053 Jeff Whitt, President of US Government Solutions at Framatome

[00:00:00] Jeff Whitt: The conversations earlier about electricity, but now the conversations are about. You know, basically helping to being able to decarbonize the industry. And so recently when people like Microsoft and the steel industry saying, Hey, you give us clean nuclear power, we can use it all to, to me, that’s creating a shift in what the business models are going to look like for the future as well.

[00:00:23] Intro: Just because the facts are A, if the narrative is B and everyone believes the narrative, then B is what matters. But it’s our job in our industry to speak up proudly, soberly. And to engage people in this dialogue. Those two and a half billion people that are in energy poverty, they need us. America cannot meet this threat alone.

If there is a single country. Of course the world cannot meet it without America. That is willing to. We’re gonna need you. The next generation to finish the job. Overhaul nuclear radiation. We need scientists to design new fuels. And focus on net public benefit. We need engineers to invent new technologies.

Over absurd levels of radiation. Entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. And we will march towards this. We need workers to operate a. Assembly lines that hum with high tech, zero carbon components. We have unlimited prosperity for all of you. We need diplomats and businessmen and women and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy.

In other words, we need you.

[00:01:27] Mark Hinaman: Okay. Welcome to another episode of the Fire2Fission podcast, where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can better human lives. My name is Mark Hinaman, and I’m joined today by Jeff Witt, president of Framatome U. S. Government Solutions. Jeff, how you doing?

[00:01:41] Jeff Whitt: I’m doing great.

[00:01:43] Mark Hinaman: Yeah. This is going to be a wonderful conversation.

We’ve got lots to cover. You and I met at an ANS utility conference and uh, excited to Catch up. You had lots of interesting things to say at that conference. Lots of hot takes and so I was like, man, we gotta get you on the podcast.

[00:02:00] Jeff Whitt: So you, were you recording me while we were talking at the conference?

That was great. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. Secretly. Yeah, I had

[00:02:06] Mark Hinaman: I had the iPhone and the suit jacket. Good. So, Jeff, for the audience’s benefit, why don’t you give a brief self intro, you know, 30 seconds to a minute. So people have kind of an understanding of what your day job is. Dive into some of your background and talk about your current job.

[00:02:24] Jeff Whitt: Yeah, sure. So, well, what’s, what’s interesting, I would say that I’m one of the, one of these people that’s a little bit later in the season of my career. And what I find is though, that we’re in a time in this industry where our people are really motivated. I don’t like to use the word the cliche energized, but in actuality, there’s a lot of energy going on and, and and it’s all about what nuclear energy is doing now. And so I’m very encouraged by my work. I’m encouraged that I’m getting to share it with a lot of great people, younger people, people that have been in the, in the, in the industry for a while. And so, so my, my day job is I leave the LLC and we can talk about that a little bit more later, basically working for Framitome.

I’m actually headquartered here in Letchburg, Virginia.

[00:03:07] Mark Hinaman: Got it. Okay. So skipping back or jumping back, you you had a consulting business called Wits End, which sounds like a pun on your last name. I I was doing a little more research on you, but give us a perspective. What was that?

[00:03:22] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. So how about if I take you back in a story and tell you how I ended up there and give you a little bit of my history.

I, I did, I did not start in the nuclear industry. I actually started in the mobile communications mobile emergency communications in manufacturing and I was trained as a journeyman machinist. And so I became a fairly good tool and die maker and things like that German machinist journeyman, journeyman machinist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, I graduated a state apprenticeship program, which tremendous opportunity for somebody that. You know, young in the career. And so I, I ended up coming to to the nuclear industry through the manufacturing channel. So I actually started there in the manufacturing route.

I was in the tooling engineering then ended up being in supervision. And then I went back into telecom for a period of time, and I went back into the management side of telecom. And and it was in that time that I developed some, you know, some pretty interesting skills of deploying new cellular technology.

I mean, we, we, we all love our cell phones, but I lived through what it was like to actually take it from an analog to a digital platform and ran that. And so during that period, as it kind of hit its heyday, the company that I was working for decided to, to basically that they had finished doing their part in the industry.

And I still had customers that I’d work with that said, Jeff, we’d like for you to continue to work for us. And so I, I secured some IP rights to some 9 1 1 certification work that we had developed and actually went to work for customers, former customers and started my own business. So what best to say, it’s end, you know, so, so that’s, that’s how I ended up at my own business.

It was, it was a great. A great experience in that I was now working on projects that had very short life cycles, which is much different than the nuclear industry. So I found when I came back into the regular life cycle, regular life cycle could be a life cycle in, in some of the projects we did could be three months to 12 months.

So we would go into a region of the country and basically survey cell sites, create the specifications, change out the power systems, help help the carrier be able to figure out what the equipment was. And then we had teams that would actually go in and we would cut over whole systems. And sometimes we would do that in 9 to 12 months.

So, so you can imagine which, which is fast, which is unbelievably fast, but you got to remember back at the time the demand for cellular technology was just growing. I mean, I was 1 of those guys that had original bag phone, right? You know, I was so proud of myself. I could dial these codes and spend 50 cents a minute to be able to call the evolution of that.

But. It gave me a much fresh, fresher perspective of how projects can actually be run. And so you can imagine when I came back, when I came back when I came back here I probably created some tension because I had a whole different life cycle mentality than, than what we classically had. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:06:28] Mark Hinaman: Arriva?

I’d like to say I really appreciate the, Hey, I had a job. I was working for previous customers or even coworkers. And then I left and they said, Hey, we really like what you do. And you started your own business. Like, I just love highlighting that because that entrepreneurial spirit is in my opinion, one of the great things that makes America great.

Yeah.

[00:06:51] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. And it’s funny. So when I, when I came back. Story of how I got back, the head of the projects organization in the fuel business unit at the time, which is in the arena days, ran into me at a Lowe’s and he goes, Jeff, what are you doing? Well, I’d worked with him many years ago when I was a tooling engineer, right?

And I said, well, I’m running my business. He goes, you know, we could use some help on a couple of projects. And he named a utility customer. I said, well, I might have some bandwidth. Well, at the time I was traveling, I was doing work in Texas and whatever the case is, and I thought, you know, having some work close by would not be a bad idea, so I came and sat down with him at Applebee’s with his project manager, and he came in with this list of a yellow notepad, and he goes, well, we have this and this and this, and I said, well, I think I can handle that, I can think of how to handle that, so we met, and about six weeks later, I get a ding on my email, and it was a purchase order, and I So, so, so I came back in that contracting capability, but it, it allowed me to then come in and start working on over time, some key projects and and that’s where that, that maybe that entrepreneurial exposure that I had in telecom kind of levitated me toward the services side of the business and being able to grow that and, and, and I have to tell you, when you’re negotiating contracts with building owners.

