049 Caleb Tomlin, Senior Technical Leader at EPRI

[00:00:00] Caleb Tomlin: You don’t need a project team of 150 people to begin doing evaluations. You can be a project team of 1 or project team of 2 to begin utilizing resources that are out there and available. So, we have a number of different items that could be potentially useful for a utility evaluating a coal site.

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[00:01:27] Mark Hinaman: Welcome back to another episode of the fire division podcast. My name is Mark Hinaman and I’m joined today by Caleb Tomlin, Senior Technical Leader at EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. Caleb, how you doing?

[00:01:40] Caleb Tomlin: Doing very well. Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today, Mark, and looking forward to the conversation.

[00:01:47] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, I think this topic is going to be really interesting for me. I’m hopeful to learn a bunch and excited to chat with you. Caleb, for our audience’s benefit, why don’t you give a brief 30 second intro about what you do at EPRI and then I’d like to talk a little bit about your background before we get into our main topic.

[00:02:08] Caleb Tomlin: That sounds good. Caleb Tomlin with EPRI, I’m a senior technical leader. I currently lead our nuclear beyond electricity technical focus area as well as our coal to nuclear focus area, which we’re here to discuss today. That research entails any of a variety of areas from hydrogen production with the current nuclear fleet to again, repurposing, redeveloping coal sites.

For nuclear deployments.

[00:02:37] Mark Hinaman: And it looks like you spent quite a bit of your career at

[00:02:40] Caleb Tomlin: Riva or fra. Yes sir. Yeah. . How was that? It was a great experience. So I am a native Lynchburg resident. So Lynchburg, Virginia. We have both BWXT and OME Arriva here in town. So worked with. For about 12 years started on the U.

S. E. P. R. and it’s design and then moved from there into a variety of different areas. I joined the boy is your program, which was a rotational development program that they all for. And that gave me kind of an overview of the company. So I got to do. Mechanical fuel design for a while component analysis but the 1 thing that’s really, really under, underpin my career with framatome was flexible operations and looking at how nuclear plants participate.

In the grid with growing renewables, and so that’s that led me from there to an opportunity with every, I guess, about 18 months ago. Now, I joined nuclear beyond electricity.

[00:03:49] Mark Hinaman: What what is nuclear beyond electricity?

[00:03:52] Caleb Tomlin: So Nuclear Beyond Electricity is looking at opportunities for the existing fleet as well as the fleet to come and how they participate in what we’ve broken down as eight different areas.

So flexible electric grid being one of those low carbon fuels production is another area that would include hydrogen production, ammonia production. syn gas biofuels and the like industrial integration. When you think about a project, such as the X energy and Dow project, that process and integration aspect, thinking about district energy and how nuclear may participate in providing heat.

And power for district energy applications, college campuses, hospitals, military bases to name a few. Thank you. And then we also have our data center integration. So looking at how nuclear supports data centers as well as water and wastewater. When we think about closing the. Water cycle looking at how nuclear could participate in cleaning water, as well as producing clean drinking water.

It can literally do everything, right? It can, yeah. There’s just so much opportunity here. You’re, you’re exactly right. Jokingly ask the question, what can nuclear do for you? But it can be an energy source for many, many different applications, both on land on water and in space. So I think it’s limitless and it’s balance.

And I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.

[00:05:36] Mark Hinaman: Can you give a brief background on EPRI? I mean, I imagine lots of listeners will know what EPRI is, but always helpful in case they

[00:05:44] Caleb Tomlin: don’t. Yeah, so EPRI is a nonprofit research organization, and we do research in the energy landscape, I would say.

So we cover everything from nuclear, which is where I reside to our generation sector, which is coal, natural gas, solar, wind and the like. And then we have our end use sector. So they’re looking at transmission distribution and the end users of that power. So we cover electric vehicles and charging and what does that mean as well as looking at a capacity expansion and how that affects utility planning and the like.

