 Ladies and gentlemen, summit moderator, Miles O'Brien of PBS. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. We'll bring our panelists right on out. We're on the home stretch on the Adamsburg Humanity Conference, and we're going to sort of open the aperture a little bit, dial back, and go to a higher altitude, and we're going to talk about nuclear safety and security. We're going to go global. Let's ask some important questions. What if America led the way in reinventing nuclear, and as we think about reinventing nuclear and exporting some of this technology, what are the safety and security considerations that we need to factor into all this? We've got a couple of pretty smart guys who can give us some insights on the political side of this and also the intricacies of nonproliferation issues, stockpile stewardship, and modernization of the nuclear weapons arsenal as well. U.S. Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, he chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety on the EPW Committee, and Dr. William Bookless, the principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is the agency tasked with maintaining and enhancing the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, and in addition oversees the nuclear navy and the innovation that occurs there, which ultimately is where it all began and where the innovation can lead into civilian use. Speaking of that, Hyman Rickover fathered the development of Adams for Peace after President Eisenhower gave that speech to the United Nations. It began with the nuclear navy, and then it went into commercial energy. Always nuclear has been something that has carried with it tremendous possibilities and a lot of risk. So let's begin with kind of a general question. And it's so general, I don't know where you're going to go with it, but let's give it a shot. When it comes to this new age that we're in, nuclear age, how do we balance the need for U.S. leadership, the desire to be in the forefront of pushing technology and using peaceful use of nuclear as an instrument of soft power, along with the inherent risks and security concerns that go along with it? Senator Bond, that's a big question, but give us a couple of ideas that you are thinking about in Washington these days in this front. Great question and sense that I've met with many energy entrepreneurs as part of the committee, subcommittee I chair, the committee I'm on, one Republican that shows up at all the discussions on climate and how are we going to generate energy and do it in a way that lowers our carbon footprint. Leadership is essential and we've got to make sure we don't lose it. We're in the process of that happening currently because I toured the Cook facility in Michigan, for instance. It is a picture of safety and things that they've done in the management of their own nuclear facility feeling confident enough to actually apply for a 20-year extension and I think they might go for another 20 years after that. But in general, I think there are a couple of plants under construction. China I think is going to bring five online. So that begs the question, how do we as leaders in the industry up to this point to where we know the technology, to where most of the world's dependence on the technology depends on us? Do we leave the scene? Do we vacate because we now have fracking and natural gas? All I can tell you is this is going to be in the state of flux. We haven't found a way to affordably sequester carbon. Nuclear is the one where that's not an issue. We're never going to get solar and wind, especially in the short run, to be a real contributor. We're basically now changing our system from coal to natural gas and building renewables slowly to where they will peak somewhere around 50%. The rest of the world probably isn't going to pay attention to the safety factor like we always do, which is great that we do do it. So I think we've got a difficult decision to make as we're not really building any new plants as we're actually looking at natural gas as the energy of the near term. What do we do so that we're not left out in the cold? Advanced nuclear technology, which is a subcommittee that I chair. I'm hoping that this is what leads us in and transitions us from where we are now to where we need to be to where we never give up on the leadership part of it. So let's talk about that. China and Russia in particular are pushing nuclear exportation of technology and as a way of bringing influence as they go along. Has the U.S. already lost its competitive edge or is it losing as we speak? I don't think we've lost it because we were the ones that created it. But it's like anything. If you put it in the closet or you don't use it, coal, for instance, is going to be gone in five to 15 years. I asked some of the key players in the coal arena. They will not figure out how to sequester carbon quickly enough to keep coal alive and it's not easy to turn the switch back on. So I think the fact that we may be leading on advanced nuclear technology with what we've done here at Purdue to at least get it switched from analog to digital, we need to stay in the game. We want to make sure our nuclear fleet, not for electric generation, but for aircraft carriers and submarines, we certainly need to be in the forefront there. Dr. Bogus, that's a good segue into your neck of the woods. Historically, of course, Rick Over's nuclear navy is where the whole idea began. That was adapted for civilian use. To what extent is the nuclear navy still leading on the technology charge? And to what extent can technology that you're working on there that you may or may not be able to talk about ultimately lead to, you