Outstanding reporters. I am sheila hollis, the acting executive director of the United States energy association. Why does it exist . And he was part of it right now . We are unique in the country, we are nonprofit entity. We work in 104 countries around the world, the state department and the department of energy. We also worked domestically to work on issues associated with Major Concerns and challenges, as well as potential solutions with respect to United States energy supply, with deployment utilization and so on. We have on our board. Edison electric, aga and a variety of other speakers, living Arizona State university and the national labs. With respect to u. S. Ca, we look forward u. S. Ea, we look forward to working on these programs. Our goal is to have an open forum, and educating experience and to interact with the industry and all those affected by government, academic or the public. With that im going to return it back to llewellyn. Thank you so much for joining us today. You will learn a lot from this panel and the intense reporting staff that are here representing various outlets today. With that i sign off, and turn it back to you. Thank you, sheila. Our panelists are on the expert panel, john ball, executive Vice President in Nuclear Energy. Scott strawn, Vice President of burns and mcdonnell. Bud albright president and ceo of the u. S. Nuclear Industry Council and doug true, Vice President and chief Nuclear Officer of a Nuclear Energy institute. The journalists are Ken Silverstein, markham hislop, Jennifer Heller of the wall street journal she is having computer programs because of a storm in houston. She will join us when she can. We will begin with the question from rod kuckro. Its good to be back from what that for one of these events. Theres a lot to talk about whether the nuclear it seems to be positioning to the future. The federal government reported a week ago that 49 of the lower 48 states in the u. S. Are in drought conditions. Of course we know this is affecting production at the hoover dam. In other places, a lot of the gulf coast and texas we have some rivers a dried up, you can rock walk across the rio grande. Given the fact that a Large Nuclear plant uses about a billion gallons of water a day to cool itself, what does the current Climate Crisis if you believe in it, bowed for the continued bode for the continued use of Nuclear Plants . Could they fall prey to the large things that dams have fallen to . Are there any technical changes in the design of a plant that may make it able to operate with less water than they currently require . I would like to ask doug true to answer that. Have take a couple of minutes to tell us why youre qualified. Thank you. Thank you usea for having me today. Have the responsibility for regulatory and technical issues across the Nuclear Energy and a present the utilities and developers on suppliers to the current and future fleet. I spent about 40 years working in this industry. I came in, one of the first projects i was assigned to come out of school, to work on a High Temperature gas reactor, generating heat in a chemical facility. Something that is come back into the news in the last few weeks with the recent announcement. I joined after working on safety issues. I joined about four years ago. I have been focusing on supporting the Current Fleet and its operation as well as the nuke plant to really its an exciting time to be in nuclear. We have 20 projects going in north america right now. Were looking at new nuclear bills. Our Current Fleet is operating lets move to the question, doug. The question on the climate, first of all the plant is located in a different location. Any plants are located on lotion oceans or great lakes, major rivers, mississippi, susquehanna, they are all major rivers and expected to be significantly impacted by drought. Currently, a small number of plants in the desert a been operating for nearly 40 years on the water coming from the city of phoenix. With that said, this is something that our members are focused on like any good company. Looking at risks to production of their product, companies are considering what Climate Change could do for them whether it is water or temperature. A recent work by the electric Research Institute shows that the fleet has only been impacted by environmentally related events, whether Something Like 1 10 of 1 of our total capacity over the last 10 years. So plants have shown to be quite resilient in the light of these positions. We will move to the next question. Markham hislop, coming from the british columbia, canada. Thank you for inviting me back. My question is around the economics of small marginal reactors. Theres a lot of interest in canada about that. The government has said we cannot meet National Climate targets without the four provinces that have a banded together to work on research and development of smrs. There one in development in ontario. We have seen one of the big utilities there. Every time i bring this up in conversation or on social media about what does it cost or what will it cost for a megawatt hour in the smr, i get in cash in. The god answers odd answers. Immediately, i raised this issue on social media, the nuclear supporters come in and say the economists got it all wrong they are using wrong assumptions and it is lower than that. Ive never had anybody tell me what a small margin reactor would might be able to produce a megawatt hour of electricity four. Anybody wants to address that, if you can answer i would love to hear it. Jon ball, hitachi is our man. Thank you. Tell us about yourself and answer the question, thank you. Thanks. My name is jon ball, executive