57 min approx | 25 Apr 2023

Introduction

We need nuclear energy to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions and to have the energy security benefits. Now, a lot of people are coming at nuclear energy because they're interested in climate. Conventional nuclear energy is actually among the safest forms of energy that we have.

Announcer

Welcome to the Decoding Innovation podcast series, brought to you by the EY-Nottingham Spirk Innovation Hub, where we explore the innovative technologies, business models and ideas that are shaping the future of industries. During each episode, Mitali Sharma, a principal in the EY-Parthenon strategy practice, meets with stakeholders at the cutting edge to discuss innovations in their space, challenges they need to overcome, and their outlook on the future.

Mitali Sharma

Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Mitali Sharma, and today's topic is nuclear fission. Our guest today is Judi Greenwald, the Executive Director of Nuclear Innovation Alliance, an organization, a think tank and a nonprofit that is working on nuclear fission and nuclear power as a solution for climate change. Welcome to the show, Judi.

Judi Greenwald

Thank you so much for having me.

Sharma

Judi, before we get into the specifics around the topic and the Nuclear Innovation Alliance’s role, would you mind sharing with our audience your background and your journey so far?

Greenwald

Sure. It's a long story, so I'll see if I can just hit the highlights. I'm probably one of the few people who have known what I want to do for a very long time. I came of age in the 1970s, when the twin crises of environment and energy were top of mind. And I really wanted to work on that.

And simultaneously, I received a lot of letters from universities, who were looking for women engineers. I had actually never really thought about engineering. I was good in math and science. A lot of people thought, maybe I should go into medicine, but I couldn't stand the sight of blood. So, I was really interested in using my science and math and problem-solving aptitude to solve really important problems.

And I thought energy and environmental problem-solving was what I wanted to do. And so, I pursued an environmental engineering degree. At the time at my university, which is Princeton University, they didn't actually have environmental engineering, and I had to invent it. And so, I took a lot of classes and many different topics related to problem-solving and environment and energy — all different types of technologies and solutions for our society's problems.

And then I had a long career in mainly public policy. I got a master's in public policy while I was working at the Environmental Protection Agency, and I then proceeded to have a career and really worked throughout many different organizations in the nonprofit and the government world. I worked at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, at the Department of Energy, at the Environmental Protection Agency, at the US Congress — I was the other committee staff in Congress — I worked at the White House. And most recently, I am now the Executive Director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance.

And my theme throughout my career is solving energy and environmental problems. And I particularly focus, for most of my career, in solving climate problems. And I really am excited about climate solutions broadly. I feel really lucky that I've been able to use my technical skills, as well as my policy skills, to solve a really important problem. And it's also really interesting.

The reason is that, right now, I'm focused on advanced nuclear energy at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, I feel it's an extreme promising solution and it just needs more policy attention and investment.

And we're really having a moment where lots of people are starting to realize that and we've had some recent important successes, but there's a lot more to be done for all of society to help create the conditions for success, so that advanced nuclear energy can be part of the climate solution.

Sharma

That's impressive, indeed. And specifically, the fact that you sort of invented your own major, that gets me into my next question. If you are in the best position to help explain to our audience, what is nuclear fission? How does that differ from fusion? And, you know, why should we be excited by it?

Greenwald

Yeah. So, fission just means splitting. And nuclear fission means that you take atoms that are half the property that they can be split. And when they're split, they release energy. And what the process is that you have to basically hit them with neutrons and that causes the split, releases a lot of energy and also releases more neutrons. And those neutrons then cause what's called a chain reaction and they go off to split other atoms. And so, you get a sustained reaction where you are making more and more energy as long as you sustain the reaction.

This is a very energy dense process. A lot of people think about how much quantity of material you have to use to make energy and how much land you need. And because a small amount of nuclear material can make a lot of energy, you actually don't need as much material, as much land, as much facilities, as you need for a lot of other sources of energy. So, it's actually a very — at least inherently and of course, you have to do it well — environmentally friendly in many ways, because it uses so little material compared to other energy sources.

Sharma

And when you say nuclear energy, are you mainly talking about fission or do you also work on fusion?

Greenwald

So, we do a little bit of fusion work, but our focus is on advanced fission and that's our focus. We think that there's a lot of exciting developments in nuclear fusion, but it's a bit further off. But there is a lot of exciting stuff going on, and advanced nuclear fission is closer in time. And so, we've been focusing more on that. It has more near-term policy and investment potential.

