Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week. Why the
Speaker 1: West can't build nuclear electricity demand is booming, and it's
Speaker 1: not just because of AI. We are electrifying a lot
Speaker 1: of things, from cars to heating to heavy industry, and
Speaker 1: that's got a lot of people thinking where will all
Speaker 1: this electricity come from? And how can we make sure
Speaker 1: it's available whenever it's needed. One of the technologies that
Speaker 1: people are turning to or turning back to, is nuclear.
Speaker 1: In fact, the demand is so great that in the US,
Speaker 1: previously decommissioned nuclear reactors are being turned back on. Microsoft
Speaker 1: last year signed a sixteen billion dollars deal to reopen
Speaker 1: the three Mile Island Nuclear power Plant to make sure
Speaker 1: they have enough electricity to power their data center for
Speaker 1: the next twenty years. The bigger conversation, of course, is
Speaker 1: about building out new reactors, something the West hasn't done
Speaker 1: at scale for decades, and when it has tried in
Speaker 1: recent years, the cost of those nuclear plants and the
Speaker 1: time to build them has been extraordinary. Take the example
Speaker 1: of the Vocal Nuclear Power Plant in the US state
Speaker 1: of Georgia. Its two newest units, built in the last
Speaker 1: two years, cost thirty seven billion dollars, nearly three times
Speaker 1: the original cost, or take Hinkley Point C in the UK.
Speaker 1: Its construction began in twenty seventeen and was expected to
Speaker 1: be completed by twenty twenty five, but long delays mean
Speaker 1: it might not be operational until twenty thirty one. And
Speaker 1: yet there is growing interest in nuclear so it's worth
Speaker 1: exploring the state of the technology and whether these dreams
Speaker 1: can become a reality. Some quick basics first, there are
Speaker 1: two major types of nuclear reactions produce energy. Fission where
Speaker 1: atoms are split, it is what all commercially operating nuclear
Speaker 1: plants use today, and fusion, where atoms are fused together.
Speaker 1: That is what some are hoping will solve our energy
Speaker 1: needs once and for all, but there is no commercial
Speaker 1: fusion plant yet. For the next two episodes, we'll focus
Speaker 1: on the commercially available technology fission. In today's episode, we'll
Speaker 1: specifically look at the state of large nuclear fission reactors
Speaker 1: that are in operation in around thirty countries and how
Speaker 1: to build more of them. In next week's episode, we'll
Speaker 1: look at small modular reactors, which many hope will be
Speaker 1: the future of nuclear fission. In theory, faster, easier, and
Speaker 1: cheaper to deploy. Joining zero for both those episodes is
Speaker 1: Rachel Slabor. She's a partner focused on climate sustainability and
Speaker 1: energy at the venture capital firm DCBC. Before that, she
Speaker 1: was a tenured professor of nuclear engineering at the University
Speaker 1: of California in books. Rachel, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a lot about how Western
Speaker 1: countries can start building nuclear power plants again. But before
Speaker 1: we get into the meat of the conversation, I want
Speaker 1: to know what I can do to become a licensed
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor operator that you are, well not anymore so.
Speaker 2: I as an undergrad. I was a reactor operator at
Speaker 2: Penn State's research reactor, which is a different thing than
Speaker 2: a commercial power reactor. But I studied for a year
Speaker 2: and took an exam and you know, read lots of
Speaker 2: manuals and did lots of drills. So if you have
Speaker 2: the time and go to a facility, I'm sure you
Speaker 2: can figure it out.
Speaker 1: Oh that's excellent. I mean, if it's only a year,
Speaker 1: I think that's manageable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a year at a reactor that is so safe
Speaker 2: it can't melt down A commercial power reactor. It's long,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Start with a little bit of history. First, Europe and
Speaker 1: America used to be great at building nuclear power plants.
