In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stu Turley is joined by James Walker, CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy, to discuss the exciting advancements in microreactor technology. James shares insights on Nano Nuclear’s upcoming projects in the U.S. and Canada, including the development of the first commercial microreactor. They also explore the impact of regulatory changes, the growing demand for clean, reliable energy from tech and military sectors, and the future of nuclear power in addressing the U.S.’s energy challenges. Stay tuned for updates on their groundbreaking work in the nuclear industry.
They have the potential to change the entire nuclear game. Their new complete designs include dramatic changes to ocean shipping and microgrids. This is huge and has the potential to lower costs for AI data centers and businesses looking to put electrical generation behind the meter.
You will want to check out the Nano Nuclear site to look at their new updates: https://nanonuclearenergy.com/
Connect with James on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesjohnwalker1/
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:43 – James Walker’s Introduction
02:09 – Nano Nuclear Energy’s Exciting Developments
02:50 – Timeline for Nano Nuclear Projects
03:03 – Deployment Speed of Microreactors
04:05 – Regulatory Process and Industry Shifts
05:03 – The Impact of New Regulations
06:00 – Reactor Size and Deployment
07:23 – U.S. Grid Challenges and Nuclear Power’s Role
09:25 – AI and Nuclear Collaboration
10:23 – Military Demand for Nuclear Power
12:37 – Nano Nuclear Energy’s Growth and Industry Partnerships
13:09 – The Future of Nuclear Power
14:05 – Growth and Job Creation in the Nuclear Industry
16:17 – Nuclear’s Future and Challenges
19:13 – The Public Perception of Nuclear
20:34 – Molten Salt and Triso Fuels
22:07 – Nano Nuclear’s Upcoming Developments
23:12 – Conclusion and Future Updates
Check out Nano Nuclear Energy’s Breakthrough in Microreactor Technology | Future of Clean Power, on the Energy News Beat Substack for conversations and other information on Nano Nuclear Energy.
Nano Nuclear Energy is one of my stocks that I am actively tracking and watching for activity. As Michael and I have always said, “Good Management, Good Numbers,” and James and Jay Yu, the Founder, are a great team leading the charge. I am looking forward to seeing some of their great successes and wins.
They have just announced new locations and approvals for reactor test sites, including one in Canada, which is excellent news for both the U.S. and Canada.
Thanks again, James, for stopping by the podcast, Stu.
Stay tuned, we have some exciting guests lined up, including General Mike Flynn, Ron Gusek, CO of Liberty Energy, Steve Reese, CEO of Reese Energy Consulting, and Charley Burd from the Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia, among others.
We have 10 autographed books from General Flynn that we will be giving away to our contest winners on our Substack.
Full Transcript:
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Podcast. My name is Stu Turley, President and CEO of the Sandstone Group. I’ll tell you what, I did not have on my bingo card with the Department of Defense getting into critical mining and also chip manufacturing, but I’ll say what’s even more important right now that’s on the headlines is cotton picking AI and nuclear energy and I happen to have the CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy. I’ve got James Walker stopping by the podcast to address everything that was in the big beautiful bill and all that and more. Welcome James. How are you today?
James Walker [00:00:43] I’m great. Thank you very much for having me on the show.
Stuart Turley [00:00:45] I’ll tell you, we were just starting before the show and we were kind of chit chat. And I said, Hey, do you got any great plans? And he goes, well, other than wrestling with my three kids, uh, you know, I, it’s pretty sad when you go and look forward to getting mauled by your kids instead of going to work, that’s kind of crazy.
James Walker [00:01:01] Yeah, it’s a mixed blessing because obviously the kids are wonderful, but like they never give you any downtime. So weekends are never a time to recover. I probably get more recovery time on Monday than I do at the weekend.
Stuart Turley [00:01:13] But I thought J.U. Was a little bit of a demanding kind of a boss.
James Walker [00:01:18] Oh god, like he works me relentlessly, hopefully he doesn’t get that feedback, but like, I don’t know, 80, 90 hour weeks, I mean that’s pretty typical for me.
