061 Matt Solomon, Project Manager of NCEI

Matt Solomon (00:00)

And so then the question, and what you do with that data is, where do we apply our resources in the conversation? If you have a group of people that are dead set, solar is the only answer, nuclear is the devil, and you’re not going to sway me, I’m not open to what the facts show, I don’t care what they are.

then we’re not going to allocate money and resources to appeasing them because they’re not having a conversation about the community. They’re having a conversation about their opinion, right? And that’s something worth noting because the project I’m working on is about the community. And do we want to appease and please everybody? Of course you do. But you cannot please everybody. And we really do need to find the best solution.

Not the best opinion.

Mark Hinaman (02:03)

All

right, 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 today I’m joined by Matt Solomon, project manager of NCEI or Northwest Colorado Energy Initiative. How you doing,

Matt Solomon (02:20)

Doing well, Mark. Thanks for having me on today.

Mark Hinaman (02:23)

Stoked to dive in. You guys recently released a report. We’ve known each other for some time, kind of run similar circles in Colorado. I’m excited to chat about this. So before we talk about the survey, the reason that we reached out to you for the podcast, I’d hope to learn just a little bit more about you, Matt. Give us some background on yourself, where you’re from, how you got started and how you ended up

Matt Solomon (02:46)

You know, which industry do we pick? I’ve worn a lot of hats, Mark. I moved to Colorado 28 years ago after going to school in South Carolina and growing up as a kid in Northeast Florida. And in the last 28 years, I’ve kind of juggled both the public and the private sector. On the private side,

I’ve launched two companies internationally and two of my own in Colorado. And then on the public side, I’ve worked as a paramedic. I’ve served on town council. I’ve served as a contractor for a U S military. And, you put all those together and it kind of positions me into this strategic consultant role that I’ve been filling lately. which led me to becoming the project manager for the Northwest Colorado energy initiative.

This initiative started a few years ago with Senator Rankin. When Colorado started making its push towards this coal transition, Senator Rankin realized we had a date, but we didn’t have a plan. And he initially set up the NCEI to conduct the feasibility study for Northwest Colorado so that we could come up with a plan. And when he brought me on, it was right about the same time that the state passed House Bill 1247.

for the state of Colorado to do its own feasibility study in both Northwest and Southeast Colorado, Pueblo, Craig, Hayden, and the surrounding facilities. And so I spoke with Senator Rankin and the county commissioners that are part of our advisory committee and said, you know, it might be a good idea if we pivot what we’re doing. You know, we worked really hard with our state legislators.

to ensure that nuclear energy was included as part of the feasibility study, which it is. And we also worked internally in a way that, look, this isn’t just about nuclear energy. It’s about having an all of the above discussion, but finding a best of the above solution that includes nuclear energy. And so we’ve been working to prepare the region for the feasibility study.

Let’s set those foundational components in place so that we can have fact -based discussions. So I know that’s a little more than you asked, but that’s how my background ties into why we’re here today,

Mark Hinaman (05:18)

No, it was good.

Yeah, yeah, kind of jack of all trades, that can work on a bunch of different things. then, yeah, finding, I mean, we share a passion for nuclear and think it’s holds a lot of promise for the region and the area that means a lot to us. So how did you get plugged in with Senator

Matt Solomon (05:42)

Well, he represented the district I live in and then I was a candidate for the state Senate and a targeted race and he and I spoke once or twice a week. We worked really closely together. My time on town council. Kind of it led to that and. We spent a lot of time really getting to know each other over a couple of years and it was time well spent in my mind. He’s a good man.

a good thinker and he’s not partisan in how he thinks and works. wants what’s wanted, what’s best for our region and for our state. So he’s a good man for me to learn from.

Mark Hinaman (06:24)

Gotcha. Give us some background, Matt, on why this study was necessary, namely for those that don’t know or might be listening out of state, right? Colorado’s shutting down coal plants. So set the scene for us. What’s that look like? When were they scheduled to shut down? And yeah, why did this come

Matt Solomon (06:46)

That’s a lot. Let’s look at the history first. I think in Pueblo, Excel has cited a date of 2031 that their Comanche 3 is going to be closed from coal. In Craig, was 2030 was the final date. There’s three stacks at the Craig station.

believe it was slated and correct me if I’m wrong for 2026 was stack one 28 and 2030 it was in every other year timetable Hayden was very similar Hayden’s an excel plant and Craig is it’s a cooperative plant with a few entities that all have a stake in the plant Tri -State being the largest member so they tend to be the name everyone cites

but they’re a partner with others. And what was discussed, what was found as it was told to me is, you have employees that have families and they’re looking towards the future. And with a date and no plan, this is going back a couple of years, some of these families said, look, we need to secure our future because we don’t know what’s next. And it was becoming more difficult to stack the plan. And

That 2030 date got bumped up to 2028, which really expedites the timeline. And for future proofing this, we’re sitting here in July of 2024. So in four years, all of these families tentatively don’t have a solution. AG &C is the fiduciary agent, the umbrella for the NCEI. NCEI is an initiative.

that operates under the umbrella of the associated governments of Northwest Colorado, which is a council of governments, but it’s also an economic development district that’s been in this region since the early 1970s. So in 50 years, they really do have a feel for the region and they really do have a passion for the families and the communities that make up the region. And in our discussions with AGNC, it was

We’ve got to take the partisanship out of the conversation, and we’ve got to have fact -based discussions. That was one of the top pieces of importance to our work. How do you have fact -based discussions without data? Instead, you end up with a he said, she said conversation. Well, Mark told me nuclear energy is the best. Yeah, why is it the best? Because Mark said so.