Speaker 1: The US even today has the world's largest fleet of
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants, and countries like France have a huge
Speaker 1: share of their electricity coming from nuclear even today. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to building new nuclear the story is
Speaker 1: really in Asia. So tell us why did the West
Speaker 1: stop building nuclear power plants altogether?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we stopped building them mostly due to
Speaker 2: the flattening of power demand and inflation. Right, So in
Speaker 2: the early eighties, interest rates were very high. Oil shocks
Speaker 2: of the seventies, conservation became a really big deal, and
Speaker 2: so load growth in the US changed, and that was
Speaker 2: combined with really high interest rates. So even if you
Speaker 2: could build a project pretty well, a big, expensive project
Speaker 2: with fourteen percent interest rate is just not economic. And
Speaker 2: so that combination of things, and then nuclear fell out
Speaker 2: of public favor. There was a lot of resistance to
Speaker 2: it for various reasons, and so throughout the eighties and
Speaker 2: most of the nineties, nuclear power just wasn't of interest
Speaker 2: in the United States and to some extent in Europe
Speaker 2: not quite as badly. It's country by country there and
Speaker 2: then nuclear became of interest again in the United States
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands to begin with, when natural
Speaker 2: gas prices were really high, and so when gas was
Speaker 2: eight dollars in mmbtu, now nuclear powers looking pretty good.
Speaker 2: And then in the two thousands we figured out fracking
Speaker 2: and gas went down to three dollars in mmbt, you
Speaker 2: and nobody cared about nuclear anymore. So that it's been
Speaker 2: kind of a journey since the seventies.
Speaker 1: And it is not that the West has not built
Speaker 1: any nuclear power plants. There's one being built here in
Speaker 1: the UK, there was one built in the state of
Speaker 1: Georgia in the US. The trouble has been that all
Speaker 1: these recent nuclear power plants have been very expensive. So
Speaker 1: in the UK the average cost of power is about
Speaker 1: seventy pounds per MEGAWATR. The Hinkley C poplant, which is
Speaker 1: under construction, has been guaranteed a price of one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty seven pounds per megawodar. So why is it
Speaker 1: that nuclear pop plants in the West have become so expensive.
Speaker 2: It's a collection of reasons. One of the reasons is
Speaker 2: the West in general and the US especially are very
Speaker 2: bad at megaprojects. So in general, megaprojects are expensive. They
Speaker 2: are typically overscheduled and over budget. And my flippant answer
Speaker 2: there is that when you add radiation, that doesn't solve
Speaker 2: that problem. Right, So we can't build a bridge on
Speaker 2: time and on budget, why could we build a nuclear
Speaker 2: power plant on time and on budget. So partially is that,
Speaker 2: the other part is that historically we haven't had significant
Speaker 2: load growth, and so you're building a reactor one at
Speaker 2: a time, or maybe two at a time, and so
Speaker 2: you never get enough reps in to actually drive the
Speaker 2: cost down. So when people say first of a kind,
Speaker 2: if everything is a first of a kind, it's more
Speaker 2: expensive when you get to enth of a kind. I'm
Speaker 2: putting air quotes here. That's when you hit the actual
Speaker 2: projected costs. And in the case of large projects, n
Speaker 2: is usually like four. You don't have to build hundreds
Speaker 2: of them to get to that cost. But when you
Speaker 2: build the same project repeatedly, you know, even on number
Speaker 2: two compared to number one, all of the things that
Speaker 2: were maybe not one hundred percent figured out and the
Speaker 2: design or figured out, the supply chain is exercised, the
Speaker 2: workforce has done it before, right, So part of it
Speaker 2: is we just aren't aren't building enough of the same thing.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing is we're bad at construction
Speaker 2: projects for a whole bunch of reasons. People have written
Speaker 2: about that are like too many subcontractors. And yes, if
Speaker 2: you have subcontractors that are suing each other during the project,
Speaker 2: it's probably going to slow down and become more expensive.
Speaker 1: I also heard from Ernest Monies, who was the former
Speaker 1: Secretary of Energy, that the Vogel nuclear power plant in
Speaker 1: Georgia needed two thousand electricians and there weren't two thousand
Speaker 1: electricians in rural Georgia, and they all had to be
Speaker 1: moved and that just took so much longer. And of
Speaker 1: course the US did not plan to build another nuclear
Speaker 1: power plant, so now those two thousand electricians have disappeared
Speaker 1: into wherever there are electrician jobs. And that kind of
Speaker 1: problem also shows up in construction activity here in Europe.
Speaker 1: So that adds to the cost.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And you can say the same thing
Speaker 2: about welders in these skilled trade positions.
