 Good afternoon, everybody. This is your host, Nghia Musalatier, on today's Perspective on Energy here on Think Tech Hawaii. And today we're going to talk about the Marvel program from the DOE, Micro Reactor Technology, Musa the Next Level. So anyway, again, welcome. I am the Director of International Services for the Health and Safety Institute at hsi.com. So thank you for joining us. And some pretty good news here when it comes to the development of small and micro modular reactor technology. It looks like we finally are coalescing into a one unified design. And that's a lot of great news because in the next phase really it's going to be testing. And once you have that testing, you are moving closer to resolving a lot of the supply chain issues. Because one of the things that really gets in the way of the economics of a lot of these different nuclear programs is the fact that every design, every build is different, which of course then repeatability is lost, and then you have a problem with cost at that point. So if you can make these processes, designs, and supply chains repeatable, you dramatically reduce the cost of every project thereafter. All right. So again, this is straight out of the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy Programs, MARVEL, which is an acronym I'll describe in a minute, but I think it's a pretty cool acronym. I'm sure somebody is a fan of some kind of science fiction and something else. And they probably force retrofitted, that's a fit, but sounds pretty exciting, right? And we'll talk about a couple of other items in there as well. And this is important because I think this last episode I had, I talked about how the federal government's going to have to step in and help move along some of these designs and processes if we're ever going to meet these climate goals as well as maintain a reliable system, right? Not to mention the fact that it's really impractical to try and build these nuclear plants pretty much anywhere. So in this case, right, this really opens the door to a lot of new possibilities. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide, if you don't mind. Okay. So microreactor program, right? So this is kind of a rendering of what that would look like. And what MARVEL stands for is microreactor applications, research, validation, and evaluation. So really what it is is that we are now at a point where the design is pretty much pretty much well on its way. Now it's really the phase of testing and applications, right? So here, for example, one thing to remember, this is a very small modular reactor, right? So really, I should have changed that term small, and so Mike will, because a lot of these reactors are not even beyond too many of what's capacity. It's actually rather small. And why is that really, right? And it has the capability to be able to test, right? So in this case, if we go ahead and zoom into that one slide and show it full screen, that'd be great. All right. So thank you. So then in this case, for example, one of the applications here, and here's where it becomes really important, is this usually is smaller than what I normally have been discussing regarding SMRs, right? Here, you're even smaller still, like remote community or defense facility. And when I say defense facility, you're talking about a base or an outpost or some kind of like somebody related to national defense that is in an area where that's quite isolated, right? And in a lot of cases, there's no transmission lines, or you want to have reliable power supplying that particular facility, whether it's a myriad of different applications that come to mind when you discuss a defense facility, whether it's a radar and early detection, something to fire up munitions, whether it's a forward base or something that is being set up ad hoc or rather quickly that this particular application is really used for it. The other one, of course, is a mining site. And these are just one of many examples, right? So I'm just listing four of them here. But the mining site becomes important in a sense that remember, we're going through mining a lot more different elements, precious metals and different minerals to be able to get into these like renewable resources. One of those, for example, are the lithium mines. So a lot of these are actually found in different new remote locations. So you can get to these sites and deploy one of these sources, but having to build an entire infrastructure behind it, like power lines, transmission lines, substations and all that to be able to supply that. Along with that, of course, comes back of power, right? So in a lot of cases, this could be the adequate backup power source for a generating facility or any other piece of large infrastructure that relies on something less than two megawatts of power that's highly portable. And of course, the last thing here is really, really interesting. And I think this is something that, for example, from the perspective of islands like Hawaii, the Hawaiian Islands and all the other ones like the Balearic Islands or even, for example, the Canaria Islands, which we've seen a few examples of those having humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions. In this case, these are also easily deployable and allows for having quick power set up, especially after like a fire or an earthquake or a storm or something of the sort, right? Where you actually able to deploy these rather quickly and they have an area up and running again without having to build or rebuild all that other infrastructure that supports it, like transmission lines, distribution lines, substations and all that. Now, the other important thing here as well is that you look at that fourth major bullet there is that they have achieved again a 90% design completion. So that means at this point, right? They have pretty much agreed on the design philosophy and design protocols. So at this point, I mean, they already have an actual working model that they're going to begin testing at Idaho National Labs. And that's very exciting because now once you're at that stage, now you're working out some of the kings and problems, right? So it puts us a lot closer to that end goal of being able to actually field these devices. And of course, if these become successful, then skating them up to something larger becomes a lot easier. Then of course, instead of just micro reactors like this one, you have small modular reactors that can then be deployed with greater ease. Sadly, I'm sure most of you have heard that new scale is just they have to pull out of a project they were building because just the ballooning costs, right? And when a private company is, well, they went public, but it's an investor owned, they're trying to actually fund these projects. It's very difficult to control this unless you have a larger government and you're stepping in and doing that. Not to be said, not that new scale didn't receive funding. They didn't receive a lot of funding for the federal government to develop this, but again, a lot of costs just ran away from them in this case. But I'm eager to see what they come up with next, hopefully, and they're able to manage those costs. So the other important thing here is that we