Can We Finally Solve the 70-Year Nuclear Waste Problem? | EP 302 - Clean Power Hour

Episode Transcript
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Rod Baltzer (00:00):
The US has already spent more than $10 billion on

(00:03):
storage, and they're incurring$2 million a day for added
storage cost on average. And sofor deep isolation, we look at
that with our new economicreviews that we've done in the
US and overseas. Depending onthe size of your reactor and how
much fuel and other factors, thetype of geology you've got.
Pricing can vary, but it lookslike it's a savings of more than

(00:25):
half. Bottom line, it could beeven more than that, depending
on your situation. And so thereis the opportunity to save
billions of dollars.

intro (00:33):
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We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
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(00:55):
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Tim Montague (00:59):
today on the Clean Power Hour. Deep isolation, for
decades, the US has failed toestablish a permanent, large
scale repository for spentnuclear fuel, with Yucca
Mountain stalled. Progress as acase in point, my guest today,
Rod Baltzer, CEO of deepisolation, aims to solve the

(01:20):
long duration nuclear wasteproblem deep isolation is using
off the shelf technology, boringtechnology, and applying it to
this nascent industry whichcould have successful save
taxpayers billions of dollars.
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour.
Rod Baltzer,

thank you, Tim.
It's a great pleasure to behere. I really

appreciate your time, and this industry is near
and dear to my heart, because Igrew up in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, fighting a nuclear wastedepository called whip in
southern New Mexico, which hadsome fundamental flaws. It was a
salt depository. But anyway, Ialso live in the most

(02:03):
nuclearized state in thecountry, called Illinois, where
40% of our grid power comes fromnuclear. And currently, many
people don't realize this, butthe spent fuel is just piling up
on site at these nuclear powerplants around the country, and
what we want to do is put itdeep underground in a very

(02:23):
secure geologic formationthat'll keep it safe away from
humanity for for 1000s of years.
And we haven't succeeded indoing that for a variety of
reasons. It's a complicatedstory, but tell us, Rod, how you
came to the nuclear wasteindustry and what is deep
isolation trying to achieve?

Yeah, I I came through a to nuclear waste just
by blind luck. So I'm actuallyan accountant. I'm a CPA by
training, and came up throughthe finance side of the
organization. I worked initiallyat a low level radioactive waste
company, and eventually becameCEO there. We sold that company

(03:03):
to private equity and and theybrought an executive team in,
and so I joined deep isolationafter that, in 2018 started
there as their Chief OperatingOfficer, and got promoted to a
CEO last year. So I've been hereabout eight years now. You know
nuclear waste is one of thosethings where you don't think
about it a lot, unless you're inthe business or around it or

(03:26):
whatnot. It's safely stored. Butit's also one of those that you
know, because it is safe andnobody really thinks about it,
there's not an impetus towarddisposal, and that's costing us
as taxpayers billions of dollarsa year. So yeah, that was to
change that.

That was a big takeaway from me, from our from
our pre interview where you toldme about this reality of you, of
the DOE, the US Department ofEnergy, has to pay utilities to
store the waste on site becausethere's a contractual
relationship between thegovernment and the utilities

(04:05):
that they are going toultimately create a depository,
and they haven't been able to dothat, and so they're having to
pay the utilities to store thewaste on site, which it has two
problems, as far as I see, It'sexpensive and it's not
necessarily safe for the public,why don't you just further

(04:25):
explain that problem? Becausethat is really creating a market
for deep isolation.

