Zaporizhzhia: Nuclear on the Front Lines - Ep134: Chris Gadomski

Michael Liebreich  Chris, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us here today.

Chris Gadomski It's a pleasure. It's always great to have a conversation with you, Michael, I miss you very much.

ML  So, for our audience, we always start with me asking guests to describe what they do in their own words. Because I do a little intro, but it inevitably kind of cuts some corners and gets things wrong. So, what do you do? Who are you?

CG  I'm head of nuclear research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and I spend most of my time writing research notes and talking to clients and prospects of Bloomberg, who are trying to understand the nuances of what's going on in the nuclear power industry globally. And there's a lot of stuff that's in the press that's not exactly accurate, and I try to straighten my clients out and say, listen, this is the way it is.

ML  Very good. And I think our audience also deserves to know that we go way back. It was kind of the early days of New Energy Finance, as was then before it was sold to Bloomberg, and I was running it and I thought, you know, it's all very well, knowing all about wind, all about solar, and then we started to, you know, explore some of the other technologies and how it all comes together in the electricity markets; but it really bothered me that we didn't really have anybody who knew nuclear. I was like the big expert on nuclear, and that's just not right, because although I studied it, I was not up to date. And so, you and I started speaking and the rest is kind of history, right?

CG  Very much so. I remember, everybody tells me, how did you get hired? I say well I got into a discussion / argument with Michael Liebreich and he hired me on the spot. That was great.

ML  Very good. That's going back to, it must have been 2007/8 or something like that. So, that was a life-changing argument with me, and I'm sure you were absolutely correct, and I was way out of order.

CG  You took me from the dark side - I was a solar guy at that time and became a nuclear guy. So, it was great.

ML  So, the spur for the conversation today is the unfolding situation, or at least the attention that is being paid to Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, and there are threats that it might be blown up... But I wanted to step back from the to and fro of the media coverage, exactly as you say you do with your clients, and let's understand, you know, what is this plant? Let's start with, what does it do? How big is it? What technologies? And then we can go into kind of what are the real risks? And then maybe we'll talk a bit more broadly about the nuclear industry, Russia's role in it and so on. So, if that's okay, could you describe what is that Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant?

CG  So, it's the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It's made up of six VVER, water-water energetic reactors. Russian designs, very, very different from the RBMK design that characterized Russia. I have been inside containment in Russian reactors recently, three or four years ago, and these are good reactors, solid reactors. They've been operating for 40 years nearly. The last one, I think, came on in '85. So, they've been established, sound reactors, and they've been operated somewhere below US standards or European standards for capacity factor. We like to talk about, in the US, we have a very high capacity factor of 90, 95. These reactors been operated like high 60s, low 70s. So, not really good credit for how well they're operated based on the International Atomic Energy Agency data that I have access to.

ML  And these are Pressurized Water Reactors? So, the fundamental technology is just the same as reactors that are being run in France, or in the US, or in Canada or elsewhere, right?

CG  Two thirds of the installed base of nuclear power plants around the world are Pressurized Water Reactors. The other third largely are boiling water reactors, for example, the reactors that had a problem in Fukushima are boiling water reactors. These are Pressurized Water Reactors, the most popular. Westinghouse sells them, the French sell them, the Russians sell them, the Chinese have adapted several technologies. So, it's a mainstream technology that is out there, and they're 1000 megawatts each. That's a pretty typical size for all these large reactors operating now.

ML  And you talked about the capacity factor. Why has their capacity factor been lower? Is it because they keep breaking, they're not good? Or is it just because the role they play in the power network in Ukraine, or the role that they have played historically, has been different?

CG  You know, I don't know the exact answer to that. I suspect, however, that the maintenance of those reactors is at fault. The US is very, very good, have very high standards for operating capacity, operate very, very high. In France, for example, they sort of cycle the reactors off on the weekends, so their capacity factor is somewhat low. So, I'm not exactly sure of the power demands within the Ukraine. But it could be that they're taking a longer time to re-fuel them - they refuel every 18 to 24 months. So, here in the US, we have an art to try to get that done as quickly as possible, and we're very effective. Other countries take longer time. But I noticed that some of the reactors in the US in the bottom quartile are similar capacity factors, but the top ones that the US is very proud of, we have 90%, 95% capacity factor.

ML  And these six units were built during a period, they started construction in 1980, the last one came online in 1996, you talked about roughly 40 years. Who built them, whose technology are they?

CG  These are Russian-designed reactors, so Rosatom. And Rosatom right now is a global leader in supplying nuclear power plants around the world. They're building reactors in Bangladesh, in Turkey, in Egypt. They have several built inside Russia. I visited one in Novovoronezh, when I was speaking at a conference that the Russians, Rosatom sponsored a few years ago. So, good reactors, good simple reactors. The reactor that I visited didn't have an elevator. Very simple, straightforward reactor designs. And typically, less expensive, much less expensive than some of the reactors that are being built, certainly in the West... which is not a good example of economically sound construction practices.

