Welcome back to Naked Nuclear and another edition of all of
them Friday. We're the final Friday of every
month we spotlight people in nuclear or through time,
attention and remaining brain cells.
Today's guest is Nick Durant, founder of What is Nuclear?
One of the internet's first and best resources for understanding
how nuclear energy actually works.
Just clear explanation Reactor deep dives history, policy, and
the kind of educational content the broader energy world should
have built years ago. Nick's journey spans
engineering, consulting, entrepreneurship, and science
communication. In this episode, we talked about
how you built the site, the future of advanced reactors,
what coolants and moderators actually do, and why regulation
matters if we want innovation to move faster than a glacier.
So I hope you enjoy this episode.
And welcome to another episode of Naked Nuclear.
Today's series is a part of our larger series of who to follow
in nuclear. If you've ever gone onto YouTube
or been browsing to the web and you type into your search
browser what is nuclear, you'll actually publicly find a website
called What is Nuclear? Today's guest is Nick Turin,
PhD. He's got a nuclear engineering
background license. PE has been spent 15 years at
terror power and now advises the industry as well as creates
amazing YouTube content on historical nuclear reactors and
the history of nuclear. So thank you so much for joining
us today, Nick, and I'm so glad to have you on the show.
Yes, happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
So it was really funny. A few months back, I was
connected on LinkedIn and I was listening and watching some of
the content that you've created around historical nuclear film.
I was like enthralled watching this.
I was like, Oh my gosh, this? Is.
So amazing, literally like on my counter, like sitting up.
I'm like, this is really cool. So I just literally had to get
here. Like what?
What is the story from like, you know, creating these like from,
you know, when were you interested in nuclear?
Why create this? So you want the whole story like
going way back to nuclear? A bridge.
A bridge version. Yeah, I'll try to give the short
version. I had interest in energy.
I think I was kind of lucky to have something to kind of guide
me when I was in high school. I was like, energy is important.
There's energy shortage, there's climate change, there's all
sorts of stuff. Even back when I was in high
school, that was very interesting.
So when I went off to engineering school, not knowing
what to major in, I asked a peer advisor, hey, I'm interested in
energy, but I don't know what to major in.
And she had said, well, have you tried our nuclear engineering
department? I just happened to be at a
university that had a nuclear department and one of the few,
you know, University of Michigan.
And I said, you know, no, I haven't thought of that.
Isn't nuclear kind of old and dumb?
And didn't we just shut our research reactor down?
And why would I do that? She said, well, just take the
introductory class and it'll fit this prerequisite anyway.
And anyway, so I took the class and I fell in love with nuclear.
I learned all these things, you know, all the things we know now
about how cool and capable and what the potential is, the real
start of my interest. And then I started with fusion
and got into advanced fission and learned about sodium cooled
fast reactors. And that led to my job at Terra
Power. They basically called, I was in
grad school. They were looking for people who
are studying sodium cooled reactors and like my research
group was one of the few. So they called us up and they
said, hey, teach us a thing. So I went out there to see
people as a grad student, as a consultant, and they put me in a
nice hotel and that was a good 15 1/2 year adventure there.
But yeah, along the way, this what is nuclear thing started
with my friends in undergrad. We were like, hey, no one likes
nuclear. It's too.
It's so cool. And they just don't know.
And when you Google it, they don't see anything positive.
So let's make a website that'll solve this problem, and we'll
say we'll teach people, you know, we'll make it plain
language. It'll be written by nuclear
engineering students, you know, the most trustworthy group of
people. That was the start of the
website. We wrote basic pages on what is
nuclear waste and what are different types of reactors and
so on. And then as the years went on,
my friends got other jobs and kind of got out of it.
I still would just, like, write new pages.
As I was talking to people in the public or doing
presentations at high schools, questions came up all the time.
And so I would write a page eventually, like, OK, what's the
difference between sodium and molten salt?
Like those sounds similar to the old page, or what's up with
thorium? So we do a little page on the
head. And that was a big one for a
while. So eventually I got into like
history stuff and I started throwing a bunch of reactor
history stuff on there as I got interested in it.
And that's kind of what led eventually to the discovery of
just like hundreds of old nuclear films sitting on 16
millimeter reels in the National Archives.
And I found out how to get those digitized and just started
throwing those up there. So that's kind of how they got
started. That's amazing.
I love that you're just like, yeah, just casually got called
up to the big leagues from terror power.
Yeah, it was awesome. Some sort of baseball player
just gets what liners like we're going to need this ace picture
right now it. Was just dumb luck because I
mean, when we were doing the senior design project that
nuclear engineering students do, like I really wanted to do the
weird sodium cooled fast reactor option and all my teammates were
like, why would we do that? Like that reactor is going to be
no one's going to build one of those.
Where would we get jobs? Like none of these exist right
now. And I was like, all right, guys,
I'll make a deal with you. I don't know why I wanted to do
it so but I was like, I will learn the Super obscure
neutronics codes and you guys just have to do the thermal
hydraulics and economics and they're like, OK, you'll do all
the neutrons. I'm like sure.
So I like really dug in and learned these like super
esoteric coach from like the 60s.
This other a grad student helped me do it.
Eventually it just so happened it was just again, luck that
Bill Gates came along and wanted to do a certain cooled fast
tractor. And like everyone else had been
thinking as my classmates did, like, why would we do that?
So it was just lucky, lucky timing really.
Wow. OK, that, that's awesome.
Like, I'll just do neutronics, put the team on my back.
Like, yeah. Yeah.
And that carried my career. But they were like, we need
somebody knows these neutronics codes.
And I was like, oh, I can do that.
And I did that for many years. Oh my goodness, that's too
funny. Yeah, I love the serendipity of
it as well. And so, OK, so then we're we're
creating what is nuclear because you're like, hey, there's nobody
talking about this. We need good, you know,
information on the site. I love the sources that you guys
have on there. I guess like along the way, so
you went from nuclear engineering students to then
getting then working in the field.
What was that process like in terms of trying to inform the
public along the way as you're learning and and the kind of the
industry's learning as well? Yeah, it was interesting.