Mark Hinaman (09:37)

I can be pretty convincing, Matt. A lot of people, sometimes that works.

Matt Solomon (09:38)

You know, I heard because I said so my whole life growing up in the South, excuse me if I’m a skeptic. But we get that a lot at the state level, right? It’s the divisiveness of politics. Why are you so partisan? Just agree with me and stop being so divisive. That kind of banter interferes with our ability to have good discussion. And

having a survey and touching base and having discussions with the people that live in the region is the only way to really garner what the facts are for the conversation. And we started this a year, a little over a year ago, we did five screenings of the nuclear now film. And after those screenings, we had our state and local elected officials present for a Q and a.

with everybody that was there. We were able to have discussions with several hundred people in the region. And we took notes of what was asked, what was stated as a concern, and what answers were provided by the elected officials. And that’s what helped us craft this first survey that you’re looking at today, is what’s the elephant in the room? What’s the common threads of understanding or misunderstanding?

And how can we present some educational facts in a way that doesn’t trigger an emotional response one way or the

Mark Hinaman (11:19)

I’ll say it back, make sure I heard it. The survey was meant to be a tool to address this underlying issue of, we’re about to lose a huge source of the economy in Western Colorado, right? This power plant that’s shutting down. And we want to do something about it. We want to help solve this problem. But it seemed like there were some partisan conversations floating around. And this was an approach to…

source data and help frame the conversation

Matt Solomon (11:52)

Absolutely. if you look at during my time when I was on town council, any feasibility study we did began with survey and community outreach. We surveyed the community to get their feelings, their impressions, their understandings of the need or the want. And then we had a ton of outreach with the community so that they were fully engaged in the feasibility study and the process. And

That step was left out of the House Bill 1247 feasibility study. So we wanted to ensure that the community was fully engaged. You also, there’s a bit of a gap in the trust of state government. I just got back from several meetings in Washington, DC for the last two weeks. And there was a common theme in those meetings that whether you’re talking about the Department of Energy or the federal government as a whole,

It’s not a partisan issue that states and local communities, there’s a certain mistrust of the federal government in its reliability of being able to depend on it, right? Just from a history of missteps or lack of communication, it’s not a partisan statement. It’s not a, you know, they’re evil or anything like that. It’s just, there’s a natural mistrust. And you have that same thing.

within the state of a region feeling like they’re a bit under attack and not having that outreach opportunity with the state government on this. There’s a feeling of uncertainty and a feeling of we’re being told how to live our lives and what industries are allowed or not allowed. And so we really wanted to make sure the community was engaged.

and was a part of this feasibility study and this process of the transition.

Mark Hinaman (13:51)

you. So in the survey, you have kind of a couple categories, Northwest Colorado, somewhere else and national. Can you kind of break those out for us? for folks that will link the feasibility or sorry, not feasibility, the survey, right, and we’ll link it for folks in the report and highly recommend that pull it up. Look at look it over read along while we’re going through this. I think it’s a ton of great data. But

Matt Solomon (14:04)

So.

Absolutely. You can get the survey off the AGNC website. Or if you’re watching this online, just go to the link that Mark provides below and click on it. I recommend when looking at this survey, it’s kind of the way I read all books anyway. Read the conclusion first, then go back and read the introduction and the individual questions. And it’ll give you

Mark Hinaman (14:47)

You must not read many novels. You can read the last chapter of novels and read the…

Matt Solomon (14:50)

Are you kidding? I wrote

I wrote one, come on Mark.

Mark Hinaman (14:58)

Read the punchline first, we just given away.

Matt Solomon (15:03)

Yeah, on novels, I tend to read the acknowledgments first and then go back to the beginning.

Mark Hinaman (15:07)

There you go. There you go.

Matt Solomon (15:12)

But yes, as far as the audience, now that you’ve got this open,

We ran a national level survey at the same time as we circulated the survey in Northwest Colorado. And it circulated in Routt, Moffett, Rio Blanco, Garfield, Mesa counties primarily. And for those that don’t know the state, Routt County is where Steamboat Springs is located. Just to its west in the top corner of the state is Moffett County. That’s where the Craig station is.

