Hello and welcome back to Energy Evolution, the S&T Global Commodity Insights podcast where we explore what's happening in emerging and existing energy technology. I'm Dan Testa, and I'm happy to be stepping behind the mic again, following the departure of our friend and colleague, Taylor Kirkendall. In today's episode, we're going to be discussing the current moment in nuclear power, and there's a lot to talk about. In the US, decades-old shuttered nuclear plants are being acquired, expanded, refurbished, and eventually will be restarted. Some previously abandoned, partially built nuclear reactors are about to see construction start again. At the same time, a growing market of new companies are racing to be the first to build advanced nuclear reactor designs that are smaller and hopefully cheaper to build and safer to operate. Now this is all occurring at a time of growing power demand in the US, driven by data centers to support AI, industrial reshoring, and other economic trends. And nuclear is the rare technology that enjoys political support from both sides of the aisle, as it's both carbon-free and it lacks the intermittency obstacles presented by some renewables. So what could go wrong, right? Well, there are major questions about the ability of the nuclear industry to execute and deliver these massive, expensive capital projects on schedule and on budget. Joining me to talk about this today are Abby Bennett, a reporter for Platt's part of S&P global commodity insights who covers nuclear and build freebearing, Platt's Associate Director of Price Reporting for Nuclear Fuels. For this episode, Abby interviewed Adam Stein, a nuclear analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, as well as Drew Marsh, CEO of Energy, a major investor in electric utility, and the new chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Hey, Abby and Bill, thanks for being here. Thanks for having us, Dan. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Happy to be here. Okay, so let's just jump into it. I think we need to start with a rundown of where we are right now, like a snapshot of this moment. What are some recent developments in the nuclear sector that we should know about and why are we kind of like having a moment right now? There have been so many developments just in recent months involving existing and potentially new large-scale reactors. At the end of October, the administration announced it would partner with Brookfield Asset Management and two nuclear industry firms to build what they said would be at least $80 billion in new reactors across the US funded through trade agreements with Japan. There aren't too many details yet on this, but we're looking out for developments. And this recent announcement is, of course, in addition to executive orders aimed at boosting US nuclear, as well as preservation of tax credits in the federal budget bill. There have also been several anticipated updates on US reactor restarts, including for whole-text policy plant in Michigan, next area is Dwayne Arnold in Iowa, and of course Constellations announcement last year that it would restart unit 1 of the Three Mile Island plant, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center to supply Google AI operations. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Southern companies Vogel, units 3 and 4 in Georgia, which entered service in 2023 and 2024. And Sandy Cooper is also taking initial steps to have Brookfield Asset Management buy and complete the two unfinished units at the VC summer plant that were previously abandoned. And as we know, Brookfield bought Westinghouse, the construction contractor for the Vogel expansion and builder for the failed summer expansion. Many utilities are also filing to extend the lives of existing units to keep them online for another 20 years. Okay, so that is a lot. So that's some of what's happening with existing and new large nuclear plants in the US. But I guess the next question in the Zen, why is this happening now? What's driving it? Well, to start, there's broad bipartisan support for nuclear at the federal level, and locally we're seeing states make policy changes to lift moratoriums on nuclear generation, or to support additional nuclear capacity, which is generating some tailwinds. But what we're hearing most about is demand, particularly from large load customers. The agreements and deal announcements between tech companies and nuclear plants shows there's willingness to pay for the power generated by these assets. So much so we're seeing some of them revived. And there's growing interest in newer technologies as well. And it's not lost on these folks that nuclear could provide carbon free baseload generation. Yeah, and really the thing we're seeing and hearing from the industry is that speed is of the essence. This new demand is immediate. You know, power is desired as fast as possible. And I think that's possibly what's driving a focus on the sort of low hanging fruit, which should be the fastest things to market. The fastest thing right now is to restart a nuclear plant that was operating a few years back, but was permanently shut. So those projects are sort of easier sells. And then the completion of a partly built unit, for example, at summer could also be attractive because of its speed to market. And we have seen a real significant swing in focus in the US to focusing on this AP 1000 reactor design, which is Abby mentioned, has been built as operating in Georgia. So it's been licensed. It's been through construction. And many people feel like that's going to be one of the quickest ways to get a significant amount of capacity online by building that design as opposed to the more esoteric first of a kind design that are behind that. Okay. Well, that's where we're heading next. I mean, that's a really good rundown of what's happening with I guess what we tend to think of as a conventional nuclear reactor technology, those that AP 1000 has those huge cooling towers that we kind of think of when we think of nuclear power. But