251. Fission Impossible: the SMR Gamble - Oct26

0:07 With Laurent Seguelin from London and Gerard Reid from Berlin, this is Redefining Energy.

0:13 Today on Redefining Energy, Gerard, this is our yearly episode on nuclear, but we're going to concentrate probably on small modular reactors.

0:24 Well, Laurent, you know, I was thinking of you recently because I was in Brussels and I just happened to listen to the French nuclear lobby. telling me that the future is nuclear. And it just made me think of you for some reason.

0:38 The good thing is once a year, we have the Bible of Industry, almost 600 pages, which is called the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026. And we'll put a link in the show notes. So you will have all the data of all the countries. of all the nuclear reactor being built. A lot of things are on China, SMR.

0:59 So really, it's the Bible if you want to have a bit of an independent view and not just listening to lobbyists all the time.

1:07 Excellent, excellent.

1:08 Well, listen, I'm looking forward to this conversation because I really think that the SMRs are the great and maybe even last hope for nuclear.

1:16 This industry has great tailwinds. You have hyperscalers who are gobbling whatever short-term nuclear capacity is available. They restart decommission plants. There is the deal that Google did in Finland. So they took one gigawatt of existing nuclear. And the U.S. nuclear startups have raised $ 5 billion this year. So we thought it would be a good idea to bring a nuclear specialist to dig a bit into all those investments.

1:44 Absolutely.

1:44 Absolutely. What we decided to do was to bring on Andrei Utkin, who is the nuclear specialist at S & P Global. I think we should bring him on the show.

1:54 Andrei, welcome to the show.

1:56 Thank you for having me.

1:57 Well, Andrei, meet. Maybe we sort of kick off with a simple question from my side, which is, are we really seeing a renaissance in nuclear or what is it? Because there's massive activity, you know, whether it's people building large scale reactors, SMRs, there seems to be massive amounts of capital flowing into the area. Enlighten us.

2:16 We are definitely living in a time of nuclear renaissance and there's many drivers or catalysts, positive catalysts that are happening at the same time, right? So number one is we're living in a time where we have multiple crises all around the world, which kind of shape the way how we produce, consume, and move energy all around. And there's definitely an emphasis on energy security by many countries out there. So nuclear is clean, reliable, can run 24 per 7. And with this advanced nuclear, which we will be discussing later today, you can even untap and unfold new applications, which the conventional nuclear cannot achieve. There's definitely also another catalyst, which is hyperscalers, right? They're hungry for

3:00 24 per 7 power, not only today, but in 10 years from now for AI and data centers. But broadly speaking, electrification is a major theme. And as we decarbonize more and more our grids, some portion of clean farm power is needed in order to, from the system perspective, make it more efficient. So Yeah, nuclear has been a source that decades before we knew how to build on time and on budget. Back in the day, also, it was an energy security question and demand has been growing. We are now living again at the same time. So there's never been a better time in the recent decades for nuclear to prosper. And now whether we will achieve that, that is a question to be answered.

3:42 Legacy nuclear has proven, as you say, extremely valuable for grids. But every attempt to build new plants, whether it's in Europe or in the US, I've seen budget going like bananas. And of course, everybody's going to point towards Okiloto 3 in Finland that they bought for 3 billion. But what they forget to say is it cost 12 billion to Areva to build it, which basically made it bankrupt. So the Fin really had a great deal with Okiloto. Let's put those big government programs aside. And I think that's because that caused explosion that all of a sudden people start talking about SMR. So when did that SMR craze started to emerge? Probably with Bill Gates.

4:28 Why exactly do we try to build SMRs? And as you correctly said, in particularly recent decades, we completely lost touch. And by we, I mean in the Western world, because I also want to raise a distinction between Western world and say China or Russia, who has actually not lost their touch. And they are building more than anyone else combined.

