Nuclear for Newbs
0:00 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Energy 101. We are stoked today because we finally have a nuclear 101, something that's been coming up on our radar a lot recently. Um, and we
0:13 have John Chaplin here from last energy to school us a nuclear. John, welcome. Thank you guys for inviting me. Glad to be here. Of course. So I'm saying we have like two first today. This is
0:25 our first, we've noted a virtual podcast. So you're our first virtual podcast. As well as nuclear. So yeah, we're pumped. Awesome. Perfect. Well, glad to be a first in two different ways.
0:37 Yeah, absolutely. So do you want to give us a quick background on yourself, how you got into energy in general, maybe specifically how your career led you to last energy? Sure. Sure. So yeah,
0:51 my career really started off actually in oil and gas. So I'm originally from Houston, went to school at University of Texas and studied economics. And then joined investment banking and worked in
1:03 the investment banking industry in Houston for about seven years. So mainly focused on oil and gas, MA, particularly with kind of the shale development in 2013 to 2019 era. And then since then,
1:19 I've kind of left after a few different downturns in the oil and gas industry decided that I wanted to, you know, explore other avenues, started working at startups in Austin. And then through
1:31 kind of working through those startups came across last energy as really an interesting thesis on the nuclear space and an interesting kind of development model and brought my kind of experience and
1:44 expertise and energy private equity markets to bear kind of being able to finance these projects. I love that you're the perfect person then to speak to us on learning about nuclear because We all
1:58 are familiar with oil and gas. I would say probably most of our listeners are in the oil and gas space.
2:05 So yeah, you can really speak the language to us where it makes sense. Sure, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the oil and gas space was a great space to get started. I mean, at the time, that was probably
2:17 the most active segment of the energy markets. It was really a place to cut your teeth and understand what was an attractive investment and how to really do a really technical evaluation of a company.
2:31 Yeah. That reminds me of the course that we're in process. We're in process of putting out a course that's evaluating oil and gas deals. So that's kind of right up that alley. But let's dive in.
2:45 So pretend you are explaining nuclear energy to a kindergartner. What is nuclear energy? Well, I guess I probably start off with just explaining a power plane. So, you know, most power plants
2:58 that are out there run off what's called a steam-ranked encycled. So essentially it is some energy source is heating up water and producing steam. That steam is then piped to a turbine that spins
3:13 and generates electricity.
3:17 And that's really how most power plants that are out there exist today. And it's just depending on what is that energy source that they're using And coal, are they using natural gas? Are they using
3:27 biomass or are they using nuclear energy?
3:31 So then if that's what a normal power plant looks like, how is a nuclear energy power plant different? It's really just about how it generates that heat source. So in a coal or a natural gas fire
3:43 power plant, you're taking that coal, you're burning it, it's producing heat and it's heating up that water. And a nuclear power plant, really all you're doing is taking uranium and facilitating
3:54 a nuclear. kind of reaction to basically have that uranium generate heat that then heats up water to create that steam. How common right now are nuclear power plants? So there's about 400 or so
4:12 nuclear reactors that are operating globally. Not all of those are power plants. Some of many of them are actually research reactors or reactors that are put at universities to help train future
4:24 nuclear engineers. So for example there is a research reactor that is at Texas AM University just north of Houston. That's interesting. That's kind of trained nuclear operators. But yeah globally
4:37 around 400 or a little more than 400 reactors. Do you know how many are in the US?