ML  That's right. So, normally on these shows, we kind of go off, we spiral off into what is the levelized cost, and why is it... But we're gonna stick with Zaporizhzhya here. Whose fuel do they use? Where do they get fueled? What's the fuel cycle, from processing through to reprocessing or waste?

CG  So, they had been using historically Russian fuel from PVEL. But there has been an attempt in recent years to switch to Westinghouse fuel. Westinghouse is very, very aggressive in that market. First, we're trying to supply fuel to that market. And there's been talk about if the dust settles from this war in Ukraine, that Westinghouse is poised to build - or at least they've announced that they're going to try to build - several new large reactors. I remain a little bit skeptical on how quickly that will happen. And also, if it's the proper choice for the Ukraine to do that. Because the whole landscape of nuclear power, with the infringement of renewables into the marketplace, makes me think that there's opportunities for other types of technology besides these large reactors.

ML  Talk us through, what normally happens... you said that there's a refueling every 18 months. Our audience, just to be clear, some of them will be highly, highly expert, they'll know all about this, and some people will not, this will not be an area that they know much about. What actually happens to the fuel? So how long does it stay there in cooling ponds, and what happens to it next?

CG  So typically, when you refuel, which happens 18/24, or depending on the price of uranium, even more frequently, the fuel is shuffled around in the reactor core. Typically, it will last for six years in a reactor, but it's moved around depending on the fresher fuel in the centre, the more spent fuel is moved out towards the perimeter. After being in the reactor for six years, it's taken out and put into a spent fuel pond, and will stay there for it to cool down for five to ten years or until we get these things brimming full and we want to take them out. After they spend appropriate time cooling down in a cooling pond, they'll go to a dry cast storage on site, and they'll move the reactors put these things... they look like concrete beer cans, so to speak, with steel reinforced in concrete, and they're designed to keep the fuel cool and safe for 50 to 100 years, perhaps 200 years, depending on how long it takes a nation to figure out how to dispose of this long term, or to perhaps reprocess it, recycle it, and put it to better use. Because the energy content of the spent fuel is there, it's just that being in a reactor for six years, it accumulates poisons, and that sort of interferes with efficient process. So, it needs to be reworked, re-thought, and some of the advanced reactors that are being developed will actually be able to use that as a fuel.

ML  So, would Zaporizhzhya, at the beginning of the conflict, would it have had a lot of spent fuel? 40 years of spent fuel sort of gently cooling down? Well, some of it cooling down and then some of it in dry cask storage.

CG  Yeah, I actually have the exact number of that somewhere written down for you, because I knew you'd ask that question. There's something like 3000 spent fuel assemblies, something like 1800 in either dry cast storage or in spent fuel. And there's 2200 tonnes of spent fuel at the site right now - that's on 2017 data, I wasn't able to get more advanced data for you. But people talk about 2200 tonnes, and they think, oh, that's a tremendous amount of spent fuel - people don't realize how heavy uranium is. And so, it really is in very, very small places. I used to take students and analysts from Bloomberg to visit the spent fuel pools at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in North New York City before they closed it; it's surprisingly small, compact and dense and comparatively easy to manage, as opposed to CO2 going into the atmosphere.

CG  And the cooling would be then... These pools and the cooling of the power station, the pressurized water, the water, the cooling for it, it all comes from the Kakhovka reservoir, or came from at that at that point as the conflict started, correct?

CG  Yes, and that's why they built the reactors over there, because they have a huge heat sink in that reservoir that has now been damaged as of June 6, and levels of the reservoir have gone down, which is causing quite a bit of anxiety to people in Ukraine right now.

ML  Now, just before we get on to what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine and then occupied this plant, just before we do that, I have to sadly use the word Chernobyl. I have to ask, what is the difference between this plant - just if you look at that engineering. You've given us a little sort of thumbnail sketch of the plant and what it produces, uptime and containment and so on. How is that different from the design that would have been in place in Chernobyl?

CG  So, Chernobyl used an RBMK design which are graphite-cooled reactors, which did not have containment on them. So, something goes wrong, poof, it goes up. Whereas these have 1.2-metre-thick, concrete on the sides and their cylinders, curved on the top, they're 1.1 metres thick. And plus, I think 22 millimetres of steel lining inside. So, these are well protected containment vessels. So, that's a big difference. There was an explosion at Chernobyl and oop, it went right through the ceiling, and whatever. That I would imagine would be very unlikely to happen over here, because of the status of the reactors. So, Chernobyl we were operating, these are in cold shutdown - all except for one.

ML  Okay, so let's get to then the point of the invasion. So, Russia invades, and for a while, they took over and said, we're in charge, but keep operating. But then at some point, they were shut down?