Sharma

You have 30 to 35 years working in climate change. How has the sentiment evolved and how do you feel about where we are?

Greenwald

I actually think that we've made a lot of progress on climate solutions. And I think sometimes people really despair, because certainly we're not making enough progress. We need to do a lot more. And I think people get really worried about the future of our planet, and are very anxious and to the extent that this concern drives action. I think it's good. But I think people get so concerned that they give up, that's actually not good. I would urge people not to despair.

There are people all over the world — here, abroad, in all walks of life — working on policies, working on innovations and doing really incredible work on cool solutions to climate change. And really, there is so much we can do to make the world better, and a lot of people are working on this problem and we're making enormous progress. And I really hope that people can focus their attention, certainly, on the problem, but also focus on how they can help on the solutions side.

Now, what we can do, individually and collectively and how we talk about the issues, and really there's so much positive work being done around the world. And I really applaud the innovators, technical and otherwise, who I interact with all the time and are really making a difference and are really working to solve this problem. And so, I feel like we really have a huge potential to solve this problem.

Sharma

When a layperson thinks about nuclear energy, the visions of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island or Fukushima come into mind and it's scary. So, why should we not be scared or what advances have happened recently that have changed the way we should think about nuclear energy?

Greenwald

Yeah, I think there're two things to think about. One is that setting aside advanced nuclear energy, which is our focus and I'll get to in a second, conventional nuclear energy is actually among the safest forms of energy that we have. Most people don't know that. But in fact, we actually are good as a society at making sure that we keep reactors safe. And it's a lot of work — people have to work hard to make sure that they're safe.

And that is something that's very important. But there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time and are very dedicated to make sure that nuclear energy is among the safest, if not the safest, form of energy now. That isn't to say that it's perfect. And we've definitely had some problems. And every time there is a problem, we get better. We learn from it and do better.

The exciting thing about advanced nuclear energy is that there's a number of innovations, which is making it what I would describe as even safer. It has what we refer to as inherent safety measures, where if something goes wrong, the reactor automatically shuts down. A lot of times in conventional nuclear plants, a problem is starting to occur, and a lot of operators have to take action to make sure that the plant remains in a safe mode. And what happens in a lot of these new designs is the tendency or they use natural forces and inherent capacity to actually make the plant shut itself down and avoid any problems. So, on the safety side, there's really a lot of exciting developments.

Sharma

Can we take and unpack each one of these separately? So, let's start with just the reaction itself. Again, limited knowledge on my end, which can be a dangerous thing. But when I think of a nuclear reaction, one of the things that is alarming is the runaway reaction. So, you're saying that the chances of that happening because of the new advances are minimal or reduced?

Greenwald

Yeah, I think the runaway reaction is less of an issue. I think the issue that a lot of people worry about is that you stop being able to remove heat from the core and then the fuel melts. That's sort of the biggest risk that people are concerned about with conventional reactors. So, it's not so much that the reaction runs away, it's that you have too much heat. And then the fuel core can melt and then you can release radiation.

So that's sort of the risk that a lot of people get worried about, and with an inherently safe system, it becomes nearly impossible for that to happen, because you actually, instead of having to actively cool the core, you automatically cool the core. And so, a lot of the scenarios that people worry about with conventional reactors are not possible with a lot of these new designs. They have other risks that you have to protect again. And certainly, with new technologies, you always have to make sure that you're careful and you do testing and you make sure that you're reducing all kinds of risks. But a lot of what we've been worried about in the past is just not a problem for a lot of the technologies going forward.

Sharma

So how is that automatic button pulled? Is it like a sensor-driven thing? How do we do it?

Greenwald

So, there are many different ways to do it. Sometimes, it's the fuel itself. So, for example, there's exciting developments around a type of fuel called TRISO, where instead of having fuel rods, you actually have bits of fuel that are dispersed in a material that is non-radioactive and very safe. And it's actually, really hard to get the uranium out of that and it's really impossible to melt it. So you just have the fuel itself — it is almost like it's its own containment. A lot of times we talk about containment as a big facility, which surrounds a reactor in case there's a problem. And this fuel itself is sort of inherently giving its own containment. Sometimes, in conventional reactors, where the way we cool it off is we use pumps to send water through to cool the reactor, but if there's some kind of problem where you lose, it's called a loss of coolant. If there’s a loss of coolant accident, then you know you might have a problem. You can't pump the water in and so other reactors actually just sit in a pool. You don't have to have any kind of active pumping system. It's just inherently going to keep cooling it and you don't have to actually do it. Others take advantage of gravity where you use natural gravitational forces to bring in coolant and or to do various things on the reactor, turn things off automatically, because it's at a lower height than another piece of equipment. So using natural forces and inherently safe methods, the natural state of the reactor is going to be to go into a safe mode, as opposed to any kind of making things worse.

