ENERGY: America’s Nuclear Revival is Here w/ Dr. Hash Hashemian

0:00The state of nuclear in the United States as follows. So we have 94 nuclear power plants that are operating and producing about 20% of US electricity. Nuclear is the second largest power generation in the United States even today. So we are building a series of new nuclear power plants. We recall a small modular reactor or advanced nuclear reactors, SMOs and AMOs. We are also extending the life of the existing plants. So the plants in the United States are licensed to operate for four years initially, but you can extend that to 60 and 80. And I think about 80 or 10 of them are now licensed to go to 80 years. And these talks are running nuclear power plants to 100 years. So one of the things that people have to realize is that even though it's very expensive to build one, the fact that you can use it for 100 years, it pays for itself. Welcome back to the BlockSpace podcast brought to you by CleanSpark. Nuclear energy is cool again, and we have AI to think for that.

1:02But we're also coming off of decades of stagnation in the industry, following the threefold disasters at Chernoble, Fukushima and Three Mile Island that's scared most of the developed world, including the US, away from nuclear energy. But now we're seeing a resurgence in nuclear energy and technology as AI data centers press demand onto regional grid across the US. To discuss the current revival, we have Dr. Hashem Min, the president of the American Nuclear Society on today's show, to discuss the current state of America's nuclear industry where it is headed and what barriers are in its way as the American nuclear sector sees its largest revival in some decades. If you're a new kid, this show is for you. We'll be right back. Hey, Charlie here. Guess what? We just announced our next Bitcoin technical conference up next. That's right, y'all. Up next is back for 2026. We're running it back after a successful

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3:07that is opnext.dev. Use code podcast to save 20% off a GA ticket to the event. Ticket prices go up every few weeks, so don't wait y'all lock in that ticket today. We'll see you April 16th at the time center in New York City. Dr. Hashem Min, thank you so much for joining the mining pod, sir. How you doing? I'm doing great. My pleasure, my friend. My pleasure. Yeah, so we touched base in NIMS in Nashville in January, and I regret that we couldn't do this in person, but everyone was really busy. But I thought you were the perfect person to come on to talk about this topic, because I've been wanting to get a show done for the nuclear renaissance that we experienced in the U.S. for some time. So before we get into the questions that I have today, could you please give our listeners a little bit of your background? Of course, of course. I am Hashem Yun. Actually, my name is Hashem. Hashem Yun, but people called me Hash.

4:08I came to United States from Iran about 50 years ago to go to school of nuclear engineering. At that time, we had the government in Iran was planning to start a bunch of nuclear power plants so that they can sell the oil and use the nuclear for electricity generation. Then the government changed and the nuclear power program was stopped. So I stayed in the United States while I was a graduate student. I started this company called Analysis of Measurement Services Corporation. We call it AMS. You're in the business of testing the control systems of nuclear power plants, basically what we do. We make sure that if something happens in the reactor core, the plant gets to shut down as soon as possible. So we make sure the sensors are fast, the cables are fast and good. The electronics work properly. They're all control systems that is the brake that is stopped the reactor all work in a few seconds. So from when something happens

5:14to your plant is to be shut down, should be something like 10 seconds or so, we make sure everything that creates that 10 second delay works properly. So that's what my company does. We do that in all the nuclear power plants in the United States and we do that in any US-made plant in other countries. No, we have also started doing that in Russian-made plants and sometimes Chinese-made plants. So we had a global nuclear engineering company headquartered in Oxford, Tennessee with the agents in South Korea and Europe in other places. I have to say as a native Tennessee, and I'm very excited to still see Eastern Tennessee hoisting the nuclear flag, so to speak. As the bedrock of the nuclear movement in the US with Oak Ridge, it's just very exciting to see that there's still a lot of development going on there. So as true, I forgot to mention of also the sitting president of the American nuclear society.