we're also hearing a lot about advanced nuclear companies, whether that's small modular reactors or other kinds of technology, Abby, you recently published a story on this sector. I mean, what are the key project developments here and which companies are kind of leading the pack to develop one of these? Well, interest in advanced nuclear is accelerating as demand forecasts grow as we've discussed. But much of this hinges on the next steps for these reactor technologies. There are more than 100 advanced reactor designs competing in various stages of development, many are categorized as the small modular reactors or SMRs and the global pipeline has expanded to more than 25 gigawatts, including 3.3 gigawatts in some advanced stages like permitting and those under construction. There are a few hundred megawatts already in operation, though none in the US. North America, though, Ontario Power Generation's darling to an SMR project near its existing nuclear plant includes four grid scale SMRs for about 1200 gigawatts with the first set to connect to the grid by the end of 2030. OPG is using the GE Hitachi Nuclear BWRX 300 design, a boiling water SMR. That project also recently received a $3 billion government funding commitment. The Tennessee Valley Authority may lead the charge here in the US as it pursues its own BWRX 300 project at clinch river. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted TVA's application to build the SMR in July and set a 17-month review schedule. TVA also in September announced an agreement with EnterOne Energy to provide TVA with up to six gigawatts of new nuclear using new skills 77 megawatts SMR design. There are many, many more, but those are top of mind and may be among the quickest to reach commercial operation in North America. Yeah, I think it's important to note that those projects are all using sort of a more traditional light water-cooled reactor technology, which has been the basis of most reactors operating in the world right now, but that there's also been a focus, especially if you go back five years ago, people were talking increasingly about advanced reactors designs, these next generation reactors that used cooling systems other than light water, and were attractive to people because they offered the potential for other features, perhaps some safety enhancements, but the potential for cost reductions. A couple of these are actually in process here in the United States and some are actually operating overseas in Russia and China. There's some first-of-a-kind demonstrations that are underway right now and they include X Energies project to bring its high-temperature gas-cooled reactors to a Dow Chemical facility in Texas on the Gulf Coast there, and that facility will actually provide heat as well as power to this industrial facility. And some of this is attractive in the decarbonization of the economy, and those projects have received substantial U.S. government support and are supposed to be on track to be operating around 2030 also. This seems like a good place to get some additional perspective. Abby, you recently spoke with Adam Stein. He's director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation Program at the Breakthrough Institute. You put many of these questions and issues that we're discussing to him. Let's hear what he had to say. What role do you see nuclear playing in the next five, ten, fifteen years? That depends if your question is related to domestically or internationally. Let's start with domestic. I expect to see several projects completed in the next five years. Most of those will be first-of-a-kind projects from advanced reactor developers, and I also expect to see one or two, maybe more, if the additional support is provided, large reactors also under construction. The challenge will be if firm orders for second-third-fourth plants can be put in place while the first-of-a-kind plants are being constructed to carry momentum through, which is the necessary next step to enable broader scale-up. If that step is missed, then we're going to have a gap in between, like we do right now, in completing Vogel 3 and 4, that gap makes it more challenging to get started with the next plant than if they were sequenced one after another. Internationally is a different story. China is already in the process of building about 30 plants, or 30 reactors, I should say, that are all large water-based reactors. They are also building a smaller SMR that is water-based and an advanced reactor. Russia has successfully sold their designs to multiple other countries such as Egypt, South Korea successfully deployed four reactors in the UAE, and countries in the Asian Pacific and Africa are very interested in bringing nuclear energy to their country. Although most of them in the early stages of exploring that, they are very interested because many of them are strongly committed to their own climate goals. What nuclear generation do you see as most realistic moving forward in the United States? Is it the advanced reactors, is it the larger scale, such as the AP-1000s? I expect to see some of each at this point, but it's very important to note and often overlooked that not every buyer has the same needs. Southern company that built Vogel 3 and 4, and Santi Cooper, that was building VC summer are large utilities. There are over 3000 utilities in the United States. Most of them are very small in terms of footprint or customer base, and they would not be able to support nor would they need the output from a gigawatt scale nuclear power plant. That is in part why I think that advanced reactors are going to take a lot more of the market overall, over time, because they fit the needs of more customers in terms of utilities or industrial facilities or potentially hyperscalers that just want on-site behind the meter power. In terms of these larger load customers we're seeing hyperscalers and the like, are they willing to pay for the increased cost of generation that would come with a nuclear project? Some are absolutely willing to pay