So we cover really all aspects of energy, but nonprofit

[00:06:32] Mark Hinaman: funded mostly by the utility sector.

[00:06:36] Caleb Tomlin: Correct. Yes, sir. Yeah,

[00:06:39] Mark Hinaman: I’m doing research for the utility sector for the

[00:06:42] Caleb Tomlin: nuclear beyond the electricity.

[00:06:43] Mark Hinaman: I mean, that’s really, really interesting to me. The fuel piece of it specifically. Can you tell me more about some of the research with synthetic fuel?

[00:06:54] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so right now we’re, we’re really just beginning to, again, getting, get into what nuclear is capable of doing. So first would be the hydrogen production as we begin to think about where nuclear participates going forward in the production of biofuels or synthetic fuels, hydrogen is going to be a key part of that.

So produce some papers. Recently, looking at the integration of hydrogen with the existing fleet as we go forward, that will expand into advanced reactors and how that is produced. But we’re working closely with our colleagues within the low carbon resources initiative. Here at every and so that’s a collaborative looking at how do you decarbonize hard to abate sectors and nuclear is 1 of those pieces.

So we work closely with them and their production. You’re brought to us

[00:07:50] Mark Hinaman: for the for coal to nuclear, but let’s talk about it. This is a specific topic, but why don’t you just give kind of a general overview of. What the coal to nuclear thesis is in the U. S. and we might realize it moving forward.

[00:08:10] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so cold and nuclear, I would say, from an every perspective is a broad or part of a broad topic. If you look at. The coal fleet today and its existing generation specifically within the U. S. In 2021, it was about 212 gigawatts or 22 percent of the country’s capacity. Fast forward 14 years to 2035 and we’re looking at a reduction of about 59 gigawatts of coal capacity.

Coal plants have provided farm dispatchable generation or for many years. And so we’ve begun to look at how do you replace that power? But how do you redevelop some of these sites not only thinking about it from a technical perspective, but also thinking about the human aspect associated with any of the sites at the end of the day, when we think through this transition, it’s not only a.

Technical. We need the power for the grid to provide electrons. But this is also people’s jobs, people’s livelihoods, and the communities that support these plants are also impacted. And so we’re, we’re also looking into those areas as well. So did you

[00:09:32] Mark Hinaman: say 59 gigawatts by

[00:09:34] Caleb Tomlin: 2035? Yep. 59 gigawatts is projected or is scheduled to be brought offline by 2035 in the U.

S. That’s huge. Yeah, no, it’s a 2035

[00:09:53] Mark Hinaman: and that’s going to have to be replaced by something. You know, we’re, we’ve got connections in Colorado and, you know, I’ve spoken to people and utilities there and it’s, it’s a mixed bag on how they’re going to accomplish this challenge. And Colorado is kind of a micro having coal coal plants that are closing, but.

And some people say, well, we’re going to have lots of renewables, but then we’re going to build a natural gas plant to get behind it. And others think that, you know, they shouldn’t be closing the coal plants this early and with the kind of deployment timelines for nuclear, 2035 feels realistic. Like we could build some nuclear plants by then, but can we build 59 gigawatt reactors by then?

[00:10:41] Caleb Tomlin: That’s yeah, no, you’re, you’re exactly right. It is a tremendous amount of power that is coming offline. And I think the, the item that has to be kept kept in mind is these are announced retirement. It may be an even larger number than the 59 gigawatts. So we’re talking a significant amount of power and you’re right.

There are options, there are options available. And 1 thing that we’ve uncovered and new intuitively, but as you go forward, and a lot of these research projects, it becomes a lot clearer. There’s no one size fits all solution for transitioning any of these sites. It’s really going to be each individual site and utility walking through the process to determine what’s right for them.

