Speaker 1: This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston bringing you
Speaker 1: stories of capitalism this week, the risks and rewards of
Speaker 1: nuclear energy at a time when we need all the
Speaker 1: power we can get, plus immigration and economic realities. How
Speaker 1: a glass factory in Fargo, North Dakota is filling the
Speaker 1: demand for labor. But we begin with the story about
Speaker 1: big global problems and about finding the money we need
Speaker 1: to solve them.
Speaker 2: So our aspirations are limitless, driving our work to deliver
Speaker 2: a better bank because eventually we will need a bigger bank.
Speaker 1: That's a Jay Banga, former CEO of MasterCard and current
Speaker 1: President of the World Bank, speaking in Morocco a year ago,
Speaker 1: just a few months after taking the top job. But
Speaker 1: what is a better World Bank and what does a
Speaker 1: bigger World Bank look like? To answer that, we need
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to the end of
Speaker 1: the Second World War.
Speaker 3: About eighty years ago, when the Bretonwoods Meeting took place.
Speaker 3: There was this important emphasis on helping to restructure and
Speaker 3: recreate the destruction that was done after the World War Two,
Speaker 3: and there was this emphasis on how do we go forward?
Speaker 3: So a number of multilaterals were created then and since
Speaker 3: then many more have come into existence all over the world,
Speaker 3: and their job was really to take capital that was
Speaker 3: generated from governments and turn that into a leverage form
Speaker 3: of capital to give that out to different entities.
Speaker 4: The various institutions have morphed a lot.
Speaker 3: So for example, the World Bank was created to help
Speaker 3: with the reconstruction of Japan and Europe, and now it's
Speaker 3: been working for many, many years on on helping emerging
Speaker 3: markets and developing countries, which covers a lot of very
Speaker 3: different countries with very different economic structures and systems and
Speaker 3: income levels.
Speaker 1: Asni Beschloss is the CEO and founder of Rock Creek
Speaker 1: and worked at the World Bank, including as treasurer and
Speaker 1: Chief Investment Officer in the eighties and nineties, she's witnessed
Speaker 1: firsthand the evolution of the Bank into what it is today.
Speaker 3: Obviously, emerging markets cover all the way from China, which
Speaker 3: is a huge economy, to small countries.
Speaker 4: Like Peru or Sierra Alone.
Speaker 3: You know, so fasts with very very different economics, populations,
Speaker 3: education levels, culture, et cetera. So what you mean by
Speaker 3: development is really bringing education, health, other social sector development
Speaker 3: needs to these countries, but also helping build their bridges,
Speaker 3: their dams, their clean energy, infrastructure and communications, and also
Speaker 3: their financial system, so you know, for example, helping to
Speaker 3: develop fintech in Latin America. So it's a very big
Speaker 3: range of things that the development institutions work with.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 6: The multilateral banks, which include the World Bank, the African
Speaker 6: Development Bank, but also the International Monetary Fund, have significant
Speaker 6: financial capability to address exactly this type of debt crisis
Speaker 6: in low income economies. In fact, that's basically why they
Speaker 6: were created was to help reconstruct the world after World
Speaker 6: War Two and give developing countries a chance to grow
Speaker 6: their economies so they could become safe and productive trading
Speaker 6: partners with the United States and our allies. And so
Speaker 6: right now we believe that those institutions have to really
Speaker 6: step up their efforts to provide debt relief, to provide
Speaker 6: long term, stable and low cost capital for the public
Speaker 6: sector economies of these countries, and to actually finance the
Speaker 6: global public goods, including the fight against climate change, in
Speaker 6: economies that simply have no fiscal space to make those
Speaker 6: investments on their own.
Speaker 1: The World Bank's total disbursements have risen every year since
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen at a rate outpacing global economic growth, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't take into account repayments to the bank, and
Speaker 1: they haven't necessarily kept up with the growing needs of
Speaker 1: lower and middle income countries. If they're to get to
Speaker 1: anything as big as a j Banga is hoping for,
Speaker 1: he says, they'll need to turn to the private market.
Speaker 7: The only way this is going to work is by
Speaker 7: getting private sector capital, private sector innovation, in genuity technology
Speaker 7: that people that ambition to make return on their capital,
Speaker 7: but to come to the party where it's possible, whether
Speaker 7: it's a good business model.
