Ryan Marcum: [00:00:00] Digital can't be 100% tested like analog can. 

Digital is no longer a four-letter word. 

Advanced reactors, that technology is, it's just booming right now. Regulation is changing as well to help that momentum along.

Nuclear is greener than people think, with less waste than you would imagine. And it's safer than you would imagine.

The amount of nuclear waste that the US has produced since its inception, it can fit on a football field. Less than three stories high.

Now you can have one control center securely communicating with multiple sites all over the US. 

In 10 years, I don't think that you're going to see any AI controlling power levels, safety rod movement, anything of that nature.

We're taking baby steps here. We're going to gain the trust. We're only doing documentation right now. We can't have any of those false positives.

Andrew Kazlow: My guest today is Ryan Marcum, a nuclear instrumentation and controls engineer who's helping shape how we [00:01:00] build and operate advanced reactors.

From research reactors to demonstration projects, Ryan offers unique insight into the technical realities of bringing new nuclear designs to market. In this episode, we explore how digital technology is transforming nuclear operations, examine the very careful integration of AI into nuclear systems and learn what investors should watch for when evaluating claims about advanced reactor designs.

I hope you enjoy learning from Ryan as much as I did.

Ryan, thanks for being with me today.

Ryan Marcum: Yeah, good to be here.

Andrew Kazlow: So Ryan, I'd love to just start with what is happening right now in your world that is exciting and getting a lot of attention?

Ryan Marcum: my world, my world is the, is nuclear I&C, Instrumentation and Control. We don't get a lot of excitement, which is, it's odd that we are getting a little bit, though. Advanced reactors, [00:02:00] that technology is, it's just booming right now. Regulation is changing as well to help that momentum along.

Specifically in I&C digital is no longer a four-letter word. It's been a four-letter word for the past, gosh, decades until, six, five years ago. So we're seeing a lot of jumps in all kinds of areas. Seeing just a true Nuclear Renaissance, other than the fake one. They're the stop and start that we experienced back right before Fukushima.

And then, uh, AI, AI is getting into nuclear as well. And we're starting to see some effects in instrumentation and controls, and reactor physics and all of that. So it's honestly, as exciting as nuclear gets, this is it. I mean, it's, it is getting exciting.

Andrew Kazlow: I love it. Okay, I'd love to ask about all four of those categories. Maybe let's start about the advanced reactors. So, first off, explain what you mean by advanced reactor, and then specifically on [00:03:00] the I&C side, how you're seeing these developments kind of affect your work day to day.

Ryan Marcum: Sure. So advanced reactor is anything that's not a typical pressurized or boiling water reactor that's been put into commercial service since like the 60s 70s. We've got two types of reactors that have dominated the US industry for that. PWR is Pressurized Water Reactors and BWR's Boil Water Reactors. Advanced reactors or any kind of reactor outside of that, you can have something using molten salt as a medium for dispersing heat, triso fuel particles that are no longer rods containing uranium, but balls about the size of a golf ball and a little bit bigger. The options are not truly endless, but virtually, yeah. It's whatever you can think of now is being funded by the investor space.

We see that it's a clean energy, that there's a lot of space and a lot of [00:04:00] desire for clean energy, especially with data centers popping up all over the place and are greater growing reliance on energy. Nuclear fits the bill. It's a steady base load power. It's inviting a lot of speculation, a lot of new innovation into the space.

Andrew Kazlow: And what does that do to your day to day? I know you're involved primarily in the I&C capacity. Are you deeply engaged in kind of developing the control structures for a lot of these advanced reactor designs? How does your work fit in to that? 

Ryan Marcum: Yeah, I didn't imagine it would, um, up until a few years ago, I was pretty focused on research reactors, which are anywhere about hundredth of the size of a commercial standard reactor that produces power. These don't produce power. They are inherently safe. They won't blow up and they're usually at a university.

There's about 25 of them across the US right now operating. I didn't think [00:05:00] that the advanced reactor industry would suck me in, but turns out there's a really smart way of going about fleshing out and proving the concept of an advanced reactor. The first of a kind that's ever been built. It's got a lot of risk there from a regulatory perspective of, you know, do we build it and then try to regulate it?

