Is Louisiana equipped to move forward in the nuclear energy sector?

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1:01So don't miss your shot. Head to fandall.com slash podcast to get started. Fandall, play your game. Must be 21 plus in present in Virginia, first online real money weight you're only, $5 first deposit required, a bonus issue does not withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt and restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com gambling problem called 1-800-Gambler. Get more out of every mile when you share the ride to work. With carpooling, you'll have time to relax, save money, and pick up new friends. Commuter connections can help you find carpool partners who live and work near you. Even if you're commuting just a few days a week, it's a free service. Carpooling, every dollar saved, every friend made. Register for free carpool partner ride matching at commuterconnections.org or call 800-745-RIDE. That's commuterconnections.org. Welcome back folks, we're joined by Stephen Swiber, Deputy Secretary Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. Stephen, welcome to the show.

2:02Thank you, new longtime listener, first time caller. Well, thank you, sir, for joining us today. We really appreciate it. The governor's made a point of saying that we should be looking at nuclear energy in that sector as it relates to the generation of power for us here in the state of Louisiana. And I think a healthy portion of power is provided by nuclear power already. I think it may be as high as 25%. No, about a fifth, about 20% of Louisiana's power is generated by nuclear power. This comes to the forefront now, and a lot of people wonder why. I mean, I know I'm a big believer in nuclear energy, but why now? Why is that issue important now? Well, that's a great question. And there's two reasons why now is the time that people are, and this is a nationwide phenomenon,

3:03really looking at nuclear power generation to fill the gap. One is that our generation fleet is aging, right? A lot of the power plants that we have now were built 30, 40, 50 years ago, and are nearing the end of their lifespan. So no matter what, we're going to have to build new generation in this country, and we're probably going to have to retool a lot of the aging infrastructure like our transmission lines. So the investment that's coming necessary is kind of a bill that we've been kicking the can down the road a little bit in this coming due. And it's at the same time that we have this huge demand spike, and that is partly driven by AI and data centers, but also by the reshoring of manufacturing. A lot of the gains that we had efficiency gains from making our homes more efficient, those have kind of stalled out, and they're getting replaced by more electrification, right? Where more things are electric. I don't even know if you can buy the leafflowers that run on gasoline anymore. You've got to buy the one that runs on a big battery, right? Like everything's becoming electrified, and that's driving the demand as well. So there's a lot of drivers that are coming into the fact

4:05that MISO is looking at, doubling capacity over the next decade or two. It's something that I think everybody is seeing at the same time. It might be a little bit of a perfect storm. But when you talk about Louisiana, since Governor Landry has taken office, we've seen $100 billion in capital investment announced between the LNG plants, the data centers, the Hyundai Steel Mill, and a bunch of other, we would almost call smaller projects, but once upon a time we would have called pretty big projects, a billion or two here and there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. All of these projects need what we call base load power, right? You and I, when we leave the house during the day, hopefully everybody turns your thermostat up to 78 degrees and saves power during the day. That's a great way to drive your energy bill down. So we vary, right? We leave during the day, we come back home, we turn on our TV and our washing machine and crank the AC back down. Industry doesn't want that. They need base load power, and that can only really come from gas coal and nuclear.

5:07So with the demand drivers, we're gonna have to pursue all of those opportunities and the United States has not been on the ball, and it comes nuclear for the past few decades, so it really requires government leadership to step up and send that signal to industry that we're gonna have their back when they wanna come restart this industry. We're visiting with Stephen Swyber, Deputy Secretary Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. Stephen, when we talk about reliability and sustainability, correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard that nuclear has been one of the most reliable and the most stable, true, not true. Absolutely. I would say that's 100% true. I mean, look, you can ask the communities around these reactors that we have in Louisiana. These plants have been running safe, clean, reliably, since the late 70s when they were constructed. I think it's one of the, you know, on safety metrics, you would not believe the regulatory structure that exists. That was put in place after the one incident we had in the United States, which is to be my allylin'. Right, post that era, the safety culture is,

