22 - Joe Miller: BWXT's Leading Role in the Nuclear Industry

[Music] Welcome to Advanced Nuclear, the official podcast of UCAN Power. Relating experts, innovators and policymakers explore the latest developments shaping the future of nuclear energy. Welcome to the Advanced Nuclear Podcast. I'm your host Jim Howe for UCAN Power. Thank you for listening. You only need to spend a few days sailing across the Atlantic or the Pacific to realize the enormity of our world's oceans. It takes a huge amount of energy to propel a cargo ship, a research vessel, or a warship across these expansive bodies of water. And in the case of America's Navy, this tyranny of distance presents a huge challenge requiring regular resupply for our combatant ships, which is often done at sea. But there's a better way, and that is nuclear propulsion. In the 1950s, the US Navy developed the first nuclear-powered submarine, with construction of the USS Nautilus started in 1952 in the submarine underway on nuclear power in 1955. This represented a revolution in the naval war fighting capability. Over the ensuing 70 years, the US Navy has transitioned its submarines and aircraft carriers and a handful of surface combatants to nuclear power, which has become a massive force multiplier for the US military. But it takes a great industry to manufacture the intricate and highly reliable reactors used in the nuclear navy, and today we're talking to a leader in that field. BWX Technologies, or BWXT, has roots going back to 1856, and has been serving the Navy since the 1950s for nuclear power. Today, the company is responsible for manufacturing all of the reactors for our submarines and aircraft carriers. And BWXT does so much more, as we'll soon learn with work in nuclear fuel, uranium enrichment, microreactors, small modular reactors, space nuclear technologies, among other things. It's a dynamic, exciting, and innovative company with a pivotal role in America's nuclear industry. Today, we're talking with Joe Miller, who's the president of BWXT government operations. Joe oversees a huge swath of the company's activities and has a unique backstory. He started out in the US Navy and served as a machinist made aboard the USS Norfolk, Los Angeles class, Fast Attack submarine, before transitioning to shipyard work and support of the nuclear navy as a test engineer. He joined BWXT in 2011, and has risen rapidly through the ranks. Most recently is the president of the Advanced Technology Group, before his promotion to his current position. Joe holds a master's degree in radiation health physics from Oregon State University, and is very active in the community serving on the Central Virginia Community College Educational Foundation Board, the Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization Board, and the Oregon State University Nuclear Science and Engineering Advisory Board. So, Joe, thank you for joining us on this edition of the Advanced Nuclear Podcast. We're grateful you could join our show to talk about the latest developments at BWXT. Thank you, Jim. Really happy to be here, and I love the intro, especially the intro talking about the USS Autolus and the rise of nuclear power, both for the US Navy and the commercial industry here in the United States. So, really looking forward to the conversation. Well, you're talking to a former coastie, and we were always jealous of the Navy with its nuclear program, because we spent a lot of money on diesel fuel, and would have loved to have a nuclear capability. So, thanks for your service there. So, speaking of which, how did you come to get to work at BWXT, and eventually work your way up to head the government operation segment? It really started with my enlistment in the Navy in 1998. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do in my career, wasn't sure where I wanted to take my high school education, and did I want to go to college? Did I want to just be in the Navy and serve for 20 years and become a veteran and retire from the US Navy? I just wasn't sure. So, I took the leap, and I joined the Navy, went to boot camp in Great Lakes Illinois in February. The coldest I've ever been in my entire life. And immediately after boot camp went to Orlando, Florida for the summertime. So, the hottest I've ever been in my entire life. And the part that I thought was really interesting as I look back on my career is you go through, you're in your late teens, you are really interested in what the future may bring. And you go through boot camp, you go through nuclear power school, and you start to understand who you are as a person, how important you want to take, how important you want your career to be in your future. And it really is a formative time. And it was formative for me. And as I go through power school, and I was on board the USS Norfolk, and went underway, went in on a med run, and started to understand the power of nuclear, started to understand the importance of being part of a mission. And I really formed how I wanted to live the rest of my life and the rest of my career. So, I got out of the Navy with a nuclear engineering degree. So, I spent a lot of time on my, after hours, after work, studying, and getting more acclimated to engineering principles, and was able to earn my degree as soon as I got out of the Navy. And so, I took a job working at the shipyard. I started to learn more