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THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Nuclear Power
Unlock the future of energy as we navigate through the multifaceted world of nuclear power, exploring both its historical pitfalls and modern promises. Have you ever wondered how past disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima continue to shape our view of nuclear energy? Join our discussion with leading experts as we unravel these incidents' profound impact on public perception while highlighting the leaps in safety and technology that position nuclear as a cornerstone of sustainable energy.
Journey with us to the sandy landscapes of Moab, Utah, where a geologist named Charlie Steen struck uranium-rich wealth, sparking a rush reminiscent of the Wild West's gold fever. We chart his story from drilling dreams to the transformation of his home into a local landmark, the Sunset Grill, while also addressing the environmental aftermath of uranium mining. Unravel the mysteries of nuclear materials like uranium, plutonium, and thorium, and how they power our world through fission and the tantalizing promise of fusion.
Explore the groundbreaking convergence of nuclear power and artificial intelligence, where innovation and technology meet to redefine the future. From the stealthy endurance of nuclear submarines to the revolutionary potential of micro nuclear reactors the size of cargo containers, discover how AI is optimizing our energy landscape. Delve into the parallels between decentralization in energy production and blockchain, and see how communities might soon harness their own power with microgrids. This episode promises to engage, educate, and inspire as we seek a sustainable path forward.
Welcome back guys. Happy to be in the studio again. Dave, good morning, Happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Good morning, good afternoon, whatever you're watching this, good evening, good evening.
Speaker 1:That was a fun conversation, you know, hitting on coal and gas last episode. I don't know if I have the depth in this next subject to consider myself an authority.
Speaker 2:I don't know that in any of the subjects we might play it. We are learning because we are engaging in these. But yeah, we'll get to a point where we bring on some people who are actual experts in the space. So we're doing our best to play one on podcasting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, guys, you know, I'm sure we're going to have listeners that we're going to want to chime in and correct and provide some feedback, and that's great. Please, we, we want that, we, we want to be corrected, we want to, we want to be uh, we, we want to be on point here with with what we're communicating. We don't be just making things up just to talk about something. Right, that's right. Um, so I thought it'd be fun if we dove into the nuclear conversation. Oh goody, today and and we might, we might cover a little bit of hydrogen, but nuclear energy, you know, is interesting. I in a former lifetime served a religious service mission in south-central Russia, so I actually lived in Volgograd for 18 months and then got to go down and live in sochi for a little while I don't know that.
Speaker 2:I knew that about you. Oh, that's very cool, okay, okay. Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know that's where you landed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay at life-changing you know, opportunity for me to spend a couple years in russia and learn that language and learn the history you know, talking about energy and some of the things we've already covered, and then getting into nuclear Volgograd during World War II. I mean that's where World War II ended and it was formerly known as Stalingrad. So when you read about that in your history books, it's Stalingrad, now it's Volgograd. And it's interesting being in Volgograd because it's flat but you get up in these big concrete buildings and as far as you can see smokestacks, nuclear submarine plants, tank factories. I mean this city was industrialized for the war. It was a war machine If there's ever been a war machine and it's a huge city. So it was very inspiring to see all of that industrialization in Volgograd.
Speaker 1:That geographically happens to be not too far away from Chernobyl in Ukraine and I bring Chernobyl up because we've probably all heard of the infamous nuclear meltdown of the power plant in Chernobyl, which is probably the standard of everyone's nightmares in what can go wrong in nuclear energy. I mean we're talking about a power plant that basically exploded and sent nuclear toxic waste, radiation, radiation everywhere, killing people and everything in its path. Okay, and you can still go look this up online and you can see people still kind of going in and exploring the old ruins of Chernobyl. It's terrifying.
Speaker 2:I think I've seen some of them where you have to have the monitor. You can only go in so long. I also see all these interesting aberrations in plant life and animal life that have been affected by it. Absolutely. Well, we had a three-mile island too. Yeah, that's right. We had a three-mile island in New York and then obviously Fukushima. Yeah, Interesting. That's how a lot of the world knows the downsides. I mean, that's the problem when it goes bad, it goes really bad usually.