Speaker 1: There are those who agree with Banga's call for private capital,
Speaker 1: among them Rod Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation
Speaker 1: and former administrator of the US Agency for International Development
Speaker 1: in Barack Obama's White House.
Speaker 6: Well, to be honest, we're all always trying to attract
Speaker 6: private capital, especially from outside.
Speaker 4: Of the country.
Speaker 6: Right now, the foreign exchange environment is a very complex
Speaker 6: and risky one for countries, so we were building tools
Speaker 6: that take the risk out for those types of investors.
Speaker 6: The two biggest issues for would be investors are policy
Speaker 6: and regulatory clarity and consistency, which often also means anti
Speaker 6: corruption efforts that are serious, and then secondarily taking the
Speaker 6: risk out, especially on the foreign currency side. So for example,
Speaker 6: on the currency risk removal exercise, the World Bank is
Speaker 6: already planning to commit significant new resources to instruments that
Speaker 6: basically protect foreign investors from foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations
Speaker 6: over time, and those types of solutions are going to
Speaker 6: be absolutely critical to success.
Speaker 1: Though addressing those risks will surely help. The competition for
Speaker 1: private capital is as tough as ever.
Speaker 3: So in general, you know, if you look twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: emerging markets was the place where you would have faster growth,
Speaker 3: you would have higher returns, higher risk adjusted returns, and
Speaker 3: that's why the capital.
Speaker 4: Would go there.
Speaker 3: So if we look today, that has happened in some countries.
Speaker 3: So if you look at an India, let's say over
Speaker 3: the last ten years, equity markets ten percent up, Taiwan
Speaker 3: for obvious reasons because of being a center of innovation
Speaker 3: and chip making thirteen percent.
Speaker 4: Over the last ten years.
Speaker 3: And you have another set of forces going on which
Speaker 3: is completely changed in the last year or two, which
Speaker 3: is Ai.
Speaker 4: With ai comes huge need for.
Speaker 3: Power and data centers that need this enormous power.
Speaker 4: So the big.
Speaker 3: Job, really enough for Ajabanga and the leaders of the
Speaker 3: other multilateral banks is how do I compete to get
Speaker 3: private sector money in this kind of environment If in
Speaker 3: the past it was not proven that the returns could
Speaker 3: be the returns that weren't expected. If now there's this
Speaker 3: com petition we're sitting in Virginia, you could be investing
Speaker 3: in data centers, where there's regulation, where there's a rule
Speaker 3: of law, where there is no country risk, where there's
Speaker 3: no currency risk. I think the bank helps reduce your
Speaker 3: country risk and your repayment risks. You know, if you're
Speaker 3: aligned with the bank, and if you're investing together with
Speaker 3: the bank, you expect that you will get your capital
Speaker 3: return and the return and hopefully some other returns. The
Speaker 3: big issue there is that that is no longer enough.
Speaker 1: So if private capital is the key to achieving a
Speaker 1: bigger World Bank, how then to make it better? Specialist says,
Speaker 1: part of the problem today has been getting money into
Speaker 1: the right hands.
Speaker 3: Obviously, there's been a lot of studies on how to
Speaker 3: help generate more money.
Speaker 4: For the World Bank.
Speaker 3: But it's a really great question, David, because as we
Speaker 3: sit here today, World Bank actual disbursements in the last
Speaker 3: few years has been anything between ten billion and twenty billion.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's anywhere close to what we're just
Speaker 3: talking about, because these countries literally need trillions. So this
Speaker 3: is net dispersements after they've repaid their debt to the
Speaker 3: World Bank.
Speaker 4: So you do need a lot more.
Speaker 3: So the question is within its existing capital structure. The
Speaker 3: World Bank could be giving meant much more, but if
Speaker 3: it starts getting closer to a certain level, it does
Speaker 3: need to have more capital. So it's the chicken and
Speaker 3: egg where you do need more resources, but you need
Speaker 3: to start using your existing ability to generate loans and guarantees.