about the fundamentals of submarine construction and manufacturing and testing. I started to enjoy how that entire large project could come to life, and could represent an important mission, like deploying new nuclear submarines. From there, I decided to get back into some technology and understand how technology manufacturing processes brought new products to the market. So, I left the shipyard, got into semiconductor manufacturing, worked in that industry for about six years, and I really enjoyed understanding how technology and manufacturing and new processes and new architecture in the design of semiconductors all came together. So, that helped me understand more about the aspects of high throughput manufacturing and the fundamentals there. And as I was thinking about what I wanted to do beyond semiconductor manufacturing, I decided to get back into nuclear and went back to school, was able to earn my master's degree in radiation health physics, and I got back into nuclear through B&W now, BWXT. And I started off as a test engineer, like you mentioned in your intro, and I was testing small modular reactors, and as that program was coming closer to the marketplace and commercialization, and the economics of the time in the power industry, we decided to put that on hold and shelve the technology and start focusing on new ways to manufacture nuclear, new ways that we could implement things like additive manufacturing and rapid design and using machine learning and AI for not only the manufacturing process, but the interplay between design and manufacturing. And that's why we started advanced technologies in 2018. And from there we were able to build up a good product portfolio and things like project pay lay, some of the space reactors, both thermal propulsion and nuclear power for space applications. And we built this organization up with those same principles, understanding how you can design for manufacturing, how manufacturing informs design, and you can go through that entire product development sequence to deliver new prototypes and eventually new product lines for the industry, for the company, and for the country. Well, I mean, that's a great backstory, and it's kind of the American success story. But tell us a little bit about BWXT. I mean, it's a company that everyone has heard about, but I'm not sure they know a lot about the breadth of what the company does. But first, just how big is the company? Where's the headquarters? How large is your workforce? That sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. So BWXT is headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia. The workforce is right around 10,000 employees. Our revenue is close to $3 billion a year, an annual revenue. And we're a manufacturing company. And the staff that I love the most are the millions of square feet of manufacturing facilities that we have throughout North America. And we have been in North America since the mid 1800s, and we've been manufacturing products for the power generation industry, starting with steam generators, and then making our way into nuclear in the 1950s. So having the floor space and the ingenuity and the employees, and really this network of understanding how to deliver our products and nuclear products over the course of our history has really created a sense of culture that is all about delivery of high consequence components like nuclear demands. It's really remarkable if you think about how manufacturing takes raw materials that are dug out of the ground and turns them into things like, oh, you know, a nuclear reactor, which is one of the most complex machines on earth. It's really remarkable what we as humans have figured out how to do and to see a company that's so invested in manufacturing in all the various different forms is really impressive. But you're the government operations side of the big of XT. Tell us the general areas that you oversee within the company. Yeah, absolutely. So the company is two segments. One is commercial operations, which is headquartered out of Cambridge, Ontario, and I run government operations, which is also headquartered out of Lynchburg, Virginia, much like BWXC. And so inside of government operations, we have three major segments. One is advanced technologies, which I just went through that product portfolio and talked about that business line. We also have nuclear operations group, which is by far the largest segment inside of BWXC. And the major focus there is the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. So in that segment, we have manufacturing facilities and we deliver nuclear reactors, steam components, and a variety of other components focused on. everything nuclear for US submarines, both fast attack and ballistic missile, as well as aircraft carrier program. Then the third is technical services group where we participate in joint ventures to manage and operate nuclear facilities for the Department of Energy, and both NSA and NE, and then we also participate in joint ventures for environmental cleanup and remediation for DOE. So it's probably sensitive information I'm about to ask, so I know you won't divulge anything you're not supposed to, but as far as the naval reactors manufacturing, where is it done, and I mean, is it done, I'm imagining here in the United States, but I'm sure you've got various factories throughout the country. And what's the basic throughput? Is it, you know, 10 years, is it 100 years, at one year, I would imagine it's a pretty low number, because we're not building on many subs. Yeah, so the manufacturing facilities that we have in Tennessee, in Virginia, in Indiana, and Ohio, create all the products that go into the nuclear fleet. And so we produce two to three reactors a year, and over the course of our history, including some commercial reactors, we've delivered over 400 nuclear reactors. 