In some very eclectic parts of the country you learn how to do creative contracting and solutions to problems because when you need to have a cell site in that region, you have to find a way to be able to solve that problem. So that that helped me. And so, you know, what I have found since coming back is I, I seem to levitate to the problem areas or the challenging areas.

That may me need a little bit more, more fresh. Why, why

[00:08:30] Mark Hinaman: is, do you just keep asking questions, like questioning how people are doing

[00:08:34] Jeff Whitt: things? I, I, it’s not that I ask questions, but I I, in some regards, I, I, I think of myself, and I don’t mean this in a wrong way. I kind of think of myself as a futurist in that I, I can look at, at situations and go, you know, this could evolve here, or this could go here and.

And maybe we need to be thinking about this. So, for instance, one of the things that I do is I lead our advanced reactors engagements in North America. And part of that’s growing a challenging areas. The business, I’m sure we’ll talk about that a little bit, but on my presentations, I have fusion on there.

And, and I was asked, and I was, I was making a presentation at Idaho earlier this year, and I was asked, why do you have fusion on that list? And I said, well, because I have an 18 year old, that’s getting ready to go to college for mechanical engineering. And by the time he graduates in his mid career, fusion is going to have its place in the energy mix.

And I want to make sure that I’m doing everything that I can to make sure that he has a part of things like that in the future. So anyway. I’ll give you my mindset

[00:09:36] Mark Hinaman: thinking forward for America’s youth. Yeah,

[00:09:39] Jeff Whitt: that’s great. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So you said several times come back. Does that mean coming back to like a Riva?

[00:09:48] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. I came back to Riva at the time I went into the commercial side of the of the fuel business. And that gave me an opportunity to then begin engaged. And I was, I was one of the guys that helped with the ATF project when that came along with the government post machine. And what, what is, what was that, sorry.

The acronym AC accident Tolerant Fuel. Sorry. It, it’s assumption everybody. I’ll try my best to not use acronym acronyms. Yeah, post Fukushima, when the industry come back and said, Hey, you know, literally there’s some things that we can learn here. So there was a program with the department of energy launched about accident tolerant fuel.

So I was engaged in that and some other projects and then and it was good. We, we, we came up with some creative things as a company and now I think we’re leading in that area. So

[00:10:31] Mark Hinaman: Jeff, do you want to give us a background on what? What Framatome does and I mean we we’ve used this term Ariba and Framatome interchangeably sure we can maybe talk about how they Transitioned but yeah, just give us a brief

[00:10:45] Jeff Whitt: perspective.

Sure. So so so the Framatome family is really a International company that basically reaches out basically have a global presence in what we’re doing. We have, I think the last number I saw was about 18, 000 employees globally, about 64 sites worldwide. Here in North America, we have about 3000 employees in over about a dozen sites.

Our teams so if you’ve met Craig Ranson, then he’s probably talked to you about servicing the fleet. Those, those teams, as well as our field teams, they work. Over six million hours a year of safe work hours. So that’ll give you an idea We we we probably have a portfolio of well over well over a hundred reactors that we support over a mix over the years and So we we we support the commercial fleet.

Our customers are basically the commercial fleet in US and Canada PW ours BW ours And can do is, and I want to come back to that when we start talking advanced reactors and I’ll tell you the mix that I think this is creating for us. We also work with the Department of energy and the national labs, the university, and a big part of what growing businesses is the work that we’re doing with new reactor developers.

So our business lines can be compartmentalized to maybe three main areas. We, the install base really focuses on the existing fleet of reactors primarily. products, maintenance, service, infrastructure, parts, repairs nuclear parts center in our Hallmark location is our technical training center here in Lynchburg, Virginia.

That is a place where you can actually come in and you can see, we actually have mock ups of real world reactor environments. We have a a pool that we can actually do BWR and PWR fuel handling, testing out equipment and whatever. We even have things like we have cybersecurity, we can do virtual reality.

There’s a great mix of innovation and whatever that we’re doing to be able to bring a solution to that fleet. The second part of that is our fuel division, and they’re the ones that basically design, license, manufacture nuclear fuel. And I have a little bit of history, if I can go down a rabbit trail here for a second.

Please, please do. But when I was back in manufacturing for fuel, when I was the tooling engineer for the first 17 by 17 fuel assembly that we built. So, so that’s where my roots go back and by 17 that yeah, that’s 17 pins by 17 pin array for a P. W. R. Pressure was water reactor fuel assembly. And so I have a little bit 14

[00:13:14] Mark Hinaman: ft long

[00:13:15] Jeff Whitt: rods or 2.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s about it’s about it’s about, yeah, it’s about 12 ft of active uranium height in those rods. So, yeah That, that team does licensing, manufacturing of fuel core components, control rods, things like that. They, they our hallmark facility there is our Richland Manufacturing Facility in Richland, Washington.

We, we can do about 10 different fuel types, and the beauty of that facility is we might be doing a shorter a boiling water reactor fuel assembly one week and the next week we’re doing a long pwr fuel assembly for a customer And being a move out. It’s probably one of the most versatile facilities that you’re you’re ever going to meet and tremendous licensing activities there and reputation and But that team also is working toward the future with new fuels and whatever and i’m sure we’ll talk about that a little bit The third division is our instrumentation and controls.

They’re the ones that Manufacturing core detectors, instrumentations, things that actually do monitoring and control systems at those, at those power plants. So that’s, that’s kind of the three primary divisions at Framatome. Got it.

[00:14:21] Mark Hinaman: Yep. I, coming from the outside, again, I think most of the world doesn’t recognize that a lot of nuclear fuel is a solid.

Yeah. Actually manufacture it, right? Like you have to make metal tubes that you hold it in. And then how do you. Arrange the amazing. And the geometry has, has to be very specific for it to function correctly when it’s in a reactor versus, you know, versus when you’re like, well, you know, fuel in every other form of energy generation is a liquid or a gas, I guess with the exception of like biomass, right?