Sharma

So, are we also using different kinds of fuels from the traditional uranium, plutonium and the isotopes to something different now?

Greenwald

So, for the most part, we're still using uranium, which is what we mostly use in reactors. Now, there is some interest in some other materials like thorium. But the bulk of it, the new designs, just like the old designs, use uranium. An important new fuel that is being used is something called high-assay low-enriched uranium or HALEU.

Enrichment is the process by which you increase the concentration of uranium in the fuel. And so, if you can use this somewhat higher concentrated uranium, you can actually have a more efficient approach to getting nuclear fission. And so that's actually an exciting development and a number of the new reactor designs use HALEU — that’s high-assay low-enriched uranium or HALEU.

The problem we have right now is that at the moment, the only commercial supplier of HALEU is the Russian state-owned enterprise, TENEX. And so the Russian invasion of Ukraine has focused all of our attention on the need for the US to develop its own HALEU production capacity. And in fact, that's one of the most recent policy advances that we've had lately. There was a significant funding in the Inflation Reduction Act that just got enacted this summer, significant funding to jumpstart a US capacity to supply the HALEU, and to jumpstart our market, so that this will over time become a commercial business that we can do here and don't have to buy it from others who may not be our friends.

Sharma

That geopolitical conflict actually is a good segue into the weaponization of uranium. So, are there newer processes that are preventing it? You did talk in the beginning about the fact that it's hard to get uranium out of the new methods of creating fuel. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Greenwald

Yeah. So it's definitely important that we do not do anything to allow for diversion of the fuels that are used in nuclear plants to be used as weapons. And there are a lot of rules about that internationally to make sure that we don't have problems with fuel being diverted. The world has a regime, IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, it makes sure that countries comply. And so, we have an entire regime set up around that.

It's generally not an issue about the reactors. It's more in other parts of the fuel supply chain, like where you do enrichment that the issues are more and that's where we have to make sure that we are keeping any types of nuclear material out of the hands of bad actors.

Sharma

Interesting and then, I guess the last bit is around the waste. How are we dealing with waste differently now than we used to before?

Greenwald

We have definitely gotten, I would say, good at dealing with waste on a current basis, on an interim basis. We have, in my view, a very robust process. The waste is carefully taken out of the reactor. It is put in pools to cool off. It's then transferred to what we call casks —this sort of concrete containers that are essentially hard to and intentionally impossible to open and so we keep them in those containers and then they're kept onsite at nuclear power plants. This is in the US around the country.

And as I mentioned earlier, because nuclear power is so energy dense, you actually don't have a lot of material. You definitely want to keep that material away from people. But you can actually do that with careful management and keep it on site. And these casks can last for quite some time.

The thing we're still dealing with or need to deal with here in the US is still a very long-term solution. What ultimately do we do with these casks once the power plant stops operating, once there's too much waste on site? What's our ultimate solution where the waste can be put in? And technically people think it's deep, deep geological disposal — you find places very deep underground and you can keep it essentially forever. We know we can do that.

In fact, Finland is already constructing a site for permanent disposal. Sweden is on the way to doing that as well. So, we know we can do this technically. It's just really difficult to figure out where to put it, because you have to make sure it's put in a place that people want it or at least are willing to accept it. And we've really struggled here in the US to make that happen.

There is some innovation going on in this space, both on the process side, in terms of finding a place to put it, as well as on the technical side. And I'm pretty excited about the notion of consent-based siting, which I guess in many ways shouldn't really be innovative, but it is. Consent-based siting is somewhat innovative. It is to make sure that you make sure that the community actually wants the waste. And this is what has occurred in Finland and is occurring in Sweden. And we should be able to do it here. The Department of Energy has actually recently embarked upon a process to site an interim facility on a consent-based basis. But we have not yet tried here to find a permanent place to put the waste on a consent-based basis. But I think most people understand that's what we need to do.