4:47 And China now has under construction more reactors than the entire world. And they are actually building on time and on budget. And they are also having the first small nuclear reactors already in operation since some years. It's true that since demand has not been growing in the Western world in the past couple of decades, we moved from the standardization point of big nuclear to the mega project trade.

5:11 So each project has become some sort of a unique thing. started to add and modify a little bit technology and finance and each and every aspect, as well as we kind of completely lost the transfer of experience and knowledge. And therefore, SMRs, which stands for small modular reactor, small because it's supposed to produce just a fraction of a power output that a big nuclear, but this modularity is the key because small nuclear reactor is trying to achieve what other industries achieved being produced in a factory fashion.

5:47 So the whole point is that you bring it to factory in a controlled environment, you design once, you license once, and then you deploy many, many, many times. You don't really change it massively, probably incrementally you change a little bit to make it better and better and better each unit. But ultimately, that's essentially the nutshell. So whether or not we're going to achieve that is yet to be seen.

6:10 Some of the projects already are under construction. Not necessarily 100% they're built in that kind of factory fashion, but the idea is there. So to build it smaller, to have smaller amounts of capital that are needed to deploy them, therefore to reduce the financing part and run them essentially on time and on budget.

6:29 And Andrew, just talk about when do you expect to see the first real, I call it commercial, SMR online? Because the first one that comes online is going to be the first of the kind. So you have mass producers, et cetera, et cetera.

6:40 You are really touching the key point of the industry today, because if the question is where we're going to see the first one, well, the answer, we already have the first one. Actually, we have a few. Academic Luminosophers, the first floating reactor in Russia, which is actually essentially a floating boat. It's in Chukotka. It has two reactors and combined power output of 70 megawatt. And it powers the city of 5,000 people. It could power many more. Now, there's another reactor which was constructed in China. So from that standpoint, we know that we can do it. So the challenge of this industry today is not reactor, is not physics, but it's actually the challenge is commercialization. So the licensing, fuel supply, customers, financing, supply chains, And ultimately, execution.

7:26 We do know that first of a kind, we can do. The question is, ends of the kind. To answer your question, so G.E. Hitachi is looking into, well, a Darlington project in Canada. The first unit is supposed to be built at about 2029, 2030. Arguably, the entire industry is watching very closely on what's going to happen with that project.

7:48 If it happens to deliver on time and on budget, they would like to multiply it to four units to bring it to up to 1.2 gigawit. And I think that will open up all other different markets where GE, Hitachi, Rolls-Royce, and arguably those Generation 4 are supposed to be built all around Europe, United States, and it can go beyond.

8:08 If that does not happen on time and on budget and we overrun, I think there are very hard questions to answer.

8:16 Andrei, so I think it's very interesting what you said in terms of giving the Russian example. But I would also add to that, surely, I mean, sorry, every nuclear submarine in the world, every aircraft, they all use SMRs. So the technology is there already. So if it's there already, surely it should be pretty easy to scale this up.

8:35 Well, it should be on paper. And that's what we're trying to test at the moment. The technology that we have in submarines is relatively different from the technologies that we have today. If we go into a bit of technology route, right, so we have Generation 3+, so technology that is based on the known conventional fleet, and these are the first to scale. Generation 4, though, these are your exotic types of reactors which use various types of different moderators and fuel and coolants in order to reach different applications. So not only electricity production, but also decarbonized energy, industrial heat or produce heat for district heating or for some remote places. There are still in a generation four,

9:21 there are still some technological questions that have to be answered because we are dealing with high temperatures and fuel that barely exist. And there's some elements that are still need to be brought into the picture for the scalability. And the generation three ones are essentially.

9:37 The closest to be deployed.

9:39 It's all about the commercialization path and Who actually can build and bring the business model first? Because as we start, there's 130 different designs, but they are not necessarily 130 viable businesses. And so the ones who will win, the ones who will prevail, it's not necessarily those with the most exotic designs. it's those who actually could build them.