6:17And so every month, American nuclear society have a magazine called nuclear news that comes out. And if you look at the nuclear news for February edition, it rated the states in America as which one is ahead of everyone on nuclear deployment and development and not and Tennessee is the number one state in the United States in the development and deployment of nuclear energy. So we are very proud of that. As you know, Colin, there is about $12 billion already committed for development of nuclear fuel and building of nuclear reactors all in Oak Ridge. So there's a lot going on in Tennessee, especially in Oak Ridge. We had a great governor that distorted an advisory committee. I was a member of that. There was 20. It was that advisory, the governor on that on how to make Tennessee the center of nuclear energy in the United States. He gave, he put in $100 million behind that. And that also started, and of course,

7:23Department of Energy is doing a lot to boost the nuclear around the United States and especially in Tennessee. Yeah. And as I understand it, a French company, Orano, is planning to build an enrichment facility in East Tennessee, which will kind of give East Tennessee a full stack, kind of vertically integrated, you know, approach or supply chain for its nuclear base. But on that note of Tennessee and some of these other leading states and what the Department of Energy is trying to do to revitalize America's nuclear industry, what would you say is the current state of the US's nuclear industry as we enter 2026? All right. So we are very careful not to call it a renaissance occurring because last time we had a renaissance, it died out. So we don't call it renaissance anywhere. We call it rebirth or resurgent in Europe. I was in Europe recently and they call it the spring of nuclear.

8:25So the state of nuclear in the United States as follows. So we have 94 nuclear power plants. We had 110. We shot some of them down prematurely because the demand for electricity was not as high at that time. There was other ways to generate the power that we needed. But about five years ago, maybe even four years ago, everything changed in favor of nuclear power. So we have 94 nuclear power plants that are operating and producing about 20% of US electricity. People don't know that. Nuclear is a second largest source of power generation, electric power generation in the United States even today. So we are building a series of new nuclear power plants. We recall a small modular reactor or advanced nuclear reactors, SMOs and AMOs. That's what's going on. We are also extending the life of the existing plants. So the plants in the United States are licensed to

9:30operate for four years initially, but you can extend that to 60 and AD. Almost all the operating nuclear power plants in the United States have been licensed to go to 60. And I think about 8 or 10 of them are now licensed to go to AD years. And these talks are running nuclear power plants to 100 years. So one of the things that people have to realize is that even though it's very expensive to build one, the fact that you can use it for 100 years, it pays for itself. So I want to pull a chart up really quickly that I think speaks to what you were just saying about where, you know, how much electricity we get from nuclear. It is a huge chunk. But one of the things that I find very perplexing about this graph that kind of, you know, is someone who covers energy a lot kind of just sends me for a spiral is our electricity generation in the US kind of at those starting in the 2000s. And you can see, you know, that gas continues to eat up more of a chunk compared to coal. But things like nuclear seem to stagnate or even dip as we see in the 2000s.

10:36Why did we decommission those power plants? I know you mentioned lack of demand. But why not continue building those things and what really kind of stalled America's nuclear build out kind of starting in the 2000s? At the time that they were shot down, they couldn't make money. They were losing money of generating power in nuclear. So that all of that change in the recent years, but the reason those 10 plants were shot down was economics. Some of them were also old and a couple of them had the issue that if they tried to fix that issue, the cost would be so much. If that was today, none of those would have been shot down. In fact, a plant called Palisets in Michigan was shot down about seven or eight years ago and a company called Holtec private company basically is is bringing that plant back up. There's another plant called Duane, I or no, that's bringing it. They are working to bring that back up. So

11:38at the time that you're talking about the power demand and the economy of nuclear was not favorable. So the plants that could not make money, they were shot down. In fact, at one time, I own a nuclear engineering company. Sorry, I really worry about this. At one time, they were saying nuclear plants in the United States are going to go down from 100 nuclear power to 50. This is five or six years ago that we were thinking that our business is going to do in there to very little, but everything changed two or four years ago because of the energy demand prompted by a lot of things. Economic activity is post-COVID and then the resurgence of AI and they need the power, the data center for electricity. I've just really gave a big spike in the demand for electricity. Nuclear is back in business because of that. And of course, the environmental benefits of nuclear was extremely publicized during the Biden