higher costs, particularly for first-of-a-kind projects or restarts of reactors that could be restarted in the near term. They are also willing to buy the output of existing already on the grid nuclear power plants and take that out of the wholesale market, as we've seen in Illinois. They are willing to pay for upgrades that were not deemed economical by the company in the wholesale market, but they will buy the power of the upgraded output at a higher cost from the existing nuclear power plants. So they've definitely demonstrated already through actual contracts that they're willing to pay above market price for this, but they are going to be just a small percentage of total demand in the United States. So given the changes that we've seen in the nuclear industry, especially in the United States, would you say that we are now headed for a proper nuclear renaissance? I would say that there is a very strong chance of that, but it's not assured. What we're missing from this equation is the firm orders from buyers, and those buyers cannot all be hyperscalers and tech companies or even industrial companies like Dow with X energy. They have to be utilities which provide the bulk of electricity generation in the United States, and it will be challenging to get to those firm orders from utilities if utilities are expected to buy them individually. Most utilities are too small to buy them individually, even an SMR-type plant. The next step, the next challenge to really overcome, other than the regulatory challenges that are still being worked out, is how to build a consortium of buyers that can share cost risk and each have a small portion of offtake from an early plant and build that momentum to get to scale. Getting back to a consortium approach will help to build the orders and building the orders up front is how we are going to actually get to what would have been similar to the nuclear renaissance a decade or a decade and a half ago. Okay, really helpful insights from Adam Stein. In keeping with the discussion over these issues of costs and risk appetite that he was just talking about, Abbie and Bill, I also want to ask, what is the investment climate like for these advanced reactor companies? Are they attracting a lot of investors? This type of technology seems like it can be a very high-risk, high-reward type of proposition, and maybe it's not something that provides an immediate return. Yeah, Dan, it's been a remarkable turnaround in the last few years. Some years back, it was very challenging to find anybody who would supply funding for nuclear power projects, but some folks in the financial industry tell me now that investors are extremely eager to put their money towards nuclear companies and nuclear power-related projects. We're riding on the backs of a trend that also has been going on for a while where the money of some very wealthy individuals who just believe that nuclear power is going to solve a lot of the world's problems have been investing. When Bill Gates and Sam Altman want to launch a startup, it's just a notable availability of funding as you can imagine, and these companies are currently well-capitalized and trying to bring some innovative approaches to the nuclear market. Bill's absolutely right, and that's a great question, Dan. Analysts, we spoke to estimate SMRs could be a $1 to $2 trillion market, totaling 343 gigawatts by 2050, and that's driven primarily by data-centered demand. It looks like SMR stocks will likely trade on near-term catalysts, and the newer technologies may be tethered to that data center build out, at least in the near term, which could create some risk. But some companies such as Terrapower and Oaklow marked significant fundraising milestones so far just this year, raising more than a billion dollars in June alone. There's definitely more curiosity, maybe also some fear of missing out given the hype. Analysts tell us, some companies are also exploring public offerings. Oaklow new scale and nano-nuclear energies share prices have more than tripled since their stock debuts. There's also discussion about the possibility of bank project financing for nuclear projects, which could open a whole new world. Now, before we leave the topic of new nuclear generation, what are the prospects in the US for companies to build large, conventional AP-1000-style reactors, like we were discussing earlier in this episode? I mean, what's changing in terms of building big nuclear? That's a difficult question to get at. We've seen some developments. The influence of the Vogel units coming online can't be ignored. That's created optimism, despite the long road to get there, and significant cost overruns. In its latest Carolinas resource plan, Duke Energy added the possibility of a large conventional reactor, along with its existing plans for SMRs in the 2030s. Part of that was at the urging of state regulators who asked Duke to explore that possibility. Duke has several sites in mind, but has taken no concrete steps, and that resource plan still awaits regulatory approvals in North Carolina and South Carolina. Energy has no public plans, but CEO Drew Marsh has said the company is looking at all forms of new nuclear, and he mentioned the AP-1000 by name late last year. Meanwhile, southern company CEO Chris Womack has been adamant that while the company supports new nuclear in the U.S., southern has no current plans to move on new nuclear after completing the Vogel expansion. It does seem that there's a certain amount of enthusiasm behind the AP-1000 designed that is shared by the U.S. government. The increasingly government reports are focused on the idea of just building a single design and doing it over and over again as a way to reduce costs. In addition, several companies are exploring the possibility of new models for deploying reactors that are no longer first of a kind. Instead of utility leading that kind of project, there's potential that a development company steps into do that, working with end users like the hyperscalers, utilities that might be the