I mean, certainly the overall public perception of nuclear I
think has changed pretty significantly since the early
2000s or mid 2000s, I guess, when we started the website.
But yeah, so I mean, we were in Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor is
largely anti nuclear, at least it was back then.
And like we had a thing at one point we just went out on the
street and started with like a video camera.
And we would like go up to people and be like, you know, an
old school video camera, like tape.
And we were like, you know, hey, can we interview about nuclear
power? And they would be like, sure.
And we'd say like, what do you think about nuclear?
And everybody said they don't like it.
And they, you know, they don't think it should be expanded or
anything like that was pretty universal.
So that was very interesting. But then occasionally, like,
people started seeming to get interested.
I got a call from a Michigan radio, like an NPR station.
I think a professor had referred them to me because the professor
didn't want to do the interview. So I got a little bit of
exposure and kind of the local, you know, radio media, which was
kind of fun. And it just started building on
itself to a degree. Like with the site up, people
started reaching out more And I got involved in doing eventually
someone would say like, hey, I have a, my kid is in middle
school and they're looking for people to give talks on like
cool science topics. And so I started, I got involved
through just through like friends, parents and that kind
of thing. The kids are really into it.
And then the teacher would be like, hey, can you come back
next year? Or like, Hey, my colleague wants
like a similar talk. And so I think because it's kind
of like a nichy thing and that most people don't know that much
about, but it's like getting more and more interesting.
There was quite a bit of demand that just sort of built on
itself. And so I got to a point in
Seattle, I mean, I was doing talks at coffee shops and
breweries and schools and he responded to emails all the
time. So it really just ramped up.
The just interest came and people found me and asked me a
bunch of questions and it got much more positive.
Like in Seattle, it was also pretty anti nuclear at first,
but then it got to a point where like most of the people were
really open and interested. There would always be someone
who would say like, who's paying you to say all that?
Like you're trying to kill the planet.
And then I got to a point where I was comfortable enough for I
could kind of yell back and sort of an entertaining way and be
like, well, I don't think killing 8 million people per
year with air pollution is much better.
And then the crowd erupt in applause.
That's my perception. I'm sure it was kind of like a
few people clapping. But anyway, so that's kind of
how it's gone so far. OK, yeah.
So like essentially a nuclear famous hack, like the hecklers.
I also really enjoyed that as well.
But yeah, it is interesting, you know, kind of like watching the
evolution of people's interests within the industry and topic
itself, especially because I think even nowadays we really
don't have a lot of K through 12 education in nuclear.
So it's pretty foreign to a lot of people anyway.
And so when they do find somebody who can kind of tell
them in a way that they understand, they're like, hey,
I'm going to refer that guy to all of my friends.
It's hard to scale. I mean, there's like ANS has
tons of good material slides that are pretty good slide decks
and they have a whole like boxes.
You can be like, hey ANS, I'm going to do a talk at a school
and they like send you a box of like pretty cool, you know,
stickers and little pamphlets and little simulated fuel pins
and stuff like that. They have some good resources
and other outreach groups like Generation Atomic has some
pretty good stuff and they're trained.
They have a thing where they try to train people to be good
advocates and they help what resonates.
And so I think there is a huge demand for it, though.
Every time I did like I was saying, a talk at at a science
class, especially in high school, really, people were
like, that was great. The students loved it.
Like please come back. So if people have kids or know
someone who's in high school and can somehow go, they're really
reaching out for it. You can say like, Hey, does
anyone want to hear, you know, when's nuclear science week or
when are you guys doing nuclear science?
Do you want to talk? It can be really interesting and
I think that the kids take it home and talk to their parents
about it. I think it's very powerful.
That's awesome. Yeah.
And I think the the word of mouth, it's almost like every
marketer's dream, like it's to get their their product or their
service or whatever they're doing so that somebody goes home
and tells somebody else about it.
I feel like that just kind of naturally happens with nuclear,
which is also pretty cool. I think, you know, also like the
rise of YouTube is a big one because I think you were
mentioning like thorium reactors and I know like 10 Fox and
Nerman's. Like what about thorium?
Yeah, Well, yeah, that was so around that time, I mean, in 20
whatever 13 or 14 thorium became like fever pitch.
And I that's when I started doing sort of what I call in
reach instead of outreach to a point where I was like there
were people who were very pro nuclear because of thorium and
they were saying things and it was becoming and we were seeing
big publications and major, major online platforms.
And so I'm saying like, hey, thorium is way better than
uranium. It's much safer.
There's much more of it. And it was only not developed
because it couldn't make weapons.
Like we made light water reactors because we were going
to make weapons with them. None of this is true.
It's not even remotely true. I mean, I was a big thorium fan
for years. But when I started hearing
people say stuff that was kind of overhyped, I wanted to push
back a little bit. And just, you know, I feel bad
for the engineers who have to like, say, oh, people found out
it was a nuclear engineer. They're like, oh, are you doing
thorium? Just people off the street,
everybody knew about thorium, which is, I mean, impressive in
a way, but they had. Yeah, over inflated expectations
of like what it could be and why we weren't doing it.
So anyway, I did a bunch of like push back and like correction on
thorium and I made a big thorium myths page and tried to, I
always kind of debated it because like what tends to
happen is people learn about thorium.
They're like wow, nuclear is cool because of thorium.
And then when they start digging into it more, they're like
actually nuclear is cool in general.
And so it's started this feeder program into being there.
So. So maybe I shouldn't.
I don't want to go out and like Pooh Pooh it too much because I
don't want to prevent that from happening.
And people are smart. They'll figure it out
eventually. But it's still kind of annoys me
when people say things that are just like not quite historically
accurate. But anyway, the Thornian people
got like mad at me. I got in like big fights with
other pro nuclear people. Yeah, back in the day, mostly on
like Reddit. Yeah, like, yeah, they're so
Reddit, you're getting a little heated.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, Internet warrior,
warrior in out there. Good times.
