Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, you know, we recently did that episode down in
Speaker 1: Austin with a Jigger Shaw of the Department of Energy,
Speaker 1: and he said a bunch of interesting things about nuclear.
Speaker 1: I mean, we talked about a lot of stuff related
Speaker 1: to electrification, decarbonization, but I think both of us found
Speaker 1: like the nuclear comments to be particularly interesting.
Speaker 2: Well absolutely so, there were a couple things to pull
Speaker 2: out there. On the one hand, he sounded positive in
Speaker 2: the sense that maybe nuclear is getting more traction than
Speaker 2: it has previously. You have these new types of was.
Speaker 1: It smaller modular reactor at.
Speaker 2: Which he described as neither small nor modular, So I
Speaker 2: have questions about that, and you know, a sort of
Speaker 2: ground swell potentially of support for cleaner energy technology in
Speaker 2: which nuclear, you know, theoretically could fall. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, he also described these long running structural roadblocks
Speaker 2: to nuclear, at least in the US, So this idea
Speaker 2: that there isn't really a nuclear industry. There are utilities
Speaker 2: that my own nuclear plants, but no one's really pushing
Speaker 2: for it. And then also if you're a utility CEO,
Speaker 2: You're probably not going to be that incentivized to build
Speaker 2: a massive nuclear plant because historically it's been a massive
Speaker 2: risk and responsible for a number of bankruptcies in the sector.
Speaker 1: Right, And so I think this was really like the
Speaker 1: key thing to me too. It's like, why did the
Speaker 1: US stop building nuclear And in my mind, and I
Speaker 1: think probably in the minds of a lot of at
Speaker 1: least the rhetoric of a lot of advocates of nuclear power,
Speaker 1: it is a clean, carbon free source of energy that
Speaker 1: has a bad reputation and environmentalists stymy it because of
Speaker 1: you know, outdoates.
Speaker 2: Are you going to say the three eyed fish in
Speaker 2: the Persons again.
Speaker 1: Three eyed fish on the Simpsons. His view is like, actually,
Speaker 1: that's not the story that as you say that, you know,
Speaker 1: because of historical cost over runs, there's real financial risk
Speaker 1: in financing these and that part of the reason these
Speaker 1: cost overruns happen is that there's really no domestic nuclear
Speaker 1: construction industry or nuclear industry, and so no one is
Speaker 1: good at building plants, and that's why you have these
Speaker 1: cost overruns. And then ultimately these are the stumbling blocks,
Speaker 1: the impediments towards like this nuclear renaissance that many people
Speaker 1: would like to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of this like muscle memory effect. For
Speaker 2: some reason, it reminds me of like the lumber industry
Speaker 2: post two thousand and seven two thousand and eight, where
Speaker 2: no one wanted to have over capacity anymore, so they
Speaker 2: just became incredibly lean, and then when we did need
Speaker 2: more lumber in twenty twenty, we didn't have enough capacity.
Speaker 2: So if it kind of feels like that, like it
Speaker 2: feels like everyone's been so scarred by the experience in
Speaker 2: the seven the eighties and nineties that it's hard to
Speaker 2: kind of get people within the industry excited about it again.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so we wanted to follow up and actually like
Speaker 1: explore some of these themes. So I'm very excited we
Speaker 1: have the perfect guest to do. So we are going
Speaker 1: to be speaking with Mark Nelson. He is a founder
Speaker 1: and managing director at Radiant Energy Group, which is does
Speaker 1: energy analytics. He is an advocate, I believe, for nuclear
Speaker 1: and he is going to talk us through as he
Speaker 1: sees some of these issues that Jigger raised. So Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on oud. Lots good
Speaker 1: to be here at Tracy. You are an advocate for
Speaker 1: nuclear energy. I said, I believe, but you.
Speaker 3: Know, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: What is radiant energy group? What do you do? Why
Speaker 1: should we listen to you? Why are you here?
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't start out as a as a consultant.
Speaker 3: I started out as an energy analytics expert. I'm working
Speaker 3: for a nonprofit out in California that was attempting to
Speaker 3: figure out why nuclear plants were closing around the world
Speaker 3: and how to stop it. So I was working with
Speaker 3: Michael Schallenberger at environment Progress where there had been a
Speaker 3: sudden growth in environmentalists turning towards nuclear in the Bay
Speaker 3: Area of California, practically where they first turned against nuclear
Speaker 3: energy back in the sixties. And the thinking was, on
Speaker 3: one hand, if you developed an academic basis and a
Speaker 3: scientific basis for understanding nuclear energy properly, people and other
Speaker 3: environmentalists would come around. On the other hand, there was
Speaker 3: a crisis. There was a fire in the house, which
Speaker 3: was nuclear reactors were being closed around the world. We're
Speaker 3: not talking about nuclear reactors that people were proposing and
Speaker 3: needing to find financing for. These were nuclear reactors where
Speaker 3: the hard part was already done. They were constructed, they
Speaker 3: were making super cheap, reliable, carbon free electricity, and they
Speaker 3: were being shut down all over the world. So at
Speaker 3: environmental progress we needed to figure out how to stop that,
Speaker 3: and the first step was figuring out what was going on,
Speaker 3: and so I came in as a nuclear engineer to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: I'll take the bait, what was going on? Why were
Speaker 2: all these reactors shutting down? Because I imagine on the
Speaker 2: one hand, maybe you had environmental pushback, but on the
Speaker 2: other hand, we have heard a lot of stuff about
Speaker 2: how difficult some of these are to finance to maintain
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 3: The broadest possible thing I could say is there was
Speaker 3: not enough appreciation for nuclear reactors if we needed to
Speaker 3: break it up. Though, some places in the world, like
Speaker 3: the United States, had extremely cheap natural gas and had
Speaker 3: installed governing systems for electricity that used extremely temporary, cheap
Speaker 3: fossil fuels as an excuse to shut down nuclear reactors
Speaker 3: that could last for another thirty forty to fifty sixty years.
Speaker 3: And that's really stupid. Those electricity markets are some of
Speaker 3: the worst things we've ever done to our infrastructure, but
Speaker 3: they were in place and they were leading to a
Speaker 3: wave of retirements.