And technically, there's a lot of really interesting ideas. Right now, we think about very large repositories where you put a lot of waste all in one place. And there are some interesting technologies, for example, people are interested in something that's called deep boreholes, where you go very deep, in fact, even deeper than a lot of these geological repositories that people have talked about. But it's a small hole basically, a narrow hole that goes very deep. And so you have small amounts of waste, so that no one community has to take a lot of waste. So that may be a solution.

And there's also a lot of innovation going on recycling fuel. There have been earlier processes where people reprocess fuel and the outcome of that had some proliferation concerns. The reprocessing is where you could wind up creating plutonium and it could be diverted. But there are other ways to recycle the fuel that are both safer and also much more proliferation resistant. And so, there's a lot of exciting research going on in those arenas.

A number of the advanced reactors are working on making a more proliferation resistance of waste with characteristics that are more amenable to disposal over the long term and for making sure that they stay safe. I should say one more thing. To make sure that the fuel can be recycled and also these reactors, a number of the advanced reactors, can actually use recycled fuel, which is actually not every reactor can do that and so that's a very exciting potential development as well.

Sharma

So, Judi, in most of these innovations, it seems like they need a lot of investment, maybe some government help. Are there areas within the nuclear energy space, which are more accessible to a regular innovator with maybe slightly less access to all the resources that may be needed?

Greenwald

This next generation, or I can say that the next generation of advanced nuclear energy, they tend to come in smaller increments. So, there are things as small as what we've called micro reactors, which are very small reactors. And then we have what some people are referring to as small modular reactors, which aren't that small. They're kind of the size of a natural gas plant. But a lot of them, or I'd say most of them, are smaller than the very large nuclear power plants that most people are used to thinking about. And I think it's also helped because these very large plants require very large investments.

So, you can have a more medium-sized investment with some of the smaller plants and actually quite small investment with something like a micro reactor. And what's interesting about the advanced reactor development portfolio of what different developers are coming up with in different designs is that they're coming in lots of different types of sizes that might be more or less appropriate for different types of situations.

So, there's a lot of interest, for example, in micro reactors in Alaska for remote applications, where you might have a small community that's pretty isolated and the nuclear reactor would be quite reliable and a good fit for someone in the middle of nowhere. And then you also have a number of these small modular reactors that might fit in better and compete well against something like a natural gas plant that can also come in the same increment. But a natural gas plan has carbon emissions and a nuclear plant doesn't. So, there'd be advantages there.

A lot of the things we've been struggling with in the nuclear industry over the past decade or two have been basically project management. And it's just much easier to manage the building and execution of a small- or a medium-sized reactor than these very large ones. And it's also much easier to finance a smaller or medium one. And even if you ultimately need a very large power plant, you can build it modularly. So, there's a lot of interest in something that we're calling small modular reactors, where you can add a module at a time. And that's also very helpful in terms of adding power as you needed and right sizing what you need over time.

The other really exciting thing, and this is particularly helpful on the cost side, is that as you get to these smaller reactors that you could produce in multiples, you can actually wind up producing multiple components of the same type. And so you don't have to build everything on site. A lot of the trouble that we've had with conventional reactors is that a lot of them are essentially bespoke and they're all built at one site and it's sort of stick built right at that site.

So all of your construction has to go on right at the site. And if a lot of these advanced reactors promise to have a bigger factory-built component that you can actually build a lot of it offsite in a factory, where you can build multiples, and then you can ship it to the site. And so, you'd have shorter construction periods and each component would essentially be cheaper, because you'd have many of them around the country. So, you'd be shifting from economies of scale at the facility to economies of production of lots of small reactors that could then be assembled on site, as opposed to actually being fully built on site. So, a lot of the innovations are making it more cost effective, in addition to the safety benefits that we talked about earlier.

Sharma

Just to give us a sense of what that size difference is, what would be a micro reactor size versus a modular reactor size?

Greenwald

Generally, this is actually not well defined. I would say, people generally talk about a micro reactor being less than 20 megawatts and then the small modular are somewhere between that. And the very large ones, I think natural gas plants, usually come in like 250 megawatt increments. So, small modular might be in that range. And then a lot of the nuclear plants that we have here are like 1000 megawatts. So, it's significantly different sizes.

