S3E14: The Nuclear Energy Institute's Matt Crozat discusses new nuclear and SMRs as part of nuclear power's role in the clean-energy transition

There's something like a couple dozen proposals now for development of small modular reactors (SMRs), widely seen as the future of nuclear power as a participant in the clean-energy transition. Publicly traded NuScale* is at the vanguard of this trend. We spoke with the Nuclear Energy Institute's Matt Crozat about the prospects for SMRs and nuclear's role in the clean-energy transition at a time when we thought the first of Georgia Power's new Vogtle nuclear power units would have already been brought online. But a "degraded hydrogen seal" was only the latest delay for the $35 billion expansion project funded by ratepayers captive to a monopoly utility supplier. We also spoke at a time when Putin's invasion of Ukraine became even more fraught amid reports Russian troops may have planted explosives at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant they've commandeered.

Crozat sees the prospect of new nuclear technologies and the growing acceptance among the public and policy makers of nuclear's critical role in the clean-energy transition as reasons for optimism on nuclear's future.

"We have as a starting point all of these utilities that have commitments to be carbon-free by mid-century. And that's creating a lot of pressure looking for technologies that can help bring low-carbon solutions into the portfolio, which also requires making sure you have the ability to provide the reliability and resilience to the grid that we need to have that be successful. And nuclear is standing out as one of the possible technologies that can do a lot of the roles alongside of wind and solar and batteries and these others, but it's really becoming something – it needs something that looks like nuclear to make the system work," Crozat says. "A lot of people are coming to this conclusion. At the same moment, we have new technologies that are offering nuclear in different packages than before. And it's really changing the calculus as people are approaching this as a possibility."

Our conversation touches on new nuclear, the apparent lack of investor interest in NuScale despite its regulatory progress, carbon taxes, nuclear waste disposal, competitive markets versus monopoly regulation, exporting U.S. nuclear technology, and the prospects for sabotage at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant.

As for Zaporizhzhia, Crozat doubts Russia will sabotage the plant: "Russia itself has a very long-term strategic interest in having nuclear energy being a viable strategic outcome. They want to sell reactors, too."




 

Transcript

EMP S3E14: Matt Crozat, NEI executive director of strategy policy development
(transcript edited for clarity)

EMP: Welcome to the Energy Markets Podcast. I’m your host, Bryan Lee. And today we’re going to delve into nuclear power’s role in the clean energy transition. With us today is Matt Crozat, executive director of strategy policy development with the Nuclear Energy Institute. Matt, welcome to the podcast.

MC: Thank you for having me.

EMP: Well, these are pretty auspicious times for nuclear power. There seem to be a dozen or more various interests pursuing next-generation small modular reactor designs. And it looked like Southern Company’s Georgia Power was going to have the first unit of the Vogtle project expansion online. Are we seeing the oft-sought nuclear energy renaissance?

MC: Well, I'm old enough to remember the last renaissance so I try not to use that terminology because that's been pretty branded. But we are seeing a remarkable range of interest in what nuclear energy can be for the future of the power system. And even more broadly. We have as a starting point all of these utilities that have commitments to be carbon-free by mid-century. And that's creating a lot of pressure looking for technologies that can help bring low-carbon solutions into the portfolio, which also requires making sure you have the ability to provide the reliability and resilience to the grid that we need to have that be successful. And nuclear is standing out as one of the possible technologies that can do a lot of the roles alongside of wind and solar and batteries and these others, but it's really becoming something – it needs something that looks like nuclear to make the system work. You know, a lot of people are coming to this conclusion. At the same moment, we have new technologies that are offering nuclear in different packages than before. And it's really changing the calculus as people are approaching this as a possibility.

EMP: Even some environmental groups are starting to see a different light when it comes to nuclear. So as I mentioned, the Vogtle expansion is very close to having the first unit come online. They thought they would have it online by the time we're speaking now, but there was a degraded hydrogen seal that they had to repair. And the second expansion unit is close behind in terms of coming online. But the project is years overdue and costs have more than doubled. Last thing I saw was it had gone up to $35 billion in costs. And other contemporaneous efforts to build new nuclear reactors in neighboring South Carolina and Florida were scuttled because of rising costs. While it cost consumers in those states millions of dollars, they did not incur the added costs of completing those units. Vogtle was able to press on in the face of a doubling in costs but there seems to be a growing backlash. Is the Vogtle experience the death knell for new boiling water reactors? Are SMRs the future of the industry.

