 Okay, let me first introduce The moderator today This is Susie and Suzanne Savarowsky She serves the US Department of Department of Energy in the office of nuclear energy as senior advisor And in a role she serves as the liaison between the office and the secretary of energy and the White House she has been one of the Most visionary person I've met In nuclear sector. She has been helping us not only Advocate nuclear energy, but also has been very proactive in Especially in the public sector in outreaching nuclear energy to public so you know She is the one who created this very important and Impactful event called Millennial Nuclear Caucus where young people gather together and then You know have a conversation about nuclear and the future of nuclear energy So and more importantly, she's a Hoosier and also she is a proud mom of three boiler makers so it is So it is it gives me a distinct pleasure and honor to introduce to you all as a moderator for today's panel Mrs. Suzanne Savarowsky. Thank you Thank you so much. Dr. Kim Thank you students staff faculty for being here. It's my pleasure and a great honor to be here at Purdue I'm I'm super impressed with Purdue and like dr. Kim said I have three of my four children 75% of my kids are boiler makers So I know for sure from firsthand Experience what a great school Purdue is and the bright future that each of you has in front of you So it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having all of us this distinguished panel here today And also for hosting back in March when dr. Kim had us here and I would say the same about dr. Kim He is a visionary leader. He's an enthusiastic leader for the nuclear engineering department He's been a great host and a great friend to me. So thank you so much And now it's my pleasure to introduce this great panel today, and I would like to Invite each of you to please be interactive with this panel This is what will make this experience the best for everyone here in this room Is if you feel comfortable asking questions and there's no Stupid question to ask every question that comes into your mind might be something that someone else is thinking of also So please feel free to ask these very reputable people here who have great experiences to share Ask them the questions, and I want to point out. I brought some pictures of what nuclear will look like in the future How small modular reactors will be integrated into different scenarios? And the first five people to ask questions of the panel will be able to take their pick of those Pictures and take them home. So I hope that that will encourage you even more to be open and ask some questions so I want to introduce our panel and the way that we'll do this is I'll introduce each person and Then each person will have a few minutes to talk about what they do and give you some framework for their Experiences and where they see nuclear going in the future in the next hundred and fifty years Purdue has made great contributions to the area of nuclear engineering and engineering in our world And so having these folks here to talk about what's coming in the future is a great honor So you heard Bill Magwood's Credentials and heard about him and all that he's done having been the Ne1 which is the leader of the office of nuclear energy at the US Department of Energy He also served as a commissioner on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now is the director general of the Nuclear Energy Agency out of Paris and More importantly than all of his credentials I've had the pleasure to introduce Bill in the past and I can also say that he's not just had a lot of titles He's done a lot of things that have produced a lot of results And so some of the significant things that he's done that have created results have been to develop Nuclear Engineering University program funding and scholarships that have turned out people who've made a difference in the world And so Bill just doesn't hold titles He's created results. So we're thrilled to have Bill Magwood here and then Tim Hanley Tim is with Exelon He has served he is the senior vice president of operation support for Exelon Mr. Hanley is currently a senior VP He is responsible for corporate functional areas that provide governance and oversight to 23 reactors in the Exelon fleet Prior to his current role Tim worked for Exelon's nuclear operations lead on matters related to public policy issues associated with nuclear plant operations Tim works closely with Exelon's government and regulatory affairs and public policy group Providing his operational knowledge and expertise on various current and future public policy issues related to nuclear operations Previously, Mr. Hanley was a senior vice president for West operations He was responsible for Exelon generations Dresden and Quad City stations and had executive oversight for the Fort Calhoun nuclear station Which Exelon operates but is owned by Omaha Public Power District Previously he held positions as senior vice site vice president And also served as the director of engineering at Dresden and director of Midwest operations Warrenville, Illinois his career has mainly been spent in roles of increasing Responsibility at quite Quad Cities Hanley holds a master's of business administration from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa And a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from Purdue University Welcome Tim Hanley. Thanks Susie Next we have Trees Gribble Trees is deputy associate administrator for programs for the space technology mission directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington DC Trees Gribble began serving as the deputy associate administrator for programs within the space technology missions directorate the STMD at NASA headquarters in June 2017 in this capacity. She provides executive leadership and Management of the technology programs within STMD with an annual investment of approximately $600 million. She's responsible for budget planning and allocation of resources and serves as the final decisional authority For project content ensuring that technology investments align with the NASA strategic plans and roadmaps Trees began her career at Glenn in 1991 in 2002 she established and managed the technology program for advanced Radio isotope power conversion technologies at NASA