10:02 André, I really would like to make a distinction because I don't want to enter into the engineering stuff because I don't know. What I'm seeing is, okay, you've got governments, okay, China, Russia, Canada, France, they do their public thing. They go to their usual supply chain, the Westinghouse and the EDF and the Rosso Atom or whatever. And basically it's pay, pay, pay, pay, pay, and whatever it costs, it costs. But then, as you said, there are like dozens of developers. Some have been at IPOs.

10:36 And they say that as private, of course, they've got sponsors like Bill Gates. They can do better than government. And they have convinced some capital markets. that they can do better. And as you said, reach a level of economy where, by and large, I don't know the price of the LCOE per megawatt hour because we see pretty much everything, but somewhere between $ 100 and $ 200 per megawatt hour. Now, some people may say it's expensive, but as you pointed out at the beginning, there's a lot of value in the power which is delivered to Kling 24-7 and so on.

11:10 So that whole crowd, are they all the same, that whole private investors in SMR or developers?

11:17 I don't think that this is the same, right? Because as you correctly said, historically, nuclear will just simply because the reactors were quite big and therefore it required quite a bit of capital. And so very few people can actually do it. And the market design has to be very particular for that model to sustain. You can't really go merchant and compete with other renewable sources. So you need some regulated tariffs or CFDs or very long-term government contracts backed by the supply chain and workforce and so on.

11:48 What we see now in the United States, particularly, because I think that's mostly the US story, right? Where you see the private sector very much into the nuclear. There are different types of investors. So number one, again, hyperscalers. Hyperscalers do not buy reactors. So I don't think that hyperscalers would like to run reactors as their business model.

12:10 They are not, you know, utilities to that extent. And what they are doing, they do know that the demand is there, the demand is growing, and they need to power their needs today, and they will need to power even more needs in a decade from now. And they're buying this optionality so that if any of this design will go through and will actually commercialize at some point, they could have an access and sign up long-term PPAs for 24 per 7 clean and reliable power. So this is one catalyst. And it is a new type of customer that we never had in this industry that is also happy to take higher risks and happen to have a lot of capital to deploy. This is number one.

12:51 We also see that the demand is growing across all the sectors. Then take the industrial consumers. They are less eager to spend big money as of today for the reactors that are not proven. But we still see some deals already shaping around and If, again, these reactors happen to be materialized, they're happy to use that to decarbonize the industrial heat. You know, we have a report that we publish quarterly. One of the metrics that we track is investments. We've seen about $ 12 billion being invested into these companies in the past seven years. And every single year, the amount of investments is growing. I'm not talking about public companies like GEO Rolls-Royce, because that's obviously excluded. But

13:37 what is interesting is only a handful of companies are getting the biggest chunk of this money. The top three are getting essentially 60% of all the investments. And I will go that far to argue that 12 billion may sound like a big number, but to scale up and to take off such a complicated industry as nuclear, it's not really a great chunk of money. So to answer your question, to sum up, there's customers who used to be in this space, there are new customers who are entering the space with more money, more interest, more excitement, and they're happy to spend in order to get optionality.

14:14 If I look at the hyperscalers, the issue that I see there is they want power now. They don't want power in 2035. So I understand why they want optionality. But realistically, if we're talking about commercially comes online, it's 2035. It feels like there's just going to be a bloodbath in that whole area. Like there may be one company, two companies, three companies that survive. It's a little bit like, I think it's a little bit like the wind industry.

14:37 At some point you decide, hey, we're going to really focus on this technology. And at the end of the day, how many people do you have left an offshore wind to? Is that the way it ends up going? Or do you see it differently?