CG  Yes, well, they were all operating. And as of, I think, the end of June, there was a period when all the reactors were shut down, in various stages. So, the maintenance people have been reduced by three quarters, the operators have reduced by one third over there. And so, they're gradually shutting down the nuclear power plants, because quite frankly, there's much less demand for electricity because of the situation and the war over there. And there is some sort of tension between the Ukrainian operators and the Russian military that's organizing and running the plant right now, controlling the plant over there. So, we've had five of the reactors in cold shutdown, which is the best place for them to be right now. One of the reactors is in hot shutdown, which is a little bit different, means that there's still a chain reaction going, they're still producing cesium and iodine. And there is still... it's a much more dangerous situation if somehow that reactive vessel was breached than if they're in cold shutdown. Cold shutdown, you go ahead and you start refueling the reactor, people go into containment, I've been in containment in cold shutdown. So, it's a safer place to be.

ML  And you mentioned iodine. And that's very important, because that's very radioactive, but has a relatively short half-life. So, the five units that are fully shut down, would no longer be producing cesium and iodine? So, they're not dangerous, but the sixth one, with some reactions still going, on producing steam, would also still be producing iodine, correct?

CG  Right. Hot shutdown, that's correct. And there are still those dangerous... the chain reaction is continuing to go on at a very, very low level, and producing those radioactive isotopes.

ML  And iodine is important because we absorb that very quickly into the body that that moves through the body very quickly to the thyroid.

CG  And the thyroid, specifically the thyroid, exactly. So, one of the first things they will do is they will distribute iodine tablets for your thyroid, as a preventative, prophylactic measure to help you avoid the worst effects of that.

ML  Right, so we're having a sort of tomato-tomato moment here, Chris, because you say iodine and I say iodine. But that's fine, I think the audience can take their pick. So, what happens there is, if you think there's going to be radioactive iodine released, you can give people iodine tablets, which kind of packs their thyroid and stops the absorption of the radioactive iodine - at least that's how that's how I was taught, however many, 40 years ago when I studied this stuff. And so, the one unit that is in a hot shutdown, it's not producing power, it's producing steam. Why would you need steam? Why would you do that? Why not just shut it down?

CG  Well, my sources in Ukraine have told me directly that they asked, they ordered that reactor number five be shut down, and the Russians did not allow that to happen. So, it seems like we'd like to have all six reactors in cold shut down. But my sources have told me directly that that's still up there, they requested the shut down, but they still continue to operate that. Which suggests nefarious intent, perhaps, on one side of the table.

ML  Because that was kind of my question. Do you need the steam because that powers an auxiliary generator, or because it does something or whatever? You're saying no, the only reason you would do that is to increase tension.

CG  That's my interpretation based on the information I've received from officials in Ukraine.

ML  And that's very significant, because when it comes to the dam, the Kakhovka dam which was destroyed, or which fell apart after lots some damage, what's very interesting is that there's a discussion about who did it and do we have proof... But for me the smoking gun is that that dam was being run down. The level of the water was being run down until about February 2023, when the Russians - and it was only the Russians that controlled it - turned that around and started to fill the dam. And there's no excuse for filling a damaged dam; the only interpretation that makes sense is to increase tension, to increase danger, and potentially then, to increase the damage if and when that dam is destroyed. So, nobody else controlled the level of the dam. And what you're saying is nobody else controls that sixth reactor?

CG  Right. And to your point, regarding the water levels of the dam, what's very, very important is having water available to cool all of the reactors and the spent fuel ponds at the power plant. Without water, and without electricity to continue circulating the water through the cooling ponds and through the reactors, you have unpleasant opportunities.

ML  Right? So now let's take those in order. Have they got enough water in that cooling pond? Because the water evaporates, it's got a source of heat in it, right? So, have they have they got enough water, despite the fact that the dam is down? Is there a source of water to keep those ponds sufficiently full?

CG  The reservoir provided water for the cooling pond. The cooling pond, as of yesterday morning was at 16.2 metres. The canal to supply that was in 11 metres, bringing the water from the reservoir. So, you have a situation where you have a cooling pond isolated now and at a higher level than the reservoir has been. And they believe that it will be able to provide cooling for the nuclear power plant for several months - how many months that is, whatever. And so, the consequence is that we feel good, we still have some water, it's not a crisis situation. But if you were to lose the cooling pond, or lose ability to move water from the cooling pond through the spent fuel ponds and through the reactors, then you would probably have increased excitement in the area.

ML  And could you pump... The water level is low, the level of the pond is high, can you pump? How big is the volume? What are we talking about? I mean, if you had full control of the area, and there was no hostile activity going on, would this be a really bad problem? Or could you solve it with some pumps?

CG  You can solve it with some pumps. The problem right now is that you have this counter offensive going on, and that's creating increased tensions in the area. And two things are critical for the safety of the plant - availability of water and availability of electricity, either from the emergency diesel generators or from outside sources, to continue powering and moving the water around.

ML  And so, let's come on to electricity. Do they currently have electricity, were they to need to pump, or for all of the uses that they have at the plant? Do they currently have electricity?

CG  They do have electricity, but historically since the war started, power has been cut off to the plant six or seven times - I have a timeline for that. But we know that it has been cut off, it's come back, various transmission lines have been damaged, been restored, the emergency diesel pumps have worked for 24 hours, 36 hours. So, it's a constantly changing thing. Worst fears have been relieved due to the operation of the crew there to sort of tap another electrical source, turn their emergency diesels on or whatever. But this could deteriorate if there are problems with running out of fuel, or having other things that interrupt the supply of electricity.