Speaker 2: Do you mean that the competition from even cheaper electricity
Speaker 2: was like that electricity from fossil fuels was even easier
Speaker 2: and cheaper compared to nuclear, and so the preference was
Speaker 2: for that at the time.
Speaker 3: It's simply wrong to say that it was cheaper electricity.
Speaker 3: It was one aspect of the total electricity system that
Speaker 3: was cheaper on the margin at that moment at those times,
Speaker 3: and sometimes wasn't even cheaper. You just had a natural
Speaker 3: gas folks that were willing to take a temporary loss
Speaker 3: to drive nuclear plants out of business.
Speaker 2: Oh so like a market share fight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Basically there was a market share fight. There
Speaker 3: wasn't as much growth for electricity demand. There was extremely
Speaker 3: cheap natural gas, making losses for the natural gas producers
Speaker 3: and needing to find more markets, and people arranged ways
Speaker 3: to build new natural gas plants so close to nuclear
Speaker 3: plants or near enough in location on the grid to
Speaker 3: drive them out of business. And then that's not like
Speaker 3: the cost savings would be passed on consumers. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you drive the nuclear plant out and then you get the.
Speaker 2: New race prices.
Speaker 3: Well, well you can't really raise the prices go up
Speaker 3: once the nuclear's gone, right, But then the nuclear's gone.
Speaker 3: And as we've discussed in the intro, it's hard to build.
Speaker 3: So you had a one way ratcheting effect.
Speaker 1: I want to jump in very quickly to the hard
Speaker 1: to build, but just this dynamic because the fall up.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, just like you said,
Speaker 1: like electricity markets have just been this damaging phenomenon. And
Speaker 1: I think generally like people like think like markets are
Speaker 1: good things, and markets produce abundance and et cetera. What
Speaker 1: is it about electricity that, in your view, either markets
Speaker 1: or at least markets as they're currently structured, have this
Speaker 1: pernicious effect.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, electricity is not a commodity. And
Speaker 3: the analogy that the economists use to think about electricity
Speaker 3: and setting up these markets was that electricity is a commodity,
Speaker 3: as commodity like properties that are close enough that you
Speaker 3: can sort of squint and say it's, you know, a
Speaker 3: standardized unit one megawat hour, one kill a watt hour.
Speaker 3: And so they came up with a system to break
Speaker 3: apart the carrying of electricity with the building of power plants.
Speaker 3: And they said, there's all these different parts of making electricity,
Speaker 3: and if we divide it up disaggregate it. We can
Speaker 3: come up with competition and maybe start with the power plants,
Speaker 3: but then we can move to other aspects like competition
Speaker 3: and bundling up electricity contracts to sell to consumers with
Speaker 3: different packaging. And it just turns out that, to cut
Speaker 3: a very long story short, that could be its own
Speaker 3: series of episodes. Yeah, it doesn't really work, and it
Speaker 3: leads to either enormous risk taking that ends with massive
Speaker 3: market failure like we saw briefly in Texas and we're
Speaker 3: seeing in other places that have instituted markets or the
Speaker 3: market manager. The market system ends up taking on both
Speaker 3: the attributes and many of the criticisms of the old
Speaker 3: utility system that it was supposed to break up.
Speaker 2: I can tell this is already going to be one
Speaker 2: of those episodes that leads to like five other episodes.
Speaker 2: But just it's going back to something you said. I
Speaker 2: think you mentioned nuclear is hard to build, and Jiggershaw
Speaker 2: might very politely disagree with you, because in our conversation
Speaker 2: with him, he was talking about how there is this
Speaker 2: perception that like, oh, it's so difficult to build these things,
Speaker 2: but actually his point was we've built them before, you know,
Speaker 2: we've done it. A lot of our technology has been
Speaker 2: exported to other places in the world where they're building them.
Speaker 2: Is it that hard to build a nuclear plant?
Speaker 3: Yes, So I visit construction sides and nuclear plants around
Speaker 3: the world. I mean, I this is this is something
Speaker 3: that I thought was going to be the main problem.
Speaker 3: We just don't know how to build nuclear plants, and
Speaker 3: sure enough, it is quite hard. Here's what I'd say
Speaker 3: about nuclear plants. They're premium energy, and they take your
Speaker 3: best people to build, and they take your best effort,
Speaker 3: and they need to be done right because they are
Speaker 3: that difficult. I mean, I've been to nuclear side. So,
Speaker 3: for example, the biggest construction site in Europe is a
Speaker 3: massive two reactor nuclear plant on the west coast of
Speaker 3: southern England, and that site you cannot possibly go there
Speaker 3: and think nuclear is easy. Now, some of the best
Speaker 3: people in the country, the best contractors, the best engineers,
Speaker 3: the best managers are over there and they're going to
Speaker 3: be working for a decade on that massive nuclear plant,
Speaker 3: and then it's going to provide the best electricity service
Speaker 3: in the country. Like it's going to be extraordinary. Okay,
Speaker 3: but it is really hard to build. The argument maybe
Speaker 3: he was making was what compared to the immense factories
Speaker 3: that go into the supply chain for solar and wind,
Speaker 3: it's not that hard. But actually what we're seeing is, say,
Speaker 3: offshore wind is extremely hard to So is this a
Speaker 3: comparison question or is this a contrast.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that we got to do an
Speaker 1: offshore wind episode at some point too, because every article
Speaker 1: I read just looks like that industry on many levels
Speaker 1: is a total mess. But setting that aside, I wonder
Speaker 1: if maybe like the question of like hard or difficult
Speaker 1: to your point, you know, like a semiconductor fab is
Speaker 1: clearly like a complicated, difficult thing. There are not many
Speaker 1: entities around the world that can build like, you know,
Speaker 1: a seven animeter or five animeter semiconductor manufacturing facility. But
Speaker 1: some people are good at it, and some people become
Speaker 1: practiced at it, And so I guess the question is, like,
Speaker 1: how much of the constraint in the US or in
Speaker 1: places where you would like to see nuclear expand an
Speaker 1: inherent difficulty or maybe like just out of.
Speaker 3: Practice, out of practice, is it we can build nuclear again?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we didn't a bunch I could fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, right.
