Speaker unverified: prediction

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…d have their nuclear-powered car that they used to drive to their nuclear-powered office and everything. Is that true? How good or bad is the current regulatory environment? How much is that changing? Yeah, yeah. I think it's an overestimated headwind, certainly today. I think if you go back five years ago, 10 years ago for sure, I mean they hadn't licensed anything in decades. There had been nothing new, but I can't even tell you how much has changed in the last few years. It's kind of remarkable. And it's been across both the Biden and the Trump administration, which is amazing to see. I mean the legislation around nuclear passes 95 to 5 type of thing. It's really, really strong bipartisan. What was interesting to see is it started with Biden, a bunch of legislation related to modernizing and reforming the NRC. The biggest thing they did was they changed the mandate of the NRC and they said, “You are no longer focused just on safety.” Because what's the safest number of nuclear reactors to license? Zero. So they expanded that, “You must consider the full environment, the full civilization…” that's great. And then just change things around like the advanced reactor pathway, removing some of the barriers. And then it's continued on with Trump and in fact, he's sort of added even some more teeth and specificity. So right now they've changed it to, you have 18 months to get your answer from the NRC. License or no license. Do you pass or not? And what happens if they exceed the 18-month window? Probably it's in the details somewhere. But the point is that these have been declared that timeliness is important. There's also been some leadership change, which is just more reform-oriented, which is great, and there's just a huge microscope on it. Everyone's watching. Everyone knows now who's submitting their paperwork and what's going to come out the other side. Another thing that happened with some of these Trump executive orders is the Department of Energy pathways have been also unopened and unblocked for test reactors. And so actually Antares is part of this new test reactor program, which allows the DOE, alongside usually Idaho National Lab, to be sort of your regulator as you’re testing your first reactors so that you don't have to spend all this time upfront with the NRC for something that you're just still innovating on and iterating on. That's a really nice, I think, first step before you go through the NRC. Wait, so let me make sure I'm getting this right. There is now a Trump-era change where we essentially, for the first time ever, have a second nuclear regulator where you can go the NRC path, but also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start by working with the DOE and get up and running. Yeah, that's essentially right. How big is the sandbox? gulator where you can go the NRC path, but also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start by working with the DOE and get up and running. Yeah, that's essentially right. How big is the sandbox? I mean, the DOE has always been a path. There actually technically has always been a path within the military. They license their own reactors with submarines, so it's always kind of been there, but hard to navigate, not well staffed, not well known about. And now it's kind of like everyone's watching, let's go DOE, let's go INL, Idaho National Lab, and let's make these things happen. So there's just been a lot of stated like, “You must enable this thing” and now here's some… It's actually a $0 program, but it gives you unlimited access to staff and all these other things. And the point is everyone's watching to see how fast you can get one of these reactors through safely. So are you guys going the DOE route first? Yep, we are. And the DOD route. I mean to say the Army is now also able to license its own reactors alongside the Navy, which already does. So that will absolutely be our first step. The NRC really only regulates civilian electricity. So civilian power, so we actually don't need to even go there yet. I see. So you could be selling a lot of reactors and never go through the NRC. We'll basically do our test reactors with the DOE, alongside the DOD who has the jurisdiction to regulate, which is great. I didn't know that. So this is the rare bipartisan issue. It's a true… Kind of a gem. I can paint three clean energy futures. One is the solar and regular renewables view. Casey Handmer, who was just on this podcast. And solar will get very cheap. Batteries will get cheap enough such that you can go all in on solar and batteries, maybe some other renewables in the mix, but there you go. That's it. Nothing will be able to cost-compete with that. That's one vision. Another is that we will rediscover nuclear fission and we will figure out the spent fuel and everything like that, and we'll just do what we used to do, which is build nuclear power plants at larger scale and that delivers us enough clean energy. A third view is that fusion will work and we'll actually have nuclear fusion at a useful meaningful scale of the grid. Between those scenarios, how would you handicap them? I think it's… I'm going to leave fusion out because I’m not enough of an expert to know when and how that will happen. I would love for that to happen. How exciting, right? Okay. Between the first two, we do a lot of market manipulation of our energy markets and there's a little bit of flavor of the administration that does happen, especially between renewables and oil and gas. Nuclear has been a little bit actually immune to that. But isn’t diversity of energy sources valuable because the solar maximalist would say, “No, it's fine. Solar will just take everything.” And wouldn't the nuclear maximalist say “We figure out how to at scale produce nuclear power plants and why do you need that gas? Why do you need anything else?” ine. Solar will just take everything.” And wouldn't the nuclear maximalist say “We figure out how to at scale produce nuclear power plants and why do you need that gas? Why do you need anything else?” It's a good push if you are able to own through and through your whole supply chain. You make the panels, you mine and process the minerals, which we have zero interest in doing as Americans. All that dirty work is done in China and elsewhere. If you really did all that yourself, then I could say, “Okay, you own it. You can do it right now.” At least you have, hey, if you're natural gas pipelines get shut down. Actually, it's not a problem for us. We're not even an importer anymore. We're actually good. This is actually the reason that… Do you know what percentage of France's electricity is from nuclear? It's declining, right? But historically it's been around 70%. Yeah. Do you know the US? US from nuclear? Oh, it's small. It's five, 10%. It's actually more. Really? Eighteen. And everyone thinks it's below five, 10%. When I got into this, I thought it was like 2%. But anyway, my point is that France made a very, very deliberate decision to actually go to 70%, if not more at the time in the seventies because they had no carbon resources. So they didn't have the ability to say, “Oh, we'll just dig in our backyard and we'll be fine.” And actually uranium, while it does require digging out of the ground or whatever, is so much easier to store. It's a million times as dense as coal. So it's a lot easier to work with than… The reason people get uptight about oil and gas supply is that it's not easy to store, and if it's not easier for you to come by, you better well have good geopolitical relationships. Yes. Yes. So anyway, this world and where it's headed, I think it's still going to involve multiple sources. Julia's work involves managing a lot of risk: unsolved physics, complex engineering, and a lot of regulatory scrutiny. Managing risk for an internet retailer shouldn't be that complex, but sometimes it can feel like it. Internet fraudsters now operate on industrial scales. They attack strategically when you're sleeping and they use AI to sharpen their attacks now. Stripe’s defense against fraud comes from its scale. When a payment happens on your site, there's a 92% chance we've seen that exact card before, so it's easier for us to spot misuse. 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