ML  Now International [Atomic] Energy Agency, Rafael Grassi, has been there but he was there some time ago. He has not been there to inspect at this point, has he?

CG  He's been there a few days ago, and he has... I can't remember the exact date, but he has been there, and he said that there was no evidence of any mines or ammunition or potential evidence of sabotage at the nuclear power plant. He's concerned about the staff that are tired, he is concerned by the fact that you have no one seemingly in control of the nuclear power plant. When Chernobyl went, everybody ran and said, yes, we have to solve this problem. When Fukushima went, yes, there was an organized group of people and a response appeared. That does not necessarily exist right now, because it's in a war zone, at the border of a war zone, and so there's no clear... If something were to happen, who is going to come to the rescue to solve this problem?

ML  So, let's come back to the question of explosives and sabotage, but let's stick just if we could with the cooling ponds. If they lose electrical power, and they lose water, what actually happens?

CG  Because there is a lot of residual heat in the spent fuel, it will evaporate the water. And so, in cold shutdown, the time is eight or nine days without circulating, water will boil off. When you have a hot shutdown, it's down to 27 hours according to the people I've talked to in Ukraine in the last few days. And so, it's really important going back to make sure everything's in cold shutdown to calm this thing down, and that you want to have water available to circulate through the reactor as much as possible.

ML  So, that's the reactor. But with the pool, the spent fuel pool, presumably that evaporates off, boils off ultimately, if you're not adding water?

CG  That's correct, and that's what happened at Fukushima, where there was a lot of concerns about the spent fuel pool, being dry and melting down and whatever. So, that's a concern right now.

ML  So, the spent fuel can melt? But the thing that happens first, I think you're saying, will be the reactor and particularly that hot shutdown reactor.

CG  That's exactly, that's what would be the first bit of concern. Also, in the reactors that are in cold shutdown, they're inside containment, so if something were to happen, theoretically, the reactor pressure vessel will contain any radiation release or any problems inside the containment vessel - that's why you have containment vessels. And so, spent fuel pools are not as equally hardened, and so they're perhaps more vulnerable to damage.

ML  If we were to look at a potential timeline there, the first thing that would happen would be the hot shutdown reactor might melt? But it would be in containment. Then the cold shutdown, and then the spent fuel. But if that melts, it's really bad because it's not in containment, so then you do get radioactive release and some kind of a plume, correct?

CG  Correct.

ML  How big of a plume, Chris, tell us?

CG  Ukrainian nuclear authorities have modeled, they did a modeling in August of last year, 2022. And the prevailing wind is from the northeast to the southwest. So, you're going towards Odessa perhaps and towards Bulgaria, for example.

ML  Towards Crimea, presumably Crimea, my understanding Crimea, Odessa, and then across the Black Sea.

CG  Crimea is directly to the south. So, the simulations that I have seen in the last couple of days suggest that the fallout, the radioactive fallout and areas that would need to be evacuated, are from a vector going in the direction of the Southwest.

ML  And how substantial might this plume be compared to... in units of Chernobyls? Are we talking about a tenth as bad, the same, even worse? A hundredth? What does the modeling say?

CG  They ran several simulations and the data that I looked at approximately 10 millisieverts and 16 millisieverts in a worst-case scenario. So, a range from 10 to 16, with the two simulations that I had. But what are the simulations based on? How much is going to be released or what the wind direction is going to be - these are simulations and so they could possibly happen, but I think there's a wider range of possibilities as well.

ML  And what how many millisieverts were released in Fukushima, Chernobyl? How does that compare?

CG  I don't have that data but it's certainly significantly less than in a Chernobyl situation, which was a very, very serious radiation issue. I think when I visited Fukushima, 2015 and 2017, I picked up a few millisieverts when I was driving, but I was within 10 yards of the reactor when I went there.

ML  And that's one scenario, that's the loss of coolant scenario. What about the sabotage scenario? Because suddenly the Ukrainians have been sort of conditioning the information space by saying the Russians have sabotaged it, they've put explosives. Rafael Grossi said the IEA has not seen evidence of that, but they were not allowed, I believe, to see everything in that plant. Is it possible to... those containment vessels, is it possible to breach them with explosives from outside?

CG  I imagine if you have a large enough explosive, that's possible, but they are designed to withstand the full impact of a jet airline crashing into them. So, the Ukrainians claim there are explosives in certain parts of the nuclear power plant that Grossi denies seeing, none of his staff has seen them. But it's a dynamic and changing situation. And IEA inspectors have requested to go back and revisit the plants to get access to parts of the plant that they have not had a chance to visit.

ML  It's an interesting one, because, obviously, if you are in control of that plant, you can put as much explosives as you... If you really truly have access to it, you sort of assume that the answer to the question is, in theory, they could breach the containment. But that would have to be quite a lot of activity, quite a lot of explosives to do that by the sound of things.