Speaker 3: The cost estimates that we're seeing for offshore wind Joe
Speaker 3: are about the same as the extreme blowout over budget
Speaker 3: catastrophe that is Vocal in Georgia. So think about this.
Speaker 3: The wind that's supposedly we're gonna build and it's going
Speaker 3: to go well, and it's going to be on time
Speaker 3: and on budget. If that happens, it will be at
Speaker 3: a cost per delivered megawatt hour that is about the
Speaker 3: same as Vogel in Georgia, depending on what you assume
Speaker 3: with interest rates and assuming they build the wind on time.
Speaker 3: But Vogel wasn't supposed to be that expensive, and it
Speaker 3: provides an electricity, a constant electricity supply that makes the
Speaker 3: rest of the electricity system work even better, which is
Speaker 3: not quite the case for the offshore wind. So the
Speaker 3: offshore wind, even being expensive, even after you pay for it,
Speaker 3: is going to be part of a more expensive electricity
Speaker 3: service overall. So I guess the question I ask is
Speaker 3: Vogel was very hard to do, It continues to be
Speaker 3: difficult to finish, It will be extremely valuable, It will
Speaker 3: be valuable for one hundred years or more. Was it
Speaker 3: Should we not do it again? Because it was hard?
Speaker 3: I think we have to admit that nuclear is hard,
Speaker 3: but unlike many hard things, this is.
Speaker 4: What I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I take the point that it's hard, And you know,
Speaker 2: the knowledge gap was sort of what I was getting
Speaker 2: at when I said that we have a history of
Speaker 2: doing this, so like the knowledge is clearly there, but
Speaker 2: talk to us, like, exactly what the impediments actually are? Like,
Speaker 2: what is it about building It sounds funny when I
Speaker 2: say it building a massive nuclear power plant with dangerous
Speaker 2: radioactive material. What's so difficult about that? Why can't we
Speaker 2: all just do it in our backyards? No, I'm being
Speaker 2: facetious now, but like, what are the actual impediments to
Speaker 2: building these things? And why does there seem to be
Speaker 2: h you mentioned vocal, why does there seem to be
Speaker 2: so many cost overruns in these projects as well?
Speaker 3: In the sixties, seventies and eighties. It's kind of an
Speaker 3: astonishing that we if you look at the interest rate
Speaker 3: charts back in the day, like most of us nuclear
Speaker 3: plants were built and completed at interest rates from five
Speaker 3: to ten percent and above. So that's quite kind of astonishing.
Speaker 3: And they were and they happened during a time when
Speaker 3: the environmental movement was getting immense elite support all over,
Speaker 3: and that popular media turned against nuclear energy also, so
Speaker 3: in a way, I you know, it's quind of astonishing,
Speaker 3: and we did that.
Speaker 2: But so they overcame those hurdles in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they had to overcome the hurdles of the
Speaker 3: earliest plants that were built quickly and cheaply did not
Speaker 3: apparently make money for the builders. That's a problem if
Speaker 3: you're going to keep building. In other words, it had
Speaker 3: the call it the offshore wind problem, where the projects
Speaker 3: seemed to be excellent from a sort of technological perspective
Speaker 3: or from an administrator's eye view, but the people building
Speaker 3: them are burning through capital and not making profit in
Speaker 3: order to make these cheap things. That's not sustainable, right.
Speaker 2: This is kind of the CEO point where like a
Speaker 2: bunch of CEOs have surveyed previous nuclear projects, seen that
Speaker 2: they've been massive financial drains on finances, I guess, and
Speaker 2: then thought maybe not but tracy.
Speaker 3: That brings us to possibly the central paradox of this
Speaker 3: episode of odd lots, which is, there is nothing more
Speaker 3: valuable in the energy world than existing already built nuclear
Speaker 3: plant of traditional design. So as an example, of one
Speaker 3: that I heard recently. Let's take Tennessee Valley Authority had
Speaker 3: one of the all time messes on their hands with
Speaker 3: finished nuclear plants when their Brown's Ferry plant had it
Speaker 3: one of the most famous fires that we have to
Speaker 3: learn about in not just nuclear engineering school, but all
Speaker 3: engineers or mini engineers I know learn about the Browns
Speaker 3: Faery fire as an example of all sorts of things
Speaker 3: not to do. So this is three large reactors that
Speaker 3: are finally working well after decades of tinkering, and together
Speaker 3: they make about let's say five million people's five to
Speaker 3: six million people's worth of electricity at fifteen dollars a
Speaker 3: megawat hour, and they're going to be able to stay
Speaker 3: down near fifteen to twenty dollars a magawat hour costs.
Speaker 3: That's the cost to TVA of generating electricity of the
Speaker 3: course of a year, divided by the amount of power,
Speaker 3: right fifteen dollars a magwat hour, and they're going to
Speaker 3: be able to do that decade after decade after decade.
Speaker 3: At this point, it's not clear what would actually cause
Speaker 3: these reactors to shut down, and so you have this
Speaker 3: situation where can you survive as a CEO proposing building
Speaker 3: what after built is incomparable in what it can do
Speaker 3: for society and any kind of carbon constrained environment, or
Speaker 3: to heck, with the carbon constraints, nothing beats this power
Speaker 3: plant even without carbon having a prize. I mean, the cheapest,
Speaker 3: most advanced, lowest cost coal plants on planet Earth would
Speaker 3: struggle to get near that cost.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I like talking about, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I think we've had good conversations
Speaker 1: with Gigger in the past is he understands the role
Speaker 1: of finance and that yeah, finance and incentives, and that
Speaker 1: just like we could talk about construction, we could talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen dollars megawat hours for decade after a
Speaker 1: decade after decade, but that you know, we need to
Speaker 1: solve the financing problem. And as he sees it, a
Speaker 1: big issue is with new construction is that nuclear projects
Speaker 1: have been a major contributor to utility bankruptcies. Is that true?
Speaker 1: I mean, is that all?
Speaker 2: Do you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Of course I think he's right there.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like then, you know, like the follow
Speaker 1: on from that is that if we want this sort
Speaker 1: of decade after decade after decade of stable urginally inexpensive electricity,
Speaker 1: that somehow the public balance sheet needs to be involved,
Speaker 1: or that we at least don't have these sort of
Speaker 1: like undermining markets where the cheaper natural gas you know,
Speaker 1: plants can like situate near you and like price you
Speaker 1: out of business. How do you see the financing constraint
Speaker 1: playing out, Well.