know, true advancements in generation for nuclear power generation? Well, I can... The NNSA is responsible for the naval nuclear propulsion systems for both all of the submarines and for the aircraft carriers. The naval reactor part of NNSA is currently working on the next generation of those propulsion systems for both aircraft carriers and submarines, and I think is leading the world in the technologies required to deliver those propulsion systems. Because of the nature of their use, I can't talk about too much of the individual technological components, but what I can say is that the next generation of submarine propulsion systems will be fueled once in their lifetime, in their 40-year lifetime. Well, that's an extraordinary development. I know you can't provide details, but is that something that maybe one day could be adapted into the civilian nuclear generation fleet, do you think? Yeah, I think that those... The individual elements of those things are going to be difficult to generalize broadly, but there are some elements of that application that I think will probably make its way into the civil nuclear community as we go forward. I know you have to be careful with your words, so I apologize. I don't mean to torture you here, but... Oh, no. It comes with this space. Understood. Senator Braun, when we talk about incentivizing innovation, when you look at nuclear versus fossil fuels and renewables, renewables have subsidies, fossil fuels have all kinds of subsidies, what's the appropriate way to level the playing field a little bit for nuclear, given that when you're competing against fracked natural gas, it's difficult? So let's look at the context of what nuclear has been like from when it started to date. It's never really been competitive in the sense that subsidies, driven mostly by regulation, safety concerns, has never made it probably something we could have scaled into the future anyway, despite the issues that occurred mostly outside of the country with the safety part of it. Never solved what to do with spent fuel. That politically is not going anywhere. The only place that's wanting to do it is Yucca Mountain. There's not any state that wants to consider it passing through. So what is the role of government? I'm one that believes that if government is healthy and it's got a balance sheet and it's operating in a way that they can do some important things, they ought to be involved in, like research on curing diseases, maybe coming up with new technology even for energy. I can tell you, as a U.S. senator that's a finance guy, a main street entrepreneur that understands finance not only in the real world but actually in government, we are setting ourselves up for being out of the game in a lot of things simply because we are shrugging off trillion dollar deficits on 22 trillion in debt and have paid none of the consequences yet. I don't want to get any more political than that, but you ought to be in the biggest business in the world, I call it federal government ink, in a position of strength, not weakness. So does that mean when you've got natural gas, which is paying its way and it's out there now lowering the cost, it actually imperils certain new technologies that might need that seed capital for research? I don't know where it's going to lead because I do believe that we're pumping carbon. I'm a conservative that has been a conservationist my entire life and that is going to be the issue that may drive for other reasons. And advanced nuclear technology is basically the only bird in the hand that can give us the possibility of that depending on how you can generalize it into the use of it. So there are a lot of variables right there that we mentioned. I think that depending on how long the natural gas run lasts, there are some bottlenecks there in terms of pipeline capacity. The public doesn't know it, but I think it was back in 2011. We had a really cold spell. There was a Russian tanker parked off the New England coast because we were about ready to lose natural gas for electric generation because homes would have been the priority. It'll be things like that that I think drive us into what we do with nuclear technology or maybe there'll be some other energy breakthrough with hydrogen fuel cells that get scalable, who knows? I'm a believer that the least expensive, cleanest fuel should win in the long run and I'm feeling fairly comfortable that the energy industry itself is going to do a lot of the work to get us there. More so than what I'm comfortable about us maybe breaking the cost curve on health care. I've been wrestling with that for decades in my own business. That looks like it might be more difficult than what do we do with sustainable energy while removing carbon in the process. Well, I know it's hard for a Republican to get on board with something like this, but what about putting a price on carbon somehow? So I've met with what I'll call them energy entrepreneurs and I love entrepreneurs across the board. That's where all the tinkering occurs when you take anything generally from the garage or the lab to the marketplace. They are more ahead of the game there and willing to look at carbon pricing. That'll run into a political hot potato when you're having price setting occur. And I'll tell you where we're arguing about that right now. I've got friends like Rand Paul and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania that don't want us meddling with health care by setting guidelines and pricing. I agree with that when you've got a healthy industry that's fully embracing transparency and competition and all the things that most of us do. It's not happening in health care. Therefore, I