 I really wanted to thank everyone for tuning in today. My name is Andres Martinez. I'm the editorial director of Future Tense. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate and New America and Arizona State University. It's a project where we really like to explore the impact of technology on society, which is why I'm especially excited for today's conversation that looks at, that asks the question of how nuclear is our future? We like to think in Future Tense about questions. We don't pretend to have all the answers. And I think when we're trying to inform citizens in a democracy about the direction in which we're going to take and how we're going to deploy these exciting technologies, it's really important to have conversations like this where experts like the amazing panel that we've assembled here today can help us, the rest of us, understand again the impact of technology on society. And nuclear energy is one of those subjects that I think is really important to come to with an open mind, leading with questions rather than pretending we have all the answers. And I also think it's really important for the public to kind of understand how technologies evolve over time. Nuclear energy is one of those thorny subjects when we're looking at technology where we're all kind of aware of this amazing promise. And yet also I think people have great apprehension. It's one of those subjects where balancing out the peril and the promise is difficult for those of us who are not experts. And sometimes the peril, and I'm sure we're going to get into this today, might be connected to associations with nuclear and other contexts and costs and safety issues, which as technology has evolved, we kind of have to revisit, right? And we're all aware of the sort of urgency of climate change and the environmental moment. So it's one of those, I just wanted to stipulate the obvious, which is it's an incredibly complex subject that I'm excited to learn about from all of you. You can follow Future Tents at Twitter, at Future Tents Now. We publish content that's on slate every day and we like having conversations and creating community around questions like this as we're having today. So let me quickly introduce our experts today and I can get out of the way and listen along with the rest of you. Jason, thank you so much for agreeing to be our moderator today. Jason Bordoff is the co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and a professor of professional practice in international and public relations at Columbia University SIPA School. Prior to that, Jason served in the White House as assistant to President Barack Obama, senior director for energy and climate change on the staff of the National Security Council. So Jason really appreciate that you're taking the time today to help us conduct this conversation. And then Maria Korsnik is president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Nuclear Industries Policy Organization here in Washington. Prior to that, she was senior VP of Northeast Operations for Excellent Corporation and chief nuclear officer at Constellation Energy. So obviously someone who brings a wealth of experience in the industry and now is charged with thinking about the sort of macro policy issues in the industry. Adam Stein is a good friend of Future Tense and we've done other things together. Adam is the associate director for Nuclear Innovation on the Climate and Energy Team at the Breakthrough Institute and where he focuses on technology policy risk and the economics of nuclear energy. It's good to see you again, Adam. And NAMSA Nangwe is a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. NAMSA comes highly recommended by our colleagues at the Center for Science and Imagination at ASU and has good friends there that she's done some work with and I'm excited that NAMSA can also inject into the conversation the perspective of someone who's done a lot of work on proliferation, nonproliferation of nuclear in again in a very different context. But so I think we have a great team assembled here and I'm gonna pass off the baton to you, Jason and I look forward to learning from you all. Thank you so much. Thanks, Andres And thanks for the invitation to join this tremendous group on this really important topic. It's a pleasure to be with you all. It's a really timely topic. Nuclear is even more than in the past, I think very much back on the radar is roughly almost exactly a decade ago since the Fukushima nuclear accident which sat back nuclear powers prospects worldwide. But I think renewed focus on the role nuclear energy can slash should slash will play in a lower carbon future to come. A lot of new investment going into both early stage nuclear technology, advanced nuclear technology, fusion, large policy commitments like Emmanuel Macron recently announcing that in France they're gonna put a major push behind nuclear power. The European Commission and its green taxonomy including nuclear power, not without some controversy. And of course controversy here in the US with some high profile folks taking to Twitter and op-ed pages and elsewhere on decisions like shutting down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. So really excited to hear the views of these three experts with backgrounds in the technology, the policy and the security and nonproliferation aspects having spent time in government at the National Security Council how to think about the international security and geopolitical dynamics of nuclear is a particular interest to me. So I really am looking forward to this conversation. I think the outlook for nuclear power in the United States may be brightening. Well, I'm curious to hear what folks think about that driven as I wrote recently in a column in foreign policy both by the urgency of decarbonization and getting to net zero by improvements in nuclear technology and also by some of the security concerns about the fact that at present Russia and China are building most of the world's nuclear power plants and how we should think about that from a US foreign policy perspective. So this is a great opportunity to talk about