The Hayden station is 30 miles to the east of Craig, en route county in a town called Hayden. Just south of Moffitt County is Ria Blanco County. The two big cities there are Meeker and Rangeley. South of Ria Blanco, I was wondering if you’re going

Mark Hinaman (16:04)

Big cities. Yeah, thousand thousand to two thousand people right for for something that grew up in Rangeley. It’s yeah big city

Matt Solomon (16:12)

I said that for you, Mark. I was wondering if you were going to catch

And then just south of the Rio Blanco is Garfield County. Gwynwood Springs is the county seat for Garfield County. And then south into the west of Garfield is Mesa County. And that’s where Grand Junction is, which is the big city of the Western Slope. So 425 people responded to the survey in that region. And we had a thousand respondents nationally.

to the same exact survey. The survey was paid for by a group called Energy Works through a capacity building grant from the Department of Energy. And Anne Bisconti of Bisconti Research helped us organize it, and she circulated the national survey. So this really was a team effort. A lot of groups came together to bring the survey to life. If you think about numbers,

On a typical statewide survey, 500 to 600 people get you within the margin of error. So if we’ve got over 400 people in just one region of the state, it’s a pretty good margin that we’re working with. And it gives us a really good taste for what the impressions are in the region. And so that gave us quite a bit of confidence. We didn’t know how many people would participate.

that number, it’s a good one. It shows that the region wants to be engaged. And I had people after the two week window closed calling me still wanting them and their family to participate in the survey. And, you know, I told them there’s a second survey coming. I will make sure I let you know directly so you can participate in that one. Within the Northwest Colorado region, because we identified

Route Moffat, Ria Blanco County and the demographic scrub. We didn’t realize how many people from Mesa County and Garfield County would participate. And so we set those aside as other places in Colorado because we couldn’t say specifically where those respondents lived. And so you have three categories. You have national, you have direct energy impacted communities.

and then outside those direct energy impacted communities.

Mark Hinaman (18:50)

sure that makes sense. So yeah, folks can see that that’s page four, figure one, I think, has one those first charts that show that but you know, the demographics of actually the political affiliation was surprising to me, like page five, figure three, it shows, yeah, Democrats, Republicans, but then also unaffiliated. I was surprised at the percentages of unaffiliated or independent, I guess.

Was that surprising to you or the study group?

Matt Solomon (19:24)

Not at all. It mirrors the state of Colorado. And I think where your surprise might come is because the region is historically Republican, you would think there would be a heavy Republican weight in the region. Is that correct?

Mark Hinaman (19:37)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. But for listeners that don’t have the report up, was 12 % Democrat, 37 % Republican, but 40 % unaffiliated, which, and then it was even higher percent unaffiliated for the somewhere else category. So like you would expect, fewest Democrats, but I expected those kind of to be reversed or have a low number of unaffiliated and a higher number of Republicans.

Matt Solomon (20:03)

It represents the region though, really. Statewide and in this district, about half the population is registered unaffiliated and the other half is pretty evenly distributed Republican Democrat. Although Moffitt, Rioblanco County, that distribution is heavier Republican. Whereas if you look at Routt County, it roughly

50 % unaffiliated with a little heavier weight to the Democrat party as far as affiliation goes. So this is representative of the region and of the state. It’s interesting, nationally

The national one, think surprises me more, but it is representative of our nationwide registration, right? It’s a pretty even split, 30, 30, 30, roughly. It’s what, 30, 30, 227, Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated, but it’s representative and that’s a good thing. We want a balanced representation in the discussion.

Mark Hinaman (21:18)

Let’s bounce down to figure four on page six. I thought that this chart was really interesting. Can you just kind of walk us through this, Matt, and talk about what this is? I guess the title of the chart is, how important to you are the following considerations for the way electricity is produced? And you had a response from Northwest Colorado, and then think you had a couple of responses from elsewhere. yeah, just kind of step us through what this chart tells

Matt Solomon (21:45)

So, and this question was gauged with, you know, a four, a five point scale, pretty standard for surveys, right? Extremely important, very important, somewhat not at all, or not too important, and then not at all important. considerations to how it’s produced, the options people were given were affordability, clean air, climate change.

economic growth, efficiency, energy independence, energy security, job creation, preservation of natural resources, reliable electricity, resilience, and a small footprint. Is it less land use? The figure itself is just Northwest Colorado because there’s a lot to that question and there’s a lot of options.

And it wasn’t a rank these top to bottom. was, is this individual affordable electricity, is it extremely important to you or is it just somewhat important to you? And so of those in Northwest Colorado, reliable electricity was the most important.

followed by affordability, security, and energy independence being the second most important. And I think the third most important was efficiency and resilience. And that’s just in Northwest Colorado. If you look at the nation, the numbers in table three,

The top item of importance is affordability, and then reliability, and then security and economic growth. And clean air was actually right up there in third or fourth place. So I think that the difference in the region compared to the nation is that clean air component, right? Just where it sits in the top three or four nationally.

And it’s more in the middle third in the region of importance.

Reliability and affordability were top two both nationally and in the region. Now, if you hadn’t read this, Mark, what would you think the most important thing would be in the region or in the nation for things to consider and how energy is produced? Is it nuclear? No, I’m kidding. That was not an option.