Speaker 1: One place to start could be the need for speed. Currently,
Speaker 1: dispersements take an average of twenty seven months from the
Speaker 1: time the bank gets a loan request to when the
Speaker 1: money shows up, a timeframe that Banga says is unacceptable.
Speaker 2: We tell communities to pay patiently, whether children grow well,
Speaker 2: poverty deepens will untreated illness is worse, and the warm
Speaker 2: to clean water is packed harder every step, sometimes ten
Speaker 2: years before the first benefits are felt. That is a lifetime.
Speaker 2: We have to do better. There is precious time they
Speaker 2: can save. We have the entire process in our process.
Speaker 1: You know the culture of the World Bank, having worked
Speaker 1: there in a senior role, and as they say, culture
Speaker 1: eats strategy for lunch. Yes, Ajia banker came in saying,
Speaker 1: I want to make the bank better before we make
Speaker 1: it bigger. There are those who say he has made
Speaker 1: some progress. Absolutely that he's expedited some things. It takes
Speaker 1: less time to get some things decided upon. Has it
Speaker 1: made progress.
Speaker 3: I think he definitely has made some progress. If you
Speaker 3: talk to people in the bank, you know, depends on
Speaker 3: who you talk to, you get different stories.
Speaker 4: But one of the two things.
Speaker 3: That do need to still happen is really this culture
Speaker 3: of urgency because at the end of the day, you're
Speaker 3: there to serve the countries that have these biginess.
Speaker 4: That's your job.
Speaker 3: You're thevironment, so you have to be much faster on
Speaker 3: your feet to get things done.
Speaker 1: Next on Wall Street Week, how and why North Dakota
Speaker 1: is embracing immigrants for the sake of its economy.
Speaker 8: This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from
Speaker 8: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This is a story about our neighbors, who they are,
Speaker 1: whether we really know them, and why we need them.
Speaker 1: Neighbors like Anna Yore of Fargo, North Dakota.
Speaker 9: You can work in in gamel glass without no sperien,
Speaker 9: without know English, what's for.
Speaker 4: Immigrant and anyone in it job my yao, missine TECHNICIANE.
Speaker 9: I'm making spots of the window at this so you
Speaker 9: make it and then put that blaff on.
Speaker 1: You're moved from South Sudan to the city of Fargo
Speaker 1: fourteen years ago, seeking a better life. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: she started working at Cardinal Glass and has been an
Speaker 1: employee there ever since.
Speaker 9: Have Minnie immigrants, we worked like a family, a friend
Speaker 9: and team work and we help, we support each other.
Speaker 10: So here in Fargo we have three hundred and forty
Speaker 10: seven teammates. About seventy percent of our team is comprised
Speaker 10: of people born outside of the UNI United States.
Speaker 1: Plant manager Mike Arnson has worked at Cardinal Glass Fargo
Speaker 1: since it opened in nineteen ninety eight. The company manufactures
Speaker 1: residential glass for windows and doors, with ten thousand employees
Speaker 1: across its forty nine locations. In Fargo alone, it employs
Speaker 1: about four hundred workers.
Speaker 10: What we want to do is attract and hire the
Speaker 10: most qualified, the best qualified teammates that we can attract,
Speaker 10: And it just so happens that a lot of those
Speaker 10: folks that we're attracting happen to be immigrants, and we're
Speaker 10: more than happy to have them here.
Speaker 1: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, North Dakota has
Speaker 1: the worst worker shortage in America, with only thirty workers
Speaker 1: for every one hundred available jobs. That's well below the
Speaker 1: national average of ninety five workers for every one hundred jobs.
Speaker 11: There are thirty thousand open jobs in North Dakota, and
Speaker 11: although our workforce continues to grow, if we get every
Speaker 11: high school and college graduate, every individual coming out of
Speaker 11: our correction system, every person on disability into the workforce tomorrow,
Speaker 11: we would still have thousands of open jobs. And so
Speaker 11: we really do need to be looking outside of our
Speaker 11: states borders and outside of our nation's borders to help
Speaker 11: identify how we can recruit workers to fill the jobs
Speaker 11: that we have available.
Speaker 1: Katie Rolston Howe is director of North Dakota's Workforce Division,
Speaker 1: overseeing the newly created Office of Legal Immigration. Their goal
Speaker 1: to bring together immigrants seeking employment and companies that need workers.