all of these with a really fantastic group of experts. They've already been introduced. So I won't repeat those introductions. I will just jump right in. And I guess the question, I'll just ask each of you to respond to it, but maybe Maria start with you is why we're talking about this. So Alaska, slightly provocative question. And for folks who read things I've written recently or in the past, you may know, I won't even believe necessarily everything I'm saying, but we have to move really fast to decarbonize. We are way behind schedule and we got to be deploying what we have on hand and solar is cheap and wind is cheap and batteries are cheap. Nuclear is expensive, at least in many parts of this country and some other parts of the world. And it takes time and the advanced nuclear technologies people are talking about take time. So why are we taking an hour out of our day today to talk about the outlook for nuclear energy? Well, thank you. And I'll jump right in to begin the conversation, I guess. And I would just say that, you know, we need to sort of move past tribalism of, you know, I want this technology or I want that technology and realize that the climate crisis that faces us, it really is a coming together. And I think we need renewables, we need and nuclear, sort of and any carbon-free options that we have because I think it's that important. And you already mentioned the fact that, you know, people are really paying a lot more attention to the climate and not only paying attention to it, but just sort of realizing how hard it's going to be and how much that we need to go and how quickly we need to get there. Thank you. Combine all of those together. I think there's really no more debate about nuclear. I think nuclear has to be a part of the solution. Adam, your thoughts about that question. Well, I agree that nuclear needs to be part of the solution and it definitely is a combined effort between renewables and nuclear and other clean energy sources such as geothermal. It's not one or the other, but from a system planning point of view, you need sources such as nuclear or geothermal that provide the firm resources that renewables do not provide. So it's a different resource. It's not just we need all of the above to build out enough generation, even though we do. It's also that it provides unique characteristics that are valuable. I follow up questions, but no, so let me turn to you. Sure. Thank you for having me. I think it's, as Maria said, the discussion on nuclear energy is an atom as well. It's a discussion that a lot of people think it's like an either or situation. So it's like either you fully commit to being interested in nuclear energy and whatever concerns you have are ridiculous and let's move forward or you're completely against it. I would definitely say I'm in the camp as we're, I think most of us are speaking on this panel benefiting from nuclear power generation as we speak. I am definitely in the camp of saying, yes, I understand why people have concerns. I do believe those concerns need to be addressed at the same time as we explore non-carbon options that are going to help us globally deal with this crisis. So that will be my answer. Adam, let me just follow up. You said something I think is pretty important and wanna ask you to elaborate a little bit on it. You talked about firm dispatchable resources. Talk a little bit more about what you mean by that and why they're important and how big a role they need to play. Are we talking about the last 10% of the grid for a few days a year when demand is super high because it's very hot or how big a role do you see them needing to play particularly with improvements in energy storage that might allow us to think differently about the role intermittent sources of energy could play. Sure. So most studies find that you need about 30% firm generation of some sort. And currently we have much, much more than that because gas and coal can provide firm generation as well. And that's power that can be dispatched. That's power that can be dispatched when you need it to provide energy to meet demand instead of when it is available such as intermittent weather dependent sources such as wind provide energy when the wind's available but they can't provide energy exactly when you ask it to. So most studies find that you need about 30% firm generation of some kind even with about 70% renewable grids which is a very high penetration of renewable resources. And to do that, you need in a decarbonized grid you need a clean source of energy and you have potentially hydro, geothermal and nuclear that provide these clean firm generation sources. Geothermal is limited currently because advanced geothermal is still being developed that can provide sources where needed. Right now it's limited to where those resources are which are where heat's located close to the surface. Hydro is very limited where you can site new hydro in the US it's very close to being maxed out but in other parts of the world there are still a lot of hydro resources that could be tapped but nuclear is the one option that you can put pretty much anywhere you need it to provide the energy when you need it such as at night or when the wind isn't blowing because variable renewable resources don't meet demand exactly when you want it. And the, I assume Maria you agree with that can you talk about but expand on it if you want to also kind of when we talk about the outlook for nuclear in the United States maybe we'll come back and talk about the rest of the world in a moment too. The conversation seems very much focused on how to prevent early retirement of existing nuclear as opposed to are we gonna be building lots of new nuclear in the future? Can you talk about each of those and what you see as the outlook for them? Sure, happy to and I agree very much with what Adam said a healthy grid and a reliable grid is that mix of I'll just say the sort of always there resources and then of course the intermittent resources and I think we also need to maybe step back take some of the emotion out of this and just say, hey listen we all want reliable electricity the