If it doesn't pass approval, did we waste our money? What they do is, they start out with a very small example of it. Something called like a demonstration reactor. It's maybe, a hundredth of the size, maybe a 10th of the size and the regulations are a bit eased on that because the fuel is

quite a bit safer. It's smaller, it's more manageable and the cost to implement and to test it out is, you know, about correlated to the size of it. A lot of the regulations that you can use in a research reactor can be translated over to a demonstration reactor. [00:06:00] Not in a way that you can't use that for a commercial reactor.

So I've been helping licensing demonstration reactors, such as the one at ACU Abilene Christian University. They're trying out a brand new type of reactor. Something that's only been done by, I think Oak Ridge National Lab in the 60s, it's called a Molten Salt Reactor, and they're putting it on ACU's campus.

It's a one megawatt, which is very small compared to the, you know, 200, 300 megawatt reactors sites, depending on how many units are at a site. The students, they're going to get a lot of benefit out of it, a lot out of testing the new technology. So the benefit of uh, ACU getting that as the students get a new reactor technology to train on the reactor, then gets approved out at a very small scale. And a molten salt reactor isn't something we've seen in a long time. If we do see that it's viable and we fully expect that it is, we can scale it up and there's a lot of

inherent safety mechanisms with using molten [00:07:00] salt. There's a lot of efficiencies with how the salt regulates the heat, transfers the heat, that'll translate into higher electricity output. And that's just one of the examples of a demonstration reactor. So we've also got Kairos Power, they're doing the Hermes Reactor.

They're starting out with two small reactors that are stepping out or stepping up rather, in size. So they'll prove the first one and they'll prove the second one. And they're doing a progression to get up to the commercial sized, fully electric and, power producing reactor. That's long story short or it's a long story longer.

That's how I've gotten into advanced reactor technology.

Andrew Kazlow: So Ryan, could you walk me through, maybe let's double click on the molten salt reactor as a good example of pretty new technology, a new model essentially for these reactor designs or old, but being made new. And then it was first developed in the 60s now being [00:08:00] re-rolled out in its evolved format.

Walk me through the macro commercialization timeline. Step one is research reactor. Step two is demo. Step three is full scale. Maybe taking a step back, like what's the full evolution of a novel, first of a kind reactor design actually look like? And I imagine this is many years, decades in progression, but maybe talk me through the major steps that you, timelines and then kind of key regulatory checkpoints that would be relevant as it progresses.

Ryan Marcum: Sure. So, the one specific to Abilene Christian University is, it actually started as a concept in 2016. Things are really moving fast in this space, as far as going from just an idea to putting something in the ground, which they started, they broke ground two years ago. So in less than eight years, they've got a building and they're working on putting the reactor in it.[00:09:00] 

How it started was, Dr. Rusty Towell at ACU, gave a, something of a Ted Talk or something similar and, uh, an investor, an oil and gas guy, from background name of Doug Robinson, approached Rusty and this is all secondhand information. This is how he tells it. So, you know, don't hold me to it. But after the talk and said, Hey, I'm interested in looking into getting something into energy

different than oil and gas, but nuclear sounds like the right space. They began talks. Doug funded this initial phase out of his own pocket. And then, uh, once they saw that it was gaining momentum, saw that there was some plausibility, got a few other investors together and, um, they

started the licensing process in 2018, I believe. And we received our initial approval for construction this year. We submitted last year [00:10:00] was approved in a pretty quick amount of time. The nuclear regulatory commission has gotten on the ball, honestly.

I want to give them some credit for how they've been organizing and prioritizing these types of licenses and these steps in the regulatory process. And then, now they are working on the

operating license. They've engaged an engineering firm. And by the way, this company that Doug started is called Natura Resources. I want to give them a shout out. That's the name of the actual commercialization company that will take the design at ACU and put it into, you know, all kinds of different plants and modular designs, who knows what.

We expect to have an actual research reactor, the research reactor at ACU completed, up and running 2026, I believe. And then depending on how that runs, what we find out about it, how we need to change the design, it could be anywhere [00:11:00] 2029 to 2030 that a commercialized unit is, is up and running,

or at least being tested. We've seen some demand from that. There's already been commercial talks, just like you've seen with the AI data centers that are scooping up MOUs with these advanced reactor companies. Facebook just put out a request for quote, Google's married to at the hip with X-Energy and so on.