Speaker 3: Let me dance overseas for just a second. You can
Speaker 3: say that we have an interesting comparison in countries that
Speaker 3: either like China, are building a bunch of nuclear at
Speaker 3: a low cost, or like France, have decided they need
Speaker 3: to but are doing it very expensively and are having
Speaker 3: a ton of struggles doing almost anything in nuclear. But
Speaker 3: in both cases it's considered vital to state interest that
Speaker 3: nuclear be strong and effective. Now, that wasn't that way
Speaker 3: in France only a few years ago. France was had
Speaker 3: an anti nuclear ruling elite for a number of years,
Speaker 3: and that's part of the immense trouble that they got
Speaker 3: into during the energy crisis when they should have been
Speaker 3: bailing out Europe. Instead they had to be bailed out
Speaker 3: by Germany, sometimes because of their own problems making nuclear.
Speaker 3: But they've decided it as a vital state importance. One
Speaker 3: of the first decisions they had to take was to
Speaker 3: repeal anti nuclear laws, and then they had to decide
Speaker 3: to say renationalize.
Speaker 1: EDF was sort.
Speaker 3: Of basically owned by the nation, but they needed to
Speaker 3: take on the rest of the responsibility and just understand,
Speaker 3: as many countries do, nuclear is so important. It's a
Speaker 3: vital state interest and it must be done right. And
Speaker 3: at some point it starts uniting the various political interests
Speaker 3: in a country and just starts moving forward. We're big
Speaker 3: and strong, We're America. Do we have to do nuclear well?
Speaker 3: I think that maybe even brings us into this cultural moment,
Speaker 3: which is if people of great talent, great energy, and
Speaker 3: great financial backing want nuclear more badly than they weren't
Speaker 3: anything else, is that going to be something that, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, unveils the path. I think the answer is yes,
Speaker 3: there is a cultural moment. There's a genuine cultural moment
Speaker 3: where almost anybody I meet wants to have a conversation
Speaker 3: about nuclear with me. Whereas before I had very poor
Speaker 3: taste in conversation, it would be me forcing it on
Speaker 3: other people. Nowadays, nowadays, since I work and talking about
Speaker 3: nuclear and thinking about nuclear and writing about nuclear and
Speaker 3: advising about nuclear. I am totally fine to talk about
Speaker 3: every other subject when I meet people, but they want
Speaker 3: to talk about nuclear.
Speaker 2: I like this the idea of you just like walking
Speaker 2: down the street going have you heard about molten salt reacting?
Speaker 1: Have you heard the good news?
Speaker 3: But that moment event of evangelism, that's that's why I
Speaker 3: got into nuclear. A gentleman out in Calgary who just
Speaker 3: was a big fan of molten salt reactors and thorium
Speaker 3: made a video channel. I was trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what to study in grad school. I wanted to do
Speaker 3: an engineering grad degree. I started an aerospace and mechanical
Speaker 3: engineering and it was you know, space flight and big
Speaker 3: machines and stuff like that. And I just saw a
Speaker 3: few minutes of a video at exactly the right time
Speaker 3: in my life, and everything just clicked. It hadn't clicked
Speaker 3: when I'd worked at Los Alamos as an engineering intern.
Speaker 3: It hadn't clicked when I'd been to either the Chernobyl
Speaker 3: Memorial Museum in Kiev or the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Japan.
Speaker 3: I hadn't been scared of nuclear. It had just been
Speaker 3: I hadn't connected it to the future of the world.
Speaker 3: Let's put it that way. I'd had many opportunities to
Speaker 3: be involved with nuclear that I just missed or not
Speaker 3: noticed along the way. And when I saw a have
Speaker 3: you heard the good news video like the guy shouting
Speaker 3: in the street, I saw that. Within a few minutes,
Speaker 3: I knew I was going to be involved in new
Speaker 3: engineering or nuclear energy in some way for the rest
Speaker 3: of my life.
Speaker 2: Well, since we're talking about things that might be changing,
Speaker 2: I take the point from a cultural and political perspective,
Speaker 2: but can you talk also about the technology side? And
Speaker 2: we already mentioned the small modular reactors, which Jickershaw says
Speaker 2: are neither small nor modular. So I would love to
Speaker 2: know exactly what they are and how they work, and
Speaker 2: whether or not they do in fact provide a possible
Speaker 2: solution to some of the obstacles we've been describing, For instance,
Speaker 2: the idea that CEOs of utility companies, having watched a
Speaker 2: bunch of bankruptcies, a bunch of cost overruns on these
Speaker 2: huge nuclear projects, maybe they don't want to do something massive,
Speaker 2: but maybe SMRs, these smaller reactors are a sort of
Speaker 2: middle ground.
Speaker 3: Is it okay to make haters on this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 3: Yeah, go for it controversial.
Speaker 1: Okay, let your haters be your waiters at the table
Speaker 1: of success, is what our mayor says.
Speaker 3: So yes, go, well let's start. Let's start it this way.
Speaker 3: I hate the word advanced. I detest the Gen four
Speaker 3: versus Gen three. It's complete bullshit. Sorry, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I can say that on odd blots.
Speaker 2: Wit advanced nuclear reactor? Is that what you mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean like people use that to mean anything going forward,
Speaker 3: not stuff going backwards. What's advanced? It means we haven't
Speaker 3: done it. I mean, so the number of people I
Speaker 3: meet that know what the state is of things that
Speaker 3: we call advanced in this country that are actually deployed
Speaker 3: and working in other countries. People have so little knowledge. So,
Speaker 3: for example, the Russians have several different lines of advanced
Speaker 3: programs already in production. They know how much they cost
Speaker 3: compared to the quote traditional reactors. They also play the
Speaker 3: Gen three game because they're selling in to some of
Speaker 3: the same countries that the West would like to sell to.
Speaker 3: And they can build the traditional reactors quite well, reasonably
Speaker 3: on time, reasonably on budget, and they provide the financing.