14:49 I couldn't agree more with you. This is exactly where we're heading. And to be frank, all these industries happen to go through different cycles. As of today, SMI industry sits somewhere between like a science project and a mature industry. So we're moving from PowerPoints and labs to the first of a kind. And whenever you have a first of a kind, different business models, different value prepositions, different applications, most of them, the majority of them will never see the execution. And I agree with you that I don't know one or two. I would probably go with a bigger number simply because you have a big number of designs that are targeting different applications. To have a very small reactor and go, say, floating or go into some

15:35 very niche applications, there are reactors that are trying to reuse or recycle the existing fuels that our current fleet is using. I think it's very interesting. But this is, again, Generation 4, so we're a little bit further down the road here. Generation 3... In each of these categories, you will have one or two which will prevail and therefore they will be given a blunt check. But I agree, yes, we will have to go through a massive consolidation.

16:02 I'm interested to hear one area which is floating nuclear. In other words, we already sort of have them already in the form of ships and we already have floating gas turbines, floating diesel. The reason I'm coming at that, I'm thinking this is probably a quick way to get around regulations because you could take one of these ships.

16:20 throw a cable.

16:21 In a kilometer into a city yeah and you avoid all these nuclear regulations in a particular country if you might even put it in international waters is that like am I just being stupid or what do you think?

16:33 I wouldn't simplify it that much just by the fact that you happen to have a reactor on a ship does not necessarily mean that you can not comply with the regulation that is required for the connection to the grid or connection to the city or data center, whatever it might be. Essentially, this is not what floating is supposed to achieve. You're right that we have a ton of reactors already on the ship, but the first one, which is, well, the power plant, which is essentially built for purpose to power the city, is academic Lomonosov in Russia.

17:10 It's actually very cool. You can go to Google Maps and actually scroll and see it, how it is docked in Chukotka. It's quite interesting. Many people think that if you build a floating reactor... It's value proposition that it can move around from A to B and power today one city, tomorrow another. You, as you said, throw the cable, connect it, and easy peasy. The reality, though, it's much more complex than that. You need to have an interconnection point.

17:35 You need to deal with safety and security and waste. All types of licensing and permitting that you need on land apply, obviously, when you are docked. And this type of applications are designed to be docked once and stay there It wouldn't go forever, but for a very long time. They're not designed to be moved. The value proposition of each of these small modular reactors is to build them in a factory fashion. But in this time, you're building them in a shipyard, which is essentially a factory. So you eliminate the need to build something on land. And that's where, in most of the cases, we overrun the time and the budget. Russia is pushing for that and they will be building more than the one that they

18:20 have already in Chukotka. In Western world, you have a handful of companies who are actually designing this. Some of them are technology agnostic. Those are barges. You can then pick up your technology, your reactor and put it on top. Some of them are designed for specific reactors. But I would probably conclude that it is a niche application. It will remain to be, in my view, a niche application.

18:42 But I think we're going to see much more deployment of floating reactors that we have today, which is just one, but it will be niche.

18:49 Can I stop you right now? Because as usual, Gerard, you're in fantasy land, okay? You had your data center in space, now you've got a VOP, always something. As for floating power, you've got this unique plant, which is Turkish, this boat, Carpower, which is full of diesel engine, and whenever a poor country Doesn't have power. They bring that most polluting ship on the planet. We used to put the coins in the meter. Every morning, they said, you want power? The guys say, ah, you know, I'm Bangladesh or South Africa. I'm bankrupt. Say, OK, fine, no power today.

19:26 And the next day, they come, say, do you want power? OK, fine. It's $ 500 megawatt hour. And at midnight, they plug off. Lone shark. And there's one boat. Please, can we concentrate on where Wall Street has been playing with? And I've got a few names and numbers because these are public company. So New Scale, it's packed at 13 per share last year it was at 50 now it's down to eight oklo ipo that 15 went up to 136 last year now down to 35 x energy ipo this year at 30 per share now at 15 Nano nuclear IPO that 20 peaked at 48, now down to 15. What I'm saying is, okay, that all nuclear SMR, beautiful, the ship has sailed. I think the market in 2026 doesn't believe it anymore. And in the meantime, the management of this company,

20:28 especially at Oklo and Nano, the manager, they sold $ 150 million of their own shares. So they don't even believe in their plan.

