Insight
Nolan: Fuel can exceed half the operating cost for small advanced reactors
“And so you go from a situation where the reactor is over 90% of total cost of energy produced to where, and fuel is obviously single digit percentages with low enriched uranium and gigawatt scale reactors and those simple metal fuel pellets to now where the fu…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Nolan: Advanced nuclear reactor deployments will ramp significantly starting in 2030
“That, I think those, that timing is coming, you know, 20, 28 through 20 30. They're gonna first really start doing the, you know, single digit deployments, and then I think 2030 is where it really ramps.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nolan: Allied nuclear fleets will rely on Russia and China without US
“If the U.S. Does not provide enrichment To these countries, they will have to get it somewhere else as they build up their nuclear fleet, or they turn back on their nuclear fleet, and that'll be Russia, China.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nolan: SpaceX can be cash-flow positive whenever it wants to be
“I think now the company, you know, has money and can be cashflow positive whenever they want to be.”
Assertion Contradicted
Nolan: Uranium enrichment is the only nuclear step the US lacks domestically
“The reason we're doing enrichment is because that's the one step the US doesn't do at any scale.”
Opinion
Nolan: Factory-built nuclear energy should drop below 3 cents per kilowatt-hour
“I think three cents shouldn't even be the limit. Like that was three cents building huge gigawatt scale mega construction projects, not factory production. And so I think we should physically be able to get less than three cents if we were doing it before.”
Opinion
Nolan: Boeing's slow cost-plus programs drove him to join SpaceX
“Got to work at Boeing during college, got to see what a cost-plus government program looked like, thousands of people going extremely slow, decided I didn't want to do that, Didn't want to go back to Boeing, instead went to SpaceX”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nolan: Early SpaceX employee handbook declared this is not a science experiment
“I remember getting there on day one and reading the employee handbook and on the top of page one was just a single line that was in bold. And it said this is not a science experiment.”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: Nuclear energy has the lowest death rate of any baseload power
“Nuclear energy for the past 50 years has been the cleanest form of energy, no carbon emissions, the safest form of baseload, which people find really surprising, but fewer human deaths per terawatt hour than any other baseload, And even any other energy source…”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: General Matter is building on the last closed US enrichment site
“And we shut down the last enrichment site in 2013, and that site was actually in western Kentucky on DOE land that our company is now building on.”
Assertion Partly supported
Nolan: China has tripled its electricity grid capacity since 2010
“If you look at the grid in 2010, we were completely tied neck and neck with China on grid total capacity. Something like 4000 or 5000 terawatt hours per year. Since then, in the 15 years since 2010, they've tripled. I think this year they're actually at three …”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: NRC committed to fast-tracking new fuel cycle licenses to 12 months
“And I think it was Thursday the NRC announced that a new fuel cycle license application went in And they're committing to put it on fast track and get it out in 12 months.”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: General Matter won a massive DOE contract for HALEU uranium enrichment
“Congress that appropriated 2.7 billion dollars for HALU enrichment. And we received one of those awards for nine hundred million. So nine hundred million dollar Milestone based contract, which will be earned over the next few years as we build that capability …”
Insight
Nolan: Expediting critical-path projects pays off if cheaper than daily burn
“If you're on the critical path of schedule and you can make a one-time decision to pull in schedule by a day, like you can expedite something that's otherwise going to make us have to exist as a company for two more days, five more days, and it's worth less, i…”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: Small Advanced Reactors Require Enrichment up to 19.75% U-235
“Most reactors, the big ones, people think about gigawatt scale reactors. They need that you, the uranium enriched to about three to five percent U two 35. And then the small ones, 19.75% is where everyone's ending up”
Assertion Partly supported
Nolan: A single nuclear pellet equals over 100 barrels of oil
“One of those pellets is equivalent to over a hundred barrels of oil or over a ton of coal.”
Assertion Partly supported
Nolan: US Accounted for Over 80% of Global Uranium Enrichment in 1980s
“So the US in the eighties was actually more than 80% of global enrichment.”
Assertion Supported
Nolan: NASA aims to achieve nuclear-driven space propulsion by 2028
“I think they're aiming for space ion nuclear-driven space propulsion by twenty-twenty-eight. And then they're talking about reactors on, on the moon's surface to, you know, create heat and power things.”