Speaker 3: It's amazing, right they can do that, But they also
Speaker 3: can do the so called advanced and at least the
Speaker 3: advanced lines that they have. That's not what their customers
Speaker 3: around the world are asking for. Turkey didn't ask for advanced,
Speaker 3: Egypt didn't want advanced.
Speaker 2: People just want the basic, like well functioning numbers.
Speaker 3: When they see the numbers tracy from a company that
Speaker 3: can do it all, it just makes sense to do
Speaker 3: the ones that if we hadn't invented, we would call
Speaker 3: it advanced today. Right, our reactors are extraordinary performers. How
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be able to know in advance that these
Speaker 3: things are going to last eighty years or one hundred years,
Speaker 3: but they turn out to last eighty to one hundred years.
Speaker 3: The utilities that built these nuclear plants in the US
Speaker 3: were hoping to get seventy five percent uptime. They're getting
Speaker 3: ninety five percent uptime out of their nuclear That's part
Speaker 3: of our paradox. The performance is out of this world
Speaker 3: for existing nuclear it's outlandish, but can we get there again?
Speaker 3: So the Russians have a sodium fast reactor program. Their
Speaker 3: sodium fast reactors are decent. Rumors from the Russians just
Speaker 3: chat on the Internet says that it's about twenty percent
Speaker 3: more per kill a whatat hour to produce electricity from
Speaker 3: their traditional ones. What's the advantage? Oh well, I mean
Speaker 3: they're still tinkering. They're going to try a few versions
Speaker 3: going forward over the next few decades if they don't
Speaker 3: have other issues. But it's it's okay, it's not bad.
Speaker 3: And by the way, guys, none of this means we
Speaker 3: won't have genuine engineering breakthroughs or development success with other
Speaker 3: types of reactors. But let me just summarize in this joke.
Speaker 3: What do you guys call a Gen four reactor? We're
Speaker 3: building the first.
Speaker 2: Version of Gen one? Yeah, there, we know you're still
Speaker 2: punchline Tracy.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to ask you get back to like
Speaker 1: a Vogel some of the questions around the point of like,
Speaker 1: we don't have a construction industry. But just real quickly,
Speaker 1: to sort of add on to Tracy's question, setting aside advance,
Speaker 1: setting aside Gen four, setting aside Gen three? What is it?
Speaker 4: Lee?
Speaker 1: It's like the sort of dictionary definition of a small
Speaker 1: modular reactor. What's the idea here?
Speaker 3: Well, so there's fighting over how big small is? So
Speaker 3: I I love jiggers line. I mean I've used that
Speaker 3: for years. This small could mean I don't know what
Speaker 3: he listens to or doesn't listen to. I think that
Speaker 3: it's not It's not that hard to come up with it.
Speaker 3: There's a template for that joke with the Holy Roman Empire, right,
Speaker 3: and so you you can.
Speaker 1: They also that they also that same joke about m MT.
Speaker 1: It's neither modern nor monty. It's all. It's all or
Speaker 1: or a theory or whatever something like that or theory.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the normal definition is small means anything smaller
Speaker 3: than say three hundred, five hundred, six hundred, there's a battle.
Speaker 3: It's typically whatever size your reactor is, you're in. Whatever
Speaker 3: the good term is. Whatever your reactor is, that your propars,
Speaker 3: especially if you've never built it before. That's what makes
Speaker 3: it advanced and small or modular or whatever. Just to
Speaker 3: give you an example here in the nineties in Japan,
Speaker 3: one of these big reactors called an ABWR Advanced boiling
Speaker 3: water reactor. There's the A for advanced, right, So we've
Speaker 3: been using advanced for almost my entire life. The Japanese
Speaker 3: built one of these reactors with ge in three years,
Speaker 3: from first concrete all the way to first reactions in
Speaker 3: the core four years to get it to full commercialization.
Speaker 3: And this was a one thousand, three hundred megawak reactor,
Speaker 3: so enough for say a million people in an energy
Speaker 3: hungry rich country, right, And they built it in forty
Speaker 3: eight months from first concrete to commercial operation. And I
Speaker 3: asked one of the engineers who'd been a young man
Speaker 3: working on that project. I met him. He's working on
Speaker 3: new reactors for GE and I said, how do you
Speaker 3: guys do this? And he said, well, it was modular.
Speaker 3: And said that's nice. Then why do you change the
Speaker 3: design afterwards? And he said, to simplify it. They haven't
Speaker 3: built another reactor since. Do you see where I'm trying
Speaker 3: to get at. I think that we got this advanced
Speaker 3: language and this gin for thinking because you had a
Speaker 3: bunch of well meaning nerds who didn't want to face
Speaker 3: down the true roots of social anxiety about nuclear which
Speaker 3: don't really have to do with the advanced or the generation.
Speaker 3: And actually, in my opinion and my experience over talking
Speaker 3: to thousands of people at every level of society all
Speaker 3: over planet Earth for years now, it doesn't really have
Speaker 3: anything to do with the reactor at all. So you
Speaker 3: can't fix it with the reactor. If I find somebody
Speaker 3: on this to you just says, oh, I didn't like nuclear,
Speaker 3: but now I kind of like these advanced new designs.
Speaker 3: Or have you heard of molten salt thorium designs? Or
Speaker 3: have you heard Bill Gates is making an advanced new reactor.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I almost invariably find they either actually always liked nuclear
Speaker 3: or they're totally fine with the non advanced reactors now.
Speaker 3: And it's not that it's not the rebranding or the
Speaker 3: claimed new technology that may not exist yet, that's not
Speaker 3: it. It's that they either had a fundamental issue with nuclear
Speaker 3: and that got resolved, or they had no issue with
Speaker 3: nuclear all along and just want to sound like they're
Speaker 3: progressive and modern about it.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a market opportunity maybe for Elon
Speaker 2: Musk or someone like that that's just like the boring basics,
Speaker 2: a reliable, cheap reactor company.