are now ready for testing. So let's go ahead and go to the next slide. So all right, so that is what device looks like, right? So here you have the primary cooling apparatus. Testing the device is going to go into your into that particular reactor vessel, and you're going to see how they're going to combine these two together and run their cooling test. And of course, this is a sodium potassium and lead bismuth coolant, which is a little bit different than what we see in the past. And then these designs tend to be a little bit safer, a lot safer, and then they have the ability to do a walk away, meaning that if left hand attended, they would just basically go back to a relaxed state in this case, which is really helpful in this regard, because then it allows for the deployment in facilities that are that are unattended. Whether it's a container-sized device or something is placed out there in a facility that's underground, there's not a lot of need to have people supervisor around. Of course, there's a lot of remote telemetry to watch this, but there's no real need to have personnel operating these devices. Most of these are going to be automated, or they're going to be operated remotely, but certainly there's going to be a lot of software involved in running these. So go on to the next slide, please. And the next slide is there we go. So now the more the boring part is going to have a lot of like, so here, what is the DOE microreactor program? So the project goal here is to actually have a 100 kilowatt efficient reactor that researchers and technology developers to gain operational experience with real microreactor to experience that immaturity and enable new microreactor applications. So the whole point of this really is to actually help the industry, help the facility, the development of these devices, right? So this wonderful project goal is ultimately, what they're trying to do is ideally it's a coalescent to one accepted approved design. And the whole purpose really is to actually have the economies of scale where you can then mass produce these things at a much lower cost. Having to do a one-off here, one-off there with different design specs makes each of them really, really expensive. So once you have a generalized accepted design that's repeatable, so then the first one costs a lot of money, but then the second one will probably cost half as much. The one after that costs half as much. So you're going to have this arithmetic regression of price, right? As you look, as each issue is being developed, eventually you will reach a point that the cost for every particular facility is going to be much less than the previous one. So ultimately, you can expect to see hundreds of thousands of these deployed ideally throughout the country as some point. So what is Marvel, right? Again, it's part of the Idaho National Labs, and they're applying research and development to that particular treat program, which is part of their ongoing process of developed fuels, developed operations, and to make sure that the counts of design can be licensed and deployed by commercial entities. So the whole point is really they're trying to stimulate, motivate, assist, and facilitate the development of these technologies. So once again, you know, it's a pretty good move by the Department of Energy and the federal government to go ahead and make that happen and help accelerate this, because really the main motivator behind this is not just reliability, but to me that'll be the main motivator. But really it's also that coupled with the fact that, you know, this is the one carbon, carbon zero, true zero carbon resource as a generator, you know, electricity. The other thing that's important as well to me is that the fact that, you know, when when there's reliability, you have dispatchability and nuclear is still at a point where it costs far less to develop even than solar. So when you look at at a permaculot, so that's an important thing to consider, right, as they develop these projects and our further. Now, of course, well, maybe like two years away from the first commercial design, but two years is so is a lot better than when it was a while back. So this is definitely a really important milestone to get here, right? So again, once the general design is agreed upon, as I said earlier, right, you'll see this design and this implementation cost being reduced, and you'll see widespread adoption and deployment. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. Okay, so what can be enabled by the Marvel operation, right? So the whole point of it here is to demonstrate and address issues related to installation, right? So here they're trying to figure out, all right, they're trying to work out the problem. So they're trying to design, apply the design, and then maybe find something at this point, right? So they're going to see, for example, improve the process of when it comes to citing approval review. So that's usually another, another typical pretty, typically larger or tall curve for a lot of these new, new developers actually get across. So the startup methodology. So the other thing that's important here, right, is the start starting up a reactor in this case, not just from the process of designing it and building it, but also actually running it and operating it, right? The other important thing here is normal operating transients to start up and load management. So that's an important thing because startup, of course, implies that you're going to cycle this unit off and load management to me is even more important. That means, of course, that now you're going to dispatch the unit as needed for load management, which of course, that's one of the things that really is really, really concerning when it comes to having the variable renewable energy resources in your portfolio. Solar and wind proves to be very, very, very variable. And nobody, I mean, one of the quick dirty solutions really is to curtail their output, but that's, you know, now you're, now you're, you're wasting that capitalized expenditure that you invested initially, and then you buy pretty much limiting the output of these resources. So if you can allow those variable resources to run as needed, and then you can re dispatch these other base, base loader, these thousands of little micro reactors, then you are definitely positioned at a much more reliable posture when it comes to operating the grid, right? The other important thing to verify and test here, which is something that I've always had a concern with, of course, is cyber and physical security hardening, right? So these devices, of course, they'll be left out there in remote areas away from supervision in a lot of cases. I mean, direct supervision, but they won't have a lot of monitoring and equipment and barriers and place physical and cyber security barriers. But again, this is a good time to go ahead and test those. And definitely something to look forward to when it comes to that being, to the constant being proven being verified in this case. The other thing, of course, is what I was saying earlier, right? They're real net zero electrical micro grid, right? So here, for example, we're looking at deploying a resource that once deployed