Yeah. I mean, the longevity and props
to you is very impressive, but I think that it is something
that's really fascinating that I feel like I see nowadays as well
is, you know, because people are kind of like tell a friend, tell
somebody else. It it.
Nuclear almost gets this like to this game of telephone where
like the end message kind of gets a little bit garbled and
you're like, oh, that's not quite right.
And having to kind of course correct a bit as well.
I feel like here's things around like SMR development where I'm
like, oh, I don't necessarily know.
And now, I mean, obviously there's a lot of excitement,
there's a lot of hype associated with that.
And there's potentially a lot of inadvertent fraud, like people
saying things like, oh, we solved all economic problems
with nuclear, just gonna make little tiny reactors and like
everything will be solved. It's like, I wish they would
say, and I know this isn't how capitalism works.
I wish they would say, like, we think there's a reason to
believe that if you make them smaller, we could make them
cheaper. And we are going to find out by
developing them. And we're going to build a few
and we're going to see if it works.
But instead they come up and say, like everyone who's
building big reactors doesn't know what they're doing.
We're going to build small reactors and it's going to be a
great solution. And it's like, you don't really
know that. Like you haven't built the
reactor. Like, let's get to prototype
first. So I am happy that now people
are kind of done with talking and everybody is like, let's
just build a reactor and look at it and see how well it actually
performs. So I'm excited to get into that
phase. Yeah.
And that's exciting because, yeah, before this I was just
chatting because I am not a finance person.
And so I'm always trying to learn from like the economic
side. And I was literally chatting
with the economics person before this and I'm like, tell me about
the economy side. And my brain.
I was like, I don't think my brain likes that brain more
likes the physics for me of like supply chain management of
global different, you know, products and things.
And so I guess that kind of was making me think about like when
we're seeing like kind of this expansion of just different
reactor types of advanced reactors, One of the things that
I think, you know, that a lot of people are interested in is just
understanding all the different types.
And one of the things that I think was really helpful on your
website is like when you're going into like reactors, I've
got like this lovely table of coolants moderators.
And if you go down it. And so for our guests that are
maybe not super familiar with the reactor side, what is a
coolant? What is a moderator?
How are they different from each other?
Yeah. So, OK, they can be the same,
but they don't have to be. That's one fun fact.
A coolant, I think is the easiest to understand.
When you're splitting atoms, you're releasing the nuclear
energy as heat. And so you're just heating up
the fuel and that heat is going to start conducting outside of
the fuel material and you have to.
It would just keep increasing in temperature as you ran the
reactor, unless you pushed some kind of fluid by it to pick up
the heat and carry it and transport it to the power
conversion cycle. And that's where it turns the
heat into electricity. So you can use lots of different
materials. Usually it's a fluid.
You can use a solid, but usually it's either a gas or liquid.
Obviously water is kind of the most common coolant right now.
It's easy to heat up water and it's easy to pump water.
So those are kind of the two things that you need to be able
to do. There are many other types of
coolants, like liquid metals. So mercury was used as a coolant
in the Clementine reactor. Yeah.
Real early on, a strange one off and then much more commonly
liquid metal sodium, which is just like mercury.
It's not. Don't think salt when you hear
sodium, everyone thinks you know salt sodium, but actually
there's like elemental liquid metal sodium, which is more like
mercury. You can have liquid molten lead
is another liquid metal that's been used a few times.
And these all have different pros and cons.
Like liquid metal is an excellent coolant.
It conducts heat really well and it's easy to pump and it doesn't
go to high pressure when you heat it up.
So with water, when you heat it up, it would boil unless you
keep it under very high pressure.
With liquid metal, you can leave it at pretty low pressure and it
doesn't boil until. So you can have a much sort of
thinner walled system. But there's disadvantages which
are like liquid metals burn when they touch water or air or
concrete. So you have to like if there's a
leak, it's a much bigger deal. And then you can have gases like
helium or carbon dioxide or nitrogen, and you can have
organic material like oil. There's oil and wax that have
been used as coolant. And then it keeps going.
You can get creative. There's like many different
types of things that can and have been used as coolant.
And then moderators are much more nuanced, and this is in the
nuclear physics realm of things. A moderator's job is to slow
down neutrons to improve the ability of the system to chain
react with neutrons. So it's all about the neutron
chain reaction. When you split an atom, neutrons
come out moving really fast and they could go and find a new
another uranium atom and split it, or they could leak out of
the system, or they could get captured by another piece of
fuel that doesn't fission. So it turns out we found out
very early on in the early 1940s, they discovered that if
you slow those neutrons down in a separate material.
So if you have like a fuel material and then a moderator
material, that's job is to just slow neutrons down.
You can get the chain reaction to react much, much easier with
really natural uranium. This is how they did the first
reactor before we had enrichment or anything.
So the trick is the neutron goes out of the fuel into this
moderator and it basically slows down in peace.
OK, so it's slowing down by bouncing off light nuclides,
whether it's carbon or hydrogen in water or whatever, it slows
down. And as it slows down, there's
nothing in that material that can capture neutrons because
those materials only slow neutrons down.
They don't capture them or as if you slow down in the fuel, it's
very likely that you're going to captured by uranium 238, which
is actually a pretty big neutron absorber.
The trick is to slow it down over the moderator and then let
it come back into the fuel is a very slow neutron, at which
point the likelihood is that it will get captured in AU 235 atom
and caused the next vision. So anyway, so moderators make
you can run on much lower enriched fuel.
If you get rid of a moderator, you need higher enrichment.
You need Halo or beyond really to go critical like a fast
reactor. Graphite is carbon.
That's the early moderator. Then we did switch to water.
Water can both cool and moderate at the same time, which is super
nice. Water is actually a phenomenal
moderator because those hydrogen atoms, if a neutron hits one, it
slows down like all the way. So you can slow a neutron down
in like 5 centimeters with water or it takes like 20 centimeters
with graphite. So you can make a very small
core, which is why we made pressurized water reactors for
submarines because they're very small and very compact.