Mark Hinaman (24:24)

When I read this and I saw this chart, said, yep, people want it cheap and they want to make sure their lights don’t go off. That made a ton of sense to me, right? That resonates with what I’ve seen my whole life. But it’s kind of counter to a popular narrative in the media. Because you guys had climate change solution on here as another option.

thought that was interesting also at how varied that response was, I guess.

Matt Solomon (24:59)

That was the absolute bottom result for the region and for the state. Nationally, it was second to last. Nationally, small footprint was the lowest of importance, and climate change was the second lowest.

Mark Hinaman (25:23)

Yeah. Which is, it’s interesting, right? So people, it’s not, they may not care about these things, but they don’t care. They don’t care about them as much or don’t care about climate change or using a bunch of land for energy consumption as they care about making sure that the lights are on and that it’s

Matt Solomon (25:42)

If I flip this switch, do the lights turn on?

Mark Hinaman (25:47)

So, but with these, Matt, mean, nuclear can solve a bunch of these issues, but I mean, it also solves the climate change issue, but it’s often touted as, okay, this solve the climate change, which I think most people think is great, but like, it’s not the number one selling point. To me, like it says reliability or the high capacity factor of nuclear power plants is the best selling point then for people in a region, right?

Matt Solomon (26:14)

Yeah, I just spent a week having these discussions with another segment of the nuclear circle. And one of the things that came up in conversation was you have engineers conducting branding for an energy resource that has a bad rap. It’s the pit bull of the energy set, right? Pit bulls were bred to be nannies.

They’re great family dogs. And you have a segment of people that raised an offshoot of the Staffordshire breed to be fighters. And as a result, the rest of the breed gets a bad rap. With nuclear energy, you had, I read, listened to a podcast recently, I’ll send it to you, that Senator Dylan Roberts sent me.

that highlights the overview of the history of nuclear energy in America. And it goes back to Three Mile Island is where the bad rap began. And it was a communications faux pas, right, to the general public. And I think among the bad communication was the stigma being allowed to stick that, it’s unsafe. And then you follow that up with a cartoon that’s been running for 20 years.

Painting the imagery of big vats of steaming green fluid is the byproduct of nuclear energy, and it’s tagged nuclear waste. And this is bad for the environment. It’s bad for us. And so you have that stigma. You’ve got this bad rap that engineers are science -based, and they’re data -driven, and they’re not trained.

to work on redeveloping a brand or changing and pivoting messaging in a way that’s able to be communicated. And it’s not a dig at engineers. It’s just a fact that, look, I like the Oxford comma. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean either one of us is wrong, right?

And so I think that the industry, out of these conversations in the last couple of weeks, the industry recognizes that the industry needs to work on how it communicates and how it defines its messaging. What is nuclear waste? It’s not bats of green fluid. It’s not, you know,

throwing pollutants and carbon into the air, it’s an eraser tip size chunk of metal that has to cool off, right? Is it waste, or is that just the slang term that you use in your engineering school and in the lab because it’s not the active product you’re drawing from? Let’s go to the board and write down, what is nuclear waste? What is a cleanup? What is spent fuel?

And let’s be a little more accurate in how we communicate these things so that we can work on correcting the course of this bad rap. Let’s communicate better. Let’s communicate more accurately. And let’s also look at how nuclear energy integrates with all of these other sources of energy and all of these other initiatives taking place. And that’s been.

a big point in our discussion and that’s really the focus of the second survey that we’re releasing. But this one had to have some focus on nuclear energy because that’s the elephant in the room, right? And I think that just like you think, nuclear should be, if not one of the spokes, the center hub, the center of the wheel of that hub of energies working together. And so we’ve got to work on our communication.

We’ve got to work on the accuracy of our language and we’ve got to be data driven. We’ve got to take the politics and the emotional banter out of it and look at what’s best for our nation, what’s best for our communities, what’s best for our families, right? Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. Bad at

Mark Hinaman (30:34)

Absolutely. It’s good. It’s good. I like it. Yeah. So you’ve got opinions and knowledge in here. And I thought you guys did a good job of creating and crafting these questions. I want to read some of them, but then I want to know kind of how you decided to come up with these questions and decide these were the appropriate ones to ask. And maybe you already answered that talking about the feedback that you got at some of the nuclear now films and discussions that you had. But I thought they were they’re really good questions.

One of them might be, well, how much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? And one of them was, the current operating license expires, we should renew the license and nuclear power plants that continue to meet federal safety standards. So that was an example. Another example was, we should definitely build more nuclear power plants in the future. But it’s those kinds of questions and it’s an opinion, right? Like it’s not a fact or knowledge base. But how did you guys…

decide that those were the right questions to

Matt Solomon (31:34)

Well, Ann Bisconti should take the credit because this is her specialty and this is her focus. in our discussions with Ann, it was we need to find a baseline of people’s knowledge and understanding. And that includes a baseline of what their opinions are. And we need to share something educational with them so that they can walk away with something as well. And this was a baseline establishing question.

Mark Hinaman (32:04)

Awesome. I’ll say, so those are figures five and six. Responses generally positive, meaning the opinions about nuclear from the study respondents, both from Northwest Colorado and national responses, if you include the strongly agree or somewhat agree. It’s the majority of people seem to be seem to support either building more nuclear in future or at a minimum

We’re doing licenses.