12:46administration. There is a conference. I don't know if you've been to it or not call and call cop. It's an environmental conference. I was there. It was in Dobay in 2024. I was there and they declared that the nuclear energy production in the world have to be increased by a factor of three in favor of the environment mostly in that conference. So the environmental benefit of nuclear was more recognized in the last five years due to Biden and of course Trump is also good for that. So things have really worked in favor of nuclear and you have no other choice. I mean, if you want to make me the demand of AI, if you want to use chat GPT and everything, you can have it all. I mean, there are some issues that you have to worry about, but there is no other choice and nuclear is an eternal source of energy. You will never run out of it. Especially if you do recycling, which means that once you put the fuel, the fuel that is burned

13:52is a better fuel than the one you started with if you do recycling of nuclear waste and that would also reduce the amount of nuclear waste that you have to store. So there's a lot of benefits to it with everything else. There is some also risks, but I think the risks are so small compared to other alternatives that it really makes sense. So you kind of mentioned there that you feel like the winds of the environmental pushback are changing for nuclear. We've seen in the last, I would say, decade or so, the green energy folks have not really embraced it. It's been considered a polluting energy source because they think that we can't really safely store the fuel. You've been in this game for a while. You think reliably those tailwinds or those headwinds are kind of changing into tailwinds in the internal movement starting to embrace it. Yes, very true. There are environmental people that are totally against nuclear. There were anti-nuclear people that have turned their own company. Not every one of them. There are still people who speak against the

14:56production and development of nuclear, but the numbers have probably halved over the last five, six years. You also mentioned in your last or second to last reply, Dwayne Arnold, the Google with next era is kind of leading the charge to restart that. We've also seen Microsoft sign a deal with Constellation to restart Three Mile Island. What do you make of these deals specifically? These company-led deals to restart these assets for data centers and the broad scheme of this rebooting of our nuclear industry? Right. So let's talk about Three Mile Island unit one. So the unit two, of course, had an accident in 1979. I was shot on permanently. Unit two was also shot. I mean, unit one was also shot down a few years ago. Microsoft through a PPA agreement with Constellation decided that the best thing to do is to restart KMI one and I think the work is going on. 23rd year, I guess, is when they're going to bring it back up.

16:00So the reason Microsoft is behind this is because they need the power and you have two choices. Either build a new nuclear power plant which takes a while or go get one that's already there and restart it. So that's why KMI is being restarted. So it's policy. So it's doing Arnold. So it's several other ones that are in the works. And we see summer which was a nuclear plant that was being built in in South Carolina was had economic issues and some mismanagement and they spent nine billion dollars and then they stopped the construction of that plant. But now they're talking about building that back up and finishing it. It's going to be expensive but there's a lot of reversal of everything that we were hearing five years ago today in rebuilding nuclear power plants. The ones that we have that we shot down and new ones. Yeah and as you said obviously them restarting one that's already completely constructed much

17:00cheaper than building one outright. I always see these figures of how much it costs per megawatt to construct nuclear here versus say one of our geopolitical rivals like China and it's much cheaper in China for a number of reasons obviously that some of them are not so good. Some of them maybe we could learn from. What are the barriers standing in the way from building nuclear more cheaply in the United States? So historically when you ask that question everybody blame the regulators the nuclear regulatory commission has over regulating and also the fact that we are not as good as China is in building huge things that cost has been the very but an advanced act and an act passed by the Congress about two years ago and also one of the executive orders have really started the process of making sure the regulations are done to make sure the safety of nuclear power plants are 100% preserved but yet at the same time that red tape that doesn't add to the safety

18:06what generates a lot of work. For example we have some issues for example radiation limits that are imposed on nuclear in some people's opinion especially mine is very strict and some people think it's not strict enough but in my opinion it's very strict and causes a lot of cost overruns for nuclear we basically the basically you're supposed to have almost zero radiation that's very difficult right to do you have to put it on and basically we are saying nuclear plants that radiation environment should be below background or near the background that's pretty hard requirement that makes the cost of an nuclear plant so high. The other thing is we've lost in this country over the last several decades or ability to build huge infrastructure like the reactor vessel for example the reactor vessel that are being built for nuclear power plants some of them are