MC: Well, so a couple of things along there. The actual design that is being pursued and deployed in Georgia is what's called a pressurized water reactor. We have a lot of these in operation right now, about two thirds of the U.S. fleet is of this design. But this is the new one. We haven't done one with this design itself. We hadn't been building them for quite a while. And what we ran into was the realization that the task of standing up that supply chain and that workforce was more daunting than I think was appreciated going into the project. You do get at something that has been, I think, a real takeaway from the industry, however, over the last 10 years or so, which is that thinking about ways to provide nuclear that's not at the 1000-megawatt unit. Instead, something that's more in the hundreds, or even less, begins to change the economic calculus. That the amount of upfront capital at risk is just scaled lower and it creates a different risk profile for companies trying to understand how nuclear fits along with their other technologies. So, I think having nuclear available in smaller packages, it opens the possibilities for a business environment that is able to address the risk profile and have it managed more along the lines of the kinds of powerplants they used to building in the past.

EMP: Well, you know, I think I can thank the nuclear industry for the trajectory my career took over the last 30-plus years. My first newspaper job was in Matagorda County, Texas, in the mid-1980s, where I had the opportunity to cover what at the time was one of the last new nuclear power plants to be built in the United States. There was the South Texas Nuclear Project in Matagorda County. And I guess Comanche Creek was also close to being finished at that point. But the safety issue was paramount back then. And there were, of course, lingering concerns in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown. Those were exacerbated by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster that had just occurred. And STP officials were straining to explain how the Soviet Union's graphite-cooled reactor design was different from the reactor design under construction then. And then in 2011, we saw the Fukushima meltdown after a tsunami caused by a really powerful earthquake that moved the entire Japanese archipelago meters. But this prompted Germany to move away from nuclear power completely on safety grounds, despite having to up their carbon footprint by activating fossil fuel units to replace it. So what do you say to those who maintain that nuclear power is too dangerous to pursue?

MC: So it’s interesting that, at the same time you have countries like Germany move away from nuclear, we've seen a broader set of countries turn to nuclear as part of the solution for a lower-carbon future and energy security. And a large part of that is actually the safety record. There were high-profile events, but these plants are operated in a safe manner. And the U.S., in particular, has the highest levels of safety that we've seen in the history of the industry, because we've really focused on those metrics as part of the core of operating these plants. Worldwide, we've seen even in Europe, countries in Eastern Europe in particular, looking at nuclear as how they're going to move away from coal in driving their economies. And I think what that comes to is this almost generational realization that there's a climate problem that is really looming over these societies, and nuclear is part of that solution. And so looking for different ways of designing nuclear that learns from what we've experienced in the past, that has increased use of passive systems to ensure safety, having smaller units that have less nuclear material in the first place, always sort of make sure that I can have a safety profile that's consistent with the widespread deployment to address this larger looming crisis that the countries are seeing on the climate front.

EMP: There's got to be at least a dozen interests that are pursuing some sort of small modular reactor design. Do you have a definitive count? Ballpark it?

MC: So I think if you look in the United States and Canada, you think on the order of a couple of dozen projects that are being in some stage of development. What's most interesting, I think, as a starting point is looking at this range of support that we've seen from the U.S. government in trying to get some of these first movers going. So there have been efforts in the past to bring some of these small modular reactors through the licensing process. And now that's broken more towards initial deployment. There's a project that will be sited at the Idaho National Laboratory to build the first small modular reactor plant of the NuScale design, which has been really trying to think very fundamentally about how to use a small reactor to have safety at the core of the system and create a power plant that can be widely deployed. And that's been one of the first designs. We've seen more than that, too. We have more interest now in trying to think more creatively about the fuels that you can use in a reactor, the way you cool it and kind of opening the business range of opportunities for some of these designs. These are advanced reactors that are seeing support from the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program from the Department of Energy to help fund some of these first projects to demonstration. This is a very different profile from what we've seen in the past of good ideas that were being talked about in PowerPoint presentations are now turning into actual projects and the support behind them and that's a really exciting place to be.

