⚡ US SMR buildout stalls on NIMBY and unproven technology

“Yeah, so in the small modular reactor, Gen 4 stuff, we as well as others have investments there. A great company we like called X Energy.”

“This is, I think, Gavin, one of the great upshots of the AI boom is that the AI companies, whether it's Meta or Google, they're so motivated that they'll actually go and upgrade the infrastructure. They'll invest in the, you know, small modular nuclear reactors that are coming.”

“So then it's like, okay, what can I do? Nuclear? I can't, because that'll take till 2035”

“I saw yesterday the Tennessee Valley Authority filed the first ever application for a small modular reactor. Let's go. Hopefully, it gets approved very quickly.”

“So the regulatory constraints need to be addressed first and foremost. That's, in my opinion, the number one mission critical strategic comparative for the United States right now.”

“This was an area that China chose, and now, you know, the US finds itself years behind on a technology that we invented, right? So this was research that happened at Oak Ridge National Lab.”

“OK, if you ordered one today, the fastest that you can get it turned on is 2030 The fastest that you can get nuclear turned on is 2035 So we don't have the ability to generate incremental electricity very quickly, but for renewables.”

“Yeah, the downside is the amount of time it takes to adequately build these things properly. The thing that China has had is, it's as Thomas' chart shows, is decades of practice in building things safely and quickly. We can build things, but we haven't had the practice to build them either safely or quickly because we haven't built any.”

“we have new Gen 4 technologies that are meltdown proof, that have a totally different architecture where there isn't a setup, where you have runaway heat and ultimately a collapse of the reactor and a release of radioactive material, which is what happened at Chernobyl. These new systems, which we highlighted on the show a couple of months ago, like the Pebble Bed Reactor that's been in production making electricity in China, are incredible new technology architectures and they're here and they're running.”

“SMRs don't work yet. We have theoretical ways in which we can profile and model that they work, but we don't have a functional one that people can look at and inspect.”

“I mean, I think there's plenty of land outside of the triangle here in Texas, where there is no density and you could put one and I'd have no problem with there being one 100 miles, 200 miles.”

“I don't think anyone wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. It's really simple. I mean, no matter what the benefits are for AI or for America's global competitiveness, I just don't think your typical community wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. And I don't think it matters that much if it's a small modular one either.”

“that it might be the fastest path to solving this energy gap problem is SMRs”