Matt Solomon (32:36)

By majority, 73 .5 % of people feel that licenses should be renewed. 72 .5 % of the respondents feel that we should prepare now for advanced design nuclear plants to be ready. And 61 % think we should definitely build more nuclear power in the future. it definitely was interesting when you look

demographics and how strongly those responses are weighted.

Mark Hinaman (33:11)

Yeah, I’ll say, yeah, less than, I mean, than those for those just the strongly agree in Northwest Colorado. and if you look at the two negative categories or, you know, slightly disagree or strongly disagree, I mean, it was less than 11 or 12 % in every category, including the national, except for the, I guess we should definitely build more nuclear power plants and the national responses. was, fewer people or I call it, what is this? 30 % of people voted negatively for that one,

That’s still left you with 70 % of respondents at the national level, think, yeah, we should definitely build more nuclear power plants.

Matt Solomon (33:47)

It really, if you look at nationally and Northwest Colorado, the strongly agree and the somewhat agree that the agree side of the scale, you’re looking at 80 to 90 % of the respondents on the first two questions. Are in the agree or strongly or somewhat agree. And then as far as building more nuclear it you’re at 88 and a half percent in Northwest Colorado feel we should build more nuclear and

71 % nationally feel we should build more nuclear. it that really is a different statement than what we’re told in the media or by the more vocal population if you will.

Mark Hinaman (34:36)

Yeah, it’s data that demonstrates that the mythology that people don’t like nuclear is just blatantly wrong. Right. So, I liked figure seven on page eight. This was, give you your best estimate, how many countries in the world already have operating nuclear power plants. Right. So you guys were looking at, I mean, this is really testing knowledge from, of the survey respondents. And when I read this and look at this chart, it tells me people aren’t

that knowledgeable about how many, about where in the world and how many countries actually use nuclear. Was this, perhaps characterize this response and was it surprising to you

Matt Solomon (35:16)

Again, it’s a baseline. It’s what’s our knowledge base? How integrated are we? I think the one takeaway from all of these baseline questions is we’re surveying an energy community and comparing that to a general population. And it’s really not that surprising that you do have an educated population in the energy community compared

the general population. It’s their livelihood. You look at Moffitt County, I think 47 % of their GDP comes directly from that power plant and 65 % of their GDP is the power plant and the ancillary businesses. So they’ve got something at stake in that area and they do know a little more than others.

Mark Hinaman (36:08)

Gotcha. Let’s talk about the impressions. So this is figure nine and 10 on page 10. Yeah, impression of air pollution for each of following electricity.

Yeah.

Matt Solomon (36:27)

impression? An impression is, what do I think the answer is compared to what do you think the answer is? So this first one, what’s the amount of air pollution coming from coal or gas emits? So what produces the highest pollution in my mind? And if you look at nationally,

Coal and oil, people think, produce the most air pollution, right? If you look at Northwest Colorado, the general impression is that coal and gas produce the most air pollution.

Nuclear is interesting. In

It was less than what 2 % of the people felt surveyed felt that nuclear was contributed to air pollution. Nationally, over 5%. So nationally, it was over 5 on the scale of 1 to 10. I apologize. That’s a huge difference in the region compared to the national survey, right? But again, you were comparing

energy knowledgeable region compared to a general population. So it’s not surprising in that sense, but when it comes to a nuclear inclusive conversation in Northwest Colorado, that’s different than what we’re told because we’re told nobody in the state, nobody in the region wants nuclear energy because of all of these regions. But this survey

says, hey, you’ve got a region that understands if clean air is what we’re after, nuclear is a feasible option,

What’s your take? Do you see something different in that

Mark Hinaman (38:24)

Yeah. Well, the thing, yeah, the thing that really surprised me about it was hydro at the national level. So if you don’t have the report up, the hydro, the national level still thought rated it at a three out of 10 or almost four out of 10. When the energy literate at the communities in Colorado, written it down to, in my opinion, correctly down to one or 1 .3. And maybe, yeah, my impression of hydro is

there’s virtually no emissions. You’ve got water going over under a spillway through generators. I don’t understand how you could have any emissions on hydro other than when you’re building it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Matt Solomon (39:03)

And when you say hydro, you’re speaking hydropower as in water power. Yes. Because we did split off hydrogen from hydropower, just for the audience to be clear.

Mark Hinaman (39:14)

Touche, yeah. Yeah. And then also the other thing that stands out to me is wind and solar being perceived as lower emitters at the national level, but then higher emitters at the local level or on par with nuclear at the local level. So that to me demonstrates kind of like this energy literacy idea that you were just talking

Matt Solomon (39:43)

And there’s an answer to each of these that, you know, for this podcast is nuclear focused. And you could say the correct answer was under two for nuclear, right? But I don’t feel it’s fair when we’re asking someone’s impression to tell them what the correct answer to their impression is. Cause it would be like you and I getting into an argument about each other’s feelings and me telling you that your feelings are

I can’t tell you how you feel is wrong. All I can do is understand how you feel and then try to learn why you feel that way so we can shift towards a fact -oriented, data -driven conversation. So that’s why we didn’t provide an answer to this of you’re right or you’re wrong, because we were asking what their impression is.