operators of the reactor and the reactor vendors, putting a package together of some sort that then gets financed with by some investors or banks. This is unproven in the nuclear space. It's really an idea from the non-nuclear power side. We don't know if it's going to work. There's a very significant to capital outlay required, as you can imagine. But people are trying new things just as with the new reactor designs. They're trying new models for actually getting these reactors built. Yeah. Wow. That would be a huge change to power-practic finance in the U.S. Okay. So we've reviewed a lot of very promising developments here for the nuclear industry so far. But this might be the time to do a little bit of a reality check. I mean, a critical question for this tidal wave of large load customers, which is mainly tech companies building data centers, is that they need power supply and they needed it yesterday. In many cases, just connecting to the power grid or gas plants or solar plus storage isn't fast enough for these customers. And Bill touched on this a little bit earlier in the episode, but how does the timeline for nuclear power fit in here? The timeline for restarts like three mile island or Dwayne Arnold or even for partially constructed project like the VC summer units could be promising for these customers prioritizing speed. And you see that borne out by the deals we've seen emerge so far. But there are significant questions about timelines and ability to deliver given the industry's history. We've already seen one advanced reactor project fail in new scales Idaho project. First of a kind costs for new technologies may be higher compared to spot gas, though they could be competitive with combined cycle gas or renewables plus storage when firm capacity is required. But there's acknowledgement in the industry of challenges. Terrap power CEO said earlier this year that the biggest hurdle for these companies is showing they can deliver, especially on cost reduction for iterative builds. If they can't do that within the next decade or so, interest may fizzle. Financial executives told me they don't expect another large scale US reactor for at least another decade, though they're more optimistic about smaller technologies. Of course, you know, there's some rumblings that not all the new startups pursuing new reactor designs are equal. Some are definitely further down the road with their technology, their business model, their licensing approach. And many in the industry, you know, expect a fair number of them to fail. And that's sort of normal in the startup space. Of course, there's still questions about where the money is coming from. There have been some developments recently as the US government has indicated that it's intending to use the DOE's loan program office, for example, to provide a significant pot of money to build these reactors. But no matter how you look at it, the idea of deploying a significant number of new reactors requires a huge amount of capital, hundreds of billions of dollars probably. There's a lot of ideas about where that's going to come from. And there's, you know, a very growing interest from the private sector and contributing to that. But there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Bill is absolutely right as usual. It's a big lift to scale from essentially nothing. And we've not even yet touched on challenges such as NRC licensing timelines, fuel availability, supply chain and workforce, which could all be potential headwinds. Utilities are also clear about the need to de-risk nuclear projects before they might be willing to sign on to anything new. Suggestions include federal cost overrun insurance, but we've not seen signs that there's significant appetite for more nuclear incentives beyond the federal loan programs office support and tax credits DOE already considers generous. Yeah, there definitely seems like there's been a bit of a sense from the federal government that the incentives on offer are kind of going to remain what's available for the time being. Okay, so let's hear from someone who's optimistic about what's next for nuclear. Abby, you recently spoke with Drew Marsh. That's right. Drew Marsh is CEO of Energy Core, a large investor-owned electric utility headquartered in New Orleans and with operations across the South, including Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The company owns more than five gigawatts of nuclear capacity according to S&P global market intelligence data. Drew is also the chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an organization which promotes the benefits of nuclear power and advocates for policy to promote nuclear generation. Drew's been the chair for just a few months, he told me. As the new Nuclear Energy Institute chair, can you tell us what your priorities or plans might be for the role? I can't think of a better, more exciting time to be at NEI in the position given everything that's going on in the industry. There's just so much demand growth out in the electric space that is requiring or asking for all kinds of generation, including new nuclear. And so creating that foundation to help navigate the industry out for the next 25 years to 2050 and meet the objectives of the country. And to help navigate the intersection between the private space, the private investment space and the public space with the government. There's a lot of key partnerships that need to happen and that's where NEI is going to excel. Nuclear is often held up as the answer to a lot of issues in the power industry. How do you see nuclear fitting into the US energy sector over the next 5, 10, maybe even 15 years? As I look forward to 5 years or 10 years or 15 years, I think in the next 5 years, you're going to see a lot of things probably happen with the existing fleet, things like restarting of existing reactors that had been recently shut down. For example, the Palisades plant in Michigan, which we actually owned and sold at the whole tech and now they're working on restarting it, looking