That's those are the basics. No, that that's actually super
helpful because I think I think a lot of the time, at least from
the folks that we get questions on the show and on the podcast,
I think if you're like recently getting into nuclear, because
nuclear is like the hot topic right now.
You kind of step in and you look around and there's just like
everything happening all at once.
And so people are like salt, molten salt, fluoride, chloride,
like I don't really know what's happening here.
And I think it may be sometimes it's overwhelming.
So I think this is definitely one table that we can just be
like, hey, like we got our coolants here, modern and water
being, you know. Very simple, but also kind of
really cool that it can be both the coolant and the moderator.
You can also just use it as the coolant like in the Hanford B
reactor. It was just a little thin
annulus of water was pumped through the coolant, but then
there was a bunch of graphite to slow it down so you can kind of
mix and match it. That tables a lot of fun because
it just shows that there's like so many different comos.
And then I tried to put little hyperlinks to like if there was
a beryllium moderated sodium cooled reactor like here's like
that one that ever was and here's a link to it or something
like that. So I've had a lot of fun and
whenever I hear of a new one, which happens all the time.
So I was like, oh, here's a organic cooled heavy water
moderated reactor. I'd have to go add it to the
table. So I update that table all the
time. Yeah, I love that as well
because I think it's also fun for just like the historical
brain and me to kind of just go on a hunt and be like, what have
we done historically? Because yeah, I think it gets
weird and kind of fun as well. Yeah, and I, not to jump back to
the films, but like, that's one thing that I've really enjoyed
these historical films for is because like, yeah, you can read
about or you hear about they built a reactor and here's a
paper on it. But when you can see it in like
a pretty professionally produced documentary style film that
someone put some real effort into, it's somehow just more
engaging. Like maybe I'm more of a visual
learner, but I think, and it's also you like more shareable and
more accessible to more people. So I think a lot of those
documentary films are just so well done and super interesting
to see. Like here we are, you know,
here's the nuclear powered ship Savannah getting, you know,
here's someone smashing the champagne on it and christening
it. Here it is.
Here are people eating their dinners in it and just being
able to see it. It's been really inspiring.
It's like humbling because it's crazy what the people have done
in the past. And it's, I think it's good for
people in the industry to watch some of that and be like, wow,
we have some ketchup to do because it was a pretty hot
industry in the 50s and 60s. So I think those have been
really fun. Yeah.
I think historically it's just so fascinating learning about
where we were. To me, like right now, we're
kind of in the age of information.
We have just access to so much information, but it's also
sometimes like a little bit of a needle in a haystack when you're
trying to find something very specific.
But when going back on within this historical context, I think
for me, there's just so much more respect because like, they
didn't have Google to be like, hey, if we do XY and Z, what's
going to happen? Like that wasn't the thing.
Is there any like I guess what have been your wow moments as
you've been going through some of these films and pieces?
Yeah, I mean, there's so many. I'll try to think of a few.
Like one thing I learned kind of going through is when we were
doing these, there's a thing called a homogeneous, an aqueous
homogeneous reactor, which is a fluid fueled reactor, not molten
salt that uses like a water solution with uranium dissolved
in it. So is this like, tank with
complex flow patterns and with the fuel moving around inside?
And they didn't have CFD computational fluid dynamics.
We run these big simulations now and, you know, you can click a
button and it shows where all the flow is going to be.
So what they did this, like, blew my mind that they had some
kind of fluid called a milling yellow solution that somehow
changes its optical properties if the fluid's under tension.
And they built a thin plexiglass model of this vessel and they
pump fluid through it and let it flow sort of as like an analog.
Basically it's a physical model. And then they shine light
through it and they take pictures and you can see these
patterns in the picture that show where the flow patterns
are. And they were then able to
adjust the shape until it had stable flow, just like we would
do on ACFD model. And then they went and built the
thing out of a big expensive zirconium vessel.
It's really interesting to see. And then other fun things to
see. We have big 3D models of
buildings where we practice, figure out if when we're
installing something, you can make sure it fits well.
Just huge. I don't know what scale it is,
but the models are like this big in this massive room, like
plastic models of the whole facility.
And they're sitting there planning construction and
planning maintenance operations with these guys, like playing
with these. It's like a big dollhouse
effectively, which I just thought that was kind of cool.
Even though we had a lot of these analog computers, they did
also use some of the world's first digital computers to do
reactor design. So there's some cool footage of
people running a computer in the early 1950s doing neutronics
diffusion simulation of one of the early Army micro reactors.
And it's just like some people say we built these reactors or
the slide rules. It's like, yeah, not entirely.
We actually ran like the world's first computer on that core as
well. So those are just a few kind of
fun things that come to mind. There's so much in there.
Sorry. One other thing that was just a
real odd find is another one of those aqueous homogeneous
reactors, like burned a hole in its vessel and dumped the core.
It was like 100,000 Rankin per hour.
Radiation in there is extremely radioactive, and they built
these specialized tools and went down there with like a Periscope
and repaired it remotely from the top.
And there's a whole film that just shows like the special
tools they built and the process they went through to make that
happen. And it's wild.
It's humbling and inspiring. They're awesome stories.
I'm just like still processing because I'm just like, wow,
like, but I think it's, it's so fun because like when you don't
have let's say, like, you know, necessary, like, you know, we're
talking about CFD. We don't have a computer to kind
of like do that for you. It creates this like new sense
of, you know, problem solving of like it almost feels like really
hardcore engineering because you're really trying to figure
out like, how do we engineer this problem and try and go back
and fix and try and see what we're doing here.
Let's just build a whole town models they got.
It's like, that's just wild to me.
I'm like, yeah, look, we just played it.
What is this building? And yeah, I think one of the
things that would be helpful with sharing these is kind of
seeing the creativity around the industry of like, how do you
kind of create solutions when you don't necessarily have all
the quote, UN quote, fancy, you know, pious tech tools as you're
using? And that to me is like, pretty
impressive. Overall, and I think it kind of
helps, maybe it'll help solve like analysis paralysis.