19:11building other countries but they're gaining all of that back I think you talked about executive orders the executive orders are a huge positive for the resurden of nuclear energy in the United States and also for a streamlining regulations in a way that the safety of plants are preserved 100% or even improved but all the red tape that doesn't add to the safety what creates a lot of cost for nuclear power for no gains is being eliminated on their executive order from President Trump. We're Clean Spark America's Bitcoin Minor a publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate powered entirely by self-operated infrastructure across four six. This is our proof of work we are setting the standard for what's next learn more about the intersection of energy and Bitcoin at CleanSpark.com so I'm glad you mentioned the executive orders I

20:15wanted to touch on that so we'll double tap on that here as I understand it there are really four pillars to these executive orders that Trump has issued for reviving nuclear energy in the US and perhaps maybe the biggest one is reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What do you think of that effort and what do you think should be done to reform it to speed up development and the construction of these nuclear power plants? Right so that is okay there's that the executive order and before that the law passed by Congress called Advanced Law those two are geared toward streamlining regulations in a way that preserve the safety of nuclear power plants and get rid of unnecessary work that was imposed on nuclear industry. The nuclear industry when he started it was over-regulated because we didn't know how safe it is right so and it is good that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was there to really really make sure everything has

21:18been taken care of be very very conservative because when we started these nuclear power plants we didn't know a lot of things that we know now so because of the data because of the history because of the safety record of nuclear industry now we can go back and say these stuff that we required these things that we were doing were not necessary we did them because we didn't know how things are going to work not that we know how things are going to work let's not do this stuff that doesn't add anything to safety or nuclear power plants but creates a lot of paperwork a lot of red tape and Trump executive order has really been effective even though it's very new so I am friends with all the commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so David Wright which was the commissioner head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission till two months ago gave a great speech about how they are implementing the executive order the advanced law in a way

22:19that is maintaining the maximum amount of safety of nuclear power plants like always but getting rid of a lot of things and a lot of work that is not necessary that imposes cost and burden on the nuclear power plant for absolutely no gain right so the other thing you have to remember Colin the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission is recognized worldwide as the gold standard of nuclear regulations everybody tries to follow the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission thing so we have a product called NRC that is that is the envy of the world in nuclear safety and nuclear regulations and we want to maintain that and I think the very executive orders have been drafted and the advanced law has been drafted has been so perfect seriously I'm so glad they did that and I'm so impressed by the people who wrote the executive orders and the advanced law in a way that will preserve the safety of nuclear power plant

23:22to the maximum level that we like while reducing the red tape that is unnecessary so that's going to be a huge boost to the rise of nuclear power in the United States and maintaining of the existing fleet and if you remember look nuclear power we have almost 450 nuclear power plants operating in the whole world right and we have had only three major accidents in the last eight years that's an amazing record if you look at the amount of electricity that 450 nuclear power plant around the world has produced versus three accidents two of them was kind of a preventable sort of man made and we have learned from that and those kind of accidents are not going to happen the warning in Chernobyl was a completely this bad design of that type of nuclear power plant those nuclear power plant have all been shut down so we're not going to have a design that has that kind of flowing it that can cause of accident like that and that accident was actually happened because the people ever running an experiment and the safety system of the plant was

24:28was disabled for the accident for the experiment and they actually so so basically we have had one accident that was essentially unpredictable and that was Fukushima in Japan what happened in Japan was nobody could predict so that was beyond a design basis accident beyond the worst thing we could ever thought about it happened so basically one accident in 450 nuclear power plants in eight years that's an amazing safety record by any standard especially when you look at the history of accidents at coal mines throughout throughout human history rate chemical plants you know you had this Bupal accident in India everybody remembers that that was by far the worst much much worse than anything that has happened from the other hand the nuclear accident have not caused a lot of a radiation death in a short and long term except for Fukushima that was just you know the work