EMP: NuScale’s design seems to be the furthest along. They actually got their design approved earlier this year by the NRC, right?

MC: They’re the furthest along through the licensing process. We expect others that are kind of derivations of the same light-water reactors that we have in operation now. Those will be positioned to move relatively quickly as well. Those that are really small, some of these microreactors could also be wanted to move quickly just because there's so little material there. So I think we are seeing real progress through the licensing and also now over on the commercial side of trying to see how these can be demonstrated efficiently in a timely manner.

EMP: NuScale began the process at NRC about five years ago. Did in the give-and-take with NRC did they have to change the design, tweak it in any way? Or was it pretty much accepted as filed?

MC: No, their interactions at NRC go back well before that even. They were in pre-application conversations for a number of years before they submitted an application. And so part of that is trying to ensure that when you reach the actual formal application and review that there's an understanding of the issues that need to be worked on and the information needed to adjudicate them. So that has been a rather time-consuming process. But along the way, the design itself has evolved. The core approach to the design has been consistent, of a reactor and a large pool of water with natural circulation of the heat. But they have changed a little bit how they are increasing the output from the plant. So there are sometimes you go back and revise it. But the core approach how they're moving forward, this design has been accepted and that's been a real step forward.

EMP: It's interesting to see all the progress that NuScale has been making but yet they lost half of their market cap in the last year, despite the NRC signing off on the review. So it would appear the market is not so optimistic on the outlook for its design, or is the market simply skeptical of the whole idea of small modular reactors?

MC: Well, I’ll also observe in the same time period we've seen interest rates go from approximately zero to something well north of that. And I think that changes how you look at the kinds of companies that are making long-term investments for design. And so I think that's as much a reflection of the financial environment in which we find ourselves as the technology itself. When we look at the kinds of analyses for the power system going forward, we see a strong role for nuclear. That's one thing in particular about the recent report from the Department of Energy, Commercial Liftoff for Advanced Reactors, and there they're pointing to something on the order of needing 200 additional gigawatts of new nuclear, and that's on top of the 100 or so that we have currently. And so, I think, we're in this moment of realizing that there is a real huge role for deployment of new technologies and trying to get through those first demonstrations, the first deployments, to create the commercial competence around them is where we find ourselves at the moment. And you know, as we see the economic landscape evolve as it tends to do, you can change the time horizons for certain investors have – what they're looking to happen in the next quarter versus over the next decade and two decades. And I think that's what we're seeing at the moment.

EMP: I'm not a scientific expert on this by any means, but I do follow the news reporting on this technology. And it really seems to me that as various small modular reactor designs have advanced, they've run into cost overruns, similar to the problem that plagued the first generation of nuclear reactors. And with high interest rates that's, as you noted, I mean, that's going to be an issue, right?

MC: Well, we haven't seen overruns, because we haven't actually had any projects that are actually far enough along there. We have seen instances in a cost environment reflecting the inflationary pressures in much the same way, you know, I see the conversations taking place around the offshore wind projects that are also, I think, a lot of steel and concrete, a lot of commodities and a lot of upfront investment. And so I think that the overall need to create a large capital investment into the power system in order to enable this transition to low carbon – this is going to be an ongoing challenge, regardless of technology. And I think that we're seeing from the nuclear side is trying to rationalize that, see how you can find opportunities for reducing costs but recognizing that the most efficient way to bring costs down, is just start building lots of them. We've shown very good history of demonstrating that building one of something and stopping is not efficient to bring costs down. And I think there's a greater appreciation now that what these smaller designs can enable is thinking in terms of the economies of serial production, as opposed to economies of making it big through scale. And I think that's where we’re trying to create a pathway to make sure that it's not just one and done, but you're creating the opportunity to get better over time is a real fundamental change in how we're looking at these technological opportunities.

EMP: Well, regardless of how the market views SMRs you're still going to have the nuclear waste disposal problem. We've kicked this can down the road throughout my 35 years here in Washington, starting with the conference agreement on the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments, the so-called stick-it-to-Nevada bill that became a centerpiece of Harry Reid's rise to power in the Senate. How close were we to having Yucca Mountain ready to start accepting fuel? Were we years away?