4:44 Not off the top of my head is probably a large percentage of them. Especially if you include like the Navy nuclear fleet or a lot of the nuclear reactors that are in like aircraft carriers. There's
4:58 a lot of the research reactors are here and then we also have quite a bit of nuclear power plants as well. Got it. Can you explain fission and fusion? There's always come up when you're talking
5:11 about nuclear. Can you explain like what it is at a high level? Yeah at the highest level and you know being a finance guy can't really know too much details but at the highest level really fission
5:24 is you know about basically taking the atoms and being able to a little bit kind of basically split them apart creating energy from doing that. Infusion is really pushing them together and that
5:40 requires an immense amount of energy and that's why it's really on the cutting edge of where nuclear is going. What you want to do is be able to create a lot of energy, fuse those,
5:53 you know, those electrons together or those. atoms together and be able to have that create an abundance of energy that you can then use to produce, you know, electricity. So that essentially
6:04 like how nuclear energy is getting generated? Or is that completely separate? That's how it generates the heat that then creates the steam that then creates the electricity. And so it is one of the
6:18 benefits of nuclear energy is that that is what it is doing. It is creating heat. So if you need heat, you can use nuclear energy just for steam. So for like district heating or using heating in
6:30 your industrial processes, or you can take that heat and use it to generate electricity using kind of a standard power plant design. Got it. And so the fission fusion process, is that happening
6:45 with uranium or where does the like uranium come in to the mix? Like we're I don't know if this is like too deep into it. I don't know what questions are like, you know, don't make sense. Yeah,
6:60 I know what the fusion I think, I think there are other elements that you can use. Uranium is by far the one that's used the most. And that's kind of the standard. I think there are people doing
7:11 research to figure out maybe other elements that can be used. But yeah, typically when you're looking at a, you know, fission reactor it is using Uranium U-235. And you basically can get that
7:26 Uranium from a ton of different sources. And then there's some enrichment level to enrich that Uranium to be able to use it in a nuclear power plant setting. What, why would someone use nuclear
7:39 power at a plant as opposed to like a natural gas? Obviously all of us know that coal emissions, environment colds like a big no-no these days.
7:50 So how does that compare to nuclear and why people wouldn't move in that direction? So I think there's a couple advantages in nuclear when comparing it to coal or even natural gas. There's a big
8:03 decarbonization push across really the globe. So a lot of the customers that we're targeting are focused on decarbonizing their energy mix. So one of the countries that we're very focused on is
8:15 Poland at last energy And they get 80 of their power from coal. So they want to transition that away. They were initially looking at transitioning to natural gas. But obviously, the problem with
8:28 natural gas is that you're reliant on natural gas supply to be able to fuel that power plant. And with the Ukraine war, that ended up becoming a bigger problem. So they started to make a pivot and
8:41 decide to explore nuclear energy as an opportunity. So being a finance guy, one of the biggest drawbacks to nuclear is how expensive it is to get started. Can you kind of explain that and maybe
8:55 compare it to like oil and gas if you're able, if there is a comparison there?
9:02 Because I know that it's one of the biggest like, why we aren't more like using nuclear more is just because of how expensive it is to get started And the timeline, I think, of building a new
9:15 reactor plant. I don't know what that is. No, that's true. And that's the biggest critique that we see, you know, from people when we're talking in the market. And we've developed a very unique
9:27 thesis at last energy around that. And I can draw some comparisons to what that would be in oil and gas. But essentially what happened in the nuclear space is that it really got started in the '60s,
9:38 kind of post-World War II after kind of development of nuclear energy as a source. And from the '60s to, let's say, the back end of the '80s was really when it went from no nuclear power plants to
9:51 all the way up to 400. And since then, it's kind of remained at that level. And the really reason being is the large regulatory burden that is added to nuclear power plants. There's a lot of
10:03 safety analysis. There's a lot of development and kind of core - or
10:09 government led regulatory that you need to go through regulatory processes.
10:16 So as we kind of - that kind of scaled up through the '60s through the '80s, what the nuclear energy focused on was we're going to try to get economies of scale by making these plants larger and
10:30 larger and larger. And they got up to gigawatt scale facilities. Once they started doing that, though, they limited the people they could sell to so they can only really sell to a utility and
10:43 really utility with a utility. government backing it because it was such a large project. And the best example that, you know, if you wanted to draw a comparison to oil and gas would be these
10:52 large offshore projects that, you know, they don't really require as much regulatory oversight as a nuclear plant, but it's definitely more regulatory oversight compared to, let's say, like an
11:03 onshore shale development. Right. And what last energy has done is said, let's actually scale that back down to a much, much smaller level Wide in the market that we can sell to. And then also,
11:18 since we're scaling it down, we've lowered the regulatory burden that we have to go through 'cause it's not such a large plant. So hopefully we're able to proceed through a project much, much
11:29 quicker. That makes sense. Are there any other, other than the financial aspect, are there any other kind of roadblocks you see when talking about the benefits? of nuclear and trying to maybe get
11:43 people to make that switch. I could imagine people that maybe aren't familiar with the ins and outs, hear the word nuclear, kind of like the hear the word oil and gas, and think everything is bad.