world that we have depends on it as we look forward for decarbonization we're gonna be even more dependent on electricity because there's a lot of things today that use other sources that we're gonna put on electricity cars and transportation as an example so that grid of the future becomes even more important and it's important that you decarbonize that again as we're going to lean on it even more and when we look at some resources they're gonna require quite a bit of transmission so whether that's wind or solar and so you have to look at it's not just building the generation source it's building that generation source and connecting it to the grid and we have to look at how can we do that sort of the most effective and reliable way and that's where things like nuclear and other carbon free sources come and I go back to it's a teamwork event we wanna do this in the best way for communities best way for a reliable grid best way for affordability best way for a just transition all kinds of different lenses if you will that we can look on it and I'll kind of leave it there because there might be different directions that you wanna go I'm happy to go in any of those directions with you but the bottom line is we gotta take a look at sort of making that happen in the smartest way and here in the United States and then of course outside of the United States by leading with some American technologies you started by saying well maybe at first principle we need to sort of stop shutting down the things that we already have and I couldn't agree with you more nuclear is carbon free it's dispatchable I mean it's there around the clock and it's a very reliable source very high what we call capacity factor meaning it's there when you need it as a US fleet we have just under 100 reactors and for our US fleet we had a greater than 92% capacity as an example for last year we should be very proud of our nuclear fleet we run nuclear plants extremely well here in the United States and so all of that sort of carbon free power honestly we've been getting it for years and years and years but we just really didn't value it as much for the carbon free nature that it provides and I think now what's bringing sort of nuclear more into the conversation is that realization that it is carbon free and it's reliable and it's always there and so in some cases you are seeing based on economics some of these nuclear plants being shut down and in some cases in effort for people to do good things they wanted to encourage this or encourage that they put sort of different incentives in place also the low cost of natural gas all of these pressures have really put pressure on the current nuclear fleet and many of the markets and that's really what's pushing pushing nuclear out of the market the real challenge is it's hard to see and it's actually it's hard to watch to close down these highly reliable very well performing plants providing all that carbon free energy because when you shut that down sure you get a little bit of wind and solar but the majority of replacements for nuclear plants are gas plants, right? And so not only did you lose that reliable source you just add it to your carbon footprint. Yeah, I was gonna say for folks watching listen to what you just said and said well if they're having trouble competing economically and there are things that are cheaper let's use those I assume that ties back to your earlier comment that we may not be fully accounting for the carbon free value of the generation. That's right the market doesn't recognize that today when we work that through and sort of rationalize carbon in the market all of these things I think will easily work themselves out I think the challenge we have is we need to get through that and right now the market does not recognize the carbon free attribute. No, I'm curious to your view on kind of the outlook for nuclear in the United States or you bullish or bearish and if we were properly accounting for climate costs and carbon CO2 costs how much would that change that? And then I'd love to hear your thoughts next about sort of elsewhere in the world but maybe start with the US. Okay, thank you. I think the main issue that arises when we talk about nuclear energy because as I was listening to both Adam and Maria I don't disagree with the more technical aspects of it but I think to divorce all of the horrible nuclear incidents that have happened and you mentioned Fukushima earlier as to how that affects public perception and public opinion and how there's a lack of trust, right? So Maria, you're talking about how safe it is and it's a non-carbon option but then folks are thinking, okay so Fukushima, I read that they're about to pump billions of barrels of contaminated water waste water into the ocean because nobody could have predicted a Fukushima incident. So I feel that when it comes to nuclear energy especially in the United States when we look at Nevada when we look at the whole Yucca mountain debate I think it is always important as much as it's not fun to bring those things up but I think acknowledging that those concerns exist and they exist for good reason so that it's to say even if we talk about risk mitigate the management of risk mitigation or analysis yes, the risks are probably going to be from a scientific perspective minimal but when it does happen, right? It has such a broad impact on people and our psyches and we're in year three of a global pandemic and we're just thinking about all the things that nobody warned us could be bad for us. So I think when we're having the debate about nuclear energy especially in the United States it is important to also incorporate that element of the debate to acknowledge the fact that yes there have been mishaps, this is new technology it's only been around for less than 100 years it's done a lot and it can do more and it will continue to be a player in the energy sector I do not believe that we're ever going to be at a point where people are going to be like oh no, we can just never have it I think as we are seeing in countries like Germany that are moving away from nuclear energy and that gap is