Stuart Turley [00:01:27] I’ll tell you, I am so excited because Nanonuclear is a publicly traded company now, and tell us what’s new at Nanonuclear and tell us what your thoughts are on the big new beautiful bill, as they say.
James Walker [00:01:41] Okay. I mean, I’ve got a lot to say on both of those things, but, um, I would say some exciting developments with us is that, um we’re just about to go ahead with some drilling work at our, um a site where we intend to build our prototype in the U S it’s going to be built in partnership with the University of Illinois and it’ll be, I think the first, um commercial microreactor that’ll be built the U.S. Uh, so that’s going be huge for us. Obviously that puts us into the lead in that microrector race. How’s the timeline for that, James? I’m sorry. I get it.
Stuart Turley [00:02:08] I get it, I’m excited.
James Walker [00:02:09] It is exciting, like hopefully you can hear it in my voice that I’m excited about this too but drilling work will start in the next couple months. We’ll complete that this year and the ambition here is to put in for a permit to construct with the NRC, the federal regulator either later this year or early next year and as soon as we get that approval back we’ll start pouring concrete and steel erection and we’re already working on our supply chains now to find the reactor vessels and all the components to build that prototype. And then the interesting thing about this is we’ll be building this prototype at exactly the same time. We’ll be doing a very similar project in Canada because we want to have the first advanced micro-rex in Canada built at the same. Oh, that is way
Stuart Turley [00:02:50] Cool. Now, once you get these micro reactors rolling, I know the first time is going to be an issue, but how fast can you start deploying these rascals after you get the business process down?
James Walker [00:03:03] So it’s a really good question because the first two reactors, the one in the US and the one in Canada, we’re going to be constructing those at the same time. We’re going through the licensing. But once those are constructed and we’re licensed at that point, effectively because of the NRC reforms, everything we make at a factory level will be licensed and then we can deploy to site. So the first one will be a bit more expensive and take a bit more time because of licensing. But then we’ll be building up our core manufacturing facilities while we’re building those reactors. So. When those reactors get licensed, the anticipation here is just roll them off the factory production line. Keep them coming out, because then we get the economies of scale. We want to do initially 30, 40 of these a year, but then scale up to… Eventually, we want to get up to hundreds of these things on an annual basis.
Stuart Turley [00:03:47] The only way we’re going to make it with AI and nuclear and everything else, because the regulatory process in the United States is not like the UAE where they did, I believe, in five years. I have to fact check myself. And we’re at 20 years to get a nuclear reactor done.
James Walker [00:04:05] Yes, it’s very different. One of the big reasons for this, why the industry has shifted towards small modular reactors over big civil nuclear power plants, is kind of that reason. Is that if you can get a small reactor licensed for certain environmental conditions, seismic, temperatures, flooding risks, and it can deploy to things that meet that criteria, the NRC doesn’t need any further involvement once it’s licensed that reactor. But if you have a big civil nuclear power plant that is that is an individual. Licensing process that one reactor has to go through, and the nuclear industry going forward will look very different.
Stuart Turley [00:04:40] Well, this is so exciting from the standpoint that we have got to do it. Have you been able to work with the new administration on the regulatory processes and what are your thoughts? I just produced a podcast today, uh, with the chair of the regulatory process and she was excited about all the changes. So I’m hoping you have some great changes instead of waiting for them.
James Walker [00:05:03] Oh, look, I’ve got lots of comments about everything that’s happening very recently. And like, but it’s all been the nice part about this is it’s all very positive for the new industry. And then ultimately that’s positive for America because, you know, the quality of our life is always the base of it is built on our energy systems. And the power requirements that everyone are looking at now are crazy. Like we talk about the tech industry, but the power projections that they need, the energy projections they need are insane, like gigawatts and gigawats of power. And if you wanted to do that conventionally, even if you had all the gas and coal you wanted or wind and solar, you would still need to massively upscale your grid. And that would require huge infrastructure works. And those almost certainly happen, but nuclear can do those independently of the grid. So it is an exciting time. And all of these big developments are obviously geared towards ensuring the US can meet these energy challenges as it re-industrializes, as it electrifies, and as the tech industry massively upscales.