400 reactors, okay, well that's pretty impressive. So you guys actually know what you're doing when it comes to building reactors, which I think is really important. I'm going to ask about that later on, because we've got a whole lot of startups up there that are kind of learning how to build reactors for the first time. And I know there's a pretty big challenge there. Now, you also manufacture the fuel for the naval reactors, because they work basically on highly enriched uranium. Is that the case? Yeah, we do. We participate in the fuel supply for the naval reactors program, and those facilities are within the entire footprint that we have in the United States. So the way we got to know you as a person is when you've been at many conferences talking about B2BXT's involvement in Project Palae, which you can power, I think is one of the great success stories of advanced reactor industry over the last decade or so. So for our audience, you can just kind of give a general overview of what is Project Palae, BWXT's role in it, and kind of the basic reactor characteristics of the reactor you're developing. Yeah, absolutely. So the program started in 2020. It started with a two-year design competition with BWXT and two other competitors that were going off to design to the requirements that the Strategic Capabilities Office brought into the program. So those requirements were to use Trisofuel, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a little bit, and to deliver one to five megawatts of electrical energy to put all of the components inside of ISO-qualified shipping containers or context boxes, as they're commonly referred to, and be able to site that reactor and operate it within a couple of days and do the same thing and shutting the reactor down and picking the reactor and all the other components up and transporting them offsite within a week. So those are pretty stringent design requirements. So they're very unique to Project Palae, and it goes back to your point, being able to use a program like Palae as the Pathfinder for new nuclear required it to have audacious goals and it required it to be very tactical because it will be a military machine. And so understanding those design parameters or design inputs around the normal design parameters that we have as nuclear engineers was a significant technical feat. And the institutional knowledge that's been built up throughout that entire program has allowed us to look at new and different ways to use nuclear systems because they have to be in relatively very small footprints and also they have to have the lowest mass possible for ease of transportability. - And how big is this reactor? It's not, you can't have a whole lot of output, right? - So it's over a megawatt, and it's over a megawatt for three years without refueling and that's the important part of Palae. It's really the important part of nuclear reactors. You can generate that much thermal energy, transfer that thermal energy to electrical energy for long durations without refueling. And so that's the significance, the tactical significance of Palae is you can have power on demand for years without having a long logistics supply chain and you don't have to, is the Department of Defense, or Department of War season now is, they see the capability to generate electricity without having the extreme vulnerabilities of diesel fuel staging that fuel, transporting that fuel, having people protect that entire fuel logistics chain and Palae is revolution in that way, but also you generate a tremendous amount of electricity and a small footprint, which means the emerging power hungry systems for tactical capabilities for the US government can now be fed with a system like Palae. - It's very impressive. And the program, from my understanding, is done really well and staying unscheduled. What's the current status is to win when the next big milestones will be reached for Palae? - Yeah, it's a good point. And we started in 2020 with a clean sheet of design and a clean sheet design. And we've gone all the way through the design iteration. We've gone through the regulatory process. We are building that reactor now. And we are building the reactor in Lynchburg. Now, BWXT is the prime. We have Rolls Royce Liberty Works in Indianapolis, building some heat exchange modules in the power conversion system, something that they have extreme expertise in. And then we have North of Grumman and Charlottesville, Virginia, and a few other sites within the North of Grumman corporation creating the control system, something that's very familiar to them in their work with the nuclear navy. So you bring these three companies together with BWXT as a prime, we will deliver. And we're feeling very confident because we're well beyond the design review period, we're into the supply chain. We have received thousands of components we're assembling