A lot of times engineers even I've been guilty of this one to
like, no, we have to keep designing it until it like
really performs well. Like at some point it's like get
out there and build something and make it cheap and fast and
iterate on it. Like that's a pretty good
pathway. And I think that is aligned with
what we're seeing on some of these high speed programs to
build the first critical thing you can build.
It's not going to be a good reactor product at first, but
maybe it gets you what you need to learn really important hands
on lessons and then make fixes to get on a pathway to make an
actually economical and easy to run reactor.
This episode is brought to you by Nuclear Talent Scout.
Right now we're supporting an exciting new maritime nuclear
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Officer. They're actively looking for top
tier talent. And if you've got the skills and
want to be considered, fill out the qualified candidate form
LinkedIn, the show notes. And if you're a licensing
engineer, we're definitely looking for you because the
future of emissions free shipping won't build itself.
Humans are still involved now. Back to the show, Yeah, I think
the assumptions part is like the assumptions of what it's in your
head. And you're assuming all these,
if you haven't ever built it, like I almost think of like,
wow, what ego you have to like for me at least, to think that
all of my assumptions that I've created are going to be right.
And I'm like, I've not even built it.
So I think, yeah, the idea of just getting out there and
building it definitely humbles you a little bit because like,
you can get hung up on something so simple.
And that's always, you know, the nice thing around actually is
getting out and starting to build because it's always a
challenge when you know something very simple like, oh,
the road is not big enough. It's like I think about that.
Yeah, plans never survived their first encounter with reality.
There's. Exactly.
And so you're kind of mentioning how much you update the website,
but then also some of the things that you're doing now.
And we chatted before this and you'd kind of mentioned doing
NRC surveys. And as we're kind of shifting
into, OK, now we're going to start building all these
advanced reactors, what does the regulation look like?
What does the licensing look like for this?
And so can you just kind of describe what that NRC license
layer survey was, was about? Yeah, that was back in April.
So there was like all the rumors were flying, like the
administration wants to streamline regulations.
There's going to be some executive orders.
And so a few people got together and thought, like, we should
interview people across the industry and come up with a list
of specific regulatory reforms that we think would be useful.
There was a lot of like, the regulations are the problem.
We need to fix regulations, but there wasn't a a lot of talk
about like, here's the specific changes that we think we want to
see. Now, to be fair, like some think
tanks had put stuff out like that.
There are policy, nuclear policy people who do this
professionally and really had done a good job sort of laying
those out. But we wanted to get a fresh
list and make it available for whoever the people were who are
building these executive orders and planning the regulatory
reforms, updated information, surveying people all across the
industry, from the operating plants to different startup
companies to national labs and other folks like that.
I worked with Clear Path with a think tank in the DC and went
and interviewed a bunch of people and did like, hey, if you
could change any regulation, what would it be and why?
And we came up with a top ten list that I threw up on a post
on what is nuclear in the blog post section.
And then we also sent through networks up to whoever to who we
thought might be close to the decision makers making these
executive orders, like not really knowing.
And so, yeah, a lot of the results that came out that were
commonly seen were things that had been said before that other
policy groups like Adam Stein, for instance, has all this stuff
memorized and knows exactly what is needed.
So he was a lot of it. He kind of already had.
But yeah, there were some specific things.
It was like continue streamlining the environmental
review work and like the NRC interestingly already had
recommended they already have a plan to continue streamlining
that work. It was, it's like a part, it's
like a rule making that's been slowed down for a while.
And so it's kind of like enable them to continue that thing that
they're working like they're on a path that was really good.
And so like make that keep going.
Another one was there's some nuanced sort of like in the
weeds ones. There's something called the the
mandatory, you know, I have to get my list up.
The there's, there's anyway, it's like there's hearings that
have to happen by law that are not necessary.
The uncontested mandatory hearing is an example.
And it's like, why do that? It takes all this time and
there's really no need to do it. So let's like push it through.
There were a few other things that the NRC had made policy
recommendations to have Congress go change the law so that would
enable them to streamline certain things.
And when that was first proposed, Congress was in no
state and it was not pro nuclear enough to go through with it.
But like today Congress is so pro nuclear that you could just
throw it up there and they'd be like sure, like ship it.
So it's kind of like just bringing that kind of thing back
up. Another one that's kind of a fun
one is when you build a new nuclear plant, there's
regulatory guidance that says you have to have like a really
tall meteorological tower in place for two years, collecting
weather data on that site before you can like start thinking
about construction of a plant. So that's like as a two year
delay to just get wind pattern data in case something goes
wrong. And it's like, well, these that
made sense in like the 40s, but these days with like satellites
and weather sensors all around, like, why not just if there's
enough like weather information recorded about an area, then why
not just analyze it and be like, yeah, that's good enough for
what we need and not have to do this two years of Met tower type
stuff. So anyway, there's a few other
things along those lines, but those are a few of the results
that came out. So we to sent those up the chain
and then the executive orders came out and one of the big ones
was reform, regulation, reform the NRC.
And that's still an ongoing process.
And I'd like to think that like some of those things that that
we sort of reminded ourselves of.
Hopefully those got in front of the right people and we'll be
doing something useful. I think you're like a big fear
was like, well, if you just say get rid of the NRC, a lot of the
people in the industry who have applications being reviewed and
like are about to get approval and don't think the regulator is
like their major critical path. They don't want that because it
throws in all this uncertainty. It opens up tons of options for
people to stop the process to sue or to take away the
liability protection like the taxpayers through Price Anderson
have provide a stopgap for a major nuclear accident.
And if the NRC is gone, then why would the taxpayers keep
providing liability insurance like they're not going to?
And so I mean, and I wouldn't blame them.
So you'd have to basically move all the regulators into the
private insurance companies. And it's just going to be like
20 years of confusion and slow things.
So let's like find the things in regulatory space that are like
clearly slow and clearly dumb and not needed.
And let's like get those going first.
And I think that's kind of what I hope that's what we're moving
towards now. Nice.
And I think it's nice that we talked about the historical
industry of nuclear and all of that because it feels like a lot
of the regulations just are kind of stuck in the 50s a little bit
and just kind of getting that audit of like, hey, we have
satellites now. This makes sense.