Speaker 11: With the political climate that we're in, immigration has become
Speaker 11: a really hot topic, and when we talk about the
Speaker 11: work that we're doing through the Office of Legal Immigration,
Speaker 11: a lot of times the conversation does go to conversations
Speaker 11: around the border or illegal immigration, and that's really not
Speaker 11: what we're doing.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 11: Our focus is proactively identifying appropriate pathways and programs that
Speaker 11: we can utilize to help fill jobs in North Dakota.
Speaker 11: Employers have been responding really well. There's a ton of
Speaker 11: enthusiasm around the work that we're doing. Communities are responding
Speaker 11: well too, and so we've been able to really work
Speaker 11: with those who are already working in this space.
Speaker 1: North Dakota may be the extreme case, but its shortage
Speaker 1: of workers can be seen in various forms across the country.
Speaker 1: According to the US Chamber of Commerce, labor shortages affect
Speaker 1: just about every industry in nearly every state. Although shortages
Speaker 1: have become less significant over the past two years, the
Speaker 1: latest national data show that we still have over eight
Speaker 1: million job openings in the US and fewer than seven
Speaker 1: million people looking for those jobs. Pa Oranius is a
Speaker 1: labor economist with a Dallas Federal Reserve. Her research focuses
Speaker 1: on regional economic growth and demographic change.
Speaker 12: There are areas of the countries, especially the more rural state,
Speaker 12: where there's a great need for workers, but at the
Speaker 12: same time their populations are stagnant or declining, and so
Speaker 12: they have a tremendous need for workers, and of course,
Speaker 12: if you had a good policy, immigrants would be one
Speaker 12: of the best ways to funnel workers to those regions.
Speaker 1: As the overall size of the US workforce has grown,
Speaker 1: the proportion of immigrants in that workforce has grown as well,
Speaker 1: going from just over fifteen percent back in twenty ten
Speaker 1: to over nineteen percent today. That's some thirty three million people.
Speaker 1: The construction industry had the highest share of immigrant workers
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, and estimated it's three point three
Speaker 1: million people, or eleven point seven percent of all immigrant employment.
Speaker 1: In comparison, there were just over eight million native born
Speaker 1: workers in construction in twenty twenty two, representing six point
Speaker 1: two percent of all native born employment.
Speaker 12: We're in a demographic fall. We know that, slowly but surely,
Speaker 12: we're seeing the baby boomers retire, the aging of the
Speaker 12: US labor for the declining birth rates, and we know
Speaker 12: that labor shortages are not just a cyclical matter. They're
Speaker 12: actually a structural matter for the US economy. And if
Speaker 12: you look out ten years or so, we're actually looking
Speaker 12: at a point in time where the US born workforce
Speaker 12: will begin to decline. In fact, we will have no
Speaker 12: growth in the workforce without immigration. We've been very lucky
Speaker 12: in the US that immigrants have wanted to come to
Speaker 12: this country and they've contributed labor supply. In terms of
Speaker 12: their contributions to the economy. This labor supply has boosted growth.
Speaker 12: They've also tended to come in the areas of the
Speaker 12: economy where we have relative scarcity where we need workers,
Speaker 12: and so whether it's on the high skill end of
Speaker 12: the distribution or the low skill end of the distribution,
Speaker 12: we tend to bring in workers where there's fewer American workers,
Speaker 12: and so immigrants are really complementing that US labor force.
Speaker 12: This has really been key to rounding out the economy,
Speaker 12: addressing needs in different sects, and so definitely mostly sectors
Speaker 12: on more of the load to medium skilled end, because
Speaker 12: obviously it takes immigrants a while to learn the language,
Speaker 12: to get the skill set and the networks to sort
Speaker 12: of move up the job ladder in the US economy.
Speaker 12: But for now they're filling important needs in these sectors
Speaker 12: that employ recent immigrants and more the low skilled immigrants.
Speaker 12: Now looking forward, now that the economy is more imbalanced.
Speaker 12: Labor markets are more balanced, and we're really approaching a
Speaker 12: kind of a normalization after four years of a pandemic hangover.
