The Race for the World's First Advanced Nuclear Microreactor Developer

NANO Nuclear Energy is a leading advanced nuclear energy and micro modular reactor technology company focused on developing clean energy solutions. Last month, the firm announced that it would be investing more than $12 million to establish a manufacturing and research and development facility in Illinois, with support from a state incentive program. It is expected to support nuclear engineers, component manufacturers, researchers, and support personnel who will work in collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on NANO Nuclear's lead project, the KRONOS micro modular reactor (MMR) Energy System.

James Walker, the firm's CEO and director, discusses the pursuit of bringing the first functioning small modular reactor into operation. James speaks with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. He is joined by Will Wade, Bloomberg News Energy Reporter.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Chairs of Canadian uranium producer Chemico rose as much as
twenty seven percent to a record high today. This after
the US government signed a packed with westing House Electric,
Chemi Coo, and Brookfield that will see at least eighty
billion dollars of new nuclear reactors constructed in the US
to accelerate nuclear power in AI deployment and breaking late yesterday,
next to air Energy planning to restart a nuclear power

(00:36):
plan in Iowa, primarily to supply Google data centers. We
got Will Wade with us. He's Bloomberg News Energy reporter.
He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
Did the US make a mistake, Will in shutting down
nuclear reactors over the last few years.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Oh, that's a tough question. When they made those decisions
to shut down reactors, and I used to keep a
spreadsheet on my desk, I call it dead Nukes file
of the dozen or so reactors that were shut down
in the past a little more in a decade. It
was the right decision. Then they were expensive to operate.
Nobody wanted to pay that much for power. But the

(01:14):
world has really changed around us.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
And I think at Indian Point, close to New York City,
that one was didn't it outlive It's like life cycle.
It was sort of at the end of its life.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh no, it was closed ahead of time.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
It was closed ahead of time.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, that was a big political campaign. There were people
that were really worried about having a nuclear power plant
so close to the biggest city in America. I mean,
that's a legitimate concern. But we closed that plant and
immediately people started saying, wait, New York State carbon emissions
are going to go up this year because we replaced
all the nuclear with natural gas.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Who would have thought.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
So it does feel like we mentioned the US signing
an eighty billion dollar pack to boost nuclear power in
that AI push, Google buying power from next era nuclear
power plant being revived.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So the spend is on, the deal are on?

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Is the build on though, to really build out maybe
the nuclear capacity that's needed.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Oh building nuclear, No, nobody's doing that, that's true.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
But the money's there, the commitments are there. The mothballing
is being undone. Right, Okay, So here's what we're seeing.
There is an enormous amount of interest in nuclear energy
right now. I've been seeing it for eighteen twenty four months.
This is because electricity demand is going to go through
the roof. That's largely for data centers and AI It's

(02:31):
not just that, it's for a lot of things, but
that's the big part of it.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
We need new electricity, we need a lot of it.
We did not see this coming. We were not building
new nuclear plants. At the same time, we would love
our electricity to be clean. So that really makes nuclear
the best option because it's available around the clock, unlike
wind and solar.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right how quickly can nuclear power plants be built outside
of the United States? In China, Korea, Japan.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Oh, China's really good at building them.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
They've they've been doing a NonStop they got I think
they're soon going to surpass the US in terms of
the number of reactors they've got going. So yeah, they're
faster at it than us. The Koreas are really good
at it. I was in Korea this year. Their nuclear
industry is they've been going NonStop for fifty something years.
Our industry pretty much ground to a holt around nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Nine with through My Island.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
So we spent years doing nothing and we never really
recovered from that.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
We're working on it.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
Well, we're going to keep Will Wade with us Blimber
News Energy Report. Someone else who's working on it too
to build out nuclear capacity is James Walker. He's CEO
of Nano Nuclear Energy. It's a two point three billion
dollar market cap nuclear energy company that is working on
SMRs small modular reactors. Shares are up nearly ninety percent
so far this year. Big chunk though, of the float

(03:55):
is short. James joining us from Vancouver. James, come on
in on this conversation. I mean, realistically, how long before
we actually you actually get an SMR built and it's
up and running.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
It's a good question because it gets asked, as you
can imagine, more than any other question. And there's kind
of two answers to it too, because to get a
reactor built and constructed and licensed is one question, but
the other question is how long is it going to
take for the fuel supply chain to be built back
adequately in the country to be able to mass manufacture
the fuel, to allow the mass manufactur of reactors. So

(04:32):
on one side, our company is already going ahead with
the construction project two construction projects to build reactor systems,
and we're talking to data centers and all of those
sort of groups as well. But on the other side,
like you know, we even our company, we need to
get involved in that fuel supply chain and build it
back because, as Will was saying just before this sort
of after Three Mile Island, the investment into the country

(04:56):
sort of broke down a lot. We need that investment
to go back in into rebuilding that fuel supply chain,
so companies like ours can mass manufacture the reactor systems.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
But James, on Carol's question about a timeline here, what
would be a realistic timeline for completion of your first
modular nuclear reactor.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
So we're doing a dual program right now, as it's
already started on the site. So we'll have the geotechnical
data to submit for a construction permit that'll go in
early next year, and I'll see you will turn that
around in twenty twenty six. So construction twenty twenty seven,
twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, and then fully licensed
reactor operating commercial license twenty thirty is very reasonable timeline.