There you is a solid, but like, you know, this is very sophisticated. I, I wouldn’t say overly complex, but that’s perhaps just me being naive, but like the, the technology that. You know, the industry has developed and that you guys manufacturers is really, it’s cool in my

[00:15:10] Jeff Whitt: opinion, it is unbelievable. It’s precise.

You know, that, that’s where I go back and I talk about those proud moments of building those first few minutes because I learned a lot about, you know, a, a, a fuel pellet you know, a, a uranium fuel pellet. You load a whole stack of those inside of a fuel rod to a very tight tolerance. You basically, that fuel rod is basically evacuated and basically pressurized with an inert gas.

It is hermetically sealed. And it stays that way for its whole life. You, you know, and and after you guys get

[00:15:44] Mark Hinaman: done assembling it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s designed to stay that way

[00:15:47] Jeff Whitt: forever, essentially. It’s, it’s designed to stay that way forever. And if you sit down and look at the material sciences that have gone into the evolution of that fuel and how robust it is, it, it is absolutely amazing to me.

I, I mean, and I can tell you the rigor. That goes into the manufacturing and the quality oversight and even the statistics and everything that was doing. It’s just, it’s pretty tremendous to me. If I go back and think about my career evolution, being able to be a part of that environment early on, gave me a lot of appreciation for the rigor I sometimes when I came into telecom, when I came back into telecom, I had to learn to temper that level of being precise on things that did not need to be.

But yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s, it’s a tremendous, tremendous quality in the industry. Okay.

[00:16:35] Mark Hinaman: So Jeff, what’s what’s your current role within

[00:16:37] Jeff Whitt: the organization? Yeah. So I’m, I am currently the president of Framatome U. S. government solutions limited liability corporation. We are a we are wholly owned subsidiary of Framatome Inc.

in North America. Our team basically coordinates and works across all of that Framatome family that, that we talked about before we, we helped deliver. Those solutions, those products, those, that engineering, that support to the needs of the U. S. government and U. S. government entities. That’s our primary mission in the LLC.

You know, we, we help, we help with things like the Accident Tolerant Fuel Program. We we deploy teams to the national labs. And support their critical mission there, like at the advanced test reactor. We were part of that ATR restart the National Institute of Standards. We have done work there, Argonne, Pacific, Northwest, and whatever.

We also, though, bridge over, and you can understand the diversity of this, we also bridge over and work with the university programs for, for the U. S. D. O. E. N. E., the, it’s the, the NEUP programs, where, We come alongside where universities can do early stage R and D or development or whatever, where we bring our expertise to bear working with university teams and being able to help with the challenges and materials systems new technology development or whatever the case is.

So we kind of provide some leadership for that. And then we also, we also leave the office. Go ahead.

[00:18:04] Mark Hinaman: Curious on the university pieces. Is that like a pro bono thing that you guys do where you get contracted with?

[00:18:10] Jeff Whitt: We do. We do call share into that. We actually do call share for some for some things we come alongside the way the program.

Sometimes we come in and we do it at our own cost is our contribution. Sometimes we have some cost reimbursement that goes with that.

[00:18:22] Mark Hinaman: But it’s like universities that have nuclear reactors on campus that they’re, or they’re doing research on radioactive, radioactive materials. It’s those kind of departments, right?

[00:18:32] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. Yeah. It’s those kind of projects, but they don’t have to have a reactor. Some of them, it can be material sciences and so forth. And we’re coming alongside, you know, we, we might like, and then then we might work with other small businesses that are developing things like silicon carbide or whatever the case is where we teamed it up with the university.

aNd try to help solve some fundamental science or some issues that need to be done. And and it’s good because it’s great experience for the university talent. But it’s also a good blending of us being able to bring expertise in and being able to work with them too. It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a good synergy with the universities and which, which, which we enjoy doing.

[00:19:08] Mark Hinaman: So where does the name framatome come from and why, why the rebrand from Areva to Framatome?

[00:19:16] Jeff Whitt: I call it back to the future. You know, it’s there, there was a time where in Areva was basically a fully consolidated, you know, it’s Framatome.

It has its origin in the Franco American cooperation. That’s where it has its genesis in. We found ourselves as Arriva, which was basically a full spectrum company. Everything from mining and enrichment to fuel to servicing to the back end of the cycle and even building a fully integrated nuclear fuel.

Yeah, it was like fully integrated. Arriva was a fully integrated company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the decision was made due to some economic things and stuff that happened. The decision was made to actually do a re separation and so you had You basically had a, a a restructuring of the Riva family where one group went off in, in Orono and they basically have all the front end and all the back end type stuff primarily.

That’s where their expertise is. So in that case, you basically realign your talent and your stuff around primary expertise. We, on the other hand, our front end,

[00:20:19] Mark Hinaman: you mean. Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:24] Jeff Whitt: Yeah, all, all the way, all, all the way through to the point. We take the uranium hexafluoride at our manufacturing facilities and then we turn it into a powder and then into pellets.

So that’s where we pick it up at. And then we do all the fuel manufacturing and then surfacing of the existing fleet or whatever. So it was, it was a, it was a it was a, an interesting transition because you have to go through a a, a division of responsibilities as you do that and, and what’s interesting out of that, my team, the genesis of the team that I’m with now actually came out of that because, At the time we had everything consolidated, we realized that inside of Framatome, we needed a, a government group, a government services group to be able to maintain that connection with the U.

S. government interest. So that was the genesis. of how our team actually got formed. And I came into that. I came back into this group about about a year or more after after that division happened. And what’s what’s interesting is that, I found myself in our, in our CEO’s office on a conversation about the future.

You know, you always wonder how those conversations go. And, and at the time I was, I, I, because I’ve been working with advanced fuels and stuff, I was very. I was very becoming very visionary or very interested in where new reactor technologies were going. And so out of that conversation was a request to lead the government group and provide leadership for where we’re going to go in advanced reactors.

And and I remember, I remember the conversation at the time I said to him, I said I said, Gary, I’m not sure that I know much about advanced reactors, you know, and he goes, Jeff, you know, business and you know, fuel, you will figure it out. I said, can I have two weeks, two weeks to think about it? Right.

And Anyway, so I need to do a little homework. Yeah, I had to do a little bit of homework. Yeah, I needed to go ask some questions. You know, I was, I was fairly well versed but, but not being more primarily on the fuel side of the business and then being business focused outside and coming back and getting onto that reactor side of the business.

That was going to be a stretch for me. But the rationale was, was to put both of those, both of those, what I call initiatives together under one leader, because We clearly understood very early on that for new nuclear to be introduced into the market, it had to have a strong government support component.