Yeah. So when utilities go to operate a plant,
they have to sign what's calleda standard contract with the
Department of Energy, and thatbasically says that, do we will
take their waste and dispose ofit. And those standard contracts
all got signed a long time ago,and they all said, Do we would
start picking the waste up inJanuary of 1998 and that didn't

(04:52):
happen. Do we thought they'dhave a repository by then? But
they don't. And so utilitieshave sued the Department. Of
energy said, hey, you've got apartial breach of contract here.
You were supposed to pick it up,and you didn't. That's forced me
to expand my storage so on anuclear power plant, you've got
spent fuel assemblies, they gointo a pool, and those pools

(05:13):
were designed for a certainperiod of life, but without
having any kind of place to takeit for the next step into a
permanent repository. They hadto put it into dry cask and put
it in storage next to theirplants. And so almost all the
utilities in the US have drycask storage sitting next to
them, even utilities that havedecommissioned the reactor, and

(05:36):
all that's still sitting thereis the dry cask storage of the
spent fuel. It is safe. I mean,you can walk out there. I've
walked out on pads. You don'tget a whole lot of dose. It's
very robust concrete powderpackages with a steel liner
inside of it. And eventuallythose could be moved or
transported to a repository, butwe don't have one, and so the

(05:59):
concern is, well, how long is itgoing to sit there? And some of
these have been there for morethan 60 years already. And so
the question is, you know, after100 years, do we have to
repackage this? Or what can wedo about it? So deep isolation
has come along with our boreholetechnology to say, you know, we
don't think you need to be therepository for the entire

(06:19):
nation. You could put these inplace just for your utility,
just for your power plant inthat community, and put it deep
underground, instead of instorage above ground, next to
the reactor.

And what is the potential cost savings for the
DOE and ultimately, the taxpayerwho's footing that bill when we,
you know, transition fromScenario A, the current scenario
of storing the waste on site, toScenario B, where we're putting
it in capsules, putting thewaste in capsules, and then

(06:54):
shoving the capsules into a tubeor a borehole that has been and
we'll get into this technologydeeper as we go. No pun
intended, but what is the atface value, the potential
savings for the United States?

Yeah, so US has already spent more than $10
billion on storage, and they'reincurring $2 million a day for
added storage cost on average.
And so for deep isolation, welook at that with our techno
economic reviews that we've donein the US and overseas,
depending on the size of yourreactor and how much fuel and
other factors the type ofgeology you've got. You know,

(07:33):
pricing can vary, but it lookslike it's a savings of more than
half as the bottom line, itcould be even more than that,
depending on your situation. Andso there is, you know, the
opportunity to save billions ofdollars. So when we talked about
Yucca Mountain, that nationalrepository for all the waste,
would have been around $100billion back in those days. And

(07:53):
so when you talk about savinghalf that cost, that $50 billion
dollars, which is not enough toget us out of debt in the US,
but it's not insignificant,

yep. And let's just paint a further picture of
the industry. How many plantsare there operating in the US?
And it's, it's a, it's a littlebit of a dynamic time in the
nuclear industry. The USgovernment is trying to create a
resurgence, and we haveofficially announced the

(08:30):
reopening of some plants thatwere previously closed. I don't
know if we've announced any newbuilds, but, and you probably
know that statistic, but what'sthe state of the state of the of
the industry, and then, of thoseplants, how many locations, as
they exist, would be appropriatefor your technology?

Yeah, so when we look at the US, there's a, I
think, 70 some odd sites thathave 90 some odd nuclear
reactors at them. Typicallythey'll have one or two
reactors. A couple of them havethree or four, and the last one
that was finished was The Vogelplant, number four. And so that

(09:13):
wrapped up not long ago and wasconnected to the grid. When we
look at new ones, there havebeen announcements recently from
Westinghouse that they weregoing to build things, 10 new
plants, based on some of theexecutive orders and other
things from the administration.
And we've also seen, I thinkit's Fermi energy out in
Amarillo, former Secretary ofEnergy, Rick Perry's group, that

(09:36):
said they were going to buildfour new nuclear reactors, as
well as a lot of gas to powerAI. So I think there's been a
lot of kind of announcements ofthose types, and then also a lot
of AI data center agreementsbetween some of the small
modular reactors and advancedreactors, as well as these big
gigawatt plants. The

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call, 855-584-7168, to find outmore. So plus or minus 70, you
said, 70

sites in the US, 90 reactors. Yeah,

and of those, 70 How many would be appropriate
for deep isolation?

