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James Walker - Should Nuclear Reactors Be Mass-Produced?
•The Lars Larson Show
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James Walker, nuclear physicist and CEO of NANO Nuclear Energy, joins Lars to discuss a new regulatory pathway that could speed up the licensing and deployment of microreactors. Could nuclear reactors soon be built in factories and deployed like any other piece of equipment?
Hey, welcome back to the Lars Lars and John a Tuesday after Labor Day. If you want to jump into what we always call the best conversation in talk journalism, it's here every day at 866. Hey Lars. That's 866-439-5277. If you happen to be a naysayer, and we love naysayers on the program, don't get me wrong. We invented that idea over 30 years ago. Naysayers always go to the head of the line, and they always will. And we've never broken from that. The only time I I have allowed that if we already had, say, the President of the United States on the phone and we got a naysayer call, I might take the president's call first, and I'd have to take the naysayer call second. But naysayers go to the head of the line. Send your emails to talk at LawrenceLarrison.com and our poll on X. Should New Mexico be rename re renamed New Mexico America? I would say, yeah. Go ahead. Name it New America. Donald Trump seems to be on an American naming uh binge at this point. He amplified his image by writing in a separate post that many people have suggested changing the name of New Mexico, describing New America as much more prestigious and beautiful for that state. The New Mexico Post touches on a long-running political theme for Trump, rebranding geographic landmarks and places, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. You can find the poll on X at LawrenceLarrison Show and at LawrenceLarrison.com. And last week's poll on First Amendment Friday, we asked you this should a parent have the right to take their own child to church? Now I have to give you a little explanation on that, not as thorough as we did last week. But here's what happened. Mom and dad, in this case, are getting divorced. They have disagreements about how child custody is to be shared. Mom wants to take her daughter to a church of her choosing. Dad says he doesn't want the daughter taken to the church at all because he says the church has dangerous ideas. And I actually don't remember, but it was uh seemed like a conventional uh Protestant Christian church. So does the dad have a grief, uh have uh have an objection or reasonable objection? I would say he does not. But should the mom be able to say, I'm gonna take my daughter to the church of my choosing, dad can do the same or not at all. Now, on that note, I want to talk about nuclear power just a little bit because I've been looking forward to this. Uh James Walker is gonna join us here in just a minute. Uh Mr. Walker, welcome to the program on the for the first time. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
SPEAKER_01
No problem at all. No, please, please be on.
SPEAKER_00
So tell me about this. The NRC has just added a fast track for nuclear power. Does that mean we could start to get reactors and and power generating stations built more quickly? Whereas in in under the old school approach to nuclear power, it routinely took decades to get through the licensing and the building of these things. Can we change that?
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Ms.
SPEAKER_00
Walker?
SPEAKER_01
Can you hear me?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, I can now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Great, great, excellent. So you're you are right. The intention with this NRC regulation is that the the previous way they were licensing reactors was very set up around those traditional big light water reactor systems, the huge ones. And um the the and that affected any sort of a different type of reactor system that wants to be licensed, whether it's advanced reactors, gen 4 reactors, that kind of thing. So the NRC is looking to put new frameworks in place to allow for licensing of new reactor types. So you don't get stuck into that big safety evaluation that might be more applicable to big reactor systems. Um and a lot of that stuff is just not applicable to these smaller systems that are being developed now, which can be built much, much faster and need far fewer safety systems because the the fuel, as an example, might just be more inherently safe. And it gives you an ability to ensure that the reactor, I mean, the fuel itself gives you an ability to ensure that the reactor cannot break down in the same way a conventional reactor can. So that means that we will hopefully now get um an NRC that's able to license reactors of a different kind faster than how they would have conventionally been licensed before. So all that to add up to, yes, this should overall lead to an expedited route to get these new advanced reactors out into the market commercially.
SPEAKER_00
I'll tell you, uh, Mr. Walker, I uh by the way, James Walker is a nuclear physicist. Should I be calling you Dr. Walker at this point?
SPEAKER_01
Yep, that's right.
SPEAKER_00
Fair enough. CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy. I've always been a defender of nuclear power, except I had to admit the old school way of doing it was every reactor was a one-off. You know, and they they built it and it was its own unique animal. And the next time they built one, they built it, and it was it would be different, which meant, uh, if I'm correct and correct me if I'm wrong, that you couldn't get any lessons learned out of building one because the next one was going to be different anyway, which means you couldn't really add to your knowledge about how the reactor should be designed. Is that a fair way of summing it up?
SPEAKER_01
Oh, look, that's that's incredibly accurate. And um, what this led to as well was that um the cost overruns, time delays of these big reactor projects, they became very normal. And I think Vogel in the US at the moment, I think that's on track to be the most expensive reactor ever built. And it's mostly because those lessons learned from all the building of reactors before just didn't carry through. Um now, if you if you compare that as an example with China, they're building two large gigawatt-sized scale nuclear power stations every single year, but they're just moving the crew from one project to the next to the next to the next, and they're keeping those lessons learned and not changing that plant. Now that's a good strategy. You can't, you know, you can't really do that in the US. And so it's even private industries that have been the um the drivers behind these small modular reactor systems because it's it's industry solution. Like, how are we going to get around this problem of lessons learned and carrying on knowledge? Well, the solution is a modular system where you can manufacture the components remotely and then just ship them to site, and that way you can continuously manufacture components, you can stockpile them. And when you get the demand or the order, you just ship those parts to site and then you assemble them. That gets you around that lessons, um, those those lost lessons learned from each project. And you just copy and paste that reactor system and deploy it in new locations. It's it's a it's a really wonderful response, and it also gives you an expedited timeline from order to first production of power.
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, does it also solve part of the financial problem? Because if you can plug in these modules and do it a bit at a time, you can get cash coming in to help finance the rest of the construction instead of you only get a dollar in when the entire plant starts working.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, look, that that's that's a big one. Like um at the moment, I would say if you're looking at a big gigawatt scale light water reactor system, you could be looking at from once all the approvals go through um maybe 15 years. Maybe you're looking at 15 years time to get that first big-scale reactor producing power. Now, that means that you're it's all CapEx without any revenue coming in to mitigate against that big liability. Um, some of these reactor systems, because the especially the smaller, much more modular ones, you could get a a timeline between three or four years from order to first output a power, um, especially if all of the components are already um manufactured.
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely. Mr. Walker, we'll look forward to having him back. That's James Walker, Dr. Walker, a nuclear physicist and CEO of nano nuclear energy. Dr. Walker, we appreciate your time. Glad to get your calls at 866. Hey Lars. That's 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at LarsLarson.com. Coming up, every Seattle school student now eats free of charge. I think that's a real problem, and I'll tell you why. Coming up next on the Radio Northwest Network.
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