Speaker 12: I think what we're looking to now is more of
Speaker 12: the structural factors that affect labor markets in the US
Speaker 12: and that are going to limit growth going forward. So
Speaker 12: we look at the demographics of the US labor force,
Speaker 12: We look at the retirement of the baby boomers, the
Speaker 12: aging of the workforce, the falling birth rates, and we
Speaker 12: know that in ten to fifteen years we won't have
Speaker 12: a growing US born workforce, and that really all the
Speaker 12: growth in the workforce is going to come from immigration.
Speaker 12: And that's the reality of where we are, and that's
Speaker 12: where we need to address policy in order to enable
Speaker 12: and facilitate more immigration if we want to continue to
Speaker 12: grow that labor force.
Speaker 1: The immigrant labor force has meant a steady stream of
Speaker 1: workers for the Cardinal Glass factory, but for anyone who
Speaker 1: thinks this is a local story, think again. It's also
Speaker 1: helped create real economic benefits for businesses and for the
Speaker 1: country as a whole. Economists point to immigration as one
Speaker 1: of the key factors that kept GDP and job growth
Speaker 1: strong in the wake of an aggressive fed hiking cycle.
Speaker 1: Even as inflation has cooled off around the world, other
Speaker 1: major economies haven't been so fortunate, with China, Japan, and
Speaker 1: South Korea among the countries grappling with net migration levels
Speaker 1: that are too low to counteract population declines.
Speaker 13: The reason why we've seen significant increases in labor supply
Speaker 13: and labor force participation it's legal immigration has come back
Speaker 13: after COVID and after the Trump administration, as well as
Speaker 13: more women coming into the workforce. That process of legal
Speaker 13: immigration that is now normalized, and the Biden administration prioritized,
Speaker 13: for example, working down visa backlogs and trying to get
Speaker 13: to a more normal system. I think under a Trump
Speaker 13: administration you could expect that to revert. And I think
Speaker 13: in addition to that being bad for innovation and bad
Speaker 13: for broader economic growth, it could also be quite inflationary
Speaker 13: in the short term, because what you're doing is constricting
Speaker 13: labor supply at a moment where we need more We
Speaker 13: need more workers. In the United States, our legal immigration
Speaker 13: system has been an engine for growth for decades.
Speaker 8: For a long time, North.
Speaker 1: Dakota businesses like Cardinal Glass have no doubts about how
Speaker 1: important immigrant workers are to the success of its operations
Speaker 1: and to the North Dakota economy overall.
Speaker 10: As the economy grows, we need people to move to
Speaker 10: Farga more ahead to help us run our businesses. And
Speaker 10: whether they come from Kansas City or New York City
Speaker 10: or Los Angeles or Somalia or Bosnia, we just need
Speaker 10: people to move here to help keep our economy growing.
Speaker 10: You don't even have to speak English to come work
Speaker 10: at Cardinaligi. We've cracked the code on that. We have
Speaker 10: master trainers that are multilingual, that can train our new
Speaker 10: teammates in their native language, and so we have entry
Speaker 10: level jobs where we can get people contributing right away,
Speaker 10: and as they grow in their comfort in those entry
Speaker 10: level jobs, then they can graduate onto jobs with a
Speaker 10: little more difficulty, a little more skills required, and probably
Speaker 10: within the course of a year, they can be contributing
Speaker 10: in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: For the management at Cardinal Glass and for its workers,
Speaker 1: immigration isn't about politics. It's about business and maybe something else.
Speaker 1: It's about reaching out to neighbors like Anna Yore to
Speaker 1: build relationships that work for both parties, which has proven
Speaker 1: to be the right as well as the smart thing
Speaker 1: to do. Next on Wall Street Week, the shifting balance
Speaker 1: of costs versus benefits for nuclear power.
Speaker 8: This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from
Speaker 8: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This is a story about changing our minds when the
Speaker 1: facts change, and when we need to. For years, we've
Speaker 1: heard about the costs and dangers of nuclear power, stemming
Speaker 1: in large part from two commercial disasters some forty years ago,
Speaker 1: compounded by the ways governments responded and the news media
Speaker 1: covered them.
Speaker 8: It was the first step and a nuclear nightmare.