think you need the government nudge. When it comes to if we can't figure out a way to eliminate carbon, we're going to have to nudge the energy industry. I've just seen the energy entrepreneurs, the industry, way ahead of the curve including being willing to put a price on carbon. Yeah, I think generally industry likes predictability more than anything. A level playing field, you're a businessman. You want a level playing field and some predictability and I know that some of these companies, they might say something publicly right now but truthfully they could probably live with it. And when I put it this way, I said do you want regulation or would you like a friendly neutral pricing mechanism? Because it would be one of the two. You either have to have regulation to keep the air clean or to me pricing is probably a better way to do it but you'll run into a hot potato there among other senators that are ideologues, not ones that can see through the ideology to the practicality, if that makes sense. Well, if it were revenue neutral, maybe you could get there. I don't know. What about tax abatement subsidies? I mean the plants that are being built in Georgia now would not have happened without tax breaks. Is that an appropriate thing? Would you push for that? Subsidies, where do you start and stop with them? It gets into crony capitalism. I'd love a subsidy for my distribution and logistics business. Never could find one. Had to do it the old-fashioned way by making a profit, reinvesting, keeping a low overhead and using a banker as your financial partner. And a banker in the real world is as good as your first mistake when he's gone. The federal government, since it can float this large S on the credit card since we're a reserve currency, it changes all the rules. And I'd be one that would have to really be convinced that you start using more of them. I'm not for pulling the rug out from underneath the industries that have had it as a pump primer. So, Dr. Bookus, let's talk about exporting this technology. We had some representatives from Terrapower and some of the panels here. Of course, Terrapower with a new idea, Gen 4 idea, sodium reactor, had intended to build one, the first one in China, and that is now not going to happen. First of all, that decision, appropriate decision in your view? I think the analysis was that it was going to be a transfer of technology that we couldn't guarantee would be properly protected by the Chinese partner. So it sounds like you would agree with that. I agree with it. So now, as Terrapower looks for other places to build this prototype reactor, possibly it could happen here in the United States, but it might happen elsewhere. There might be some other country that might be interested in this. What are the concerns that you and the NNSA would have as something like that is exported across the border? Well, so in general, the NNSA is the government's arm for analyzing the nature of nuclear technology export and to assure that when the technology is exported that the proper safeguards are put in place to assure that the materials or the technology aren't diverted for weapons use, for military use. And so that's part of our commitment in the nation to the Atoms for Peace deal that was made under the Eisenhower administration, that we would make nuclear technology available around the world in exchange for an agreement that those countries that were recipients of that technology that the nuclear power capability would not then turn into nuclear proliferant nations. So a big part of your job as well, and this is a little divergent from talking about civilian nuclear energy production, is stockpile stewardship. And it's worth a few words on that because that gets into this whole area of, ultimately gets into testing, non-proliferation issues. Right now, is enough money being spent on making sure that the nuclear weapons that we have in the U.S. arsenal are secure and safe? Oh, yeah. That is an essential part of what we do in the stockpile stewardship program that we assure that they are safe, secure, and effective. And deterrent is only as good as people believe it's effective. If there are safety or security issues, that undermines the value of the deterrent. So we use, I mean, safety and security are integral parts of the way we both design and support the nation's stockpile. We worry about security at our sites. We had some discussions a bit earlier about Los Alamos. We worry about safety and security at Los Alamos very strongly. We worry about that at the other labs in the plants that are part of the nuclear security enterprise. Right above your head here is a depiction of the latest supercomputer that NNSA will be deploying al Capitan, which gives you a lot of insights, not only into what's going on at the stockpile, but also makes it unnecessary to do a lot of testing. Is that an accurate statement, first of all? And what is this going to do for you? Well, al Capitan will be the first exoscale computer within the NNSA enterprise. The first one will actually be at Oak Ridge in the other part of the Department of Energy. But al Capitan will be the first one that's dedicated to national security mission space. And it's essential for enabling us to do much more complex three-dimensional, full physics simulations of the pieces of the US nuclear stockpile. It allows us to make better risk-informed decisions on the changes that we have to make in the stockpile as it ages. I think something that perhaps people don't fully appreciate is that a nuclear weapon is a collection of materials just like your car is. And we don't use the nuclear weapons, thankfully. But they do age. There are materials in there