25:28of nature and Elon Musk is famous who said give me a fish from the coast outside of the Fukushima power plant and all eat sushi with it you know it's the right there are all these misconceptions I think with nuclear and a lot of it is due to I think media framing and popular media I think we're going a lot of Americans think nuclear energy they think of the radioactive fish from the Simpsons right or they think of Homer operating a nuclear power plant right those are those are the reasons and one other thing called since you brought that up we have to be careful to call nuclear energy energy and nuclear power because when we say nuclear power some people mistake that with nuclear weapons so we're talking about nuclear energy but there's another aspect to nuclear and that nuclear defense nuclear weapons right so that the mixing of the two some people like for example I have a new friend and she told me she taught of nuclear as the only user of nuclear is to make nuclear bombs

26:33she had no idea and this is an engineer educated person doesn't didn't know that nuclear power is also responsible for 20% of the one every five lights in this room is powered by nuclear so people have to really be educated that there is two aspects of nuclear energy that generates electricity and nuclear power that that produces nuclear defense equipment of facilities I want to just double back on the executive orders for just one thing to highlight you mentioned that they've already been well received and they are helping spur development by cutting some useless red tape are there any examples that come to mind as paragons for why this executive order is long overdue to help reduce that red tape yes so the nuclear industry has been taught has been complaining about red tape for for long long time and in fact we had a conference of the American nuclear society called next it was in Atlanta last year what a thousand people came to it they have

27:35another one coming up and in that conference I actually interviewed the nuclear industry executive and it was only few months after the advanced law has gone into effect and I ask him I said do you see a big difference in the way an RC looks at thing the nuclear regulatory commission looks at and regulates you and they all said that the the these are the nuclear exactly they all said that there is almost a reversal of the very nuclear regulatory commission was looking at how to deal with with utilities generating and nuclear electricity and they were all impressed the ones I talk to I'm not sure everybody is like that the one I talked to were very impressed with the advanced law consequence of reducing red tape that does not add to the safety but creates cost that are not necessary and the executive orders are no but when you talk to the industry people they they say they already see the benefit and we have a new nuclear regulatory commission chairman

28:39he's also very good at what he does he worked at the NRC for 20 years so President Trump with another David Wright was before him was great very experienced guy he did a great job of interpreting and implementing the advanced law and starting to implement the executive orders David Wright did that he was the previous chairman and whole knee which is the new chairman of the nuclear regulatory commission president Trump put him on the water two months ago a month or so ago and he has worked in the nuclear in this nuclear regulatory commission for 20 years so he the nuclear regulatory commission today is in the hand of some of the best people that you can have in terms of experience and knowledge and and policy to really make sure that the cost of nuclear is not increased by regulation that doesn't add to the safety of nuclear problem so yes the answer is the executive order and the advanced law has been long overdue and time got there here because they are going to really

29:42do a lot for existing grants as well as the new nuclear power plants being built is there anything else you would like to see on the policy and legal front for nuclear to help spur this innovation along so I have been saying for for the last three four years that if the United States does not want to be get behind China in nuclear power development and deployment the United States government is going to have to come in with a lot of money and I'm talking about not 10 billion here at 20 billion there they have done a lot of that which is great and I'm talking about half a trillion dollar or a trillion the 500 billion to start with and the reason I say that is because there is a lot of risk for private people or utilities to engage on development and deployment of nuclear power plants and China's nuclear power fast nuclear power the ones that are very successful or all

30:44government and you compare nuclear industry with airline industry United States as great of a country that is as wonderful of a place it is to live has some of the worst airlines in the world and you go to other countries that are very small compared to United States the economies are not even one tenth of the United States and their airlines are so much better because their airlines is government a sponsor government subsidies or government owned so they I'm not saying the nuclear industry should be owned by government but I think to get get ahead of China we need a lot and but I tell you that over the last six months to a year my dishes have been have been met by the US government there for example Trump has done a great job negotiating deals like for example with with Japan is investing 550 billion dollars in the US there bunch of that is going to nuclear so