Yeah, we looked across the US just at a high
kind of desktop level, and itlooked like about 80% of those
had a nice shale or crystallinegranite kind of rock beneath it.
And it looked like that might besomething that would be
interesting to drill. We'd haveto do site specific to be sure.
And of course, the communitywould have to be willing to do

(11:25):
something like that. But wewould say that most of them, you
know you typically, are going totry to site a nuclear power
plant in a seismically stablearea away from mineral
extraction opportunities andsimilar for our repository as
well.

So 80% that's pretty good number. And what is
the geologic formation that youare ideally seeking?

Yeah, we look at a couple of them, the shale clay
layer, or something like that.
That's, you know, that we drillin opportunistly right now, with
directional drilling, those lookreally good. They're a little
more shallow, and they've gotreally good permeability
qualities, so that you have aisolated area that's been out of

(12:12):
touch with the surface for morethan a million years. We also
look at Granite. We've donestudies in both of those rock
types, that's been a traditionalmine repository rock. It's a
harder rock, so it's a littlemore costly to drill through
that, but it is something that'savailable. And particularly it
could be it could be deeper ornear surface, depending on where

(12:33):
you're located. The third typewould typically be salts. And so
we looked at that briefly, butwe haven't done a lot of
experiments or testing a lot ofanalysis in that one yet.

So let's get into the technology and the business
case a little more. You'reyou're using directional boring,
which is currently used in oiland gas, so you can think of the
St Louis Arch, okay, upsidedown, going down into the earth.
So you're boring a hole that is18 inches in diameter down into

(13:09):
the Earth's crust. How deep yougoing? And is it truly off the
shelf, or are you having tocreate some new version of
directional, boring technology?

Yeah, for instance, it's like a logo behind me. So
we would go down and turn, it'snot that sharp of a turn, and
then go horizontal. It could beslanted or other other
properties. But the idea was,let's use this directional
drilling, because that allowsyou to stay in a formation. So
once you identify that formationthat looks suitable for
disposal. You could follow thatas long as that formation last.

(13:45):
Generally, for us, we're lookingat a kilometer, two kilometers
deep in the same laterally. Sothat's roughly a mile, you know,
deep, and a mile laterally. Andthat's looks like that would
provide sufficient safety. WhenI say sufficient safety, the
regulatory standard out therethat most people abide by would
be about 10 milligrams, which isa chest X ray. We'd be 1000

(14:09):
times less than that as we'veanalyzed that. So, you know,
this looks like it's very safe.
It puts it deeper than a minerepository. We're about twice as
deep. They're about 500 metersor so, and so we're twice as
deep, and that added transporttime and just distance from
surface allows us to get thosekind of safety performance.

So you said a mile deep and a mile wide, correct?
Yeah. And what is the this is alittle geeky, but what is the
temperature when you go a miledeep?

Yeah, it definitely gets warmer. And so we've got to
be mindful that we don't want toboil water at that depth. And so
as you go deeper, you also havemore pressure, and that allows
you to keep from boiling thatwater and creating a gas at.
Depth. And so when you look at100 Celsius, being the boiling
temperature of water, we go downat depth, we'd be around 160 in

(15:09):
the kind of natural environment.
And Celsius, we would actCelsius, okay, but and then we
would add another 40 degreesCelsius with our payload. So
we'd be in that kind of 200range, except the pressure at
that kind of depth makes theboiling point of water about 300
Celsius, so we're still wellbelow that boiling point of
water down there.

Okay, and so you're taking fuel rods, you're
putting them in a stainlesssteel casket, you call it, or a
capsule, a canister, canister,yep. And then you're shoving it
like a pill. You can think ofjust a pill, right? Or a small
elevator. What are thedimensions of the package, and
how many are you putting down?
And I guess, how does thistranslate for every borehole

(15:53):
that you're able to build? Howmuch of the waste are you able
to store?