headquarters in Washington DC From 2003 to 2005 She was the technology manager and deputy spacecraft manager for Prometheus project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL in Pasadena, California So this is a little bit of Big Bang Theory happening here in real life Prometheus was envisioned by the first nuclear electric propulsion deep space mission for NASA from 2007 to 2010 She was the chief of Glenn's manufacturing division that fabricated instrumented and assembled the upper stage simulator for Aries I through X one through ten Launched in October 2009 as the first test flight for the Aries one vehicle a native of Northeast Ohio Teresa's the recipient of several NASA Awards including the outstanding leadership medal She holds a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering and a master's of business administration from Cleveland State University in Cleveland Welcome to Reese Grebel Next we have our friend professor left Terry Suca Calcas He's a professor and former head of the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois Illinois at Sherp Champaign Urbana and has over three decades of experience in IA Methodologies and with over 250 research publications in the area Including a book entitled fuzzy and neutral approaches in engineering Dr. Suca Calcas is the founding director of Purdue's AI labs AISL and has served in advisory and consulting positions for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna The agency for space technology and research of the governments of Singapore and the US Department of Energy He's a fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 2009 he was awarded the Humboldt Prize Germany's highest honor for international scientists welcome professors to caucus And last but surely not least we have a student representative I think probably among the most important voice that we have on the panel today To be able to shape what the reality is for the future of nuclear. We have so Sophie Wydenbenner Did I say that right? Okay. Welcome Sophie. She's currently a senior in nuclear engineering at Purdue University She supports at Purdue. She supports work done by the Applied Intelligence Systems Laboratory working with Dr. Sue caucus On projects funded through the consortium for non-proliferation enabling capabilities Sophie has completed two internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which I can tell you that's a very impressive Experience to have where she has participated in the Lannell keeping non-proliferation Keep in non-proliferation summer school. She has also served as an ambassador for the School of Nuclear Engineering for the past two years Please welcome Sophie. And with that, I'd like to have each panelist give a little bit of a preview and discussion about your experience I feel like I've already talked too much today Well, as you heard I've spent The first well, I spent the first part of my career in the industry I worked at Westie house when I came out of school and then moved to Washington and Became involved in the electric utility business I worked for a trade association called the Edison Electric Institute, which is where I most became involved in policy Before moving to DOE whereas I shared with Susie today that I still stand as long as serving political pointy in DOE history Where I was there 11 years seven years of which I ran the civilian nuclear technology program and it was really during that period that I probably gave the most the deepest thought to You know the future and what was needed and at the time it was very clear to me that Laying the groundwork for young people to come into the nuclear business was absolutely essential to the future And as I think I shared in the mid 90s This was really in question There were a lot of people who thought that the whole discipline of nuclear engineering was was phasing out and we would see it go Away, and it's not far-fetched because we we've lost disciplines. You know, we've lost essentially there's there's so there's so little radiochemistry Opportunities for training around around the United States today So it's really depressing and there's other disciplines where we also have lost a lot of capacity so nuclear engineering could have gone that way unfortunately it didn't because it enabled us to To see all of you here today and to be talking about what the future might be My time at NRC was much more of a time where I thought much more about safety than I had in the past I used to used to joke that you know, for example, my job was to make nuclear waste not worry about cleaning it up So I do worry about nuclear waste a lot more now than I did back then and And I think that over the years I've been able to see that Now that I'm particularly with an international organization that the problems that we see are not Unique to any country. They really are global problems in the same issues country after country situation after situation we have to face and so I guess the perspective that I have now is that we have a shared future and Certainly countries like the US can display a lot of leadership But it's got to be leadership on behalf of the whole global population not not just not just us it's got to be part of the overall Achievement of humankind and I think that that's the kind of perspective that perhaps we once had but it's so much harder to do today because everyone is so constrained in terms of money and time and attention and So I think we have to get back to thinking in terms of those Save the world save the future kind of of of ethos That I think we once had back when people like Neil Armstrong We're thinking about taking those first steps, you know those things like that don't happen without vision And I think that's what we have to recreate that that sense of vision a sense of purpose and a sense of direction Thanks Bill Tim Thanks, Susie as Susie mentioned I spent my entire career with excellent or prior to that It was commonwealth Edison through a series of mergers. You know became the entity that we are today It would talk a lot and bill mentioned the financial pressures on a lot of nuclear plants and what you know People may not realize that is actually a fairly recent phenomenon You know actually the week prior to Fukushima We were at a meeting that was talking about the nuclear renaissance There is going