Speaker 1: So one way in which I want us to talk
Speaker 1: about nuclear is to just look at it in these
Speaker 1: five different buckets. The first bucket being the old school
Speaker 1: large power plant design that exists that we've built many reactors,
Speaker 1: and countries like China are building many more of. Then
Speaker 1: there are these advanced reactors which could be safer, cheaper,
Speaker 1: could use fuel in a more efficient way than there
Speaker 1: is small modular reactors, which are essentially maybe old school
Speaker 1: or advanced, but in a small form factor. And now
Speaker 1: these days there's even microreactors, things that you could literally
Speaker 1: put in your backyard in a shipping container or even
Speaker 1: something smaller. And they're all very interesting. But let's start
Speaker 1: with the thing that exists at scale, which is these
Speaker 1: old school reactors. What are they and why is it
Speaker 1: that those were the reactors we built most of and
Speaker 1: continue to today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we call them large light water reactors, and by
Speaker 2: large they actually are large, like a gigawatt of electric output.
Speaker 2: And by light water we mean regular water, because the
Speaker 2: nuclear industry likes to name things in ways that are opaque.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there are also heavy water reactors, and that's where
Speaker 2: a hydrogen in the water molecules have an extra nucleon
Speaker 2: in them, they have some different properties. Those exist mostly
Speaker 2: in Canada. Large light water reactors so they use water
Speaker 2: to both cool the fuel and transfer the heat. So fundamentally,
Speaker 2: a nuclear reactor is taking usually a uranium two thirty
Speaker 2: five atom, which is a big, heavy, unstable atom, and
Speaker 2: you add a neutron, and the addition of that neutron
Speaker 2: causes enough extra energy in the atom that it becomes
Speaker 2: so unstable it splits into two pieces, and in that
Speaker 2: process it releases heat. So it's just a really complicated
Speaker 2: way to boil water. So the water in light water
Speaker 2: reactors is both cooling the fuel to keep it safe
Speaker 2: and then transferring that heat so we can use that
Speaker 2: heat to make electricity. The fuel in those reactors it's
Speaker 2: uranium two thirty five, about five weight percent compared to
Speaker 2: uranium two thirty eight. Specifying this because there's talk of
Speaker 2: enrichment quite a bit out in the world these days,
Speaker 2: and in nature, uranium two thirty eight is ninety nine
Speaker 2: point three percent of the uranium, and so we have
Speaker 2: to increase the two thirty five percentage. The fuel pellets
Speaker 2: are ceramics, so they're very stable. Think of like you know,
Speaker 2: a coffee cup. It's not going anywhere. It's not a
Speaker 2: pile of ooze. It's like a ceramic material that the
Speaker 2: fuel is inside. Those are in metal tubes that are
Speaker 2: tall and skinny. We heat up the water, we create steam,
Speaker 2: turn a turbine. Why did we do it that way.
Speaker 2: It's just the easiest way to make it happen. So
Speaker 2: there are all these properties around, like what energy is
Speaker 2: the neutron when it causes the fission to happen. What
Speaker 2: materials are absorbing the neutrons, Because when a fission happens,
Speaker 2: a few more neutrons are released, and those neutrons are
Speaker 2: available to go on to cause more fission. So it's
Speaker 2: all about keeping the chain reaction steady. So a lot
Speaker 2: of like what reactor design is is keeping the right
Speaker 2: number of neutrons in the system. It's just easy to
Speaker 2: do that with water reactors. And also historically, you know,
Speaker 2: the nuclear Navy in the United States is really where
Speaker 2: nuclear power was born. At the time, the major competing
Speaker 2: design was a sodium cooled reactor. But sodium and water
Speaker 2: do not mix interact quite energetically, and so at the time,
Speaker 2: you know him and Rickover, the very famous admiral of
Speaker 2: the US Nuclear Navy, was I don't know if we
Speaker 2: can swear on the show, but I'm going to say
Speaker 2: his quote. Anyway, if the sea was made out of sodium,
Speaker 2: some asshole would try to put a water reactor in it.
Speaker 2: So really it was the nuclear Navy. Having a water
Speaker 2: reactor in the ocean made much more sense. And so
Speaker 2: it was kind of a VHS versus Beta Max and
Speaker 2: I need a new analogy for this century. But lightwater
Speaker 2: reactors went.