Vice President of ge hitachi Nuclear Energy. It been part of ges nuclear business. Ive spent a third of my career in leadership roles in our fuel segment. Another third in our Services Segment in the last third and they are new plans a segment and i have overseen creation, the development of our reactor. Let me say that the reason we are focused on smrs and we believe that the future of nuclear is in Small Modular Reactors. The industry has been focused on large reactors for decades. But you have seen what has occurred in terms of these projects going over budget way past schedule. So, the reason we pivoted was to create a design that could be cost competitive in all forms. In our industry leading smr, with some new innovation, we have figured out how to reduce the overall capital cost by 50 on a per megawatt basis by using less concrete, less steel versus todays Nuclear Plants. Now i think it is the expectation to be able to achieve a level levelized cost of electricity in the 60 per megawatt hour is achievable. When it comes to really evaluating these nuclear technologies, what i would say is it is imperative to really look at sidebyside comparisons in terms of the amount of concrete and steel that these reactors require on a per megawatt basis. The size of the reactor system on a per megawatt basis the number of turbines that are required per megawatt. When you do that sidebyside, we are confident that we will be able to achieve the most cost competitive design, which is why we are seeing strong commercial adoption at this stage. Thank you, jon. Next question, for an stte overseen Ken Silverstein. Thank you, im going to take you back to the question, this modular reactors. I did a story on atrium not to long ago. One of the attributes that the sources explained to me was that they can back up all her powers and that these reactors have this potential maybe it is here now. How does that change the Energy Landscape in terms of Battery Storage . And other forms of backup such as fast reacting natural gas plants . If the modular reactors are able to take on instantaneously and back up wind and solar when the weather does not permit . Got, would you like to try that one scott strawn, would you like to try that one . It im not 100 familiar with the load capabilities, i want to thank sheila and llewell yn the opportunity to be here. We did about 10,000 professionals worldwide if i could sum up what we do is we have taken some of the industrys greatest challenges in trying to make our customers successful along the way. Decarbonization is clearly a huge piece of that. When you look at the intermittency of wind and solar now it comes on and often the grid in the frequency that it does, clearly storage as a huge viability to that. Im not sure that it has the load capabilities but i believe it is a promising aspect of that technology. I defer to may be bud or doug. But hear from you. Tell us who you are. I am bud albright. We have 90 members, a little over. Ge is among our members. I started as a federal prosecutor for a number of years and then i wont go through everything. But went to the hill with staff director on energy and Commerce Committee and then was undersecretary of energy in the last several years of the bush 42 administration. You know, we look at Small Modular Reactors, theres just so many advantages and things we havent really talked about as compared to other zero carbon emission sources. One is a Small Modular Reactor should last a minimum of 60 years, probably more up to 100 frankly if maintained properly. Wind and solar about 20 years before you have to replace replace everything. Certainly the panels and with wind, the entire tower. So thats something to take into consideration. The cost factor is, we talk a lot about, you know, how do we, predict the cost . If you look at the cost of the first one that rolls off, its going to be fairly high. But were counting on volume, volume as predicted. So that should bring costs down. There are lots of other reasons for that as well. The load following capabilities, i see Small Modular Reactors just as as we do larger reactors and that is really primarily baseload. These reactors can run full time all the time. They are walk away safe read walk away safe. That is not the case with women. So what could they be used as a backup . Yes, they could be, but probably makes a lot more sense economically and otherwise to use them more as a base load opportunity. Thank you, i would like to hear from the other panelists on this very important issue of cost. How do you calculate the cost on it . Lay terms of our actual capital cost, this is not something we are publishing publicly. Were in the midst of other commercial competitions. But again, what i would say is that, you know, a very important aspect of evaluating cost and what a design should cost is looking at these very important parameters and normalizing on a per megawatt basis. Again, the amount of concrete and steel that a reactor requires per megawatt, you can draw comparisons from todays smrs between designs and the existing fleet, the size of a reactor building on a per a up basis. Per megawatt basis. These are all examples that go into an influence on a significant manner the overall cost of the plant. If i could, i would like to weigh in briefly on the question. Its an interesting one. Its one that the industry is, really talking about around load following. Ge had touchy is partnering withthem. On this design. We think that is going to replace the need for other storage . No. This is in all of the b of all of the above solution. Nuclear storage i think is going to provide a very important aspect including