00:00You're our constant reality check, Will, when it comes to the viability of these announcements and
00:05the actual capabilities that the United States has right now. Does the U.S. have this nuclear
00:10energy right now? Does it have it now? No. Oh, no. When will it get it? Yeah, that's a good
00:17question. Not anytime soon. That's for sure. Nuclear is just really slow. I mean, you said
00:22these plants aren't built. They're not even licensed yet. Although TerraPower is very close
00:27to getting an important license for its Wyoming project. But this deal is like for two other
00:33TerraPower projects that they haven't even begun planning and maybe six more after that.
00:39Hey, Will, does Meta coming out and saying, hey, folks, we're making a deal with you. We're behind
00:44you. We want your power. Does it in any way speed up the timeline for getting these things built?
00:51Or it's a lot more complicated, as you have reminded us. No, I don't think that speeds up
00:56timeline. But what it does do is it adds a lot of credibility to the idea that people want more
01:03nuclear, that nuclear is going to happen. And, you know, you started this off. Do people want more
01:07nuclear, though, Will? Or does Meta and everybody who's in the AI deal or AI world, they want more
01:13power? Lots of people want more nuclear. But definitely the data center, the big tech, the AI people,
01:20they really want nuclear. But there's a push to use nuclear for heavy industry. There's a growing,
01:27you know, realization that homes are going to need more electricity if you've got an electric car,
01:33if you've got electric appliances. There's just growing demand for electricity across the board.
01:40And nuclear is seen as one of the key ways to meet that.
01:43Will, you always remind us of these so-called SMRs, these small modular reactors. The technology
01:48sounds pretty great, but it's not there yet. And it got me thinking to nuclear submarines and the
01:54fact that we have a fleet and have had for decades fleets of nuclear submarines that are all over the
02:00world being powered by essentially small modular reactors. Why can't we just do what we did
02:06in those subs decades ago and plop them next to a data center?
02:11A lot of it is the regulatory thing. You've got to get, you know, sign off from the government and
02:17the ones used in submarines and also big aircraft carriers, they get licensed through the Department
02:23of Energy because they're not commercial. If you want a commercial plant, that's got to go through
02:27the NRC. It moves slowly, but I'm really seeing movement. You know, things are happening. It's just a
02:35very slow process. And I have to say that the government is making a lot of pushes to accelerate
02:41the process. And I've been hearing from companies just this week, the process is getting faster.
02:47So I think that Carol, yeah, well, go ahead, Will.
02:50Well, I was just going to say, it's like, yes, we can speed up paperwork and red tape and all of
02:55that, but it is a nuclear power plant with dangerous radiation. So let's not cut corners about it.
03:01I was just going to say that. I think that would probably be Carol's natural follow-up here.
03:04Which would be, is it a good thing for us to speed through this process? Isn't it a long
03:10regulatory process to prevent the next three-mile island, to prevent the next Fukushima, you know,
03:16to prevent the next Chernobyl?
03:19Yeah. Yeah. We definitely want to make sure we don't have any nuclear accidents, but there's room
03:25to speed up the process. Just not too much.
03:28Listen, I mean, and bottom line, like, as you said, you know, Will, everybody wants this stuff. I mean,
03:33the amount of power that increasingly this world needs, and especially as, you know, we have more
03:40domestic manufacturing maybe coming back, not only in the U.S., but maybe in other countries. I mean,
03:45the power grab is on, so we're going to need it all. Renewables, carbon-based, we're going to need
03:51nuclear. We just need it all.
03:53We do. And I mean, you were asking about wind before the break, too. We want wind as well.
03:58The president doesn't seem to want wind, though.
04:01No, but a lot of other people do.
04:03Is that enough? Is that enough to get investment in wind to continue?
04:09Ooh, investment in wind, that's a... I wouldn't put money in wind right now just because the U.S.
04:14federal government is putting so much effort to block wind for whatever reasons, but short term,
04:21it's a risky bet.
04:22Yeah.
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