Stuart Turley [00:06:00] How many megawatts are each of your reactors that you’re looking to target? You’re gonna have several models of reactors. How big and how fast, once you get to the point of in tomorrow, how fast can these things be deployed if they’re the size of a semi-truck, correct? Somewhere in that range.
James Walker [00:06:19] Well, so the reactor we’re going to be pushing the most is our Kronos reactor, and that because it has the most advanced of all of our systems. And that reactor is actually slightly bigger. The reactors will be building at University of Illinois and Chalk River in Canada. Those are actually 45 megawatt thermal reactors, but- Oh, nice. So it’s a bit bigger, but when we finally put out the commercial reactor, it might even be still bigger, like 55, 60 megawatts thermal. These will be bigger systems, but The important nuance here is that we’re going to make a reactor as big as you can possibly make it before it stops becoming completely modular. Because there’s still a number of small modular reactor companies out there that are making 300 megawatt reactor systems. But when you do that, there are certain components like the reactor vessel that you’ll have to fabricate and make on site because they’re just too big to move by road. Right. The reason why we want to make the reactor as biggest possible and still be able to everything by road is so that we can. Shorten that deployment time and that construction time because they can roll off that production line and we can just move them to the sites and then it’s a Lego project. It’s an assembly project at that point and we could piece it all together.
Stuart Turley [00:07:24] What we need because we’ve got the US Department of Energy released a report and and James it was pretty frightening to me as to go through the report in the entire US grid they have 200 new gigawatts planned of the 200 gigawatte planned only 20 are nuclear or natural gas That’s a hundred and eighty of solar and wind that’s actually going to cause more problems than actually the gigawatts that they’re going to supply.
James Walker [00:07:57] Yeah, like it’s a very, it’s very interesting, the whole energy market. And look, the US is a big country and it’s got a lot of energy demands. And I think a diversified solution will obviously be part of it. But let’s say for things like data centers and AI, the amount of downtime that those things can sustain on an annual basis is effectively zero minutes, so you need like high baseload power that can ideally be co-located with these tech centers. And even if you want to opt for gas as a solution now, I mean, the waiting times on some of these gas takes you beyond when these nuclear reactors will be ready to deploy. And even with things like wind and solar, you’ve got to remember that these are locationally dependent technologies that need optimal conditions. And even in these optimal locations for wind and solar, they’re still intermittent, which means you need big expensive storage systems. You very likely need to have huge footprints like five, six times the capacity generating ability. These wind and solar farms so you can overproduce to store it for times when it’s nighttime or the wind’s not blowing or anything like that. So it’s a very nuanced picture. Hopefully these things can feed into the overall grid, but if you want high baseload power that can be located anywhere that’s clean with zero carbon emissions and all of that kind of stuff, it pushes you in nuclear direction, which is which is why that The tech industry is allying itself so closely now with the nuclear industry.
Stuart Turley [00:09:25] Well, I know you’re limited as a publicly traded company into some of the things that you can say, but it would seem to me that the Googles, the, the Amazons of the world and the Facebook’s won’t be knocking down your door saying, excuse us, how do we get on your waiting list and how fast can we order one of your products?
James Walker [00:09:47] Yes, I mean, as a publicly traded company, as you say, I can’t I can reveal any sort of big industry names that we’re currently in discussions with about powering their facilities. But all of the big tech names are currently in discussion with nuclear companies about providing power for their data centers and AI centers. And certainly we’re having a number of those discussions currently. And some of the requirements of these things here are enormous. Like I think as far as data centers at the moment and tech centers, there’s one 600 megawatt project we’re looking at, there is a 900 megawatts project. There’s one that’s going to be just a flat out gigawatt project, this is a huge amount of power.