And as we’ve seen has played out, that’s exactly how I did. So, about, about three months into that job we, we commissioned a white paper internally where we begin to look at all the different reactor. And at the time I want to say it was like, 75 different designs and companies and whatever, and we begin to do an analysis of both what the DOE was doing and then basically what we saw, and we started doing our own assessment of, okay, so let’s talk about what success would look like, you know, how, how strong is this company for the long term, because if you’ve been in nuclear, It’s not a short, short term proposition.

Okay, just from the fuel days, you know that the life cycle of introducing a new fuel product can be 10 years. Okay, so, so, so we looked at the companies, we looked at the fuel design, and then we looked at the reactor designs. And out of that, we created a. Kind of what I call a viability assessment. We begin to paint a picture, and it’s funny, every, about every year our teams get together and we do our crystal ball.

You know, we sit down and say, what has changed? What looks like? But, but out of that we begin to develop a, the forefront of what makes sense for us. What are we really good at as a company? We, you know, at the time we, we have a very good high temperature gas reactor team here in Framatome. We, we know how to manage large projects.

There’s a lot of things we’re really good at. So we begin to put a plan in place, but we merged. We run that out of the same leadership structure. For the future. So it, it, it is quite the fun experience. I’ll have to say that.

[00:24:29] Mark Hinaman: I wish I could have been a fly on the wall or got my hands on the spreadsheet to see that matrix evaluation matrix or

[00:24:37] Jeff Whitt: we hold it.

We hold it pretty close. Mark, it’s funny before you call me today. I had somebody. I had somebody to send me an email. So Jeff, I remember I’ve been commissioned to do something. I remember and I’m like yeah, I need to pull that one back up again.

[00:24:53] Mark Hinaman: I’ll circle back real quick, just for folks that might be unfamiliar with the nuclear fuel space.

Cause you know, we’ve got several listeners that come from oil and gas and it can be kind of challenging to understand, but so I’ll summarize back cause I was unfamiliar with this history and so you just described it, but it makes a lot of sense. Arriva Framitome, or it sounds like Arriva spun off several subsidiaries or departments that used to be part of the uranium fuel cycle.

And that was in the, what, the late 20 teens, 2018 maybe? 2017, 2018, yeah. 2017, yeah. And so my understanding of the history is the, there were specific segments of, you know, I mean, uranium, right? You dig it out of the ground, you gotta process it, you gotta enrich it or spin it in a centrifuge to get the useful isotope, and then you manufacture it into a metal and put it in these fuel rods.

And there were just specific parts of that process. Because of kind of the supply and demand of certain components and the total number of people that were available to do those different processes that were less economic or less profitable. It sounds like you guys spun, spun some of those off and concentrated on some of the other core business or parts of the supply chain.

Yep. Yep. And then rebranded as Framatome well. Did I summarize that back?

[00:26:07] Jeff Whitt: Yeah, yeah, you summarized that. I mean, the key is you basically, you basically consolidated teams around our competencies. At the point where you could excel and do your best at those things and that’s where you know Through that you said then look at our original manufacturing facility is world class.

You said then look at our our Services facilities here in Lynchburg world class. I mean I and that allows you to You know, one of the things I’m always concerned about in business, at what point as you’re reaching in and you’re growing and you’re doing your stuff and you’re managing diversity of all the different demands, do you begin to dilute your focus and your competencies?

And, and I think, I think in the structure, we’ve hit a very good equilibrium. And, and, and I would have to say that I am very proud of our operational culture. Because you, you can move between those teams inside of Framatome, and, and we have a culture where we can sit down and have similar conversations we’re having today.

We, we can have a non threatening conversation. We have the same structure that we follow through for problem solving. We hold ourselves accountable, you know, and, and and, and I think that was an outcome of part of that restructuring that we did was the beginning to develop an even stronger operational culture for ourselves.

Sorry, I know I got off on a tangent, but yeah,

[00:27:25] Mark Hinaman: no, no, I think that’s awesome. It sounds like, I mean, it’s like logical safety and having consistency across such a big organization. Yeah, it speaks volumes, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I want to touch on, you mentioned high temperature gas reactor competency.

This is nascent to me right now. Recent conversation I had with another reactor developer recently. Yep. Describe this to me. What do you mean you guys are really good

[00:27:47] Jeff Whitt: at this? So, so if you go back history, and I wasn’t part of this history, so if I get it wrong, don’t anybody hold me accountable to this, but there was a, there was a next generation project, NG oh, I can’t even remember what it’s called now, but it was a next generation project with the Department of Energy, where out of that, the decision was made that a high temperature gas reactor seemed to be able to solve the bill for what would needed for higher energy densities and higher temperatures that would happen.

Meet not only the needs for electricity, but the needs for industry, whatever the case is, unfortunately, that project did not continue. And so what came out of that was Jeff. Oh, goodness. No, I, I don’t. I, you know, I’ve got it written down someplace, but if I have to commit it, I want to say it’s in the late 2000s, if I had to guess.

NGNP was what it was called. You keep talking. I’ll see if I can, yeah, yeah. You try to find it. All right. Then what, what came out of that is we decided to move forward because we saw such promise with that. We continued a core team.

Working on a steam cycle, high temperature gas reactor design where we, we, we continue to develop those competencies. We continue to develop R. and D. and that and whatever the case is and so that belt that built some really good advanced reactors competencies, you know, systems, engineering, understanding materials.

One of our experts that still works for me is, was very involved in the TRISO fuel qualification program and follows that as engaged in the industry. So what we developed out of that was a tremendous capability and expertise for Gen 4 reactor technologies with a focus on hot temperature gas reactor.

Some of our colleagues in France and the parallel through our French colleagues We’re working on not only projects like that, but on the you might remember the Astor project Which is a sodium fast reactor project So we kind of kind of held that had our high temperature gas reactor experience here And in and that was very good because it’s become the foundation For what we have built into and where we’re at now in our engagement with some of the developers.

You’re still

[00:29:57] Mark Hinaman: looking at it Yeah, no, no, I found, I found a couple studies. It was like late 2010s or early 2010s, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. 2011, 2012, but some studies were

[00:30:07] Jeff Whitt: published about it, so. Yeah, shame on me for not knowing the answer to that.