Speaker 3: You have at least one of the nuclear startups that's
Speaker 3: specifically trying to go in exactly that direction, work with
Speaker 3: engineering and marketing. Last energy. Brett Koogle mass, a software
Speaker 3: engineer sold a software company, asked advisors, what can I
Speaker 3: do to solve climate change? They said, young man go nuclear,
Speaker 3: and so he started this sort of think tank in
Speaker 3: DC to try to understand why people didn't like nuclear
Speaker 3: and why the nuclear industry wasn't building. His direction was
Speaker 3: to come out with a zero frills, stripped down, small
Speaker 3: or even micro in some people's estimation, simple version of
Speaker 3: exactly what we're building today for our submarines or for
Speaker 3: the big reactors. It's the same standard type. I've been
Speaker 3: trying to avoid these technical words, but since I already
Speaker 3: talked about the Advanced boiler water reactor a PWR pressurized
Speaker 3: water reactor, one of the early types that was developed
Speaker 3: and was so successful in its implementation, partly because of
Speaker 3: the strength and genius of the program director, Admiral Hyman
Speaker 3: rick Over back in the late forties and fifties, but
Speaker 3: also just because it works really well. As in engineering technology,
Speaker 3: it's like the seven thirty seven gotten to its shape,
Speaker 3: its configuration with predecessor aircrafts as in wing certain size
Speaker 3: two engines slung below the third chord of the wing,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of hit that shape. That shape
Speaker 3: just kind of works really well, and we keep getting
Speaker 3: seven thirty sevens over and over and over. Well, well,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what it seems we got to with
Speaker 3: PWR in a time of extreme experimentation where reactors around
Speaker 3: the world were going to every possible configuration, including a
Speaker 3: lot of the ones called advanced today. We made commercial
Speaker 3: versions of these back in the day, and it's just
Speaker 3: this type hit critical engineering and technological mass and just
Speaker 3: became standards and for people to claim that a thing
Speaker 3: that hasn't really done well yet is going to dethrone
Speaker 3: the king. I love the idea that we would have
Speaker 3: multiple technologies we're working on. The Russians do it, the
Speaker 3: Chinese do it, India's doing it, A bunch of countries
Speaker 3: are doing it. But there's a reason the winner was
Speaker 3: the winner. It works extraordinarily about.
Speaker 1: As Tracy mentioned, you know, there's tons of follow on
Speaker 1: episodes that all of this conversation is uh is inspiring
Speaker 1: in my head. But you know, I want before we
Speaker 1: wrap up, I want to go to sort of the
Speaker 1: other key point, which is this idea that like there's
Speaker 1: there's not a nuclear industry in the US, or maybe
Speaker 1: the way that it sort of makes sense to me
Speaker 1: is like if you were utility and you wanted to
Speaker 1: like add nuclear, who do you call? Is like who
Speaker 1: do you like, this.
Speaker 2: Makes the decision to actually start a new project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who makes the decision? And like who made Vogel?
Speaker 1: Like who do you call? Like talk about that?
Speaker 3: Okay, I keep feeling like I'm sidestepping by jumping outside
Speaker 3: of the US to look for overseas examples.
Speaker 2: Now that's really how contrast it works.
Speaker 3: So one of the most interesting projects recently was the
Speaker 3: UAE setting up its nuclear program. Because they it was
Speaker 3: Dula Rasa. They had a small number of people that
Speaker 3: had this vision of doing nuclear in their country. People
Speaker 3: now say, oh, of course, they just bought it. They
Speaker 3: just had a bunch of money and just took it. Well,
Speaker 3: hold up, they got a really good price and they
Speaker 3: executed the project really well. And big utilities, you know,
Speaker 3: with money somehow didn't do that in the US. So
Speaker 3: what is it the UAE did. They got an entire
Speaker 3: generation of people, a lot from the US who had
Speaker 3: built nuclear programs, not just reactors, but entire programs. Before
Speaker 3: I met a gentleman who lives was from Chicago who,
Speaker 3: as a young man my age makes me feel like
Speaker 3: a dumb baby in comparison at my age early thirties.
Speaker 3: He was helping direct nuclear construction for Commad, the utility.
Speaker 3: Comad built five large nuclear plants circling Chicago. Okay, and
Speaker 3: they built him in well between about a fifteen year period.
Speaker 1: Okay, no, but when when are we sorry.
Speaker 3: From late sixties to I guess early eighties Okay, right,
Speaker 3: I mean Jigger actually mentioned one of these five plants
Speaker 3: on his episode. I believe it was Byron Nuclear Plant, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that he grew up next to.
Speaker 3: I think yes. So what UAI did is they hired
Speaker 3: people who had been daily overseeing construction sites for the
Speaker 3: buying utility, and they said, come teach us how to
Speaker 3: do nuclear. We want to learn from you and then
Speaker 3: build nuclear ourselves. And then they worked with a country
Speaker 3: that definitely has a nuclear industry, the Koreans, who had
Speaker 3: an American design practically like American English manual for the reactor,
Speaker 3: almost exactly the same as what they purchased from American
Speaker 3: nuclear companies back in the eighties to build out their
Speaker 3: fleet of standardized American designed, maybe Korean upgraded reactors. And
Speaker 3: so you can find they're not dead yet. You can
Speaker 3: find the people who actually executed these construction programs in
Speaker 3: the set, and they would serve as extremely good advisors
Speaker 3: once you can recruit the young people motivated almost with
Speaker 3: a religious fervor to work in nuclear because they want
Speaker 3: to build nuclear.
Speaker 2: Wait, can I just ask so some of the examples
Speaker 2: of countries that seem to be doing this relatively well,
Speaker 2: you know, China, the UAE, Russia, even Korea to some extent,
Speaker 2: they have a history of like a very outsized role
Speaker 2: of government financing in this type of construction. So like,
Speaker 2: are they actually good analogies for the US where we
Speaker 2: still seem to be, you know, Jigger and his four
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars worth of loans at the DOE, notwithstanding
Speaker 2: where we still seem to be hesitant about publicly financing
Speaker 2: this type of project.