at the Dwayne Ardell facility in Iowa that next era is restarting, and also the Crane Energy Center, the constellation is restarting in Pennsylvania, that was formerly known as Three Mile Island. Those are all good reactors, good plants that they're bringing back to life, so to speak. And that's going to be a big focus of the next few years. Also a lot of what we call upgrades, the capacity improvements in the industry. Well, where we can get 50 megawatts, 100 megawatts from an existing unit spread across 100 units, that's a lot of extra capacity in the nuclear space. So those are probably the kind of things that you'll see in the next few years. Once you get out to 5 years to 10 years, you'll likely see some of the new reactors begin to come on. And by the time you get to 15 years, I would expect that the industry should really be rolling. So if we're going to be thinking about meeting objectives of getting quadrupled the nuclear capacity out there by 25 years, by the time you get to year 15, there ought to be many projects coming to fruition about that time. Given your utility experience and given the latest US government commitments to the nuclear power sector, do you think utilities will be willing to build new nuclear units large or small? Utilities are typically seen as risk averse. But if the government brings maybe financing or cost overrun protection to the table, could that clear the way for new plants? Absolutely. And the government doesn't always have to step in. The big risk is construction cost overrun risk. And the industry has a long history of being very challenged by cost overruns in the nuclear space. And if we could figure out a way to really narrow down the uncertainty associated with construction, that I'd take you to see utilities come in a very big way. The challenge that we have isn't that we're risk averse. It's that our customers are risk averse. And typically what happens is if there is a cost overrun, that's assigned to shareholders and then the rest is assigned to the customers, which was perhaps the original cost expectation. And at that point, the company does not have the opportunity to earn its return again or earn back its money. It's locked in forever at the lower price. It's really important to get the cost well understood and get that uncertainty very much reduced in order to begin construction. But if we got several reactors built or underway and we have a good idea of what the costs are going to be, I could imagine that utilities would significantly invest in nuclear reactors versus other potential technologies. I also want to ask you a little forward looking what you think maybe the next steps are for the nuclear power sector. Are we entering that sort of fabled nuclear renaissance do you think? Yeah, that term nuclear renaissance has been batted around a few other times before. But this time I think it's fundamentally different in that it's demand driven. And as I said earlier, the unique profile of nuclear to serve data center demand because it matches up so well with what the expectation for data center demand is going to be really I think really boats well for the opportunity here. And when you think about the people that are building the data centers or driving the data centers, folks like Google and Microsoft and Amazon and Meta, they are also very interested in clean energy and they have a massive appetite for energy. And so looking at nuclear makes a lot of sense for them. Now they would much rather invest in chips and software than in nuclear power plants, but they want nuclear power to be there for them. So they're going to be asking as the customer, they're going to be asking for something that looks a lot like nuclear to serve them. And they're already very active in that space. So I expect that to continue. But I think that's what's going to be driving this build out of new nuclear. And I don't expect that to slow down anytime soon. There's a great deal of enthusiasm for nuclear as Drew mentioned. And we discussed, but I don't think we can overstate the challenges here. The industry has to prove it can execute. A lot of things have been going right for nuclear, especially in the US right now. You could almost say conditions are ideal or as ideal as they have been in many years. This could be an enormous opportunity for the industry, but it could also be its last opportunity of this magnitude if results don't materialize. So much of this hinges on the industry's ability to prove it can deliver on time and on budget. Yeah, I think that's completely right. And I think that the nuclear industry definitely understands this. And as they approach this, they now are looking to see how they can execute trying to build the supply chains that are going to be needed. The ability of these companies to sort of scale up and provide nuclear power in larger quantities is unknown. And so they're doing that work right now. They are looking for some government support and seem to be getting it. But we're just going to have to wait and see as to how this all plays out over the coming years. Well, that seems like a good place to wrap up. We've covered a lot in the short time today, Abby and Bill. Thanks for joining and sharing your expertise. I hope you'll speak with us again when we've got another round of major nuclear developments to sit through, which I think is going to be the case. And Abby, thanks for doing those interviews as well. Thanks also to Adam Stein of the Breakthrough Institute and Drew Marsh of Energy and NEI for speaking with us. I'd also like to recognize the rest of our energy evolution podcast team, including Camille and Asher, Karen Willenbrecht, Drew Engbone, and a Claudia Gupta. And a big thank you to our agency partner with 1-9-9 and the S&P Global Commodity Insights Digital Content Team. Finally, please subscribe to Energy Evolution on your favorite platform so you don't miss the next episode. And if you've got an idea for future podcast topics or guests, email us at
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