Sharma

Now we know that US gets about 19%, I was reading some report of percentage from nuclear, versus France which gets somewhere in the 70% or 80% range. What is the learning from countries like France that can be applied to power generation in the US, or actually even the developing world?

Greenwald

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm not sure how much you can learn from France that could be applied here. In the US, generally, our system has been that we have utilities, and we have multiple different utilities and they make their own decisions about their reactors, of course, under state regulation. Whereas in France, I think there's either one or a very small number of utilities in their government owned and so they've had a lot easier time, I guess, standardizing, so that you only have really one or just a few types of designs. And we've had more diversity of designs and approaches.

I should mention that a lot of these advanced reactors have a potential to be more flexible to what we call ramp up and down, so that they can be used more or less to combine them with storage. So, if you have time on the grid where you can produce power, but the grid doesn't need it, you could store it and then you could release it again when it's needed. So I think there's a lot of interest in flexible operation recently, and these advanced reactors are better able to provide that.

Sharma

Something you said was very interesting. You said that France decided and made a policy decision. It was government backed and then that resulted in standardization, while as US took a more of a laissez faire approach. And that has resulted into innovation. Right? So it's an interesting approach to innovating around an evolving technology. Not sure what is the best, but it definitely proves out different things.

Greenwald

Yeah, it's interesting, because I do think in the US, to some extent it was about innovation. But I think in a lot of ways we just do a lot of the things at the state level. So instead of having a national decision, the utility would propose, but then the state would have to approve it, as opposed to having it at a national level. So on a safety basis, we have a national system. But in terms of decisions about what resource mix we want for our power sector, a lot of that happens at the utility level and at the state level here.

I think that what's happening on the innovation on advanced nuclear energy, I actually think is new here. The new generation of advanced reactors, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in advanced nuclear energy, which is a relatively new phenomenon for nuclear, not so much for other types of energy, like renewables or other types of businesses here. But we have a really robust ecosystem of advanced nuclear entrepreneurs, and I think that's actually our comparative advantage at this moment. We'll see if it pans out, but we have a dozen or more advanced nuclear developers who are being very entrepreneurial, very innovative. And that's really why we have a really good chance of becoming global leaders in this industry — in this emerging advanced nuclear industry — and potentially to export the technology overseas.

We need nuclear energy to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions and to have the energy security benefits, but we also need to help decarbonize the world. And there's a lot of people in the world who need clean energy and so, there's a potential that our entrepreneurial edge will be able to help us compete successfully. So, it's good from an American energy perspective and in being competitive, but also from a societal perspective, that we have a good chance of helping the world decarbonize.

Sharma

This is perfect segue, Judi, to get into what does the Nuclear Innovation Alliance do and about its history, and how it's encouraging innovation within US and abroad.

Greenwald

Great. Nuclear Innovation Alliance is a little think-and-do tank. Our mission is to help create the conditions for success for advanced nuclear energy to be part of the climate solution. We are primarily funded by philanthropy, so we have a public interest in advanced nuclear energy succeeding. And the conditions for success for advanced nuclear energy in our mind would be defined as having advanced nuclear energy at a scale, where it can really contribute to the climate solution.

And we don't think it's the only thing you need for to solve the climate problem. We think we need a large mix of technology and we need a lot of technology. But we do think it's an important part of the solution and could play a very, very large role. So, ultimately, the success would be if the advanced reactors are successful enough commercially, that they can play a big role in decarbonizing. To achieve those conditions for success, a lot of it's on industry. They have to actually make sure that these technologies work, that they can have business models that work, that they're cost effective.

But the rest of society has a lot of roles to play as well. And the Federal government, in particular, has done a lot of research and development and is now moving into demonstrations in partnership with industry. And that's really important to get us on the pathway to success. And of course, to do that, you need federal funding to make sure that these programs work. You also need the programs to be implemented effectively. And so, there's a whole role for the government on the innovation side.

One of the other key roles for the government in helping to create the conditions for success is licensing these technologies at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a long time has been our regulator that make sure that the nuclear plants are safe. They have to continue to do that. They have a challenge at the moment, because a lot of the advanced reactors are quite different from the conventional reactors. And so, a lot of the rules that they have need to be adapted or changed to make sure that they fit with the new technologies, just as you couldn't determine completely the safety of a combustion engine the same way as for electric vehicle.