Mark Hinaman (40:36)

Yeah. Let’s talk about the impression of cost to consumers from electricity from each source. Let’s see, you guys had this broken up into, this is figure 15 on page 13. You had Northwest Colorado on somewhere else. And when I’m reading this, it shows impression of cost to consumers for electricity, wind, solar, and hydrogen appear to be the highest, followed

oil and then nuclear. Which is interesting to me that Northwest Colorado would have oil be highly rate or would think that the cost of that, sorry, would think that the cost of electricity from oil would be more expensive, but the wind and solar being the most expensive also.

Matt Solomon (41:33)

I

What were fuel prices? What month is this? Three months ago in the spring of 2024, fuel prices in Northwest Colorado were $4 to $5 a gallon. So that might’ve played some part in that response.

Mark Hinaman (41:56)

Gotcha. But then, I mean, solar and wind being perceived to them, people having the impression that they’re more expensive. Do you have any thoughts on

Matt Solomon (42:08)

That’s their impression in the region. And you’ve got to figure, it’s a coal community. What’s the least expensive in their mind source of energy? Coal. So it is surprising that nuclear was not rated as higher as far as impression of cost. I apply that to it being an educated area.

it being an energy community. Nuclear has an expensive buy -in, but in the long term, over 80 years, by the time you replace solar panels and batteries and so on and so forth, what’s the cost benefit there? the data I’ve read is it really does even out with solar and wind and whatnot. Geothermal,

It being right in there with nuclear is accurate. Geothermal is expensive to initiate. And it does pay for itself in the long term. So it doesn’t surprise me that it is an educated community because of where we are in the region. And the coal answer makes me smile because it is a coal community, right?

Mark Hinaman (43:28)

Yeah, remaining coal was rated as the most cost effective according to the respondents. Northwest Colorado. Interesting though, so when asked, what’s your impression of the efficiency of each of the following sources of electricity, nuclear was highest rated both in the region in Colorado and at the nation level. So it seemed across the board.

Matt Solomon (43:54)

across the board.

Mark Hinaman (43:58)

Colorado rated it higher than the nation level, but it was still the highest across each. But then the kind of the biggest difference in the national and I guess local ratings was for solar, wind, and hydrogen, which I guess kind of makes sense also.

Matt Solomon (44:18)

So and if you look at figure four, which we discussed just a little bit ago, efficiency was the fifth most important thing to the region.

So that, you know, it falls into that top five thing of items that we should consider.

Mark Hinaman (44:42)

Yeah. Talk to us a little bit, Matt, about the knowledge of SMR safety radiation. So you guys had a bunch of stats in here, in tables, seven, eight, nine, 10. And just asking if people had heard about SMRs. What do they think about them? How do they describe them?

And I love your radiation question for the best of your knowledge, how would a person receive the most radiation? But you had living next to a nuclear power plant for a year, living next to a coal plant for a year, flying one time from New York to LA, or receiving a chest x -ray.

Matt Solomon (45:27)

Yep, and this page came directly from the Q &A we did a year prior, right? Because we were asked, why is this such a nuclear -focused survey? And up to this point, it hasn’t been nuclear -focused. It’s been about all of the various energies addressed in House Bill 1247 for the feasibility study. But this page came directly from.

conversations after the film from the year prior and I wanted to cut to the chase here’s the elephant in the room what really is the level of knowledge that people have about this so that we can just stop talking about it and move on to the real conversation right if we just don’t talk about nuclear because people don’t want to talk about it it it never gets talked about

In our effort, let’s look at the elephant in the room. Let’s size it up. Let’s see where we’re at. And then when we do our second survey and when we have our conversations moving forward, we don’t have this shadow we’re looming over us of nuclear energy that hasn’t been discussed. It’s been discussed. Now let’s move on. So I think the interesting thing to pull from page 15 with tables seven through 10 is

The knowledge level in the region compared to the nation. This really does confirm this is an energy community. They understand what we’re talking about. They don’t buy into the Simpsons. They don’t buy into the propaganda or the miscommunications. It’s they understand what they’re speaking of when they speak. Look at understanding and knowing what SMRs are.

64 .5 % of Northwest Colorado knows what an SMR is compared to 18 % of the national respondents.

67 % of people nationally did not know what SMRs are. Your takeaway from that, Mark, is you’re not doing a good enough job. Right?

Mark Hinaman (47:41)

I know, right? We need to expand this reach for the podcast. Yeah, I think you’re right. Man.