Yeah. We don't need to do that because
we actually can get the data like some other instead of, you
know, just the overall hacking of the NRC.
Because I think from a public perspective, it almost feels as
if, you know, anytime you say, like, get rid of a regulator,
like the public is like, yeah, and like pandemonium.
But I. Think.
There is a lot of misconception on the public side of what
regulation is on the nuclear side within the nuclear
industry. So I think there's a lot of
like, Oh my goodness, like, what are you doing?
But within the industry there's like, actually this doesn't make
sense. We should like reform this.
And so I think that's probably, you know, with that survey being
able to see what those are. Yeah.
Another one was like, how many like force and force drills you
have to do at the operating plants?
Like how many, like how much security theater do you really
need? This is like an interesting
question. And I mean, it's kind of
interesting because there is quite a lot.
I mean, the idea that the regulator is the only problem
and it's holding nuclear back, it's a very broadly believed
prospect right now and people in power in in the political world
and sort of just like across the populace.
So like not to like do a push back on it, but like, I think
there's this idea that now we the nuclear is becoming so
popular. They're like, well, nuclear is
among the safest forms of energy we have, which is true.
There's this question of how much of that is because we have
very strict quality assurance. We have great standards and we
have a very serious regulator. There's of possibility that
nuclear is really only been able to perform so well because the
industry got very serious and takes safety seriously and is
well regulated. When you look back even in 1980,
light water reactors capacity factor was like 60%.
They were down for maintenance and now it's 92%.
Once you get really good at quality assurance, maybe quality
goes up and maybe that high regulation is part of the reason
we were able to get really good at operating plants very safely.
And there certainly were a bunch of like near misses.
When you talk about the Browns Ferry fire and the Salem
anticipated transient without scram, there's all these like
near miss issues that when you read them, you're like, you
know, Yikes. Like that they couldn't shut
that reactor down for 8 hours. Like that's not good.
And I'm kind of glad we have redundancy in Fire Protection
systems and so on. Yeah, I don't want to get rid of
regulations, but. But again, there are certainly
there's plenty of things that could be done to make it more
sort of appropriately regulated. Regulated in a way way that
doesn't kneecap the industry, but also doesn't just let people
run wild with a, you know, inherent there's there like high
radioactive material is hazardous.
I don't call it dangerous because we have it under
control, but it is like something you have to respect
and be careful with. Yeah, and I think that's a good
point of like the safety factor, just like reading about like the
origins of nuclear history. I mean, I'm like, wow, they were
allowed to do that. Like that is crazy.
Like OK, but it was that learning factor that we were
like, oh, we learned through sometimes some mistakes to be
able to be like, oh, we shouldn't do that anymore.
And I think within a lot of different industries, like so I
background in aviation, so I had to fly and like, I remember when
I was first flying, like my instructor was like every single
plaque on here is because somebody they did something at
one point where they needed to put that plaque on there.
Right, right, right, right, right, OK.
And you know, it's it's very similar with aerospace and like
astronauts and things like that. And so like the safety isn't
just like we just kind of like auto whim.
We're like, let's just do that. It's usually because somebody
did something pretty stupid or something lethal that we're
like, OK, let's walk back from there and then really see how do
we how do we make this appropriate for the future?
And so, yeah, I think that's, it's exciting that, you know,
that survey took place. But even just within the
conversation of like, it can't just be the regulator that is a
potential bottleneck to me that is always kind of like a I don't
think so. No, I don't think it is near.
People say it took half a billion for new scale to get a
license, and it's like, no, it took half a billion for new
scale to do the engineering and design work to the level that
you could first build the thing. And also, by the way, get a
license like those. The engineering needed to
finalize the design of a plant and get a license is very
overlapping. So it's not like all that money
is just engineering development work.
It's not because they had to do all the licensing things.
And I think it kind of brings up the horizon for nuclear.
I think right now we're seeing a lot of indicators within the
industry that it's like, OK, we've got green lights coming
from here and here and people are building and it's really
exciting. And so from your perspective,
what is exciting to you that you're seeing within the
industry that you're like, oh, this is kind of fun like.
People are interested. Yeah, there's a lot.
There's so much going on. There's so much to be excited
about. I think the restarts are super
fun, you know, with all the Dwayne Arnold and Palisades and
TMI coming back or sorry, Crane coming back online.
So like that's the easiest thing for sure.
And then like these announcements that like now
there's talk about refinishing the plants at VC Summer, which I
no one expected even like months ago.
So that's kind of awesome. And then other plans, I'm kind
of happy that there's some reviving interest in the large
in the large light water reactors.
I have been an advanced reactor guy my whole life, but I've
really come to respect the value of a large light water actor
that already has a license. We just built 2 in Georgia.
Yes, they were over budget, but you can only have an incomplete
design once. So like there's no regulatory
risk, there's no engineering design risk.
It's just like a siding and financing issue.
And then the advanced reactors that are the big projects like X
Energy, Kairos and Terra Power I think are all making making
really super interesting progress.
They all have major licensing activities going on.
The licensing is going well. Kairos got like 3 reactor test
reactors approved for construction that the Hermes and
Hermes 2, which is 2 reactors and Terra Power just got an
indication that their environment report is looking
good. So all my buddies back at Terra
Power are doing great and they're going to be building
these pretty interesting reactors out and.
Wyoming and X Energy in Texas and so on.
So that's all very cool. And then the the like race to go
critical for the micro reactors by, you know, nine months from
now or eight months from now is kind of it's sort of funny.
I at first thought it was pretty sort of a stunt.
It's difficult to develop to do the engineering required to make
a good reactor in eight months, but I guess it doesn't have to
be perfect. Like I think it they're like
trying to rush and get something critical does give an urgency
and it's like a fun competition. I don't think they're going to
be commercially viable reactors at first, but hey, going
critical and splitting atoms will give these folks hands on
experience. They'll get more hands on
experience with high radiation, with high temperature coolants
and all that stuff is going to help them more quickly encounter
reality and start making the iterations that are necessitated
by physical reality. So that stuff is all pretty
exciting too. And I don't think it's
impossible. Like bringing enriched uranium
critical, you know, isn't that hard.
