great answer. I'm going to cheat and I'm going to say that my one sentence is, hey, check out this chart. The chart is from Hannah Ritchie who works with Our World in Data and it's hypothetical cumulative waste generation per person over 25 years in the UK. A striking chart because on the left side, you have municipal waste at 12 ,125 kilograms. In the middle, you have solar photovoltaic cells at 201 kilograms. Then you go all the way over to the right, 3.69 kilograms nuclear.

40:25It's this tiny, tiny, tiny, we'll tell you in a million different ways, the football field thing, the fact that they can store it. But it's this really, really tiny amount of waste. And I trust humanity to be able to deal with amounts of waste that small in a safe way. Okay, next one here from Cornasor on X. Will it take a crisis to create the necessary conditions for more political support of the AP1000? Think Winter Storm Elliott, but if more gas lines froze up and we had a big blackout. I mean, I think what's interesting here is this points out gas lines, right? Natural gas is not as resilient maybe as we might think.

41:02And it's also incredibly volatile in terms of pricing. We've seen a lot more natural gas come online in the US in the last decade or two. That has been the leading driver in reducing our carbon emissions, right? You change out coal for natural gas, which is less than half of the level of carbon emissions. but that's not going to be something we want to kind of like wholly replace our grid with. We know that when we build out renewables today, we build out peaker plants with natural gas, typically natural gas to go alongside them that run when the renewables are not generating and there's still demand on the, on the grid, but we don't want to just, you know, now go like majority natural gas grid, which actually 50 % of California is natural gas and then have issues with that.

41:43So yes, I think, you know, a big blackout like this would cause some more awareness, but it's all about the narrative that's being told. So when people, you know, whatever narrative the media grabs onto in terms of like, you know, what caused the storm and what should we do about it? You know, why should we care is going to be the most important part. So the fact that more people are aware of nuclear energy now, there are a lot of advocates working tirelessly to help get the message out. I think that's going to be important in terms of letting people understand why nuclear is a great resilient form of energy and why people should be demanding that from their politicians, from their local utility to build out.

42:22Nuclear is not going to be fast to build. It's not going to be a quick fix to blackout issues. And it's going to be something that people are going to all agree needs to be done for the long term. I mean, when you put it that way, it does seem very hard, right? The two things that people are not good at, which is patience and kind of giving up something now for something in the future. And then the media narrative piece, I think it's a great point and is like really, really, really hard. Even if you have facts on your side, we're recording this a couple of days after SpaceX's second Starship launch attempt, which was a success by every goal that they set out.

42:58They went farther than they were expecting to. The separation of the two stages happened beautifully. And there's these like incredible images that anybody with a heart and soul should be inspired by. and then you look at the press tech press traditional press and it's like spacex rocket blows up again it's like how is that the story that you take away from that and so like getting that narrative right when the media has like an impression of something in their mind or even when it's hard to understand like yes maybe if you haven't thought about it before the fact that a rocket blows up at any point in the mission like doesn't sound very good uh and like maybe there's some you know more communication that can be done there maybe it's just that papers sell more when they talk about rocket blowups as opposed to successes.

43:38But I do think that's a really, really hard thing to change. And we're doing our darndest over here to help change it, but we need everybody listening to go spread the word. All right. This next question also from X comes from at JABridge. He's asking for a deeper dive into developing nuclear projects, including a discussion of grid interconnection challenges and the regulatory approval process. He has a follow-up question here, which is exactly how are new gen reactors safer when it comes to meltdowns and how are they protected against tsunamis and missiles? Julia, I'm going to turn this one back over to you.

44:07This is a great question. We talked a little bit about this on episode five when we talked about advanced reactors and the new passive safety mechanisms that they're building in. So unlike the pressurized water reactors that have come before, for example, Fukushima, those required external power to control the systems that would prevent meltdown from happening. And this is actually what caused the accident at Fukushima. The tsunami flooded the area where they had the backup diesel generators, the power went down, and therefore the core was not able to be managed, and we saw the meltdown occur.