So yeah, Natura Resources is going to quickly become a big name in energy. And I think data center support, especially in Texas, the Texas government's really taking it seriously. Exciting to see where that goes

Andrew Kazlow: And would you say that timeline, so 10-ish years from idea to quote unquote commercial scale, would you ballpark as you look forward to some of these other advanced designs? Is that a realistic timeline? Obviously plus or minus a few years based on any [00:12:00] roadblocks along the way. But as you think about some of these other modular designs, you know, it's try so a few old stuff that's different from what we've seen historically. Is that a reasonable timeframe for an investor to kind of think about from idea to commercial best case?

Ryan Marcum: Best case, I would say starting now yes but if you look at the case like NuScale with their small modular reactor, they had to take the lumps for the bulk of the advanced reactor groups. They started back in 2012, if not earlier, I believe, but their concept at Oregon State. They've had a lot of licensing hurdles. They basically had to train the NRC on how to license, inspect and qualify

a new type of reactor that doesn't fit the mold that they're used to. And it was very expensive for them. Took several years to do what current advanced reactor companies are being able to do in a year now. So if [00:13:00] you would have asked me back then, back 10 years ago, I'd say 20 years. But now 10 years doesn't seem too far off if you have your ducks in a row.

Andrew Kazlow: Ryan, it's a fascinating point because I see so much similarity to the medical device industry, where if, if there is a predicate device for a similar use case, the path to approval and regulatory, greenlights is so much cleaner and faster, but being the first one, right? If there is no predicate, if there's no existing device for that particular use case, all bets are off in terms of the complexity, so to speak.

So it sounds like a very comparable concept here. Who are the other major players that you're watching that are kind of pioneering these new approaches? You mentioned NuScale who else is putting in the hard work and taking the lumps, as you said, that we should be watching.

Ryan Marcum: Yeah. I want to shout out to, USNC. They went bankrupt [00:14:00] this year. They took a lot of lumps. They were one of the earlier ones too. They also had a research reactor design that was going to go in at the University of Illinois. Or Urbana Chicago. How do you forget how you say there? Um, the city name there, but the, the main campus at UIC.

Um, Hopefully they'll be picked up. Especially if a lot of your investors are trying to pool together. I think they're looking for investors and they've got a solid design, honestly. I mentioned X-Energy with Google. well, a dark horse that is just now coming through the ranks, and I think they're doing it really, really cleverly, is Aalo, A-A-L-O and they're close to my heart because they're in Austin, here in Texas. They just opened up a new facility, and they put some roots down here. What's clever about them is they're taking the design that INL, Idaho National Labs, has or is currently vetting. They've already built it, and they're going to co-qualify it with them.

They're going to take advantage of a lot of what INL is doing, incorporate it with a very safe fuel that's been in research tractors since the 60s as [00:15:00] well. And they're not really reinventing the wheel here. They're just combining a few proven elements into what I think is, still an innovative concept.

They just went through a seed round. I think they're $30M I want to say. So they've got some momentum behind them.

Who else? You've got Kairos Power, like I've said. And these are just the US-based. There's several that are outside of the US, a few in Canada, I know. You've got a BWXT. They've got one, they're working on a, I believe, Pele for the government. It's supposed to be a small movable, micro reactor.

You can guess as to what they might be using that for all kinds of things and the army. The, you know, Corps of Engineers could use something like that. And forward bases, just speculating here, but I think that's about it. That's all that comes to mind for me.

Andrew Kazlow: Let's talk a little bit more about SMRs. You just [00:16:00] mentioned one, that feels like a buzzword that seems to be making its way into common language. What is the inside baseball on what's happening in the SMR space? Like what's the internal kind of industry level conversation looking like around the development of

small modular reactor technology, which has so many promising upside, but I'm sure there's tons of complexities and challenges around that, that the average investor wouldn't have context for. What's the inside baseball for how the industry is considering some of that?

Ryan Marcum: Sure. I mean, there's a lot of hype, right? I like to be more of a realist and uh, admit that a lot of these are just paper reactors at this point. Outside of proven concepts like Aalo's using with their fuel. That ACU and Natura Resources are using with the molten salt reactor that was developed by, you know, or R&L. They're [00:17:00] good concepts.