the core. There's just a ton of activity to deliver this reactor in the next couple of years. And so the idea is to start up and operate the reactor in the next couple of years and prove that this technology, not just the reactor, but the reactor, the power conversion system, everything that goes into deploying an entire system will happen here in the next couple of years and be demonstrated at the Idaho National Lab. So strategic capabilities office, the department of energy, the Idaho National Lab, BWXT and all of our partners. We've come together as a tremendous team that is working very well and collaboratively together to make this reality. - Now it's very impressive to watch from the sidelines and we can only hope that all the other advanced reactor projects in America kind of follow a similar path. I know it's always challenging to bring a new technology to market. So a great job on that. But you've also looked to potentially commercialize your upscale and commercialize this. I think it's called the banner. And can you talk about that project or what your thoughts are? Is that going forward? Is that just in the evaluated decision phase or what's the story there? - Yeah, absolutely. So in 2022, we were awarded an advanced reactor demonstration program contract through the department of energy's program. And the focus of banner is to scale up the advanced microreactor to scale up, Paley, use a lot of the attributes and institutional knowledge that we have inside of our company and manufacturing, try so fuel and building reactors. And then the advanced design capabilities that we have to bring that to market. Now, banner is interesting because that was a product poll from the oil and gas industry. They were very interested in using microreactors to help with the extraction of oil and gas. So them and mining companies and other extractive industries were really the first movers on this. So they were interested in the amount of power output, both from electrical and thermal power output of a nuclear reactor to help with their large capital projects, especially in remote mining locations where power is either very expensive or unreliable or was going to become more unreliable or more expensive over time. So they were the first mover there. And that gave us a really good mindset around what should the cost of delivery, what should the cost of operation of a microreactor be to accommodate an industrial user and user. And so we use that knowledge and we use those conversations to create our proposal for the ARDP. And we got a very positive response that we didn't award it. But we got the most positive remarks when we were awarded that contract because we were told that BWXC was the only company that was hyper focused on cost. And we were hyper focused on cost of the manufacturing process, fuel delivery, and everything that goes into operating those systems. And it just goes back to our knowledge base and how we've grown over the years as a company and focusing on not just the products, but also deployment and what the customer use cases are breaching on those products. Yeah, look, if you don't have a good business case, you could have the best technology in the world and you're never going to bring it to market or you will maybe for a short time, but not for long. So that's, it's good to hear that you've got that focus on the cost, the element of it. And that makes a lot of sense. So we've mentioned a couple times triso, tristarchtural isotropic fuel. And we know that BWXC is kind of one of the world leaders in manufacturing. Could you just talk a little bit about this fuel, what it is? know, what's the status here manufacturing? Because there's some big news there too. So, after you. Absolutely. So, there, the trisofuel something we've been manufacturing for several decades. And we started as a scale-up partner for the national laboratories. So, the national labs wanted to qualify trisofuel as part of the advanced gas reactor campaign. So, it was an effort with Oak Ridge and Idaho National Lab and BWXD to take trisofuel, which has been, which was manufactured in the laboratories and be able to put enough equipment in place to be on a manufacturer. Create the test samples, get those test samples in the advanced test reactor. At the Idaho National Lab, go through a very rigorous campaign of irradiation and post- irradiation examination and qualify the fuel. And so, on the tail end of that qualification program, that's when Project Pele was started up. So, not only were they choosing a qualified fuel, they were also choosing trisofuel, which is encapsulated at the kernel level. So, think of the tip of a ballpoint pen, a very small fuel particle that's created with a fuel kernel and nuclear, excuse me, uranium kernel that has the three layers of encapsulation around it. So, you can eliminate the need for large containment or any containment building. You can reduce the minus side prep and then nuclear reactors could be used for tactical purposes for the U.S. government. So, trisof is at the center point, at the nucleus of that entire technology. And we've been manufacturing in its current form. And then we also have several development activities underway to optimize trisofuel as relevant to some of the new designs that are coming out, both from VWXC and some other nuclear industry participants in high-temperature gas