Speaker 1:Now those are utility-scale massive power plants in all three instances and I want the listeners to understand that that proven nuclear technology is nuclear fission technology. That proven nuclear technology is nuclear fission technology, not dissimilar from the technology that was developed when we created the atom bomb, you know, prior to World War II. So you know we have this technology in one aspect and now we have new technology that we're all that, this kind of the buzz right now, which is cold fusion fusion technology, which has not advanced enough to be commercially viable, yeah, not yeah, okay, it's.
Speaker 2:It's been an energy in, energy out problem. It's it's never. They knew if they could get it to that point or they could figure that out. It would always. It could be a forever source of energy. Uh, that would be green.
Speaker 1:But it's, you know, it's not there yet do you have enough understanding about, historically, what was the problem? What caused, you know, three mile island to blow up? What happened with those reactors?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know enough specifics, but it all comes back to design safety protocols. So when something would go wrong, they didn't have that right protocol and they couldn't do what they needed to do in order to shut the reaction down in time. I don't know that we I mean I'm sure maybe we do, we know enough about Chernobyl now, similar, and we know these things. It's one problem, another, another, another, another, a chain of events usually where it hasn't been predicted. These things happen in order and all of a sudden something major happens and you can't stop it. These things happen in order and all of a sudden something major happens and you can't stop it.
Speaker 2:That's what the last I think 20, give or take two decades from everything I know about where we are with technology has been about upgrading designs, about safety protocols, about making these things, making the smaller reactors or some of the different formats of reactors so much safer and so much better and so much more efficient and effective. So it's been a lot of that. It's been that learning curve. Now I think France is like 80% of their power is nuclear. So there are countries who are obviously embracing nuclear and saying yes, thank you very much, and they are typically also pushing the, the technology, saying, okay, now we we know these, these issues, we found them, we discover them, but it's a good source of thing, but there's there's a lot of fear out there.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of stuff, and that's why I think we have a patchwork of solutions across the world right now well, it stands to reason to me that that's also why we see such a prolonged and complex permitting process to do anything with nuclear, because, as a direct result of the disasters that we've all experienced in multiple countries you mentioned, I think, the other day to have a new nuclear project go through the RNC could be a decade long.
Speaker 2:Six to ten years to get permitting and you could spend $300 million in that permitting process before and if you ever reach an approval Right and that has been the biggest issue, especially here in the US, is it's expensive, it's arduous, you've got so many hills to climb. The risk for investment is gigantic, because you could be into this tens of millions of dollars and might have a community say we don't want it or it doesn't meet us, and that's tens of millions or more basically thrown away. And so it's a really really challenging area. It's exciting, it could be changing for our energy profile, but the hurdles are significant profile, but it's the.
Speaker 1:The hurdles are significant. You know, something comes to mind as I'm thinking about nuclear and I think about the, the feedstock or the, the thing that makes new nuclear so special. And as we talked about the project that I did in moab, um, you know, there's there's some really interesting history around moab, very, very interesting history in Moab. You know Moab. Well, let's start with the gentleman. There was a gentleman named Charlie Steen and Charlie was a geologist from Texas, and this is we're going cultivation of atomic assets, nuclear assets. And Charlie had studied some of the rock formations in the Moab area in central Utah and felt determined that he might be able to strike it rich. You know, it's like the gold rush, right, they thought he might hit the uranium. Well, he moves his family and I want to say he had eight or ten kids. They all move to Moab. Now. Moab currently only has roughly, I think, 4,500 permanent residents, so it's still a very small town. In the 80s it was maybe a few hundred people. It was hundreds, right? Yes, I think it was hundreds. So he moves his family from Texas to Moab, determined to find it, and he goes out. He had an old Jeep and he would go out day after day trying to find uranium. Just drilling Wildcatting is really what he was doing we talked about in the oil. That's what he was doing. He was just drilling where he felt, you know, like he understanding the geology of the area where we would be most likely to find uranium.