And that’s what EPRI’s really tried to do. So again, I mentioned, I sit within the nuclear sector. We’ve worked closely with our generation group and what they’re attempting to do. So they’re painting a broader picture and looking at all of the different generation types that could replace. An existing coal site, so that’s solar and wind gas turbines with that are hydrogen powered and looking at battery.

Yeah, batteries being a storage technology as well. So all of those are being evaluated. But as I mentioned earlier. Coal is a firm dispatchable generation source and nuclear is as well, just without the carbon emissions. So nuclear in a lot of ways makes a good fit for replacing existing coal sites, given their firm dispatchable generation.

[00:12:32] Mark Hinaman: Do you have a couple of examples of why? There’s not a one size fits all solution. I mean, it sounds simple

[00:12:40] Caleb Tomlin: to say, oh, yeah, you’ve got a coal plant and a

[00:12:43] Mark Hinaman: coal plant might be 500 watts or a gigawatt. Why can’t you just slot in a different power source?

[00:12:50] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, no, that question has come up and as always, the devil’s in the details.

And as you begin to evaluate any of these. Different sites in some cases, it comes down to the available land. What we discovered in doing the research is there are three, three key items that make coal sites attractive for deployment of nuclear. One is the available land. In many cases, there’s sufficient land available for the deployment of nuclear.

The next is going to be water. Coal sites and nuclear sites, Both operate with steam turbines. We’re boiling water to turn a turbine and those run most efficiently with a large. Body of cooling water near them to cool the condensate. Water is the next available asset. Lastly, is.

Transmission distribution. Siding of transmission is not a simple or easy task, and so running new transmission lines can be a very lengthy process, and so taking advantage of those assets is one of the biggest advantages of siding at a coal site.

[00:14:05] Mark Hinaman: So that’s specific for. Whitewater reactors and boiling water reactors, but you need the water people.

I guess our plants are always

[00:14:14] Caleb Tomlin: Right. Yeah, as long as I The plants today for the most part are looking at Rankin cycles. So a steam driven turbine So whether they’re PW ours BW ours or any of the advanced reactors molten salt hot temperature gas or sodium They’re looking to turn a turbine with steam and then

[00:14:35] Mark Hinaman: me Coal plants are in the U.

S. now, and I mean, 59 gigawatts of announced retirements. How big is this, I’ll call it a market or a project that we think the U. S. will need to

[00:14:50] Caleb Tomlin: undertake? So I would say that it’s a significant opportunity for the U. S. Now, number of sites, number of plants that can be Broken down into many different ways, but again, we like to look at it from the higher level with the 59 gigawatts of capacity.

I know that the did a great study earlier this year where they said, hey, potentially 300 sites across the U. S. could be suitable for. Deployment of nuclear and require further investigation there. Again, you’re talking coal sites with everything from 100 megawatts of. Generation to 1000 megawatts of generation and in between.

[00:15:36] Mark Hinaman: What all would be converted in these sites? You mentioned there’s plenty of land available. I mean, do you have to build a new building next to. The boiler help paint the picture for us on what gets converted.

[00:15:47] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so from that perspective, again, this is going to come down to a site specific evaluation and that’s, that is our recommendation.

You, you’ve got to get in and do your own evaluations for what is suitable, but at the end of the day, we don’t see reuse of the turbine cycle or. The boiler area, the coal coal plant proper as being used. And so there are a couple of different reasons for that. 1 being if you want to maintain your cold generation until the point where you turn your nuclear plant on, you’re not going to build.

Next to it and maintain those 2 concurrently secondly, if you look at the sizing of the turbines for a coal fired power plant, you’ve got to keep in mind that a turbine is, it is designed specifically for the operating conditions in which it, was procured for and in most cases, the nuclear plants are not going to be able to satisfy those steam conditions, but then further beyond that, even if you’re able to provide the steam conditions required in a lot of cases, you’re looking at equipment that is 40, 50, 60 years old.

And so you begin to ask the question, do I want to buy a new one? Right?