MC: Oh, it was it was years away. Yeah. I was in the Department of Energy when then Secretary Chu made the decision that Yucca Mountain was not a workable solution and halted that project. And I think that then, that was not something that was revisited in the Trump administration either. So I think that has been, the method by which we arrived at that solution was something that was really difficult for the political environment, especially in that state, to find a solution. We've been working towards trying to create a different opportunity for partnership and working towards what we call consent-based siting, where rather than the federal government's trying to impose something from on high, instead trying to identify places where communities see this as an opportunity for their commercial opportunities. This model has been successful in Scandinavia, where we've had much more progress with both Finland, in particular, and Sweden is not far behind developing this. And so we think that there are better ways to approach these conversations. In the meantime, the used fuel is safe where it is. I mean, it's in steel and concrete-lined casks. The material itself is basically a ceramic so it's kind of like a really heavy form of what you have in your usual coffee mug. It's not going anywhere. It's there. It's hot. So we want to keep some shielding between it. This is not an efficient approach. We do need to find ways to start to collect – especially the material at the reactors that are closed – and start demonstrating that this is not something that needs to be an intransigent problem. This is something that we really can make progress on. And we have models internationally and even in some of our other parts of our Department of Energy that we can build upon. I'm looking forward to seeing some of this conversation being rebooted out of the Department of Energy as they begin to find a better way to approach this long-term strategy.

EMP: So it’s not like we don't have any nuclear waste storage at all. We’ve got the Waste Isolation Project in Carlsbad. And the people in Carlsbad, New Mexico, love having those jobs. And I guess Holtec International a couple months ago got the NRC’s okay for a temporary spent fuel repository at another community in New Mexico that apparently would welcome the jobs. But the state, I guess, wants to disallow the temporary storage facility until the federal government has reached a permanent storage solution? Want to elaborate on that?

MC: Sure. I mean, I think importantly, I wouldn't call what’s been proposed as a repository because that tends to imply that’s the final resting place.

EMP: Okay. 

MC: So instead, we think of it as an interim-storage capability. But I think the whole chicken-and-egg problem here is that, if it's going to be interim, you need to have some assurances that there is a pathway towards something that happens after the interim. And that's where, because of the very slow actions on the part of the Department of Energy to site a repository, it's difficult to create those assurances. And that's where I think the state has had some concerns about enabling this kind of a path forward that knowing what happens out the other side. And this is where I think the Department of Energy does have the task to go and begin to reboot those conversations and that process to work towards identifying what a more permanent solution looks like.

EMP: Well, there's at least one modular design out there that would use spent fuel, right? Are you familiar with that one?

MC: There's a number of designs over the years that are designed to take a component of used fuel, at least, and use that as fuel for new generation. We think of these as part of recycling. France has a version of that right now in its current Light Water Reactor fleet, where they take recovery materials from the operating plants and turn them into fuel. 

EMP: I’m, sorry to interrupt. But you're anticipating my next question. I'm not talking about reprocessing. I thought I saw that there are actually – there's actually an SMR design contemplated that would use the used fuel to generate electricity. 

MC: I wouldn't expect that anyone's going to use that as the first design. So the first project is going to be in more traditional fuel forms. I think, though, that what's interesting is once you begin to look at different technologies for reactors, you can begin to think more broadly about looking at what the fuel cycle looks like both in terms of the ability to use materials that are currently not feasible or just think about different forms of waste as well. And so I think rather than any one design using spent fuel as a starting point, I think what's more interesting holistically is how the range of technological ideas is really opening up how I can approach some of these questions that have been kind of intractable in the past.

EMP: Are we the only country that as a national policy does not reprocess spent fuel?

MC: No, not at all. As a matter of fact only a handful reprocess right now. One of the things to keep in mind about reprocessing is that it still requires the creation of a permanent repository for waste. There's still waste. It’s in a different form, I'm reusing some material that's in there that would otherwise be lost. So there's benefits for it, but it doesn't get me out of the need to have a long-term solution. And even France, in particular, is working on finding that location for its own purposes. Japan as well. And so there are lots of reasons to look seriously at recycling material. But it doesn't offer the promise of saying, well, and then it makes the whole challenge go away. Somebody has to deal with the material. But as you pointed out, that's true of a lot of parts of the system, including what we've seen from our weapons programs, too. And so this is not something that is unsolvable. We just need to have a different conversation about how to get to a solution.