Similarly, we have to have new ways of approaching and making sure that the new designs are safe and the rules need some adaptations. So, what we do at the federal level is we do a lot of analysis and advocacy around making sure that these innovation programs are well funded, that they are effective, that they focus on the right things, and that the government itself plays a good role in partnering with the private sector to advance the technologies that are ready to be commercialized and does that in a way that's fair and also technically sound. And so, a lot of our work is around making sure that the government does what it ought to be doing to be helpful on the innovation side, a lot of that to the Department of Energy and then on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Historically, we were part of the thought leadership behind statute called the NEMA, the Nuclear and Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which basically told NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that they had to do regulatory modernization. And so, they've been starting to work on that. So, we have been weighing in. They have a long-term rulemaking on that to have better rules. But in the meantime, a number of developers are coming in now. We're applying for licenses. And so, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is working with those developers to adapt current rules as best as they can to make sure that they appropriately evaluate these new designs.

And we've done a number of analyses and workshops to make sure that goes well. We did a report about a year and a half ago on licensing efficiency — maybe it’s a year ago — and on basically how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the companies, the developers, could do a better job at making licensing go well.

Just as we're doing technology innovation and business model innovation, we also have to do regulatory innovation. And at the moment, that's a process which is happening kind of one at a time, as these developers and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission work to get these first few plants licensed. And then they're also, in the medium term, working on a rulemaking that they were required to do under this NEMA law, which will hopefully have a more appropriate overall regime for these reactors — a better suited regime for these this new generation of reactors that takes into account their particular characteristics that might be different from conventional reactors.

And then in the very long term, we're going to have to figure out something which I referred to as high-volume licensing, like we get a lot of these — how do we rethink, how to do licensing in a way that's, of course, safe — safety has to come first, but it has to be efficient.

Sharma

A lot to unpack there. But if I were to summarize the think part of it in your think-and-do, which is an interesting way you describe the organization, the think part is advancing the thinking around what needs to happen in either regulatory world or outside, and the do part is actually working with the developers and others who are coming up and thinking about their business innovation, business model, licensing and those kind of things. Did I get that right?

Greenwald

Yeah, I would say a lot of our doing is on informing federal policy, that would be our biggest doing. And so, for example, in the Inflation Reduction Act that just was enacted this summer, there were a lot of what the advanced reactor community consider as big policy wins. There's now a tax credit available for any clean electricity, including advanced nuclear energy and that's a big deal. And you can take that tax credit in the form of a production tax credit or an investment tax credit, which is very exciting. It will really help drive investment.

There's also a big investment for HALEU, the high-assay low-enriched uranium that I mentioned. And that will really help the advanced reactor developers’ needs, and will be good for US security and competitiveness. And so those were two policy wins. For both of those things, we did a lot of analytical work, we did tax credit analysis, what would be the implications of tax credits for investment? What are the different levels? What's appropriate?

On the HALEU side, we did a paper about how much HALEU do you need? What's the best way to design a program where you actually jumpstart HALEU using government funding but you segue to a private commercial market and how do you actually do that? And we also did a lot of convening around — because the fuel production supply chain has a lot of players. You mine their uranium, you fabricated it to fuel, you move it around, I mean there's a lot of steps to getting to the point, and then you ultimately have to use it in a reactor and then dispose it — and making sure we lay out those steps and making sure that everyone in that supply chain is involved with making a program workable, as well as the policymakers at the Department of Energy and in Congress understanding what the problem is, what the potential solutions are, and how we can actually move forward with the right programs and investments.

So, I sometimes talk about it as it's a think-and-do tank, I also sometimes talk about us as geeky advocates. We're not advocates in terms of getting a lot of people to hold signs and advocate for something. We're really more “this is what our analysis has showed” and educating people about that analysis-based advocacy.

Sharma

Judi, thank you for telling us a little bit about the philanthropic side of the contribution that funds your organization. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Also how do you decide on prioritization of which projects you work on? And how do you spend your day?

Greenwald

Our mission is pretty both straightforward and maybe a little broad in that we aim to help create the conditions for success for advanced reactors to be part of the climate solution. And so, what we do is we think in a pretty organized way about what are those conditions for success. And then we also think about where we, with our skills and our abilities, can be most helpful, because there's certainly a lot of things that need to be done, but that's not really our wheelhouse.