31:45so my wishes for the government stepping in with money is being met partially not fully but partially China is still going gangbuster with nuclear and if you don't do anything big and fast we are going to get behind yet they are plowing money into basically anything that generates electricity right now I mean coal buildouts solar nuclear you name it China is like you said going gangbusters and a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that well it's toy you said they have a state run everything a state run in China more or less right and the state has a monopoly on allocating resources to just about anything they want but I can't help but think that they also have the industrial base for it right and going back to what you were saying about there being some snags for producing certain equipment and components for nuclear reactors what other choke points are there in the nuclear supply chain that we would need to solve before we

32:47can really wrap this thing up well my so there is a lot the first one let me add something to the China in addition to what you very correctly articulated the reason that they are more successful not more successful but could be more successful than the United States is that they don't pay for the development of anything they copy everything so the United States is extremely generous this country we all the work that we do in all this 17 national lab in all these universities we put it out as in part most of it in public domain and they just look at it and so they don't pay for any development right they also you you know they are my customers and the work in China so we did the commissioning test of the four American nuclear power plants that they built but you only work for them one time because after that they will copy everything you did so that's another huge benefit to the fact that you know they don't pay billions and billions of dollars for

33:50developing technologies they just find out who has done it where and they'll just find a way to to copy that you know I don't know the legalities of those and the United States does everything we can through the expert control measures to make sure our technologies are not taken advantage but but it's very hard to keep them from so that's another thing that helps them a lot so what was your question I forgot what other choke points are there in the US specifically on the supply chain side forgetting nuclear reactors off the ground well we we are behind on we haven't been nuclear power plants for not many years I mean we built a vocal just a few years ago and tried to build this so we have lost a lot of the supply chain that was there to supply stock and everything so reactor vessel for example you know it that's one one problem and not President Trump is doing

34:52things that may lead to the bringing of that that manufacturing expertise back to the United States other things such as you know transformers they talk about the shortage of transformers and some of the big stuff the electrical equipment we are behind on that on workforce is also a problem but that's being being really handled a lot by by the infusion a lot of money by the government into the university programs and national labs and other things I my person my personal opinion calling is that if you start building them I think these things will fall in place that's my I think you go build try to build a nuclear power plants the supply chain with with with com so I'm not worried about many people out but I personally I'm not worried about supply chain as much or workforce I think we just got to start building plants and those things will fall in place

35:57I think I would ask with that you're not at all worried about how to put this it almost seems like the industrial bases for these things will be competing with the end customers for the nuclear energy i.e. AI data centers right they'll be coming into these areas and AI data centers will be sucking up a lot of this energy it's also why you need that energy for industrial capacity as well I mean we've seen this play out in germany they demolish their nuclear power plants they had to revert to coal it's much more expensive for them because they don't actually produce that much coal and now their industrial base is crumbling do you see a tension between the industrial base and the data center side of things for this I haven't heard that no I had that's the first time that's a good point but I have not really heard that so I really can't comment on that I really think US has proven time and time again and if you want to do some big we'll do it and and I think if you are going to build nuclear power plants supply chain and workforce

36:59is going to fall in place automatically not and a lot is being done already especially on their workforce develop there's so much going on on development workforce with nuclear power the only risk there is that what if you don't build what if there is an accident and stop the momentum what are all these people that are that are being trained to come to nuclear going to do so you've got to balance those things against against the potential risk that is there remember all of these stuff can slow down or cool off completely if you have a major accident anywhere in the world not just in the United States so there is risk involved so we've got to be so supply chainers are not going to start doing stuff hoping that you've been nuclear power plant you start building up and we are going to bring what you need and I think Tennessee is a testament to that absolutely when you look at the and when you look at the activity going on there with the French company coming in and and build a enrichment facility when you look at the fact that they

38:01are planning an a small modular reactor in the TVA region are there any other states that you think are really well positioned to take their nuclear capacity up a notch other states or no a lot of states are you know they're Michigan is building the palace rebuilding the palace aid constellations looking at even bringing some of the dead plant back up yeah there is a lot going on Tennessee's ahead because Tennessee has a lot of ingredients right they have seven nuclear power plants in Tennessee and Alabama that's so what we have the Oak Ridge National Lab we have the Y-12 which is a weapon complex but that feeds a little bit into nuclear so we got the second best university nuclear university in the country here so we are a very comprehensive nuclear ecosystem here in Tennessee now but if you take a place like Illinois Chicago Illinois power 50% of it