to be 30 new reactors under construction being built You know the NRC staffed up because they're going to be have to be reviewing so many new licenses and two things Happened and everybody thinks a lot about the Fukushima, but that really Wasn't what drove the issue the two things that happened was horizontal drilling and fracking That drove down the price of natural gas to the point where And I could go on and on about the markets But drove down the price of natural gas that took away the high end of how we were making money when the when it used to be When you brought a natural gas plan on that set the market and we were making a bunch of money With low-cost natural gas that drove that down along with that the large influx of renewables That were put on the grid without really looking at how they would impact the grid Took away the low-end so there are times at some of our plants There are so much unneeded wind energy Congesting the transmission system we see negative pricing for the electricity that the nuclear plants are making so essentially We are paying to produce that electricity over that time period even though it's clear you need that nuclear plant energy When the wind goes away, and it is going to go away So the unpredictability of the renewables being put on the grid at places that weren't well engineered You know hit us on the low end so those two things really squeezed the profits Significantly particularly for the commercial nuclear power plants the ones that are not part of a regulated utility So that really all came together less than 10 years ago So it's relatively new but the losses can be so large you see a lot of companies getting out Of the commercial nuclear business if they're not part of their regulated utility, and that's why you see so many plant closings So, you know my my vision of the future for nuclear is kind of two-fold one is Whatever there is whatever we're gonna build whatever's gonna be out there in 150 years has to be much more flexible The plants we have now are generally designed to be baseload plants. We have a little bit of operating margin and we actually in excellent Load follow some of our plants now with their uncertain constraints Maybe interesting if you you know when I was actually a nuclear engineer 31 years ago Quad Cities We would put the plant in what was called economic generation control We would set limits on the research pump speeds We'd push a button and the load dispatcher in Lombard, Illinois would actually control the power of the reactor I'm pretty sure the NRC would never ever license that again But what it does it also means you're not operating at full power You can't allow it to ramp all the way to full power. So you give up some of that that top end So there is some flexibility, but whatever there is in the future has got to be more compatible With the intermittent renewables that I think are going to be a larger and larger part of the portfolio The second part is I think they have to be more inherently safe And from that standpoint is we've always accepted with the current type of reactors that we have That the fuel if not cooled can melt and everything all the designs put into that and the safety systems are to ensure that we don't Leave the fuel without cooling. I Think the technology we should be pursuing and Bill mentioned accident tolerant fuel Create a fuel that can't melt Once you do that not only does it lower the cost of the nuclear power plant The people become much more accepting of it because you no longer hear the core melt scenario Which becomes so scary to so many people so I think 150 years from now You know those two hurdles should be fairly easily overcome and if we're really gonna meet our goals for both environmental and Energy security nuclear has got to be a big part of that Thanks, Tim trees Thanks, Susie so As Susie said I'm from NASA and NASA is going forward to the moon and then to Mars and beyond with humans and This is in is consistent with the president of the United States Space policy directives that he signed almost a year ago And the one the first space policy directive is to have sustainable existence of humans it at the moon and beyond and The sustainability is really going to necessitate higher power systems and so The expectation is that we will have to have like a surface power reactor in order to survive the lunar night I mean sustainability me probably means more than a week, right? So so the the nuclear surface power reactor will be necessary for sustainability and the nuclear and we're also developing Nuclear thermal propulsion systems within my organization. So NASA is organized into four mission directorates one's aeronautics That's the first a in NASA The other three have to do with space One is science, which is all those really fancy science missions robotic missions. We see JPL landing rovers are doing flybys in in deep space And Goddard space lights that are does more the earth-observing ones and then the human exploration Mission directorate does the human operations where we operate with astronauts at the International Space Station and hopefully go back to the moon and beyond The fourth mission directorate is the one that I am in which is the space technology mission directorate and when we do missions in the science mission directorate and the human exploration mission directorate usually they're cost-capped and they are Very rigorously managed. We're not allowed to have it's not acceptable to have failures It's not acceptable to exceed certain costs And you can't miss your launch date because usually well because Mars doesn't stay where it is and nothing stays where it is in space so What we do in the space technology mission directorate is we develop those technologies in advance of them being necessary for meeting the mission and objectives and the vision of the president and so We are doing all manner of technology development. We have five themes. It's go live Go land live explore and prosper and go has to do with transportation landing is safely getting there Exploring and living have to do with the life support systems and the instruments that are necessary and prosper really has to do with the Commercialization how do we get a commercial market to benefit from going on these exploration missions? And so within this the portfolio of