Stuart Turley [00:10:23] Oh, yes, I need to introduce you to John Bruton. He is the CEO of, um, data squared. He just got his patents on AI for, uh, validating AI and keeping the hallucinogenics out of answers. And, and it would be critical in the U S military space. And so he, you might be very interested in some of his stuff. Cause as you’re going through these, uh, processes and talking about saying, Hey, wait a minute, how is AI going to be done in a process? You, you don’t want those. AI just coming up with any answer that it can to help you grow as fast as you can. I noticed that Jay had put a thing, we need people, we’re hiring people, we need more people. And that’s a great thing, but you’re going to need to make sure you use AI when you’re designing your rapid growth that you’re facing. You’re going need those kind of checks and balances.
James Walker [00:11:27] You’re a hundred percent right. And obviously you mentioned the military there too. Like one of, one of the customers we’re actually looking to supply data center wise, um, a lot of that data center is actually for military purpose. It’s, you know, it’s, we’re coming into, into contact with the military in almost two different ways. It’s it’s one through this sort of tech angle, but the other, the other way is that they are the military is also wants power systems that can make their baits, um energy sovereign and energy independent. So they’re not relying on the grid. They currently can’t meet their own mandates to have independent power for two-week periods. And nuclear is a way of giving them that. So we keep bumping into them all the time. And even on the nuclear fuel supply chain, they are putting a pressure on the DOE, who’s obviously putting a press on the government, to build back nuclear fuel supply chains so we can manufacture the fuel for submarines and aircraft carriers and all these different elements. It’s a very unique time in nuclear where everyone is converging on nuclear all at once to put this pressure to build back as fast as we can. It’s great in the long term of the country because it de-risks any impediment to the quality of life we’ll have. As long as we can keep producing this power, we’ll all live.
Stuart Turley [00:12:37] Well, so, you know, it’s kind of amazing to me that we have, I believe, around 95 active nuclear reactors in the United States and with the big new beautiful bill and the additional funding for nuclear and greats, and I’m going to say this, you don’t have to say this, but great success stories like nanonuclear. I’m over here, I’m probably one of your biggest cheerleaders out here going, yeah, and it’s because I’m excited to see the resurgence again.
James Walker [00:13:10] Yes. And look, I’m also very happy to say, yay, nano. I’m over the moon with how well things have gone. And obviously, when Jay and I started the company a number of years ago, it was kind of before this resurgent interest. We saw a potential market opening up in the future, but it really took off. And now market conditions are wonderful for us to just grow incredibly quickly at a rate we never foresaw. So it is a really wonderful time in nuclear. And as you say, even this big, beautiful bill that came out, as I started reading through it, I was like, They had included a huge number of things that were beneficial for the industry. Funding from the DOE Loans Progress, ARPE programs, infrastructure, investment and jobs, R&D, fuel cycle development, export financing support. I mean, I could just go on about all the things that were deliberately included in there to assist the US nuclear industry build back quickly. Isn’t that great?
Stuart Turley [00:14:05] I’ll tell you, one of my goals is on my bucket list is to have Mike Roe on the podcast because I absolutely love Mike Ro and he’s now sitting there going, you’ve got to get back into the trades. We are going to need skilled people for nanonuclear technology for your plants, for your thing. That’s some high paying job.
James Walker [00:14:28] Oh, look, Mike Rowe is 100% correct because I think a lot of these jobs got sort of offshored, especially as China was industrializing as a country. There was a tendency to ship as much as you could offshore because it was cheaper, right? But as it industrialized, a lot of that industry is now coming back. And what we’re seeing actually is that those jobs that were offshore and they weren’t renewed, we now need those people. And there’s going to be a the number of jobs we have and they’re going to have to be onshored again. And so micro is completely right. And you know, people have been making jokes recently, like with AI, some of the advances mean that a lot of the jobs that it might be able to do might be white collar jobs. So maybe my job in the future will be much more blue collar, just by the fact that like… You know, we will be able to thankfully voice some of the, some of the work onto AI, but with the amount of build back, we need, we’re going to need everybody like thousands of thousands, hundreds of thousands of millions of jobs. And, and we’re seeing that once, even if you try and get these jobs done cheaper overseas, ordinarily, they don’t result in much cost saving at the end of the day, because the standards are not as high. And the qualifications they do claim to have, they don’t usually have. And then so. The more we can do this within the continental US, the better.