6:10in this, I want to highlight the new generation of nuclear reactors as well, right? Whenever we do eventually build new reactors here in the United States, they're not gonna be your grandma's reactor, right? They're not, the technology has evolved a lot since the late 70s when the United States is really cranking up reactors and now there's something called generation 3 plus and generation 4 reactors. These are reactors that are designed such that even if you had the old situation where you lost containment, so to speak, instead of melting down, they actually shut down, right? So it's actually a matter of physics. As much as, you know, when an apple falls out of the tree, it goes down, some of these gym 4 reactors actually cannot have that kind of incident that you might associate with nuclear power. And there's been a lot of discussion about what are called SMR, small modular reactors. Talk to us about that. Yeah, so a typical reactor like we have, it'd never been in water food here in Louisiana, are about a gigawatt or so in scale, that's 1,000 megawatts.

7:13That's a lot of power and we centrally put them on the grid and distribute that power out throughout the state. Just to put it in context, the thick energy has about 11 gigawatts on the grid. If you count for all of the power in Louisiana, at a time, the capacity's about 28 gigawatts. So one nuclear power plant, you know, represent, I guess two nuclear power plants could be almost 10% of what we're using. And that's 20% of what we're using at a time because a lot of plants are on and off. And that just comes from two plants. So the scale is very large with the small modular reactor. You're talking more in the 100 to 350 megawatt range. And what that allows operators to do is you could put them a little closer to the demand, right? You could co-locate that with a data center. You could put it, you know, among some petrochemical plants and they can all kind of share that power. And that's a lot more scalable. You don't need to spend quite as much at a time. You could buy just 300 megawatt reactor. And then eventually you could put another one right there

8:13with it and you have 600. And then another one for 900. And it's a lot more, the theory is it's more scalable. And then the other theory is that it could be constructed modularly. So that's the modular in SMR. That means you can, you could try to, and everybody from the coast will see a lot of the modules under construction for the venture global plant down there in Placaman. They build them, you know, either a shipyard or a fab yard or a manufacturing facility and then barge them onto the locations so that they can get the factory sort of economies of scale that you can get in any other industry. You don't have to what they call stick build every project that wants. So once they get an order book, more than, you know, four or five reactors of one kind, the hope is that they can get the cost down by getting those sorts of, those sorts of manufacturing. Legendary doesn't happen by chance. It happens because it's what Betemgium does. Sign up for Betemgium or receive up to $1,500 back in bonus bets if you don't win your first bet. Get into hockey, basketball, and more of your favorite sports with same game parlays, live betting and more.

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10:16it's a free service. Carpooling, every dollar saved, every friend made. Register for free carpool partner ride matching at commuterconnections.org, or call 800-745-RIDE. That's commuterconnections.org. Economy to scale. Yeah, I was gonna ask this question and I just got a bunch of texts. I guess people are thinking along the same lines as I am. I mean, we already do that in the military context, right? With nuclear subs, nuclear ships. These kind of smaller, modular reactors that we bring in pieces and parts together and putting them in these vessels and powering these vessels for a really long time. That's absolutely right. I think a lot of folks, when we announced this, and we Governor Landry announced our nuclear strategy on Monday, I saw on social media a lot of some air-unters and folks from the Navy commenting, like I, you know, a nuclear reactor kept me alive for years.

11:18And I thought that was really cool because those folks could be able to come right into the civilian workforce and help us build these new reactors. Yeah, so I know that President Trump is very much an advocate of this as well. There's been, I think, some granting opportunities that have been provided to try and stimulate this thought process and move it forward and research and alike. Where do we stand? Have we been able to avail ourselves of any of that funding or financing? Yeah, so part of Governor Landry's announcement was an additional $45 million for the future use of energy in Louisiana fuel. That's our NSF engine working through LSU and Southern University as well as a consortium of all the other universities. More on the research side, the outreach side, the kind of more technical, scientific, academic end of things. But I'll tell you the Trump administration is, and we're over here in Houston this week at an industry conference called Sarah Week, which is a lot of industry executives.