39:03comes from nuclear energy so nuclear is really good in a lot of places the reason Tennessee was was recognized as the as the center is a new nuclear development orano is one that you talked about which is doing this five and a half billion dollar investment by the way I I was in Europe a few months ago and just talked to the head of the number one orano man and I taught asked him about this project project in Oak Ridge and he said it's all contingent of nine hundred million dollar investment by the Department of Energy he said if we don't get that money we cannot build this five and a half billion fortunately that money was was approved so that that five and a half billion dollar investment is going to happen by France but I'm going to go to to orano headquarter where they do the enrichment and all here as the president of the American nuclear society to look at all these things are done so to answer your question Tennessee is

40:03unique because we covered the whole spectrum of nuclear but other states are also good because they either have a lot of nuclear power plants such as Illinois or they are looking to bring nuclear power plants down up that they're dead so it's going going basically nationwide our competitions are Virginia Texas is doing a lot Texas is doing really good Texas is a big competition for for for Tennessee in terms of new nuclear development and deployment. Texas Tennessee rivalry runs deep especially with two pop in cities like Nashville and Austin and the fact that the original UT is in Knoxville and not in Austin a couple more questions doctor and then we'll get you out of here what are your thoughts on small modular reactors as being a good solution to really rev up development more quickly than we have in the past I've heard mixed comments from people in the energy community about their efficacy what where do you land right so what you've heard is is true and is sort of new about three years ago we thought nobody will build a big nuclear power

41:09plants anymore well that thing has changed because of few things the small modular reactors were supposed to be online the first group of them by 2020 or 2022 at the latest while we were talking about 2020 2030 or later so we are very late in the small modular reactor community delivering on the promises that hey we are going to have one operating you know the advantage of them we can put them next to where you need them you don't need power lines you don't need to put it on the grid there's a lot of advantage that's why the other centers are are so hungry for SMRs because you can build one next to the data center you don't need wires and just put the power and amazingly enough this data centers can go up 50 hundred 200 500 megabod or half a gigabod of electricity so that's the advantage but I want to make think one one thing very clear for the for your audience then you talk SMRs you better remember there's two types of SMRs

42:12water cooled SMRs and non-water cooled SMR the non-water cooled SMRs are called advanced reactors advanced modular reactor AMRs all right people don't say those are harder to build those are bigger technologies we have we don't we haven't done that the water cooled SMRs we such as no scale such as GE300 that's being built to be built a clinch river or have been have been done before and are easier to do and are cheaper to do the new ones that are built that are cooled by gas or by liquid metal or liquid salt are different so there are two those are a little bit further out they're probably ten years out the water cooled reactors are probably five to six years out so there's two types of SMRs we have to worry about one is water cooled that's a simpler and one is being built in Canada we are going to build one like that here in

43:14clinch river at YTBA with most likely there is several of them that are being talked remember Kairos Kairos you and I talked about that is building two nuclear power plants two nuclear power plants is being built small nuclear power are being built in Oak Ridge people don't know that if you go over there it's really you're building small nuclear power plants in Oak Ridge two by Kairos terrapower build gates company is building one in volume so you're doing that but these things are going to take longer the one that are not water cooled you're seeing them build gates one right because that's a sodium reactor yeah you'll guess have two two types one and the one that they're called metrium that they are building it's a good design they have a storage of it has a some amazing feature and the Kairos ones are really also they ahead of time compared to what I was thinking that the that the advanced reactor can be can be deployed so they may even come

44:15online before go other cool reactors but I doubt it just one last question on this before my closing one why has this taken so long you mentioned 2020-20-20-22 as a projected timeline for a lot of these first ones and it hasn't come to pass what's the reason for that do you think that's a very good question so about 10 years ago or 15 years ago when people who had the wisdom of thinking that the demand is going to be like this in 2025-2026 a start on development of small modular reactors and then when they they start smelling that they are right about the demand going up to this level they start saying okay we're going to build one and put it on on the grid in 2020 but I didn't because they just didn't they they they were slow they had money problems they had because everybody was looking for government to come in we had

