The Race for the World's First Advanced Nuclear Microreactor Developer

0:00What if data didn't sit still? What if intelligence moved with us? Not buried in reports, but activated in real time. Where lives are being shaped. Where decisions are being made. It all starts with a question. Where is the potential? Cotality turns data into clarity. Intelligence into insight. Insight into action. Because when intelligence moves, we all move forward. Cotality. Intelligence beyond bounds. The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work.

0:50Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, that isn't always easy. Risk can touch multiple parts of an organization at the same time, often in ways that aren't immediately obvious. It might involve property, liability, or cyber. It could stem from regulatory requirements or challenges tied to a specific industry or the scale of an operation. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline, not a one-time decision.

1:28At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. That means working with companies to identify where they're exposed, decide what matters most, and put practical standards in place so risk is managed as part of day-to-day operations. And when losses do happen, the Hartford can pair that risk control work with insurance coverage grounded in underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience developed over time. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation. Game night rush or any night of the week, really. Genius keeps every order moving.

2:04From online ordering to your kitchen to the front counter. Big league reliability for any business. That's genius.

2:15Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Shares of Canadian uranium producer Cameco rose as much as 27 percent to a record high today. This after the U.S. government signed a pact with Westinghouse Electric, Cameco and Brookfield that will see at least$80 billion of new nuclear reactors constructed in the U.S. to accelerate nuclear power and AI deployment. And breaking late yesterday, NextEra Energy planning to restart a nuclear power plant in Iowa, primarily to supply Google data centers. We got Will Wade with us.

2:54He's Bloomberg News energy reporter. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Did the U.S. make a mistake, Will, in shutting down nuclear reactors over the last few years? That's a tough question. when they made those decisions to shut down reactors. And I mean, I used to keep a spreadsheet on my desk. I call it the dead nukes file of the dozen or so reactors that were shut down in the past, a little more than a decade. It was the right decision then. They were expensive to operate. Nobody wanted to pay that much for power, but the world has really changed around us. And I think at an Indian point close to New York City, that one was, didn't it outlive its life cycle?

3:36It was sort of at the end of its life. Oh, no, it was closed ahead of time. It was closed ahead of time. Yeah, that was a big political campaign. There were people that were really worried about having a nuclear power plant so close to the biggest city in America. I mean, that's a legitimate concern. But we closed that plant and immediately people started saying, wait, New York State carbon emissions are going to go up this year because we replaced all the nuclear with natural gas. Like, who would have thought? But so it does feel like we mentioned the U.S. signing an 80 billion dollar pact to boost nuclear power in that AI push.

4:07Google buying power from next era nuclear power plant being revived. So the spend is on the deals are on is the build on, though, to really build out maybe the nuclear capacity that's needed. Oh, building nuclear. No, nobody's doing that. But the money is there. The commitments are there. The mothballing is being undone. Okay, so here's what we're seeing. There is an enormous amount of interest in nuclear energy right now. I've been seeing it for 18, 24 months. This is because electricity demand is going to go through the roof. That's largely for data centers and AI. It's not just that. It's for a lot of things, but that's the big part of it.

4:48We need new electricity. We need a lot of it. We did not see this coming. We were not building new nuclear plants. at the same time, we would love our electricity to be clean. So that really makes nuclear the best option because it's available around the clock, unlike wind and solar. Right. How quickly can nuclear power plants be built outside of the United States in China, Korea, Japan? Oh, China's really good at building them. They've been doing it nonstop. They got, I think they're soon going to surpass the US in terms of the number of reactors they've got going. So yeah, they're faster at it than us.

5:25The Koreans are really good at it. I was in Korea this year. Their nuclear industry, they've been going nonstop for 50-something years. Our industry pretty much ground to a halt around 1979 with Three Mile Island. So we spent years doing nothing, and we never really recovered from that. We're working on it. Well, we're going to keep Will Wade with us, Bloomer News Energy Report. Someone else who's working on it, too, to build out nuclear capacity is James Walker. He's CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy. It's a$2.3 billion market cap nuclear energy company that is working on SMRs, small modular reactors.

6:04Shares are up nearly 90 % so far this year. A big chunk, though, of the float is short. James joining us from Vancouver. James, come on in on this conversation. I mean, realistically, how long before we actually you actually get an SMR built and it's up and running? It's a good question because it gets asked, as you can imagine, more than any other question. And there's kind of two answers to it, too, because to get a reactor built and constructed and licensed is one question. But the other question is, how long is it going to take for the fuel supply chain to be built back adequately in the country to be able to mass manufacture the fuel to allow the mass manufacture of reactors?

6:45So on one side, our company is already going ahead with a construction project, two construction projects to build reactor systems. And we're talking to data centers and all of those sort of groups as well. But on the other side, like, you know, even our company, we need to get involved in that fuel supply chain and build it back. Because as Will was saying just before this, sort of after Three Mile Island, the investment into the country sort of broke down a lot. We need that investment to go back into rebuilding that fuel supply chain so companies like ours can mass manufacture the reactor systems.

7:19But James, on Carol's question about a timeline here, what would be a realistic timeline for completion of your first modular nuclear reactor? So we're doing a drill program right now. It's already started on the site. So we'll have the geotechnical data to submit for a construction permit. That'll go in early next year. NRC will turn that around in 2026. So construction 2027, 2028, 2029, and then fully licensed reactor operating commercial license 2030. It's a very reasonable timeline. So I would say early 2030s, then you're going to see the mass rollout of reactor systems. So dozens on an annual basis.