Speaker 1:This went on for years. This went on for years and you know he, as the story goes, he depleted his savings and was kind of down on his last dollar and one evening stopped at the gas station in his old Jeep and had all of his tools and things in the back of his Jeep. He went in to pay for his gas. He comes out and there's a couple of guys standing at the back of his Jeep and they're like hey, what is this? And they're pointing to his drill bit which was glowing. The end of his drill bit had something on it that was glowing, okay, and he and and so on.
Speaker 1:His last dime that's a super cliche story. On his last dime, that's a super cliche story on his last dime. And out of luck, he was ready to quit. He hits it. He knew when he saw the drill bit that he'd hit uranium and he went back and found where he bored that, and lo and behold, charlie became a billionaire with his find, and so in Moab they still have a cleanup project from the tailings of mining all of that uranium out of Moab.
Speaker 2:Well, quick aside, is that the house there's a house that sits up on a hill Was that his? Was that it is? I'm remembering that right. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:Do they have like a chairlift or a gondola or something to it? So so that's not attached to it. The gondola is a little before you get to the, so now, now it's a restaurant called the sunset grill. Okay, but if you go and have dinner, and I recommend you go do a I had dinner there years ago.
Speaker 2:That's why, okay, and this is all coming back, I'm like I think that's okay that was this place okay gotcha.
Speaker 1:They do a phenomenal Thanksgiving dinner there. But the house has been remodeled into this restaurant. But they maintain the house as kind of a museum. It's all original structure and some of the paintings. So it's a fascinating thing to go experience that in Moab. But uranium is one of the more common forms of what could be used in a nuclear reactor to produce energy with.
Speaker 2:There's multiple Uranium, plutonium being another one.
Speaker 1:Thorium is one I've recently learned about. So uranium, plutonium, thorium, so we have these. What do we call that? We call that a. It's akin to fine gems, it's like a fine fine. How do we classify the commodity of what that is? It's rock, it's mineral, it's a fine mineral.
Speaker 2:I suppose I'm trying to remember where it sits on the periodic table. I think it's 280, 285, 7, 79, 70.
Speaker 1:So, in a very elementary way, how do we explain what makes it so special? What is so special about uranium, plutonium, thorium that makes it so that it can produce this?
Speaker 2:energy. Yeah, I mean, it's what happens when you split the atom. It's when you split it and it's the fission, and it produces, obviously, as we've all seen, it produces an inordinate amount of energy, and the old nuclear reactors are okay. We're going to produce this amount of energy, we're going to split it and then it's going to heat up all this water, and then water and steam energy is then going to drive this and that's what's going to create power, and it's been versions of that right for a long time. That's what's made it really good is the amount of energy that will come from this.
Speaker 2:On the fusion side, it's similar, but the byproduct is not radiological. I think that's right, which is that's why I wanted to. It's got all the good sides, which is basically yeah, and it's all the good side, but not we don't get the but good side, meaning like the amount of energy we can get from the stone. So that makes it very interesting. But, to your point, that's one of the big issues. One of the bigger issues is the cleanup, yeah, uh, the mining, um, and then how do we deal with spent fuel while we?
Speaker 1:talk, when we talk about cleanup. Just to be clear, this is, this is toxic waste that never not goes away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thousands, this is thousands of years, the half-lives are yeah, so it's going to be radiological for, or radioactive for, thousands of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chernobyl, you're never going to go back there in any you know given way for thousands of years, yeah so, uh, and that's, and so we, we know that, and so then you look at fukushima same thing, uh, but then that radiation is also leaking into the ocean, which is a concern across, you know, concern on lots of levels. So these are big concerns. Obviously, the benefit is huge because we can get, once we do it and we do it safely if then it's really clean power, well, and really dense power, very dense you talk about probably the most, I think probably the most, probably the most the most dense power. Fortunately, in this whole industry right now, there's a lot of innovation going on. Yeah, yeah, to tackle these issues, to address to like, okay, we've had 40, 50 years, 60 years of of dealing with a lot of these things. We've had bad stuff, but we get some really good things out of it. How do we make this more usable, more scalable, more readily available and get it to market and do it in a way that's not so crazy expensive, and that's a lot of what is happening around us right now. So we've got projects happening in Wyoming, different technologies, everybody's trying to do these, and they're called small reactors. They're these almost micro-reactors that have just been approved by the NRC and the NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but still, those are going to take five to seven years before we see them probably being brought online. There are companies, at least, probably less than that. There is one project, I think, that's already there. We're going to bring them online. Might already be online back East, but there's a company in Europe that just got approval and they've created their own kind of small version. But now in order to get it here in the U? S it's got to go through the NRC, yeah, All those things. So we're still not going to see it tomorrow or next year or two years from now. It's going to be a while before we get those up and going, but there's a lot going on. And to your density thing, yeah, if we can get some of that solved and we get the safety side of it solved, it's huge. Of course, if they solve meaningfully and they solve fusion, that fundamentally changes everything. And so that's where we are.