[00:30:11] Mark Hinaman: Wow, you can’t remember everything, Jeff. Come on. Okay well that, that’s fantastic background on Pramatome, I love it, but as you said, you self described yourself as a futurist, but actually I think when, when we met, I had met some other people that immediately were like, oh, you got to talk to this guy, he’s a futurist.

You’re kidding me. Drag me over to you. He’s exactly who you need to talk

[00:30:37] Jeff Whitt: to. Listen, I was talking about these topics before anybody wanted to hear about them.

[00:30:45] Mark Hinaman: Still talking about them. We’re not

[00:30:47] Jeff Whitt: nearly into the future

[00:30:48] Mark Hinaman: fast enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so what do you think some of the biggest hurdles are for us to build more nuclear in the U.

S.?

So I think the biggest hurdles I, I, the list used to be longer than it is now, so I’ll tell the biggest hurdle. The number one is people. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but the, we, we, we have a type of, we, we need a tremendous, we need a tremendous need for more talent. It’s not that we don’t have the talent, but the workload in this industry to be able to address everything that we need to do to, to bring in new technology.

[00:31:22] Jeff Whitt: We just don’t have the depth of the pool. And the problem is it is an unbelievable competition. I mean, if you’ve talked to some of the other developers, some of the other companies, you know, you’re going to hear a similar thing. I was, When I’d first gotten into this about about three or four years ago, I was at one of the USNIC conferences, and I was talking about advanced fuels at the time, and But this was one of the sub themes of the topic and I remember asking the question in the panel So how many of you in this room are actively recruiting people from someone else in this room, right?

About half the hands go up and was an indication is is that We had an emerging problem that was coming and that is is we don’t We don’t have a deep enough talent pool to us to address all we’re doing. I think think about what has happened So let me give you some context When we did that study that I told you that we did we sat down and look at the market We estimated at the time on the top projects maybe about 1.

3 billion dollars of investment was going into those In our crystal ball review that we just did recently, 1. 3 billion, 1. 3 billion, yeah, yeah, and And what we did here recently, we just looked at the top dozen or so projects that are going on right now. That number is close to 20 billion. Okay. Okay.

Between, between governments,

[00:32:42] Mark Hinaman: investment in

[00:32:43] Jeff Whitt: new nuclear, that’s investment in new nuclear commitments in new nuclear, that’s the department of energy, RDP programs, private investors, or whatever the case is. Just, it’s kind of a rough metric, but if you sit down and look at that in, in, in just those few years time.

What we’ve seen in the demand to be able to, you know, we, we now have, we now have high temperature gas, sodium, fast, pebble, bad light, water, react, pressurized water reactor, SMRs, bowling, water reactor, SI mean molten salt. And it is such a mix and such a diversity. It, it is a, a, our, our talent is probably the biggest challenge now for, we are very fortunate here at ome.

This is, we have, we have some tremendous people that are very diverse. And and we’re attracting more people that are coming in and our growth trajectory for what we need is hundreds of people. And fortunately for us, we’re making good progress on that. The second challenge is I kind of got chastised over this in a meeting a couple years ago, but it’s, it’s the supply chain in general.

If you sit down and think about the potential demand that we’re creating out of that 20 billion worth of work. And you sit down and look at the supply chain’s ability to be able to deliver major components and high SLEU fuel and all those different things. We, we have an initial demand, what I call the first of a kind curve where we, we need to get the initial designs out.

But then, as we know in the nuclear cycle is you need, you need to do some proving, right, and some operational experience or whatever. And so what happens is, is you don’t have the nth of a kind, you don’t have the n plus one reactor orders in place. And so it makes it very hard to make a speculative investment on a column where you don’t have the order books for it.

And that’s one of the biggest challenges that we’re doing. I am convinced I was talking it up on a panel back in back in the early summer, and I pulled up a global manufacturing graph and just basically worldwide. And I basically said, we know how to build stuff. Okay. Worldwide, we know how to build stuff.

We have the talent to be able to do that, but we’re in this unique thing where we have an emerging demand, but we have this, these hills and valleys that we’ve got to navigate. So I think supply chain. The third one that’s still challenging, I think, is the regulatory approvals. It is, you know, you have a very, I, I, I, I have a, I have a good person I consider to be a good friend that used to be in the Department of Energy went to the U.

S. N. R. C. And I, I remember after he went into that job, went, sat down with him 1 time. And we were just talking about all the different developers that are visiting them. And it kind of hit me. If you’re the regulator, you have people coming in wanting to talk to you about this design, this big one, this small one, this technology, we want to do remote operation.

So, what we’ve created is a very diverse need for regulatory reviews that I think is, is, is, and, and, and the NRC and industry are working their way through that, but I think the regulatory approvals is probably one of those long poles in the tent, so to speak, so. Can we just get rid

[00:35:51] Mark Hinaman: of it and just like, you know, not have to do it like, no, no, no, no,

[00:35:54] Jeff Whitt: no, no.

It’s funny. It’s funny when I was at an A and S I was at an A and S meeting very early on during the accident tolerant fuel days. And what we learned is, is we went through. Started looking at these advancements in the fuel development. We realized that we could probably increase the enrichments, increase the burn up increase the benefit from fuel being able to do that.

But I remember, I remember in that panel, I said, before I make any comments, let me make one thing clear and nothing that we’re going to talk about today. Am I suggesting that we make any compromises on safety?

[00:36:29] Mark Hinaman: I’ll push back Jeff. I, I, I’m serious. I, I think well, first off. There has been a perfect safety record and I’ve been in like to the

[00:36:39] Jeff Whitt: industry,

[00:36:40] Mark Hinaman: you know, I can hound on that a lot and it’s, it’s stifled innovation and has caused a lot of, I’ll say, indirect safety incidents in other energy generation.

Industry sectors of the industry, meaning there’s been more coal deaths, there’s been more car accidents in oil and gas, there’s been people falling off roofs getting hurt installing solar panels because the nuclear industry has been too safe.

[00:37:08] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I agree. You know, you know, I, I, I’ve, I’ve addressed this.

I, I, I think our nuclear safety culture is to our benefit and it is also our challenge. anD let, let me explain that is because we are so risk averse, it, it makes the life cycle of innovation much longer. Okay. We, we have a tendency to want to analyze which makes it more expensive. Which makes it more expensive.

And so we, we really need to find that balance, and you know, I, I, I, I I was wondering if the Google hits increased at one of the conferences I was speaking at, because I, I told the story. of the Disney series, Kim Possible. I don’t know if you ever remember that, but my kids were raised on Kim Possible, right?