Yeah. So when we build these boreholes, they're
about 21 inches as we drill theminto the rock at depth, and then
inside that, we would put aboutan 18 inch, 18 and a half inch
Casing Inside, and we'd submitthat casing into the rock to
make sure it stayed in place.
Inside, that would be ourcanister. That canister is about

(16:20):
15 inches in diameter, andinside that is one spent fuel
assembly. It's about 12 incheson the diagonal. It's a square
assembly, but 12 inches on thediagonal. And so they nest
together in that configuration.
And we can these canisters areabout 16 feet long, and so you

(16:41):
can put a lot of them in thatspace. And I said a mile before
depends on your site and howmuch space you have. They can be
shorter. But if you generallythink of about 200 or so in a
borehole that that wouldn't bethat hard to do for a gigawatt
nuclear plant that operates for60 years, we'd need about 20

(17:02):
boreholes to hold all thenuclear fuel from that lifetime
of production.

Oh, 20 boreholes.
That sounds totally doable. Howlong would it take to build 20
boreholes?

So it takes about 45 days per borehole to
construct. And I have not donethe math on how much total that

is sure. Now you've recently done a reverse
merger. You raised $33 millionthrough that. What is the near
term plan for deep isolation?
What are you going to marketwith?

Yeah, this fund raise allows us to go out and do
the full size at depthdemonstration. So what we've
done already is a small scale.
We took a three foot longcanister that was about five
inches in diameter down anexisting oil and gas well. We
released it there, we pulledeverything back up, show no
wires were connected, and wewent back and retrieved it for

(17:55):
us. We need to show that thiscan be retrieved if we need to.
We've also done large scale. Sowe've produced a couple of these
canisters already. We call it auniversal canister system, UCS,
and so we've connected this withcasing up at the surface, but we
haven't done it at depth, justdue to the cost of drilling that
out at that size. And so wewe've done kind of full scale at

(18:18):
surface, small scale at depth, Ineed to do full scale at depth,
and that's the majority of thisfunding being used toward that
purpose. And what our customershave told us is this is
important to them, that theywant to see this happen. They
want to bring over theirregulators, their communities
and others, so they can kick thetires and really see how this

(18:40):
works and understand thatbetter.

Yeah, and what is the industry's response to your
technology? I mean, I think oflike, I think of like, there's
obviously the plant operators,but there's also the DOE, like,
they're footing the bill forthis storage en mass. What are
the experts saying about deepisolation?

When I first got started at Deep isolation,
boreholes were, I'll say, on thefringe of the discussion. And
there had been some discussionback in the, you know, 50s, I
guess, early 80s, but thetechnology for directional
drilling hadn't really taken offyet. And so the technology has
now leaped ahead of where weused to be and what we thought

(19:27):
we could do with directionaldrilling, and it's really opened
up a lot of things for us. Andso when deep isolation came and
kind of re looked at boreholesand started doing some of these
reports, the industry, I think,has started to take a little bit
more notice of that. It's becomea little bit more in the
mainstream. We see there'scooperative research projects at

(19:48):
the International Atomic EnergyAgency that talk about more
whole disposal specifically. Sothat has helped a lot. We've
also had good support from theDepartment of Energy. There.
Advanced Research Projects.
Agency for energy, ARPA E, hasgiven us about $6 million worth
of grant funding that's helpedus design this universal

(20:08):
canister system. And look atsome of these new advanced
reactor fuels, like trisopebbles or molten salts or other
things. And how would youdispose of that. How would that
be compatible with our bowls andcanisters and things? And so
we've done a lot of work withsome of those nuclear, new
nuclear companies coming online,and the work there

compare and contrast deep isolations
approach, if you would, to theYucca Mountain approach.