Speaker 2:I mean, utah has a very interesting story of fusion. I mean, back in the early 80s we had Pons and Fleischman. They were two scientists at the? U who thought that they discovered how to solve cold fusion and it was a big to-do. It was an international story and unfortunately they ended up losing their jobs and I think it was President Chase Peterson, I believe. At the time he got balanced as president of the? U and it was a big to-do. But we're coming back around and I've read some things that we're coming back around to, around maybe where they were, maybe they're way ahead of their time, maybe they had actually discovered some things, but it couldn't. Whatever their results were, it could never be replicated, which is why they fell out of grace and they were working on a cold fusion project yeah, cold fusion, and that's where you know we find ourselves.
Speaker 1:That's, though, that's one area of study right now, and it's one area of study that's showing some promise you know something that that is really interesting, as I've kind of started researching the nuclear is understanding that the us navy and russia, and I think china, maybe even has these nuclear powered submarines, absolutely, and aircraft carriers, and that's not new technology.
Speaker 1:No, that's, that's been there for a minute maybe even has these nuclear-powered submarines, aircraft carriers, and that's not new technology. No, that's been there for a minute. We have always known that government and military probably has technologies that are so far advanced of what the public is aware of. We only see, maybe, what they want us to see, maybe 20 years after the fact, right, maybe what they want us to see, maybe 20 years after the fact, right. So, um, I can only imagine what actually exists today in in nuclear technology. Um, but you know, it's fascinating to think of submarines that, unlike you know, submarines that are using the diesel engine technology, right, you talk about range. Okay, you talk, and you talk about jets with range. Nuclear powered submarine can basically stay and float around forever, yeah, more or less.
Speaker 1:There's basically an undetermined range.
Speaker 2:Well, and they and they just and they recycle water and then all these things they can. They can stay down for months at a time. Yeah, yeah, it's probably comes. I would imagine it probably comes back to food, food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's the human element. Is the weakness in that?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so it's but it's promise nuclear's promise for all the things that we're going to talk about and we're going to continue to talk about is absolutely there. Yeah, and you know, obviously our military has used them, as have other militaries, very effectively. Um, and you know it's, it's it's done some amazing things, but again it's it's it's got to get to a point where I think the general public feels okay with the safety and I don't know if there's a force public will ever feel safe enough. Yeah, because of all the stuff that's happened in our lifetimes. But scientists, the people on the science side, would say you know, ultimately it still is a very, very, very, very, very safe technology. The problem is when it, when it isn't, it really isn't Sure. And that's what they're trying to solve with some of these smaller ones and some of the and the new designs.
Speaker 1:There they feel like again. They feel like they've gotten to a point where they're finally there safe enough that these are going to function really well and that they've got backups upon backups and if something happens, then this is going to so that they can mitigate the biggest risks. As we advance into the future and we're talking about all these future possibilities, ai is is one of the dominant, dominant pieces of the conversation, and you talk about these nuclear submarines that our Navy uses and we know they're using AI and the AI within that that construct can operate so many different things and coupled with nuclear propulsion. So it stands to reason to me that, to the extent that we advance, ai also means there's this correlating certainty we could create around the technology to also manage nuclear power. Yes, AI.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, actually, because if you were able to take a and I'm sure there are others thinking about this, I know we've thought about this If you can take one of these small nuclear reactors and you can power a data center, the size of data center that you could do is substantial and what that could mean for that area, meaning if we finally have the power and it's economically viable and you can support massive infrastructure well, that means that you push a lot of this forward On the use case of AI and ML and generative AI in the management of all these things and the ability to do things that we haven't been able to do before.
