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It’s been a huge few months for the nuclear power industry.

Just weeks after the French nuclear company Orano announced it had chosen Oak Ridge as the site of a major uranium enrichment facility, Microsoft signed an agreement with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to power the data centers that drive its AI tools.

Last week, in the space of two days, Google signed a partnership with Kairos Power to deploy a fleet of advanced nuclear reactors, and Amazon signed a partnership with X-energy to help construct small modular reactors. Both Kairos Power and X-energy are building facilities in Oak Ridge.

To understand the shifting nuclear landscape, in which tech companies are increasingly bankrolling ambitious new projects in return for lots of carbon-free power, Knox News sat down with James Walker, CEO of NANO Nuclear Energy, a microreactors developer that purchased land in Oak Ridge in August for its technical headquarters.

Walker, originally from the United Kingdom and based in both Canada and the U.S., will move to the Oak Ridge area full-time next year. He spoke about the role Russia and China are playing and why Tennessee will become a major global player in the nuclear industry.

This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Q: Could you tell me about the nuclear state of play between China and the U.S., and why it is that China is 10 to 15 years ahead of the U.S. on advanced reactors?

The U.S. stagnated just a little bit because it was able to secure a steady supply of Russian material, typically weapons-grade material, that it was down blending to meet its domestic needs. But that also allowed for the U.S. to not have to develop its nuclear infrastructure as comprehensively as countries that didn’t have access to this material from Russia.

With the U.S., now that it’s in a position where the relationship with Russia is very strained, they’re looking to cut that almost completely. That means a build back of the domestic infrastructure. But that will be done, and the Department of Energy is funding a lot of that. They obviously have to build back some infrastructure to support the nuclear industry, whereas that infrastructure already exists in China, because they have settled on nuclear as the solution for quite a long time.

Q: When it comes to public, state-owned companies like in China or France that are building nuclear reactors and private companies in the U.S., do you think there’s an advantage for the countries that have a lot of government power behind their nuclear operations?

I would say that in countries where nuclear is predominantly backed by the government, it’s a double-edged sword. If you have a big, big nuclear energy company that is predominantly government, the preference within those companies is essentially to stick to more of what their business model is. Their ability to switch to more nimble systems that are more innovative is actually much harder to justify as a business case.

That gives us an advantage for the U.S. that might actually allow it to pull ahead in some areas − the fact that it does have a private sector that has access to, say, capital markets and private equity investments that can actually boost this area. It is a big advantage having the government back your project and put billions of dollars into building new big power systems, but as far as innovation goes, industry always has a massive advantage.

Q: Why does it matter to look at nuclear power as a metric for national success or national security? Why should we be concerned if China is developing this technology faster?

The advantage that China has here is that the generation of sovereign energy is becoming incredibly increasingly important now. China’s ability to deploy power systems to other countries will mean that it gets a foothold in those countries before the U.S. is able to do so.

When we were recently in Africa and we were speaking to a lot of uranium manufacturers or producers, a lot of their customers were in China. And these were neutral countries that had an interest in relationships with the U.S., but there was no U.S. company in that region. China had already got that foothold in the uranium mining industry there because the U.S. had this ability to source Russian fuels. When you’re deploying technology, economic influence can precede political influence in some areas, and that can be a concern. So, the U.S. is very mindful that it needs to catch up.

The demand for power globally is going to increase rapidly. The tech industry in the U.S. has decided that nuclear is a solution. It’s a zero-carbon emitting power. It’s a consistent form of baseload energy. And China has come to a very similar conclusion. If we don’t build that domestic ability, that sovereign ability to produce that power, then the technological development will slow and allow others to pull ahead. So, there’s an international competitive edge to building back this nuclear energy as quickly as we can.

Q: What role does a place like Oak Ridge or East Tennessee play in the global race for nuclear power?

I would say Oak Ridge is looking to become a big global player. And it’s not just me that thinks that. Orano, they’re effectively a French national company, and they selected it for the same reasons we identified. On an international stage, if enrichment is being done there, too, it’s going to become a major supplier of U.S. industry. And the U.S. industry is always going to be one of the central players in the international industry. So we can expect a lot of growth out of the area. When you get big companies building industry like that, you’re going to get a lot of ancillary and supporting services around that kind of area. There’s going to be a lot of new jobs, very high paying ones, and it’s going to lead to a lot of industry expansion.

Once these reactor companies are actually manufacturing, these systems will be internationally exported. So a lot of power systems that might go to countries that don’t have a developing nuclear industry will come from Tennessee. So it’ll be a big hub for enrichment, but it also will be a big hub for power systems that will power homes all over the world.

Q: Could you tell me about the fuel for NANO’s reactor designs and where you all plan to source that fuel?

We’ve already started discussions about a much deeper partnership that will involve investment in a U.S. enrichment company with patented U.S. technology, but we want to support them all the way up through to a commercial facility. NANO wants to build deconversion and fuel fabrication facilities around our partner company’s enrichment facilities. So it wouldn’t just provide a direct fuel source for our company, but it would actually provide a source for the entire industry, which it desperately needs, and it would be a major component of our business.

Our long-term strategy is to have a vertically integrated company that manufactures our own fuel, and we’ve even looked beyond the enrichment side all the way to sources. We’ve recently been abroad to discuss offtake agreements with Namibian uranium companies that are directly producing. The idea here would be to try and create that full supply chain, just so it makes our reactor much more competitive.

Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.

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