Speaker 3: So I feel that there's a bunch of idiological directions
Speaker 3: people are pulled into when they come to nuclear in
Speaker 3: terms of how to execute it. What I'm excited about
Speaker 3: is people from every possible ideological stripe, except for say
Speaker 3: Doomer degrowths, almost everyone else is coming to nuclear and
Speaker 3: seeing it in their own way. What's going to be
Speaker 3: the path for us to actually execute it? Look, I
Speaker 3: think people keep commenting on the excellent Doe Liftoff report,
Speaker 3: there's a reason why because it's actually really good and
Speaker 3: some of the ideas in that report do have a
Speaker 3: big role for government, and a number of the things
Speaker 3: in that report are actually happening. For example, it does
Speaker 3: seem likely that say, for example, one of our big
Speaker 3: traditional large designs is going to be purchased and installed
Speaker 3: in other countries. That should hopefully keep the supply chain
Speaker 3: alive and keep the credibility of that design alive. In
Speaker 3: some way, we have most of the ingredients we need
Speaker 3: for reignition. I think we're going to have a large
Speaker 3: traditional design be the winner. I think that that design
Speaker 3: is going to be the winner. After going, for example,
Speaker 3: at Vogel A one thousand, let's say eight one thousand,
Speaker 3: a big design, right, I think that that has shown
Speaker 3: that once it actually gets built, it's extraordinary. China is
Speaker 3: returning to using that design. When they could pick anything
Speaker 3: in the world to use their excellence in construction on,
Speaker 3: they keep electing to build that design in their own country.
Speaker 3: They don't owe us anything, they don't have to do it.
Speaker 3: They're choosing it because of its excellence. Once you know
Speaker 3: how to build it, and we will get some critical
Speaker 3: mass of government help of private initiative of talent coming
Speaker 3: in from all directions, of belief at the top of
Speaker 3: utilities that doing a big capital project right is still
Speaker 3: the way these big utilities outside of these electricity market
Speaker 3: regions increase their asset base, the continued outstanding performance of
Speaker 3: existing nuclear and finally a thing that could be its
Speaker 3: own three, four or five episode series, the lack of
Speaker 3: alternatives as the deep problems with anything but nuclear start
Speaker 3: to reveal themselves at nation.
Speaker 1: Scale, one small question and I just want to sort
Speaker 1: of go back to the who builds it? Say like, okay,
Speaker 1: it comes to there's the finance and so at least
Speaker 1: solve the finance component. A thousand people who listen to
Speaker 1: odd laws because of you. They're like, all right, I
Speaker 1: want to like devote my life to nuclear, get over
Speaker 1: all these issues, etcetera. Utility chiefs sort of like outside
Speaker 1: of the market areas like yeah, we want this. I
Speaker 1: still want to get just clear, like who builds it?
Speaker 1: Like is it? Are they the big engineering.
Speaker 3: Can I can give you some names. For example, Sergeant
Speaker 3: in Lundy is one of the elite. So that's because
Speaker 3: they have an office in Chicago and I've gone in
Speaker 3: to see them and they built the nuclear plants that
Speaker 3: power my home in Chicago. Right, So, Sergeant in Lundy
Speaker 3: is an example of a firm that will take a
Speaker 3: nuclear plant designed from say one of the nuclear designers.
Speaker 1: So they could take the eight one thousand.
Speaker 3: Power plants, and then they can oversee construcuction firms on
Speaker 3: site and make sure it's built to the specification that
Speaker 3: they're specialist engineers and architects design, like the building that
Speaker 3: goes around the shiny metal bits. Yeah, say so, that's
Speaker 3: an example of a firm involved in this. Bechtel is
Speaker 3: an example of a firm that's extremely famous. Is the
Speaker 3: one you probably should have called in the beginning, but
Speaker 3: they were too expensive, so you call them in the
Speaker 3: end after the bankruptcies. Right. So Bechtel is going to
Speaker 3: emerge from Bogel in a pretty strong position to say
Speaker 3: we know how to build AP one thousands. For example.
Speaker 3: They may say we can build anything. You can come
Speaker 3: to us with anything, but if you put together a
Speaker 3: winning design a short list of people who can demonstrate
Speaker 3: that they know how to build it, there's an active
Speaker 3: supply chain. I think people are going to find that
Speaker 3: the shrinking down to get to SMR it may be
Speaker 3: that once you've actually done the detailed costing of these SMRs,
Speaker 3: it will find that the shrinking down was not worth
Speaker 3: the loss and power in terms of the saved project effort.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense now?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are going to be some goods
Speaker 3: around the world that will just have to pay the
Speaker 3: premium for these small reactors. But China has been able
Speaker 3: to build three hundred megawa or one hundred megawat reactors
Speaker 3: for a long time. They're trying again at making a
Speaker 3: one hundred megawat design that they're calling an SMR, but
Speaker 3: they're not. They don't seem to be planning many of
Speaker 3: these when they could again build anything. When China, who
Speaker 3: can build anything, chooses to build, they seem to be
Speaker 3: building the EIGHTP one thousand. I think we have to
Speaker 3: look at that and say there might be a reason
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: So I have just one more question, sort of summing
Speaker 2: all of this up. You know, I came into the
Speaker 2: conversation thinking, like, yes, yes, attitudes towards nuclear are changing,
Speaker 2: and I kind of thought a big portion of that
Speaker 2: was on the technology side. So all these cool new things,
Speaker 2: maybe some stuff around the edges with like governments support
Speaker 2: the Doe loans program and things like that. Maybe it
Speaker 2: makes financing these things slightly more easier. But technology seem
Speaker 2: to be the big factor to me. But you seem
Speaker 2: to be suggesting that actually we've had the most efficient
Speaker 2: technology for some time. It's just been ignored, but now
Speaker 2: people are sort of reverting back to it and looking
Speaker 2: at it with fresh eyes.
Speaker 3: I'll admit I am working on a book on this,
Speaker 3: But as far as I can tell, at some point
Speaker 3: humans were going to discover how to split the atom,
Speaker 3: at the point that we were modern enough to be human,
Speaker 3: at some point we were going to split the atom.
Speaker 3: And as far as we can tell so far, that's
Speaker 3: about as advanced as energy may get quite some time.
Speaker 3: Even fusion is just a small difference. It's kind of
Speaker 3: the same levels of energy, the same amount of fuel.
Speaker 3: It's pretty much the same, just immensely difficult, right, So
Speaker 3: at some point we're going to discover the ultimate energy.
