The Ledger, every show

“All of the reactors in the advanced reactor population are paper reactors. We haven't built them. We haven't tested them.”

“Small reactors, SMRs, are a nuclear engineering solution to a financial problem. We need a financial solution to this financial problem. Small modular reactors are a nuclear engineering, engineering solution to a PR problem. We need a PR solution to that, not …”

“We should be figuring out how to build AP 1000 instead of flailing around trying to find silver bullet designs that will rescue this industry.”

“We're gonna have amazingly cheap, abundant solar. Combined with storage, we may not need all of these advanced energy ideas.”

“However, I have to say that the United States is no more suitable to solar manufacturing than it is to iPhone manufacturing.”

“I would suggest that they are just an uncompetitive manufacturer looking for any help they can get.”

“If Tesla had not purchased SolarCity for 2.6 billion dollars plus the assumption of a couple of billion dollars worth of debt, SolarCity would for sure have gone bankrupt within a couple of months.”

“We have these hordes of software developer billionaires thinking that they can disrupt the nuclear industry just like you can disrupt the software industry, and I think they're going to be sadly disappointed very soon.”

“The modular reactor from NuScale is 76 feet tall, so that's not exact. If you're thinking it's the size of a bread box, it's not. It's 76 feet tall, and when you're building a twelve-pack of these modular NuScale reactors, the size of the civil works that you …”

“In places like, say, South, South Korea, the folks who design The nuclear plant and build the nuclear plant are also the same people, in many cases, are the same people who operate and maintain the nuclear plant, and all of their incentives are aligned, and th…”

“In a world where Chinese manufacturers are at gigawatt and 10 gigawatt and 50 gigawatt capacities, aux and solar is relatively inconsequential on the world stage, and yet they're still able to essentially freeze the ten billion dollar U.S. Solar industry.”

“In fact, the United States has the highest cost solar modules in the world because we are taxing ourselves with tariffs.”

“The energy transition does not happen in the United States without imports.”

“Without that diving save of getting that venture capital, and without the half a billion dollars in loan guarantee, it's quite likely that the Tesla of today would not exist.”

“Despite ridiculous promises about spooling up to 1000 roofs per week, I would say that he's barely installed a thousand roofs with the product, and it went through four different revisions over the course of the first few years.”

“They are forcing the curve on EVs. They're forcing the price structure of batteries. It's hard not to see them as one of the greatest forces of the last decade in catalyzing the energy transition. For all of the lying and prevaricating and questionable busines…”

“Only 25%, 20 to 25% of the cost of a nuclear site stems from the actual equipment itself, the reactor vessel, the fuel rods. 50% of the cost of a nuclear project is due to the cost of installation, the cost of building reinforced concrete and the steel that's …”

“There are too many advanced reactor designs being looked at by the DOE and the industry. That's an enormous problem right there. We need to pick a design and stop this first-of-a-kind nonsense.”

“Those of us who have lived through a bubble might see certain parallels this time, and this is certainly not your grandmother's venture capital bubble. It's a very different situation. The societal impetus for acknowledging climate change, the bank and financi…”

“We've seen them enacted during the Obama administration, we've seen them during the Trump administration, and we've seen them continued under the Biden administration. Turns out there's one thing that they can all agree on is, ah, protectionism.”

“Not only is it raising prices for power purchase agreements, not only is it causing paroxysms within the developer world, But it's causing manufacturers to stop shipping to the United States because they're afraid of tariffs, and more importantly, retroactive …”

“Surveys by industry groups, whether it be SEIA or American Clean Power have found that 65% of the projects that are on the books in the United States in 20, 22 and 23 are threatened.”

“And Biden is also a union man, and there's a union aspect to keeping manufacturing going in the United States, and so Biden has to balance that out, but it's empty rhetoric if you're going to cut the industry off at its ankles with a tariff, and to then say we…”

“I think things are going to be evened up in a couple of years.”

“Every job is a custom job, and there's no way that this is ever going to be profitable except for super, super, super high-end applications.”

“Toyota is launching 16 EVs in the coming years. That would never have happened without Tesla, and I think that's applicable to Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and the rest of the automakers.”

“Many of the new advanced reactor designs are not exactly new. They date back to 60 years to the Manhattan Project and the early development of nuclear. So things like fast breeder reactors, gas-cooled reactors. We have experience with all of these for many, ma…”

“Russia supplies 46% of the enriched uranium in the world, and we buy about a billion dollars worth, the United States buys about a billion dollars worth of enriched uranium from Russia”

“The nuclear industry has never had more financial or spiritual support from the U.S. Government or our populace whether it be the IRA's investment tax credit and production tax credits that are aimed towards the nuclear industry, whether it be the Bipartisan i…”

“Florida, Turkey Point in Florida is, is, has a license granted for two new reactors, but they're not building them because they're flinchy about the cost.”

“The nuclear industry grid-connected About four gigawatts of nuclear to the grid this year.”

“It's not the intense science-based Department of Energy of Ernest Moniz or Stephen Chu. The DOE is being helmed by Business people and industrialists like Jigar Shah, like David Crane, like Elaine Shea, and many, many others, and so we, we've gone away from a …”

“It's gone from a couple of hundred million dollars a year to being a 10 or twelve billion dollar a year market that employs 200,000 people. That's four times as many as is employed by the coal industry.”

“Just to give you an idea of the scale, the United States has a capacity of about seven gigawatts of solar manufacturing, whereas China has a manufacturing capacity of about three 300 gigawatts of solar manufacturing. One company, Longi Solar, has a manufacturi…”

“The United States is not the only game in town when it comes to the solar industry. We are only maybe 10% of the global industry, so China has plenty of other customers to sell solar to.”

“However, the automotive leg is 95% of the company, and the energy storage and the solar are only five percent of the company. So his initial vision, Tesla is an EV company with a hobbyist Business in solar and energy storage.”

“China has 22 nuclear plants under construction today. 22. And 70 planned.”

“We've gone from, you know, the nuclear reactor fleet has this amazing on-time capacity factor. It's at over 90%. It's 92% or something of that nature. It hasn't always been like that. In fact, 30 years ago or 4030 years ago, it was at 50 or 60%.”

“There's been some recent stories about what the global total for solar will be in twenty-twenty-three, and the number's over 400 gigawatts”

“So Tesla recently logged one of its first profitable quarters in which it wasn't reliant on zero energy. Vehicle emission credits to make its numbers.”