EMP: Is there any discussion on the Hill? You, NEI, has great partners with public power and rural co-ops in terms of advocating for a solution, as well as NARUC. NARUC would love to see this resolved. Are there any discussions at all going on? Or is it just too fractious there to even contemplate?

MC: So I wouldn’t say fractious. The ball is very much in the court of the Department of Energy because they are they have the responsibility to take the fuel from power plant operators and just manage it permanently. But what I think is really interesting about the conversation on Capitol Hill is that there's more bipartisan support for nuclear energy than we've ever seen before. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for progress on the spent-fuel issue, but it's not front-and-center. You know, we've seen over the last two congresses more support for deploying nuclear than we've seen at any time since the 1950s. The tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that are designed to spur carbon-free energy production, include nuclear in the same way it includes wind and solar, the same incentives are available for new nuclear in a way that just has never been there before. That is a dramatically different signal about how the federal policy making is viewing the role of nuclear. And between the support for demonstrating new technologies, for deploying these new nuclear capabilities, you've seen a breadth of support on both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress that really creates a strong foundation for thinking about nuclear as part of a long-term solution. With that kind of a foundation, I think, you're in a different place to approach how to think about some of these political questions around spent fuel that is just a much healthier place to be as we're thinking about, not so much which one spot in the map we're going to focus on. Instead, how does this fit as part of a long-term strategy for a lower-carbon reliable energy system. And that, I think, has to be really optimistic about how this conversation might evolve in the next few years.

EMP: Well, we do have something on the administrative side. I mean, we saw some incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, right. I’m hazy on that? Do you want to elaborate on that for us?

MC: So for years, we had tax credits to incentivize, especially wind and solar production. Wind has a production tax credit, where for the first 10 years of operation of a new windmill, it's eligible for about $30 a megawatt hour of tax credit. On the solar side it’s more on the investment. So if you invest in a solar facility you can apply for essentially a tax credit rebate on your investment. What the Inflation Reduction Act did was say, well, look, we'll take both of those credits. And put them both on the books and say, as long as you're carbon-free, you're eligible to choose whichever one you want. And so all of a sudden, this creates a much more valuable incentive for nuclear – as well as for other technologies too. But I’m going to focus on nuclear, of course. And this is something we have not seen before, the scale of support and the notion that we don't need to be focusing on picking individual technologies, but instead saying, if you're carbon-free, that's part of the solution we want to encourage. And that's a big, big step forward. 

EMP: I know when I was at Exelon, that was something that we would love to have seen at that time. But that was just a pipe dream back in those days.

MC: No, it really has been just a signal of how far the conversation has come. And I think, to the point you alluded to earlier, it's not just been the industry pointing to the role for nuclear. We've seen the kinds of energy systems analyses, the modeling tools, that are trying to figure out how do I work towards a low-carbon energy system? What does that portfolio need to be? How to maintain reliability? And nuclear kept showing up as part of a solution set that should be available. And so this conversation has expanded from, I think, a smaller niche of advocates to a broader coalition of people looking for a range of solutions. And nuclear is just part of that toolkit. And it really has taken things that seemed unfathomable say 10 years ago, now just part of the law.

EMP: Well, aren't there dollars at stake here too? Aren't they providing grants of some sort on the state level? Again, I'm hazy, I apologize.

MC: So, if you go back, say, eight years ago or so, the real problem that we were facing on the nuclear side was that even perfectly well-running nuclear plants were facing the prospect of early closure. As natural gas prices fell so far, power prices fell with them, these plants were losing money. And in spite of the fact they were in many cases, the largest source of carbon-free power in these states they were going to be driven to closure. We started to see states begin to step in and say, well, wait a second. I've got these strategies that are saying I'm going to be carbon-free in my state. I can't lose my largest source. So states like New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, all moved forward with policies to ensure that that carbon-free element of what nuclear is providing was also part of the calculus. And that stemmed the tide of closures that we were facing. We've seen Washington begin to catch up. In the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law also had provisions in there to ensure that the operating nuclear plants themselves had resources available to ensure that they were going to stay in operation too. And so we really have seen a change and an incentive from the policymaking front to say, keep what you've got, and go find avenues to build more. And this has been a, I think, we're still trying to really internalize what this means because it has been such a dramatic change from what we're used to.

