Prediction Not checkable as stated
At least three or four advanced nuclear reactor developers will succeed
“I'm very comfortable that, there's going to be, you know, probably three or four at least that are going to make it through that part of it that will be successful in the long term.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2039
Light water reactors deploy in early 2030s; non-light water in late 2030s
“The early thirties is the light water reactors, and the late thirties is when we'll see commercially more of the non-light water reactors coming to fore.”
Opinion
Light water reactors carry zero technology risk, only field construction challenges
“So, for light water reactor technology there really isn't a technology risk, it's just, Pulling together the right pieces to, you know, de-risk it in the front end to get to a final investment decision and then start construction and have a solid plan to be su…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nuclear plant development timelines will fall from eight to five years
“I do see a path by which you get down to, from the seven to eight years, we're looking at the first ones, to getting down to five or six years, which to me really makes a game changer when people have their planning horizons.”
Insight
Permitting new transmission lines is globally harder than building nuclear plants
“It's going to be easier to permit and get a nuclear plant built than it is to get new transmission lines, and that's just historically how it's been, you know, everywhere I've been, whether it's in the US, the UK, Australia. Over in Taiwan Philippines, people …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mature SMR capital costs will reach $10,000 per kilowatt
“Once you get down the curve, we're probably, you know, 10,000 dollars a kilowatt, so if you have a 600 megawatt plant, that'd be about six billion dollars. The first one might be, you know, 15, 20% more than that.”
Insight
Hyperscalers and AI power demand will enable US nuclear deployment
“Back in the 2000, there was not really any demand growth. Now we're seeing phenomenal demand growth, which was strong to begin with, but just, I mean, really taken off with artificial intelligence driving it. And, you know, those trillion dollar balance sheet …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nuclear development costs hundreds of millions upfront, far exceeding renewable projects
“Unlike renewables, where the development cost might be in the tens of millions of dollars at most It's hundreds of millions of dollars for nuclear, and you can't just have a power purchase agreement to make that kind of investment as a developer.”
Insight
Multi-unit SMR sites reduce factory and field cost curves faster
“And when you have multiples at a site and multiples in a deployment, you can get down those cost curves both in the factory and in the field more readily than you could with a large reactor.”
Assertion Supported
NRC nuclear application review timelines have dropped from four to two years
“That has been demonstrated by reduced timelines for them to review various applications I've observed just in the 15 years I've been in the nuclear space where, you know, what once took four years is now being done in two years.”
Insight
Regulated utilities cannot take nuclear development risk with returns capped at 10%
“You know, what I hear from utilities now is what I heard from utilities back in the past, right, is that, you know, they fundamentally can't take development risk. And, you know, that's a, having done fossil plant development, I did that for 15 years of coal a…”
Disclosure
Elemental targets 4.2 GW nuclear capacity by 2030, 100 GW by 2040
“Our goal was to have a gigawatt under construction by twenty-thirty, 10 by 35, and a hundred gigawatts by twenty-forty. We're now looking at 4.2 gigawatts by twenty-thirty, so we've already, like, quadrupled that, or halfway there to our twenty-thirty-five goa…”
Disclosure
Google deal directly funds Elemental Power's upfront nuclear project development costs
“They made investment, you know, mostly in the technology, but increasingly as this deal we're doing now with Google is in the upfront development, which is really the key part that needs to be re-risked.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2033
Elemental Power expects its first nuclear plant to operate by 2032
“26 to 28, we're doing a construction permit. You know, 29, we start construction, and by 32, 33, we're operating the plant.”
Assertion Supported
Former US coal and industrial sites have sufficient transmission for new nuclear
“In the U.S., we have a pretty robust system where any former coal plant or any former large industrial site We'll typically have the transmission infrastructure necessary for it.”
Assertion Supported
Plant Vogtle Unit 4 cost 40% less to construct than Unit 3
“You know, unit four, I think, was 40% less than unit three.”
Insight
Paying construction labor premiums is far cheaper than nuclear schedule delay costs
“You just got to be able to, as an owner, admit that if I have to pay a person five dollars extra an hour to keep them working on my project as opposed to going down to the data center project down the road, then you pay that because if you don't, The cost for …”
Disclosure
Elemental Power to select winning nuclear reactor technologies within 18 months
“We're technology agnostic in the belief that, or the knowledge that we can go out and find sites that are amenable to the hyperscale is what they need for offtake and location that we can develop in a way that in a year from now or, A year and a half from now,…”
Assertion Supported
No modern commercial reactor design has received an NRC operating license yet
“Nobody's gotten yet to the point of An operating license where you get the ability to load the fuel into these new designs.”
Assertion Supported
Small modular reactors for tech companies fit on 100 acres or less
“The smaller plant sizes, the small modular reactors you're looking at for Google, can probably fit about a hundred acres or so or less.”