Speaker 1:That's also going to help To eliminate human error Right or dramatically reduce the human error. We hope.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, right. Because, AI has its own issues.
Speaker 1:If we have the hallucinations? Yeah, that's also a problem.
Speaker 2:I don't know it was a war. You remember it was a war games, war games with Matthew Broderick, but it was Whopper, yeah, whopper, like simulated a war, and that was the whole. I mean, they were thinking about that, you know, back in the 80s For sure.
Speaker 2:What happens if this computer simulates a thermal nuclear, global thermal nuclear war, yeah, and runs a simulation. They don't know some of it we've had movies, but that's you know. I mean there's, there's some reality to that of like what you know what kinds of things you do, but also it means you could advance technologies quicker. I mean, that's the side of this. Where ai is really interesting is is you know, what can they do by leveraging ai, which I'm assuming they're already doing, I'm sure, to make our designs better to run simulations. Do all these things to advance those things I know they're already doing. I'm sure, to make our designs better to run simulations. Do all these things to advance those things.
Speaker 2:I know they're doing it with drugs and plants and things and they're looking for new combinations of medications and things. Why? Because they now have the capacity to be able to run billions of permutations and have a generative component to it that they can actually get to better answers or discoveries. And I think we're gonna see the same thing in nuclear, where you might have an AI, you might have MIT or somebody running something going. Oh my gosh, we've just we've run this thing. We've now just determined that we can do this thing that we didn't know was even possible. That would have taken, you know, tens of thousands of people, human hours, or if not, you know to, to get to that same point. So I mean, that's where this is, and and they're colliding, because in order to run AI the right way, or what I need is you need capacity, right, and you need big systems to do that.
Speaker 2:And you know, for for years it was just a few, you know, we had the big supercomputers, but now you have these these larger networks, but they need power, and so this, this really kind of dovetails into this whole thing of like in order to build out the ai infrastructure. To you know, and and probably also I'm going to touch on v, you know, vr and AR, virtual reality augmented reality MR mixed reality.
Speaker 2:All of those kinds of things that are out there, come in and will change how we do things. All of it needs infrastructure, all of it needs power, and so this all comes back to in order to get one, we need one. But that's why this race to sort of build more power, build it smartly, to solve all of these things right um, we have not touched on um the tesla technology just yet directly nicola or nicola tesla and this whole notion of transmitting electricity through the airways without the transmission lines.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my watching the Jetsons cartoon and my vision of the future can't help but dwell on the possibility of decentralizing power production with these micro nuclear reactors that can transmit electricity without power lines. Imagine a mat that I mean we're down my phone.
Speaker 2:That just rang. I mean that we were, you know, and it charges. I mean that that technology sitting in on a base, that's that's inspired by that. It's Nikola Tesla to your point he was trying to solve that Right, but on a grander's that's inspired by that's nikola tesla.
Speaker 1:To your point, he was trying to solve that right, but on a grander scale right, yeah, and, and I'm hearing whisperings, some from some pretty reputable folks in the power community say, you know in in inferring that we, we have technology that can transmit power, transmit electricity without lines and that's being developed and it's being proven out, and so you know we were talking about the tiers of infrastructure. Well, how exciting would it be to reinvent the entire power ecosystem. Imagine if all of the power lines that are. I will never see this in our lifetime, but imagine if you never need those power lines like the how, how different everything looks, and and by by putting you know the power infrastructure not needed to.
Speaker 1:How put the power where you need it? Yeah and let it. Let it do what it needs to do, right, right in the, in the look in a, in a micro uh, a micro environment, rather than think of this macro grid environment that we've built over the last hundred years.