20:35 André, just to cut across Laurent, if I'd have been sitting with Laurent 20 years ago, he'd be talking about solar and all the solar companies and how much they lost and this, that, and the other thing, and they revolutionized the world.

20:47 Okay.

20:48 Sorry, Laurent, you were saying. But what I'm saying is I don't even know why we do this episode because for me, SMR, it's over. It is over. You will have a few government programs and the rest, they will never get the money and We know that the nuclear industry is waiting for them. How much can I take from those idiots? We had Constellation on the show, and they say, oh, you know, SMR, they should come on our sites. You know, they're already nuclear. Are we going to help them? So don't invest in SMR. That's my position.

21:20 But maybe you have a different view.

21:22 Andre, go on.

21:23 Go on. Give us an answer.

21:25 We need a great answer here.

21:26 Otherwise, we're in trouble when we're on, okay?

21:29 I can't really tell you whether or not you should invest in anything, but that's very true since late 2025. And I think that was roughly the peak for all the stock of these listed companies, which went absolutely bananas, right? October 2025 was the peak. And since then, slightly but surely, we are reaching the point of rationalization. So in my view, investors are no longer seeking for yet another optionality and rather everyone is looking for an actual progress and execution and to see whether the project economics actually holds strong or not. I probably would disagree slightly in the point made that, you know, it's completely dead. I do still believe that there will be certain companies that will execute

22:16 certain things, but we get to see whether without any government backing, you know, moving forward, that can be a massively scalable solution. Because to me, the biggest question is, can you build hundreds of them, not tens of them? Tens of them, we know that we can. Hundreds, that's the question. And one last point. Today, also, we're living in a society where the government backing is very, very strong.

22:40 In the United States, a place where the most innovation is happening, arguably, right? So most of these companies are American. The current administration is extremely bullish on small nuclear companies. And we have to recognize that they're actually helping them to scale. They're cutting lead times for licensing and permitting.

22:58 And the NRC has done tremendous job in a couple of recent years in order to help them to do their job. Now the ball is on their side. And if they happen to prove that it's happening, they have a bright future. If not, I agree with you, Laurent, we probably will move on and generation mix will look differently.

23:17 And we didn't even talk about the fuel. We didn't talk about the fuel. Some use fuel that don't even exist, or 50% of the supply chain is managed by the Russians. So I know that the White House loves the Russians, but maybe if you want to talk about energy security, don't put 50% of your supply chain with Russia.

23:36 It's a very valid point. And fuel has been mentioned many, many times like the biggest bottleneck in the industry. And maybe just to get a little glance of what fuel landscape looks like today for our listeners, Some of the GEs or Rolls Royces, they're using the low enriched uranium up to 5%. This is something that conventional fleet uses.

23:56 It is available, right? So there's no problem. That's also why GE and Rolls Royce are the closest to commercialization because they don't have the fuel issue. When we go to the advanced nuclear systems, there's a trade-off between building those core reactors smaller and utilize that fuel more efficiently, but therefore We need the fuel that is called halio, so high LA, low enrichment uranium. And we want to go to up to 20% of that enrichment. Technologically speaking, it's not really a problem because each and every country who possesses nuclear fleet do know how to produce halio.

24:34 It's just happened that back in the day, we never needed halio at a commercial scale. Therefore, we've never built manufacturing facilities in order to do that. Russia, though, happens to have that facilities. And you're correctly saying, Laurent, that if we have all of a sudden, imagine that all these reactors go through, they're all built today. Yes, there will be a big problem because the fuel does not exist.

24:57 But to me, this is a scalable problem, not a technological problem. Western governments realize that completely. There's a DEO program. They've invested $ 2. 7 billion recently into major companies, you name them, Centros or Urenco, Arano, all of them are scaling. It's not going to come tomorrow, six to seven years from now.

25:18 There are also other exotic fuels. I don't think we want to go that route, but they're even more complicated to produce. But it is a big bottleneck. We recognize that. And the industry is scaling that. There's no technological problem there.

