Adam Stein

An inherent safety characteristic is one that removes a failure mode from the equation altogether.

So you're removing a way that something could go wrong.

You're not adding another safety system to protect something.

You're finding something that could go wrong and just totally removing it from the system.

Some advanced reactors might not have a pump in the system at all.

It could just use physics to make the fluid flow as it gets hotter or colder on different sides.

So then the pump being removed creates inherent safety because the pump miller can fail if it doesn't exist in the system.

there was an understanding that one of the main cost drivers for the existing reactors was that you're building almost everything on site.

You're shipping some large components in, but you're basically constructing it like a Lego set on site.

So shifting to a smaller size allows you to build a lot more and fully assemble it in a factory setting.

The way that most people say this is you're building an airplane instead of an airport.

Some of the earliest concepts of microreactors were aimed at powering very small island or

very close to the Arctic Circle communities that currently use small diesel generators and have supply chain problems with diesel or their diesel gums up when it gets extremely cold and they have no power.

So to license a newer advanced reactor design that generally uses slightly different fuel or slightly different coolant fluids, they needed to seek exemptions and prove to the regulator why this change is acceptable, it's safe, it's necessary, and this made the regulatory process very cumbersome.

Congress has been trying to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up its regulatory review for many years.

The recent executive orders from last year said the NRC has to get applications reviewed within 18 months.

It was due to drawing down weapons, actually.

In the Megatons to Megawatts project, we agreed with Russia that we would draw down our nuclear arsenals.

And those would be reprocessed, essentially, into fuel, which we used in our reactors in the U.S.

to make electricity.