Speaker 2:It's exciting, way exciting. And you know I haven't read as much as others on on Tesla, but you know, now probably this is probably going to offend somebody. But you know, edison and JP Morgan kind of screwed him, screwed him over. He was a guy really just trying to solve free power and they saw an opportunity to say, yeah, no, we can make money on that and we could argue about that, you that, how that all manifested itself. But he died, broke. He was that guy motivated by trying to solve the problem.
Speaker 2:And how do I make this better? And I don't know if I'm going to get the number, I'm not even going to venture a number, but I do know that some of his patents or some of his writings are still top secret, like a good portion of them. Yes, you know, and there are those out there that are going to say that Nikola Tesla is going to go down. We can talk about Einstein, we can talk about Oppenheimer. We can talk about, you know, jay Bohr. We talk about some of these very significant people in science. You know, some would say that he will eventually be known as maybe the greatest scientist of maybe the last couple 300 years. I don't know if it's going to bear out, but it's interesting to see where we're going right now with energy and with what he was trying to do in Colorado. He was trying to solve this, I mean he was saying, look, we've got all this.
Speaker 2:As he saw it, we've got all this energy. It's bombarding the earth, it's around us. If we can just tap into it and take it in, it's free right. But you know there and that was what he was trying to accomplish. But it's a, it's a, it's obvious. It's a great story.
Speaker 2:I encourage people to go read more about him and I'll, at some point when we actually, I think, think when we have a more defined presence, we'll start sharing links and things. Like, if we talk about things we'll try to, after each of these episodes, we'll put them on there and say, hey, go check this out, and you know, put what we're seeing, what we're reading, what we've been informed by, what we're stumbling upon. But we'll get those because there's some interesting stuff on Tesla. But it comes back around to what you're saying. There's some interesting stuff going on regarding this, specifically, technology. We were all most of us now who have a cell phone have experienced what it's like to charge our AirPods or something, or you know, without actually having to plug in. Same principle just on a grander scale, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:As you talk about the demise of Nikola Tesla, it brings to mind another book that I read, maybe 10 or no, golly, I think. When I first encountered this book, it was probably in 2006, before the mortgage crisis. The book's called the Creature from Jekyll Island. Have you heard of it? No, I haven't. Okay, you've got to read it. Okay, probably in 2006, before the mortgage crisis.
Speaker 1:Books called the creature from Jekyll Island. Oh, have you heard of it? Oh, I have. Okay, you've got to read it.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's, it's thick, it's a big one, but it's the history of the federal reserve. Oh, it's the, the original meetings of JP Morgan and Rockefeller, robert Rockefeller, all of the, all of the and Robert Rockefeller. There were six tycoons, basically families, the Rothschilds, who met on Jekyll Island, which is an island, I think, in Carolina, back east in the US, and this is, I believe, back in the 20s, and they got together and they created this central banking system of wealthy families. And most people don't understand that the Fed is a foreign corporation, it's not even a US corporation. So we call it the Federal Reserve, but it's owned by foreign banks. So we call it the Federal Reserve, but it's owned by foreign banks, and the Creature from Jekyll Island is a book that's actually been banned.
Speaker 1:It's pretty hard to find. I have a copy. I'll let you borrow it. Okay, you can't get it online. It's something you have to read the. Why was it banned, do you know? Because it's pretty conspiracy theory around the banking system currently and if you really buy into what's being conveyed in the book, it's hard not to. The author presents some pretty interesting allegations around the conspiracies of the Federal Reserve itself and our monetary system and moving, and so when you dive into the conspiracy theories of our banking system, our financial markets globally, and you talk about Tesla and you talk about free power, that is a major threat. If you own an oil company, you don't want free power. That is a major threat. If you own an oil company, you don't want free power.
Speaker 2:If you, if well, I would argue, if you have a government, you don't want any of those. And this, this actually, I think to your point. This has, I think, been one of and we can argue about. This is a whole different thing about, uh, blockchain, because blockchain very similarly makes a lot of governments nervous because you don't have control, you don't have oversight. You know, say, well, for all the, all the nefarious reasons, but also for the um, you know, arguably controlling reasons, yeah, um, and when you, when you can't have banks or big banks, or big institutions, and and governments can't put their fingers and oversight into these things, that makes them all very nervous To have an unfungible record by anyone.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's what it reminds me of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I see a similar corollary into that, what we've seen and trying to kind of deal with this evolution of this technology.