And so, we really focus on our analytical abilities and our ability to convene and our ability to educate. And that's a lot of what we do. Then we also look at where opportunities arise, where we can make a difference. And certainly, for example, in the Inflation Reduction Act, which evolved from legislation that was called Build Back Better, there was this huge opportunity to potentially have game-changing policy advance. And so, we got involved in that and we did analysis that no one else was doing on tax credits. We did analysis that no one was doing on HALEU, and then we worked with many other people, because getting policy enacted is a team sport. And so, we worked with lots of allies to make things happen and educate people.

And our role is always that sort of that geeky educational end of things. We try to find both what we think the real problems are and also where the opportunities are to actually make a difference in the world. And so, I spend a lot of my time on analysis.

We also try, and this is a particular thing that I'm interested in, to learn lessons from other industries and other policy arenas. So for example, we did a report on fee reform last year about how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission charges fees. And the research a lot of it was around, well, what other agencies do? So like, how does the Federal Aviation Administration charge fees? How does the Food and Drug Administration charge fees? What's their ways of being? And we learned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is actually somewhat unusual in how it charges fees. And so, we tried to draw lessons from other arenas of innovation and licensing, of other types of technologies, and tried to bring that back. And we also push people to answer questions compared to what, you know, someone will say, “Well, I'm really worried about this,” about nuclear energy, or “I'm really excited about this about nuclear energy.” And you sort of push people to say compared to what? And that's where we come up with looking at how nuclear energy compares to other technologies and how it's among the safest technologies and among the most land efficient. And so looking at and really honestly assessing what our different options are and also making the point that we actually need them all.

Sharma

Fascinating. The thing that really got me interested in what you were talking about is most people think about innovation in the core product, but what you just explained was that the innovation is around other things — the business model that's there, the fees that are being charge, how they're being charged and  the ecosystem that you're convening. So absolutely fascinating topic here.

Sharma

I read on your website that you have something called Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp. What is that?

Greenwald

Yeah. So Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp is this really cool thing we've been doing, I guess, since 2016. We took a hiatus, unfortunately, for a couple of years during COVID-19, but it's a two-week summer experience for students and early career professionals who are interested in advanced nuclear energy entrepreneurship. And as I was mentioning earlier, that isn't the old way that people thought about the nuclear industry is sort of a place you could do entrepreneurship or innovation. So, I think we've made some difference. It's a small program. It's not going to do it all by itself. But I think we've made some difference in creating a pipeline of people who are interested in nuclear entrepreneurship to go into the field of advanced nuclear energy.

You have this two-week experience. You have workshops. It's usually about 20 to 25 students depending on the year. And so, lectures by really smart people, and then these group projects and each group has to come up with some kind of venture idea. And then they pitch the venture to a panel of judges. So, it's a little bit like Shark Tank, except we don't have a lot of money to give. But it gives students the experience of actually trying to create some type of venture. It could be a business venture, could also be a nonprofit venture, but it has to be some type of venture that needs investment to succeed. And they have to do business plans, and they have to show how it's going to make money or be sustainable. And they also have to technically defend it, and it has to be targeted at solving a problem.

So, it's a very exciting program. A lot of engineering schools don't teach entrepreneurship that well. Some do and we are getting better at that. But it has at least filled a gap for a number of people who would like to learn about the entrepreneurship angle. And it's also created, at least on some scale, a pipeline. And most of our alumni are somewhere in the advanced nuclear world and either at nonprofits or in businesses, developers, all different places, think tanks, around this space. So, it's an exciting program. And this past year, just a few months ago, we did it at the University of Wisconsin. We do it in partnership with several universities. And that was the first time in several years because of COVID-19. And then next summer, summer of 2023, we're going to do it in Japan. So, we're actually very excited about that.

Sharma

In the entrepreneurial world, what has surprised you about the interest within nuclear energy?

Greenwald

Yeah, it's been very exciting to me to see this new generation of people who are interested in advanced nuclear energy. It's a new breed. And I think now, a lot of people are coming at nuclear energy, because they're interested in climate. And so, it's a new generation of people who are excited about nuclear energy for different reasons.

It's also, I would say really interesting, a lot of the politics around nuclear energy are changing and there's a bit of a generational shift. I think a lot of environmentalists grew up being anti-nuclear and the new generation of young environmentalists, who care deeply about climate change, did not grow up with that set of assumptions. And they're willing to give nuclear energy another look. And then they come to it and they learn things like, actually, it's quite safe compared to other technologies. It's actually zero carbon and it has a lot of advantages, and there's this new generation of technologies that could really be competitive economically, both here and abroad.