11:54 Are people kind of scared of the term nuclear? A little bit, though, I will say of the last several years, we've seen that change, right? I think if you were to ask that question three, four
12:08 years ago, I think most people would have a knee-jerk reaction that nuclear is unsafe, it's too expensive, it takes too long to develop, we shouldn't even consider it. And we're definitely
12:18 starting to see across all of our markets and globally that that mindset is changing. I do think that it might be changing at the energy or government level, at the local level, talking to
12:30 communities where you might develop, nuclear energy is still a scary word that people are always worried about, but really just explaining how safe it is an energy source perspective, you know,
12:43 oil and gas coal, it has much more accidents, has many more deaths attributed to it compared to what nuclear energy has. How do climate activists take to nuclear? Because I know, like, whenever
12:59 you see a nuclear reactor and you see the steam coming out of it, a lot of people think that's chemicals or whatever being released, but it's really just steam. So it's not bad. It's actually like
13:10 the I'm I love nuclear. I think there should be way more nuclear. But yeah, I'm curious how climate activists feel about it. Do they love it or do they like? Are they not as educated there? Yeah,
13:28 I would say that climate activists are kind of split on the issues. There's some very big climate activist organizations like Greenpeace kind of comes to mind that is very anti-nuclear. and they do
13:41 not want any nuclear developed anywhere, they're constantly, they're one of the ones that really led for Germany to shut down most of their nuclear reactors. So we definitely see some of the big
13:52 elements in the climate space really have a large pushback to nuclear, but I think there are certain advantages that the renewable energy sources like solar and wind are not able to meet. So if you
14:05 were looking for a carbon-free really base load power product, nuclear is really the only one that has shown to be developed to be able to provide power to safe, consistent manner. So I think
14:18 there's a lot of government officials and people who are setting policy that are trying to make that turn to bring nuclear in as a lag of their energy mix. Right, and I, oh, sorry, are you gonna
14:29 say something? Go ahead. I know you mentioned with what Last Energy is doing, trying to scale it down a little bit, making it more accessible, easier to kind of push over the regulatory edge. Do
14:43 you feel like as more people get on board with nuclear that as things develop overall, pricing will come down, and maybe that barrier to entry is a little lighter? So could we see, in your opinion,
14:59 a lot more, I know you're working with Poland, a lot more countries
15:04 switching to nuclear over the next, let's call it, I don't know, five years, five, 10 years? Yeah, absolutely. I would say that there's a lot of people operating, you know, the nuclear
15:14 industry doesn't really like to title it this, but there's like a nuclear renaissance that's happening right now where there's a lot of new entrants and also some of the existing kind of legacy
15:26 operators that are all working on deploying either the gigawatt scale or what they're calling small modular reactors or SMRs.
15:35 So these are much smaller than Gigawatt Scales to be able to deploy. A lot of the timelines are 2026 to early 2030s for deployment. But I think as if those projects all get done on time and on
15:51 budget and there's enough interest to reinvest, what you will see is the cost come down the same that we saw the solar and wind where early on, those technologies, there wasn't a large supply chain
16:03 to draw on, they were very expensive, but as they become more developed, more commercialized, the costs considerably ramp down. Are there any other countries right now that are really leaning
16:16 into nuclear? I would say, so last energy kind of started with a list of 30 countries that we were considering, and we whittled that down to the four that were in, so we're operating in Poland,
16:28 Romania, Netherlands,
16:31 and the UK There's reasons for that a lot of it has to do with economic and also the regulatory environment and them having a positive view towards nuclear. But over the last several years with the
16:42 Ukraine gas crisis, we've seen a lot of in-bounds from several other countries that have either had nuclear in the past and haven't developed any new nuclear reactors or have never developed a
16:55 nuclear reactor and are really looking to see if they can add this to the energy mix. So we get in-bounds every week from countries all over the world, wanting to know more about our technology,
17:04 how we can come in and help stabilize the grid while still providing carbon-free power. Awesome, so I have a question. How is nuclear energy stored? Is it different than other types of energy?