Speaker 1:I bring all of it up because I love conspiracy theories for one.
Speaker 1:But when we're talking about permitting nuclear, when we're talking about developing clean coal technologies, we're talking about all the things we're talking about on power production, energy, mining, all of those commodities, those global commodities markets that we're talking about for tier one, tier two, infrastructure, and getting into the tier three with these advancements, I think we're remiss if we're not considering the fact that there are major forces against this, major forces that do not want this advancement, potentially major forces who have holdings in in certain companies that have financial interests to make sure that things stay status quo, right, yeah, um, that that's probably an interesting conversation on its own that we could research but we've talked about something and maybe this is where this, this is, I don't know, maybe applicable is we've talked about this idea of micro grids and being able to and and and communities, so individual you touched you've, you've touched on it but individual communities, municipalities, counties, states, being able to have more say in their grid, which we haven't, because it was, you know, it's been this notion of it's utility.
Speaker 2:Everybody needs it. We're going to have these kind of national because we've got the. It's a, it's a national infrastructure that has to take place. But is it possible and I think it's more and more and more possible to where you could have, you could have, say, a, a, a grid that services a particular area. And this is this also becomes interesting when you start talking about battery storage and the ability to store, store power, which is really, you know, at scale.
Speaker 2:So if, if, if, you know, because that's that's that's one of the issues is okay, we need to be able to store for when we need it, and you know, it's one thing to just be able to have solar or wind, but what happens when we when, when it for when we need it? And it's one thing to just be able to have solar or wind, but what happens when it's not windy, when the sun's not shining, when we don't have these? So you've got to battery, and this is something we'll talk about coming up, I'm sure, become part of that solution. But then you start talking about the communities, and I know there's communities out there already that have micro communities where they have battery backups, where they're paying a certain, they're paying you. Some of it's been almost like an hoa, where you have a community that has its own power but it's just taken care of, or it's one cost, or it's just factored in and there, or it's just low cost and it's predictable and it's not fluctuating and they have it all the time and it rarely, if ever, goes offline because they're able to service themselves.
Speaker 2:But this goes to that bigger issue of you know what, if, as we want to decentralize talking about the blockchain, talking about banking, talking about, maybe, power and energy what advantages comes or will come from being able to decentralize something that has so much control over our lives and where we really don't have a say in for the most part? And I think that also becomes part of the larger conversation of energy Cause, as people like like us, try to solve some of these things for other reasons. We're going to have excess power in our wherever. You know, if we, if we do what we do right, we might be in a community where we were like, well, we can service the community too, right, because we're already doing this over here for these bigger projects, why not just service the community? Possibly right? I mean, could be, it could be possible, and I think you're going to see some of those things happening as these projects spin up.
Speaker 1:And I think it brings up this really interesting question about decentralization well, listen, I think, I think, if I think, if there are enough of us who have altruistic intentions to develop that decentralized, microgrid way of doing it, I think the communities would absolutely be able to benefit equitable position in even sharing in the profit of that power production or benefiting from dramatically reduced or free power, which we've talked about. Those are all possibilities that don't exist right now. Because right now, with the current state of grid and centralized, and you have one big power company that runs the whole region well, they set the pricing. That runs the whole region well, they set the pricing. So there is no negotiation on that. So this is a very motivating thing For a developer getting into or being in the industrial and energy space. This is top of mind for me, top of mind figuring this microgrid thing out, and you can't ignore the nuclear In fact.
Speaker 2:Fact there are at least three, as we say in utah nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, the nuclear. Sorry, I'm picking my own state spanish fark, yes, is one of those utah, that's one of the funny utah things nuclear.