Speaker 14: The accident occurred here at the Three Mile Island Nuclear
Speaker 14: Power Plant, a dozen miles south of Harrisburg. It took
Speaker 14: a full eighteen days before the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Speaker 14: made any public pronouncement on the nuclear disaster. Returnable today
Speaker 14: on Soviet television, mister Gorbachev said the accident has deeply
Speaker 14: affected the Soviet people.
Speaker 15: Engineers are fighting to contain the damage to this nuclear
Speaker 15: facility in Japan, warning that one of the reactors could
Speaker 15: melt down.
Speaker 1: But today, the need for more and cleaner energy is
Speaker 1: changing the cost benefit equation, and opinion in the US
Speaker 1: has started to shift. The majority of Americans now say
Speaker 1: they support more nuclear power. One of those supporters is
Speaker 1: Heather Haff Fear.
Speaker 15: Of nuclear is dangerous, but nuclear itself isn't.
Speaker 1: Haff is co founders of Mothers for Nuclear, a group
Speaker 1: she started on Earth Day in twenty sixteen to address
Speaker 1: some of the misconceptions about nuclear energy.
Speaker 15: I think when we talk about risk, it's also important
Speaker 15: to ask, you know, like, what is the actual impact
Speaker 15: when something happens? And so everyone kind of knows the
Speaker 15: big three things that have hapen in a nuclear a
Speaker 15: three mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. And when we go
Speaker 15: back and we look at those events and say, what
Speaker 15: was the impact to human health, our environment, the planet,
Speaker 15: it's pretty minimal, and even some of the impacts that
Speaker 15: we did feel were caused by our own overreaction to
Speaker 15: those incidents. We have rallies and marches to show our
Speaker 15: support for nuclear energy.
Speaker 4: We talk about.
Speaker 15: Why nuclear is important for our community. We give tours
Speaker 15: of nuclear energy and power plants, and try and share
Speaker 15: share with people our hope for the future and how
Speaker 15: nuclear supports clean energy for people. I started out not
Speaker 15: really knowing much about nuclear energy, and I was feeling
Speaker 15: pretty nervous about it. After I graduated from college with
Speaker 15: an engineering degree. I couldn't find a job locally. I
Speaker 15: did a random asortment of things, all while trying to
Speaker 15: avoid working at our local nuclear plant, but eventually said,
Speaker 15: you know, maybe I can get curious and ask some
Speaker 15: questions and learn a little more about it. So I
Speaker 15: took a job in operations at the plant, and my
Speaker 15: conclusion after about six years of doing this was that
Speaker 15: nuclear is amazing. I think safety is a little bit
Speaker 15: of a tricky word, and maybe we need to talk
Speaker 15: about it differently, more in terms of risk. And it
Speaker 15: turns out that a lot of things about nuclear sound scary,
Speaker 15: but that doesn't mean that they're dangerous. So I think
Speaker 15: that was something that took me a long time to learn.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the equation, there is no
Speaker 1: doubt that we need a lot more energy, and may
Speaker 1: well need nuclear to deliver a good part of it,
Speaker 1: with over seventy five percent of the demand coming from
Speaker 1: two categories transportation and industrial needs.
Speaker 16: Today we use perhaps three times more electricity than we
Speaker 16: did in the nineteen eighties, and you were doing much
Speaker 16: more with it. Our productivity had exceeded the growth in
Speaker 16: the use of electricity, so there's a very efficient use
Speaker 16: case there.
Speaker 1: Dan Briatt is the former US Secretary of Energy and
Speaker 1: now runs Edison Electric Institute, which represents all US investor
Speaker 1: owned electric companies.
Speaker 16: It's important for the nation to realize that we're going
Speaker 16: to need more energy, so we start with that basic fact.