[00:17:15] Mark Hinaman: So the steam conditions, you mean that the temperature of the steam at the inlet and outlet of the turbine might actually be different than for a nuclear plant as they’re designed by water plants versus full plants? Am I thinking about that correctly?

Yes. bUt is it higher, lower? What’s a typical coal plant run at?

[00:17:36] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so coal plants typically run at higher, higher temperatures and pressures than most nuclear reactors.

[00:17:44] Mark Hinaman: Okay, and building concurrently. I mean, if you’re a company and you’re wanting to continue to make money while you build your huge capital intensive project, then yeah, keep your coal plant on while you’re building your nuclear plant next to it, or nuclear island next to it.

That makes so much sense to me. And yet there’s announced retirements in some areas, but it’s kind of politically driven. They don’t have plans to replace the generation before they make it retirement. Not really a question there, just kind of a comment, but, you know, no.

[00:18:18] Caleb Tomlin: So I think from that perspective and.

Politics regulations, any of the, any of the like aside, this is something that needs to be looked at from a long term perspective. It needs to be planned for if you think you may want nuclear. You don’t have to go all in. You can begin to evaluate bits and pieces at a time, and so that is the other aspect of this is one size doesn’t fit all.

You don’t need a project team of 150 people to begin doing evaluations. You can be a project team of. 1 or project team of 2 to begin utilizing resources that are out there and available. So, uh, we have a number of different items that could be potentially useful for a utility evaluating a coal site. 1, the practical guide that we just released.

And that builds in a lot of ways off of our sighting guide, which every has had for 2 to 3 decades at this point, as well as their technology assessment guide. And so with those 3 items, it really gives a utility a starting point where do I need to begin looking in order to understand where I want to go?

Are there any. Showstoppers such that. If I am asked to go and dig deeper, I have some baseline, baseline knowledge and understanding of what is, what is required and where we stand today.

[00:19:55] Mark Hinaman: And you described these as guides. What, what are they? Are they PDFs? Are they documents on a website? Are they interactive tools?

[00:20:03] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so they are PDFs on a website at EPRI. com. They are free to the public. All three of these are free to the public now. For a long time, they were behind their paywall, but we made the decision, I guess, about 12 months ago To bring these out and make them free to the public because we saw them as being necessary for that energy transition to help help utilities as well as the public in a variety of stakeholders understand what is required and and maximize the benefit to society as a whole.

[00:20:40] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, you guys have a ton of information on your website. I just tried to pull up or search for some of these guides and. There’s what, 10, 000 results and thousands of reports that you have available, which is awesome. I mean, maybe you guys are busy doing work, doing research.

So when you chat with utilities and some of your stakeholders, What’s kind of the general feeling? Are they still in the exploration phase? Are they excited to do this? Are they hesitant? Can you give us some color on that?

[00:21:14] Caleb Tomlin: So I guess I won’t comment on whether or not they’re excited or not excited.

In some cases there, I’ll say there is a lot of momentum around nuclear and the potential that it holds. So we’ve seen in in the past 6 or 7 years, we’ve gone from nobody talking about nuclear to. You’re seeing it in the news mainstream media routinely. And so we see that as good momentum going forward.

Many of the utilities are doing their own evaluations. They’re trying to determine what is what are the right options for. Our stakeholders for our customers and nuclear is beginning to to be drawn more and more into the mix. And that’s where every sits. And what we’re trying to do from the generation sector within every they’ve developed a, Guide or a tool for evaluating what generation types may be most suitable for the retired coal site. So they’ve developed this tool. It’s not flashy, but it gives all the right information and ask all the right questions to give a site or a utility and understanding as to what may be best suited for replacing that coal generation.

And from that tool, they’ve done case studies both at the site level as well as the fleet level to begin painting that picture. How do we think about replacing that generation? Because it’s not, like we’ve mentioned, it’s not a one size fits all by any means, but at the same time there is a process that can be undertaken in order to really determine what is required and what that best generation source is.