And if you sit down and think of the mindset of Kim Possible, well, nothing was impossible. We can do this, you know, and you, you know, you, you have all this stuff going on. And I said, somewhere we’ve got to find the balance between our safety culture and our possibilities. And, and, and I feel that energy.

Our, our younger talent. Is much more optimistic about the future. And I think that tension between the safety culture and the innovation and being able to move quicker is there. And obviously, as you’ve talked to me, I understand that tension, right? And I might help create that attention at times.

Cause I’m, I’m asking the question, well, why can’t we do that? You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to touch on

[00:38:36] Mark Hinaman: one point. You mentioned 20 billion invested recently. And was that just the U. S. Industry?

[00:38:41] Jeff Whitt: Is that globally? That was that was North America. We basically we basically looked at the top. We looked at the top S.

M. R. light water reactor. S. M. R. S. We looked at the top. Demonstration programs it was companies like Kairos, Terra Power you know, Xenergy, we looked at them. And then we looked at the microreactor developers as well. And, you know, just kind of did just a snippet of that. And, and it, to me, it was revealing.

Somebody on my team went in and they, they mined in the data of, of the Department of Energy awards. They looked at the private investment and the level of commitments or whatever. And to me, it was somewhat eye opening at, at, at the level of money that’s going into it. But I’ve also had an aha moment in, in this, and if, if you can pardon me, I, you might be getting your closing comments, so I don’t want to miss this point, but I got all the time in the world.

You got all the time in the world, okay.

[00:39:32] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, well, I got another, I got about another hour, so. Oh,

[00:39:35] Jeff Whitt: yeah, well, we don’t need to go,

[00:39:36] Mark Hinaman: we don’t,

[00:39:37] Jeff Whitt: no, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t need to go that long, but, what struck me when we begin to look at that, okay I have to ask myself the question, what will the world look like a decade from now?

What will the world look like two decades from now? Now, right now, you used the word nascent earlier, and I’m glad you said that because I’ve had to explain to some people what nascent actually means, right? Okay, it’s, it’s, it’s yet to be proving itself. And if you sit down and look at all those lists of projects, They have yet to be proven.

Okay. We have yet to build them and operate them. But if you look at statistically, the promise of success is always increasing as you begin to go through the life cycle of a project or whatever the case is. So if I sat down and say, what will the world look like 10 years from now? Well, 10 years from now, we’re going to have not only the, the life, the, the large reactors that are still going through the lifetime extension, whatever, and operation, but we’re now going to have.

Most likely, boiling water reactor and pressurized water reactor, smaller reactors up to the 300 megawatt size in the mix. We’re gonna have a high temperature gas. We’re gonna have a sodium fast. We’re gonna have micro reactors of different fuel types and whatever the case is. So if I sit down and look 10 years from now, we’re going to be in the proving period of multiple technologies.

Now, so, and in 20 years from now, as they burgeon, that nascent market will become much more defined. And so we, we adopted a strategy or a what I call an ambition is that we will work to be the preferred supplier and the ones that will servicing and support the fleet of 2050. And the problem is, is we can’t tell you right now what the fleet of 2050 looks like, but we can begin to predict what the goal makes sense.

So think about that for a second from the workforce where we’ve been. Delivering fuel and servicing pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors is our primary business and can dos, okay? Add that into the mix now. High temperature reactors of various configurations. Okay. Sodium fast configurations.

Molten salt will begin to have its place in that mix or whatever. Now the diversity of energy supply out of nuclear energy is going to be exponentially more complicated than it is now. Right? That that to me is the challenge ahead of us, but it’s the one that I think if we embrace it now, we can shape it and we can help it to be successful.

We can help it be good. So anyway, that was one of my aha moments that I share with our employees here recently. I,

[00:42:05] Mark Hinaman: I think that’s excellent. It’s just so correct. And I’ll, I’ll. provides perhaps some validation for you. You mentioned 20 billion invested in North America. That jives with some, a recent number that I saw that there was an estimate that we’ve been investing about 40 billion globally in the nuclear industry.

About half of that’s in China alone which kind of makes sense with your guys estimate of 20 billion. Yep. In 2022, the world invested. 638 billion in the oil and gas industry. Wow. And I bet they’re investing even more in 2023 and we’ll invest even more in 2024. So if we actually want to displace carbon burning fuels.

In the world, like, and I’m, I’m, I’m from oil and gas. I think it has done tremendous and incredible things for society. I’m not saying that we should decrease that. I think the benefit of having abundant and affordable and reliable dispatchable energy far outweighs anything, far outweighs the dangers and hazards of climate change.

If, if your goal is to do that, then there’s a lot of investment opportunity that you think about the energy that’s being used in society now. It’s only one out of seven people have the standard of living that we have. So if you want to. Bring everyone up in society, then, you know, the level of opportunity to invest in the nuclear industry.

I mean, it’s, it’s been so small to date, but it has so much opportunity to grow. So I think you guys are in exactly the right spot and your, your analysis of we need more people and we need to be competitive and we need to be able to draw attention to the spaces.

[00:43:57] Jeff Whitt: Yep. Yep. Yep. We, we’re, we sometimes our own, we’re probably too critical of ourself at times but, but we need to move forward.

Let me go back and tell you another story. You know, I’m, I’m, I’m in what I call the later season of my career, but I’m still energized and I’m very excited to be working on this. And I, and one of the things that hit me, I, I, in, in years past through, through work that I’ve done, I’ve been in, in the African continent and, and I’ve been out in the bush where, and what was amazing to me where no one had electricity in our home, but everybody had a cell phone.

Okay, and, and, and what struck me was, is that because through microwave backhaul, you can actually be able to create the distribution of a cellular network much easier than you can distribute electricity. Okay, and so I remember how that had an impression on me, and it was before I came back and got involved in this side of the business.

But I’d just been new in the business, and I was in a meeting, and a guy was telling a story, and, and this was relative to the same, you know, philanthropy or whatever. The guy was telling a story about having an engineer with him where they visited a village that was really struggling and they were struggling with having fresh water and the engineer said, you know, I think I could design a well system that could bring fresh water to this village.

And, and the leader of the project said, so, what, what would it take you guys, man, I, it could be up to 10, 000. He said, I tell you what, I will get you the 10, 000. You figure out how to do it. We’ll come back next year and install it. And they did. It was transformative to a village that had never had fresh water before.