Stuart Turley [00:15:52] I think Chris Wright is such a great leader for our Department of Energy because he has now said that I changed how my podcast was going on years ago, probably four or five years ago because of Chris Wright. Chris Wright believes we need to deliver the lowest kilowatt per hour to everyone on the planet with the least amount of impact on the environment. That’s nuclear, baby.
James Walker [00:16:17] That’s nuclear, baby. And it’s really wonderful seeing all these sort of comments. And recently, actually, we had Rick Perry, who was a former Secretary of Energy, join our company. And he’s a wonderful person. I mean, he’s very easy to like. But he was reiterating the same sort of things. And it was really nice, these people who got a bullish on our country. They want the long-term success, and they want the future of it. And it it’s not even that they’re personally interested. They just have a long term. Interest in seeing us succeed, but these things are all necessary. And so people like Chris Wright are instrumental in that. Like, you know, pro-American, pro US industry, pro re-industrialization. All of these things that are good for us.
Stuart Turley [00:16:59] So you said, um, secretary Perry is now on your company site.
James Walker [00:17:04] Rick Perry has just joined us.
Stuart Turley [00:17:07] How cool is that?
James Walker [00:17:08] I know, I know. It’s awesome. And this is what we were saying earlier about the company has grown in ways we never foresaw, but even people like having Rick Perry join our board, fantastic to have people like him. And even he is looking at now a massive plant in Texas to generate, I think he was looking at 11 gigawatts of power for the purposes of things like data centers and AI and military purposes and all these different areas. And now we’re obviously looking at how we can support him doing all of that. So, isn’t that great?
Stuart Turley [00:17:39] Uh, you know, I love, I’ve talked to him while producing a podcast, I believe for David Blackman one time, and, uh, he and I were scheduled to do one. We just had a scheduling issue where we couldn’t get rescheduled. I absolutely would love to sit down with him because I really love the fact that he was a very good competent, uh secretary of energy. I’m sorry, but Chris Wright may just outshining.
James Walker [00:18:06] I don’t want to take sides here. I mean, I can’t say anything negative about Chris Rudd at all, only positive things. Like everything he’s done recently and especially as soon as I began reading through the big, beautiful bill and like all of the mechanisms that are in place to build back. I think what people don’t appreciate that bill is that the amount of economic benefit it will incentivize and grow within the U.S. Is appreciated, but it’s going to really spur on a huge amount of development and growth.
Stuart Turley [00:18:37] And the jobs, and I hate to keep bringing up micro again, and he’s not even on the podcast, but it’s jobs. It’s about re-onsuring, and it’s all about the jobs and the low-cost power. And it seems like, James, when we take a look at net zero policies, there is a strong correlation between net zero, wind and solar, and deindustrialization. You look at that correlation there, it’s kind of like, and nuclear is not supported, even though it is incredibly net zero.
James Walker [00:19:13] I think that the problem with nuclear has always had is that the divergence between the reality of nuclear and the public perception of nuclear is so wildly different that that’s inhibited its growth. And the US has always kind of had that 20% of its overall power across the nation being drawn from nuclear and it’s never gone above that. And it’s probably the public perception. But I’m hoping for the first time that’ll change because as these reactors roll out. They’re also very different. A big civil nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island can still melt, but the modern reactors can’t. And so all of the things that people were concerned about in the past have gone away. And so we’ve already got the safest form of power that’s ever been devised and we’re making it even safer still and can put it anywhere. You could build your house next to this and then blow up the reactor with a missile and you’ll still be safe, apart from the missile.