So for Yucca Mountain, it was an 18 foot wide
tunnel, basically that you coulddrive a train through. And it
was carved into a mountain. Itwas in a tough formation.
Geology wise, they had to put alot of engineered barriers in
they wanted to make sure waterdidn't get into the canisters.
They have to manage the heat andthermal loads, as well as the

(21:02):
radioactive aspects of that. Andso you were carving this
facility out of a mountain, youneeded ventilation and other
things for workers and all theworker safety for being
underground in a minerepository, and it was for the
entire nation's waste. Nevadadoes not have any nuclear
reactors. They have had lots ofnuclear testing there at the

(21:22):
site, but they haven't had anynuclear reactors, and so there
was a lot of political pushbackat that time for deep isolation.
Ours is a 21 inch borehole thatthat that you can fit with
drilling equipment. We don'tneed ventilation. Nobody's going
to be down hole. As these getspaced out in the horizontal
configuration or even vertical,it's canister in the canister

(21:46):
end, and so you don't have themlumped together. It helps with
the thermal properties andmanaging some of that heat load
and other aspects. And so itactually makes management of
some of that radioactive wastebetter. And so we've been able
to look at both deep isolationas a standalone, put it next to
a reactor, or have a regionalrepository, or something like

(22:09):
that, where it's smaller scale,so you don't take the entire
nation's worth of waste. Andwe've also looked at it as a
synergistic aspect. If you didneed a mind repository, which
the US will? We have some wastethat just won't fit in a
borehole, but you could takesome of the higher heat
generating waste or the nastierstuff out of it, put that in a

(22:29):
borehole and make the rest ofthe operation simpler and reduce
the life cycle cost for theentire program.

Yeah. So it's, it's really kind of apples and
oranges, right? Yucca Mountainis a central location, a very
large central location, a kindof a man made cavern in a
mountain, and you would have totake all the waste from the
industry and truck it or trainit across the country. And that
was also, I think, one of theproblems is getting permission

(22:58):
from all these authoritieshaving jurisdiction, states,
counties, etc, and that gummedup the system. So this is, this
is more of an on site, butpermanent solution by putting it
underground. It does concern mehaving all this waste at surface
for a variety of reasons, itcould leak into surface water or

(23:21):
groundwater, if the containersleaked. I sail on a power plant
on a nuclear power plant Lake,and I really appreciate having
this power plant 30 minutes frommy home because of the sailing.
And of course, there's all kindsof other recreation going on
there at Clinton lake, but thethought of all the waste piling
up on site really doesn't suitme very well. I'd rather have it

(23:42):
pushed underground, as long asthat's going to be a stable
formation and nobody else isgoing to drill a hole into it.
What, I guess. What are some ofthe challenges, some of the
other challenges that we haven'ttalked about, that you will have
to overcome in order to get thistechnology embraced en masse.

Yeah, the technology, you know, the
technology is there. So as wetalk through with our drilling
experts and supply chain vendorsand others, we oil and gas is
used to taking things from a padand deploying them down whole
nuclear is used to taking thingsout of a spent fuel pool and
moving them to a pad. And sowe're combining both of those,

(24:25):
where we take it to a pad, putit into the drill hole, and
deploy it down, down hole, andwe can do that safely. So the
technology, you know, I don't, Idon't know that there's any
cutting edge there. It's thepublic perception, which we
think, having a modularsolution, being able to do just
your power plant and not theentire nations, particularly

(24:46):
smaller countries. We're dealingwith, some in Eastern Europe
that are interested in this, andit seems like something that
will get embraced further there,but that all makes a difference.
We also, I think, on theRegulatory Act. Aspect, you
know, they they've been focusedon mine repositories for such a
long time. Looking at boreholetakes a different way to look at

(25:08):
it, and so having that be moretechnology neutral, I think,
would be really helpful for deepisolation. We've been working
with the International AtomicEnergy Agency and and others
we've we've had visits with theNuclear Regulatory Commission on
what our technology is, what itdoes, and how it operates, just
making sure that as we get intothose kind of stages. You know,

(25:30):
we're not unknown to them.