7:58Yeah, that timeline fits with what I hear from a lot of companies, early 2030s for a significant wave of new power plants. But I guess the issue is that we have all these people who want power yesterday. How do we meet their needs? Look, it's actually a very reasonable question. As a company, we want to be conservative and truthful with everybody because we've got to earn long-term trust here. There are good interim solutions. Like I know companies have been exploring things like gas. And to be honest, if they can get hold of that in the interim, great. But even things like gas contracts, they're all tied up for seven, eight years.

8:38Turbines around gas are tied up for seven, eight years, too. So there's no easy solution here. Even bringing in, as you mentioned, like wind and solar or anything like that. These are intermittent technologies which require huge battery storage technology to run alongside them. a lot of the time it's just not feasible they're also very locationally dependent so you'd be limited on where you can even deploy these things i mean unfortunately there's no there's no great solution which is why when the show started they were talking about opening up these old power stations and recommissioning old nuclear power plants because those are the some of them are the interim solutions it won't be enough power but it'll be some Yeah, those restart projects, that's the low-hagging fruit.

9:19Do you think there are other plants that we can restart, or is it just the ones we've already seen? Are we exhausted that list? so it's a good question like this um a number have been shut down um and like it's it's arguable you mentioned indian point as an example i i know it wasn't politically popular and maybe there was some some of that related to the decisions around that kind of plant that that could be an act that could be a route even the old three mile island plant since we're bringing that up is um i think it's it's either microsoft or constellation were involved in in recommissioning that and trying to get that back up and running.

9:57Yeah, Constellation says that'll be ready by 2027. There we go. So like, you know, I think, as you say, like, there's going to be big projected powering demand increases in the country. They might not get solved for until we get to those 2030s. And the problem there is that that could mean a stagnation in the tech industry. They'll find every means they can to get power, but like that big online co-location green technology that provides baseload power, that can only really come from nuclear. And a lot of these reactor systems, despite any really outlandish claims about deploying near term, it's going to be early 2030s, 2030 and onwards.

10:38All right. So the demand story is compelling, yet the obstacles are just as apparent. Those aren't my words. Those are Will Wade's words, who reports on this sector, as you well know. I mean, help me out here though, because I'm just wondering, you know, if I'm looking at a stock that is up 80 % year to date, you know, you guys don't have any revenues, right? I mean, like our investors, you know, this is what we do. Like, are they probably getting ahead of themselves? 30 % of your float is short. So investors are just kind of waiting for something maybe negative to hit because they're negative, the sentiment.

11:17I mean, realistically, you're talking at least five years, right, before you're showing significant revenue or earnings or anything along those lines. No, like revenues in our company will come online a long time before that. I mean, because there's this massive buildback, the opportunity at the moment in the nuclear space is huge. It can come through the fuel supply chain or transportation or isotopes. Like the nice part is that we're part of this build back effort. So and look, the stock market is always about an investment in the future. I mean, the nice part is that the demand is there in a way that's unprecedented.

11:52Like buying now really is an investment in the future and a future that's inevitable. The tech industry is not going to just give up and pack up and go away. But what if the AI spend and build that is? I know everybody comes out and says no bubble, or a lot of people do. What if there is, though, an overspend? Where does that catch you guys, potentially? I think the bubble has only been discussed around AI. But in terms of data centers, those are things that cannot be bubbles. That is power that's needed for our whole tech industry. A data center cannot be a bubble. If you need increased power for computing power, it has to come from somewhere.

12:30AI, whether that's going to bear out the fruits of what's been promised. That remains to be seen. But currently, it's just expanding. But it's kind of irrelevant to the long-term power requirements because the electrification of the country, the re-industrialization of the country, that's all going ahead. And you mentioned stocks like ours and the short interest. Great. If people want to short us, that's better because we've gone higher and higher as a stock just because every time the shorts have been squeezed. The The more shorts, the better for us. That's fair. James, only 10 seconds left, but would you say that you are most further along than any other company, the most along than any other company in the space?

13:09In terms of micro-reactors? Yes. 100%. I believe we'll have the first U.S.-constructed, full-scale, commercially licensed micro-reactor in the country. Well, you can put an SMR in my backyard because my monthly electrical bills are crazy. They're shutting off lights. Cheryl, you're glowing today. Yeah, I'm glowing. Will Wade of Bloomberg News and James Walker, CEO of Nanonuclear Energy. Guys, thank you so much. Great discussion right here on Bloomberg.

14:08Thank you.

14:27with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. Here's the truth. You could literally be adored by everyone and then come home and still get completely ignored by your own cat. It's classic cat behavior. But new Shiba Premium Puree is a lickable treat that changes all that. They're protein-rich, made with bone broth, and have the smooth, creamy texture cats go crazy for, especially when it's hand-fed. Yeah, it's more than a treat. It's a fast pass to favorite human status. So feed your cat Sheba and go from totally ignored to truly adored in just 12 days, guaranteed, or your money back.

15:09Learn more at Sheba.com. Why is it always chaos when we link up? Because nobody plans anything, bro. Good thing the Rogue's ready like that. For real. Rain, dirt, whatever. Available all-wheel drive. Five modes. We still outside. And they got some kick, too. That turbo? Torque is crazy. the most in its class it moves moves rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space merch on merch gear mics all of it fits load up we out 2026 nissan rogue built for all of it auto pacific segmentation 2026 rogue versus latest in-market competitors in the x suv mainstream midsides class excluding electrical vehicles based on manufacturer websites sites.