[00:23:09] Mark Hinaman: Are there examples of companies actually doing this? I mean, the 2 that I’m aware of, or that come to mind when asked questions, the Kemmerer project in Miami, and then let’s see, earlier this year, I was at the utility and some. The Tennessee Valley Authority said that they were, you know, exploring the opportunity to say, using it there.

Are there other utilities that you’re aware of that are do you have examples of I would say there are others that are evaluating their sites and.

[00:23:43] Caleb Tomlin: To comment on any specific utility, I, I can’t but yeah, what you’ve mentioned are definitely out there and available. And I would say also, if you look at various IRPs, integrated resource plans for the various utilities they’ll talk about where they’re, where they’re looking and what they’re planning to do.

Yeah, I know in

[00:24:05] Mark Hinaman: Colorado, the IRP that they, that Excel submitted is being challenged and revised, thanks. Does the employee headcount change with bringing in nuclear plants or converting coal to nuclear?

[00:24:21] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so that’s actually an area of research that we have going forward for next year is trying to, in a detailed fashion, lay out the jobs that exist at the coal, coal facilities today.

Okay. And map those 2 jobs within a nuclear plant would be built on or near that site. And so what we’ve discovered and some preliminary evaluations is that the head count actually goes up for the nuclear plant. Coal plants today operate. 150, 200 people at a site and we’re talking about potentially double that for, for a nuclear unit.

So there, there is job creation. However, I would say there’s also from a project planning perspective, recognizing that you’re going to decommission the coal site. You may be wanting to retain a certain amount of the Coal facility workers for coal decommissioning, and they may want to be a part of that on their own, but recognizing that each of these individuals has a great deal of knowledge from the years that they’ve spent at the facility.

And so how do you decommission well? In a lot of cases relies on on their knowledge.

[00:25:42] Mark Hinaman: If the head count goes up, would that make the plant more expensive to operate and run than a plant?

[00:25:50] Caleb Tomlin: I would say I’m not able to comment on the economics of the coal facilities, but what we’re expecting from an advanced reactor perspective is that the head count overall will come down.

But in comparison to. Coal or natural gas, either of those operating number of people required to operate will come up from there.

[00:26:18] Mark Hinaman: Okay, so more people to operate, but your fuel costs is likely lower and it will be newer than what are in. Current reactor setting, right?

What’s stopping companies from doing this now, or what are some of the biggest hurdles that people have to overcome to make

this a reality?

[00:26:37] Caleb Tomlin: I don’t know that there are any great showstoppers associated with transitioning coal to nuclear at this point. Really, it’s beginning to take that first step in understanding.

Is this where we want to be? Is this something that we want to evaluate? And many of the utilities are, are beginning to do that on their own. Again, they have to understand from a resource perspective, where, where are we going to get our power going forward? And so they’re, they are beginning to look, I would say it’s just taking that 1st step and understanding What is what is needed?

What is required?

[00:27:15] Mark Hinaman: When you guys do these research projects. How are they structured?

How do you do the research? Are you just going out and talking to utilities? Is it informational interviews? Is it public data sources? How do you bring the information in to do the research?

[00:27:35] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so all all of the above. It’s when we do a research project, depending on what we’re doing in some cases, it is going out and talking with SMEs subject matter experts and bringing in the information that they have to the project.

In other cases, it’s. Going out and evaluating. For instance, in the case of cold and nuclear practical guide that we have, it was taking information that we already had in the nuclear sector, comparing it to knowledge and information that we have. In the generation and coal sector and understanding where they overlap.

Who who is more bounding? What are the requirements? How do these different requirements interact? And what are the interfaces there?

From a general process perspective, and what, what does the process look like if I am a utility, and I think I may want to evaluate my coal site or my coal fleet for redevelopment, what do I need to be thinking about?