So, we have a new generation of people who are excited about nuclear energy as a climate solution and as an environmentally good thing to do. There is really interesting two photos that I've seen put side by side where there was a protest against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant many years ago with young people with signs, don't do this nuclear plant. And then this past year, there was a protest to keep the Diablo Canyon plant open — young people to with signs — because it's clean energy and we need it.

Sharma

And it shows you the changing shift in the culture that's driving the interest. Very interesting. So, to get to the next level in the advancement, what needs to happen?

Greenwald

Yeah, like I mentioned, these policy needs are important. These tax credits are really exciting, but they have to be implemented. The Internal Revenue Service has to issue guidance. People have to actually take the credits. They have to know about the credits. So, investors have to actually take advantage of these tools. We have to make sure that the programs that were created at the Department of Energy, some of them already have appropriations, some of them are authorized programs but need funding.

So, we have to make sure that these programs are adequately funded and execution is really what we have to make sure that they're adequately implemented. So, we've had some policy wins recently and we have to make sure they're effectively implemented. Similarly, at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we have to make sure that licensing reform happens, that it's done well, and there's roles for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as for applicants making that happen.

We also need private investment. More and more private investors are getting interested in nuclear and advanced nuclear energy as a climate solution. And we actually co-convened with Guggenheim Securities and several other organizations in New York City earlier this year. As far as we know, the first advanced nuclear energy investment conference in New York City, and we had a ton of participation and lots of excitement around people talking about the technologies and investors both learning about it and getting excited, also asking tough questions and making sure that we have that communication. And the examples of our kind of geeky advocacy, we did two papers around this. We did a paper on why you might want to consider advanced nuclear energy to be an ESG investment, environment, social and governance category of investment, and how it actually meets a lot of the criteria that ESG investors are looking for, if you look at it analytically.

And then we also did a paper on due diligence for potential investors in advanced nuclear energy. The kinds of questions you would want to ask somebody who were thinking about investing in. So, we are not helping any particular technology or company, but informing from an independent perspective, the space about the opportunities that are inherent in advanced nuclear energy and learning about the state of play.

So, I think getting education is really important. I mentioned the boot camp. It’s interesting that the space is growing really quickly. There's a lot of growing interest, a lot of private and public investment going into it. And the pipeline of a young or early career, I don't want to be ageist, early career and students or early career professionals and students isn't as big as that as the demand. So really making sure that we have more people going into this field, which we're trying to help with in our way with boot camp, but other pipelines need to be expanded to make sure we have the people to do this work.

Sharma

So, it seems like there's a whole ecosystem shift that still needs to happen. But if I were to take just one step back and ask your opinion on where you think the investor money or the smart money is going mostly? And what are they finding most exciting in terms of solving the next problems?

Greenwald

So, I'd say there's a growing interest in this portfolio of advanced nuclear energy technologies and I think they're all good bets. I don't think any of them is a sure thing. And what I'm excited about is the portfolio. I think we have a portfolio of very interesting and diverse ideas for advanced nuclear energy, and I think at least some of them are going to succeed. And that's very exciting and that makes me very optimistic. I think sometimes, it's important to try to think like an investor, that you invest in a set of technologies that are promising and you make good bets. And I think there's a good chance that a lot of them are going to pay off.

Sharma

Judi, this has been a very informative discussion. I certainly learned a lot. Is there anything that we haven't asked you?

Greenwald: I don't think so. I guess I'll reiterate, sort of my journey where I've worked on lots of different climate solutions and I've worked on transportation and I've worked on the power sector, and I've worked on carbon capture, and I've worked on the whole energy system and the whole solution sets. I've really done a lot of thinking and doing around climate solutions. And I'm excited I’m working on advanced nuclear energy at the moment, because I think it's really promising and I'm just excited that we're having this moment with advanced nuclear energy. And I think that there's a good chance that it can play a really important role in solving one of the most important problems of our time.

Sharma

For sure. Thank you so much, Judi, for your time.

Greenwald

Great. Thank you.

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The Decoding Innovation podcast series is a limited production of the EY-Nottingham Spirk Innovation Hub, based in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information, visit our website at ey.com/decodinginnovation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to spread the word!

 

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