Speaker 1:There's at least three pitches that I've received in the last two years on folks that claiming to have micro nuclear reactor, salt molten reactor technology. You know most of them have this common theme that you know they're developing a reactor that could fit in size of a cargo container. That's right, which is very interesting for many reasons Obviously, the transportation of that, the placement of that the density.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you could put something on a small, and this goes back to and we talked about it last the property availability. I mean it's one thing to say, oh, we need to do this, but we need 1,000 acres, well, that's not easy necessarily to solve, yeah. But if you can say, oh, okay, we need 10 acres or 15 acres that become these, that that is one part of the solution that no one ever teams to consider is you also need space to do these things, yeah. And so the smaller the technologies you can get dance those you can get, the Encelos technologies the better.
Speaker 1:So, you know, there's two conversations around these new micro-reactors coming up. There's this opportunity of startups approaching us saying hey, you know, would you want to put a few million bucks into the seed capital and help us R&D this, which to me seems really exciting. We've got to really start understanding how do we measure success with that before we deploy any capital. But then there's also this other interesting conversation of if they're developing it, they're going to need facilities. Well, wouldn't it be great if we could have them put up a warehouse on one of our parks? That's right, that would be very consistent with what our programming of our industrial parks look like the Valley Forge Impact Parks. I'd love to see a new technology being developed on one or more of our locations.
Speaker 2:Right, I would too. I would too, and I think you and I both know the reality. No-transcript. This has to be welcomed, yeah, but that's what's exciting about some of these newer technologies is, I think, more people or most people, you know, provided they they have, if they take a moment to get some of the information, we'll be fine with it and we'll get away from the nimbyism of not in my backyard, but it's like, well, okay, if it's proven safe in this, not in the other, and your houses now your power rates have dropped to virtually nothing.
Speaker 2:Is that worth it? And I think those are going to be the conversations coming in the future. Right, but what we can solve is is significant, so for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, you know in in closing thoughts, final thoughts.
Speaker 2:I can't believe we're already up on time here but we didn't think we're gonna have enough to talk about.
Speaker 1:I didn't think we'd have enough to talk about to cover a whole episode here, but we did, and you know. My final thought is unique energy mix. I feel like one of our secrets recipes is this openness and this determination to conjure up unique energy mixes and, to the extent that we can, you know, utilize some of those fossil fuel technologies for baseload. Bring on some of these advanced technologies and let AI help us manage this effectively. Yeah man, how do we not win with that?
Speaker 2:It's a great opportunity. You and I haven't talked about this. There was a company that I became familiar with and they were doing some work in Southern California and they developed an AI ML product a few years back and they had won contracts, I believe from Walmart, and they were going into just their systems their HVAC systems and their energy profiles and they developed a system that basically saved them between 30 and 40 percent just on normal operations, and this was just being smart about how they and when they use their energy and I mean this is just truly just software, just managing it the right way. Yeah, allowed them massive savings. Yeah, so, to your point, there are these things out there that are going to be, um, going to be fantastic and it's going to be fun to part and and to just bring it all together.
Speaker 2:We're not, I don't know, we're not coming at this as energy people necessarily. No, uh, as far as like I've, you know, not growing up in the industry, we're very agnostic, right. We're saying, okay, what's out there? What's valuable solutions, yeah, results driven right yeah, that's what? Entrepreneurs, exactly what, how can we get from it's valuable Solutions driven Results, driven Right.
Speaker 2:Entrepreneurs, exactly how can we get from here to here, in the best way, efficient way, what works for everybody and as opposed to oh no, this energy is better than this. And it's like what works and then what fits within what we're trying to accomplish on our sites, which is we do have a mind towards sustainability. So we're looking at all. We want to see it move that way, but we're not limiting ourselves. We're just saying like, let's look at everything, let's look at the pros and cons of everything and let's let's make let's make those kinds of decisions that work uh, work for, you know, for most, everyone or everyone. Like we want the bulk of the. We want to, we want to have those really good, broad-based solutions and we're not excluding anything that's possible, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think that's a phenomenal final thought and hopefully we get some good questions, Hopefully, Hopefully we get some questions corrections. Yes, yes, absolutely. Thanks again for chiming in with us guys. We look forward to the next episode. See you then. Thank you.