(05:37):
So I would say early twenty thirties, then you're going
to see the mass rollout of reactor systems, so dozens
on an annual basis.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, that timeline fits with what I hear from a
lot of companies early twenty thirties for a significant wave
of new power plants. But I guess the issue is
that we have all these people who want power yesterday.
How do we meet their needs?

Speaker 5 (06:01):
Look, there's a it's a it's actually a very reasonable question.
Like as a company, we you know, we want to
be conservative and truthful with everybody because you know, we've
got to earn long term trust here. There are good
interim solutions, like I know companies have been exploring things
like gas and and to be honest, if they can
get hold of that in the interim, great, But even
things like gas contracts, they're all tied up for seven

(06:23):
eight years. Turbines around gas are tied up for seven
eight years too, So it's it's there's no easy solution here.
Even bringing in as you mentioned, like wind and solar
or anything like that. These are it's amitten technologies which
require huge battery storage technology to run alongside them. A
lot of the time, it's just not feasible. They're also
very locationally dependent, so you be limited on where you

(06:44):
can even deploy these things. I mean, unfortunately, there's no
there's no great solution, which is why when the show
started they were talking about opening up these old power
stations and recommissioning old nuclear power plants because those are
the some of them are the interim solutions. It won't
be enough power, but it'll be some.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, those restart projects that fruit. Do you think there
are other plants that we can restart or is it
just the ones we've already seen? Are we exhausted that list?

Speaker 5 (07:14):
So it's a good question, Like there's a number have
been shut down, and like it's it's arguable that you
mentioned Indian Point as an example. I know it wasn't
politically popular and maybe there was some of that related
to the decisions around that kind of plant, that that
could be an act, that could be a route, even
the old three Mile Island plant. Since we bring that

(07:36):
up as I think it's see the Microsoft or Constellation,
we're involved in recommissioning that and trying to get that
back up and running.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, Constellation says that'll be ready by twenty twenty seven.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
There we go. So, like you know, I think, as
you say, like there's going to be big projected powering
demand increases in the country, they might not get solved
for until we get those twenty thirties. And the problem
there is that that could mean a stagnation in the
tech industry. They'll find every means they can to get power.
But like that big online colocation green technology that provides

(08:12):
baseload power that can only really come from nuclear and
a lot of these reactor systems. Despite any really outlandish
claims about deploying near term, it's it's going to be
early twenty thirties, twenty thirty and onwards.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
All right, So the demand story is compelling if the
obstacles are just as a parent, those aren't my words,
those are well waded words who reports on this sector,
as you well know. I mean, help me out here though,
because I'm just wondering. You know, if I'm looking at
a stock that is up eighty percent year to date,

(08:45):
you know, you guys don't have any revenues, right, I mean,
like our investors, you know, this is what we do. Like,
are they probably getting ahead of themselves. Thirty percent of
your float is short, so investors are just kind of
waiting for something negative to hit because they're negative the sentiment.
I mean, realistically, you're talking at least five years right

(09:07):
before you're showing significant revenue or earnings or anything along
those lines.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
No, like our early using on people will come online
a long time before that. I mean, because there's this
massive build back. The opportunity at the moment in the
nuclear space is huge. It can come through the fuel
supply chain, or transportation or isotopes. Like, the nice part
is that we're part of this build back effort. So
and look, the stock market is always about an investment
in the future. I mean, the nice part is that

(09:36):
the demand is there in a way that's unprecedented. Like
buying now really is an investment in the future, and
a future that's inevitable. The tech industry is not going
to just give up and pack up and go away.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
But what if what.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
If the what if the AI spend and build that
is I know, everybody comes out and says no bubble
or a lot of people do. What if there is though,
an overspend? Where does that catch you guys? Potentially?

Speaker 5 (09:58):
I think the bubble has only been like discussed around AI.
But like in terms of data centers, those are things
that cannot be bubbles. That is, power that's needed for
our whole tech industry, Like a data center cannot be
a bubble. Like if you need increased power for computing power,
it has to come from somewhere AI. Whether that's going

(10:18):
to bear out the fruits of what's been promised, that
remains to be seen. But currently it's just expanding. But
it's it's it's kind of irrelevant to the long term
power requirements because the electrification of the country, the reindustrialization
of the country, that's all going ahead. And you mentioned
stocks like and the short interest. Great, if people want
to short us, that's better because we've we've gone higher

(10:40):
and higher as a stock just because every time the
shorts have been squeezed, the more shorts, the better for
us because they always.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Only only ten seconds left. But would you say that
you are most further along than any other company, the
most along than any other company.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
In terms of microreactors, yees. I believe we'll have the
US constructed full scale commercial commercially license my corrector in
the country.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
Well, you can put an SMR in my backyard because
my monthly electrical bills are crazy.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
You're shutting off lights. You're glowing today, Yeah, I'm glowing.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
Will Wade of Bloomberg News and James Walker, CEO of
Nano Nuclear Energy, Guys, thank you so much. Great discussion
right here on Bloomberg