25:32 Excuse me, but after everything I heard, I can tell you on that industry, there are more red flags than on Tiananmen Square. That thing is like, if this works, if this works, if this works, no, no, no. I mean, it's a series of miracles that needs to appear. And one thing goes wrong and, yeah, sorry, guys, we tried. Sorry, we just burned 5 billion. But by the way, we pocketed 200 for ourselves. It's a scam. Now, please conclude.

26:01 Well, I agree with what you're saying. So the risk is really, really high. Then the risk that many things can go very wrong in terms of cost, in terms of supply chain, in terms of business model standardization can really never materialize. And the risk is enormous. That's also why, again, arguably those $ 12 billion that have been invested, to me, it's not massive. But the opportunity is there. And from the society standpoint, and I'm an engineer by my major, and these incredible machines that we're designing, and if some of them will ever happen, I think that's great. But I completely agree with you. The next five years will tell us actually if this is promising or not. And if we will move from first of a kind to

26:42 ends of a kind.

26:43 André, I think that's the way to look at it, is exactly what this is, is R & D programs. And 12 billion spent in R & D programs, no issue.

26:51 With that, right?

26:52 If it works, brilliant, super. Now, I really want to ask one more question, which is really about the future. And this is also to really annoy Laurent. I have to ask you about nuclear fusion and how far away it is.

27:05 Well, nuclear fusion is a completely different set of technologies. nothing to do with SMS. But as you can see, anyone who is reading press today, you're going to see at least one article on Fusion at least a day. The news are coming pretty much from every country out there. And we are making progress. And arguably, we also have a report on Fusion. And arguably, Fusion industry has actually attracted more capital than SMS. But I don't think that we are very close to commercialization there. And it's really farther beyond. So to me, And the most mature ones are your GEs and Rolls Royces. And Fusion, I think we're talking some with me decade, if not beyond that.

27:48 I can tell you, I remember the TV series Silicon Valley. The entrepreneur said, at some point, we're going to make money. And the VC said, no, no, no, zero revenue.

27:57 But we can offset a lot of that once we get a few customers and start a subscription revenue model. What? Revenue? No, no, no, no, no, no, no revenue. Why would you go after revenue?

28:07 Because to make money? No.

28:10 If you show revenue, people will ask how much, and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100x-er, the 1000x-er becomes the 2x dog. But if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue. You're a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn. It's about what you're worth. And who's worth the most? Companies that lose money. There's no revenue. No one wants to see revenue. I just thought that mainly the goal of companies is to make money.

28:35 Yeah, no, no, no.

28:35 That's not how it works.

28:37 I don't want to make a little bit of money every day. I want to make a ton of money all at once.

28:41 It's fantasy land. As Gerard said, the amounts are niche. All these amounts is less than a data center in New Mexico. So a lot of people get very busy. I can see communication people are busy. Lobbyists are very busy. After that, they do nuclear thing that nobody has a clue what's going on. The good thing is with AI, you're going to be able to put 10,000 pages report in 10 minutes. explaining everything's okay, but wait until you hit the ground and you need to talk to that nuclear supply chain who works very slowly on a cost-plus basis and needs to run all the tests. My personal conclusion is, okay, establish, state back, they're going to do their nuclear and they're going to do it at whatever

29:24 the cost, and it's still probably good for a grid to have a certain amount of nuclear. But all the rest, it's a joke, Gérard, it's a joke. André?

29:37 I think I would agree. And one interesting, I think, data point from, you know, our long-term outlooks right on nuclear is China. So China will have the bigger fleet by 2030, as anyone else combined, and China will prevail just because all those points that you've just pointed, Laurent.

29:55 André?

29:55 André?

29:56 It was great to have you on the show. My message to all the Blackstone and Brookfield and so on. Well, of course, Brookfield did a great deal on Westingham, so good job for them. But all the others, VCs, come on, do something else.