The math behind them is great, but they haven't been proven. Like, Admiral Rickover and said, he's got a really good paper and he wrote this back decades ago about paper reactors. I would advise anyone who, uh, who wants to get into this space and doesn't want to get swept up in the hype to read his essay that he wrote.

Now he's a Navy guy that helped introduce nuclear to the Navy and make it a possibility. He's kind of the godfather of Navy Nukes.

Andrew Kazlow: We'll definitely include that in the show notes, and I will certainly check that out and include it in the research. So it sounds like there's a lot that needs to happen before SMR has become reality.

Yeah. So my question is, Here's your crystal ball on what the future of this industry looks like. SMR is getting a lot of hype and is likely to get a lot of capital over the next few years surrounding that hype. Walk me through kind of your best case, worst case scenario on timing for when we might start to [00:18:00] see some of that convert into real life test cases, things that are actually working in the real world.

If it ever does happen. 

Ryan Marcum: think best case, we're already seeing some estimates that were aggressive slip years, a couple of years, three years. I know a lot of people were thinking that we would have, some of these reactors starting construction in 2025. Doesn't look like that's going to happen for one reason or another, whether it's regulatory or funding.

It just, you know, natural causes best case scenario. I'd say that we would start construction on some of these like the ACU, I fully believe that it'll start construction by 2026, possibly done by 2027. They're hoping to be sooner. Giving them some leeway there, Kairos Power as well. They seem to be hitting quite a few of their marks.

They're a little bit behind where they originally thought, but still impressive with their schedule. I think Aalo's Collaboration with INL will help speed [00:19:00] them along, depending on INL's funding, you never know. So I would say by 2030, we're going to have some actual reactors being built, if not being tested with

fuel. And fuel is another thing that people are starting to worry about fuel supply, uranium production. These different new types of fuel, who's going to make them are we going to be able to test them, fully vet them and certify that they're safe to use in time. And with all of the demand that's being placed in the next five years by all of these new concepts, that's a huge push.

It's a huge demand that, uh, the current infrastructures not able to take.

Andrew Kazlow: Ryan, if you were starting a company tomorrow, drop everything you're doing now started a company tomorrow and you had to be working in the reactor fuel space to help address some of the pain points. Where would you focus? What would [00:20:00] be your path forward? 

Ryan Marcum: So the DOE is beating me to it. DOE has been great at dumping money into nuclear supporting very, pretty smartly. They've had some focused grants and funds. They just rolled out in this last month with a new grant award for six different companies. I want to say upwards of, gosh, $20, $30 million, if not more than that to fund infrastructure, growth, uranium production, and mining, really get the the supply lines opened up.

Andrew Kazlow: So, you would go get one of those grants and just double click on some part of the supply. I guess say more about that because this stuff's not easy to produce and it's not the only fuel. It's part of the key part of the fuel, obviously, but like, Say more about specifically, like tactically, how you would do that, where you would put your company, what you would focus on, what part of the [00:21:00] supply chain, get a little bit more tactical for me.

Ryan Marcum: It's a fun question.

I think supply chain. I think it would be in delivery, perhaps storage. Um, cause you're going to have these companies focused on making it. But, the government, specifically a group within INL, is the one that coordinates and distributes, holds, ships.

If you could partner or privatize some of that, commercialize it, and certify your process. I think there's some value there to be had.

Andrew Kazlow: So, you would, you would become the UPS of uranium, essentially, like that would be the opportunity you would point to.

Ryan Marcum: I think so. There's a lot of restrictions in storing that, which there should be. Absolutely. I think you could probably find some innovation there.

Andrew Kazlow: Love it. And where would you base your company? If you had to pick [00:22:00] there's research going on nationally, let's say it had to be in the US, where would you locate your HQ?

Ryan Marcum: Centrally. Um, you know, somewhere in the Midwest, somewhere that is nuclear friendly because they're going to, you know, you're going to be storing fuel. I wouldn't do it in Nevada. They've had a history of promising and then not keeping their word. Possibly Texas, New Mexico.

Andrew Kazlow: They have the whip plant right on the border there. There's probably some efficiencies to gain by being right next to that. It's already certified environmentally, wide open space. So yeah, I would say next to the whip plant. 