Speaker 1: Out Facebook versus MySpace. Well, I don't know there are
Speaker 1: many analogies that we could come up with, but okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a tun here, because it's important to you
Speaker 1: raise this point on nuclear weapons and enrichment. So my
Speaker 1: understanding of this is that because you have to enrich
Speaker 1: uranium to thirty five, you're going from this point seven
Speaker 1: percent to three to five percent for fuel. You do
Speaker 1: use the equipment which are centrifuges, the things that the
Speaker 1: US targeted in Iran in the recent bombing attack, and
Speaker 1: those same centrifuges or perhaps higher speed ones could be
Speaker 1: used to enrich it all the way to ninety percent,
Speaker 1: which is what you need for weapons grade uranium. It
Speaker 1: is important to recognize that this connection between nuclear power
Speaker 1: and nuclear weapons does exist. There are nuclear plants in
Speaker 1: countries that tend to have nuclear weapons. There are nuclear
Speaker 1: plants in other countries, but those are typically built or
Speaker 1: provided for by countries that have nuclear weapons. So there
Speaker 1: are regulations around who can have a nuclear reactor, who
Speaker 1: can provide the nuclear fuel for those reactors, And there's
Speaker 1: a very good reason why those regulations are in place,
Speaker 1: because if you give everybody the capacity to make highly
Speaker 1: undriched uranium, they could go all the way to a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon, which we know North Korea has been able
Speaker 1: to do in the recent past. How much of what
Speaker 1: we talk about next could also lead to a risk
Speaker 1: of nuclear proliferation.
Speaker 2: So overall, nuclear reactors can be connected to nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: but often aren't, and it's pretty straightforward to prevent that.
Speaker 2: And then there are a few of these areas where
Speaker 2: you need to watch more closely. And maybe one related
Speaker 2: point is you correctly specified how much material you need
Speaker 2: for a weapon is totally different than what goes into
Speaker 2: a reactor, and so as a result, a nuclear actor
Speaker 2: cannot explode like a nuclear weapon. They are very different physics,
Speaker 2: they're different things. So it is on the front end
Speaker 2: of the fuel cycle when you're doing enrichment that is
Speaker 2: one of the places where you really need to pay attention,
Speaker 2: and that's why we have groups like the International Atomic
Speaker 2: Energy Agency that sets standards and norms and does monitoring
Speaker 2: and so it's totally possible to have a peaceful nuclear
Speaker 2: program and do it responsibly and transparently, and that is
Speaker 2: totally a thing. It's also possible to have your fuel
Speaker 2: provided for you, whether you just don't want to deal
Speaker 2: with the enrichment process, maybe your country just doesn't need
Speaker 2: to stand up that capability because it is kind of
Speaker 2: a pain. So there are lots of choices. And then
Speaker 2: the other one where people look is in recycling of
Speaker 2: nuclear fuel. Now that is not something that is done
Speaker 2: broadly today. France has a partial recycle process, Russia does
Speaker 2: some recycling, Japan has done some recycling, so there is
Speaker 2: some around the world. But that's the process where you
Speaker 2: take the fuel that we used in the reactor, and
Speaker 2: when we take that fuel out, actually most of the
Speaker 2: energy is still available in it. There's still some uranium left,
Speaker 2: and there's actually plutonium that was created in the reactor
Speaker 2: process that can also be used to power reactor, so
Speaker 2: you can take out that uranium and plutonium and use
Speaker 2: it again. And uranium in plutonium can be used to
Speaker 2: make weapons, and so in that recycling process, we have
Speaker 2: processes where the uranium and plutonium are never by themselves
Speaker 2: in a weapons usable form, and so it's really about
Speaker 2: using the processes that don't lend themselves to proliferation, and
Speaker 2: again that transparency and accountability. So we don't have a
Speaker 2: wide recycling program right now, but some of the advanced
Speaker 2: reactors we'll talk about later are set up to facilitate
Speaker 2: recycling should we choose to do so in the future.