that age, and we have to address that aging through life extension programs and perhaps in full replacement at some point in time. So exoflop, by the way, 1.5 exoflops is 1.5 quintillion calculations per second. I'm not even sure what that means. It's a lot faster than your phone. So how concerned, Senator, and I know this isn't necessarily right in your wheelhouse though, but how concerned should we be long-term about the security and the safeguards around the nuclear arsenal? So I think that along with the security and safety of anything, the nuclear and the long run is one of the things that kind of puts a wet blanket on having more of it. You know, I look at the electric generation fleet. You know, we've really not solved that. It's sitting there in kind of temporary storage. So when it comes to our nuclear arsenal, I don't know a lot about it. I think you mentioned that things age. And I think that I feel good though that we're not going to lapse on that, even if we're not doing some of the other things you'd hope our federal government would do. I think there's always, even within the context of what you do with the federal government, its capabilities, its power, there are always priorities that I think are going to be in place. And I personally, and I don't think there would be too many senators, it would think that we're even nearing the point where that is an issue. I think that my concern is more what do we do to go into the next age when you use nuclear technology vis-a-vis what we see happening with China and Russia and others. Well, how much do you think, you know, we're kind of talking about two separate things here. How much do you think they're linked though? And to what extent does the concern about proliferation and the concerns about the stockpile, et cetera, hinder the ability of nuclear energy to become more common? I mean, until there would be a solution or something that you could say, absolutely, it's not an issue. To me it is always going to be something that is going to make one hesitate to scale it to where, you know, it would be, say, something you could take out of play completely. I don't know that we can solve that until there was something, maybe, that would arise from technology or a method to do it that we don't know about yet. Dr. Booker, are you convinced there are technological solutions that make it possible to do both? I think there are technological solutions that if the nations of the world continue to desire an international norm where proliferation is not desired, then I think there are technological mechanisms to achieve that goal. I think, however, our concern is that other some... I think we believe that the United States is at the forefront of international safeguards on nuclear technology. That is, trying to assure that nuclear technologies aren't diverted for military use. For that reason, we need to be in the game regardless. Right. And I agree with that. I think, however, it puts an additional challenge on U.S. technologies when other nations are potentially ready to export technologies with less attention to those international safeguard norms. Right. In other words, we might be playing by a different set of rules. At some level. So should we be concerned then, as we see Russia and China aggressively try to export their technology, and what would the concerns be? We should be concerned, but what do we do? I mean, you've got China, for instance, who I'd be most concerned about because they've clearly got an economy that can put oomph behind whatever they want to do. Russia is going to be constrained by its economy and by the same reasons that broke up the Soviet Union. I don't think the mischief will ever disappear. But China, to me, would be the juggernaut that we all have to be aware of that, to me, has gotten really good even the Politburo knowing that state capitalism really works. Remember, the Politburo is running the political side of life, too. And I think that that's the thing that scares me. But they're a sovereign nation. I think if they want to fully integrate into the world scene, they're going to have to navigate through their behavior issues currently that involve tariffs and forced technology transfers, like you were talking about, intellectual property theft, creating these huge gluts, which come from a command-style economy like in steel. And if they don't change, it may be they're undoing because they may not be able to grow their economy to where they could really be a master with no one even able to thwart them. So who knows how that will play out? And I think for their own sake, I'm hoping they try to integrate into the behavior norms of what all other countries do. You're talking about where would you take that certain technology and it didn't go to China because you were fearful of it. I'd say India would be a place where you've got a lot of the issues of bad air quality, a huge potential economy. You know, I would trust a country like that. China has exhibited behavior if they ever became a reserve currency, for instance, which again, I don't think they will until they liberate their political system. A lot of different variables out there, they do make me worry about how they're going to participate on all these issues in the long run. And I think we'll see all that crystallize over the next two or three decades. Dr. Buchos, when you talk about Russia, of course a lot of us would think about Chernobyl and the technology of that particular reactor design, they're not going to be exporting without consideration of things like containment structures, I presume, right? I would assume they would... I assume a recipient country wouldn't want to import. I would