reactors and other types of reactors like the Kairos reactor. Right. My understanding is that because of the encapsulation with the layers of coating around the uranium pellet, it can withstand extreme temperatures in a well over a thousand C, which is really amazing. Is that the case? Absolutely. And you get these large margins between the operating temperature of the reactor and the fuel qualification margin. So, that allows us to operate these reactors and know that they'll be safe. And then also, it gives you a lot more design flexibility in what the geometries of the reactor need to be. So, your partnership with Kairos, they are a molten salt reactor and they're going to be using a fuel form that involves trisofuel. But you've now partnered with them. Is that the situation? We do. So, Kairos has made significant investment in manufacturing the final fuel form that goes in their reactor. So, these pebbles that go inside of their salt. So, what Kairos has done in developing the pebbles, what VWXT has done in developing and producing trisofuel, you combine those two development efforts and then you open up a very broad spectrum of a business case for trisofuel moving forward or into the future. So, that partnership has been really good because we're able to share the institutional knowledge and manufacturing processes and we are able to share things like timelines and business cases and ways in which we want to address the marketplace. So, it's beneficial to all, not just VWXT and Kairos, but it's beneficial to every triso user because we're going to be able to scale up even faster and we'll be able to produce this high quality fuel at a rate that the industry needs. Yeah, and the industry is going to really be reliant on you guys for that. I mean, I can't count on both hands. How many advanced reactor companies have chosen trisofuel as their fuel form? So, you know, getting your capabilities and we've got another plant that you're considering building out Wyoming, but getting those production capabilities expanded as the market dictates. So, good luck with all that. Okay, so also, there's a program down an Oak Ridge that you're working on with the National Lab. It's called Duce. It's an advanced uranium enrichment technology and you're the prime vendor now for building out a demonstration, you know, hall of cascade of these enrichment centrifuges, which, you know, a lot of people don't really know much about this program. It's all for national security. Can you talk a little bit about the Duce program? It's a really exciting program. Yeah, absolutely. So, the Duce program is run by DOE and NSA, the technology originated out of Oak Ridge National Lab. They are the design authority for this technology. Now, the defense fuels program for us is significant because it is a very mission-driven program that allows us to go through the development cycle, finalize the development cycle, and then go to a point where in the next phase, we can mass produce centrifuges so we can participate with the DOE to replenish the stockpile. So, it's a program that is a long time coming. There's been a lot of development and investment in the technology and being able to participate alongside Oak Ridge National Lab for DOE and NSA is a testament to the confidence that we have and being able to scale it up. But also, the confidence that the U.S. government has that BWXT can deliver. Yeah, that's a really important point in that. We now in the Western world have such a dearth of enrichment capacity. The government is spending a lot of money in the commercial side. So, I don't know if this technology eventually could also be commercialized. I'm not going to ask you to speculate on that. You can if you want. But just getting any technology out there that can do the mission for the national security side of the house is really, really important. Totally agree. And our focus is the national security side of the house. So, in the defense fuels program, we're focused on the mission at hand. And there are other companies out there that are scaling up for commercial purposes. But having everything sourced and originated in the United States, focusing once again on what the NSA mission is, is our primary focus at this point. So, the other thing that you use to have a closer ownership of within BWXT is my very favorite. Anyone who listens to this podcast knows which is space, nuclear power, and propulsion. And you guys were neck deep in all the NASA and DOD programs there. Unfortunately, a lot of those programs are kind of put on hold, like Draco. But can you talk a little bit about your capabilities to bring the potential for nuclear propulsion to market? Absolutely. And over the course of the history of BWXT, we have participated in every space nuclear program that has occurred. And we've learned a lot. And we've learned a lot in the ways in which you need to manufacture fuels for extreme temperatures, especially for nuclear thermal propulsion. The environment's much different inside of the reactor for an NTP type core. The reactor operates at over 3,000 degrees Celsius. And so being able to manufacture the fuel, the encapsulation for the fuel, the insulators, the core geometry, all of that has been tested by the US government, has been tested by industry participants, including BWXT over the past several decades. And a lot of that's culminating