Speaker 16: As the economy grows, as populations grow, we're going to
Speaker 16: need more energy. It's what drives our economy. As I
Speaker 16: like to say, often energy generally makes up roughly five
Speaker 16: percent of the nation's gross domestic product or GDP. There's
Speaker 16: also a reindustrialization that's occurring here in America. Manufacturing is
Speaker 16: coming back to the United States. Heavy industry is looking
Speaker 16: to use electricity to help them decarbonize or help them
Speaker 16: meet emissions goals or environmental goals. It's really really important
Speaker 16: that we address that demand in a way that's going
Speaker 16: to allow the economy to grow, allow us to continue
Speaker 16: our competitive edge. Today, if you use artificial intelligence to
Speaker 16: do a Google search, you're using approximately ten times more
Speaker 16: electricity than you would if you had used a different
Speaker 16: type of search or search that's from an engine perhaps
Speaker 16: five or six years ago. All of these demands are
Speaker 16: coming to the grid. Nuclear is so dense that it
Speaker 16: can actually help meet that in a very, very environmentally
Speaker 16: responsible way.
Speaker 1: One of the firms working to meet the country's rising
Speaker 1: demand for power is Whole Tech International. That's an energy
Speaker 1: technology firm that's developing cheaper and more compact nuclear reactors
Speaker 1: known as SMRs.
Speaker 17: Small modular reactors have been around since the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 17: They were created by the Navy. Eventually they were created
Speaker 17: for civilian purposes. In the case of Hours, which is
Speaker 17: a three hundred megawatt reactor, we expect two reactors to
Speaker 17: be built on the Palisade sites on just a footprint
Speaker 17: of about thirty acres, which by power plant standards is
Speaker 17: a very small plant, and we expect to break ground
Speaker 17: in twenty seven and we expect the first plants to
Speaker 17: be online at the end of twenty thirty and twenty
Speaker 17: thirty one.
Speaker 1: Ultex new reactor would be both smaller and safer than
Speaker 1: traditional plants, The firm's vice president and head at SMR
Speaker 1: Manufacturing says, the new technology represents a new chapter in
Speaker 1: nuclear energy infrastructure.
Speaker 18: In my opinion, it's going to be a game changer
Speaker 18: for green energy, clean, safe, and reliable. It's going to
Speaker 18: come and very become very important, especially with the development
Speaker 18: of AI electrical vehicles and a lot of the other
Speaker 18: initiatives to be able to keep the lights on. Large
Speaker 18: standard nuclear plants can take up to ten years to
Speaker 18: build and install, so the investment's huge. This concept is
Speaker 18: being able to get one in operation in a relatively
Speaker 18: half that time, and then be able to continue to
Speaker 18: add to that, so eventually you'll be able to put three,
Speaker 18: four or five, maybe six SMRs in the same footprint
Speaker 18: as one or two nuclear actors of the old size.
Speaker 18: The components that we're using can be manufactured in the
Speaker 18: United States, transportation costs will be a lot less and
Speaker 18: the manufacturing will take a lot less time.
Speaker 1: Around the world, countries are taking very different approaches to
Speaker 1: nuclear energy. Germany has turned away from it altogether, while
Speaker 1: France derives the highest proportion of its power from nuclear
Speaker 1: Asian countries are working to catch up. As a group,
Speaker 1: they more than double their nuclear power output over the
Speaker 1: last decade, and China plans to build one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty reactors by twenty thirty five. Countries that have yet
Speaker 1: to enter the nuclear age are also taking notice. Across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, Ghana is sifting through bids from fifteen different
Speaker 1: countries to build its very first nuclear plant. We spoke
Speaker 1: with the country's Deputy Minister of Nuclear Energy, Robert Sagbaji.
Speaker 1: He says, the problem for Ghana is in perception it's capital.
Speaker 5: We have the United States, we have China, we have France,
Speaker 5: we have South Korea, and we have Russia. So we
Speaker 5: have five countries that we narrow down from fifteen companies
Speaker 5: when we first introduce our requests for information and by
Speaker 5: the end of the year, maybe sooner than that, we
Speaker 5: will come up with the vendor. Right now, we are
Speaker 5: under an IMF program, so we can't borrow any money
Speaker 5: on our books, so we need a financing mechanisms such
Speaker 5: as crowd funding in terms of industry where we identify
Speaker 5: specific industries that will come in to build a nuclear
Speaker 5: power plant. We need clean energy. You can easily get
Speaker 5: money for so light weight, but it can get money
Speaker 5: for nuclear which is going to replace it's cool. But
Speaker 5: how we move cool from the sustainment is another issue.