starting to show itself to say oh wow, they need something else to fill this in so I don't think the part about nuclear energy in general like is it going to go the way of the dodo I don't think there is any concerns with that regard but I do believe that when having the conversation on nuclear energy that acknowledgement of all of those things that have gone wrong and rebuilding public trust in the technology is going to be key. And I think as you said before when you talk about the US it has the most amount of nuclear power plants. So people look to see what happened in the US how well has this worked? Okay, is this something that we want to bring into our particular countries or our situation? So it's a, in order to have a win-win situation I think that needs to be addressed more directly. For sure and we were going to get there and you took us there so that's great. We absolutely need to talk about the concerns over the risks of nuclear energy over safety issues and also waste disposal. But I just want to make sure I understood your view based on what you just said is what you were saying. Given those concerns and those risks is your view that those can be addressed and can be managed and nuclear will and should play a larger role in a low carbon energy mix or do you think that those concerns are such that actually we should be much more cautious about moving forward with nuclear energy? Well, the information I have regarding the next generation of nuclear power plants, et cetera is talking about a few years out like it's not happening tomorrow. So I think, as companies and as entities try to move towards promoting that next generation of power that is the perfect time to start confidence building measures in terms of public trust and awareness. So I am not going to say that I'm completely against nuclear energy. I do think it's going to play a role and it might even play a bigger role if the public trust element can be addressed. Yeah, well, Maria, I'm sure you have thoughts about that and Noms is right, of course, about the public perception with events like Fukushima or Chernobyl or others but talk a little bit about where the safety issues are today, how significant and addressable you believe them to be and how will that change moving forward with some of the advanced nuclear technologies that I want to come to in a moment and talk about whether they're going to be realized or not but that people are talking about. Sure, thank you. Well, I spent 35 years of my career operating nuclear power plants here in the United States. So I can say with high confidence that the plants that we operate here in the United States are operated extremely well and I appreciate and I agree with her statements that where people have concerns, it's happy to bring up those concerns and to have those conversations. We don't shy from those discussions at all. And I think just to appreciate the many layers of defense in depth, if you will, that we put in place at our nuclear plants today are really a strong benefit and demonstrate the high reliability and high capacity factor that I mentioned to you, very resilient resources that we have today. So anyway, happy to go in any direction that you want for those conversations. Simply to say, as we look to the next generation of nuclear that's coming and it is coming quickly, she mentioned, it'll be a few years. It'll be a few short years, quite frankly. There are new designs that are talking about having pilot plants built in the 2026, 2027 timeframe, others by the end of the 2020s. And so it's in nuclear is very much positioning itself to demonstrate and show what some of these new technology offerings are, not only here for the United States, but outside of the United States, there's a lot of interest on building US technology. And the reason there's so much interest in building that US technology is because of the trust with the United States. Russia and China are very bullish on nuclear. I think China is building 20 different reactors right now. And I think they maybe have 30 more on the drawing board. And so both Russia and China are being very bullish and very aggressive. And I think that's something from a national security perspective. Honestly, we really do need to take on, we need to understand. And it really does create a dynamic where there is a lot of interest in US technologies for these other countries to wanna do business with us. And at the same time, we are benefiting from the fantastic national labs that we have here in the United States that have been very innovative, very creative, bringing forth some interesting ideas, partnering with the private sector. And we're gonna have the benefit of that beautiful innovation playing out here over the next few years. And it's gonna give all of us a chance to really see and understand the benefits of these different makes and models, if you will. One really exciting thing about these new makes and models that are coming out is I'm gonna use the word approachable. I think it's gonna make nuclear more approachable than perhaps the nuclear you see today. The nuclear today are these very large plants. Again, and there's nothing wrong with large, but that's sort of the only view that we have of nuclear today. Well, the tomorrow's nuclear is gonna have some smaller and some really small called micro reactors. And as these reactors get smaller, they're gonna be able to be more approachable, more connected, if you will, connected to businesses perhaps, connected near cities perhaps. Today in some remote locations, honestly, you don't even have a grid that would be able to support a large reactor. Think about, I don't know, in the middle of Alaska, for example, and when nuclear gets smaller and more approachable, all of a sudden nuclear is an option there. Nuclear could be an option on an island such as Puerto Rico, for example. So that nuclear of tomorrow has so much more flexibility to team with wind and solar and to be that backbone, if you will, of the grid, even if it's a very remote grid. And I think that's a very exciting option for the nuclear that we're gonna know tomorrow. Quick