Matt Solomon (47:48)

But it’s not just you. You are the face of this industry through this media outlet of fire deficient. So I call you out in that regard. But it’s the industry as a whole is not doing enough education -wise. Now, knowing that for, you know, when you ask people what words do they associate with an

Mark Hinaman (48:01)

It’s helpful,

Matt Solomon (48:16)

The only people that answered table eight are the 64 and 1 percent and the 18 % that answered yes. So of the people that knew what an SMR was, what words did they associate with the SMR? And small, less expensive, safe, reliable, good for the environment, clean, and all of those words triggered more than 60 % of associations.

Off the top of your head, Mark, how often does the NRC monitor each nuclear power plant in the US to make sure it meets federal safety requirements? Don’t cheat.

Mark Hinaman (48:58)

I already know the answer. But yeah, it’s every day, They’ve got continuous monitoring. Many of them have folks on site sometimes that have a rep there all the

Matt Solomon (49:12)

And the answer to this really did not have a definitive, the correct answer is every day. And 35 % of Northwest Colorado, 18 % nationally answered that correctly. once a week, once a month, every six months, once a year, they all were pretty evenly distributed as far as answers go. So there is a gap in the knowledge across the board there.

The radiation question, your favorite one, how would a person receive the most radiation? Nationally, chest X -ray was the correct answer, was 45 .3%. Living next to a nuclear power plant got 39 % of the answers. So there’s a gap in the knowledge base nationally again.

In Northwest Colorado, 71 .8 % of people said having a chest S -ray gave you the most exposure. 4 .9 % of people felt living next to a power plant for a year gave you more. So again, you’re in an energy community. There is a basic level of or level of understanding to their knowledge.

Mark Hinaman (50:30)

Yeah. All let’s skip ahead to figure 15 on page 21. think it’s one of the last figures in the report, but it, it says nuclear opinion change pre and post facts by demographic strongly favor response. Ready? Can you kind of walk us through

Matt Solomon (50:47)

So what’s your opinion on nuclear energy before we presented some of the facts through the survey, right? And after, like before you were given some truth, were you, does your opinion shift?

And overall opinions do shift with facts and with conversation. And the takeaway to me from that is we’re on the right track here. It’s, not trying to be an advocate for nuclear energy. I’m trying to save a community, right? I’m trying to find a best of the above solution for Colorado. And you can’t do that without including nuclear in the conversation, right?

And you can’t do that if there’s a bias or a naivete to one energy versus the other. So while we’re talking about nuclear today, we should also have the same conversation about carbon capture. We should have the same conversation about solar and wind. And let’s make this apples and apples, not apples and oranges.

And then we can truly find what is the best solution. Now, you know what the best solution is from your perspective. Without an analysis like this, looking at them side by side, it becomes your opinion. But if we look at the benefits of all of these and we put them side by side, it’s a different discussion. And we can walk away if nuclear is

the best solution, we can walk away from that conversation saying nuclear is the best solution and we know this because we’ve looked at all of these side by side and weighed the costs and the benefits. So this shows us people want to have those conversations. They’re not stubbornly rooted in heels dug into the sand with their opinions. People are generally willing

to listen to data -driven fact -based conversations. Gen Z, I think, is the most data -driven of all the generations. 100 % of Gen Z shifted. The silent generation, which is our grandparents, 87 % were willing to shift. How old are you,

All right, so I’m an exer. little more than half of my gen is willing to shift, but it figures our generation got a daylights beat out of it growing up. And so we’re stubborn and we know that your millennial generation is a little more like bamboo and 70 and 77 % of your generation is able to sway. So is that, what was your takeaway from this? Are we pretty similar?

Mark Hinaman (53:53)

So looking at table or figure 15, I agree. I was surprised to Gen Z, but also not surprised that they’re all for nuclear energy. That made sense and resonated. But what I found interesting was every class, there wasn’t a single group that decreased. Meaning, so before they got facts about nuclear, they had an opinion. And then after they got more facts, their opinion

increased or at least remain the same, right? There were two groups that remained the same, but they were already pretty high, meaning that they probably marked the same response before and after, but for each individual probably did. So.

Matt Solomon (54:37)

Now what’s not in that table are the strongly disagree people. So if you have strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, the strongly disagree people, meaning the people that are strongly against nuclear energy, they are not budging. They’re not going to change their opinion. Doesn’t matter what you put in front of them. Doesn’t matter their generation. They’re not budging.

And so then the question, and what you do with that data is, where do we apply our resources in the conversation? If you have a group of people that are dead set, solar is the only answer, nuclear is the devil, and you’re not going to sway me, I’m not open to what the facts show, I don’t care what they are.

then we’re not going to allocate money and resources to appeasing them because they’re not having a conversation about the community. They’re having a conversation about their opinion, right? And that’s something worth noting because the project I’m working on is about the community. And do we want to appease and please everybody? Of course you do. But you cannot please everybody. And we really do need to find the best solution.

Not the best opinion.

Mark Hinaman (56:06)

Yeah. Matt, talk to us about the responses on pages. Let’s see, what is this? After the conclusions. So you had an appendix in here that had, I believe it’s statements from survey respondents. And can I think about that correctly?

Matt Solomon (56:22)

it weep yep now there we put these in here verbatim so if if somebody wrote it we copied it and pasted it exactly as they wrote it

Something interesting out of this.