44:43So that's the big difference here, these passive safety mechanisms, where you don't rely on that external power. As far as tsunamis and missiles, the big difference here is the fuel that will be used by the new generation reactors called Triso, which we mentioned in the previous episode as well. These are small silicon carbide coated uranium, little mini pellets, like size of a poppy seed that are designed to be able to withstand kinetic impact. So instead of kinetic impact causing some sort of like emission of radiation and radiation release, you have these silicon carbide coated, which is like one of the hardest materials in the world, think like diamond strength, that hold in the fission products and are much more resilient against any sort of kinetic impact.

45:32And he also asked about the regulatory approval process and the point on TRISO is a good one. Do we have a sense for in the regulatory approval process, in kind of like the clearance space around a plant, whether TRISO is going to be able to replace a lot of the extra built-in constructed safety requirements that prevent against being hit by a 747? Yeah, it's a great question. I will say that Triso has been developed with the DOE and the DOE. So it's been sort of government blessed along the way, which is very helpful to have instead of something new coming out of industry. So it's got sort of that level of approval thus far, although to my knowledge, we're not commercially using Triso anywhere yet and has a very nascent supply chain.

46:19As far as that safety zone or that exclusion zone around the plant itself. The NRC, to their credit, actually approved a design from one of the SMR companies that allowed them to have a smaller exclusion zone, so a smaller sort of safety security zone around the plant, because they did agree that this smaller form factor reactor shouldn't need to require the same amount of space around it. And so it was really, people were very excited to see them make a very good common sense decision that was moving our industry forward. We're not asking for a lot, just some good common sense decisions. Exactly.

46:59That's great. And then I guess our last one here, and this is an anonymous DM that I got from a super talented young person who's interested in getting into nuclear. He asked, what are some ways to get involved in nuclear? I'm passionate about it, but not sure how to make an impact. And he has a very impressive kind of PhD in machine learning from Stanford. And so like, what are ways, I guess the better way to ask the question is like, what are ways for generally really smart young people to get involved in and make an impact in nuclear? I love this question. I say there's a few ways. One is to work in the industry.

47:36So go work at a company. Maybe it's one of the new advanced reactor startups. Maybe it's a more traditional firm and there are plenty of roles, right? Just like any company, you might be an engineer there, but you also might work on the PR team or something else. So there's definitely the Go Industry Go Commercial route. There's also the Go Think Tank Nonprofit route. There are several organizations now, certainly not as many as the standard environmental organizations, but there are some forward-thinking organizations, such as Clean Air Task Force. Third Way is another very interesting one, Clear Path, that are pro-nuclear in their stance and are looking for people to be a part of their policy teams, research teams.

48:19That's an interesting one. And then the final way would be to get involved with advocacy. And there are several organizations, some of which I got involved with over the last year and a half, who welcomed me, honestly, with open arms, kind of taught me what I didn't know. And I got some interesting exposure to what happens at state level in terms of legislating and organizing to inform our leaders about what we believe about nuclear and how they can change policy to be more supportive of it. I'll turn it over to Heather Hoff now, who I met. She leads an organization called Mothers for Nuclear.

48:54I actually have a great t-shirt that I used to wear around when I was pregnant. It just says Mothers for Nuclear. And I think it probably raised a few eyebrows here and there. I had actually one person approach me to chat about it, but she started this cool organization. She works at the Diablo Canyon power plant, nuclear power plant here in California. And I'll turn it to her to talk a little bit about starting Mothers for Nuclear. I'm Heather Hoff. I run a pro-nuclear advocacy group called Mothers for Nuclear. And a question that I get a lot of the time is what people can do to help support nuclear energy and be more involved in the pro-nuclear movement.

49:31And there's so many great answers to this. First of all, there are a lot of different types of advocacy groups for nuclear and Generation Atomic is one of them. They have a great map on their website of other partner organizations around the country and the world that you can join and be a part of, monitor their newsletters, read their social media, share their social media. That's a great way to be involved. Wearing pro-nuclear merchandise is another way to show your support for nuclear. I think if we're going to build new nuclear advanced technology in the next generation, we need to show our policymakers that there is public support.