And I’m, I’m sitting in the audience, right? And I just finished doing this study of the power of micro reactors and looking at it. And I had this aha moment and I’m like, oh my word. If you could bring power to places that does not have power where we’ve always had this huge distribution networking, you could download nodal distribution or local distribution or whatever the case is, how transformative that would be to the world and the economic benefits that would come out of it.

It’s things like that that that keep me engaged in this because I truly believe that nuclear energy can be transformative to the quality of people’s lives around the world. I really believe it. Yeah,

[00:46:09] Mark Hinaman: that that’s incredible. That gave me goosebumps. You know, 10,000 bucks. Some people have fresh water. Like I can’t, let’s, let’s do the same with power.

[00:46:18] Jeff Whitt: Yeah. Yeah. We can’t do it for $10,000 though, that’s the problem. But yeah, I, I know. Well, we gotta get there, Jeff. We gotta get there. We gotta get there. I agree. I agree.

[00:46:26] Mark Hinaman: What kind of changes have you seen develop in the SMR market? I mean, give us a little color on some of these things that stood out to you when you did this market analysis and how you’ve seen it progress over time.

I mean, you listed, or gave lists of kind of different technologies, but is there anything that stands out to you that’s perhaps more, I don’t know, interesting or innovative? Price

[00:46:50] Jeff Whitt: competitive. Let me, let me approach that from the standpoint of the evolution a little bit. You know, we, we were engaged, we were engaged very early on with NuScale and NuScale was one of the recipients from DOE money and and had a very unique approach of how to be able to deploy reactor technologies and modules and whatever the case is.

And. They kind of led the way in regulatory space with the NRC of having a very good early engagement and they kind of paved the way so I, I always like to give them a call out because I think we’re indebted because they took on the front wave. In that sense. Okay. And then, and then after that, we’ve had other developers that have been much more encouraged and been able to develop in behind them.

And so what we have now is a much more diverse mix of future competition that has come out of that. But what’s also. It is more of a can do approach and and companies being a little bit more innovative, like, for instance, companies like Kairos. I remember years ago, being at Oak Ridge National Lab, and we were looking at rapid innovation models and there’s there’s teams that Kairos have adopted a much more aggressively those type models where that they’re willing to to to design the failure, whatever the case is, and then collect the data and be able to build upon that.

What I’ve seen through companies like that is. They’re driving a shift in innovation and a shift in how we approach stuff and in my mind, it’s encouraging. If you sit down and look at that now, we have We have pressurized water, boiling water reactor, high temperature, sodium fast, molten salt, hybrid approaches to stuff a mix there that was not as predominant when we first looked at that.

What, what that tells me is, is people are much more much more hopeful and, and willing to be able to drive forward and being able to make those investments being able to, to me, that’s the encouraging thing. I, I, I want us. To continue to work to accelerate these demonstration programs. And I think I think one of the criticisms that that we have to anticipate.

Is that they’re going to have to prove themselves to the level of duty cycle that we have the existing fleet I mean if you set down the existing fleets running in the mid 90s, you know, basically Duty cycle some of these earlier designs are not going there You’re going to have to do a shakedown of the designs and the proving of that I think we need to encourage ourselves as an industry to push through that, because if I sit down and look at the technologies, the inherent safety nature of some of them, the energy densities, what it’s going to do for industry and whatever, it’s going to be great.

And that’s the other thing. Let me mention that the conversations earlier about electricity, but now the conversations are about. You know, basically helping to being able to decarbonize the industry. And so recently when people like Microsoft and the steel industry saying, Hey, you give us clean nuclear power, we can use it all to, to me, that’s creating a shift in what the business models are going to look like for the future as well.

To, to me. To me, I think we’re in still a little bit of a chaotic shakedown that’s going to come through that. But I, I see, I have a belief that we’re going to hit this, we’re going to hit this place where we’re going to start seeing these things deployed.

[00:50:07] Mark Hinaman: I really like that. I, I really like that idea.

I, I think I’ll, I’ll recharacterize it and say, we need to. Be proud of the failures and embrace them and bring them out publicly and say, this didn’t work and we’re learning from it and and, and not shy away from it. And certainly not lie to federal agents like some people have but, um, but you know, that’s how people learn, right?

It’s, it’s, you innovate, you fail, you learn, and people should be proud of like, Hey. We, we messed something up and guess what? We just learned a ton from it and we’re not going to make that mistake again. And, you know, I, I just, I think that attitude and mindset really needs to be brought back to the nuclear industry.

I feel like it existed early on and there, there’s been a huge sense of risk aversion. in The space and I could be wrong.

[00:50:59] Jeff Whitt: No, no, no. I live in it. I mean, I see it. I see it in the industry. I see it for those being with it, you know, how, whatever you can do to help continue to bring that message forward from your platform.

We should do that because I mean, no one’s

[00:51:12] Mark Hinaman: proud when you make a critical design error when you’re drilling an oil and gas well, and something goes wrong and you have to plug the well, right? I mean, and this happens and it is a complete financial loss and you lose a bunch of money and sometimes people get fired over it.

But guess what? More often people learn, they own it and they say, we’re not going to make that mistake again. We add a line to the procedure, you know, we use a different technology like, and you move on, you grow. So I think people need to be confident and allowed to

[00:51:43] Jeff Whitt: fail in the space. I like that. I like that.

I like that. You know, you get a lot more done. So, so you’re talking about allowed to fail that you, you didn’t ask me about things, things that I’m proud of or ashamed of in the past. So, when I went back into telecom, I had a, I had a failure that I learned a lot from. I, I remember, I thought I understood what the cellular equipment was.

Was, and I remember going to a warehouse and setting up a delivery and I delivered an empty frame to a cell site instead of a frame that had red

[00:52:20] Mark Hinaman: hips.

[00:52:21] Jeff Whitt: I can, I can tell you that was a learning experience for me that I never forgot. It was embarrassing at the time, but it drove a different level of. of attendedness in an area that I was unfamiliar with. And it caused me to seek advice where maybe I was a little naive at the time. So I, I, I think we have to embrace those things.

Yep. I like that. Yeah. So, so Jeff, what,

What motivates you at this point in your career? I think you talked a little bit, a little bit about it, but I don’t know if you have a specific answer, a story or things that you’re.

[00:52:57] Jeff Whitt: Two, two things motivate me. It’s interesting. I’ve had this conversation with with with a couple people here in the last few months. I am motivated by. the people that I get to work with. And so, so let me, let me, let me, let me, let me give you the context of that. When we first, when we first started looking at how are we going to engage in advanced reactor space?