CG  Right. And so, what are we trying to accomplish if the Russians are going to take some nefarious steps. First of all, they want to increase the psychological horror on the Ukrainian people, which they're really happy about having, you know, radiation clouds going to drift by. So, the best way, probably the most effective way to go ahead and do this is to spare the containment vessels and to sabotage the cooling systems, the pond, to drain the cooling pond; to sort of drain all the water, prevent any water from being able to be circulated; damage the electrical access, and emergency diesel generators; damage those components and let the water evaporate and cause a radiation release. To me that seems to be a plausible way that they would do that - destroy the water cooling infrastructure of the plant and electrical supply to the plant so you will have boil-off.

ML  You don't have the Sieverts number, but it is... As long as these reactors are in shutdown - even hot shutdown, but in shutdown, and particularly if the containment vessels are not breached - I think what you're saying is it's a much smaller release than certainly Chernobyl and probably Fukushima as well.

CG  Well Chernobyl was just... the whole reactor blew up and was terrible, terrible. So, that's in a category by itself. And I'm sorry, I don't have the data for Fukushima; I published on that years ago, it's a story I like to forget, about what happened over there. But the reaction was, I think, the Japanese government took a reaction that was warranted, but perhaps excessive, and the most problems came from people who were evacuated. I toured that area, you know, a few years later with other scientists from MIT, whatever, who were with me, and, they judged the reaction of the evacuation of people as being overkill, because they just didn't know.

ML  Yeah, so the famous statistic for Fukushima is there may have been... there's been one death that has been attributed but even that is questionable. But people died during the evacuation- very old, frail people died during the evacuation. How big is the exclusion zone currently in Fukushima?

CG  Well, I think they're starting to move people eventually back into the area and again, I can't remember how it's shrunk because there's an area that is... There's such a problem right now, the main focus in Fukushima is getting rid of the thousand large holding tanks containing the contaminated water, and that's what's really dominating the news over there. And the Japanese government is in this process of starting to release that sometime this summer, and that's causing a lot of international consternation from the Koreans, and from the Chinese, who just don't want to see tritiated water released into the Pacific Ocean.

ML  Because where I'm going with this is trying to get some triangulation; how big might the evacuation need to be, setting aside the constraints of the conflict, obviously? I think the scenario that you're painting is, water and electricity are out, there's some kind of an overheat probably in the spent fuel in that pool, maybe the hot shutdown reactor, but that's contained, and then kind of how bad can it get in terms of the devastation? You've already got the devastation caused by the collapse, the destruction of the dam. How bad would it be? Give us some idea of that by comparison?

CG  One of the complicating issues here is that there's nobody in really control, and you have two competing forces - the Russians are occupying, the Ukrainians have a vested interest in making sure nothing happens. And so, if nefarious activity sets off a radiation release, what do the Russians do? Do they turn around and run? Do they leave? Do they practice a scorched earth policy and returned back to Russia? Or are they going to stick around and get turned green themselves? So, there's that conflict, who is going to sort of maintain? The Ukrainians would like to do that, the Russians are in control, militarily you have a counter offensive, you know, guns shooting. The number of times that there have been artillery shells in close proximity to the nuclear reactor makes it a very, very difficult situation to address how quickly the problem could be fixed. And if we don't understand really how well and how quickly a problem will be fixed, we're not able to really imagine how much of a problem would be created by some sort of radiation. We're in a good situation where we have five of the reactors in cold shutdown. And if we were all in cold shutdown, we'd be in a much better situation. And if we had a way to ensure that there was water and electricity supply to the reactors, I think we should be confident that there should be less danger. And the IAEA is really working hard to ensure these things happen. But in wartime, anything goes.

ML  Yeah, and I think that's what's very difficult, because it's a situation where clearly, if both sides wanted to work together to minimize the risk, then that could be done. The problem is that that is not the kind of overriding assumption here. And we've seen, as I say, there's only one country here, Russia, that could have increased the level of the reservoir prior to the destruction of the dam. So, we have a suspect, that does not appear to want to minimize the risk - in fact, the exact opposite. Which is just very... It's hard. I mean, I suppose, as an engineer, it's very hard to process that because, we live to solve problems on behalf of society, and not in any way worsen them - but that may be what somebody's intending here.

CG  One of the things that people overlook the most about the nuclear power industry is that, unlike any other industry, or technology, it is so politically driven, and motivated, and there's all sorts of politics affecting rational decisions that are going on in the nuclear power industry. And there's many examples of that.

ML  So, let's follow that, because I think we've understood the situation with Zaporizhzhya, and we've reached the point where we understand how the plant is built, what the challenges are, given the current situation, a bit about what the implications would be which direction it's going to go. So, let's move on to talk a little bit, if we could, about the overall nuclear industry and Russia's role in it. Because the implications of this, this situation, will go beyond just Zaporizhzhya; there will be - presumably at some point - there will be an end to this horrendous conflict which Russia has unleashed. But it will change the nuclear industry forever, will it not?