with how can you manufacture things differently? And things like that we've employed additive manufacturing, another advanced manufacturing techniques, not only for the fuel and the reactors, but also the heat transfer systems and radiators and things of that nature. So there's always going to be space nuclear and the demand signal kind of waxes and wanes over time. But it is an important technology that will be utilized in space in the near future. It's all about, is it going to be propulsion plus power? Will it be one of the other? But there's always some interest there. There's always technology development. And although we're in a state where we see this build up in fission surface power, especially out of NASA, we continue our development inside of BWXT because we want to be ready to launch that development into programs as those programs become more real. So I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction. And that is, we will do this as a country probably within the next decade. It's been a long time overdue. It's been since the 1950s, 1955. We started Project Rover. So we've been working on nuclear thermal propulsion for a long, long time. I think technologically we're there. We can get this done. Is that your assessment as well? I agree 100% Jim. And I agree on that timeline as well. Because we know the the space domain is becoming more and more populated with assets. We know those assets need power. We know our reach is becoming further and further away from Earth. And nuclear power provides such an extreme capability in our nuclear. We create such an extreme capability for both power and propulsion. It will happen. Well, you've also recently established down in Lynchburg the innovation campus. Could you talk about what that's all about and what sort of innovations you're looking to develop? From the day that we started Advanced Technologies in 2018, the Innovation Campus was on the forefront of my mind. And to me, it was the culmination of a lot of effort project wins the buildup of very talented staff in Advanced Technologies. And as we continue to grow from 20 people to 40 people, to over 400 people, and our projects continued to grow in the type of technology that we were working on, expanded for from additive manufacturing to machine learning on weld process and manufacturing processes and AI enabled design, we needed more and more space. So we were able to acquire a building, go through a renovation of that building, add significant floor space inside of that building and create what I think is the hallmark of new nuclear inside of the country. So we have the staff and all of our employees and all the design engineers alongside of manufacturing engineers, we have an industrial footprint where we're building project pay lay, where we are building a variety of components for space reactors, both power and propulsion. And then we have maker spaces that are included there as well. So as you walk into that building, you see this buzz of energy and innovation in nuclear design and how nuclear design and manufacturing come together day in and day out. And so we're able to rapidly go through the development process and we're able to rapidly build our prototypes and we're looking forward to start deploy those prototypes and low rate initial production out of the innovation campus. - So you mentioned using artificial intelligence tools. We had Chris Ritter from the Idaho National Lab on our podcast recently and he was just, it was mind blowing the potential for using some of these tools to really kind of cut down on your licensing time and speed up your design time. What are your thoughts on using artificial intelligence tools in the design process? - It's been a hallmark of how advanced technologies has been able to grow as fast as we have. And Chris Ritter is an excellent example of that. I met him within his first couple of days of working at Idaho National Lab and we talked about my aspirations in using AI and able design processes and then that's the front end and then you get through the prototyping process and then you have instrumentation and information coming out of the field which goes back into the AI engine which allows you to rapidly mature each one of those designs. And so he and I see it the same way his expertise and the way that he's applying his expertise at Idaho National Lab is an attribute for the entire country. And we're doing something very similar with the employees that we have in advanced technologies. We have dozens of data scientists that are focused on this exact thing, not just from the design but also from the manufacturing processes that we're employing. So all of that is crucial for us to create these new designs because it takes a lot of intellectual horsepower in the engineering staff and it takes a lot of horsepower in your computational capabilities and bringing those two things together is a reason why we've been able to advance as quickly as we have in the nuclear industry. Yeah, we were very impressed with what Chris told us and I'm glad to see that BWXT has embraced these sorts of technologies because they really are going to make a difference. Now you mentioned also the other kind of half of BWXT is on the commercial side. I think a lot of folks don't understand your capabilities as a company there as well. Steam generators have heavy forging as sort