50:12And one of the best ways to do that is to just have an out swelling of support on social media, sharing stickers on your phones, on your computers, on your cars, electric cars, split don't emit. That's one of my favorites. All these things can help demonstrate that normal people like you and me support nuclear energy. So great to hear from Heather. Also want to turn it over to Paris Ortiz-Wines. She's the global director for the organization Stand Up for Nuclear. I reached out to the stand-up team cold via the internet and Paris invited me to join her group that meets regularly to discuss areas that they can go get involved in championing nuclear.

50:58And I'll turn it over to her to talk a little bit more about stand-up. My name is Paris Ortiz-Wines, and I am the global organizer of Stand Up for Nuclear, a global initiative that advocates for the protection and expansion of nuclear energy. I love this question of how do you make an impact? How do you get started? So there's two things that you can do. So the first one is to get acclimated with the energy conversation, the space. You know, what are people saying about nuclear? What are they saying about energy in general? We have to know these things so that we learn how to be effective communicators and kind of see where we need to push and pull with this issue.

51:35Go ahead and give a couple of these resources a look into. So first one would be the Breakthrough Institute. They have great thought pieces on energy, on nuclear, on policy about energy here in the states. The second one would be Decouple Media Podcast. So they have all episodes covering nuclear energy, energy in general, solar, wind, grid complexities. They are great resources and many of our advocates that we have in our network have been featured on that podcast. And the third one would be electricity maps. So if you'd like to know where our power comes from day to day, every hour, you know, what electricity actually looks like in your location, in your region.

52:19Go ahead and give them a look into, you can go on their website, it's completely free. And many of us advocates check on this because this is how we're able to check, you know, greenwashing statements of like, we ran on 100 % renewables, and we can check day to day with the data. The second thing is, is there's already people in the space, right? There's numerous pro-nuclear organizations that focus on advocacy. So us at Stand Up For Nuclear, we get many messages reaching out like, how can I get involved in nuclear? Do you know more? Can you connect me with others? And so I would encourage you to reach out to us, connect with us.

52:58And then of course, our friends at Mothers For Nuclear, they're an established nonprofit here in California who have been around since 2016, and we're instrumental in the fight for Diablo Canyon here in California. And then we have our friends at Generation Atomic have done great work specifically around nuclear energy and policy, and have done some great actions and easy actions that many people can join. And then finally our friends at Nuclear New York. It is state-based, but what they're doing is uniting the climate and union group. So go ahead and take a look at those resources. Get yourself familiarized with what's going on, energy conversation, make the connections, follow some of these people on social media.

53:43We're on Twitter and we have a couple of lists, the US allies, global allies, and then also just know that advocacy is a wide range of things that you can do. So don't be intimidated and I wish you luck. I love the idea of getting involved in advocacy. And I think, you know, know, it's well-timed. We wanted to do this mailbag kind of, you know, we missed Thanksgiving day itself. So you're not going to be able to bombard people with the information from this at your Thanksgiving table, but hopefully you're still with your families, with your friends from home and having conversations with people about what's interesting to you recently.

54:15Spread the word, as we've been saying all season, we want this to move kind of outside of tech circles. I think tech people now generally kind of agree that nuclear is a great thing. We need to make it cheaper. We need better regulation, but wherever you are in the country or the world, tell your friends about nuclear and why you're excited about it and what they can do in all sudden. Oh yeah. And we got the holiday season continues into December. So plenty of opportunity coming going forward. Julia, have a great rest of your Thanksgiving weekend. Hope you enjoy your leftovers and we'll be back for next episode, episode seven, where we let a bunch of really smart people tell us why we're wrong and why other energy sources are going to be the winners.

54:55Thanks, Faki. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

55:00Thank you for listening and watching to this episode of Age of Miracles. If you like what you hear, please rate, subscribe, and share. And if you're feeling really generous, tell us what you think in the comments. Plus, we have a ton of resources and references in our resource hub if you want to go deeper. And we've linked them all in the show notes below. See you next week.