17:19 That might be a dumb question. Yeah, I guess so the uranium itself, after it's enriched, really stores all of that energy and it's really just all about putting a moderator in there and then it
17:31 kind of burns through. That so it's somewhat similar to I guess the way that you could think about energy storage is oil or gas But it's constantly running once you kind of you can moderate the
17:42 nuclear reactor a bit with what are called control rods Which are basically these elements that will slow down the nuclear fission reaction
17:53 But that heat is constantly generated and then you're taking that steam To generate that electricity so with like a gas or a coal plant you might just stop feeding it You know gas or coal with a
18:04 nuclear plant you would just put in the control rods to stop the Nuclear reaction. So is it pretty infinite? Would you say I wouldn't say it's infinite it does burn up the fuel So you will use the
18:17 fuel similar to the way that you would use the fuel for a gas or coal plant Right, but it's much more energy debts. Mm-hmm. So Compared to gas or coal, it's multiple factors more dense than the
18:31 energy that you can get out of them on a per, you know, like kilogram basis. So you're getting like more bang for your buck? Essentially, yep. Yeah, I think I, there's a bunch of TikToks on
18:44 nuclear energy and I find them fascinating. And one thing that I thought was cool was they would take a uranium pellet that's like this big and tell you like how much energy was in that little pellet
18:56 and I think that's energy density. But no, that's really cool Y'all should get on your nuclear TikTok, it's fascinating. I probably should, I don't have TikTok. There are definitely comparisons.
19:11 I think I've seen one, I might be misquoting it, but it's nuclear is generated roughly 10 of United States electricity and you could take all of the waste of the fuel and it would only populate like
19:23 a football field size. Wow. So it's not a lot that we're using to be able to generate that much electricity Right and speaking of the. So once the nuclear fuel is used, isn't there something like
19:40 the waste that has to be buried? Or what do you do with that?
19:46 I don't know how to ask this question.
19:50 But there's something that you have to like bury or do something with. Can you - So it's the spent uranium that is the waste. Got it. That uranium that is in there, it is still radioactive after
20:03 you've used it, but maybe it can't generate the same amount of heat anymore. So what people will do, and it depends really on the regulatory environment, the country that you're in, but there are
20:13 different things that we could do. And not every country has to figure it out. Even the United States, you guys might be familiar with Yekka Mountain was an idea that we would basically dig a hole
20:24 in a mountain in store of all of our new places.
20:28 that ended up not really going anywhere, so now a lot of plants in the United States do, is they just keep the nuclear waste on site. But handling nuclear waste is more of a perception that it's a
20:43 scary problem, but when you really dive down into it, it's not that scary. The way that we store waste now is we just take those nuclear fuel rods that have the uranium in it and really just encase
20:56 it and cement and like a steel structure, and you can walk up and touch those once it's in that structure and you're not at risk of any radiation poisoning. Got it. So it's really just more of a
21:09 perception problem than a real actual physical. So what happens when you have like
21:17 a bunch of those, you just stack them on top of each other or like where do they go? Because I'm thinking about like wind turbines for instance, like there's like wind turbine of graveyard where
21:28 there's just like it's terrible for the environment and it's just like they there's nothing you can do with them. And they're just out there. So do they just sit there? Or what do they do for
21:39 nuclear?
21:42 So they would just sit there. We would propose to countries that we would want to reprocess the fuel and maybe potentially re-enrich it and use it again. But it's really up to the countries on what
21:53 they would like to do. So as countries figure it out, they might say we want you to put in a central repository. They might say that we want you to actually ship it back to where you got it from.
22:04 So if we were to buy in the United States, they'd ask us to ship it back to the United States. And the United States would tell us what to do with it. But our preference actually would be to
22:11 reprocess it and reuse it. Speaking of, where do you buy the Uranium? They're like Uranium dealers. Are Uranium dealers, so Uranium is mine.
22:25 Very similar to where other natural resources are The mining of Uranium is. much kind of centralized in a few countries, Russia, Kazakhstan, or really the two biggest suppliers of uranium to the
22:38 market. And
22:41 that's just uranium that you can pull out of the ground. Once you've pulled that uranium out of the ground, there are some processes that you have to do, the main one being enrichment, to
22:51 basically get it up to a level that it can be used in nuclear fuel. And those enrichment facilities are spread out. Across the world, the United States has some, as well as like other European
23:03 nations. And a lot of them have kind of gone dormant with nuclear reactors slowing down their build out, but the US is considering restarting a lot of them as even nuclear energy here in the United
23:17 States is being talked about as being a major leg. So let's talk about last energy. I know you've mentioned a few times you guys kind of have a a different approach. It sounds like you guys are
23:28 like changing the game. in terms of how people have access to it. So feel free to jump in and talk on that. Sure, so yeah, I can give you the pitch. Really, we were started by our founder,
23:42 Brett Kubelmas, after he had exited a startup that was a drone company really wanted to focus on climate change and solving that energy problem. And what we did was we spent years really focused on
23:55 just interviewing people in the industry to understand why did nuclear have this huge scale up from starting off in the '60s with a few reactors to buy the 1990s having a little over 400 and then just
24:09 remaining flat through the last 30 or so years. And what we learned was kind of that thesis that I articulated earlier that to reach economies of scale, the industry really exploded the projects,
24:21 made them much, much larger, only could sell them to government and utilities And when they did that, they really changed the incentive. model for them. So if the government's buying something
24:32 from you, you have really no incentive to lower the cost. The government's always going to pick up the tab. So they were always going over budget, going over timeline, always having to do just a
24:42 little bit more spend this much. And it was great for the people that were in the industry at the time. They made a lot of money, but it didn't help the industry grow. So we took a lot of that
24:53 feedback from regulators, from operators, and decided to change our design on how we could build a power plant that solved really what we saw as the two key problems, it being delivered on time and
25:07 on budget. So really what we've done is actually design an entire power plant that is fully modular. So our entire power plant is encased in basically the size of shipping containers, these steel
25:19 frames. We manufacture these in Texas where we actually incorporate all of the equipment. So steam turbines, the piping, the pumps, all of this bolted onto these steel frames, and there's about
25:31 70 of them. We built them at a manufacturing facility, and then if someone wants a power plant, we just ship all of these steel frames to the site, and we can assemble that power plant in about
25:42 less than six months. So that's kind of our thesis. Each one of our power plants is today pretty cost competitive to a solar or a wind with battery storage. So if you need base load carbon free
25:57 power, we're able to deliver that in a timely manner. And really the only thing that's kind of slowing the timeline down is the regulatory process. But given our long history of working with the
26:08 regulators and all of our markets and globally, we understand their pain points and what they care about. And we've taken a lot of that feedback and have it influenced our design.
26:19 That's awesome. We'll have to take a field trip to y'all's. We do.
26:26 Houston, a little outside of Katie. Seriously?
26:30 We have a nine module fit up and we have frequently taken people out there, investors, customers, government officials to kind of tour that. Wow, we would love to go. Next time one of you guys
26:42 is here, please let us know. We definitely will. I think it would be cool. There's a lot of, we have that plus a couple of other prototypes that we've kind of worked on to test our thesis.
26:54 That's awesome When you said y'all scaled down, y'all scaled way down, that's really cool, that it's like a shipping container, rather than a big reactor. Right, our plant is 20
27:08 megawatts. So, we like to call ourselves a micronuclear power plant developer because there's a few people that say they're small modular reactors and we found we were getting put in that bucket,
27:20 but small for them is 300, 400 megawatts and we are very, very small compared to that. Yeah, the benefit of that is is that most if you go to a manufacturing facility, they are probably consuming
27:34 closer to 20 megawatts than they are 400 megawatts. So you can put these very close to any type of manufacturing facility. We have term sheets with chemical complexes, with steel manufacturers,
27:48 with data centers where we can site this within 10 kilometers of their site, build a private wire directly into their site, and then save the money on grid costs and be able to deliver them
28:02 consistent power. Do you have a favorite use case that you'll have done? You know, you guys brought this up to the beginning of the call. The industry that we really see that shows the largest
28:12 kind of where our value prompts really align is data centers. So what data centers are looking for is their customers are ultimately these IT providers, Amazon, Google,
28:25 And what those customers are demanding is that they want carbon-free power to be used in these data centers. And not only do they want that carbon-free power just on a total nominal kind of match,
28:42 but they want a time match. So every hour of every day, they wanna know that the power that they're using is carbon-free power. And wind and solar can't deliver that. So solar obviously is only
28:54 gonna be producing in the middle of the day. Wind is producing whatever the wind is blowing, but nuclear can give that consistently all the time. And with data centers, they can't have any demand
29:05 that falls off. They can't have power drop. So if they're looking to just add solar panels on their roof, that might give them that carbon-free power that their customers are asking for, but then
29:17 they'll need to figure out, how am I gonna find power during the nighttime when people are still paying the data center to do searches, to do. you know, all the AI that we're seeing blow up. So
29:27 we really feel like that is a great industry that we're targeting. We see a lot of development around that. That's awesome. And when you say 50 megawatts, is that per day?
29:40 So I said 20 megawatts. Oh, 20, sorry. And so the way to think about power is 20 megawatts is like the nameplate capacity. And then you will take that 20 megawatts and that is per hour, you know,
29:55 every day. Got it. So our plant will produce over the course of a year and given like a capacity factor, roughly around
30:06 165, 000 megawatt hours is how that's measured. Okay. So, yeah, so for every day, you would see, you know, 20 times 24 would be the total megawatt hours. Got it, thank you for explaining
30:18 that. Yeah, no worries Have you guys tapped into, um, mining space at all? Bitcoin mining?
30:28 We haven't tapped too much in the Bitcoin mining space. I've had a few early conversations. A lot of that has to deal with just so the way our business model works is that we are going out and
30:40 trying to sign PPAs very similar to what solar wind developers sign. I don't know if you guys are familiar with what PPAs are, that stands for power purchase agreement So, an industry like a data
30:55 center or a metals manufacturer will say, I need this much power, I'm willing to sign a 10, 12, 15, sometimes even a 20, 25 year long contract saying, I will buy this much at this price. And
31:11 what solar wind companies have done is they've taken that contract and used that as leverage to attract capital to be able to build these assets So they can go to investors and say, hey, I've got
31:22 someone willing to pay for the energy. We've already agreed on price. I've got a construction company willing to build this. This is what the cost is going to be. Now you can see what your cash
31:34 flow is going to be as you the investor that you can get a portion of for your investment. So we're leveraging that same model. So we go out and try to target these industries and get them to commit
31:46 to a PPA. With Bitcoin mining, they want to get the cheapest energy possible and they don't really need to be a base loan because it's a large driver of their costs. We really don't see that being
32:00 a large industry for us. Though obviously data centers are used in Bitcoin mining. So there's some cross over there, but not directly with Bitcoin mines. Yeah, I was interested in knowing that as
32:13 well. Just because it is so big right now in oil and gas and the intersection of Bitcoin mining, but that's because we have a ton of wasted. gas that you can just use and there's honestly, I don't
32:29 know why you wouldn't do it. But it makes sense for y'all because there's not really wasted or anything that you're already producing that you could just like, okay, I'll use the excess for this.
32:42 That's right. Yeah, the only thing that we are, I'd say would be similar is that we do produce a lot of heat that doesn't always get converted to electricity. So there's what we call waste heat
32:52 Okay. Which we could use to, for instance, to like heat a district heating network, to supply a city with like warm water or heating for their buildings. So that's, you know, particularly
33:04 important in markets that have long winters or very cold winters, they see a lot of value in that. And we can generate electricity and heat to be able to supply them Two for one. How does that work?
33:16 Like how do you distribute the heat?