of thing. Could you just talk a little bit about the other half of the company? Yeah, absolutely. So commercial operations includes BWXT medical and includes the large manufacturing footprint that we have based out of Cambridge, Ontario and also includes our recent acquisition in connectrix. So there's technology, there's medical industry and then there's delivery of heavy components and out of our shops in Canada and now in the US through the connectrix acquisition, we're delivering nuclear components to all parts of the world. And we're doing that out of those shops because of the expertise that exists, especially on heat exchangers, large heat exchangers like steam generators and then reactors, vessels, core internals. Everything that the industry needs will come, the commercial industry needs comes largely out of those shops. So it's an important footprint for us and it's a rapidly growing business because of the interest in small-modular reactors with our participation with GE Atachi on their X300 plant and in Terra Power and on and on and on. We've been meeting with each one of those companies we've been working with the SMR vendors to understand what their designs are, how we can bring those designs to life in manufacturing and then come up with delivery schemes that meet their business objectives. Yeah, that's vitally important. Now, let's shift over a little bit and get a little bit more philosophical. You've kind of become a thought leader for a lot of the advanced nuclear technologies out there, we've seen you on dozens and dozens of panels and podcasts and appearances at various conferences and you always bring a lot of deep thought to things. So what is your assessment of the current state of the nuclear industry? How real is the current revival that we're seeing? It's absolutely real and it's real because not only is there a desire signal but there's a demand signal and there's a difference between those two things. The demand signal is growing every day and the nature of power generation is gonna change over time and we know that we've seen this in a variety of other industries and by power generation, I mean, we have our large grids, those grids need additional supply and you see that in additional gigawatt plants, small modular reactors, but the distribution of energy is also gonna become more and more important with edge computing with the way in which industrial manufacturers are thinking about their processes, having energy security in a lot of their capital outlay. I mean, all of those dynamics are pointing towards nuclear and they're pointing towards nuclear because it's reliable, it is generational and in the way in which the power is produced out of each one of these plants and so that's how I know it's real. And when you think about all of the financial and socio-political dynamics that exist in the world today, nuclear is well suited to meet most of those demands and so we're seeing this huge investment from a variety of sources throughout the world in nuclear and we're seeing an important technology that all of us in the nuclear industry have known and loved for several decades and you see people coming to nuclear to provide solutions to real world problems. And as I go to conferences and meet with investors and meet with the public and talk to my kids, everybody is thinking about energy and most of those people that are thinking about energy are focusing on how nuclear can be a bigger part of the energy mix in the future. - That's a pretty positive and I think very accurate assessments, so thank you for that. But what do you think the biggest challenges are that the advanced reactor industry is facing right now, the biggest challenges? - What's the delivery on the timelines in which energy is needed? And so we have this moment now to commit to deliveries and in that moment we need to commit to not only the first deliveries but repetitive and consistent deliveries and so that's a challenge that we're facing because it's a new muscle for us to build and it goes back to one of your earlier questions about technology specifically AI, how are we using technology to enable nuclear to move faster and if we do that and we do it right, we will be successful but that's harder than it seems because a lot of the infrastructure that currently exists in nuclear, a lot of the thought process and the designs and the fuels weren't contemplated when AI, or sorry, AI wasn't contemplated when all of that infrastructure was being built up. Now that they're coming together, it's navigating how to use technology smartly and how to implement those technologies to produce nuclear reactors and nuclear components at a faster clip so we can leverage the moment that we're in right now. Well, a final substantive question and that is about work force. We're looking to triple or quadruple the size that the nuclear industry here in the US. I mean, that's a lot of people, hundreds of thousands of people. How do you see that playing out? Are there going to be pinch points where we don't have the work force or is the ecosystem of universities and trade schools that can be able to keep up? What do you think? I think it'll be able to keep up because the demand signal is now making its way into each one of the local community college, it's making its way into other industries and other STEM programs and universities. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with some folks from the University of Wyoming and talk to them about what is important in the STEM field? And how can that STEM field focus more energy on nuclear? And so that workforce does exist. It's focusing that workforce on the nuclear industry that's going to take some time. But everywhere I go, I see that. When I'm in Mount Vernon, Indiana, visiting that plant, we have a well school inside of the local high school. And so having those kids, having those young adults that are understanding what technology is most important in the world processes, how they can get good paying jobs, outside of high school, all the way through people that are in PhD programs in the nuclear engineering programs and the universities. And so when you talk to that swath of young adults, they are focused on energy problems and they are focused on participating in the nuclear energy industry that complemented by using new technology to reduce the over time. overall FTE labor that's required to make each one of these products real. We bring those two things together and it's something that the industry, especially BWC, has been focusing on for the last decade or so, is how do you do things with more educated staff? How do you educate that staff and how do you get them in the door at the right frequency to keep on the delivery schedule? So as we ramp that up, we do have a good foundation, but it's all about scaling it to the next level as these products become more and more real. I think there's a misnomer out there that a lot of people think that to be in the nuclear industry, you have to have a PhD from MIT, a nuclear physics or whatever. But as you know, most of the work is really done by technicians and the trades, whether it's like you said welding or electrical tradesmen. And those sort of craft employees are just invaluable. So I'm very optimistic hearing what your assessment here, I tend to agree with what you're saying. I think the people pipeline will keep up. And we also have the US Navy, which is one of the greatest source of our nuclear workforce. People coming out of the Navy and they want to do something for another 20 years. And boom, right, jump right into the nuclear industry. So let's just kind of close up here. What should we be looking for next from BWXT? Any big announcements you want to portend or do you want to make any guesses for us? Well, I would say it's a culmination of everything that we discussed, Jim. Mass production of nuclear needs to happen to meet the goals that we have as a human race in meeting our energy objectives. Mass production has to happen. So we've made it substantial investments in a variety of technologies, including additive, advanced manufacturing, AI, machine learning. We have a good amount of staff that have been focusing on all those things. And we're ready to take it to the next level in mass production. It's something that I'm very familiar with in my previous experience before joining the company. In addition to that, we have two new factories that are being built now. One, it's three months into the making and the walls are up. The infrastructure is being installed for this work through the defense fuels program with the NNSA. We had another announcement very recently about the high purity depleted uranium, which is a chemical process that will be building new infrastructure inside of BWXT. And we will have industry 4.0. We will have every technology that is necessary and appropriate for those two manufacturing processes installed in our Tennessee facilities in the next couple of years. So you couple that with the advanced design, with the prototyping that we have been doing with an advanced technology is in the future becomes very clear to me. We were going to use technology and not only be successful in our current product lines, but also create a new product lines and bringing those into the marketplace. >> Wow, that's hard to be, but any closing thoughts for our audience? >> Really appreciate everything that you're doing, Jim. I think that there's no better time to be part of the nuclear industry than there is right now. It's the culmination of just this huge demand signal, a very experienced and hard-charging nuclear industry. And I'm just excited about what's going on right now and even more excited to the future. >> Well, Joe, from one sale to another, I mean, thank you so much for your insights about BWXT, for your many years of leadership and thought leadership in the nuclear industry. I know our listeners will have learned a lot of important information. And they can find more about the company at bwct.com. Seriously, all the best to you and your team for success in the months and the years ahead. >> Thank you, Jim. >> Well, folks, that's a wrap for this episode of the Advanced Nuclear Podcast. We're glad you could join us. You can power believes that Advanced Nuclear Technologies are the key to powering the American economy in the years ahead. If you want to learn more, you can find us on social media and at youcanpower.org. Special thanks to the team at UCanpower and especially Miss Kimberly, our producer and fleet admiral of podcasting. We're grateful for her devoted work to bring this podcast to our listeners. Until next time, this is your host, Sineaf, with thanks to you for tuning into the Advanced Nuclear Podcast.