Speaker 5: So we are collaborating with our vendor countries, but then
Speaker 5: financing is key.
Speaker 1: Investments in nuclear energy are on the rise. Morgan Stanley
Speaker 1: estimates that it will attract one point five trillion dollars
Speaker 1: in capital investment by twenty fifty, and thanks to the
Speaker 1: demand for power for AI, even the notorious three Mile
Speaker 1: Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania is due to be brought
Speaker 1: back online, backed by Microsoft and Constellation Energy.
Speaker 16: The industry has been very concerned about being short electrons
Speaker 16: to meet the needs or to serve the demand that
Speaker 16: we're seeing coming on by hyperscalers in particular, so companies
Speaker 16: like Microsoft as they develop new AI models and place
Speaker 16: more demand on the grid. I think as we think
Speaker 16: about the generation of electric electricity here in the United States,
Speaker 16: we've we've spent a lot of time focused on the
Speaker 16: development of renewable technologies, but those are not what are
Speaker 16: described as dispatchable. They're not available twenty four to seven.
Speaker 16: Perhaps sometimes they are, but sometimes the wind doesn't blow
Speaker 16: or the sun doesn't shine, and there's not enough battery
Speaker 16: capacity to keep the lights on or the data centers
Speaker 16: running twenty four to seven. And that's what I think
Speaker 16: you know is being sent by this deal. The fact
Speaker 16: that a private company went to another private company to
Speaker 16: strike a deal may indicate that we are short electrons
Speaker 16: and we need to develop more generation capacity here in
Speaker 16: the United States.
Speaker 1: The technology has come a long way and the need
Speaker 1: is acute and growing, but concerns remain, particularly about how
Speaker 1: to dispose of the depleted uranium that is nuclear waste.
Speaker 15: This is a kind of fun little three D printed
Speaker 15: model of what a fuel storage facility might look like.
Speaker 15: It'll just would come in on some train tracks here
Speaker 15: and go all the way into the facility, and then you know,
Speaker 15: cranes could move over and pick up the canisters and
Speaker 15: repack them into different kind of canisters and then basically
Speaker 15: just put them on a concrete pad for storage.
Speaker 17: So we actually manufacture about thirty some odd canister systems
Speaker 17: designed for the storage of spent nuclear fuel, and we
Speaker 17: can storm in perpetuity. Our canister systems are designed roughly
Speaker 17: for a shelf life of one hundred years, easily extendable,
Speaker 17: you know, So we just plan to continue that until
Speaker 17: the United States decides what its long term proposition is.
Speaker 16: They're in certain countries, France in particular, they use what's
Speaker 16: called a reprocessing mechanism to take that spent fuel and
Speaker 16: use it for other sources. You know, we can look
Speaker 16: at it as waste or as garbage or we can
Speaker 16: look at it as an opportunity to solve other challenges
Speaker 16: that we face.
Speaker 1: Are there risks in pursuing a more aggressive nuclear power strategy,
Speaker 1: certainly as there are risks in whatever path we take
Speaker 1: to supply the enormous power needs we're facing around the world.
Speaker 1: The question is not whether there are risks, but what
Speaker 1: are the alternatives and are they more risky or less.
Speaker 15: The biggest risk of nuclear is not using it. I
Speaker 15: really am all in for this technology. I don't think
Speaker 15: there are any significant issues that should be in our way,
Speaker 15: and as.
Speaker 1: We're changing our minds, Kelly Trice has seen it happen
Speaker 1: in members of the next generation seeking answers about both
Speaker 1: the climate's future and their own.
Speaker 17: It's kind of amazing, actually, and I knew that it
Speaker 17: had changed. A few weeks ago. I got a call
Speaker 17: from some high school kids and they wanted to interview
Speaker 17: me for a school project because they were considering nuclear
Speaker 17: engineering as a field of the future that they wanted
Speaker 17: to be in. That told me a lot about how
Speaker 17: the population had changed.
Speaker 1: It looks like nuclear is coming. The question is not weather,
Speaker 1: but how that does it for us? Here on Wall
Speaker 1: Street Week, I'm David Weston Join us again next week
Speaker 1: for more stories of capitalism st