hope. A technology that had safety concerns like that. I think the U.S. history and reactor safety is the standard in the world, I believe. I think that our technologies are considered robust. And by the way, I think we lead the world in trying to assure that things like enriched uranium highly enriched uranium are being removed from sites around the world. We've removed highly enriched uranium from 100 different locations, either through closure of research reactors or conversion of research reactors to a low-enriched uranium, including, by the way, the Purdue reactor in 2007 was converted from highly enriched to low-enriched uranium again to try to create an environment where proliferation was much harder to accomplish. Stopping proliferation is not an easy thing. It is not, as we found with India, Pakistan, and now North Korea. But creating an environment where it doesn't spread is the goal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and we believe we have responsibility to support that. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal. Tell us a little bit about that in particular. This is the W76-2, which is the next version of Trident. Tell us what's going on in that front, just a few words. Well, so in general, our nuclear deterrent, both the delivery systems and the warheads, are very old. The Minuteman III missile, which has the W78 and the W87 warheads, that missile is 50 years old. You know, the Air Force has a plan to replace that missile, the same with the D-5 missile on the Ohio-class submarines that are being replaced by a Columbia-class submarine. And the Air Force is also putting in place the B-21 mona. The warheads date with the original delivery system developments. In the past, those systems were developed in concert. And so the Navy is looking at the next Navy warhead as a concept right now. It's not a plan, but the Air Force is also looking at the W87-1 and the W80-4. And as you mentioned, we just went through an extensive W76-1 life extension program that was just completed. And the Nuclear Posture Review called for a low-yield W76-2 warhead. Now, you mentioned low-yield. That is a controversial thing because some people say that kind of lowers the bar to a nuclear conflict. What are your thoughts on that one? The Nuclear Posture Review went through a very thoughtful process at the beginning of this administration that's done about every eight or 10 years. And the determination they made was that in an overall deterrent sense, if we had only a high-yield option, the deterrent effect would be lessened. So having a low-yield option for the submarine-launched ballistic missile would be an enhancement to its deterrent value. Senator, do you have thoughts on that one, whether the lower-yield increases the risk here? I know we're getting far afield, but go ahead. I don't know much technically about that, but I think anything that would lower the bar would create a risk that we don't want to do in general because there's enough anxiety out there about that kind of dynamic anyway. So I would yield your expertise on it, and if in fact that would create a risk for it, I think it would be something that we ought to avoid. Talks like this probably make this potential problem worse, but to the extent that the general public conflates these issues, weapons and civilian use of nuclear power, to what extent does that hinder the growth of nuclear power as a way of feeding our needs for electricity carbon-free? I think you'd lose the conflation quickly if you all of a sudden took advanced nuclear technology and parlayed it into a safe, expandable way to fill the void of how you're going to start to eliminate carbon. And I think those are two separate issues. I think if you really did that in a way that was safe, secure, and get rid of all the issues of transport and storage, you'd find that you'd have a lot of people on board. I think it's the general stigma of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima that's out there, and then it's always the stigma of what it was like in the 1950s and 60s when the nuclear arsenal was built for nefarious purposes. So you've got one that I feel comfortable, I just visited Israel for instance, spent a week there. And if you'd want to take a microcosm of how a country has to live to be on guard, to where you not only have the nuclear concern and somebody wanting to get it in the neighborhood, you've got the day-to-day fear, and you've got the iron dome technology that went into place. I believe there's going to, even with China and Russia, if they ever came on board to the extent that you felt comfortable with them allied with the U.S., I think you could almost eliminate never completely, but at least the anxiety portion of the nuclear arsenal. And I think whatever we can do over the next 15, 20, 30 years with advanced nuclear technology for electric generation, that will assuage the concerns you might have on the other issue. It's a lot of variables interplaying. Would you go along with that, Dr. Bookless? Yeah, I personally believe that there are truly separable issues. I think that if as long as we are attentive to the proliferation implications of nuclear energy, I think we can eliminate, or not eliminate, but address the difference between having a nuclear deterrent and having nuclear energy. I think Japan has had nuclear energy for a very long time and have chosen not to be a proliferant nation. And I think many other countries around the world want the advantages of nuclear power, not only for carbon reduction, but simply for reliable power. And it is a very reliable source of base energy. I think the renewables, wind and solar, are extremely valuable