technologies that I managed They're very low technology readiness level all the way up through flight Demonstrations and within my portfolio right now the two major nuclear things one is the nuclear surface powered technology That hopefully will be able to flight demonstrate in the mid 2020s and the nuclear thermal propulsion Development in order to reduce trip time to get humans to Mars To hopefully reduce the amount of radiation. They're exposed to and improve their life and their health Thank You Trace left Terry Thank You Suzanne for leadership and the Rejuvenating and revitalizing leadership that you bring to our campus and our community and the national community I Also like to thank Bill Magwood director general Magwood is an old friend from About 20 years ago when he really did a lot more than I could talk about in the limited time We have about nuclear engineering education and nuclear universities in the United States I hope some time in the future somebody puts this in a history book Because it's an interesting compelling story of leadership Also, I'd like to thank professor Kim for his leadership his leading our school and together with Suzanne and the people at DOE are Really providing a vision now they're formulating a vision and I guess this is what we're here to Look to look at the future as a form of vision the future is Illusive and as a lot of you know those who live by the glass ball Are destined to eat glass? But I'll I'll I'll try to do this exercise In part as an AI exercise, so I'll talk about five things first How we formulate the future as a function of the past and the present so we need to know where We are and where we have come how we have gotten here and why we do this Why is the future so important for us? Why do we talk about 150 years later? second How we look at the future what kind of lens what kind of telescope we use for the future and Third what's the role in the future of AI AI sort of the Will be has been but will be much more so 150 years into the future the the guardian angel of nuclear technology and that's important for The this the third reason which is that with AI we can Ensure the stability of global arrangements vis-a-vis nuclear that is we address an operation problem not at the expense of nuclear energy, but in order to promote nuclear energy and make it available For humanity we do know that in the foreground of our future Nuclear is there and that's very comforting It's great to know that we can cover the needs of humanity for the next 10,000 years or so the third thing has to do with the some of the particulars of this Guardianship the angelic guardianship, you know how what would nuclear technology and especially nuclear energy look like about 150 years from now and the fifth Has to do with the the broad role of AI in nuclear that Spawns the health and happiness, you know, we're going through a revolution now in Due to the genome In in in health in imaging a lot of this has to do with the advancements, you know that Visualization allows us to do and look at technology at the research all the way to the clinical level so If I can take a moment for the first the bridge to the future We look at the future because the future is an infrastructure for generating meaning in our lives the future is where We all know we're here for a limited period of time, but humanity will be there and contributing to humanity is Making our lives meaningful Making our efforts disciplined and focused so the future could be fantasy as in entertainment Which is a wonderful thing for certain things, but it could also be approached rationally So the question is then how do we look at the future? Obviously for the engineers for the scientists, we know that 150 years down the road is not a linear Extrapolation from the present. It's too far out, but think about it for a moment There were people here 150 years ago that almost About 150 years ago that call themselves produced students and Purdue faculty. How was their world was not? The same as today, but it was not so different. They knew about In the 1870s, they knew about Maxwell's equations. They knew about statics about dynamics that could be bridges They knew about boiler makers. They could transform heat to mechanical work Sure, they didn't know about quantum mechanics. They didn't know about nuclear physics and maybe Semiconductors and so forth you need modern physics for that But I bet in about a year they could manage and they could learn a lot of what we do know today to be updated to be to be like Most of us here so That means that a hundred fifty years from now We look at this we create this telescope and we start from the present and the past for this Telescope and in order to to get there the material for the lenses and the telescope to the future has to be mostly developmental principles They there are developmental principles that guide a relation to humanity and society like the great cultural anthropologist Tadao umesau the Japanese anthropology Kyoto University professor. He studied the nomadic populations the relations with nature was able to categorize and create a lot of a lot of interesting perspectives and frameworks for history and for What we call now? information society We look at developmental principles that affect our internal world like lies Heinz Werner's developmental principles around the personality and the cognitive development with the principle of on the genesis and so when we We look at the future because that is what generates meaning for our life The way we do it is through the lenses of science We can do it through science through fantasy, but you know science and developmental principles And when we do that as an exercise We will see that AI will be the connecting material for a lot of the pieces of the puzzle that are missing for us Today to make nuclear science and technology Safe for the global arrangements, but also for the needs of humanity. So as far as the global arrangements I think in about 150 years from now. We would have Artificial intelligence Holding a lot of things together in what would be Global monitoring system a kind of global radar system that could track nuclear materials of interest from cradle to grave And that's not a small deed to achieve, but I think it's possible it will be done We're in some ways working today in some of