follow-up, and then I don't wanna come to you. So the idea, what you said to Noamso, that are coming faster than people think, for those who might look at experience in South Carolina or Georgia, where things took twice as long and cost twice as much as we thought they would, why will that not happen again? Yeah, and honestly, I would say, as a nuclear industry, we have to own that, right? We have to own that reputation, that things take too long. And in some of the examples that you just provided, and we need to take that reputation and we need to say, okay, and that's why we need to show, we need to demonstrate. And that's why these pilot plants that I'm talking about coming online over the next few years, I think very much will demonstrate, all right, you said it would be on this schedule. Well, what kind of schedule was it? You said it was gonna be roughly this cost profile. Well, what cost profile is it? Because I think these different makes and models, what we know today, we have water-cooled reactors. Well, those reactors of tomorrow, some could be water-cooled, some could be molten salt, some could be metal. There's all kinds of different opportunities there. And so I think we're to the point where it's sort of show me. Let's demonstrate. And even that first one, won't be your most cost-effective one. That first one with anything that you build is gonna be a little bit more, but you'll be able to get that line of sight. What's also really exciting is it's not just, this isn't just sort of a US conversation. So we have some examples where we have one that's interested here to be built in the United States. Interestingly enough, Canada also just selected that design. They wanna build it in the 2028 timeframe. Interestingly enough, Poland is interested in that design and they're interested in a handful of the same design. So when we talk about getting to nth of a kind and getting to sort of a regular rhythm of build, we have to open our aperture. It's not just getting to nth of a kind here in the United States. It's in a relatively short order. You're gonna have that same design built in three different countries. You're gonna get smarter, quicker, faster in terms of how to build and how to get that supply chain moving. And that's what you see for this next phase of nuclear that there's a hunger and to satisfy that hunger, there's going to be all these different makes and models. And I think in pretty short order, we're gonna get to a regular build routine. Adam, a lot's been said. So I'll let you respond to any of it that you want, but in particular, and I'm gonna bring audience questions in for the next half hour, work them into the conversation. Several about the safety concerns that people have. So you can speak to that in particular, but anything else you wanna touch on? I'll quickly go back to the build time and cost. It's been pretty clear that the plans in Georgia and South Carolina are behind and over budget, but I would say that that's basically the case for most major projects in the U.S. right now. It's not necessarily that we can't build large nuclear plants, it's that we can't build large projects right now on time or on budget. You can look at the high-speed rail in California or the big dig in Boston. Any major project has been way, way behind and over budget. Now, to speak to the risk, this is an area that I've done a lot of research in actually. Nuclear is the safest form of major energy by terawatt hour. It's also regulated to a much safer profile than actually we can detect in the population. The safety goal for the NRC for regulation is more stringent by an order of magnitude than you would actually be able to see in epidemiological studies. So the question is, is it safe? Yes, it's the safest currently and it's been the safest for decades, even more so than renewable energy sources. So it's not a question of is it safe? It is the question of making sure that's communicated to the population because they need to be comfortable with it, to be comfortable with building it, not to necessarily just say, yes, it's safe, listen to me, they need to actually want to build new nuclear in their communities and to do so they need to understand its risk profile and its benefits and the energy industry, I'm not saying NEI specifically, energy as a whole has not communicated the safety of nuclear the same way that they communicated that about renewables and therefore there's a little bit of a skewed mentality about it that needs to be addressed. Now, in terms of innovation and new designs for safety, there's new fuels that have already been qualified that are essentially meltdown proof for new reactors called Triso. It would take a heat rate of much higher than the reactor could actually achieve for it to melt down. There are other coolant methods that essentially shut down the reactor automatically if it gets too hot. So the reactor would shut down before it would be able to achieve melting of the fuel. A lot of passive safety systems that just through physics prevent situations like happen at Fukushima. Ken, I wanna ask quick follow up and I'll apologize for the noise in the background if you hear any. I agree with you, it's very hard to do large construction projects in the US but it seems easy outside my window right now in the streets of New York. That just for, you made a comment, nuclear is the safest form of energy. And I'm just wondering whether people listening might be saying, well, wait, I remember Fukushima and I remember from island and I remember Chernobyl. I suspect for coal, you're talking about things like air pollution that people who are saying I don't remember big solar and wind accidents. Just explain a little bit more why you believe that to be true and what you think the evidence shows. Sure, so the majority of fatalities from fossil fuels are from pollution, yes. But there's the fatalities caused by Three Mile Island was zero. In fact, nobody received a appreciable dose. The fatalities from Fukushima were not caused by radiation just a poorly orchestrated evacuation, quite frankly, a very large tsunami in earthquake. There were some