The future source of energy.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is Paul Stein. He is the chairman of SMR and we’ll find out what SMR is at Rolls Royce and everybody knows the Roy’s Royce name. He joined Rolls Royce in twenty ten as a chief Scientific Officer and now he is running the SMR division. Paul, Welcome to America, Welcome to New York. What is SMR.

0:26 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, John, I just say it’s great to be here in the WABC studios here in New York, and I’d love to explain to you what an SMR is. So, an SMR is a small modular reactor and basically it’s a small nuclear power station, which we need in quantity to help decarbonize the world. It’s modular because all the

0:47 parts of the power station are individually made in a factory and the whole power station is bolted together on site, and that dramatically reduces the cost of nuclear power.

0:58 Speaker 1 Now, we talked about it before during our lunch, and this did come to America in the near future, maybe next to seven years, and it could transform One of the energies used in America to decarbonize over the next twenty thirty years is that correct.

1:20 Speaker 2 Absolutely, we’re working really hard in the UK where I come from, to build up a practical small modular reactor solution with the UK government, and we’re now looking to export that technology around the world, and of course the United States is one of the biggest markets in the world for low carbon energy. We’re really hoping to build

1:41 up quite a big activity here in the States with time, and to contribute to a significant decarbonization of the energy grid and other industries here in the US.

1:52 Speaker 1 Now, this technology came many, many years ago, and Jack tell us about the technology and how it’s used in the last fifty years.

2:00 Speaker 2 Well, nuclear power really was invented in the nineteen fifties from great companies here in the US like Westinghouse and also in the UK by government organizations. Initially, actually nuclear energy was used to power submarines, and the birth of nuclear energy can be traced back to the US submarine fleet.

2:21 But very rapidly power stations were developed for civilian applications and we’ve kept to some pretty conservative designs since the nineteen fifties, and the world has around about three hundred nuclear power stations now operating, and most of them dating all their technology back to that.

2:37 Speaker 1 Era understood, and so we’re talking about the new source for the twenty first century, where you know it will be a combination of all technologies. And I mean, I’m sure they’re going to be some fossil fuels left. I’m sure they’re going to be some wind energy and solar energy. Well, how do you view if we can push the button

3:04 in you the year twenty forty or twenty fifty, how do you use things?

3:10 Speaker 2 Well, we’ve got to crack on with decarbonizing the atmosphere, and that really involves weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, coal, gas, and oil, and we use an awful lot of coal, gas and oil around the world right now. In fact, the global market for coal, gas and oil right now is four trillion dollars. So it’s a massive undertaking to

3:30 decarbonize the whole energy system of the planet. So right now, wind and solar are dominating decarbonization with hydro if you can get it, particularly up in Canada. But wind and solar have their limitations, and they have their limitations because sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

3:51 We do need wind and solar. I’m not knocking those at all. Because their technologies that we have now and we need to deploy them at scale. And in the US we’ve done a great deal of wind energy. In fact, the US has got quite a high fraction of its energy input coming from wind. However, when the wind doesn’t blow,

4:09 the costs of energy storage are pretty high, and that’s really where nuclear power has to take over. Nuclear power provides a baseload of energy that means it runs all of the time, and right now most of the nuclear power stations in the US are large nuclear power stations, which have been traditionally quite expensive. What SMR technology does

4:30 is it reduces the cost of nuclear power down to something like the cost of wind. But it blows continuously.

4:38 Speaker 1 Understood, And how do you see it when you think you have any experimental ones in the United States? Now we’re thank you, or I understand you might be building one in Great Britain.

4:53 Speaker 2 So you know, the maturity of the technology, and this might surprise people, is that we don’t actually build prototypes anymore for these nuclear power stations. We produce a digital twin, so that means a simulation of a power station that runs in a computer and that’s now so close to the operation of the final power station that the regulator

5:16 is happy. That’s the bodies, the government bodies that have to approve these power stations, they’re happy to acknowledge. The digital twin is a good representation. We’re hoping to get the first power on grid in the early twenty thirties, and that really aligns not just with the rolls roy solution, but with some worthy competition here in the US.

5:37 Speaker 1 When so the early twenty thirties, we could have a system running a small city or a city with LESMT.

5:48 Speaker 2 Yes, it doesn’t quite work that way because the US has a grid connecting all of the energy sources together in the US, and so SMR will start replacing coal fired and gas fired stations on the grid in the early twenty thirties. But SMRs have got some other tricks up their sleeve which are quite interesting. You can couple

6:07 an SMR to a big data center, and modern data centers that are being put into place by the big tech companies are now so big that they need a separate nuclear POWERstation to run them of about the size of an SMR, and also large chemical plants that might produce hydrogen or synthetic fuels to power our cars and

6:29 our trucks and our aeroplanes can also be produced by SMRs, so there’s many applications for them, not just decarbonizing electricity.

6:38 Speaker 1 Understood, Well, I want to thank you for stopping into WABC today and is there anything else you want to tell the American people.

6:47 Speaker 2 Well, I just want to say thank you for the inflation reduction to act American American government and American people, because we just need to crack on with decarbonization and that really represents a brave move by the American government to help do this.

7:02 Speaker 1 Well, Paul Stein, I understand you’ve also been awarded in Great Britain the Commander of the Order of the British Empire. That must be a highlight in your career.

7:17 Speaker 2 Absolutely, it was an incredibly proud moment. In fact, our late Queen Queen Elizabeth, one of the last things she signed was what’s called the Grand’s Order for my CB. I’m very, very very proud of that.

7:29 Speaker 1 Well, thank you, and I look forward to continuous discussions on how we energize America and keep America going and keep the world going and de carbinalized over the next x amount of years.

7:43 Speaker 2 And with your help, I’ll definitely do that job.

7:46 Speaker 1 Thank you, God, bless