In fact, there's a whole profession, criticality safety
engineers, they make sure that doesn't happen on accident.
So it can't be that hard. So I am excited to see everybody
kind of race to go critical in the small reactor space as well.
Yeah, I mean, it kind of definitely goes back to, you
know, what we're talking about in the historical context of
like, hey, sometimes you just got to get out there and build
something and see what fails and see what works and go back to
the lab and iterate again. And they didn't.
Yeah. They didn't usually say do it in
nine months. It was usually like 2 years.
But hey, let's get something going and then we'll iterate
based on that. It's great.
Yeah, I think that's a helpful kind of at least, you know, even
from like the outside perspective of of like just the
general public to see like, wow, like this industry is like
actually like really moving, you know, considering it always has
this connotation of being like very slow and bureaucratic and
just a lot of paperwork. And I think now we're kind of
seeing, you know, people kind of like, hey, we're going to start
accelerating and start moving a little bit faster.
We have. Yeah, let's, let's get these
reactors going. I really want to like people.
I'm so sick of people talking about their cost estimates
without having ever built a reactor.
So I'm so excited to for people to be able to say like, look,
that reactor is running right now and it cost this much to
build and though it cost this much to operate.
The second one, it's like, great, I can make a decision
based on that very real information rather than kind of
trying to say like, is this guy, are they missing something or
are they being more aggressive than the last people I talked
to? It's like everything is going to
get normalized by physical. Reality.
And I think right now it kind of feels like reading tea leaves or
like, like, you just throw the bones up and you're like, no.
And like, it's impossible to know a reactor cost without
operating. That's another thing that came
up in these films in the history of things.
There's a great story like Alvin Weinberg wrote a autobiography
in the 90s called The First Nuclear Era.
It's like the best book and he kind of talks about, it's pretty
short, easy read, but very fascinating.
And he tells stories about how they thought for sure they had a
super cheap reactor this time, but once they turned it on, all
these things happened that they just totally didn't expect and
it made it uneconomical. And so yet again, they learned
that you cannot know the cost of your reactor until you have the
full system up and running. Like that's just the message is
kind of hammered in. And I really think it's true.
So I'm glad we can like get back to that point.
Kind of like, you know, the talks of like paper reactors
versus real reactors. Yeah, you can kind of go on and
on and on about like all the really cool things you can do
with the paper reactor. Great.
Cool. What's it cost?
And there's, yeah, there's this headline I keep referring to
from 1988 in Fort St. Vrain.
The headline in the New York Times said world's safest
reactor is shutting down because it rarely runs.
It was a TRISO fueled, gas cooled reactor, and it had so
many maintenance problems that it just never was online because
they're always fixing something and so just shut down forever.
So like, even if you make the world's safest reactor, you may
not be anywhere near an economical situation.
It's very interesting and instructive.
Yeah, I think that's a helpful thing to keep in mind.
If it's for people understanding like safest doesn't necessarily
mean that it's actually going to be commercial, so.
Yeah, exactly. And that goes for fusion as
well. Like fusion is kind of like our
fuel will be free. I'm like, well, fission fuel is
like 10% of the total cost. So even if it were free, like
you still have like a big machine that you're operating
and like tritium all over the place.
Like there's like who knows? Like I'm 100% ensure that fusion
will eventually make net energy, but I'm like 0% sure that it
will ever be economical. Like maybe, but like we just
have no way of knowing. Yeah.
First we gotta get to the table. Yeah.
So I think overall, what's really fun like about you and
your story and just kind of the amount of public education that
you've been doing is how do you balance all of that and like how
do you kind of follow your interests?
I think it's one of those things that, you know, being able to
kind of go on the website and kind of see all the things that
you've produced and created. It's really easy for me to
consume it and be like, all right, cool next video.
But there's a person behind it that's like actually creating
all this stuff. What is that like for you?
Well, first, yeah, in terms of creating the films that are
really digitized, like I didn't create the like, I'm just, I'm
just getting them digitized and so much effort went into them.
And I feel like it's just a tiny effort on my part to get them
digitized and put them online where so many more people can
see them than have ever seen them.
And so I was, I just feel like I'm kind of just lightly
amplifying the thing that does the work of like hundreds of
people who made those films. But more to your point, it takes
a lot of time and I do it. It's sort of it's a big hobby.
I mean, I was working at, you know, when you're working a full
time job and then you eat dinner and and you're like, I guess
I'll work on more nuclear stuff, like for fun.
It's kind of like, what are you doing?
Let's see. I think a part of it is like,
and hopefully this won't change, but my wife is like very, she's
like very intense worker. She's a physician and she works
all the time. We go on vacation, have fun and
stuff. But a lot of the time like she
entertains herself and I can entertain myself and I do like
nuclear stuff as a hobby. We did just have, as you know,
we have like a seven week old first child.
So maybe everything will change. Maybe the website's dead now,
but also like when people are like, hey, you got to watch this
TV show. I'm usually like, no, because I
want to work on my website. I mean, I'll watch TV shows, but
I try to avoid. I'm definitely susceptible to
like getting hooked in and binge watching stuff.
And I try like somewhat consciously to like not do it
too much just cuz I feel like it's somehow more fun or I don't
know, helpful to do the nuclear stuff.
I mean, the truth is I enjoy it. Like I, I like that stuff.
It's fun to read. I have the X account going where
there's like 22,000 people who whenever I find some, I'm just
reading through old documents and I find a cool picture,
screenshot it and throw it on X. And like, you know, a bunch of
people start talking about it and have fun with it.
So it's sort of addicting in the sense like I think I've found a
niche of people who are interested in this kind of thing
and I can kind of pro stuff at the social medias and off they
go. And when I put those videos up,
you know the one of them got 200,000 views, you know, which
isn't a lot in YouTube space, but it's a lot for an old
nuclear. Yeah, not in the nuclear.