Okay. Let's pivot a little bit to this digital and AI conversation. So you said something really interesting. And that is that, six, seven years ago, digital was a four letter word, but now you're also seeing AI in some nuclear applications.

Andrew Kazlow: Now, to me, that is a massive jump from base level digitization to what's [00:23:00] sick and artificial intelligence on some piece of the servicing of these reactors. So explain more about, how that progression has happened. And what do you mean when you say digital was a four letter word?

Ryan Marcum: Now we're getting close to my heart again. You know, before I got into the industry, I mean, I would say 40 years nuclear has lagged behind oil and gas, any other industry, petrochemical that uses digital instrumentation. Digital was a four letter word, meaning, let me back up some, everything in nuclear has to be tested, qualified, very rigorous safety standards.

There's a 18 chapter program that all nuclear industry vendors, plants, everybody touching nuclear has to go through and qualify their processes too. One of those things is [00:24:00] testability and digital. I don't know if many people know this, or, I mean, you might want to fight me on this. This isn't my take.

This is the regulatory body's take, but digital can't be 100% tested like analog can, because of the microprocessors it's considered not fully testable and therefore not fully certifiable. That's why from a regulatory standpoint, nuclear has been a four letter word, been very hard to get digital systems, even non safety systems, systems that don't really touch the safety critical aspects of the plant into plants.

You have to even, even for those, you have to prove that they can't have any kind of an effect on the safety systems, which is reasonable. Recently, we've had a a new wave of regulatory personnel. You've seen that the personnel that started up reactors back in the sixties and [00:25:00] seventies have been retiring and the old mindset of analog is good enough.

The way we used to do it as safe. So let's keep doing that, is slowly heading off into the sunset. And new workers coming up who are gaining traction in the regulatory committee are younger. They've been around digital their whole lives. So it makes sense that they're more comfortable with it. And I think that's been most of the impetus for the allowance of digital.

Now they still hold a very high level of qualifying requirements for digital, but they understand that you can do it risk-based and you can do it performance-based. All these types of testing to layer on top of each other, to ensure that yes, it is a safe technology, even though it's not fully 100% testable.

We have a high level of satisfaction that it will perform when it needs to.

Andrew Kazlow: And so what does that mean mechanically? Like, as you look at the development [00:26:00] implementation of these demonstration reactors, newer designs, like what's different mechanically about the designs in language that a five-year old could understand, what makes that different in terms of the electronics and kind of the systems surrounding these reactors?  

Ryan Marcum: so the first thing that that does is when you digitize a system, you now have data where you previously didn't have any data. So you can analyze that data. You can find efficiencies. You can also predict failures if you start to see trends in how these instruments are performing. Um, so it inherently makes this system safer, which makes the plant more predictable, it makes processes

more economic to run if they're more predictable. So there's a whole downstream effect of these plants are now costing the rate, the electricity rate payers list. If they're in a deregulated market. That's a real [00:27:00] benefit to, Joe Blow, you and I. Additionally, what it's going to do for advanced reactors is

allow for digital communication. So a lot of these advanced reactors, especially micro reactors, small modular reactors, the modularity of them means that they are going to distribute multiple of these units that are producing power remotely across all kinds of distances, across all kinds of regions and areas.

And they're taking advantage of cost savings by having one control center. Now you can't do that with analog because you have. You're very restricted by the lack of data that can be communicated and copper cable runs over that distance are just A. Not electronically viable, B. Not financially viable either.

You turn that into digital and you can do fiber optic runs. You can possibly do wireless. There's a lot [00:28:00] of R&D going into wireless communications. Now I would also, if I was starting a company, invest heavily in secure architectures for wireless. And so back to the distributed modular aspect of these advanced reactors, now you can have one control center securely communicating with multiple sites all over the US. And you're having way less personnel run each reactor, which means the reactor can be smaller because the personnel cost to the technology and the infrastructure cost is still in a decent ratio to where the overheads low enough. Now, or I'll stop there and let you, let you ask, I was just going to go into AI, but you might want to,

Andrew Kazlow: I will. I'll ask a question about that.

Ryan Marcum: okay.

Andrew Kazlow: So how does all of this connect to AI still, as you're talking great, we've got some advancements, we're now involving the digital world and welcome to the 1990s. How do we go from there to implementing AI? This relatively new [00:29:00] concept.  