these key elements of the problem, but doing this we will make non-preferential more robust and stronger and at the same time help us to Utilize nuclear fuels the nuclear fuel cycle for the production of energy With no fear that there will be diversions and number and perforation activities that lead to weaponry so AI will ensure the global arrangements vis-a-vis number iteration, but also contribute to a new generation of Power machines small or large like a director general Magwood described like Tim Henley also You know described there'll be flexibility No corbel towns maybe a lot more a lot following a convergence of AI big data and quantum computing will probably revolutionize the way that energy is distributed as a service more so than as a commodity with the economics of You know price-directed demand, you know being feeding signals for nuclear to operate in a far more flexible and distributed way So that's there then the fourth thing. I mean the fifth thing in the last thing AI will be there in Creating a Virtual I should say a data space for each human being that comes to earth That leaves behind not just the birth records and the educational degrees and so forth, but a lot of the health you know information Blood of I mean a drop of blood at the moment of birth will probably give a lot of guidance for how This person can can live and what to watch out. We will have longer life spans healthier people more productive To do this AI will be also part of the education of these individuals So in cyberspace there will be a virtual sort of self with a lot of this data all around it That includes health and education and you know commercial activities, etc. Hobbits are the things, you know that Google collects data from but also and I think it more importantly it will be also a tool for looking into for connecting and leaving Significant contributions of the individual in for the future for the for the generations that come and especially in nuclear This is very important because we're talking about a knowledge that spawns will span decades Technologies that will last for about a hundred years or so and so having the capacity to to be in a Dialogue with previous generations and to live knowledge for future generations will be one of the extraordinary Accomplishments of artificial intelligence. Thank you. Thank you left Terry Sophie Thanks, so as a student on this panel My role today is basically just to share my perspective on the future of nuclear energy So I figured the best way to do that would be to start out by sharing how I came to choose nuclear engineering as my career And then I'll also talk a little bit about the perspectives that I've gained so far as a student So to start Whenever I was a senior in high school. I became intrigued with the idea of working with alternative energy as a career So that's ultimately what led me to engineering But back in the day I wasn't too sure on the discipline that I wanted to get into so some of my Classmates that are in the audience today know that I actually started out my college career in chemical engineering And back then nuclear engineering was in my mind. I knew about it, but I didn't see it as a practical option I thought that the job opportunities would be too limited But towards the end of my freshman year I started speaking with students and faculty in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Eventually I came to realize that the industry is actually very vast and it's very exciting And as my proof of my belief in that I'm here today as a student ambassador for the School of Nuclear Engineering And yeah, so ultimately I chose nuclear engineering based on the belief that nuclear energy is a very important alternative energy That we should be pursuing both now and in the future So talking a little bit about my experiences so far as a student throughout a lot of my undergraduate career I've been involved in research that has to do with non-proliferation And though it may not seem like an obvious jump from working with nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear security Towards what I originally wanted to do, which was helping the growth of nuclear energy They actually go hand-in-hand pretty well from what I've experienced So through my research here at Purdue and through working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is a place that specializes in nuclear security I've been able to see that the developments being made in non-proliferation are Very very important for the future of nuclear energy Basically the proliferation risks associated with the industry need to be mitigated in order for nuclear energy to Continue into the future So through my work at Los Alamos I've been exposed to a lot of projects and research that's currently happening in the field of non-proliferation And it makes me really excited and hopeful for the future of nuclear energy And though I'm currently still a student and definitely not an expert on anything nuclear related I am very excited to build a career in this industry and I look forward to helping the future of nuclear energy Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. So let's turn it over to you. Who's our first question? Yes, ma'am Do we have any microphones to pass around? Here we go Sorry, I think I hit that a little soon for you ladies, but they're on it. They're on it. They'll get you a microphone real quick So a big problem that has been addressed in a lot of your speak Speeches has been simply the cost of developing new nuclear energy So in your opinions, what needs to change with the economic and political climates to make nuclear energy more attainable Thank you Well well first of all Yeah, we're good. Well one thing I would I was sort of echo what Mr. Hanley just said a few minutes ago about about the nexus between cost and safety You know, I was listening and I think you may you may have used the word inherently safe or something like that I think I would actually turn that around and see what we need is nuclear. That's inherently cheap You know and because the safety is is is a given if it's not if it's not doesn't have high levels of safety You're not gonna be allowed to operate anyway so what you need is it is technologies to get you there at much much much much lower cost and This I think Can create a conversation about