During a House Oversight Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) questioned Mark P. Mills, the Executive Director at the National Center for Energy Analytics, about the race to develop artificial intelligence.
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00:01I now recognize the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer, for five minutes.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:07I thank the witnesses for being here.
00:11Mr. Mills, good to see you this morning.
00:15What are your estimates for power generation demands over the next decade?
00:20Any idea what those demands will be?
00:25The total generation demand increases from growth.
00:30Right.
00:31Well, there are probably...
00:33Let me restate it.
00:34Yes, sir.
00:35We're in an arms race with China for artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
00:39What amount of power generation, in addition to what we have now, will we need?
00:45Well, the FERC is reporting an increase between 60 and 130 gigawatts more demand by 2030 than they thought was going to happen.
00:55That's in five years.
00:55Yeah, but they thought two years ago.
00:58And that's not just from data centers.
01:00It's also from bringing manufacturing back and electrification of other parts of the industry.
01:06What do you consider a greater threat to our future national security, losing the AI arms race to China or climate change?
01:15Well, as you probably know, I'm on the record of putting the economy and strategic concerns as number one, because not only from my perspective, but as we see from public opinion polls, that most people would put the economy and national security first.
01:33If we lose the arms race and artificial intelligence and quantum computing to China, they will be the superpower, not a superpower.
01:41One of the things that I think we need to be taking a look at, in addition to the power generation, is our dependence on China for critical minerals and rare earth elements.
01:54I pointed out multiple times in these hearings that there's not a single major refinery for rare earth elements in the Western Hemisphere.
02:00There's only nine in the world, eight are in China, and the other one's in Malaysia.
02:06I think that's got to be a top priority.
02:09I mean, we're talking about AI here.
02:12We're not going to do anything in that specter if China cuts us off from rare earth elements and critical minerals.
02:19But we've also got to meet these demands for increased power.
02:23And one of the things that I suggested this morning in another meeting is there's over 100 coal-fired power plants and natural gas plants that have been shut in the United States.
02:35If we started today trying to build new power generation facilities, we don't have the manufacturing capacity to produce the turbines that we need to generate, to meet that new demand.
02:46But we've got existing turbines in many of these facilities and transmission lines already in place.
02:51So I'd like your thoughts on us utilizing small modular reactors at these facilities.
02:59They're not as site-sensitive as other.
03:02For instance, you could get 600 megawatts from two small modular reactors at an existing facility where it would take 77,000 acres to get it from a turbine farm.
03:13And that turbine farm, basically, turbines would have to be replaced in 25 to 30 years.
03:18You'd get 40 to 60 years generation from an SMR.
03:21What do you think about that?
03:22Well, Congressman, I'm delighted that the tech community in the United States and Congress are enthusiastic about nuclear power again.
03:30But the reality is that you can't buy a small modular reactor.
03:33They don't exist yet.
03:35We have to build them at scale.
03:36And that will take years.
03:38Similarly, it will take a...
03:39Actually, that GE Hitachi model, we think, can be built in two to three years.
03:44You can construct that scale of reactor.
03:46This is the 300-megawatt class reactor.
03:49It's a little bit of a euphemism to think of 300 megawatts as, you know, quote, small.
03:54These are very big power plants.
03:56We can certainly build them quickly.
03:58They are possible.
03:59The regulatory barriers here are still significant.
04:01But you're talking a decade before we have the infrastructure to build them.
04:06Similarly, we can build the infrastructure to make the critical minerals and rare earth metal refineries here.
04:11But that will also take a decade.
04:13And meanwhile, as you know, 90 percent of the refined critical minerals to build windmills and solar panels are in China on coal-fired grids.
04:22So it's a problematic trade to buy technology made in China.
04:29My point is that I think having worked for two international engineering companies and having a little bit of understanding about what it takes,
04:37and I've told people this, you can open a mine here, but it'll be three to five years before you start getting out or get out.
04:43Take three years minimum to build a processor or a refining facility, notwithstanding how long it takes to get the permitting.
04:49If you permitted it on day one, it'd still take that long.
04:52But if we can build small modular reactors at scale, you're going to have some lower costs because you can basically build standardized designs.
05:01You can build advanced reactors that can use spent fuel.
05:07We could fuel a fleet of nuclear reactors for over 100 years.
05:12If you use them at these shuttered hydrocarbon plants, natural gas and coal,
05:17wouldn't it be interesting that China's building coal-fired plants to power their AI expansion that we could then use nuclear on shuttered hydrocarbon plants with no emissions to power ours?
05:30And I honestly believe that this is something that ought to be a top priority for this administration,
05:35a top priority for this Congress, to get these SMRs in place and get them in these places where we already have the turbines and already have the transmission lines.
05:42Count my vote enthusiastically on that strategy, Congressman.
05:47Thank you, Mr. Mills.
05:48I thank the chairman.
05:50I yield back.