contributions to the world's energy sources, but they don't provide the base power that you need to build on with the variable power of wind and solar. So I think that the issues of proliferation and energy can be addressed robustly if we can garner the kind of cooperation with China and Russia in particular, but all nations that have nuclear technology agreeing that we will manage the energy sector in a responsible way. So here in the U.S., we are closing the fleet. One by one they're shutting down. I think there are nine or so of them that are about to be shut down in the coming years. There's already been quite a few, a handful of them. One of the issues that comes up is the waste issue, which we touched on briefly. And in many cases, these places get decommissioned and scraped clean, and yet there remain a couple of dozen casks surrounded by razor ribbon under guard because there's no place to put this waste. A couple of thoughts on that. One of the ideas is to come up with interim storage facilities with the idea that some of these Generation 4 technologies might actually use the waste as fuel. Senator, is that a good kind of middle ground idea? I mean, Yucca Mountain seems like a non-starter still. Is it possible to imagine interim storage at least consolidating into some fashion? I mean, I guess you could imagine it. We did discuss that in one of the committee hearings and spent some time on it, and there was no one that could come up with how you would do that. And it was mostly everybody's interested in doing it. They just don't want it in their state. And that is reciprocal among every state. So I think you'd have to maybe see what happens with the current push on eliminating that as a long-term issue. And then if you got to where those were viable, then I think you'd have the ability to maybe place some of them near where the storage sites are and you could safely use some of the spent fuel in a way to where you get it down to a level or then maybe you take it to a depository. But currently, I can't think of any state's delegation of senators and representatives that would be pushing to be one that would do it. So that's a big stumbling block as we march forward. But I think we've all conceded here over the past few days that nuclear is pretty essential if you want to get serious about climate change. So what's your idea? Where do we go from here? My idea would be along the lines of what I just said. We keep pushing ahead on a way to move the technology that we know might work. So in other words, if we knew there was a Gen 4 plant, a prototype being built, then you could say, okay, this is going to actually use the waste. Let's put the waste here. Exactly. And do it in a way where you... You think that would fly? I think that would fly because what else are you going to do with the waste? Right. And here's a practical way to use it up and test it. And if it works without any complications, you could at least work the danger of that stored fuel down to a point where you can maybe do a more comprehensive cure to the issue. But in the meantime, that's why I think we've got to be in the game and keep pushing forward and hopefully we'll lead on that as we're decommissioning the energy fleet. And I think that decommissioning, like the Cook plant in Michigan, they are going to extend into another 20-year permit. And I asked them, would you... And do you have the ability to, in terms of the costs, do that last extension to 80 before the plant is obsolete? And they said they're not ruling that out. Are you reasonably optimistic about the future of nuclear power in this country? I am. I am because I think that the driver will be carbon. And I think that there's nothing else out there that addresses that variable. And you can't solve it through solar and wind. Everybody I've talked to, they don't think that can practically ever get above most likely 40%, 50% would be knocking it out of the park. You've got all kinds of issues with, are you going to clutter the landscape with windmills and solar panels? I think every additional acre or hundreds of acres that you do there, you're going to get marginally disproportionate disgust with it. It's even occurring in Indiana right now where many counties want no more wind farms. So that's why I think nuclear is going to be alive. Dr. Bookus, are you an optimist when it comes to nuclear power generation in this country? I think it's a mature technology that has a lot of promise for the world. I hope it will continue to evolve in a way that can make it acceptable financially. That, to me, the financial issue is the largest obstacle for US nuclear right now. I will defer to the senator for the political nature of handling the waste. But the further development of nuclear power in this country right now is hampered by the fact that I think it's hard for people to find funding to continue to grow the nuclear industry. And we talked about it earlier, would you be willing to subsidize? To me, then it becomes a national security issue that you're not in the game. And then that all of a sudden changes the whole dynamic of national security versus just energy. And then you'll get a lot of coming together of disparate parties to where that might drive it. All right. Senator Mike Braun, Dr. Bill Bookus, thank you both for that wide-ranging discussion. We do appreciate it. I think a lot of what you have been talking about here is, and by the way, give him a round of applause for being here. Much of what we've been discussing here is there's a generational component to it. I'm going to shift gears after we change the seats here. And we're going to take a look at a new generation of nuclear engineers and