Ryan Marcum: Very carefully. I like how, uh, how Trey Lauderdale of Atomic Canyon says it. If you listen to a few of his interviews, he says, you know, we're taking baby steps here. We're going to gain the trust. We're only doing documentation right now. We can't have any of those false positives that's, you know, where we ask a question in AI and it gives us something that seems right.

But when you pull the curtain back at, you know, the data doesn't match, just very cautiously building these models off of data. We've got 80 years of it now. So, that's the best way I can say is we're applying that AI to documentation, which is fairly safe, right? You're going to have a human checking the documentation.

Human who knows what they're doing. So all that is, is just gaining efficiencies with perhaps filling out templates, doing some low level stuff. We're applying it to reactor physics, where the human is [00:30:00] taking data, dumping it into the AI program. The AI program spits out recommendations, some efficiencies, some, really actually frontline predictive insights. Insights that we haven't seen ever in nuclear and they're able to fine tune their processes. But it's not like AI is controlling anything in the plant yet or AI is directly feeding data into the plant in any way. So you're still having that safety gap of a human checking things and a human using reason to say, okay, is this right?

Is this along the lines of what we're doing and then making sure that it fits with what they're doing in a very safe manner?

Andrew Kazlow: Let's set reality to the side for a second and run a thought experiment of, let's say I believe that the demand curve for energy is going to continue to go up.

More and more of these plants are going to get developed. Some of these technologies mature a little bit more and we're a decade in the future. How do you see AI being [00:31:00] implemented at that time in some of these more modern reactor designs?

Ryan Marcum: Well, it's fun to think about. Well, you've got companies like Blue Wave AI Labs who, they're creating tools for that. They're restricted by how much AI they can put in a plant, but you're seeing innovative thinkers like Constellation, which has a fleet of reactors, mostly in the Northwest, a little bit in the Midwest or Northeast. Um, in Midwest, They're implementing things like, checking for, efficiencies in their reactor physics, in their moisture control, in all kinds of things within the plant, which is really innovative and that will build and allow people to connect documentation and regulatory

downstream processes that other companies are doing using AI. You connect that data that comes from that to these in [00:32:00] plant, intrasystem AI tools, which then pump out more data on the downstream documentation side. So eventually you're going to see AI horizontally integrated, whether it's, you know, among several companies or who knows what kind of MNA might happen.

But I see that being the first really neat aspect of taking a lot of the mundane work out of these nuclear plant workers, procedures, and processes. Now, I don't know. I mean, it depends on where AI gets to in 10 years, if it can be proven. And again, it has to be very testable. If we can prove to do that, then you might see AI controlling some lower level processes in 10 years.

You'll see a lot of efficiencies coming out of the different steam or heat processing systems. I don't think that you'll ever, I mean, ever, right? Like who knows in 20 years, I might be laughing at this, but in [00:33:00] 10 years, I don't think that you're going to see any AI controlling power levels, safety rod movement, anything of that nature.

Andrew Kazlow: Ryan, what's one counterintuitive reality that you feel like outsiders to this industry just do not understand no matter how many times you try to communicate it. Like, are there any things that you just get so frustrated about when, you know, non experts in this industry talk about nuclear energy?

Ryan Marcum: Nuclear is greener than people think, with less waste than you would imagine. And it's safer than you would imagine. A lot of people don't realize, especially with the television show that came out about Chernobyl. That no one died from Fukushima, Nuclear as a whole has a, Excellent, excellent safety related safety record. [00:34:00] If you look across the entire lifetime of nuclear compared to any other energy producing industry. You look at the amount of deaths in nuclear very extremely low compared to all the other major electricity producing industries. We can talk about waste as well. The amount of nuclear waste that the Us. has produced since its inception, which is, what, 80 years now, a little bit over, it can fit on a football field. And it's, I think at this point, less than three stories high.

Andrew Kazlow: You say that? It's crazy. I had Rod Adams, with Nucleation Capital on the show like just recently, and he was talking about how all the Navy's nuclear, like used, spent nuclear cores are housed in one building.

Yeah, 

Ryan Marcum: and that includes, that's not just the [00:35:00] uranium, right? Like that's the core. That's the shielding around it. That's the container that the shielding resides in. It's everything.