Speaker 3: It happened to come in living memory. It gets led
Speaker 3: to an arms race that forever ended the idea that
Speaker 3: there was such a thing as absolute safety for anyone
Speaker 3: on Earth. So we had a long, multi decade shared
Speaker 3: vision of the apocalypse that now with the passage of
Speaker 3: that generation and the one after it, it's the vision
Speaker 3: of the apocalypse is breaking down. Some people don't think
Speaker 3: the world's going to really end. Some people think it's
Speaker 3: going to end in ten years from climate change. Like
Speaker 3: the vision of how we die spreads from bioterror to
Speaker 3: climate changed, it shares a crowded arena now this nuclear
Speaker 3: holocaust as that fear declines and we become nuclear natives,
Speaker 3: true nuclear natives as a specie for the first generation
Speaker 3: or two now making decisions now involved in finance is
Speaker 3: the first native nuclear generation. Where we've always lived under
Speaker 3: the shadow of ICBMs. It wasn't something we had to
Speaker 3: adjust to. It was the constant of our lives, and
Speaker 3: that honestly, the danger wasn't reduced at the end of
Speaker 3: the Cold War. I think that's now becoming more obvious,
Speaker 3: but it's not leading to a resurgence in nuclear fear.
Speaker 3: That was the fear that animated anti nuclear energy, anti
Speaker 3: nuclear waste. There's no real engineering argument for why nuclear
Speaker 3: energy is dangerous or nuclear waste is dangerous. That's that
Speaker 3: has always been nonsense. Chernobyl was operated as a power
Speaker 3: plant for fourteen years after one of the reactors blew up.
Speaker 3: It was only shut down so they could use the
Speaker 3: money given to them by the Germans to start up
Speaker 3: another reactor. I mean it's a nature preserve and yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: My point is that's the worst reactor disaster ever and
Speaker 3: it was. It's a it's a crowded to her to
Speaker 3: a site when the nation isn't at war. This is
Speaker 3: insane that this awful tragedy should become that. My point
Speaker 3: here is, though nuclear energy is coming back because there's
Speaker 3: a secular decline in nuclear apocalypse fears, and as that
Speaker 3: gathers momentum and people find ways to express it through
Speaker 3: oh nerding out about the technology or getting excited about
Speaker 3: the carbon benefits or whatever, it's because we're finally emerging
Speaker 3: as the first native nuclear nuclear global society.
Speaker 1: That's why Mark Nelson of Radiant Energy so great to
Speaker 1: have you on odline.
Speaker 3: Thanks, I'll give you back.
Speaker 1: Tracy. That was so inspiring. I hope there's like a
Speaker 1: thousand people who listen to that episode and are like Mark,
Speaker 1: and maybe you know that now they go out evangelizing.
Speaker 2: And you've been converted.
Speaker 1: Well that was so stirring, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: I kind of want I want a T shirt that
Speaker 2: says molten salt reactors are so hot right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does that exist?
Speaker 2: No, but I'm gonna I'm gonna make one. Yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 2: I did think the point about the idea that we're
Speaker 2: kind of the first generation has grown up with nuclear
Speaker 2: and it's sort of normalized, and maybe some of the
Speaker 2: fears of the Cold War, you know, nuclear missile attacks
Speaker 2: and stuff, are fading into the background. I thought that
Speaker 2: was interesting. But the thing I would add on to
Speaker 2: it is it feels like anything becomes possible, especially in America,
Speaker 2: once it's couched in geostrategic or geopolitical interest. And so
Speaker 2: I remember this kind of came up with Jick Orshaw
Speaker 2: as well, where he was talking about, well, you don't
Speaker 2: want Russian nuclear technology to proliferate in all these other
Speaker 2: countries and they become reliant on Russians for their cheap
Speaker 2: energy supply. We want to export US technology so we
Speaker 2: can have lots of you know, friends and allies. It
Speaker 2: feels like that's also an important component of this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I thought it was really funny and interesting. This
Speaker 1: idea that like advanced is kind of a red herring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: read really great deal. A liftoff report is called the
Speaker 1: Pathway to Advanced Nuclear Commercial lift Off. But to Mark's
Speaker 1: point that like if you look at, you know, a
Speaker 1: country like China, which you know, seems pretty clearly they
Speaker 1: have construction and manufacturing and assembly prowess in all things
Speaker 1: these days, the fact that like, all right, here's a
Speaker 1: country that like is continuing to expand and install more
Speaker 1: nuclear and they're just going with this sort of like
Speaker 1: the old traditional like the seven thirty seven version of
Speaker 1: a plant is really striking, and so maybe it's really
Speaker 1: like these it's more about the cultural things and financing,
Speaker 1: et cetera, rather than like some magic bullet to come
Speaker 1: up with a new way of designing them.
Speaker 2: Right, the basic boring nuclear plant for the win. Although
Speaker 2: I do still have questions about the importance of technology
Speaker 2: and alleviate in alleviating some of those old school concerns
Speaker 2: around things like waste disposal, decommissioning power plants, we didn't
Speaker 2: really get into that. Yeah, I guess we're going to
Speaker 2: have to do like four other episodes on each of
Speaker 2: these topics.
Speaker 1: And the the the Real Story of Chernobyl. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should probably do that one too. Find the historian.
Speaker 2: Oh dear, okay, yes, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 1: Follow our guest Mark Nelson, he's at Energy Bamps. Follow
Speaker 1: our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman and Dashel Bennett
Speaker 1: at Dashbot. And thank you to our producer Moses Ondam.
Speaker 1: For more odd Lots content, go to bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash odd Lots, where we have transcripts, a blog, and
Speaker 1: a newsletter. And if you want to chat with fellow
Speaker 1: odd Lots listeners twenty four to seven, go to discord
Speaker 1: dot gg slash odd Lots. We have an energy room
Speaker 1: in there, so I'm sure people will be talking about
Speaker 1: this episode. Maybe we'll get Mark in there to do
Speaker 1: a Q and A or follow up if he's down
Speaker 1: to it. Really fun place to hang out, go check
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be fun. And if you enjoy odd Lots,
Speaker 2: if you want us to do a episode on the
Speaker 2: revisionist history of Chernobyl, then please leave us a positive
Speaker 2: review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening,