 Is my mic on? It sounds like it. Yep. Okay. Loud as hell. I got it. Good morning everybody. How are you all? I can't believe this spotlight. I actually brought my sunglasses with me but I don't know if that's the right look. Good to see you all. It's wonderful to be here with you this morning for this session. I hope you enjoyed the rig so far. We enjoyed having you. We enjoyed meeting you out in the hallways and having the conversation and the dialogues that we have so thank you for being here. Giving that this is one of the last sessions of the conference, I'm thinking you're here because you're really committed so we appreciate that. We appreciate you being here and we are very committed to making this a worthwhile session for you. So stick with us. Don't change the channel. Just give us a little bit of time and we'll warm up and get it done for you. My name is Mo Shams. I work for the NRC. I'm the director of the division of advanced reactors in the office of new reactor regulation. I also direct the research and test reactor program and medical isotope program as well but that's actually a hobby that I do on nights and weekends. Not really. It's one division and I'm so proud to be part of the division and the work that this group does and hopefully we can share some of that with you today. I made a joke about this being one of the last sessions at the RIC but I'm actually, I feel heart warmed by seeing so many of you in the room here today so thank you for being here and hopefully we have a great dialogue today on a really exciting topic that's microreactors and their deployments. Our sessions title is assembling the pieces, mobilizing nuclear energy with factory fabricated and transportable microreactors and I am honored to be the session chair. I believe the topic is very befitting of the theme for the RIC which we know is adapting to a changing landscape. I would honestly say that indeed microreactors represent a remarkable change and a remarkable adaptation need for the nuclear landscape and I believe that the regulator, the developers and many other organizations as you're going to hear today are recognizing that change and are adapting to it. So in fact I hope that our discussion today gives you the confidence that significant steps are being taken already to adapt and I hope that we're all going to walk away from here and aspire to take even more bold steps to adapt what we do to help safely deploy this technology. In fact I wanted to pause on that point a little bit and say that as the regulator I assure you that what we do and will continue to do will be focused on a safe regulation of this new technology in a way that's consistent with our principles of good regulation and absolutely returns the most value to the public. With that we have a fabulous panel with us today. I'm so grateful for each and every one of them to be here. We traveled far and away and for their willingness to share their insights with us. So for that thank you all for being here and round of applause for the panel. We're going to get a few of those this morning. We'll introduce the panel here in a second but before that let me just go through a couple of logistics to kind of get us going here in a sec. So our vision for the session is a moderated discussion where each of our panelists will first share a few thoughts then followed by a dialogue where we're going to dig a little deeper into the thoughts that are being shared and some pertinent topics related to factory fabricated microreactors. Of course the part that we are all most interested in is engaging with you, hearing your questions, taking your feedback. So please keep them coming. We're looking forward to them and looking forward to answering them later on in the session. I'm sure by now you already know how this works but I'll just repeat it anyway for you. You get to feed us questions through the QR code so just scan that and hopefully it comes up for you. It did for me. And in the app you should be able to direct your question to any of the panelists including myself. I think I show up under NRC staff so that would be me or Duke. So in addition to the question and answer elements of the app that is there's also a feedback tab in there. So please if you get a chance and would like to share some feedback with us, by all means please do that, we would like to have it to continue to get better every time. So with that, so let's get started with the introduction of our panel. So I'm honored to, I'll turn it to each one of the panelists to introduce themselves. I felt that's a bit more personal so I'll start with Duke. Good morning, my name's Duke Kennedy. I'm a senior project manager in the advanced reactor policy branch in Danube at NRC. Good morning. Thanks for your interest in this session. My name is John Jackson. I'm the national technical director for the department of energy office of nuclear energy's microreactor program. Good morning. My name is Mike Krullady. With Westinghouse senior director for engineering and licensing for the Avinci technologies. Good morning. My name's Steve Schultel. I'm the director of regulatory and mission assurance in our BWXT advanced technologies group. Advanced technologies was stood up to do a lot of the new and novel things that we're doing as BWXT. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Kirsty Gogan, co-founder and managing director of Terrapraxis. We're a non-profit and we're focused on developing strategies for speed and scale for nuclear energy to be more useful in our decarbonization and energy growth targets. Thanks. Looking forward to the panel. Thank you. Thanks, Kirsty. Thank you, everyone. What a fabulous panel. Again, I can't wait to hear their presentations and their thoughts that they're going to share with us this morning. Next slide, please, if I can go to that. Thank you. If you'd allow me, I'll just take a minute or two, help orient our sort of conversation a bit and kind of give a little bit from under the hood or behind the curtain about what the regulator has been doing, what our accomplishment and activities are associated with advanced reactors in general, but certainly as they relate to microreactors as well. So if you look on the slide, you'll see a number of stats that we've accumulated over the past couple of years or so, a little bit longer than that. Starting with our engagement domestically and internationally, we are closely engaged with our colleagues and partners at DOE to share knowledge and leverage our resources. We've signed 10 memorandums of understandings. Those are intended to organize our efforts around a number of activities we do together, whether it's safety analysis, software, environmental reviews, testing, including microreactor testing, at times public engagements, training to some of the vendors about regulatory pathways and alike. So a lot of activities that we have and engagement we have were our partners at DOE. On the international side, again, a broad spectrum of activities and engagements on the international side, one of the key ones for us is our engagement with our Canadian counterparts, Canadian regulators. We do that to jointly solve technical issues to support more efficient licensing reviews, leverage the physics and engineering to be able to support much more efficient licensing. We have several work plans with our counterparts on a number of topics. We've issued adjoined reports so far, spanning fuel quads, spanning safety classifications and alike. So we're excited about that effort and we're looking to continue to build on it. Actually, earlier this week we've expanded the effort giving its value so far. We've expanded to include the UK regulators. The chairman signed that for us on Tuesday evening. So we're looking to further pool our resources between the three regulators and aim for greater efficiencies. In optimizing the regulatory framework, our framework has been built for years for the light-water reactor fleet and we've been working to optimize it for some time. So we've introduced a number of enhancements to it so far, particularly to create a framework around consequence-oriented. So we've delivered the part 53 proposed rule to the commission last year. The commission issued the EP rule, the emergency preparedness rule late last year, November-December timeframe. We have a rule up with the commission also on limited security as well. All these rules, again, are intended to provide a graded, more scaled approach that, in turn, will support reactors like microreactors as well as other types of reactors. We've been solving a number of other policy issues as well. These are just the highlights that I wanted to go over. But there's one in particular I wanted to point to which is functional containment. We were able to enable the use of functional containment as opposed to traditional containment buildings. And that was a key for our ability to license the Kairos-Harmes reactor late last year as well as our ability to be able to license many of the microreactors going forward such that, you know, to provide that foundation and efficiency in that regard. Speaking of Kairos-Harmes, I did just mention that the commission issued the construction permit application for that test reactor late last year around December timeframe. What I want to highlight is this was a successful review for us. It was done on a tight schedule under the very specific budget for that project that we assigned ourselves to do early on. And that success was built on utilizing a number of strategies that we've been building around for some time, including the use of core teams that actually allows us to focus our reviews on the elements of most safety significance to the design that we're looking at. And our plan is continue to refine these strategies, continue to use them for ongoing reviews, as well as future reviews as we move forward. One of the key aspects for us also, or one of the, I should say, one of the key success strategies for us is pre-application. Again, non-larwater reactor, new technologies, there are plenty of opportunities to dialogue, to provide feedback, to learn about the design. So pre-application gives us that opportunity. It pays dividends in learning the design and assessing regulatory applicability and understanding the deployment model, what can, cannot be done and what adjustments we need to do. So a great vehicle for us are instruments to provide feedback, our white papers and topical reports plus other items as well. We just reported on the slide the number of white papers that we've, white papers and topical reports that is, that we've gone through over the past several years. And what you can see from the slides is we're bragging by being able to do it ahead of schedule, ahead of historical schedule, and we continue to get efficiencies in these items as well. Finally, I don't want to leave the slide without highlighting our public engagements. We are very passionate about that. It's a fundamental part of what we do, our ability to be transparent, open about how we do it and engage with the public. So, you'll see some of the stats about how we, how we approach our public engagements on, on advanced reactors and we are definitely committed to continue to do that going forward. So, so a fair amount of activities, a fair amount of efforts that are going on in advanced reactors and by extension for micro reactors as well to facilitate their, their licensing in an efficient and hopefully an open, transparent way. So, thank you for giving me the chance to share these thoughts with you. I'll now turn it to the more important side of, of, of this, this equation here, which would be the panel. So, let me, let me send it over to Duke to talk about some of our, the agency's activities on policy work. Duke. Okay, thank you, Mo. Next slide, please. Sorry, I go back one. Sorry about that. So, good morning, I'm Duke Kennedy. I'm a senior project manager in the advanced reactor policy branch in Daniel at NRC. I'm going to share with you some recent efforts by the NRC staff to optimize the regulatory landscape for licensing and deployment of factory fabricated micro reactors. I'd like to start by thanking NRC staff and managers that have contributed to all of these optimization efforts that I'll talk about today. There have been many creative and critical thinkers involved in this work and working collaboratively to protect public health and safety and enable the safe use of nuclear technology. Just highlight our advanced reactor ready logo here on our website. We take pride in being open, transparent regulators and engaging with stakeholders in this website is a, is a great tool for those endeavors. Next slide. So, the staff is proactively working to enhance clarity, reliability and efficiency for licensing regulation in factory fabricated micro reactors. Potential approaches to addressing new licensing strategies must be coherent, logical and practical to allow for safe and secure deployment. The reliability, meaning prompt, fair and decisive regulation is crucial to achieving stability in licensing and deployment especially in the scenario of widespread deployment involving tens of reactors per year or more. Finally, risk-informed and performance-based regulation will help to deliver timely results and use resources effectively. Next slide, please. So, here is a graphic depicting the generic micro reactor deployment model. This is a combination of aspects of deployment provided by stakeholders as well as NRC staff assumptions. On the left, you can see a factory where a reactor would be manufactured, fueled and potentially tested operationally. Moving to the right, we have transportation to deployment sites. In the middle, we have power reactor operation at the deployment site for electricity production, heat generation or other uses. Moving to the right again, we have transportation from the deployment site back to a decommissioning or refurbishment facility where the reactors would end their life or potentially be refueled and redeployed. And so, this provides a common framework for optimization efforts that we're considering for policy topics and guidance development. Next slide, please. So, now I'm gonna talk about the options paper the staff presented the commission in January of this year. Considering feedback from numerous public meetings with stakeholders and pre-application engagements with developers, the NRC staff took a proactive approach to prioritize topics related to microreactor licensing and deployment. The topics that popped to the top of the priority list were the near-term topics of fuel loading at a factory and potentially operational testing at a factory and these affect the upfront portion of the microreactor deployment life cycle. Fuel loading at a factory is obviously something much different than what we've considered before but this is an area where provides an example of how these new deployment models and technologies may provide overall safety benefits. In this case, fuel loading at a factory may allow for repeated fuel loading operations where operational experience is built up quickly and avoid having to perform this operation as infrequent operation at the various deployment sites. Next slide, please. So, this slide covers the recommended options in the paper provided to the commission. These options would take advantage of the existing regulatory framework and not require rulemaking and so that makes it possible that they could be implemented in the near-term on shorter timeframes. So the first recommended option is an approach in which a factory fabricated reactor that included features to preclude criticality would not be an operation when it's loaded with fuel and operation would instead begin when those features are removed. This is significant because it means that a reactor that was simply loaded with fuel would not require a full operating license. And this enables the second approach here on the slide, which is that fuel loading could occur with features to preclude criticality under a manufacturing license and a special nuclear material license. So this has a potential advantage that the regulations for special nuclear material licenses and criticality safety better match the technical and safety aspects of loading fuel into a microreactor. Compared to typical power reactor licensing, this would likely reduce administrative requirements and improve efficiency and timeliness of licensing without reducing safety. So the last recommendation recommended option described on the slide is for an approach that would apply most of the non-power reactor safety regulations and possibly some of the environmental regulations to authorize fuel loading and operational testing at a factory. The NRC staff recognizes that these would be power reactors. However, the characteristics of these reactors when operated for testing in a factory would be similar to those for existing non-power reactors. So an advantage of this approach is that it would minimize the need to tailor the power reactor safety regulations on a case-by-case basis and instead use the existing performance-based non-power reactor regulations to cover operational testing in a factory. And as a final note, features to preclude criticality would allow for transportation of a fueled microreactor under the current regulations because the reactor would not be considered to be in operation when loaded with fuel. And so this reactor could be transported under the provisions of a manufacturing license and if it contained radioactive material, for example, after operational testing, these would be covered by a materials license. Next slide, please. So I'll just briefly mention that the staff requirements memorandum related to the ongoing rulemaking known as part 53 was recently issued and it contained direction for the staff to address some of these issues in the proposed rule and after the proposed rule phase as well. Next slide, please. So here you can see a substantial list of regulatory considerations and policy topics. So the NRC staff continues to hear from developers and other stakeholders about priorities for these topics and so we're working to prioritize them now. These topics, many of them were also covered in the paper we sent to the commission and included near-term approaches for addressing them as well as next steps which could include additional policy papers or other actions. Next slide, please. So finally, I'd like to share these success strategies and I think Moe just covered these adequately in his introduction, so thank you, Moe. But in the specific context of microreactor regulation, I think I'd really like to highlight the proactive stakeholder engagement because this has given us information that we need to start considering these policy topics and making informed decisions about how we can address them in the near term to provide clarity, reliability, and efficiency as we optimize the regulatory landscape for deploying and licensing factory-fabricated microreactors, so thank you. Much appreciated, Duke. Thank you. Let's go now to John to talk about some of the efforts in the Department of Energy and give us a little bit about the Marvel project. John. Thanks, Moe. So the Department of Energy's microreactor program, in case you're unaware, is part of a larger portfolio of advanced reactor technology, congressionally appropriated directed research and development programs, so this is part of a larger effort to bring to bear the resources under the Department of Energy on something as important as deployment of microreactor technology. Next slide, please. So in essence, the broad vision of the microreactor program is that through cross-cutting research and development and technology demonstration support, we can broaden as necessary the deployment of microreactors. You'll often hear microreactors referred to as being deployed, at least for the first of a kind, in Arctic situations or for D&D applications, places where resiliency is very important and the cost of energy is very high. The vision of the microreactor program is to remove that barrier so that you have more of a strategic portfolio at your disposal as you select a clean energy option for your need. So we've clearly got the gigawatt scale light-water reactors that currently represent over 50% of the nation's clean energy production. We don't expect those to go away anytime soon. You've got the hundreds of megawatts scale with more modularities, small modular reactors, and then of course you've got the microreactor technology in the ones to tens of megawatts range. So the thinking is that what I mean by broad deployment is of course, again, being able to select based on need rather than availability. So we pursue this through identification of technical issues that we can resolve to enhance the economics or licensibility of microreactor technology by bringing to bear on the problem the unique capability and infrastructure that exists within the nation's laboratory complex. The program itself is structured around four technical focus areas. System integration and analysis is more or less a gateway to the program. Here we perform techno-economic analyses, regulatory support with an eye toward identification of these technical problems that we can help to resolve. Technology maturation is our most broad area. This covers everything from characterization of structural moderators, high-temperature structural moderators to automated control schemes and deployment of advanced sensors for robust structural health monitoring. Demonstration support capabilities is our non-nuclear testing branch. This brings to bear resources like the magnet integral effects test capability, the microreactor agile non-nuclear experimental test and then at the tip of the spear we've got our microreactor application focus area for integrated nuclear testing and applied R&D and clearly this is where the star of the show today sets the Marvel microreactor. Next slide, please. If you look at our R&D portfolio we tend to focus on technologies that enable the three distinguishing characteristics that define in our estimation microreactors. That is that they're factory fabricated, transportable and self-regulating. So if you look across the spectrum and I'll caveat this by saying we don't have infinite funding so we can't cover every single one of these topics but Mike will give us infinite funding here eventually but for now we will rely on Congress. So things like I said, like characterization of interim hydride which is capable of maintaining its moderating capability to temperatures in excess of 700 degrees Celsius which it clearly ties into the economics of microreactors as more efficiency comes with higher temperatures generally speaking. Reactor controls is an area of emphasis for us because we can affect change in this area very rapidly. Demonstration and deployment of advanced sensors for robust structural health monitoring which in turn feeds automation schemes and remote operation capability. Clearly we need robust monitoring of these technologies before we turn it loose and I will just say right up front that we don't plan to deploy a full automatic operation to begin with our full autonomous operation begin with but as evidenced by our microreactor our MAX system microreactor automated control system platform that we're developing we take a greater approach and add complexity and thus capability as we proceed and then structural material clearly creep resistance is at a premium for structural materials. Section three div five compliance. We need to make sure we have a robust NQA one supply chain we're helping in these spaces and then transportation and sighting which of course is a topic of discussion today. It's very interesting from a technology and policy issue standpoint. What I will say with respect to the Marvel microreactor is the Marvel microreactor in some way or another touches each and every single one of these enabling technology areas. That's the reason it's an emphasis in our program and the tip of the spear. Next slide please. These are just pictures of our single effects test capability of single primary heat extraction or removal emulator and our microreactor Agile non nuclear experimental test bed which is essentially an electrically heated microreactor capable of testing engineering scale test articles. We are connecting a power, a Brayton cycle power conversion unit to it this year to put the ribbon on it or put the bow on it as it were and offer the full suite of capability from characterization of heat generated and electrically heated core through the heat exchanger to power conversion. So this is a resource that's available now. Next slide please. Which brings us to the Marvel microreactor. Marvel is an acronym, we love our acronyms. Microreactor applications, research, validation and evaluation. Don't tell Disney's lawyers, we're not gonna. Anyway, so Marvel is a very small reactor. It is not a commercial scale reactor. It is not intended to be a commercial reactor. It is 85 kilowatts thermal capability, 20 kilowatts electric via four sterling engines intended to utilize off the shelf technology to the extent possible with speed in mind and reduced cost of production in mind. And we envision it at requiring two operators, although clearly as a first of a kind this'll have a lot of eyes on it all the time. The primary project goal is very simply development of a small scale microreactor that provides a platform to test the unique operational aspects and applications of microreactors. This is also implicitly about reaching the end user, about reaching the public. This is about answering that question that comes time and time again and that is when can I see one of these in operation? With Marvel the thinking is that we can say now you can come to the Idaho National Laboratory and you can see this thing in operation. We're not probably gonna allow you to walk up to it and touch it, but you can certainly be near it. Objectives are clear, operational microreactor as fast as we can. We recognize that the clock is ticking with respect to energy needs and clean energy needs. And there are a lot of commercial vendors lined up to my right that wanna deploy these things. So we hope to affect this by paving the pathway, developing processes and procedures to enable commercial demonstrations, which are expected to take place in our dome facility and share this learning as openly as possible with the public and developers. Next slide, please. These are just some high-level technical characteristics of the Marvel microreactor. You'll see that it's natural circulation, sodium-potassium primary coolant. It uses control drums rather than control rods. There are four of them. It uses standard trigger fuel. When I say standard, it is an element that is 10 inches longer than the standard university element, but it is still self-moderating, very high safety pedigree, uranium zirconium hydride, self-moderating fuel. And then the primary coolant boundary is 316H stainless steel. Next slide, please. Next slide. We did build a full-scale thermohydraulic prototype of the Marvel microreactor pictured here. This is installed as of now at Creative Engineers, Incorporated in New Freedom, Pennsylvania. The idea behind this is validation for our Marvel thermohydraulic system. We clearly want to do this right. So this system did operate and demonstrate natural flow as evidenced by the plot on the lower left. Next slide, please. So where are we now? We had a massive milestone achieved in September of 2023, and that was achievement of 90% final design, which is a major step in the direction to enable fabrication and eventual construction and operation. Indeed, we've invoked our long-lead procurement process to begin manufacturing. We've cut steel on the guard vessel, as you can, which you'll see is the third item from the left in the picture on the lower left. Next slide, please. So again, this is about reaching the public. It's about reaching end users. It's about addressing questions. It's about paving paths. It's about removing that barrier to market entry, as we see it. Next slide, please. We have developers engaged, most notably. Recently, we've worked with Aloe Atomics and StarCube, who both publicly claim to leverage the Marvel Micro Reactor Project overtly. Others are interested in the technology. Next slide, please. And I'll end with this. This is a conceptual utilization model. The Micro Reactor Program itself is responsible for the Micro Reactor itself in the green box and operation of the Micro Reactor. But clearly, fundamental data generated by the Micro Reactor and its startup processes and steady-state operation will be of interest to entities like Nuclear Energy University Program's participants. And then INL's NetZero initiative plans to pilot a NetZero microgrid demonstration, Nuclear Powered, and then interaction with our Integrated Energy Systems, which is a sister program at INL or at DOE. And that's all I've got. Thank you, John. Please go ahead. Mike? Thank you, John. My boss has told me I was supposed to try to get some money from you today, John. I don't know. Money will go one way or the other. Anyway. So good morning again, Mike Rilletti. Response for Engineering and Licensing with Avinci. We go on to the next one. So first slide here. I just, to touch on really at Westinghouse, the portfolio of products of how we're trying to provide energy solutions for decarbonizing our electricity supply. I can't go without talking and saying one thing about AP1000 with the reactors that are now operating in Georgia, operating in China, and more under construction in China. And I can't wait until we have more under construction in this country as well. We are also developing an SMR based on this AP1000 technology where it's a PWR. It's a single unit, basically proven fuel, proven components, really leveraging all of our experience from AP1000 to build a smaller reactor and constructable. You see long duration energy storage, but what I really wanna talk about today is our Avinci microreactor. Personally, I've worked, this is my 41st year at Westinghouse, 37 of those years was worked on that AP1000 on the left. And my leadership has told me I don't have another 37 years to get the Avinci designed and licensed, so they said want me to get on with it. Next slide please. Here's our microreactor, Avinci microreactor. We call it a nuclear battery. And that's a salesy thing, it sounds it, but it really does drive our innovative thinking of how we need to look at this reactor. Microreactors need to be flexible, they need to be transportable, so they need to be small. The customers for microreactors, and we'll talk about that, are not looking for to be a nuclear operator. So it needed to fit a market that we could deliver this quickly and install it quickly. Basically it uses, it's a heat pipe reactor, we'll talk more about heat pipes. And we've been working on this design since about 2016 where we licensed the technology from Los Alamos National Labs, working quite a bit with National Labs, both in Idaho, Los Alamos and some of the others, with regards to the technology development, the fuel development. We use Triso Fuel, it's a graphite moderated core, and the shutdown, the control drums, we have control drums on the periphery of the core that moderate the core, moderate the nuclear reaction, and then shutdown rods that can scram the reactor, as a diverse and safe to related means of shutdown. Eliminated spend fuel storage on site, basically, we bring the reactor to the site, it operates for eight years, after a cooling off period, we take it away from the site. Most of our customers aren't interested in on-site storage, we have no on-site storage. The other is no big, no excavation, no deep excavation with regards to building the facility, it's a fairly tiny facility, about two, two and a half acres of land. Normally, but most of that is standoff, the reactor itself is very small. We look to try to, we're working to be able to install it from the time it shows up at site to be operating within 30 days. Next slide, please. We'll talk, we started this, as I said, around 2016, the initial customers that we were looking at, remote communities, remote mining, we identified that these communities using diesel for electricity, for heating, and we looked, looking at the economics of what we thought we could do with a micro-reactor, and we thought, maybe there's a possible market there. But the more we got into it, and the more we started talking with customers, the use case is just keep, I'll say growing, and I list many of them there, and I'm told, if not once, it seems like 10 times a week from our commercial folks, I could be selling a lot of these if you could just get it designed and licensed, so that's what drives us obviously safety, the designer safely, but really we're driving to have a product to market as quickly as we can. Next slide, please. The next use case we have discovered in the last couple of years has been space, so we're not putting five megawatt adventures on the moon, but we are looking at space applications, very small applications for both fission surface power and also to power satellites in space, so pretty excited about the opportunities that this technology has. Next slide, please. This is, I mentioned a heat pipe reactor, when I started on this about three and a half years ago, I didn't know, I said, tell me about these heat pipes, and they said, well, they cool your computers and your laptops, and so the challenge has been is how do you take something that is in your laptop and can actually cool a nuclear reactor at the scale? We've been investing quite a bit on figuring out how to take design these heat pipes to bring it to scale, they operate basically, to bring it to scale for a power reactor. You'll see this is the reactor cooling system for us water guys. This is the heat pipe as a working fluid, it's a liquid as it takes heat from the core, it goes to a vapor phase where then it passes through an air cooled heat exchanger on the right hand side and it goes back to liquid and it returns through a wick that's in the center of that heat pipe through capillary action. It's a passive cooling. The air cooled heat exchanger basically, then we connect it to an open air braiding system to make the five megawatts of electric. So about a 15 megawatts thermal reactor, five megawatts of electric. This really is what enables the device to be passive, requiring less operators and really to act as a nuclear battery. Next slide, please. So this is some pictures of things we're doing. I mean, so, nope, back please. The technical readiness of this, this is obviously a new technology. I guess it wants to keep going. I know, I'm sorry about that, but really you don't increase the technical readiness of any technology through analysis, through paper. So we're building, what you see on the left is our manufacturing demo of our reactor. It shows, and that's to scale for probably one of those space applications. On the top right is our electrical demonstration unit. We're actually running a test today. We'll be running that at over 800 C. That has a, it's an integral test, have seven heat pipes of a shorter dimension. And what you see down below is testing of a glowing heat pipe that we do. That's just some of the manufacturing that we're doing at Westinghouse as we develop this technology and increase its technical readiness. Why don't we get, you can stay at this slide since it really wants to, it really wants to go here. So this slide has really shown our deployment model. It's a lot of similar things that Duke spoke about, just maybe presented in a bit of a different way. The first one on the left is, I'd like to spend a little time is on the nuclear test reactor. So we are working to, we are in the throes of designing and actually doing long lead procurements and we'll be starting manufacturing for a nuclear test reactor that we intend to deliver to Idaho National Labs and to operate in the dome facility. We'd like to be on tests in the 26, 27 timeframe. We have about 250 engineers working on this right now. And so the design will be, is a scale. As I said, scaled one fifth power scale, but the heat pipes are half scale. So it's about 12 foot length heat pipe. So, and this year we've manufactured, or last year we manufactured the first 12 foot heat pipe and that probably took us about six months. We need to get up to building about 800 in a year. So right now we're going on how do you take that lab scale manufacturing of heat pipes to full manufacturing capability. And that's a lot of what we're doing now. Doing a lot of separate effects testing, materials testing as well. These reactors are high temperature. So a lot of materials testing working with the National Labs, be it McMaster University up in Canada, MIT, some of the other National Labs. Going through the model, again, assembled in a factory. That's very important for our deployment model. I think all of the microreactor vendors will tell you that our plan is to fuel in the factory. So working through that. Transportation, we're in the throes of developing a transportation cask. We will then install and our goal is autonomous operation. We understand that we're not there yet and that will take steps I think very in line with what John said. Our plan is we wanna demonstrate this reactor at INL, demonstrate the reliability and then we can get into how many operators we need and whatnot. After eight years, our model is after a cooling off period we'd remove the reactor from the site and either refurbish it, decommission it and then store the fuel storage and inner storage facility. And lots of licensing challenges with all of those. I think that we get to work with. Next slide, last slide. So just some of our recent achievements on Avinchi, just to highlight, I think I mentioned we were awarded late last year an award from the Air Force Research Lab on the Jetson program to develop a thermal propulsion Avinchi reactor to power satellites. Really excited about that project. We were selected by INL for a feed study. We're in the throes of that right now to see what it's gonna take to deploy our reactor in the dome. I know there's two other vendors as well. So there's three of us were selected all wanting to be first into the dome to perform that testing. That testing is critical not only to demonstrate the technology but it really is gonna underpin the licensing basis with both the NRC and our intention is also with the CNSC in Canada. Very excited, two weeks ago we opened Avinchi Technologies Accelerator Development Hub eight minutes from downtown Pittsburgh. This was a converted steel mill that we've turned into technology park. As a Pittsburgh guy, I'm pretty excited that we're able to convert an old steel mill into a technology hub. Here we'll have about, when we're all up and running about 150 folks there it'll be engineers, manufacturing of our heat pipes and testing a lot of the testing facilities of our heat pipes. So really excited about opening that facility. As I mentioned, a lot of building, the way to increase your technology readiness is by manufacturing. We've been doing manufacturing of the safety related components. Recently we completed full scale testing of the control drums and the shutdown rods up in our Peterborough and Burlington offices up in Canada. And finally, we did announce late last year our first Avinchi customer, the Saskatchewan Research Council which we have signed a feed contract and we're working with them to pursue the first Avinchi reactor up in Canada. That concludes my talking points for today. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mike. We'll go to Steve. I'll share a little bit about BWXT's vision for our microreactors. Steve? Yeah, thank you. If you go to the next slide. So while they're doing that thanks for everybody for being here. Last session of the RIC, it's always interesting to see who hangs around which hopefully at this session kept you around. So we're really looking forward to that. Really pleased to be up here with these folks. I feel kind of humbled by it because they've got a lot more experience than I do in some areas, so I appreciate that. So BWXT's vision is to large scale manufacture microreactors. If you think about economy of scale, if you think about large light water reactors they do it by size. You can't do that with microreactors obviously. You have to do it by volume. And our vision is to create volume by aggregating demand from the variety of end users out there that really need power today. This is a pivotal moment for us in the U.S. for decarbonization, for energy security, for these end users. Most of the people we're talking to are behind the meter and when I say behind the meter that means they don't operate off of the electricity grid nor do they really intend to put power onto the grid. If they've got a little extra they might, but they're really self-sustaining themselves with power. So that's our vision and you'll see, I'll say a few words about BWXT, how that really fits our company. Next slide please. So just a little bit about BWXT. I won't read all of this to you, but I'll point out a couple of things. So we've got 14 major manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and in Canada. We're providing hardware to the government. We're providing hardware to the utilities today, both in Canada and in the U.S. Providing fuel elements to research and test reactors and probably most notably for this session, we've made over 400 reactors for the nuclear navy and we've delivered those. That's a big number. I didn't realize the number, was that big? Our CEO said that number at our recent earnings call and I said, wow, great, I need to say that. So next slide please. So BWXT is really the remaining company from the Babcock and Wilcox company and we pride ourselves on innovation. We've been innovating for 150 plus years starting off with patenting steam boilers. I won't go through all of these histories, but the nuclear part of it started in the 40s and 50s with the nuclear navy and then most recently working on NASA programs for propulsion. We started that actually in 2017, well before our current Draco contract, which I'll talk a little bit about. Actually migrated into medical isotopes, which is really cool. I won't talk about that today, but it's really cool. Related to micro-actors, we're actively producing trisofuel for the Pele demonstration. We were awarded the Pele demonstration, which we're gonna be standing up in Idaho. Really pleased to be working with the Idaho folks there and then some commercial contracts and then most recently the space nuclear propulsion demonstration, the Draco program is really, really exciting. All of those advanced programs are operating out of our advanced technologies group, which is a really exciting group to be with. Next slide, please. So in our advanced technology groups, we're focused on space terrestrial and now commercial. In the space realm, much like Westinghouse, we've done work on Jetson, we've done work on fission surface power, but our flagship contract right now is working through Lockheed with NASA and Department of Defense on the Draco space propulsion demonstration program. I won't bore you with telling you all about nuclear thermal propulsion, but I would challenge you to go read about it. It's pretty fascinating and it's quite a material science program going from cryo hydrogen to very high temperature hydrogen in a trash can size reactor is pretty cool. On the terrestrial side, of course we're working on Project Pele that is one of our primary focuses right now, standing that up at the DOE site. Pele is in the space programs, we view as pathfinders. Those are pathfinders to our commercial programs. When I say pathfinders, what do I mean? Material testing, material science, regulatory authorization at the DOE site. All of these things are pathfinders that allow us to then pivot to commercial one to understand what we know, but more importantly understand what we don't yet know, that we have to go figure out. So you heard Mike talking about testing and those sorts of things. That's the sort of thing that we thrive on doing in our BWXD facilities. Our commercial pivot is a variant called Banner. We're not real eloquent, so BWXD advanced nuclear reactor is our acronym for that. Banner is about a 50 megawatt thermal high temperature gas reactor using Triso fuel. Not a particularly novel technology and we did that by choice. We want to use high technology readiness, so the DOE program on Triso has been extremely important to us, but the other technologies that are coming out of these high temperature gas reactors, recent startup in China, for example, if we can get some data from there that would be great. So that's the Banner reactor, very similar to what Mike said for Yvinci, the cycle is the same. We want to deliver it out of the factory, fuel it in the factory, deliver it, put it on the site, let people operate it, and then bring it back from the site. The end users that we're talking to do not want a big infrastructure on their site, they want power. So next slide. So along those lines, we entered the, we're very fortunate to work with DOE on the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project. We started that a couple of years ago when that came out and that was really a technology development program on a lot of fronts and we were actually and continue to work on advanced form of Triso fuel. What is emerging though is Gen Zero of Banner might be standard Triso. The market demand is pushing us, it's there now. I talk about market demand emerging, but that might not be the right word. It feels like it's there now. So we might be working on a Gen Zero form of Triso on the first, or Gen Zero Banner for the first reactor there. We also entered into an agreement with Wyoming Energy and the Wyoming Energy Agreement is really important to us. Wyoming has been great to work with. What they've done is they've connected us with end users. We've got people in Wyoming, as we speak, looking at what those needs are, boots on the ground. We're also connecting with other end users and working to aggregate this demand so that we make sure that when we finalize a Banner design, it meets as many end user requirements as possible. Next slide. So kind of pivoting to licensing, we've talked a lot about this. The paper that NRC just sent up to the commission on factory manufacturing, we see that as workable. There's a lot of detail in there to be worked through, but we really do see that as workable to commend NRC for doing that. That was a really lenient effort by the NRC, which industry really appreciates. And there's a lot of elements going on for regulatory advancements. Where we see the challenge is not so much on the front end. When we look at this, we see a single regulatory review to many, many reactors. On the front end with a manufacturing license or a design certification or something like that, that's achievable. It gets a little more challenging on the back end with the siting issues, with natural phenomenon issues like seismic, et cetera. So we really see the challenge on the back end. How do you get to a point where I can maybe regionally or with a lot of constraints, I can approve deployment of 100 reactors somewhere. I mean, that's the scale that we're talking about. And we need to be able to get this single review to many deployments on the back end. And I can say we've been in discussions with NRC, very, very receptive to those kinds of discussions. We're really pleased with the way those conversations are going. So we're very optimistic that we're gonna get there. Next slide. So kind of getting off the stage, we've seen this phrase rising to the moment at a number of the sessions. This is a big moment for us in nuclear. And we've got an opportunity to rise to it. We think BWXT has some capabilities that can come to the game and help that and make that happen. And we're working really actively on those deployment models because deploying a reactor in a technology sounds great, but I'm gonna use a word that's my word, it's not BWXT's word. We're really building an economy. We're building a microreactor economy that has to start with things like halo fuel, has to go through the entirety of the reactor deployment, the end user, what they really need, how we get the reactor back into a refurbishment or a storage state, and then ultimately dispose of it. And that's a whole sort of different economy than the light water reactors working with utilities. That's our challenge. It's what gets us up every day at BWXT. We love being in that challenge, so thank you. Thank you Steve, appreciate it. Kristi? Thank you. Well, I have to say I'm also really honored to be on this panel with such an inspiring and distinguished group. And I see really our job as helping to make all of you successful. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about what success kind of looks like, and it's really defined by speed and scale. Speed in terms of the need for generating assets to be on the ground by the 2030 timeframe, and scale I'll talk about, but I'm sure you're all aware of the kind of huge demand of clean, reliable energy to support the decarbonization and continued operation and growth without emissions of our most important industrial energy users that make our economies thrive and prosper. So let's talk about what the scale of that demand might look like. So we're talking about tens of gigawatts of demand for global data centers, tens of gigawatts of demand for scope one and two, upstream operations by 2030, tens of gigawatts of demand per year to decarbonize offshore, oil and gas operations and other marine applications, tens of gigawatts of demand for coal fleets in the United States, in Asia, in Ukraine, in central Eastern Europe, all within the 2030 timeframe. And what we hear is that major industrial energy users want to cost effectively decarbonize those existing generating assets that enables the continued operation of those assets leveraging their existing supply chains and capabilities and continuing to power the global economy without emissions, sustaining those jobs, sustaining the economic and social benefits that these companies are already providing and accelerating the commercialization and widespread deployment of these new, exciting new zero carbon technologies that we've just been hearing about. So there's a tremendous opportunity right now, but in order to seize that and realize that in that 2030 timeframe, there's some really important actions that have to start today. So we've been working with a range of these industrial energy users and they're evaluating whether nuclear energy could help them meet these decarbonization targets. For example, many companies in the oil and gas sector have 50% emissions reduction targets for scope one and two operations by 2030. And they've made commitments to decarbonize hundreds of gigawatts of onsite and distributed energy and they're concluding that having some of these manufactured reactors available would be really useful and actually could be their real preferred option. Now, it's worth noting that when I talk about sort of micro reactors, manufactured micro reactors in this context, and then I'm talking about tens of gigawatts of demand, you know, you might be wondering, well, how do we bridge that? How do we square that? Well, these manufactured reactors might start out as micro, but remember that most of the world's big, complex industrial machines that we have in the world today get made in factories and in world-class shipyards. And there's absolutely no reason that we can see why manufactured reactors couldn't actually get quite big and ultimately serve quite a large portion of the demand that I'm talking about today. But starting small is a great idea to start that learning and understand how we can deliver nuclear technology in a new way made in factories. So let me give you an example. So one group of companies that are interested in using micro reactors, the small ones, found 50 gigawatts of existing generators and turbines in their upstream operations, pumping, compression, operating today. So these are generating assets today in North America and that's a market for about 5,000 or between 5,000 and 10,000 of these micro reactors in the 2030 timeframe. So the micro reactors could achieve scale as well. But to achieve the speed and the scale that's required for these decarbonization targets, these companies need products, not construction projects. And confidence on cost and schedule is absolutely fundamental, a non-negotiable clear requirement. They need reactors that are mass manufactured, licensed in the factory, that can be rapidly deployed to existing facilities as completed products. They need a commercially viable licensing path that fits within the fast and predictable asset deployment process that they use already today. So that would require a licensing timeline that can enable a project decision, so identifying a need for a generating asset to that asset generating in the field within six months. So that would mean shifting the bulk of the NRC reactor licensing process into the manufacturing license, also ensuring that site specific deployments would be within the boundaries of the manufacturing license and can be therefore accomplished quickly and efficiently. It would mean developing a supplement to the advanced nuclear reactor, a generic environmental impact statement, specific for micro reactor deployments to generically disposition additional categories with little or no impact on the environment. It would mean evaluating the use of remote and autonomous operations. It would mean identifying licensing activities that can support a nuclear island that ensures the reactor safety while enabling configurable downstream applications. And it would mean coordinating with the Canadian regulator to ensure that deployments can happen there as well under those same conditions. And ultimately it means that the cost of licensing has to be less than 1% of the total project cost. So those are our commercially viable licensing pathway requirements. And to achieve the goal of those generating assets by 2030, we need to be licensing the technologies before that. We need to be standing up the manufacturing supply chains before that, and we need to be de-risking the commercially viable licensing path before that. So that will require working really closely, coordinating with the NRC, the industry working with all, the NRC working with all of the relevant stakeholders in order to really get alignment around how these requirements are going to be met from all parties in order to ensure that we have a really efficient process. And in order to ensure that technology vendors can design for those requirements, the supply chain manufacturing companies can be building the factories that can meet those requirements. And ultimately everybody needs to be able to see the risk going down. What we are, I guess I'm here to tell you that those industrials are ready to move. And we need a really high level of coordination to enable that to happen, to enable the licensing path to meet the speed of the industry. So thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you everybody. Wow, what a fascinating set of slides and insights. Thank you for doing that. Thanks for the acknowledgement of the work by the staff and the path ahead of us. Let me start with a few questions. To get us started, we have about 25 minutes or so, so plenty of time for a lot of good questions. Let's start with just a simple warmup of why microreactors. And in other words, what do you see as the most important benefits for microreactors relative to other reactors? So anyone can chime in on that question if you'd like to. Do you wanna start John there? Sure. When I think about microreactors broadly, one term comes to mind, and that is agility, which may be an odd term to apply to a nuclear reactor, but relative to gigawatt scale plants, for instance, I would say that microreactors can be described as agile. So, similar to my earlier comments about having an option for every decision you make is very much a reality with respect to this technology. And so, if I can humbly apply the word agility to microreactors, that's a term I would use. Yeah, John, just to add on, I would agree. Flexible, we talk about easily deployable. Does Christie, do you know those projections are what keep me up at night, by the way? So we talk about easily deployable. But also, what I see and what drives us in our thinking, too, is reliability. When you're, you know, these customers, they want something behind the grid. They need it. Some of these remote communities, if it doesn't operate, people don't live. People, you know, and so reliability really needs to drive these machines. And that's really, from a design point of view, that's what's driving us. So, why microreactors? We see, you know, it's the only option we see as far as becoming something that's easily deployable, flexible, and can achieve this kind of reliability. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned reliability. So, you know, you can get reliability by building the most robust machine ever, or you can get reliability by having several in some backups. So, microreactors do offer the opportunity to create that reliability in different ways, so. Okay, I'll just throw in another one word answer, which would be versatility. You know, I think one of the ways in which we'll achieve our global decarbonization goals within this short 25 years remaining to 2050 is by repurposing as much of our existing fossil infrastructure as possible. And that means substituting energy services that are being supplied today by fossil fuels with this kind of factory made technology that can be deployed to a whole range of different kinds of sites and facilities to enable heat and power and hydrogen to be provided, supplied, enabling continued operation of those assets, but without emissions. Well, let me stay with you. That was a great response. We're there, you know, where the microreactors fit. So, how do we catalyze that vision for a replacement by microreactors of these fossil facilities in industrial facilities? You know, how do we get there? Yeah, I mean, we heard in some of the presentations the discussions that are happening around, you know, the opportunities to co-locate these new technologies that have a radically different profile in terms of the potential safety and environmental impacts compared to, you know, more conventional technologies. It should be very feasible to deploy these, you know, nuclear batteries, these microreactors to be co-located with existing facilities and benefiting from much of the infrastructure and the skills, the skilled workforces that already are there and enable that rapid decarbonization and also enable the market scale to quickly enable, drive the investment in the manufacturing and factories essentially that are gonna be needed. Super, thank you. Anyone else comment on that? Okay, all right. Your presentations and talks so far are sort of painting a picture that a ton has been done, all right, a lot of thinking, a lot of aspirational thoughts and ideas and to, I mean, in my view, a lot still needs to be done. So to sustain that progress, where do you think the regulator and the industry need to focus? So I think what would be beneficial and I think we've started down that path is a more common understanding between the regulator and the industry of just how these business models are gonna work, which entities are gonna do which functions. I think the more we can inform the regulator, the more we can inform you, the more you can think forward and be flexible on what you can be part of the solution on because I know I'll, admittedly from BWXT, we probably haven't given you as much information on our business models as you would like or could use. And we met last week, that's gonna change. So looking forward to that. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, Duke. Yeah, I'd like to continue on that theme. So I've been working with Advanced Reactor Licensing and Policy for about three years and one thing that I've seen as a very important driver for the progress that's been made is the communication that's happened between all of the stakeholders and the NRC staff. And I'm not just talking about all of the developers but other members of the public as well. And we see, we get a lot of information through pre-application engagements, formally through regulatory engagement plans from developers, but also widespread participation in our periodic Advanced Reactor stakeholder meetings. And so in these four, we're able to get information that's not always perfect, not always complete, not final, but it's something to start moving forward with and thinking critically about what's gonna be needed to be successful in licensing and protecting public health and safety. So I think as we continue to go through addressing policy topics, it's gonna be critical to keep that open, transparent communication for NRC to keep its independence and to continue to work on these important topics. Thank you. Duke, let me stay with you a bit. So you shared a bit of insights about the SECI paper that we sent to the Commission with the number of policy issues that we're presenting. And Steve was kind enough to acknowledge his support or at least a pleasure with that paper. What else is the staff working on now that we're hearing where the industry's trying to go? Any ideas that you can share? Well, yeah, sure. So I showed this long list of topics that we've collected and that I think there were 15 or 17 topics on there. And those are collected from a commission paper that was written in 2020, the most recent commission paper, again through periodic Advanced Reactor Stakeholder meetings and other public meetings and interactions. And more recently in December, we had a discussion at one of our periodic Stakeholder meetings about priorities for the next topic. So at that point, we had already put out our draft white paper that became the most recent commission paper. And so we were ready to start thinking about what's next. And so the feedback that we heard during that meeting was that a lot of the topics that the NRC staff considers to be priorities line up with what stakeholders can consider to be priorities. And there are a number of them when you look at them together, such as citing issues, accelerating licensing processes, looking at different licensing frameworks that when you get these together, they really start to go towards what Chair Hansen has mentioned recently in his remarks, which is serial licensing or licensing, many, many reactors of exactly the same design. And I think we've heard about that from a couple of the panelists today. So I think this is an area where we can make a lot of impact and we have a lot of information already. Our priorities are lining up with other priorities. And so I think similar to what we did with this last paper, we'll start engaging more intentionally on what do we cover next in terms of micro-reactor licensing and deployment policy or guidance development. So I think there's just a lot of opportunities for really deeply streamlined how we conduct licensing reviews, how we issue licenses. And so it's an area where it really deserves a fresh look at how we do business and how we can optimize our processes for more of a widespread deployment model. Thank you, Duke. I appreciate it. I would add to Duke as well that... So Duke's described what we're doing on the licensing side. We're also recognizing that these facilities are going to be built and would need inspections and oversight during construction. And that's an area that we're also applying a fair amount of focus to develop a program that's appropriately scaled, appropriately risk-informed and performance-based to recognize the risk of the facility, apply that in the footprint that we would be looking to apply, and also recognize the first of a kind versus second versus nth of a kind and be able to grade and support in that regard. So a lot is going on in that area as well. So thanks, Duke. Mike and Steve, that's a question to you guys. A larger number of topical reports and white papers have been submitted and reviewed by NRC. How important have these became or become and why are they increasing in use by advanced reactor developers? You mean, it's not like this? I can start, Steve, yeah. To us, it's incredibly important. We, you're with a new design, you can't wait till you have it all designed before we bring it to the regulator and only find out what we're even thinking. So we've used this, we've put over the past several years over 30 white papers with you all got invaluable feedback. We used those same white papers and I'll say we put a Canadian view on it and have used those with the Canadian, the same white papers with the Canadian regulator. So it's really important for us to get that feedback early so that we can factor that in. Also, I think it's important for us to tell you what we're looking at from our business model. You know, I remember when we first talked about factory fueling, what does that mean? What does it mean to do 10 reactors a year or 50 reactors a year and start thinking about what that means and the implications? You know, we obviously have to get to a standard design, a standard licensing process, get as much of that operations piece of it into that standard approach so we can design license once, build many. And I think we do need to get that back end licensing to a six month kind of a window. And the only way you can start having those ideas is getting these early engagement, these white papers. So to us, it's been invaluable as a step forward. Thanks, Mike. Steve, anything to add? Yeah, no, I appreciate what Mike said. It's exactly true. If you can bring closure to technical questions, technical issues, policy issues, if you can bring closure to those things early, then you're a game up. And I have actually seen, thinking back to our Empower days, I've actually seen more motivation from NRC on the white papers to give more definitive responses to those things in recent years. And that's really, really important. Even if the answer's no, saying no early is helpful because no, we know where to move. So definitely appreciate that. Thank you, and thank you for your thoughts on that. And from a regulator's perspective, it was, we did recognize from the beginning that there are questions associated with the technology. There are questions associated with the compatibility of the technology with the regulatory framework. So there were always feedback that were given about the US approach and the ability to do stage licensing. And this is as close as we were able to get to be able to provide sort of a stage licensing to the extent that we could as much of definitive information as possible. The discussion about cost also that was important to us to address. So we devised a number of sets. You can have verbal feedback, you can have feedback through slides and alike. So we're able to scale to what supports the needs. And the question has a great point in it that we're seeing an expansion of the user. In other words, it's useful, it's adding value of industries. It's feeling that it's actually supporting them. One of the stats I didn't mention, so the slide had on it 90 over the past five or six years or so, we're thinking at least seven you just over the next year and a half in our calc. So that the expansion is meaningful. So thanks for that. Duke, this is a question for you. For factory fabric, I'm sorry, for factory manufacturers, reactors, any consideration for a combined manufacturing, SNM, special nuclear material, and transportation licenses instead of separate license applications? Well, there are provisions in the regulations for combining applications and combining proceedings for various applications. So I think there are ways that efficiencies can already be achieved without actually making all of that one single license. I know that as we've heard from other panelists, there's an idea that maybe we can drive into the manufacturing license some things that might typically be held for a combined license or a construction permit or operating license. So these are ideas that we wanna continue to engage on and that I think we'll be having more dialogue on in the future. But I think right now, we do have ways to gain efficiencies through the current regulatory processes to make those various aspects of the deployment model able to be looked at at the same time upfront. Thanks, Duke. Chrissy, this one is for you. Can you share more about the potential to deploy microreactors for natural disaster response efforts? What are the benefits of doing so? Well, as we've been hearing, it's possible to have standardized products licensed in a factory that can be moved to a location within a relatively short timeframe. And that sounds like a pretty good set of conditions for emergency response. One thing that we haven't talked about today, but just to sort of add this in is the interest in shipyard manufactured reactors. Of course, world-class shipyards are the highest productivity manufacturing environments in the world. So there are different kind of factory, if you like. And those shipyards could be manufacturing reactors for terrestrial deployments, but they could also be making reactors that are located on barges that could be deployed in emergency response as well. And that could be a very fast and effective way to respond to emergencies in coastal regions, but actually also deployments through big rivers as well. Super, thank you. This is a question for the NRC staff, so that's not me, that's Duke. You mentioned manufacturing licenses, but in the past, the agency has said there does not appear to be any interests in such licenses. Has that changed and have any vendors indicated plans to use manufacturing licenses? And also, could the reactor vendors answer the question as well? Do they plan on using them? So just getting back to the question itself, it is true that, I'll start, Duke, and you can fill in. It is true that manufacturing licenses have not been used before, but I would honestly say that it needed microreactors to be used, so they go hand in hand. It was, in my view, it was a visionary instrument, if you would, put in the regulations in anticipation of such products coming into the future. So I think the fact that they have not been used, it does not imply that they're not useful or a valuable instrument. Their time wasn't there yet, but I would say now the time is approaching and it's here, in my view. But let me go to Steve and Mike. Any interest in the industry in terms of using a manufacturing license? Yeah, absolutely. So when I spoke to the commission on part 53, I said, BWXT is very interested in a manufacturing license. I think today we're at the point where that is the most useful path forward for what we're gonna try to do. So that, we were very interested then. We think it's a path forward today. Get to here. Thank you. We concur. And I think there's details to work out, but we intend to pursue that in exactly what that looks like in practice. We wanna get the process license, the manufacturing process, the manufacturing license. We wanna leave in the factory ready to go. We don't want another 100 or 500 ITACs sitting at the site waiting for us to, for our microreactor mode. But the other piece of that is really, and so the interesting thing we're kinda dealing with too is okay, for a reactor that's gonna go in Canada, what does that look like if we're gonna be building this in the US and exactly how do they provide their oversight there? So we see maybe a manufacturing license, but maybe fueling the reactor under the licensee license. So we have to figure this out, but it does make it interesting when you talk about building a reactor in one country and you're gonna send it to another, so. Thanks, Mike. And to build on that, what Duke said is really important, the ability to combine licenses. You don't know exactly how the business model is gonna work out, but if you've already integrated from the point of making fuel to delivering a reactor, that there are many different kinds of safety analyses, tools that go into that from a Part 70 license or, so it's vitally important to figure out that business model and figure out just how many licenses you're gonna combine or how many are gonna be separate. And we're actually going through that. Thanks, Steve. John, we heard throughout the panel actually the discussion about autonomous ops or automated operations, remote operations. I'll just be blunt. How far are we from getting there? How do we get there? So this is a very interesting topic because it's a key to economics, I think is most economical operation of microactors, as most would agree. On the flip side, we can easily find ourselves in front of our headlights if we go too far, too fast, but the good news is we have very robust advanced sensors that we're looking at in various research and development programs. Again, to enable robust structural health monitoring and monitoring of the reactor in and of itself. So it's an incredible opportunity, in my opinion, with microactor technology owing to their simplicity to deploy this sort of technology and get used to it. I would stop short of saying we're gonna come out of the gate with fully autonomous operation, but clearly there's room for deployment of automated schemes and automated working in conjunction with limited staffing. But even beginning to consider autonomous operation, we want reliable decision making, we wanna remove the human in the loop to the extent possible. Again, I'll stress that if there's ever a nuclear technology that's synergistic with progress in this space, it's microactors. Thank you, John. I echo that. We all wanna get there, but we gotta get there in a responsible way. We need to demonstrate at first that how reliable they are. We were in front of the ACRS describing the Vinci and our engineers. We're describing how it operated and the ACRS kept asking, yes, but do you require an operator? And I think our engineers were afraid to say yes. And then we finally said, yes, we have a reactor trip switch, don't worry, and they said it's good. Exactly what we're looking for. So yes, but it is a vision, it's where we wanna get to, but I think we gotta get there step at a time. I agree, I agree. So we're coming down to the end of our session here, but there's one question I really wanted to ask before we leave, but are we doing enough to strengthen public confidence in the safety and the viability of this new technology? Anyone? Shall I go? Yes, please. Everyone's looking at me. Yes, right. Well, you'll be much better at it. So the first thing to say is that the independent, highly effective, rigorous, authoritative, qualified, professional regulator that we have is fundamental to public confidence. So thank you, NRC, for being the sort of first port of call in building and maintaining public confidence. And actually, as we all know, nuclear energy has an unmatched safety track record in terms of any other generating technology, right? So that's partly because of the commitment on professionalism and quality of the way that the nuclear industry operates and through the interaction with the regulator. So that's the fundamental way that we will maintain and sustain public confidence. But ultimately, in order to really sort of achieve the same levels of confidence that the other energy infrastructures and energy generators enjoy, we have to normalize this technology, which means we have to start deploying it at scale, making it much less unusual, much less sort of boutique and peculiar, and just fully normalizing it and maintaining those standards and continuing to deliver, you know, those excellent outcomes for humans and for the environment and for the economy and for society at large. So kind, thank you. Thanks very much. What a fabulous panel, a heartwarming to our audience. Thank you. Thank you for your thoughtful questions and for your engagement with us and get home safe. See you next year.