Hello and welcome to the Critical Mass Show. I'm your host Gor Sharan. Joining us today is James Walker, who is the CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy. James, welcome.
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Great to have you on the program. You know, let's get straight into it. For the uninitiated, those who are not aware of your company, give us the backstory. What's the company all about? What's the brand about? Where are you heading for?
Sure. So, Nano Nuclear Energy is an advanced Gen 4 reactor company. We got our start making very small reactors and we gradually shifted into much larger systems to cater for what was a lot of industry demand coming for things like data centers. We've also diversified into other areas such as transportation and even the fuel supply chain.
You know, the public discourse goes along the lines of, you know, comes with some profound changes in the nuclear industry. We may be witnessing a bit of a renaissance. So, from where you sit and how you view the industry, you see the narrative, but is there momentum?
I mean, there's a huge momentum now that's coming. I would say it's a bit of an unprecedented time in nuclear because it's being really pushed by industry this time. So, the demand is really being industry led. But that means there's more money involved this time. There's more diverse demand. So, for instance, for nuclear now, there's drivers coming from military bases. It's coming from the tech industry data centers, but it's also coming from places such as the Canadian government looking for power for remote communities that subsist off diesel. So, there's all these different things now that nuclear is looking to fit into and it's in a bit of a unique position to fill these gaps because it can be high base load power, can be off-grid, behind the meter, can collocate. The tech has advanced to a point where it can do new things it wasn't doing before and it's looking to do these things where it's never done them before, either.
We look at micro modular reactors, you look at SMRs, you look at large scale, all three facets and avenues have their own fans and detractors and what have you. From your perspective, what are you bringing to the table and how do you have a sense, if I may say so, a belief in the micro model?
It's a good question because obviously I think everybody's familiar with the large scale reactor systems like the 1 gigawatt systems. Now, when you're building nuclear, it does make sense to be big. And historically those systems have been really big, so you get economies of scale through one reactor system. The industry moved towards SMRs and micro reactors because you never went from building one big reactor to the next big reactor system. You build one big reactor system and then there was a break. And the result was that really when people got around to these big construction projects, there was very significant time delays and cost overruns as a result. The SMR model was supposed to be something that counteracted that. So, you built several of these and you just kept building them and then you had the learning rate that enabled you just to get cheaper that way. Micro reactors take that to a different level where you now have a system that is as large as you can possibly make it before it stops being completely modular, which is our strategy here. And the reason why we're going that route is that now we can have a production line where we can continuously manufacture these systems. And if you do that, then the learning rate continues and you can get economies of scale through numbers of reactors rather than the scale of the one reactor system. This is I think the difference. At the moment there are five commercial companies that have filed for a construction permit with the NRC. We're one of those five, so it gives you sort of an idea of the leaders in the space and we're up there with them. But of those systems, we're the smallest and that's but we're the only one that can make every component and then move all those components by road. And that means our construction projects are more of an assembly project when all the components get there. And we can have that continuous manufacture at the local levels and move everything to site. We will cut down on construction times, possible time delays. And if you think as well, if we're deploying many reactors to site, say the first one is there, there are cost overruns, it's a smaller proportion of the overall project. So, it's less impactful economically to the overall price. Not to mention the fact that you've got more versatility when it comes to these smaller systems, too. We can be collocated off-grid, provide that baseload power, and assemble quickly.
For players such as yourself, how do you square this domestic scaling versus international deployment? After all, you have great ambition. So, how do you balance the two?
It's a good point because ultimately, you could be limited by how many reactors you can actually manufacture. And obviously, we're going to build our own manufacturing facilities here in the states to cater to this sort of domestic market. But, the market in the states can be very different to say when we're looking at the markets in the Middle East. We're going to be looking at local partnerships in that kind of regions and make systems in different locations around the world and create that production line where we can make those microreactors continuously and output. I think that's the best way to try and cater towards the international market.
We can't possibly have a conversation of this nature without talking about policy frameworks and, you know, what kind of incentives and encouragement that you encounter from various parts of the world. Now, for the geographies that matter to you, what are you and your team encountering in terms of policy frameworks and a conducive environment for advanced nuclear?