45:16a government loan office called LPO loan program office and they were dealing with those there was a lot of issues with money issues with other things and they were the demand was not as as clear as it is today so they kind of took their time but we also in the nuclear industry have to be careful going forward not to over-promise and under deliver your guilty of telling the public we are going to have nuclear power plants new nuclear power plants as some are operating in 2020 or 2022 and every year saying well it's going to be 2023 not 2020 now we're talking about 2030 so I advise the nuclear industry today that do not over promise and under so that they we don't lose the public confidence I think 2030 is a good good year to think about having some SMRs and maybe AMRs on the operating by maybe Kairos and Terra Power and GE and no scale and those

46:20companies all right well doctor this has been a great conversation I close gotta throw you a fast one how far out do you think we are from fusion and building onto that are there any other are there any other technologies that are bleeding edge right now in nuclear that you're really excited about so kind of a two-part question well on the fusion so there's a lot more happening in the fusion today both on the private industry coming to fusion and the academic community and there's a lot of talk about fusion being able to produce real electricity for for regular use in matter of year five or six years or maybe even sooner so we're talking fusion companies and fusion private and other companies are talking a lot optimist more optimistically today about the potential of fusion actually producing power my view is that those estimates

47:21are pretty optimistic and I think fusion is going to deliver but I think it's going to be further than five or ten years when it's going to really deliver experimental fusion a little fusion here and there is going to happen between no and no and in and in the next few years but real fusion at the level that we need in my opinion is a few decades away so that's my vision but I'm very impressed with how much progress have been made in fusion in fact the next conference of national conference of the American nuclear facility which I am organizing and running is going to be Denver Colorado I I invited the head of eater the largest fusion experiment in the world that is in France he's going to come as one of my keynote speakers I also invited the head of the Princeton Plasma laboratory to come and speak at the reason I'm doing that is because I

48:22want to give visibility to fusion because it deserves it and we need to kind of nurture it so that 30 years from now we have fusion electricity so my thing is that if you don't do all the things we're doing today we'll never have fusion so some people who talk against fusion have to realize that if you if you don't do anything if you don't spend the kind of money that we are spending today and we should spend more you're never going to have fusion but if you really keep it up we're going to have fusion in a few decades in a in a major thing it's small fusion it's going to happen sooner with respect to whether the best thing I want to see I want to see progress in recycling of nuclear fuel Francis doing that is illegal in the United States to recycle but I think this administration is looking at that so Jimmy Carter made a recycling of nuclear nuclear fuel spend nuclear fuel illegal the reason for that is because you can you can take plutonium

49:22out of it and make moms from it and that's why it's illegal in the United States as of 50 years a four years ago 50 years ago and then Carter made it illegal but this administration is looking of making it illegal and therefore for example Oklo is is putting a $1.7 billion nuclear recycling plant in Oak Ridge so if you start recycling that's one thing I like to see happen the other thing the other ways of enriching nuclear fuel so there's many ways one by centrifuge there are other ways that are companies that are here and in other parts of the world working on trying to find other ways of enriching nuclear fuel getting their stuff from the ground and making it suitable more powerful for use in nuclear those are the technologies in nuclear that I like to see absolutely in advancement Dr. Hashemian thank you so much for joining this was a really enlightening

50:23conversation for me you know we might have to have you back on the next year so do a check-in see how some of these projects are going because it's a super exciting time so thank you for joining us of course I look forward to that thank you Conn hey this is Charlie and Conn from block space media and you're listening to the block space podcast a show about emerging tech in Bitcoin AI energy and markets we publish two interviews weekly with CEOs investors analysts and anyone else of consequence within these spaces plus we have a weekly news roundup for all the important stories you might have missed from that week the show is perfect for retail and institutional investors analysts and really anyone who wants to keep their finger on the pulse of the stories that are moving Bitcoin energy and data markets so if you've stumbled across us make sure to search block space wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube hit the subscribe button give us a rating we produce bonus podcast and other content on our main

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