fatalities from radiation at Chernobyl but as the cancer studies have progressed over the years it's much less than they originally thought it would be. The tritium release of water from Fukushima that was brought up earlier is actually eight times less tritium content than what is considered safe for drinking water. So it's not a polluting source of radiation, it's higher than most water sources have in their background and just naturally occurring. So these are things that concern people and it's understandable that they concern people but they're not actual sources of mortality to the population. If you look at direct deaths from coal, there have been more coal miners killed in the US this year or last year I should say in 2021 than there have been in the nuclear industry in the US since it started. And that's not from pollution, that's actual direct deaths. And if you look at solar and wind, there are direct deaths, unfortunately, in construction of solar projects, workers that have been injured on the job, things like that. So the risk profile in those industries, while I'm sure it will come down with learning, currently is higher than the nuclear. I wanna bring more questions from the audience unless you have any ones that have come in on that. If not, I'll turn to- Yeah, I guess I just wanted to say, I personally think there is a disconnect between proponents of nuclear energy and how they talk about these legitimate concerns that people have about safety. Because like I said before, nobody ever thought Fukushima could happen. It did not factor in the modeling who would have thought that an earthquake tsunami would do what it did. From the report that I read from the IAEA and the reports that I read from other sources, it was like, this was an event that nobody really thought could happen. And it was very educational and instructional and it's helped with the safety of nuclear power plants going forward. But I don't think it's helpful to say, it's only 2% because once again, that connection, that human connection that we have when we see something like Fukushima happen or we see something like Three Mile Island happen. No matter what the science says, you have to address that part, that human part where people feel that fear or that uncertainty. And I feel like, as we talk about science and the war on information and disinformation and expertise as a scientific community, we have to do more to sort of like bridge that gap with people to say, yes, these are the stats, these are the facts. I understand your concerns and how can we like address them in a way that would make you comfortable? I just wanted to add that because I feel like it is very helpful. That's very helpful. We do the perception, the large incidents, daily auto fatalities versus an airplane crash. I mean, there's a question of perception and then there's also a question of real risk and I'm just trying to make sure we're talking about both just so people understand them. And one of the other questions that has come in and is on another concern is not just safety but the disposal of radioactive waste. And I was wondering if maybe no, so you could start but I'd love to hear each of you talk a little bit about how we should think about that and what the solutions are. And to the extent we may not have all the solutions we need, whether the current approach of storage either on site or in potentially large central sites like we've debated in the US for a while and Nevada, do those make sense near term, long term? How should we think about disposal of radioactive waste or other ways to deal with radioactive waste besides disposal? I think on the radioactive waste topic as well, there's a lot of not so great things out there about the disposal of radioactive waste. So I think, I know Finland has progressed very far in devising something underground. That is what scientists at the moment think would be like the safest and we're talking not just like nuclear physicists but geologists, et cetera. And I'm sure that is going to continue, like in terms of nuclear safety, I'm sure we're going to continue to get better at it in general, but we cannot ignore the fact that there are 100,000 tons of radioactive waste right now sitting around above ground waiting to be disposed of. There has been a lot of talk in the US, for example, with regard to like the politics of disposing of that waste, clashing with the science of it. But the conclusion is we talked about it for 30, 40 years and it hasn't happened yet. So I feel like once again, radioactive waste is bad. We all agree, we want it to be as safely disposed of as possible, but it's very terrifying when you hear that the half-life of radioactive waste is 100,000 years beyond our even imagination. So yeah, I would stop there and let the others jump in. Okay, Maria, let me come to you. Yeah, I'll just jump in there, be intentionally a bit provocative. I love nuclear waste and so I would share that sort of one man's trash is another man's treasure. And so the thing we call waste from commercial nuclear power plants today has 95% good energy in that thing we call waste. So the reality is today, we don't have a process to use that, but our grandchildren and their grandchildren and others I can promise you are gonna want to unleash this energy in a way that's helpful and useful. So I think the responsible thing to do is to safely store it while we're sort of figuring out what next steps are. And again, I would look to the nuclear industry and I would say we've been very responsible relative to the storing of this waste. We know exactly where it is, we know exactly what it is and it's being very safely stored. I would say it's not efficiently stored which is what you have both mentioned, right? We have it sort of scattered about at different sites and why are we doing that? Well, because the government has not made good on its responsibility to ultimately collect this waste. It's not that it's a difficult solution. It's difficult politically, but it's not difficult scientifically. And as she just mentioned, Finland recently made progress on their deep geologic repository. Sweden