What are the steps? aT the end of the day, understanding what are the business objectives? Do I need to replace all of the power that the coal site generates? Or is it one of those where the coal plant was built at this location because there was a large consumer of electricity in the area? But today that consumer is gone or moved elsewhere and I don’t need that power or is that load still there and we need to be able to satisfy that so understanding business objectives Am I providing just heat or just electricity or both?

What what is the? Outcome, uh that that we’re seeking to satisfy So from there We’re going to identify a site and whether we have multiple sites or just a single site, some cases is going to be very easy because I have one plant and I need to repower it. Once that is identified, then we’re looking at site characterization.

And so this is going to be everything from population density in the area and understanding how many people live in the vicinity, what the land availability is. Seismic activity in the area, looking at wetlands habitats that are around, what is water availability. So characterizing the site from a overall perspective and understanding, are there any potential challenges there?

And so we don’t want to say that there are any necessarily we don’t want to say that there are any showstoppers when characterizing a site because With sufficient time and engineering, we, we think that a solution can be developed, but in some cases it’s cheaper or more, more advantageous for the utility to look elsewhere than, than there.

We want to understand what are the site characteristics. From that point, we can then go and look at technology and design selection. So what are the potential reactor technologies that we want to site at the, at the coal site or nearby? And so that’s understanding what megawatts electric do I need as an output?

Are there certain considerations that I have from a fuel selection perspective? Do I need this Today, or am I willing to wait on a design that is less mature, but may have properties that I find more attractive. Am I willing to wait a little bit longer for the design to mature and be available? Understanding those aspects are very important and come, come next.

We’ve got site identification, characterization, and then technology and design selection. So from, from that point, then we’re looking at evaluating site infrastructure and existing assets. What is it that I have available to me today? I have a switch yard. Do I have transformers that need to be replaced?

Do I have transmission lines that may need to be replaced or upgraded? Are there warehouses and administrative buildings that I can reuse? How do I think through project planning? And as I demolition different aspects of the coal facility, how am I reusing the various assets that are required?

Next, you want to look at securing the land and transmission and water rights. So understanding that it’s not a given that you will maintain any of these going forward, but it takes foresight. And going out and actually assuring that you have those. Rights to the land to the transmission and to the water as well as other permits.

In the case of the transmission rights in some cases, in some areas, you have 3 years from the time that you shut down. Or you stop generating at your coal site to the time that you begin generating again. And so if you miss that window, if you go longer than that 3 years, you may be may get bumped to the back of the transmission queue and have access to transmission.

So actually delivering the power to the grid. So it’s important to understand project planning from that perspective. Once we’ve gone through those items, then we can get into cost and economic evaluations, so we know what the site holds, we know what technology we think we want, we’ve evaluated the infrastructure, and we’ve secured all the permits, what is it going to cost?

And then you can begin thinking through the different aspects of, is this the right, right decision, and does it meet our overall business objectives? Two items that underpin Each of those steps is going to be community outreach and engagement. So reaching out to the community, getting them engaged and involved, having an open and honest conversation with the stakeholders across not only the utility, the plant but leaders within the community and, and different groups that are associated with it and understanding.

Their, their thoughts, their concerns. What is it that they need clarification on? How do we help them to get on the same page and really have a respectful conversation going forward, knowing that everybody is coming at this from a different perspective, and there’s a human element. To everything that we’re doing in this transition.

The other, other under, underpinning aspect is workforce development. So as you’ve made the decision and begin to think about transitioning some of the workforce or all of the workforce, there are going to be some jobs that are easily transferred and require a little retraining or reskilling. There are gonna be other jobs that are more easily re-skilled, and then there are gonna be some that the coal plant just doesn’t have because coal plants don’t require nuclear engineers or reactor operators.

So to an extent you can bucket the, the job. Transition into 3 areas. 1 is minimal reskilling required. There is a medium category of there is reskilling required. And then lastly, there are entirely new jobs that have to be brought into the area for the nuclear plant.