Space. So it's kind of fun.
I like it. It's entertaining and I've been
lucky to have time in space to work on it.
Yeah, that's awesome. I think what's really funny
right now is the idea of influencers and content
creators. It's very catchy and trendy
talking to you. You created your own website.
You did a lot of the code. I think you might have been one
of the first content creators for nuclear energy.
So like that's a kind of a fun. You know, it's a lot of text.
It's a little old school, but yeah, Rod Adams has me beat.
Rod Adams was doing his podcast the years before me.
But yeah, I think we're pretty early on the overall list of
people. OK, so the last kind of portion
of the show is our rapid fire questions.
Some of them are not nuclear related.
So the first one, do you have other hobbies outside of new?
Where? I used to when I just moved from
Seattle a year ago. I really love going out and
doing day hikes and paddle boarding.
I spent tons of time paddle boarding out on Union, just
getting outside and doing stuff like that.
Since I moved I I haven't quite discovered as much outdoors.
But also this is a lame hobby but hanging out with my dog,
walking, playing fetch with the dog, Super fun and spending the
ton of time at dog parks and getting to know people.
My whole friend group in Seattle is dog park.
We go to the bar afterwards. So yeah, that kind of thing is
those are other hobbies, I guess.
Yeah, I would say same. I have obviously, as you can
see, my kids are back here. What kind of dog do you have?
A golden retriever named Waffles.
She's downstairs. She sometimes comes in here but.
Oh I'm in love already. That's awesome.
OK, so next question, if you had to give a non nuclear Ted talk,
what topic would it be about? No, a non nuclear Ted talk.
Wow. I'm like so invested in nuclear
stuff. It would be about a startup idea
I had years ago called neighbor casting, which is like basically
already been done. It's like Craigslist, but you
just you can like go on a map and say like I need to, does
anyone have some sugar? And you go on a map and you like
draw us a radius for how how far that would broadcast, you know,
over the Internet. And then only people within that
circle could like respond and replace.
So it's like a somewhat localized map driven form of
Craigslist, which I think this has been made by now.
But it's like really you can then do, you could do like ride
share. We're like, I need to go from
this circle to this circle. Like who's going?
So that becomes like an Uber type of thing.
And it just takes over like all sorts of cool Internet things.
I always thought that was like a fun Ted talk, like startup
request for startup. Yeah.
I like that idea as well because it's like there's so many times
where I just need something very specific, but I don't want to
buy it myself. I'm like, I'm going to use it
once. It's not going to be like, yeah,
it's. And for yeah, like a tool share,
like hey. I need this like.
Special tool, I don't want to buy it because I'm only going to
use it one time. It's the same thing like, and
there's so many people, you know, we live in these dense
areas like there's and somebody. 'S going to have one.
Yeah, totally. Do you have any type of favorite
music that you listen to while working or just like mid life?
I, I have like a few different genres, pretty basic stuff.
I listen to old late 90s techno sometimes like while I'm
working, I can like zone out to that like house music from back
in the day. I worked at a hardware store and
there was this older guy who's probably like 25 when I was in
high school and he introduced me to this techno stuff from back
then. I just thought it was so cool.
And that's kind of carried over so I still can zone out to it.
And I like classic stuff like, you know, Tom Petty, I'll listen
to that. The Traveling Wilburys.
I do have a list. Do a Lipa.
I really like Do a Lipa sort of eclectic, and these days it's
like Pandora. Whatever.
Whatever comes on shuffle. But I do have AI like have
maintained I like still buy MP3's off Amazon and like
they're on my computer and I like play them through my house
on this like networked thing. So I'm a little it's like my
generation we were into like Napster and MP3's, but I like
buy them now, so. Right.
Yeah, I can say I can visualize them.
I had the 90s techno. I feel like a kind of a computer
coder. Early 2000s, definitely.
Been listening. To some, yeah.
Total No. Yep.
Yeah, right on. OK, so this last one is kind of
tricky. Can you give your best piece of
advice in 5 words? Oh, and this is advice to like
young people or just. Yeah, young people, that'll be
good advice. Well, that they want to hear
from me. A specific interest can guide.
Specific interest can guide you. OK, I like it.
Specific interests can guide you.
Yeah, or maybe like I should say, general interest can guide
you like OK, what I'm because it's.
Just framework, there's no rules.
Point being like just have the fact that I was interested in
energy was very helpful. I am interested in energy.
Like that really helped me make a lot of decisions easily.
And I think there's no wrong decision.
Like you can go on so many different paths, but just having
something like that has been helpful to kind of help me
choose some of the big decisions like going to college and choose
a major and that kind of thing. Nice.
Right on. I think that is helpful because
there's just all these different things, especially as a young
person, you're like. Yeah, the whole.
Entire world and you're like lastly, so people who want to
know more about you, I guess this is The Who to follow in
nuclear. Where can they go to follow you?
So I have all the socials and it's always like what is nuclear
or whatisnuclear.com? So I have XI, have Blue Sky, I
have Truth Social and I have a Facebook.
Yeah, I'm definitely most active on X.
That's been my Kovid hobby. And then of course,
whatisnuclear.com, I try to throw there in the news section.
It does have like, I don't know, 1 uses RSS anymore.
I wish they did, but there was a thing called Google Reader like
20 years ago and it was awesome. And so I try to like make sure
when I update the website that like you can get a notification
from it. But really like X and Blue Sky
and Truth Social. I sometimes if I do a big post,
I kind of like just dump it on all three of those.
X is where I like, I'm having most of my conversations and
stuff. A huge thank you to Nick Duran
for joining us today and for the work he's doing to make nuclear
energy understandable, accessible, and a little less
mysterious than humans insist on making it.
You can follow Nick and explore his incredible library of
resources at whatisnuclear.com. If you're a student, career
Switcher, investor, policy nerd, or just gloriously curious, it's
worth your time. And if you enjoyed this episode,
share it with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe to Naked
Nuclear for more conversations with the people shaping the
future of energy. Until next time, stay curious.