What else should our listeners know? I I'm, I'm
keen to see this pilot get done.
Congrats on the raise. That'sthat's huge. As my listeners
know, I am a skeptic of this newmovement to promote nuclear only
because it's it takes a longtime to build a nuclear power

(25:53):
plant, and it's expensive, butwe still have to solve the
existing waste problem. We havean existing fleet. We can't
remain in denial that we have afleet of nuclear plants that are
operating generating waste. Weneed to solve this problem. And
so that's why I support you andthis effort. We need to solve
the long waste the long durationwaste problem. What else should

(26:16):
our listeners know? One

I want to echo your comments, yeah, whether you
believe in nuclear or not, we'vegot a waste issue out there,
because we haven't disposed ofany of this, and it's going on
70 years. And so we need to notkick the can down to the next
generation. We've gottechnology, we've got the
ability to do this, and if wedisposed of it, we would save in
the storage cost, and this wouldbe better financially for

(26:41):
everybody to get started now.
So, you know, that would be myencouragement as people do look
at new nuclear, you know, makesure you don't forget about the
back end. If you plan this stuffout now, it will make your life
so much easier when you do go todecommission or dispose of that
waste that you package itappropriately, you know, put it
in our universal canister. Wecall it a universal pant

(27:02):
canister, because you cantransport it, you can store it,
you can put it in a minerepository, or you can put it in
a borehole. So you don't knowwhat you want to do with it yet,
or where it's going to be. Itdoesn't really matter. Just put
it in that canister so you don'thave to repackage it. It'll
literally save in the US torepackage everything we've done
would be $20 billion and that'sjust the time. It's not the

(27:23):
radioactive dose. And so justencourage people to think about
it, that as you go through itis,

does deep isolation own IP around this
universal canister?

Yeah, deep isolation has 87 patents that
are issued. They're not allabout the universal canister.
They include the full life cyclefrom, how do you characterize a
site or drill the well, and whatdoes that look like, the
canister and retrieval andreplacement, the post closure,
plugging of that well. So it'sthe life cycle. But we do have

(27:55):
some specific on the universalcanister. We've also got license
agreements available if there'sinterest out there, from from
others on this

and I guess, what would be the next phase of
success for you? Rod, at Deepisolation, you've got this, call
it startup funding, right forthis large you know, at scale
pilot, what is the next stage ofyour growth and development if
you're successful.

Yeah. So stage one is get the demonstration done.
We want to do both the surface,sorry, the subsurface, you know,
looking at that, that's the mostcritical piece, and then add in
the surface facilities as well.
How do you get it from atransport, whether that's, you
know, a couple of 100 yards fromthe reactor, or traveled over,
over the road, or over thetracks, down hole, and
demonstrate all that. The nextwould then be starting to engage

(28:45):
with the regulatory authoritieson a license application to
actually get this done.

Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer
doing light commercial butwanting to scale into large CNI
solar? I'm Tim Montague. I'vedeveloped over 150 megawatts of
commercial solar, and I'vesolved the problem that you're
having you don't know what toolsand technologies you need in
order to successfully close 100KW to megawatt scale projects.

(29:17):
I've developed a commercialsolar accelerator to help
installers exactly like you.
Just go to cleanpowerhour.comclick on strategy and book a
call today. It's totally freewith no obligation. Thanks for
being a listener. I reallyappreciate you listening to the
pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let'sgrow solar and storage. Go to
clean power hour and clickstrategy today. Thanks so much.

(29:40):
All right, well, thank you somuch. Rod Baltzer, CEO of deep
isolation, check out all of ourcontent at cleanpowerhour.com.
Follow us on YouTube, reach outto me on LinkedIn. I love
hearing from my listeners. Checkout my new book, wired for some.
Just go to cleanpowerhour.comclick on book and with that rod,

(30:01):
how can our listeners find you?

Yeah, go to deepisolation.com so we're also
on social media and others, butour website is deepisolation.com
We've got a lot of videos andpapers and studies and other
things out there, so I thinkyou'll find it pretty
interactive and interesting.

All right. Well, I'm Tim Montague, let's grow
solar and storage. Take care.
Rod, Thanks, Tim.

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Can We Finally Solve the 70-Year Nuclear Waste Problem? | EP 302

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Can We Finally Solve the 70-Year Nuclear Waste Problem? | EP 302