CG  Well, you know, I don't see evidence of that right away because there's not many alternatives. Who's going to come to the rescue? Which country is going to be the white knight? Russia has a very specific policy of exporting nuclear power plants around the world, and there are many countries in the world - Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, and others - who are very, very interested in developing nuclear power for a variety of different reasons. I spoke at several of the ATOMEXPO conferences in Russia, in Sochi. And on going to one of them, we boarded a flight to go visit a nuclear power station, and I was late getting on the plane. But as I went through first class, there were ministers and senior executives from African countries - the entire first class was full with these political staffers and people from... High government officials from Africa, they were all being catered to by Rosatom to say, hey, listen, come visit one of our nuclear power plants, and we'll show you what we can build in your country. So, that doesn't exist at all in the United States; you'll get five or six thousand people at some of the ATOMEXPO exhibits in Sochi, in Moscow. The two that I went to were full of people from all over the world. You go to the Nuclear Energy Association meeting down in Washington DC, you get 800 people there. So, they're really very, very aggressive in trying to promote this. On the flight down to the nuclear reactors sitting next to me there was a journalist from one of the leading Egyptian newspapers. What was his job? He's never left Egypt, he was flown to Russia, has a blast three or four days being feted, drinking, eating, carrying on, he goes back and he writes favorable articles about Russian nuclear technology for the Egyptian press. So, they're very, very aggressive and intend to be a leader in selling nuclear reactors around the world. What also has happened is that they've really cornered a very large percentage of the nuclear fuel enrichment business. Not so much the uranium - they have about 8% of the recoverable, at a certain price, uranium supplies around the world. But they dominate uranium enrichment. And it's a problem that could easily be solved by the US, if we decide to go ahead and invest in a uranium enrichment facility. But, we don't seem to be able to... the political machine in the United States is bogged down, can't seem to get off going. There's several different approaches to doing that. We're trying to create enrichment for HALEU, for these advanced reactors. And we're gonna get like 20 kilos of HALEU this year, when the demands for it are huge. And we're just... it's a combination of their chicken and egg situation. The enrichment companies do not want to invest in a further enrichment facility, unless they can see demand for the technology. And as a result of that, some of these advanced reactors, the day when they can come online is being pushed further, further back because of the lack of availability of fuel. It's a policy problem.

ML  Let's take a step back on HALEU and let's start, if we could, just on the fuel cycle, for the benefit of this audience. I was in the Soviet Union in 1990, I actually worked on Perestroika, that was the year before the Soviet Union just completely collapsed. And in that collapse, which was enormously chaotic, one of the things that happened, thankfully, was the deal by the West, led by the US, to go in and do a megatonnes to megawatts, to take the some of the enormous overcapacity surplus of nuclear warheads and turn that... get their arms around it and bring it into the fuel cycle, correct? But that was something called HEU, not the HALEU which is H A L E U that you've just been speaking about?

CG  So HEU is highly enriched uranium, which would be suitable 95% concentration of the isotope Uranium 235, which is fissile, as opposed to the Uranium238, which is the isotope that's fertile. So, you need that fissile component to be very, very high for nuclear weapons development. So, we took, into the megatonnes to megawatts process, we took that highly, highly enriched uranium and down-blended it, mixed it back with other uranium isotopes to bring it down to an enrichment level that was suitable for operating US nuclear power plants. US nuclear power plants use uranium enriched to 3.5% to 5%, and that's pretty much the standard for that. Now the advanced reactors are going to be requiring HALEU, High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium, which provides enrichment levels between up to 19.5% 20%, or so. So, they'll be able to operate for longer periods of time without refueling, to be more efficient and be more economical allegedly by being able to use this was higher assay fuel.

ML  And of the... there's a sort of pre-Cambrian explosion of different types of plants different... small modular reactors, micro reactors, etc., etc., everybody's got their favorite reactor design. How many of them use HALEU?

CG  Nine of the ten advanced reactors that are being designed or are being developed in the United States will use HALEU.

ML  And who controls the HALEU supply chain?

CG  Our friends in Russia.

ML  Right. And you said that, then there's been... there are a number of moves. I also know that under the Inflation Reduction Act, and there's been another sort of few billion thrown at this problem... to produce HALEU domestically in the US? Correct? And so, what you're saying is too little, too late, fiddling around the edges, not serious?

CG  I would start by saying not serious, and it's a question of money. To build up a HALEU enrichment facility is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Where's the profit, where's the demand for that coming? It's going to come in the future, so when you're talking to investors about raising this type of cash to invest in a technology that's very expensive, that has a very long lead time and may not produce results, it's a pretty risky proposition. Another thing that I think is probably wise to sort of understand is that, you mentioned yourself, that there's 35, 40, advanced reactor designs being developed. So, what percentage of them are actually going to cross the finish line and produce a reactor that is going to have a market and demand for HALEU fuel? And so, I'm very, very suspicious that a lot of these will not be able to come across the finish line, simply because of the capital requirements and the Licensing and Regulation gauntlet that they'll need to run through to go ahead and deliver that. So, I am very, very concerned that a lot of the efforts that we see being developed in the advanced reactor space, will not have enough cash and not enough legs, and will run through a tremendously difficult gauntlet to get across the finish line.