And we sat down and look, we realized that we were dealing with things that were so new and unique that we needed to make sure that we stayed fresh and being able to look at it. So we, we pulled together a diverse group of people from the different business disciplines. But for the most part, they were some of the younger people.

They were the ones that were still developing in their leadership are, are, are, are, were very eager. And so having the opportunity to pull them together early as we’re trying to shape what our future, we didn’t even have this ambition of being the services provider of 2050 already defined at the time.

Right. But the left down to go through that with that. And what, what I found is there is a tremendous I, there is a tremendous workforce and group of people that I am privileged to be able to work with. And they’re fresh. They challenge each other. If you were to come into some of our team meetings and hear the conversations they pick on each other they, they, they kind of challenge the thought process, but being able to be a part of those leaders, you know, I, I said it this way.

By the time these new reactors are a fleet, I’m late enough in my career. I’m going to be from the outside looking in just being a beneficiary of the power, but they’re going to be the ones that’s leading that new energy. So to me, I feel like having the opportunity to work with some of those talent and sometimes I’m probably too opinionated with them and share too many of my life stories or whatever.

But in some regards, I won’t. If I can pour in life experiences or be a part of them being a sounding board, being a part of that future, that, that, that’s what motivates me. And, and we have a tremendous culture at Framatome that, that creates an environment for that. So that’s, that is the number 1 thing that, that keeps me excited.

The 2nd thing is, I feel like, helping or being part of the leadership for the future. And what I mean for that is I am very hopeful that we’re going to see this advanced reactors and the teaming with the government and whatever being able. I, I, I look forward to the challenge of a diverse energy mix in the future.

Okay. And. And being able to, to maybe just have one small part of that or one voice in that, that, that’s keeping me energized. I, I recently said, if I, if I don’t feel like that, I’m making a contribution in those two areas, it’s probably time for me to look at, you know, plans to spend a little bit more time you know, going up to the lake or whatever.

But that’s, those are the two things that really energized me is our people and what I, what I believe is a possibility for the future. Awesome.

[00:55:53] Mark Hinaman: That sounds like a. You enjoy teaching them but you’re also open minded enough still and forward thinking that it sounds like you potentially Learn from them also.

I, I

[00:56:06] Jeff Whitt: do learn from them. They, they, they challenge me. They don’t always tell me everything they say about me behind my back, but that’s okay. I love working with them. I really do.

[00:56:17] Mark Hinaman: Okay. Well, we, we talked about some of the biggest hurdles and we talked about some, well, I don’t know that we actually answered this question explicitly, but what do you think is the most impactful step that we can take to build more nuclear?

ASAP.

[00:56:31] Jeff Whitt: So let’s go back to what we talked about about not penalizing ourself and maybe look at it. I’m certain I’m certain the pragmatical side of me. We have a tendency sometimes to Try to solve the big problem. And I remember, I remember very early in my career, they used to bring in a psychologist that interview us and I wonder why in the world am I having to sit down with a, with a shrink.

Right? And, and I am wired to try to see the enormity of the big problem. And so it, it would create anxiety and overwhelm me. And I remember the learning that you solve a problem, but biting it off one, one, one bite at a time, right? You eat an elephant one bite at a time, I think was what the, what was said.

Yeah. I think for us, I think the impact that we can make is take incremental steps sooner than later. hAve the faith to be able to take steps towards something that is directionally in the right direction. Without the full understanding of that, you’re going to have to trust that the process and the people and the contributions are going to solve problems that we yet don’t.

have yet to define or seem over or insurmountable to us. So take those incremental steps. Don’t, don’t let all the design boundaries, but take a very stepped approach, learn, review from it, give yourself, I think you said earlier, permission to be able to fail and learn from those things and, and, and what, and and so my mind don’t become so paralyzed with the big picture that it keeps us from taking the steps forward.

Right, you know, somebody asked me this. What can you do? What can working with framata and what you can do and I said well, you know, I I am very proud of who we are We’re very good at industrializing things. We’re very good at servicing things. And and and sometimes we have a tendency in working is to try to solve the big problem But maybe the best thing to do is let’s say this is what we want to solve I don’t know if you can see me on the screen Let’s say we want to solve but let’s go contract together and go solve the first step Let’s go establish like working relationship together And let’s get to the point that we have a better understanding between our teams of what the problems really are, because I’ve learned that over the years, people come into something, they have a perceived notion of what the problem is.

Once you get into the details, it’s always defined a little bit different than what everybody thinks it is. Let’s start taking those incremental steps together. And over time, we’ll build confidence and being able to build a supply chain of services, infrastructure, the things that we need to do to then be able to mature to where the industry goes together.

That’s awesome.

[00:58:57] Mark Hinaman: So, Jeff If people want to get a hold of you or if they want to learn more where can they find more information and is there anything else that you’d like

[00:59:04] Jeff Whitt: to promote? Yeah, so, so they can, they can always go to our Framatome website, framatome. com, the Framatome in general. You can always go to Framatome U.

S. Government Solutions, just do a search on that and it should get you to the right place. There you can reach out to us and be able to do that. The, the other thing is, is if you want to know more about what we do, if you go to the Framatome website, there’s a link called Solutions. And you can go to a solutions portfolio and you can go in and search on keywords and it’ll, we, we, we’ve worked really hard to basically make, you know, information available for people to be able to see what we’re doing.

I think, I think my closing thoughts are is let’s. Let’s understand that people are our future. Let’s be very proud of diverse thought processes. Let’s be, let’s continue to promote an open culture where we can talk about how we’re operationally improving ourselves. And let’s look at the value that each contributors.

I’m finding is when you bring a broad mix of people in together and they’re, they’re energized around a common purpose, you always get better answers. And so, you know, my, my encouragement, I think that’s who we are in our teams. But my encouragement of us in the industry, let’s continue to embrace the power of our people.

[01:00:17] Mark Hinaman: I love that. That’s, that’s a great place to leave it. So. Yep, yep. Jeff Witt, thanks so

[01:00:21] Jeff Whitt: much for the, for the time. Mark, and thank you. I really enjoyed meeting you back, back at the at the Utility Working Conference and being able to have the follow up. And, and. You have an open invitation to come and visit us in Lynchburg or Richland.

You’ll see those facilities that I talked about, and then after you, after you do that, you’re going to want to do more podcasts. Okay. So, yeah, great. Thank you.

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