about light water reactors. We were having this conversation earlier today We have a lot of experience light water reactors light water I I'll share with you. I had a I've had a series of conversations with with people even older than me who Have some History with the very early days of nuclear and I've asked this question and a question. I have asked is If you when you think back about everything, you know about what's happened over the last 50 years of the nuclear industry If you could do it all over again would you pick light water reactor technology to be the technology for for nuclear and and Almost every one of the one was more has almost every one of them said no probably would not have chosen light water technology and In one of them she highlighted to me that if you go back and you look light water technology was selected only because It already had been developed by the Navy for submarine use. So it was one thing we had it was there We were ready it was already to go so we were able to implement it quickly but if you go back and you look at the you go look back and look at you know speeches and And articles are written virtually none of the Early pioneers thought that light water was going to really last that long He thought was like an end of sort of an interim step and they actually all thought it was going to go the sodium cool fast Reactors very quickly. That's where they thought the future was so so I think that part of it is that To me especially if you look along the term I Personally do believe that we will move away from light water technology I think it's it's it is a technology that's hard to do cheaply And if we're going to be successful, we have to see the cost levels go down dramatically Now before we get to that point where we have revolutionary technologies we have to operate the the technologies we have the best we can and I would I absolutely agree with what what with what he said a few minutes go about the market situation The market situation is such that Today's nuclear plants are going to struggle unless they get some kind of extra help or support or unless those conditions change So I don't think you can cut costs enough to to fit into the market as it exists But what you can do is you can look at reducing costs using Big data artificial intelligence and other technologies reducing the cost of operating plants making better decisions reducing The regulatory burden you can do all these things, but you're only going to be able to go so far to reduce those costs The only way to go further is actually that the change to change the technology And I think ultimately especially we look long-term. That's what's got to happen. I Think all of that's true. I think part of the issue is the speed at which we do things though You know that the plants that were being built in South Carolina that were banded and the two in Georgia Have now been going on their years past when they're supposed to be You know done there are plants in the UAE that were built by a Korean company that were finished two of them on time under budget They have regulatory issues because they really have no framework to actually load fuel into them But the actual physical part of the plants are done and we're done very well very cheaply and again ahead of time so It can be done. We're just not very good at it in the United States at this point The other thing from a speed standpoint if you look at the time period from Chicago pile one the first human-made Sustained nuclear reaction was in 1942 Dresden unit one which was the first commercially financed nuclear reactor came online in 1960 So that was 18 years From even proving you could do it to have something in commercial operation We just don't move that fast anymore from a regulatory standpoint from an industry standpoint And I think I was talking to dr. Kim earlier The first thing we need to do is start building because what you do once you build you learn and You learn what you did wrong what you did right start small Learn from that and keep moving forward, but there's been this gigantic Gap in actually starting to construct anything that that we just flounder and redesign on paper And until you actually start putting you know concrete down and start putting metal down That's when you really learn from it And I think that's the first step is start building something so we can learn from it and get all the things Bill talked about earlier moving the supply chain the people's interest the support Until we do that I think we'll be Just struggling to keep the current fleet of plants running Make a really quick comment because it's a very important point But I would has what would make the note that it's not just nuclear the suffers from that it really if you look at almost any technological Industry it takes vastly longer to design and build almost everything than it did back in say the 1960s, I mean aerospace is very similar at the time It takes to put a new a new plane in the air is is it's hugely longer than it was when we first start We built seven. Oh, I forgot the time of building in 707, but what it was like a few years now. It's like a decadal Exercise and design a new airline. So it's not just it's not just nuclear. It's it's really how we do engineering It's how we do projects in the modern world so there's a there's a challenge here though you have a good question about how do we bring the cost down and Timing and longevity and Repeating and getting out there and just doing it Is the answer we're hearing but so if we I would be interested from your point of view because in your generation Look at what's happened just in the last few years when if there's a need for an app that app gets developed right away If there's a new opportunity you've had how many different cell phone iterations has everybody in this room had We've seen technology move extremely quickly for your generation So your expectations must be not in line with 17 18 20 years to build something that can be done Can you make a comment about that time frame? Yeah, that's Very interesting. So like you guys are all hitting on the past and we're seeing a trend there I don't know just being a part of my generation it It's different with technology nowadays and the way it's progressing. I mean, I think it's I think we're hopeful for the future for Using the