ML  A month or two after the Russian invasion of Ukraine - very soon after, so this would have been in March, April of 2022 - I went to an event which was on the security implications of the Russian invasion. And there were two main speakers: one was a former oil and gas CEO, who said that we were foolish to support Ukraine, because all his friends were still partying in Moscow, which I thought was an offensively tin-eared thing to say; the other person was a former head of a security service - I can't say too much about it because you'd be able to kind of work out who it was - and when he was asked what the solution was from an energy security perspective to these developments, he cleared his throat and in a very portentous voice said the solution to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the energy security issues that they raised was "SMRs." And I nearly spat my coffee. Do you think SMRs... From what you're saying, you have grave reservations about the technologies and whether they're funded to get through to be built. But then also, nine out of ten of them use a fuel which is controlled by Russia...

CG  Let's say I'm nervous about the prospects of that. The history of building large reactors in the West is rather dismal in the last few years. You have several examples in the United States. Vogtle Three and Four, they have the prize in my analysis of the most expensive reactor per kilowatt basis. And then the [Finnish] have the episode in Olkiluoto, which started construction in 2005; and if you're starting a capital project in 2005 and it's still not generating electricity, or has just started generating electricity, you just can imagine what that does to the levelized cost of electricity of that product. And then the French started in 2007, and they're lucky to get the reactor online in 2024. And we also experienced a situation in Hinkley where the project is behind schedule, over budget, and quite frankly, I question whether or not it was the right fit for nuclear in the UK. What has changed in the last ten or fifteen years is all of a sudden we have this tremendous increase of renewable energy capacity. And so, we need to find nuclear reactors that can complement that deployment of renewable energy, and large reactors pushing 1.6 gigawatts on and off the grid, reducing output, is very, very inefficient. The penetration of renewables onto the grid has changed the type of nuclear reactor that the utilities will ask for in the future. It's going to be a smaller reactor, it's going to be an agile reactor, and it's a reactor that will be able to be deployed to respond to intermittency of demand, and will have other opportunities to provide industrial heat, and will also provide hydrogen and desalination in markets where it is necessary. And that has been my hypothesis... But all of a sudden we see that, in an attempt to completely decarbonize its electrical power infrastructure, the Canadians are investigating adding 4.8 gigawatts of nuclear power in Ontario, with all large reactors. I will be wrong, because I thought that we had seen the end of large reactors in North America, in preference for smaller reactors, which can better complement the increasing deployment of renewables. The biggest challenge I see for SMR development is having the deep pocket that is necessary to support and develop those technologies, and the regulatory gauntlet that is in front of them, which is very, very problematic. You're looking to raise capital to build an SMR and get a license and regulation, and asking private equity or whoever for cash, to go ahead and invest that. And they say, well, what are you gonna do with the cash? Well, we're gonna give it to the US government to pay for the regulatory fees. And they'll say, yes, that's a very good idea, here's plenty of money to do it. Of course not, okay? And so, I am a little bit concerned that we don't see that all this lot of advanced reactor developments, not all will cross the finish line, not get capital, and the challenges they'll face.

ML  So, I did an episode, which has just come out this week with Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA. And he was commending the kind of resurgence of interest in nuclear, the combination of SMRs and then potentially even larger reactors. And he was pointing out that even if they are not fully competitive on a kind of kilowatt hour for kilowatt hour basis, that there were strategic reasons why they were good because of diversity of supply, and that countries would kind of want some anyway. And I suppose that's kind of where we end up.

CG  Well, I remember at one of the Bloomberg summits, I had a conversation with Jim Rogers, the former CEO of Duke Energy. And I asked him - this is the era of very inexpensive natural gas - and I asked him, what price premium is a utility willing to pay to diversify its supply, or portfolio of generating assets. And he looked at me and says, Chris, I don't have a good answer for you, but it's a really good question. And so, I think that we're going to see utilities in the US and elsewhere, trying to make decisions that are based on trying to reach Net Zero aspirations that are going to confuse the economics. What premium, how much more are they willing to pay, to diversify their portfolio generation, and to hedge against future disruptions and fossil fuel prices. And I think that's probably something that, again, taking the economics purely out of the decision-making process, and looking at the political considerations, is something that is going to affect nuclear decision makers more than they have in the past.

ML  Just coming back to Russia and its role in that global industry. Because you said some very striking things: that Russia is very aggressively promoting reactor construction in some countries where US or other manufacturers are probably not going to be prepared to... maybe not prepared to sell, but maybe not prepared simply to put in the hard yards to do the selling. What happens if... right now, there are sanctions which are being tightened on Russia, across the board, except on the nuclear industry. I mean, is that just kind of realpolitik of saying, frankly, in the corridors of power, they've thought all this through, and they kind of agree with that worldview that we need Russia, Russia is going to do this stuff, and we need the fuel, and so we're just kind of going to shrug our shoulders and in nuclear, at least, continue with business as usual?