Mark Hinaman (56:38)

Yeah. Statements were like, I like having energy available in my house, cheap and reliable, is efficient, safe and cost effective. And these were statements in response to what is the main reason for your opinion regarding the opinion on nuclear power.

Matt Solomon (56:49)

Yep, and I’m.

Yep, good, bad or ugly. And I thought it was valuable to put the respondents words as they were in this report because it expands a little bit more on just the questions and their voice is heard. It’s not myself. And, you know, I forgot to mention Dr. Perry at Colorado Mesa University. Dr. Perry put this report together.

So he wasn’t associated with the creation of it. He wasn’t associated with any of our work before he saw this data. And I felt it was important to have one, he’s an expert, and two, a non -biased set of eyes that compiled the information and drew the conclusions. And he put a ton of work into getting this completed. And so I want to make sure I say thank you to him.

There were a couple of responses and I paused there for a minute because I was looking for them that quoted the state party’s platform verbatim as their response. So the state Democratic Party last year was 100 % against nuclear energy and their reason was founded completely on opinion

did not have the basis of truth. And three people copied and pasted that statement into the survey. Now what’s interesting is,

I’ll give you the high level rough of it. so last up until last year, the state Democrat Party was absolutely against nuclear energy. And it was because it is harmful to the environment. The waste destroys communities. You know, all of these, whatever. Undocumented reasons. This year.

Mark Hinaman (58:39)

All good.

Matt Solomon (59:06)

the party has changed their platform. And that change came out pretty close to the time the survey came out and when our discussions started getting some momentum. And the change is that they’re supportive of nuclear energy.

when we come up with a solution for waste. So they still have the asterisks, but there’s a benchmark in there. And I do have that solution that is being worked on. And it shows that instead of having a state majority party, the Democrat party is the majority of our house and our Senate and the state, having a platform that’s opposite of the national party

they’re at least coming in line with the National Democrat Party, and they’re more willing to have these conversations around nuclear energy. So that is a positive step. I do have a webinar with our elected officials coming up here in a month or two to discuss this report, but also to take note of their concerns and their questions so that we can have

beneficial conversation and not just butt heads. So the fact that we have a majority party in our state that is now willing to have these conversations and discussions, that’s a huge step mark. And that’s a testament to all the work that everybody’s been doing in our state to work together.

Mark Hinaman (1:00:40)

I love it, Matt. Give us a view or let us know what’s happening next. mean, we did release a survey you mentioned. There’s another survey coming up. You’re doing a webinar for state officials. Yeah. What are the next steps? Where does this

Matt Solomon (1:00:55)

As far as the Northwest Colorado Energy Initiative goes, we are working on a second survey now. Greg Clough from Colorado School of Mines and the Payne Institute. He and I have met a few times to try to articulate the thoughts behind the project. And the idea is to introduce the idea of the concept of an energy campus.

And we also want to introduce the concept of integrated energy solutions. So it’s nuclear inclusive, not nuclear focused, no offense to you. I say that in jest. But how do these different sources of energy work together? Are people aware that hydrogen is a byproduct of both nuclear processing and one of the points of carbon capture?

And what can we do with that hydrogen? How does that feed into our energy cycle? So Greg has been teaching a class of freshmen for the last three or four years, I believe, at the School of Mines, this concept of an energy hub where different energies, how they work together and connect. And then this idea of integrated energy solutions, meaning

energy can be utilized for more than just electricity, right? What are the byproducts of nuclear, the byproducts of carbon capture and storage of geothermal? And how can we use it for heating sidewalks or heating a home or hydrogen? How does that tie into hydrogen fuel cells for planes or vehicles? How does all of this connect and how do they work together? And so we have a modeling effort being

worked on with NREL right now, the National Renewable Energies Laboratory in Golden, through a community’s LEAP grant program with the Department of Energy, we got a technical grant for NREL to do this modeling effort. And I hope to have these results that we can share with the state as part of their feasibility study, because this paints a different picture

You’re going to do away with coal, and it’s going to be all renewable. We want to have the solution -oriented discussion of coal is done. What’s the next step? Here’s some options. And here’s some ideas that both meet the clean air requirements, but also meet the needs of the community for having a good tax base, supporting a good pool of workers.

growing the economy and providing either enough revenue to make the housing market affordable or to make the abundance such that housing is affordable. So let’s check all these boxes and let’s maximize the benefit here. Let’s show how energies work together and how they do more than just provide electricity. So the second survey introduces that concept and

Hopes to set, just like we did with nuclear, let’s set that ground floor of understanding so we know where the starting point of discussions is. Is that more than you asked? I just went on.

Mark Hinaman (1:04:30)

I love that. no, that was perfect. That was great. So Matt, this has been excellent. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for doing the report. I’m excited to read the next one. I think you’re taking us into super

Matt Solomon (1:04:46)

Mark, on behalf of AGNC, NCEI, and all of us in this Northwest region, thanks for having us on your show. I’m honored, I appreciate it, and I hope I represented the region and you well. So thank you.

‍