way tech. We're using technology now to see if we can apply it and make things speed up as you were as you were saying And if I could just add to that what I'm seeing is the shift in the evolution of the product line If you will in nuclear it is getting much smaller and thus less expensive The first one of course is still extremely expensive compared to some other fuel sources But as we move from a large AP 1000 type product Product to a small modular reactor or a micro reactor, which the Department of Defense is looking at putting on all of the military facilities all around the world that kind of smaller evolved product if you will makes it a more Affordable proposition and then being able to have the government be the first purchaser and place Many of them all around the world will help drive the cost down is as part of the plan too. So thank you for your question Other questions. Yes orange shirt next sorry to call you orange shirt, but that's You can sit down you've got that Tennessee shirt. No That's okay. Well, I just want to say thank you guys for coming out today You guys have touched on nuclear non-proliferation. I know Dr. Sucalice you talked about the future of AI in tracking fuels But as we become a more global society and nuclear technology spreads that opens the door for new possibilities for terrorists or other state actors to get their hands on weapons-grade plutonium uranium and other materials. What are some of the challenges you think industry faces in tackling these issues and is this something that Is going to go away after a while or is this something that's always going to be an issue for industry to Overcome good question. Thank you. Well from the industry standpoint. I mean we never handle Uranium that's weapons-grade. We're limited by NRC regulations the enrichment we can put in to the fuel, which is not certainly even close to weapons-grade And really neither is the plutonium plutonium is just Easier to make a bomb out of than uranium 235 My view on this has always been if somebody has the technology to take spent nuclear fuel and transport it disassemble it Turn it back in to something where they can run it through a centrifuge to make it into bomb-grade plutonium They probably don't need the spent nuclear fuel You know, there's there's others they could just go get raw uranium, right? I mean if they've got truly the technology and the capability of Taking spent nuclear fuel and and getting it all the way to bomb-grade They're gonna get it from just getting raw uranium So I think that that part of it that the real concern to me would be using it as just a radioactive source But even that is very very difficult because the person had that whoever's doing it has to have the technology To get it without killing themselves, right and and again if you have that kind of technology You probably have the capability of doing something just as damaging Without going through all that trouble All of our spent nuclear fuel is protected just like the reactor is protected And if you've ever been to an operating nuclear plant, there is probably no more secure physically secure private location in the United States and so While I agree it's something that we always have to keep mindful of I think Anybody with that capability Could do something just as damaging without going to all the trouble to get spent nuclear fuel so we had a discussion with some young women engineers earlier this morning and one of the things that kind of came up was how the public perception of the dangers of nuclear and proliferation of obviously is one of them and so I Checked into like what would we do with our nuclear reactors if we were to use them in space, right? And so If we had a surface reactor say on Mars We're anticipating a total of about 40 watts 40 kilowatts is necessary in order to operate kind of a human kind of colony on Mars After about 10 years, which is the life of the reactor. It's not the life of the uranium It's we've only would have depleted about 1% of it, but the reactor lifetimes expect to be about 10 years or a little more When we shut down the reactor within a day, it'll be at ambient temperature And then within a few months robots can access it and humans can go for short periods of time And within a year it'll be similar to the kind of radiation that you get in the natural space environment and so in the expect so some people have talked about maybe stockpiling these reactors somewhere on Mars so that they can keep it all together and away and We don't think we're gonna build that many reactors on Mars that we're not gonna continue to have big plants and stuff on Mars But there are some of the architectural people who are working on architects to get To get people to Mars and to do some exploration They are thinking about utilizing maybe some of the spent fuel to radiate by a waste so Relative also our planetary protection people have said that the the amount of radiation that will Result at the end of life at this at after the 10 years and after it cools down is going to be similar to what the Mars curiosity rover MMRT radio isotope thermoelectric generator What the plutonium 238 is going to be and so that's it's a hundred watt plutonium 238 One radio isotope thermoelectric generator, so for the most part and on the moon. There's nothing really we think that we're gonna damage There's not a lot of life there. There are some deep space science missions where Say we were going to do a high power nuclear electric propulsion system to go to the IC moons at Jupiter When we were developing that system the idea at that time and the approval was that we would After we visited each of the three moons at Jupiter that had the scientific interest to us We would allow these spacecraft just to go into Jupiter because there's we just the the radiation of the reactor doesn't even register Compared to the radiation at Jupiter, so those are the kinds of things that we've thought about in the missions that we're conceiving Thank you It's it's really extraordinarily difficult from spent fuel from power reactors to make nuclear bombs because It's not just plutonium 239 there and the other isotopes of plutonium are in relatively speaking in proportions that You know in nuclear weaponry, it's called We don't you don't have formula material, you know there the other isotopes