EMP: It was an interesting contrast from the time I started working at Exelon, they, they were making quite a bit of money off of their nuclear fleet at the time because natural gas prices were so high. And they brought me in to help them communicate, or defend, the wholesale markets that they were operating in and then gas prices fell and the competitive market became less desirable. Is there a feeling among your membership that one kind of economic model is better than the other? Is the competitive market probably not viewed that well versus the traditional monopoly-based price regulation?

MC: Well, I think it's safe to say that those that are not in competitive wholesale markets are not enthusiastic about entering them. I think that as you look at the challenges that these competitive markets have had in just creating the market rules, how to maintain reliability, how to incentivize that. Why is it I'm seeing these shortage events, especially in the wintertime? What is that creating for customers and pricing? And so I think for those who aren’t operating in these markets, there's a lot of suspicion around whether they create the right incentives for having that long-term investment profile – not just for nuclear, but for the overall approach towards maintaining reliability while trying to meet some of these carbon commitments. I think for those who are more in the markets themselves, they've been working to try to make them as effective as possible. And I don't know if they're in a hurry to see that upended dramatically. But as I watched these power markets evolve, they were in many cases built to solve a problem. And now I'm grappling with the idea that what I'm looking towards might be a different problem. And how well are these markets designed to actually make sure I can accomplish those new goals as opposed to the ones I started with, and it's going to be a challenge.

EMP: Well, it's certainly preoccupying the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at this point.

MC: Indeed.

EMP: Why is exporting U.S. nuclear technology abroad important to the industry domestically?

MC: So there's two things about that. At least two things. I’ll start with two things. So it's important to the industry domestically because that same challenge that we're talking about earlier for new construction, that supply chain, building up that capability. I can look at the ability to send new nuclear technology abroad as a way to build that supply capability to create that expertise. So my learning effect isn't just building the ones in the United States, it’s building the ones all around the world. And so as I see the appetite, the interest for the U.S. technologies abroad, it creates that foundation for working that learning curve, getting better at the manufacturing and construction. But it's also important in the national security perspective as well. So when we have a nuclear project that we build in a different country, that's cementing essentially a 100-year relationship between the construction, the operation for more than half a century, the eventual decommissioning. This is something that really ties nations together. And as we've clearly seen with Russia over the last 16 months or so, whom you choose as partners can matter a lot. And Russia has been very aggressive in trying to export their designs. China as well. And potential countries look at this. I think there's an appreciation that this is more than just a commercial power plant that you're building. It's also a long-standing relationship with a partner that you're going to be engaged with going forward for decades. That choice matters a lot.

EMP: I'm going to do a follow up question to the discussion about markets versus price regulation. The decisions to go forward with the new nuclear builds in the Southeast, the only one that's progressed was the Vogtle one in Georgia. You know, I was working for Exelon whose footprint was pretty firmly in the competitive market model. And based on the market model, even at that time, when they were making handsome profits from the plants, they weren't about to undertake a new build in a competitive market. Should we provide out-of-market incentives so that we can get them built outside of the Southeast?

MC: I think that one of the challenges that I see with the competitive markets is that things like carbon don't show up in that calculus. I have a capacity market, maybe. Those incentives tend to change because I've never quite broken the code in how exactly I want that to work. So I'm often going back and changing what that capacity market looks like. The energy market doesn't try to factor this in. We keep waiting for some kind of carbon price that will come in and then create a signal that says, aha, that part of a nuclear plant is more valuable now. Right now it's priced at zero. And so I think that you have a general challenge of how I expect to see a transition towards lower-carbon technologies emerge in some of these places, the competitive markets. There have been some solutions that say, on the state level, I'll just create mandates that say a certain percentage of your generation has to come from this set of technologies. We'll do it that way, which is a kind of a market-forcing function. And I think as well as a focus on renewables as the portfolio standards, you can think about expanding that to all forms of carbon-free generation, and then nuclear has a role to play alongside that as well. Right now, I think that the competitive wholesale markets are really well-designed to optimize how I think about using natural gas for generation, and capacity for that. But I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that I've got a robust enough set of signals to move beyond that technology set. And so as I look towards this transition, I think about places like New England that are challenged in how much they can rely on natural gas. How do I use those market signals to create the investment in technologies that are consistent with policymaking that is happening there? And this is going to be a really big challenge over the next decade, and it's bigger than nuclear. But how I look about the opportunity for nuclear, well, what are the signals I'm seeing and are they coming from the way I designed the wholesale markets or are there other policy signals that are going to come create that plan that says, yeah, this is where we need to go.