12:20Secretary Chris Wright is here. Secretary Doug Burgham's here, Governor Landry was here. And the administration's tone on nuclear is more enthusiastic than I think I can convey on the phone. They are very gun-hoed. They understand that this is an industry that has kind of died on the vine since the 1970s and it needs that government support. It needs some training wheels so it can get stood back up just like the solar industry did, right? We probably spent $60, $70, $80 billion to subsidize in the solar industry. And then in the one big beautiful bill act, some of those subsidies went away, but that industry is still able to do its thing because it was subsidized just to stand itself back up. And I think that's what they're aiming to do with this sort of third nuclear renaissance here in the United States. And it creates a lot of alignment. And what I'll say, as far as maybe some listeners are not Trump administration fans, this is a source of power that it's the only source of power that has net favorable ratings among voters

13:22from both parties. So we know that as the wind shift in Washington, we're pretty confident that the things we set up here today are going to have a lot of staying power. So obviously, energy is the company, the public utility that provides all of this and they are operating nuclear power plants at the present time. I have to imagine they're on board with this strategy, right? Yes, they've been great partners as we've worked through this strategy. And we did about 200 stakeholder interviews, us and the governor's team that included, the court team of making the strategy was department of conservation energy, the governor's office, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the public service commission, and Louisiana economic development. And we did bring in a lot of, from our universities, from our utilities, from our businesses, from our local economic development corporations, from academia, trade associations

14:22around nuclear industry themselves. It was a very intensive process that we did over about six or seven months. And the energy was obviously a very key part of that. Their directive is to protect consumer rates, right? So right now, the last two reactors that were built in the United States were not built at a price that would work out for y'all's electric bills. And so they're not gonna move forward with the reactor until the finances work out such that it benefits the rate pair, right? Cause it hasn't right now, right? We know that nuclear plants are gonna cause more than a gas power plant in the front. Now the thing about nuclear is that you have a lot lower fuel costs, you don't have to buy the gas every day. The little rods that they use to power the reactor last a lot longer and are a lot more cost effective. Now however, gas is very, very cheap right now. Now the reason you want to still build a nuclear reactor is because once you get that built, you've locked that in for,

15:22I mean, these things can operate for 80 to 100 years, right? So you've kind of locked in some costs and in the next 100 years, what a gas goes up to $6 and $50, $7, right? If there are some of these events that happen, you have that hedge, right? That kind of alternative fuel source that you know that you're gonna be able to get power at the rate that you locked in 50 years ago. And so they're kind of working out the math on that right now and pursuing more opportunities the Public Service Commission gave all the utilities a directive to survey their opportunities and they're going through that process right now, but they're going to make sure that they're doing it in a way that is beneficial to the rate payers. Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, this is an all above approach, right? Because you're still promoting natural gas, you're still promoting other measures, co-generation, a whole bunch of different issues, all knowing that as long as it's contributing to the production of power in a meaningful way

16:24that makes sense for the rate payers, it seems like the administration is on board. That's right, that's alignment between the Landry and Trump administrations. We need to keep megawatts on the grid, so no more shutting down coal plants because of some presidential decree that we saw in the Biden administration. No more indiscriminately trying, we need megawatts on the grid to support the data center, the AI boom, the reshoring and manufacturing, and to keep the lights on for all the people in the country. Thank you so much for joining us, Steven Swyber, Deputy Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. We appreciate your time, your insight, and have a great weekend. Thank you so much, Neil, you too. Thank you, sir. We'll be right back, 504-260-1870 on the Oakland Heart Jewelers' Talk and Text Line. Stay with us. If you've got spring fever, Lowe's has the cure. During Spring Fest, make your landscape stand out

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