Speaker 1: Join us after the break when I ask Rachel Slabob
Speaker 1: why nuclear has become a China story and if the
Speaker 1: West can ever catch up. And Hey, if you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this episode, please rate and review Zero on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: and Spotify. Recently, a listener who goes by Danny Utah
Speaker 1: one O eight said the Zero team does a great
Speaker 1: job evaluating new technologies, trends, and industries through a journalistic lense.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Danny Utah one O eight. Coming to advanced reactors,
Speaker 1: one of the arguments that people have made to me
Speaker 1: is that why are we thinking about these advanced reactors
Speaker 1: of any kind at all? We know this thing that
Speaker 1: we've made for the last sixty seventy years safely light
Speaker 1: water reactors, we can make many of them, and anyway,
Speaker 1: we've learned from engineering that the more you make something,
Speaker 1: the cheaper it gets. And why not just stick to
Speaker 1: the old stuff, and that would be the way to
Speaker 1: bring back nuclear power plants to the West. What's wrong
Speaker 1: with that argument?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an argument that does hold weights, especially
Speaker 2: in some countries. Or if we really did decide, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to build a whole bunch of reactors and
Speaker 2: drive the cost down, it's possible we could do that.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of reasons advanced reactors are attractive.
Speaker 2: One is we're just not good at megaprojects. So instead
Speaker 2: of trying to become good at megaprojects, what if we
Speaker 2: did something different that we're better at, like small modular
Speaker 2: factory manufacturing, where we tend to do better. So one
Speaker 2: of it is that economics may work out better where
Speaker 2: you're trading. You know, you're losing on economy of scale,
Speaker 2: but if you can't actually execute the project to get
Speaker 2: the economy of scale anyway, then we should take a
Speaker 2: different plan. And then the advanced reactors do have some
Speaker 2: features that can be desirable, So some of them, and
Speaker 2: it's a big range of technology types, so I'll try
Speaker 2: to speak generally. But some of them can operate at
Speaker 2: higher temperatures. So if you're looking for decarbonized process heat,
Speaker 2: now you can have quite high temperatures that you can
Speaker 2: use for industrial processes. Also, when they're at high temperatures,
Speaker 2: they work more efficiently, so you get more bang for
Speaker 2: your buck out of the fuel. Some of them can
Speaker 2: facilitate recycling, and so in a world where we have
Speaker 2: increased energy demand, we want to limit uranium mining. Or
Speaker 2: when you do the recycling the waste that comes out
Speaker 2: at the end is radioactive for less time, it's easier
Speaker 2: to manage. You have less of it, right, So that's
Speaker 2: a desirable property. And as I mentioned, they might be
Speaker 2: more economic. And then the last reason is it's easier
Speaker 2: to make them in more sizes and not every market
Speaker 2: needs a gigawot. We don't always want to grow a
Speaker 2: gigawott at a time. Not every grid needs that, especially
Speaker 2: if you're talking about more behind the meter projects. Now,
Speaker 2: if you have more sizes of reactor choices, they might
Speaker 2: be a better fit for different market applications.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about all this now for nuclear, because
Speaker 1: there is rising power demand in western countries as a
Speaker 1: result of AI, as a result of electric cars and
Speaker 1: heat pumps, and this change in trajectory and power demand
Speaker 1: is what is making people go, Yes, we've got all
Speaker 1: the solar and wind and that's great, and we're going
Speaker 1: to build a lot of it. Maybe not in the US,
Speaker 1: given what's happening with the politics there, but you know
Speaker 1: everywhere else. Yes, we're going to support this thing, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to provide power all the time, and
Speaker 1: for data centers especially, we're going to need that power
Speaker 1: all the time. But then there's the argument, which is
Speaker 1: if it's going to take first these light water reactors
Speaker 1: five ten years to build, that's too long. Second, if
Speaker 1: you want to build these advanced reactors, maybe smaller ones,
Speaker 1: you're still going to have to go through the process
Speaker 1: of getting the reactor design and approved, finding people who
Speaker 1: would want to buy it, and that's still going to
Speaker 1: take five or ten years. The power demand for these
Speaker 1: AI hogs is right now. So what is the reason
Speaker 1: why they're even looking at nuclear.