[00:35:36] Mark Hinaman: There’s a lot to unpack there, but thanks so much for the overview.

That was really helpful. The is the cost and design selection that that feels like it could be iterative, right? And in this process, meaning if if there’s a design that costs less, or there’s a cost update, then that might. Modify a utility selection of a specific design and I think about that correctly.

[00:36:03] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so that’s part of the design selection is understanding design maturity. And so we would say how far along how close to being. Available for deployment is the design. Do you have a mature supply chain available that that can satisfy? So I’ve got the design on paper. Can I buy the physical parts and actually have them deployed?

So each of those are items that need to be understood. And that comes back again to what is your overall timeline and understanding? Do I need this plant? Yeah. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, or what is the timeline? And that also affects the project team that you put put on this.

[00:36:53] Mark Hinaman: Caleb, are there other organizations internationally that.

Are similar to EPRI. I mean, EPRI is mostly North America based. Am I thinking about that correctly? Or is it all U.

[00:37:04] Caleb Tomlin: S.? No, actually from a nuclear perspective, about half of our members are, are international. So we do a lot of international work have a lot of engagement globally and support many of the Oh, there you go.

[00:37:20] Mark Hinaman: I, I learned something.

So what’s the international scene look like then? Is this discussion occurring in more than just the U. S.?

[00:37:30] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so we’ve had engagements with IEA and other organizations around the world. And I think one of the things that sets the U. S. apart is the availability of natural gas. In a lot of cases, that easier transition.

Oh. We’ve seen it in the past decade, coal to coal to gas switching a lot of times that’s not available in other parts of the world. And that transition from coal to another resource may be more driven to nuclear.

[00:38:05] Mark Hinaman: Are there specific regions that are more excited about it? I, ones that I know of are Sweden, Ghana.

I know some folks in South Africa are excited, but

[00:38:19] Caleb Tomlin: do you have other?

Yeah, so I’d say that from a U. S. perspective, looking internationally the U. S. State Department is. Really trying to help that transition through their 1st program. And so they’re supporting studies and evaluations globally whether that be.

Eastern Europe or, or other parts of the world where they’re trying to support coal to nuclear transitions with SMRs, small modular reactors. Got it.

[00:38:51] Mark Hinaman: These probably aren’t going to be deployed as quickly as coal plants. wOuld you agree? If there’s someone, you know, coal to nuclear is one thing, but if somebody came in and just wanted to build a new power plant, and going nuclear versus going coal is there one that might be built faster, one one’s better emissions, but the other one might be faster to build.

[00:39:13] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, I mean that, that is certainly a case. I, I think at the end of the day, we obviously want to see a transition to nuclear units, but at the same time, maintaining power on the grid is is vitally important. To say we should build 1 or the other, I think that comes down to the region of interest and what they’re attempting to execute on.

But at the end of the day, we want to make sure we’re providing them with tools necessary. To make the transition as quickly as

[00:39:46] Mark Hinaman: possible. Caleb, what do you think is one of the most impactful steps that we can take, and I’ll say in the U. S. specifically, to build more nuclear and ASAP? I mean, you guys have outlined this process of what utilities can do to transition coal plants, and I think that’s awesome. I guess what would be 1 of the most impactful steps that folks can do that. And maybe that’s just if you don’t have a department in your company yet, but studying this, then give someone the job. Right? Like,

[00:40:17] Caleb Tomlin: yeah, no, I think that’s taking that 1st step at the end of the day, the preparation. The longer you take to plan the better off you will be.

When the time comes that you say, yes, we want the nuclear plant, then we’re able to, then you’re able to move more quickly to that final final design and final determination construction and, and putting power on the grid. If I were to say, What, where’s the best place to start? I would say do, do the evaluation, understand, do you want to look at nuclear?