Stuart Turley [00:20:05] That is really cool because the molten salt reactor type technology has changed the game. Is that what you guys are using? Oh, look, we’ve
James Walker [00:20:14] in one of our reactors, we use the molten salt reactor, but it’s not just that too. It’s the fuel site, like Triso fuels as an example. Essentially, you’re looking at almost like uranium pellets that are encased in its own containment system. So there’s no way for that fuel to melt down in any way. And I’m sitting here doing the same.
Stuart Turley [00:20:34] You can recharge a nuclear reactor and it’s self-contained by simply replacing the self- contained unit.
James Walker [00:20:41] Yeah, like our reactors, like even if we install our reactor, I mean, yeah, I mean, legally, I think with, because of the NRC data, data sets, you can only say that the reactor is good for 40 years, but, but realistically it can go way beyond that.
Stuart Turley [00:20:54] Oh yeah!
James Walker [00:20:54] And you just refuel periodically, like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, whatever is necessary. And the fuel is already contained and safe. And so it’s a really wonderful system that, I mean, nuclear ultimately will prove it over time. It’s the best form of energy we’ve ever devised. And now it can really begin to benefit mankind as it was supposed to. Isn’t that great?
Stuart Turley [00:21:19] Yeah, I’ll tell you, this is some exciting news. So what do you have coming around the corner that you can legally tell me since you’re a publicly traded company as a CEO?
James Walker [00:21:28] So without getting myself in trouble with my board and the SEC, I mean, we’ve already mentioned these projects in Chalk River and UIUC, where we will build those prototypes over the next few years. That’s wonderful. I would stay tuned for acquisitions. The company is currently making little expand services and capabilities within the company. And I would also just watch out for… What can I say here? Contracts that we’re putting in place with potential customers in the future as we finalize some of the arrangements for providing that power. Like big contracts that’ll be long-term supply agreements.
Stuart Turley [00:22:07] Well, I’ll tell you what, the offer is here anytime for you or Jay to stop by and share any time of the updates, because we need to get your story out there. Yes. A successful nano nuclear energy story is a win for the United States.
James Walker [00:22:24] Agreed. And looks to you, I’m always very happy to come on your podcast. Whenever, every time I do it, I I’m in a good mood. So, you know, you’re not getting hit in the back of the head with a toy or ambush or anything like that. It’s always, it’s always incredibly positive. So like, I, I’d be very happy to come back on as soon as we, as soon as I’m at in a position where I’m allowed to say things.
Stuart Turley [00:22:42] Absolutely. We like keeping that. So we’ll have the Nanonuclear Energy website in the show notes and people can find you on LinkedIn as well too. So is there any other last thoughts for you?
James Walker [00:22:54] Oh, no, look, I think it’s been a very positive discussion. I mean, stay tuned for the big development projects and the construction projects we’re working on, the partnerships, all of those kinds of things. And also not just us, the whole industry is moving forward very expeditiously. So yeah, stay-tuned.
Stuart Turley [00:23:12] I’ll tell you what, uh, we are living in a whole different time instead of having to wonder about whether or not we’re going to get permitted, um, you’ve got the full weight of the Trump administration behind getting things permitted.
James Walker [00:23:26] That’s right, and look, they are making every allowance they can at the moment to expedite the licensing times, site licensing times allocation of capital to companies that want to build rapidly. I mean, the nice part is that it’s also bipartisan support on both sides. The Trump administration, I know he has the authority to go ahead and do all these things, but even the Democrats will back a lot of this stuff because prior to his administration, the Biden administration was also putting out big RFPs to build back national infrastructure. So it’s, it’s easy. Is there is a national consensus that it has to be done and there’s support on both sides of the aisle.
Stuart Turley [00:24:00] I hope you have an absolutely fantastic weekend with your kids and keep those toys from getting smacked in the head there. James thank you.
James Walker [00:24:09] I can’t prevent that unfortunately, Stu, but I’ll do my best to have that that good weekend and likewise have a have a wonderful weekend.
Stuart Turley [00:24:15] Hey, talk to you all soon. Thanks.
James Walker [00:24:16] Thanks, Stu.