capabilities. The what i would say though is rather than store energy when power prices are low, rather than store Energy Nuclear can be used for many other useful purposes. That is what we are also very interested in working on for the bwrx300. These are things such as hydrogen production. There also looking at direct air capture coupling, direct air capture with electro says to form a feedstock to actually synthesize a neutral fuels. Which is going to be extremely important if the world is going d carbonized, its not just electricity sector, the transportation sector and the ability to provide these Carbon Neutral fuels are going to be an imperative. Wind wind and solar are working at capacity, a Nuclear Plant could be diverted for those purposes. May just touch on the cost issue briefly . One of the things, as i said, we represent more than 90 entities involved in the development of advanced nuclear. One of the things we talk about with cost, one of the things that is consistent is that everyone recognizes if we are not cost competitive, than it will not survive then we will not survive. It is hard right now but everyone recognizes the absolute need to be cost competitive. You have hundreds of entities, companies, individuals, investing billions of dollars in this industry, with that understanding. Thank you, doug, this is such an important question we should hear from you on it, please. Thank you. I think that first of all, the cost of numbered jon used, it is a representative number of the targets folks were shooting for. We did a recent survey and said if you have a predictable product, how much would you use towards your decarbonization goals . The answer came back, 90 gigabytes of new nuclear would be used. We raise that price to 90 megawatt hours. The number dropped a bit. We are still interested because of the volume nuclear brings to the overall system in terms of reliability. We just talked about in terms of doing other things and the ability it provides and the stability it provides. In terms of profits, they do use an Energy Storage process that allows a reactor to work at 100 power at all times and they store that energy and the only thing that really has to change is the turban that is making electricity, to ramp up and down. That enables the fast ramp rate, which i think is about 40 megawatts per minute. They will be able to deliver them and that is a distinct feature of the design. I think all of the smrs have the capacity in one way or another to adjust mode. Some will be used, and some will be used in a cash the final thing i want to say is that what matters at the end of the day is with the customers face. Nuclear enables the grid as it is to continue to support distribution and further require future transition distribution, so we can you use reuse call sites. At the end of the day, study shows that if you put nuclear in the mix, the cost of the customer goes down. It can save the Pacific Northwest a billion dollars a year. It is more than just ash that captures the landscape of what we are seeing. That captures the line landscape of what we are seeing. W a has a contract on arrangement with jon balls vinny. Ash company ash company. It is sponsored largely by cooperatives. Theres a lot of interest in that field, cooperatives are looking of getting out from under their heavy commitment to coal, could somebody quickly say what is happening in the marketplace . Mention what we have been experiencing with it, it started in canada. With ontario Power Generators we did he set a vision for adopting a canadian approach for deployment. They lead that effort. They went through a two and a half year evaluation process. At the end of last year we were selected to deploy the first smr at their darlington site as early as 2028. We will be in the process of submitting a license to construct this year, but following that competition there were many others that followed in their steps. You mentioned tba, was now partnered with in licensing this design in both the u. S. And canada, they announced that we are supporting them for the development of a Construction Permit application that will be submitted to the u. S. Embassy as early as the end of next year. Asked our also selected our technology. Fast hour also selected our technology. In europe we are seeing Tremendous Energy as well. Since those energy which is part of a large private Industrial Company signed a letter of intent with us to deploy at least 10 by the minute early 20 30s made it to early 20 30s. Heavy dependence on coal, another partnership which is the largest estate owned Energy Company in poland. Their joint ventures for the purpose of deploying the smr as a look to define their company to be a clean energy producer. Another company in sweden has also selected our technology for deployment in that country. We are seeing significant commercial adoption. This is a technology that is ready to license now and ready to deploy today. Thank you, anybody else . A couple of things. First of all, although not widely understood there are over 20 projects that are going on in north america now for somewhere micro somewhere smrs. They are expanding the sector of supporting small applications. It is really starting to happen, most of those are scheduled to be coming online towards the end of this decade. Or early in the next decade. We see a line forming for even more. In that survey i mention with our members, they said they were looking at potentially 300 smr sized reactors, needing to be deployed over the next 25 years. Which would basically double the output of our Current Fleet. The Current Fleet is expected to operate well into the 2015 timefram