is also making progress. Canada has made some significant progress on a consent-based siting process. I think France is making some progress. So I mean, you can look around the world and you can say, hey, other people are figuring this out. We have a lot of real estate in the United States. I'm confident that we can figure it out as well. We just literally need to compel the government to appreciate that ultimately a long-term waste storage solution is their responsibility and we're happy to help to make all that come true. But quite frankly, we do need to get on with it. I'll stop by just a minute to say, there's other forms of generation that create waste, many of which you're breathing. And so you might say, oh, well, they don't have waste. Well, it's because we are all breathing that waste because it's just literally emitted into the air. And so the fact that this waste again is understood, it's contained, it's stored, it's overseen, I think, and the value is that it has good energy in it that we can use again. And these new reactors that we're talking about that we mentioned that are coming, they can use that kind of sort of transformed energy. So I see a wonderful sort of coming together of new technologies that can use what we're calling waste today, which will create opportunities to transition what we have in our waste stream today to more useful sources. So I just, I see a wonderful opportunity playing out in over the next decade plus. And I'm just confident that we're gonna put our heads together and take some smart steps forward. I think you answered one of the other questions from Steven Curtis, isn't it possible to recycle? You spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors. That's what you were just talking about a moment ago. Absolutely. Adam, anything you wanna add to that? I'll also add that we're already recycling or plan to recycle some spent fuel from the one of the first Idaho National Lab reactors as new fuel for one of the new demonstration reactors. So we're already in the process of trying to do that. Some of the new designs not only are designed to use spent fuel as new fuel as you just mentioned, but fast reactors in general will burn most of the long, longer lived vision products in the normal process. And therefore the fuel or the spent fuel will have much shorter lifetimes, not hundreds of thousands of years, but hundreds of years that it'll actually be radioactive. And thus much easier to deal with. So it's innovation is already pushing us towards how can we address this problem for new reactor designs in addition to using new reactor designs to address the existing spent fuel? There's a question here. I'd love to know the answer to it says, I'd love to know what Adam and Maria believe are the strongest arguments on the other side. And so it was an interesting thought exercise. You clearly believe nuclear has an important role to play in the future. When you hear arguments for those who are more skeptical or don't support nuclear, some of you might say that's just totally wrong and some you might say, well, no, they have a really good point. I think the pros outweigh the cons, but I get that that's a legitimate issue. What do you think one or two of those might be? I would say that the strongest argument is the concern over further proliferation of nuclear weapons because having more nuclear reactors out there means more nuclear fuel out there. Although I would then say that many of the new designs are expected to be long life cores that you would not refuel in the field. So if they went to a country that doesn't have reprocessing already that they would need to make weapons that they wouldn't have that technology, the whole reactor core would come back to the initiating country. But it's definitely a concern that people should address through proactive safeguards. Do I want to come? I'd love to hear on the nonproliferation question, so what you have to say about that, but maybe I'll let Maria answer that audience question and then I'll come to you. It's a toughie for me because I would agree with the statement that he made, but I would also say, and maybe I'll go more to her comments earlier, which is I think it's less about the science and maybe just more about the perception and that perhaps we just need to do a better job sort of appreciating what the perceptions are and sort of communicating in a way that we do value those perceptions and value the facts and sort of enter in a constructive dialogue around it because honestly, and again, I've been in the nuclear field for many, many, many years. And I've, I just, I can't fathom a reason, appreciating the situation that the world finds itself in. I cannot fathom a reason why we would not want to use this wonderful energy source to help reach the solutions that ultimately that we need. And I'll just kind of add a thought there. We talk a lot about electricity. I mean, the reality is it's much more than electricity. When you decarbonize, it's not just go decarbonize your electric sector, right? It needs to be the whole economy. So think about things you do today. How do you make steel? How do you make some of these sort of large manufacturing things? How do you do all of that and not use fossil fuels? Again, I come back to nuclear. Nuclear can give you electricity, that's what you want. It can give you hydrogen, if that's what you want. It can give you high temperature steam, if that's what you want. And so all of a sudden, you have this very versatile energy source that's able to give you a variety of outputs. You can have electricity during the day and hydrogen at night. You can have hydrogens during the day and give the high temperature steam. So it is just such a fantastic opportunity for us to integrate in order to decarbonize the entire economy. Noam, can you take broadening aperture beyond the U.S., talk a little bit about the Don proliferation concerns that Adam talked about, and then also where do you see nuclear making, where are you more optimistic that we're gonna see advances in nuclear? And then how should we think about that? Maybe they're in countries that it's a good thing. Maybe there's some that raise concerns for you. Thank you to Adam for bringing up the Divergent of Nuclear Energy for Nefarious Purposes, because that is what I mainly focus a lot of my time and energy on. And I would definitely say that, Vipin Narang just recently published a book and it's about how some countries, how some countries go nuclear and why some do not. And the findings in the book show that 29 countries made efforts to become nuclear. 