Speaker 2: I think there's expectation that, yes, there's power demand today
Speaker 2: and in the future it's going to be even bigger,
Speaker 2: and so you can cobble together the tools you have
Speaker 2: right now, which honestly is kind of challenging because you,
Speaker 2: i mean, turbines for gas plants are also five years
Speaker 2: back ordered. Right It's like really hard to build anything
Speaker 2: right now, and so you are going to need all
Speaker 2: the tools in your tool belt looking twenty thirty and beyond,
Speaker 2: because we're growing now. We don't know how fast we're
Speaker 2: going to grow. People are building data centers, but you
Speaker 2: can imagine if you look at that growth rate, it
Speaker 2: leads to some pretty big numbers in the future. And
Speaker 2: so if you don't start working on the nuclear reactors now,
Speaker 2: you definitely won't have them in five years when you
Speaker 2: need them.
Speaker 1: Use address the question that the story of nuclear right
Speaker 1: now is in Asia, It's really in China. It is
Speaker 1: the place with nearly half of all new reactors being built.
Speaker 1: It is the place which bloomogenif quotes builds these reactors
Speaker 1: at one fifth the cost of the most recent reactor
Speaker 1: built in the US, and China has the plan to
Speaker 1: build about one hundred and fifty of these by twenty
Speaker 1: thirty five, which would make the fleet be double the
Speaker 1: size of what the US fleet, which is the largest currently.
Speaker 1: Why is China doing it so cheaply? And is it
Speaker 1: because it's making the same thing again and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say there is some transparency issues that
Speaker 2: we don't one hundred percent know the answer, but the
Speaker 2: answer is similar in China as it is in Korea,
Speaker 2: as it is in the other non Western you know,
Speaker 2: the rest of the world places where their reactors are
Speaker 2: being built. So it is the same exact design and
Speaker 2: they are building it over and over again, and that
Speaker 2: infrastructure of how they build projects is much more efficient
Speaker 2: than how we do things here. When reactors are built inexpensively,
Speaker 2: it tends to be vertically integrated. You have one organization
Speaker 2: that is very well coordinated building these things, and then
Speaker 2: right you have a design, you know what it is,
Speaker 2: you build it over and over the same exact way.
Speaker 2: You have people who have done it before, both the
Speaker 2: construction managers and the project managers, as well as the
Speaker 2: welders and the electricians. So it's that consistency and clarity
Speaker 2: of design and clarity of plan are two really big
Speaker 2: factors that you are building a thing that you know
Speaker 2: exactly what you're building, and the orchestration of that construction
Speaker 2: is really well done, and those are the things that
Speaker 2: have been missing in the West so far. But it
Speaker 2: is not just China, it's also Korea, the Middle East, Turkey.
Speaker 1: But then let's talk politics, and especially politics from both
Speaker 1: the polar side and from the policy side. Now, in
Speaker 1: the US you have gone through a whipsaw on climate
Speaker 1: policy between presidents from Obama to first drum presidency to
Speaker 1: Biden to second Trump presidency. Why do you think nuclear
Speaker 1: can have a future in the US where this whipsaw
Speaker 1: is likely to continue because the polarization between parties has grown.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, nuclear has become a bipartisan issue. Really. The Biden
Speaker 2: administration was the first Democratic admin to embrace nuclear, and
Speaker 2: so that crossover view of climate benefit and resilience and security.
Speaker 2: Nuclear is one of the technologies where that's true. Geothermal
Speaker 2: is actually another one where there's a stability, a domestic ownership,
Speaker 2: so it's viewed from sort of a resilience lens, and
Speaker 2: then it also has all these climate benefits. So it's
Speaker 2: one of the very few technologies that is agreed upon
Speaker 2: by both parties. So we've actually, over the last ten
Speaker 2: years seen increasing support for nuclear regardless of administration.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of fun. Thank you, Rachel. Next
Speaker 1: week we're going to talk about small modular nuclear reactors
Speaker 1: and whether they can be built at scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, akx Sha. It was great to be.
Speaker 1: Here, and thank you for listening to Zero. Now for
Speaker 1: the sound of the week. That's the sound of a
Speaker 1: balloon being popped and the echoes that follow inside the
Speaker 1: cooling tower of a nuclear power plant. If you like
Speaker 1: this episode, please take a moment to rate and review
Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode
Speaker 1: with a friend or with a nuclear bro. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Oscar Our. Theme music is composed by
Speaker 1: wonder Lee. Special thanks to Eleanor Harrison, Dengate, Samersadi, Moses
Speaker 1: Andim and Sherwan Wagner. I am Akshatrati Back soon.