CG  One of my first steps in my energy career was doing some work for the United Nations Development Programme in Egypt and Somalia, advising them as matter of fact, on developing their solar industries. And it was brought to my attention that decisions are made for political reasons that you have no understanding of why they made that decision. And I can understand making decisions based on economics, but when it comes to making decisions based on politics, sometimes you just throw up your hands, and say I don't understand why that is. And one could even look at the UK and the decision to build Hinkley. Both you and I at the time were very disappointed that they chose that option. But it was a political decision, in my opinion, because it was a way to create 25,000 jobs, which Cameron and Sarkozy thought was a very, very attractive thing to do. So, it was not so much how can we generate the least expensive electricity, but how can we put 25,000 people to work.

ML  That's an interesting one... I actually, I thought that was the most ridiculous deal, Ed Davey negotiated it, at the time. George Osborne, who was Chancellor, seems to have ratified it - completely absurd deal. I don't think it was the jobs; I actually think from the Conservatives that were in government at the time in coalition with Ed Davey, that was a Lib Dem, I actually think that the Conservative push was because at the time, people were leaving, Conservative voters, were being attracted over into UKIP, the UK Independence Party, and one of the big platforms there was, let's do manly nuclear power, and not this kind of rather effete renewables that everybody else wants to do, and so we did some nuclear at any cost. And I think that was a big part of that. But I hope... It's not a rosy picture that you paint overall of the industry. Thanks for your insights into Zaporizhzhia, which actually are probably quite reassuring. But the overall picture of the industry is not very positive. I hope you're not regretting that I pulled you back into nuclear from solar? You said that you were happily working away on solar when I called you back in 2007, 2008, and we got into that discussion.

CG  I'm absolutely fascinated with the challenges that I face, and understanding what's going on in the nuclear power industry. And I'm long past retirement age, and very happy to continue doing what I'm doing. And I'm fascinated by how things... I want us to... I believe that that net-zero has to have a fission or fusion component going forward. And I also question all these net-zero aspirations. I mean, without fission or fusion, I really question how they're going to cross the finish line. And I'm very, very impressed about some of the things I'm seeing in the fusion space, having visited ITER, Commonwealth Fusion, TA technology, seven or eight fusion companies that I've visited. And I sense in the fusion companies that there's a tremendous amount of excitement. They're very well capitalized. I mean, $2.2 billion goes a long way to commercialize a fusion power plant, prove its prototype. And there's a drive and an interest and excitement there that I find lacking in a lot of the advanced reactor companies. And so, I'm very, very curious to see how fusion will be able to contribute, because if you had a fusion plant and Zaporizhzhia, as opposed to fission plant, you wouldn't have a lot of these worries that we're talking about.

ML  Yeah, you'd probably have some radioactive vessel lining sort of sitting around somewhere that had been zapped by high energy particles for six months, and now you don't know quite what to do with them. But they wouldn't be the same fuels sitting there in those pools. That's a really interesting thought. I mean, I think we could do another 50 minutes on fusion. But I guess I'll boil it down to one question: 2050, what percentage of global electricity do you think will be coming from fusion?

CG  I won't be able to answer that question, because it'd be just a wild guess. But I'll tell you, fusion is closer than you think. And there are several reasons I believe that one is that you have a critical mass, and people are interested in investing in that. $2.2 billion for one company, let's see how they play it out. Secondly, there's also no regulatory gauntlet that they have to run through, because the way they're licensing fusion facilities is very, very different from the way they're doing that. And I think that there's a lot of different approaches, there's many shots on goal, and that's a sign of a very, very healthy industry. It's not one way of doing it, there's several different ways. And I think that, you know, to be an optimist, in the nuclear space, that's one area that I'm sort of looking at.

ML  Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, I could, I would normally push back in great detail. Because I don't think $2.2 billion is very much, given the... We did a very good episode with Aneeqa Khan on some of the materials challenges of how you actually have, how you put things into these incredibly high energy environments and how you get them to survive. And I'm thinking, it's probably, if we see one design that kind of works by 2030, and then you have to engineer it for replication, and to make lots of them, that probably takes you another 10 years, and then you start building them. So, my number for 2050 for electricity is, I'd be very happy to see 1% of global electricity produced by fusion by 2050. That would be a huge win for the industry in my book.

CG  I invite you to come with me, and I'll take you to a couple of fusion companies that are building prototypes, building super high temperature magnets, and it's really eye-opening. And I'm very excited and happy to drag you along, because it really turned me, and impressed me. And I've been to, as I said, many, many of these sites.

ML  That is a fantastic invitation, it's one that I would absolutely love to take you up on. Maybe we can work on that. Chris, it is always such a pleasure talking to you.

CG  Thank you very much, Michael. I really miss you and looking forward to your successes. And hopefully we can solve some of these nuclear challenges.

ML  Thanks very much, Chris.