30:11 My message is, guys, keep up doing the work. We need to invest in innovation.

30:15 Have a great day.

30:18 Thank you.

30:19 Good having you.

30:20 Over to you, Laurent.

30:24 Well, Gerard. I had a hunch. Now I have got the proof. For me, and I'm happy to debate, the whole SMR is an industry with a model but without a product. So cause without a tech. All the studies, all the models, they show to go to net zero, to put data center, we need new nuclear. But the way they sell it is there's no alternative. Don't try to understand because it's too complex for you and we know better and you just pay. My vision of the nuclear industry is they are the patricians of energy and we are the plebeians. The first nuclear plant was built on time and on budget, was commissioned by Joseph Stalin.

31:10 And you know why? Because there was a KGB agent behind each nuclear engineer. Otherwise, they're going to take their time. This is a cost-plus industry. Why go on time and budget when you invoice the taxpayer on a cost-plus basis?

31:26 Well, I like what you said about product, which is they don't have a product yet. And I think that's very important because what we need to see in the SMR area is you need to see standardizations. You need to see one or two of these technologies winning, where people go, okay, that's the winning technology. Let's go for it.

31:46 And I think that's many years away. I really look at that and I think, if you think the Hitachi one is going to be the first one online, but it's not really an SMR, right? So you look at it, you say, okay, the first one comes along, maybe it's 2029. Then there's going to be a few more coming on. And then you make a decision which one is the one that you're going to scale with. It's sort of a 2035 story. That's the way I look at it, which is not, it's not to say we don't need it or anything like that, or it's not going to be part of the system, but it's I think it's going to be very niche marketing. That's the way I think about it.

32:19 They always talk about F-O-A-K. You know what that means?

32:25 No, no idea.

32:26 First of a kind.

32:28 Oh, I tell you.

32:29 Okay.

32:29 Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

32:31 No, but Gerard, that's not really what it means. Because F-O-A-K means forever over-premising, always kaput.

32:42 Do you make that up yourself or is that chatty BT?

32:48 Fooling others, amassing cash.

32:51 Oh, my God.

32:52 All right.

32:53 That was definitely chatty BT.

32:54 Yeah, that was. If you want to know more about SMR and nuclear, there's a lot of excellent articles written by our friends Paul Martin and Michael Barnard. So we'll put the link in the show notes. It's amazing on Wall Street. decides to discard all those red flags and continue to go with the flow. My conclusion will be going back to 1953. And it's the famous memo by Admiral Ayman Recover. It's the admiral who created the nuclear industry for the U.S. Navy. You okay? You have two seconds?

33:33 Go for it.

33:34 So I read. Important decisions relative to the future development of atomic power must frequently be made by people who do not necessarily have an intimate knowledge of the technical aspects of reactors. These people are nonetheless interested in what a reactor plant will do, how much it will cost, how long it will take to build, and how long and how well it will operate. There appears to be unresolved conflict about almost every issue that arises. I believe that this confusion stems from failure to distinguish between the academic and the practical. To aid in this resolution, it's possible to define in a general way those characteristics which distinguish the one from the other. An academic reactor or

34:19 reactor plant almost always have the following basic characteristics. It's simple, it's small, it's cheap, it's light, it can be built very quickly, it's very flexible in purpose, Very little development is required. It's mostly using off-the-shelf components. The reactor is in study phase and is being built right now. On the other hand, a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics. It's being built now. It's behind schedule.

34:47 It's requiring an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. Corrosion in particular is a problem. It's very expensive. It takes a lot of time to build because of the engineering development problem. It is large. It is heavy. It is complicated. 70 plus years later, and it's always the same thing. Gerard, don't laugh. You should cry. Oh, my God. Well, my friend, it's been a good podcast.

35:23 And We really do need to thank our friend for coming on us.

35:27 You know, it was brilliant. Okay, John. Talk to you next week. Oh, my God. You're hilarious.

35:34 Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to rate the show and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the platform of your choice.