33:20 This might be a really stupid question again, but. No, no, not a stupid question. So there's basically these networks and all it is is pipes. So in Texas, you guys are using water heaters. So
33:34 you have like, whether it's gas or electric, some heating source that heats up the water before at your like node where the water comes in and then it distributes it through pipes in the house. But
33:45 just imagine if you took that heat source and then put it somewhere else in a centralized location, made it very big and just transported the hot water
33:55 in the same way, but that's essentially what a district heating network is. Okay, that makes sense. I feel like I'm, I feel like I keep learning about all these alternatives to oil and gas that
34:07 aren't necessarily your traditional renewables like nuclear and geothermal. And I was telling them before we got here, I was like, I feel like this is gonna be one of those episodes where I'm like,
34:15 why aren't we doing more of this? It makes complete sense. Yeah, and there's definitely a big push at the top down government level from local levels. And like I said, worldwide, where we see
34:27 nuclear seeing a lot of interest. So I definitely think you'll begin to see it pop up more, especially at the end of this decade of all of our competitors and us develop good projects that are able
34:40 to attract further investment in future projects. You're gonna see it ramp up and the costs come down and it become a larger part of the generation mix. I agree. I think I see it a lot just
34:52 recently. Like I said, there's a nuclear tech talk and
34:60 yeah, everyone's really interested in it right now. I think that everyone's just waiting for a little bit more innovation to drive the cost down. And then I think once that is solved and it sounds
35:11 like y'all solve that
35:15 I think it'll be huge. Yeah, I mean, we're, we think that a as scaling down has made it to where we can deploy a little bit of capital, not as much as a gigawatt scale and be able to hit that
35:26 cost, uh, target and also at the timeline target, which we think is just as important. If you look at what happened to a lot of the reason the costs inflated for these projects is that they took
35:38 so long, yeah, the financing charges for the loans they took out to be able to buy the equipment ended up eclipsing kind of the cost of the plant or becoming a large part of the cost. So that's
35:52 what we're focused on. I definitely think we've got a pathway to do it. We're targeting 2026 for our first developments. So I think it'll be that is just wait and see until that amazing. I'm
36:02 excited. We'll definitely be following along and hopefully in the future, we'd love to, you know, keep having you guys on podcasts and like Julie mentioned, hopefully. Field trip. Yeah. Yeah.
36:15 to Katie actually. I live in Katie officially Brexure. But yeah, I live right by there. So I'm down.
36:23 Perfect. We always wrap episodes up with a few kind of rapid fire questions. So Misty, you want to do the honor? Sure. Okay, John, what is the biggest misconception in energy? In energy. Or
36:40 you can say nuclear. Okay, I
36:45 think the biggest misconception in nuclear is that it's unsafe. That there's this kind of radioactive bookie man. And I think as you drill down into nuclear, it is one of the most engineered
36:58 nuclear energy solutions. And it's incredibly safe, considering all the accidents and people that get hurt in oil and gas, even in renewables, this one is definitely the safest energy source we
37:12 have Yeah. Thank you.
37:16 Do you have a work related embarrassing story? This is the fun one. We've had some really good ones in the bath. I think when I first started, so I came from oil and gas, I had
37:30 a very high level sense of
37:34 power, but just stumbling through how power markets work and how nuclear is different I think I can't tell you how many times I've mixed up fusion and fission of
37:49 a book. No, yeah, I'm sure. So just a little bit of bad early on was a lot of learning for me.
37:56 That's funny. Yeah, I could see that. And there's so much to oil and gas in itself that, yeah, he can't possibly know. No one wants to talk about like geology or porosity or any of that stuff I
38:09 learned through the first seven years of my career,
38:14 a whole new set of. technology. Yeah, exactly. If people want to connect with you guys or learn more, where can they go? Yeah, I mean, I think we've obviously the last energycom or website is
38:29 a great resource to just kind of understand what we're doing. We also have some podcasts, the energy impact podcast, as well as Titans of nuclear, where we've done, I think at this point, almost
38:39 500 episodes both then interviewing people, not just in the nuclear space, the Titans of nuclear is definitely focused on that. But in the energy investing space, as well as just the broad energy
38:54 regulatory markets. So any of those podcasts be great sources to just learn a little bit more. Awesome. I think our CEO Colin is going to be on energy impact. Okay, perfect. So everyone that's
39:08 doing that interview, so I'll look forward to it I want to have to keep an eye out for that. Obviously, all of our listeners like and subscribe. We appreciate all the feedback. We were just at
39:20 the image conference, which is a
39:22 geological geoscience. Geodio, geodio. Lots of rocks, a lot of rocks, some dinosaur fossils and we heard a story that lots of nerds. We heard a story that a CEO sent their intern, our seismic
39:40 energy one-on-one podcast because the intern wanted to learn more about seismic So I feel like we're one intern at a time, making it different. Yeah, that's great. That's our new time for an
39:50 intern at a time. One intern at a time. But John, thank you again for joining us and hopefully we'll get to meet you in person soon. Yeah, looking forward to it. All right. Awesome, thank you.