of plutonium act as contaminants. However since the 1970s In the United States in Washington the prevailing view is that Non-preferentialist priority has priority over nuclear power and more or less since 1970s Everything is looked through the prism of non-preferential. Why? because if you have the know-how if you have the laboratory and industrial infrastructure for Working with spent fuel Then you can do the other stuff, you know, you can get Small reactors fuel, you know, you can do the kind of things that the North Koreans have done so AI in that sense Would be very very useful in Integrating the various modalities the various sensing we have available not just Geiger counters We can get in here, you know Spectrographic data from satellites about the noble gases and noble gas isotopes neutrinos The power grid, you know noise from the environment what we call background all of these patches of sensing none of Which are Really in themselves capable of allowing us to track materials of interest from cradle to grave When we see them together and AI is the way to do this They can provide and they will provide for us a kind of global radar system for nuclear materials in that sense we will have a lot of confidence that We strengthen the international arrangements, which for which it's very pivotal non-preferential is extraordinarily it's much more Than what meets the eye non-preferential is really the foundation of the international arrangements I just tell you I recall for you that the permanent fives The the most important members of the UN our countries that did a nuclear test before January 1st 1967, right? So we can strengthen non-preferential by developing this intelligent global monitoring system and By strengthening non-proliferation and the international arrangements the global system We can really make it a lot easier to use nuclear technology in secure but flexible ways Thank You doctor. Yes, sir a new technology coming in and New type of reactor, but if we look back on things like EBR 2 at INL We had a passively safe reactor that could shut down during local instance as reactor that could Recycle its fuel on site and it was still shut down to political Needs at the time or views at the time and so if we were to have a new system implemented would the Regulatory bodies and licensing communities be able to have a paradigm shift along with that to tackle the problem in a Different manner than we currently are Great question Let me address that because I was there when this happened and it was just a huge mistake I mean we knew it at the time a lot of people argued against it The technology you're referring to we called the integral fast reactor To this day is probably the most advanced proliferation-resistant technology Created even today all these years later. Nothing is more advanced than what we were doing In the US at that time So it was obviously a mistake and but it was as you pointed out it was a political consideration Which actually was a link directly to non-proliferation by the way the story was that there were people who believed that even though You could demonstrate The technology to be proliferation-resistant the fact that it was recycling Inherently encouraged other people to recycle and they might use a technology that wasn't as proliferation-resistant And we wanted to be in a position to say don't do that and not hear someone say no But you're doing what you're doing in Idaho, so you should you should you can't tell us what to do So that's the the political context of that So if we were to go down this path a path again I don't think the regulator is the big issue. I think the biggest issue is I'm Understanding how a technology like that would fit into the overall energy framework and what is the role of of a fast neutron facility this recycling nuclear material that way and It's not in exactly. It's not exactly an obvious question right now I talked to countries like France and Japan that are still thinking about fast reactors in the future and That's something I think there's starting to reconsider Do you consider fast reactors to be a technology where we might need to say in the US 30 or 40 fast reactors? Or is it the technology where in the US we might need to fast reactors just to manage the back end of the fuel cycle? It's a question. I think it's still kind of open. So I don't think the regulators are a problem I think what you would find is that the regulators only need enough lead time to begin to gear up acquire the expertise to be able to address the regulatory responsibilities and I'll give you a very solid example when we were going through the exercise of Looking at advanced Isotope production facilities one of the facilities that was being proposed was by BNW and it was a liquid fuel reactor and when I heard that I thought this is going to be easy and And I saw DNRC staff immediately launched into action to start collecting information and Very quickly had convinced themselves that they could see a path where this was going to to happen Do I think it was going to be easy? Not necessarily, but there wasn't it wasn't no resistance to doing it But what we need in the longer term is a framework that is more conducive to Licensing these events non-lightwater technologies. We don't have that today They're talking about launching in that path Now if we don't do that we have to use 10 CFR part 50 and use a lot of exemptions It gets very complicated and very messy you can do it, but I think the preference would be to have a new framework Thank you Unfortunately, we are out of time But I would invite you if you have the time to stay after and talk to the panelists who are able to stay I know Trees has to get to the airport and catch a flight But if the rest of you can stay and be available for some follow-up questions, we would appreciate it So I think also for those of you who asked questions make sure to stop by and choose one of your pictures and We'll try to find someone else who might be interested because I think we'll have two more extra so Thank you so much for your very thoughtful questions. I just want to reiterate. I think the future is very bright for you I am appreciative of your attendance here and being so engaged and thank you so much to our distinguished guests It was an incredible opportunity to hear them. Thank you