EMP: Does NEI I have a policy on a carbon tax?

MC: Our policy is that we are supportive of any policy that recognizes nuclear’s attributes. So we don't push for a carbon tax itself. I think there are other ways that are more constructive. In particular, the tax credits for carbon-free – the technology-neutral tax credits have been very consistent with the kinds of things we've been talking about. So we're pleased to see that. We recognize that these conversations are one thing when they're being held among economists and technocrats. It’s another thing when they’re held in political conversations. And the politics around a carbon tax remain challenging, but I think what we’re seeing from policymakers is the search for other tools that can create the right kinds of incentives, like tax credits, that could create a similar effect. And so I think in that regard, we're still optimistic in the way that nuclear could fit as part of this future and is looking for the toolkits that will help us to get there.

EMP: Well, certainly public perception is a huge problem for the industry. I mean, we talked about the safety issue, but as you alluded to, you know, other than Chernobyl, which didn't have a containment, the containment vessel has worked in terms of Three Mile Island; did it work for Fukushima or did it fail?

MC: No, there was no fatalities from radiation at Fukushima.

EMP: We had Three Mile Island. That was a big setback. Then Chernobyl became a perception issue even though it had nothing to do with U.S. nuclear. And (after) Fukushima, we saw Germany actually increase their carbon footprint rather than continue with nuclear. That's a whole different discussion. But now we've got Russia in Ukraine holding a nuclear plant hostage and threatening to do with it much like they did with the hydropower dam that flooded the lower part of the country. I certainly hope for the sake of Ukrainians, not necessarily for the industry, that nothing comes to pass there. How close are you watching that situation as an association?

MC: We’re certainly watching it. And finding reliable information has been something of an ongoing challenge, which is not unexpected. The International Atomic Energy Administration, the agency of the UN, has been an important voice and intermediary overseeing that. I would expect Russia to think about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the same way it thinks about some of the other infrastructure, I mean, part of it, I say that is because Russia itself has a very long-term strategic interest in having nuclear energy being a viable strategic outcome. They want to sell reactors, too. And so, I'm alarmed by how they thought about that facility and how they’ve treated it. But I don't know that I expect sabotage or that in quite the same way. But I think it does speak to the notion that, as I a look towards the strategic relationships, these things are valuable. And I think understanding the ability to create that much power and what it means for trying to debilitate the economy of Ukraine – this is something that they saw as a strategic opportunity for them in their conflict which that power plant is not producing energy. It's shut down. And so it's in that regard it has served to help sever that large source of power from the economy as a whole. And from my point of view, the ability to have a large-scale ability to produce reliable electricity is valuable. It just needs to be secured and the actions of Russia have been completely outrageous and that, I think, is rightly met with a great deal of concern from partners around the world.

EMP: Let's just hope it's a big bluff. It certainly is concerning. I've gone through all of my notes here, Matt. As I as I do with every guest, I want to offer you an opportunity to bring up anything that we haven't discussed that you think is relevant at this point.

MC: Just one thing comes to mind. You mentioned public perception. One thing that I'm certainly keenly interested in is how to think about how different generations look at nuclear. What we're seeing is a lot of openness towards nuclear energy from the younger generation, for whom I think climate change seems to be the biggest environmental challenge of the day. The kinds of challenges that we saw in the ‘70s around nuclear aren't quite showing up in the same way. There are bigger problems on the board from how I think about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and nuclear, I think, is being seen as one of those tools that can help do that. So I do anticipate that as we see continued evolution of this conversation that nuclear will be seem less exceptional as it might have a few years ago. I think that's a good sign both in terms of what the technology can provide, but also how it's viewed as one of the technologies that are going to help to create a portfolio solution. I think that's real progress. 

EMP: Matt Crozat of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Thank you very much.

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