19 have specifically tried to develop nuclear bombs and 10 have succeeded. And in his conclusion, he was basically arguing that while nuclear technology exists, nuclear weapons are unlikely to go away and it's not a problem to be solved, but it's a problem to be managed. I personally am somebody who fervently hopes and works towards abolition of nuclear weapons altogether, but I think it is definitely a point worth elaborating on to say, yes, as long as the tech is there, people can much like the internet use it for good or use it for bad. So when we talk about the non-proliferation risks of nuclear energy, I personally feel like it is a concern, but my main concern is more on environmental impacts and all of those other things because I think from a global citizen perspective, I think we're a lot better at being able to see when someone is doing something nefarious or trying to as opposed to we have IAEA safeguards, we have a very robust non-proliferation regime out there, but my concern will always probably lean more towards than the safety aspect of it. And your second question, I would love it if you reviewed it. Well, I was asking, it doesn't have to be you, anyone who wants to come in on this, I'm just curious how you see the outlook for nuclear outside the United States where, see, you know. I think it's gonna have to be a lot more affordable to be honest with you because affordability for developing countries is a major factor. We know that currently a lot of the institutes like that help with aid or developmental aid do not fund nuclear energy projects. So I think if it's going to become something that is a lot more widespread outside of countries that already have in preexisting infrastructure, it'll have to become cheaper and maybe it will in this nuclear future, nuclear energy future we're imagining. Yeah, I'm actually very bullish on nuclear outside of the United States. So I just in this past year, have done quite a bit of traveling and interest in Poland, interest in Ukraine, interest in Bulgaria. You saw French President Macron recently make an announcement about how they are, you know, going to build out more nuclear. And that's kind of a bit of a turnaround. It was only just a few years ago. I think they were talking about, you know, reducing their, reducing their fleet. And so to kind of come around now and they're talking about building not only large but also small reactors. I know Canada is building, I've been to Brazil and Brazil is very interested as well. And so I agree with her statement. I think that at the end of the day, there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of potential. But I think some of these new makes and models that we're bringing to the fore, we have a lot of people looking to say, okay, I really want that, you know, sort of how much is it going to cost? How quickly can, you know, can you build something? And so again, I think we're really in the cat bird seat over these next few years, you know, three to five years to really see some of these pilot plants get a little bit further along so that people can get an idea relative to their cost as well as their build schedule. But there's a lot of interest, a lot of discussion. I'd say has United Kingdom, I probably forgot to mention them, but I think the conversation just in the last two to three years has really shifted. And just on that point, as I think I mentioned just at the outset, if you look at the reactors planned around the world, more than most of them are being built by Russia and China. So is the optimism you see for nuclear around the world, does it, should it raise concerns for European and US foreign policy and energy security officials as well? Well, I think it does and it has. And I think it's also one of the reasons, quite frankly, it's what the United States does best. We innovate, we bring things to the market. And yes, I think Russia and China have varied deliberately from a geopolitical perspective, I think they've divided up and said, here's all the places I'm gonna build my reactor and why are they doing that, right? They're doing that because they really do wanna control your energy supply. I think you don't have to look much farther than the gas pipeline over in Europe today and look at some of the challenges that can arise when somebody can control your source of energy. And so we really need to pay attention to that and we need to demonstrate and show that American technology and partnering with America is a good thing. Quite frankly, when you build a nuclear power plant together, you form a 100 year relationship with a country, right? You're gonna design it, you're gonna operate it for 80 to 100 years, you're gonna decommission it. It's a very long-term, very strong relationship. And so we should use the connection of sort of that sort of nuclear understanding and nuclear partnership, if you will, for building commercial nuclear plants to our geopolitical advantage. We're out of time, but in 20 seconds, have you seen the current energy crunch in Europe change the conversation about nuclear there and the outlook for nuclear in Europe? Absolutely. We are out of time. And I wish we had more time because there's so much, many other audience questions, many other questions that I had, but Adam Nomsa, Maria, thanks for making time to be with us and for so candidly and clearly sharing your insights about the role nuclear energy is playing today and will should play in the future. I learned a lot. So really, really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. And I invite you to keep an eye out for more future tense events going forward. Thanks again, everyone. Have a good day.