You may say we’re going all solar, we’re going all wind, we’ve, we’ve counted the cost. We know what the impact to the grid is. We know what storage is required for backup. We know all, all of the cost. Understanding the broad picture I think is, is step number one. And then step number 2, if you’re going to begin, you think nuclear is the place to begin, form that team, have, have the folks ready and available to, to go and do the preliminary evaluations again, if your timeline is longer, you can have a smaller team, and they can go and do individual evaluations, but if you say, look, we want to have a nuclear plant operational in 2035, you better start building that team and getting ready.

Pretty quickly,

[00:41:41] Mark Hinaman: but it doesn’t have to be a big team to start, right? Because folks like you and other there’s, there’s lots of resources out there. All the national labs, everything that INL and game is put together that there’s just so much content and

[00:41:55] Caleb Tomlin: information. Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. So we work closely with gain and Christine King and her team.

So communicate often with them to make sure that we’re not overlapping in any of these different areas. One of the, the keys is understanding what resources are available. This past November GAIN, EPRI, and NEI hosted a meeting in Morgantown, West Virginia, to look at adding nuclear to the mix, and part of that was helping to show people what resources were available.

What is it that NEI has, the Nuclear Energy Institute? What is it that EPRI has? What is it that GAIN, DOE in the broader organizations have available for utilities so that they can begin this process.

[00:42:47] Mark Hinaman: How can people help? You mentioned that stakeholder engagement and community engagement is very important. I assume that’s one step that folks can take. How else can people help?

[00:43:00] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so I would say lean in. If you are a resident in a coal community and If you’re interested in what nuclear could do for you, reach out. I’d be happy to walk through the guide and talk about what the process may look like.

And that is part of the reason we made the guide public free to the public was we wanted stakeholders to have the information available to them. So that they understood what was going on as the process was taking place so that they can engage in a thoughtful way with their utility and with the leadership of their states and communities.

[00:43:47] Mark Hinaman: And Caleb, just so folks have it again, what’s the name of the guide or how can people find this? You mentioned this through the website.

[00:43:53] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah, so I think the best thing to do would be for me to give you links to put in on YouTube and podcast. So we can do that, but just going to every dot com and searching for from cold and nuclear that will take you to the practical guide and lead you to all the references.

But I’d also welcome people to reach out to myself. So see Tomlin, T O M L I N at EPRI. E p r i dot com. And again, I’d be happy to begin the conversation. Why don’t

[00:44:27] Mark Hinaman: you leave us with your most optimistic and wow, actually, yeah, that’s, that’s really easy. I did just go to the website and search for from cold nuclear and yeah, it’s right there.

So that makes it really easy. Why don’t you give us your most practical most optimistic vision of the future? What’s the world should look like the next? 5, 10, 15 years.

[00:44:53] Caleb Tomlin: Yeah. So my most practical outlook or most optimistic outlook. You know, I’ve got 2 kids there. They’re nine and 11. And when I think about their futures and where they’re going to be in the coming years, I think it is.

Really going to be a great place because nuclear has the potential to all for abundant, cheap, clean power. And I think we’re going to see an expansion of nuclear. Like we’ve never seen not like what was in the 60s and 70s when we built much of the existing fleet but we’re really going to see an expansion of nuclear, not only for replacement power, but we’re also going to see an expansion into a non electric missions.

So we’ve talked about how it can satisfy industrial needs and low carbon fuels. District energy data centers the future is going to be heavily dependent on available energy and nuclear, I think stands to offer that. I love it.

[00:45:58] Mark Hinaman: And you guys are helping us get there and also research and work that you’re doing.

So thank you for that.

[00:46:04] Caleb Tomlin: Yes, sir.

[00:46:04] Mark Hinaman: Caleb Tomlin. Thanks so much for the time.

[00:46:06] Caleb Tomlin: Really appreciate chatting with you. Thank you, Mark. No, I really appreciate the conversation. It was great. Ask lots of insightful questions and look forward to being in contact with not only you, but your listeners.

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