Andrew Kazlow: Amazing. Ryan, what else do you think investors should think about or look into as they get a better sense for this space? Let's say you met an investor at a conference and they're trying to learn more about the space. Where would you point them to continue learning more and leveling up their thesis?

Ryan Marcum: There's some good podcasts out there. Titans of Nuclear was one, actually Last Energy, that's another advanced reactor company. They're neat. They're interesting because it began as a podcast. Their CEO, I believe, ran the podcast for a while and he spent years taking nuclear executives, startups, plant operators onto his show and sussing out kind of like Tim Ferriss does, like the best parts of each plant, each [00:36:00] vendor, each process, At the end of it, he realized, I think that he had the perfect plant in mind and that's how he started his advanced reactor design was taking the best of what he'd learned from his podcast.

So I would say, I'd say podcasts.

Andrew Kazlow: i'm not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna open a nuclear Company or plant after this series if that's where you're going. That's not gonna happen.

Ryan Marcum: don't know, man. I mean, you could probably like, you know, throw a rock and hit a group of investors now that would give you 30 million in the next week or so. So it's a pretty, pretty hot time to be in nuclear. You might want to rethink that.  

Maybe I should maybe I should Sorry, I interrupted you keep going. 

Do not go onto the Nuclear Regulatory Committee's website, atoms. That's just a mess of things that we're working on sorting out. Where else to learn? Unfortunately, there's not a great PR or marketing effort in the nuclear industry. We don't have a database where it's easy to learn about these things.

Ryan Marcum: Generation Atomic is another, they're pretty young hip group to learn from. Get on LinkedIn and just start following these execs and, uh, start seeing what they post about. There's a lot of hype in nuclear right now. So it's pretty easy to see what's going on, on social media.

Andrew Kazlow: You mentioned hype a couple times before I leave you, what are the other things that you think are [00:37:00] over hyped and what are a couple things that are maybe under hyped in your opinion?

Ryan Marcum: Overhyped is our progress. We like to brag about or frame things as, you know, we've done it already when we haven't . You'll see that a lot that really gets under my skin. We're a ways away from some of these things becoming a reality. And they're trumpeting in them like they're going to happen tomorrow or that they're already underway.

I think we need to, and I get it, we're all excited. But we can't mislead the public. And such a critical industry. Such a safety forward industry. We need to be gaining as much trust as we can with the public, especially with the reputation of nuclear and how damaged it's been under hyped. 

I would say, standard currently running, currently operating commercial reactor designs. I think a lot of the hype is, or most, if not [00:38:00] all the hype is around these advanced reactor technologies, but we just built and put online two commercial plants, Vogtle 3 and 4, V-O-G-T-L-E for your listeners who want to look it up.

Ryan Marcum: And there's so much momentum, so much invested in the workers knowledge of this, that we have to keep that up. It was expensive to do the first one, but just like any thing that you restart after a long time of being dormant, the first one's going to be expensive. The next few, if we can keep that up, if we can hype those just as much, the price is going to drop off significantly.

And they're just as important. They run just as well. They've been proven as a technology. The nuclear regulatory hurdles aren't going to be near as significant. So I think the current operating plants are severely underhyped.

Andrew Kazlow: Just to be clear, that's generation three reactor designs. I'm getting my generations. I'm learning. Is that right?

Ryan Marcum: I want to say, don't hold me to that [00:39:00] either. 

Andrew Kazlow: Okay, if you don't know that, I for sure don't know.

Ryan Marcum: The ones since the 70s, right? The ones that you see all over the place or not all over the place with the ones that you're used to, if you've seen one.

Andrew Kazlow: Ryan, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for making the time to join. I have learned a lot and very much look forward to staying in touch and seeing where you take our demo and research reactors of the future.

Ryan Marcum: Well, I appreciate it, Andrew, thanks for reaching out. I've enjoyed it. And, uh, these were some really good questions. Made me think and I'll keep chewing on some of this, but yeah, good luck. And thanks for getting some interest going in nuclear. 

Andrew Kazlow: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Diligent Observer. I'm your host, Andrew Kazlow. And if you're looking to make better bets as an angel investor, subscribe for more at thediligentobserver.substack.com.