what they are bringing to the table, one of whom you've seen on the stage here yesterday and who we met when we were doing a film for NOVA a couple of years ago called the Nuclear Option. Meet Leslie Dewan. You have to worry about free-floor formation. Leslie Dewan is one of the young entrepreneurs leading this revolution. Yeah, because that's what I'm hoping. It's a new generation with a different outlook. Atomic power doesn't carry the same stigma for them. They are more concerned about powering the planet while addressing climate change. All of this led Leslie to MIT to study nuclear engineering. This is a general trend around the world? She was a grad student on the day the tsunami hit Fukushima. It was especially shocking to me because when I first heard the news I thought there are overblown media reports but I trust that everything will be okay. But it went orders of magnitude beyond what I had thought the worst case scenario accident was going to be. And yet she didn't waver in her goal to build a new kind of nuclear power plant. It made me want to work even harder on developing newer types of reactors that don't have the same cooling requirements and that are even more robust in the case of even more extreme accident scenarios. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's bring out Leslie Dewan along with Jackie Kemper and let's do some takeaways. Come on up, ladies. Well, make yourself comfortable. I'm sure all of you last night spent all seven hours watching the CNN Climate Change Forum, right? You saw it all. Well, we'll give you a couple. How much did nuclear come into play and how did nuclear get treated during all of that? Let's start off with a little clip with a response from Senator Warren. So my question is, what is your opinion on the prospect of nuclear energy to help replace fossil fuels and what do the risks outweigh any potential benefits? So you rightly point out about nuclear energy. It's not carbon-based, but the problem is it's got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods that nobody can figure out how we're going to store these things for the next bazillion years. So here's how I see it. In my administration, we're not going to build any nuclear power plants, and we are going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels over... We're going to get it all done by 2035, but I hope we're getting it done faster than that. That's the plan. All right, so there was a fair amount of that, Bernie Sanders, of course, well-known for his positions on nuclear power. Look at the tweet storm that followed all this. Bernie Sanders is right about the dangers of nuclear power. Says the woman in the upper left. Got into a fight with this other guy. Sanders answers on nuclear is bad. Nuclear reactors are safe. The comparison at Chernobyl is ridiculous. Nuclear is mostly a cost problem, not a waste problem, et cetera. So there was that, and meanwhile, President Trump was rolling back the Obama era incandescent light bulb standards, which encouraged LEDs. I guess we're going back to whale oil now. I don't know. Could be kind of smelly. So anyway, ladies, Leslie, when you... Yesterday, I put up a chart, which came from Forbes, which indicated that a lot of the Democratic candidates were voicing some support for nuclear, but then, you know, we saw last night, which it kind of went in another direction. What is it going to take to change that? It was surprising to me to see what Senator Warren said about nuclear last night, because I had... I believe so strongly that you need this all-of-the-above approach. You need a diversified set of carbon-free energy options if you want to get the world off of fossil fuels. And it's certainly something that's very tricky politically to bring people on board with. And I think that... Honestly, I'd love to get Jackie's take on it. I mean, my thought is just it's going to be a longer conversation. It's going to be telling people not just what nuclear is right now, not just the existing fleet, but also telling people what the new types of advanced reactor technologies are. I think the candidates that understand and appreciate nuclear power, in particular Cory Booker and Yang, all understand what the advanced fleet is. So I think that's the key. Yeah, is that what's missing? Jackie, you think that there's... They're judging it by virtue of, you know, early generation two reactors as opposed to considering that technology has come a long way. We just haven't built it, but the technology has come a long way. It seems like Booker and Yang get it. You know, I think we're at a really interesting point in the development of climate plans in this campaign season that we're in, where there's sort of a fight to be... to see who can seem the most ambitious, right? And I'm all for ambition, but, you know, you mentioned Bernie Sanders' plan that came out, $16 trillion plan. You know, Elizabeth Warren's now taken on quite a few components of Jay Inslee's plan, but there's a difference. You can be ambitious, but you also have to be serious. And any climate plan that comes out that doesn't basically provide all the options you could possibly get, all the carbon-free options on the table to get us to zero net emissions by 2050 is not a serious plan. So any plan that's constraining our carbon-free options instead of expanding them is very difficult to take seriously. So it was, again, upsetting. I was watching the... well, not all seven hours, but a pretty large portion of the climate for him last night. And it was upsetting to see Elizabeth Warren take that position. Now, getting to your question, I think that there is a knowledge gap with policymakers on advanced nuclear.