is not going to create any, any not going to affect your carbon footprint, right? This is like a real zero resource where it's not offset. It's something of a sort. It's producing clean energy in this case, right? And that is something that is important to reach our climate goals. The last thing, of course, is you're using the, you're testing and you're showing the use of the high and the low grade heat extraction to gain operational experience. So this is important. This other important thing is when it comes to industrial applications, right? Don't forget, you're also producing a lot of heat. And this heat, of course, part of it is being used to generate electricity, but, you know, there's also applicability for industrial processes. So this can be coupled together with, with any type of industrial facility that requires a lot of heat, heat transfer, or heat energy to be able to carry out their operations. So definitely really helpful in this regard. Let's go ahead and look at the next slide. I think it's there we go. So autonomous operation technologies, right? That's an important thing as well. So these devices, they're going to be so many of them deployed out there that for them to actually you eliminate operator functions while maintaining reactor safety. So in this case, a lot of these are going to be self-governed. They're going to have a lot of automated systems and these automated operator functions, right? It's going to, of course, the goal of these is to, of course, improve safety while at the same time responding rather quickly to the low demands of the grid, right? The other thing that's also interesting in this regard as well is also radiation. Is this still a nuclear resource? So are you going to make sure you manage any potential issues with nuclear, with anything being irradiated, right? And that's part of that. Part of this process here is to test the sensors, test all of the reliability when it comes to maintaining the safety of these devices. Part of that is being looked at on this particular phase of the program. And of course, right, there's a lot of simulation in this case. So here, for example, they're creating a live data, a digital, some of the reactors are trained in artificial and AI-based control systems. So a lot of these resources are going to be based on some kind of AI type of like algorithm to go ahead and not just each individual device, but also all of them acting together as an aggregator and concert to, again, behave in a way that'll improve or maintain system reliability, right? And of course, the last one thing, of course, is to demonstrate wireless transmissions of live data to electrical and thermal power output during startup. So one of the things that's important here, of course, is that communications. Usually these devices will be placed in areas that may not necessarily have fiber or data connectivity. They may be connected to something that they're feeding locally, but they more than likely will not be connected to any grid, any distribution network. So for them having wireless or maybe satellite communications will be important. And this will be something that they will be testing in this regard as well. All right. What is the next slide? Okay. So the next one is seamless application integration, right? So in this case, the ability to go ahead and one of the things that they'll be able to do, of course, is provide inertia, provide reliability. They'll be able to operate with the grid. And of course, they'll be able to respond to load, respond to frequency, respond to voltage, and those different applications as needed, right? Because reliability requires demands, right, that we respond to changes, whether it's a load response or something that changes from a data day, seasonal changes as well. And for example, in just yesterday, there was a report that we are looking at being at a greater risk of having power disruptions this winter, just because of the fact that we have so much variability with our renewable resources and not a lot of base load that's easily dispatchable. So again, this is something that could definitely have an impact on that in a couple with distributed energy resources, virtual power plants, and a whole array of things. This will be probably another component in our rapidly evolving grid of the future in this case, right? And the last thing here, of course, is so many different applications, right, that we can use for both power management and also load management approaches. In this case, the things that I'm most excited about is the fact that we'll be able to maintain grid reliability, and while also supplying these far off areas that could be really isolated, or of course, also maybe even improve the possibility of having these smaller communities that are rural areas that have their own distribution network or part of these co-ops that, for example, don't necessarily want to build more transmission, but you can connect these to the distribution grid. And in this case, right, you'd have a small reactor that's the same thing as a small diesel generator producing maybe 12, 20, 50 kilowatts. In this case, power a few buildings are rather, rather important. So in other cases, for example, think of a remote hospital in a remote facility. Well, these would be ideal for that sort of situation or something, for example, the Arctic or the Antarctic. That would be another application to be really used. Now, as far as deploying these in places like Hawaii, I see the definite benefits here, but there could be, for example, challenges and pushback regarding environmental impact. Well, that's why that's what this testing is for in this regard, and hopefully that can be worked out in their application, the value of application you'll be seeing in this regard as not the end all be all, but just one more component to add to that portfolio of real zero energy sources. And I think that is all we have as far as presentations go. This next time we're talking about the HALU type of nuclear fuel that's also being developed along with this. Normally, we have three to five percent uranium enriched nuclear fuel. The HALU runs at about 15 to 20 percent enriched, much a lot more efficient. Now, mind you, this is not weapons-grade uranium, right? That's usually above 90 percent. That's not what this is. HALU is just something that'll be more efficient. And there's other places in the world that already recycle some of this nuclear waste, and they use it for, again, to extend the life of some of these resources. So that's something that could be done here with these HALU type of fuels. So we'll talk some more about that next time, but that is something that will be looked at when it comes to this particular fuel resource. So again, this is the Marvel program brought to you by the DOE and the being tested right now at Idaho National Labs. So again, this great milestone is a really exciting news for all of us in the industry, and especially when it comes to nuclear generation. So again, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions or want to say, leave a comment below. I'll try and get back to you as soon as we can. But once again, thank you for joining us. Have yourselves a great day. Thank you.