066 Brett Rampal, Sr. Director of Nuclear at Veriten

In this episode of the Fire2Fission podcast, Mark Hinaman interviews Brett Rampal, a nuclear energy expert and senior director at Veriten. They discuss Brett's journey in nuclear engineering, his experiences at various companies, and his current role at Veriten, where he focuses on energy strategy and investment. The conversation also explores the differences between nuclear and renewable technologies, the importance of staying informed in the energy sector, and the challenges faced by the nuclear industry. In this conversation, Brett Rampal discusses the complexities of nuclear energy, emphasizing the importance of rational dialogue, the need for middle ground in discussions, and the role of technology and business solutions in advancing the industry. He highlights the significance of collaboration over competition, the challenges of regulatory pathways, and the future potential of nuclear energy, including the emergence of microreactors and the necessity for real investment and ownership in projects.

January 17, 2025

Nuclear

132

minutes

Show Transcript

Transcript:

Brett Rampal (00:00)
So I don't care what your technology is.

If somebody wants to buy it, you're my favorite, right? You are my favorite. by wants to buy it, that should be real. That's not necessarily an MOU or an LOI or any of these things. That's like a real business contract, whether it's not fixed price, fixed price, whatever it is, that's a contract for purchase of something. Power purchase agreements are moving in that direction, but that takes a lot of risk out of...

the association with the nuclear technology.

Mark Hinaman (01:43)
Welcome to another episode of the Fire to Fission podcast, where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can improve human lives. Today we're joined by one of my good friends, one of my favorite people in industry, Brett Rampal. Brett is the senior director of nuclear and power strategy at Veriton. And I am stoked to talk to Brett today. Brett, how you doing man?

Brett Rampal (02:06)
I'm doing great, Mark. It's really good to chat with you as always. I'm super excited to be here and I am stoked, hyped, you know, any 90s excited word we could throw out there. It's going to be a wicked good time right now, right? I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Mark Hinaman (02:20)
Yeah, showing our millennial age and upbringing through our word choice.

cool, man. We know the drill, get, getting background on guests. but I'm, really excited for this conversation. We're going to cover a bunch of topics. This episode may be longer than some of our previous episodes and we've made sure to block out time. you and I are both, you know, not socially driven at the start of the new year. And so Friday afternoon that we're recording this, get lots, all the free time of the world. So bear with us listeners. We're, going to be covering a lot. So.

Brett, last time I saw you was after your guys's party, the Veriton holiday party in Houston. And we stayed out quite a while after that, just BSing about the industry.

Brett Rampal (03:11)
Yeah, it was great. I'm really happy that you could join us. know, Veriton Party is always a good time. to any of your listeners that have gotten an invite before and may not have joined us, know, shame on you. But no, was great. I'm glad you say that. It was great to spend that time with you. You know, Veriton,

Mark Hinaman (03:26)
It's worth it. It's very fun.

Brett Rampal (03:35)
we love to work with our community, but we also love to enjoy our community. And our community tends to be full of thoughtful, enjoyable people. And so that makes for great events. we're, you know, our kind of model is all about finding people asking interesting questions about energy, getting them together.

helping them find answers any way we can and hopefully using them to help others find answers, right? And so it's just a really great sort of environment and why not get everybody together at least a couple of times a year for something fun because we work so

Mark Hinaman (04:21)
Absolutely. For those that aren't on that invite list, it is, think, an invite only event. So you got to figure out how to get on the list. once you're on it, it's a fantastic event to attend. I agree. You guys do a great job of connecting awesome people in the industry. We'll talk more about Veriton in a bit. Brett, I want to zoom back a little bit and talk kind of about your background. Pretend like you just met me. We're at one of these parties.

Brett Rampal (04:30)
Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (04:50)
What would be your, your pitch for kind of who you are, what, you do.

Brett Rampal (04:54)
Sure, well, I would say I'm a nuclear energy expert with a technical policy and now sort of investment kind of experience base. And in the nuclear world, it's kind of hard to find opportunities to branch out and get so much exposure. And so I've been really lucky and that offers me, I'd like to think a...

a unique and useful perspective to folks.

Mark Hinaman (05:26)
Yeah, I agree. And I always love your perspective. All of our conversations are interesting. So how did you get your start, Brett? Where did you start?

Brett Rampal (05:39)
So I am a nuclear engineer by trade, by training, excuse me, and trade. I got my start at the University of Florida. I never really knew that I wanted to do nuclear engineering. knew they just wanted to, I wanted to do science and technology and math. You know, that's all that excited me growing up. could see the, for those watching, you could see the spaceman in the Norman Rockwell painting behind me, right? You know, so, and at the time I went to Florida, they had a,

two top 10 engineering schools. One was nuclear and one was materials. And my brother was in materials engineering. So that was strike number one over there, right? And, you know, my older brother, he was two years ahead of me. You never want to follow directly in their footsteps. And then I looked in the book that told you everything and it was nuclear is a lot of science and math and, excuse me, a lot of

physics and calculus and differential equations, then I looked at materials and it was a lot of chemistry and organic chemistry and I hated chemistry and I was like, no. I, you know, I, walked out of preview, the orientation at Florida and you walk out and the nuclear building is kind of directly in front of you and the materials building is to your left. then over the, the nuclear building is an engineering building and then the football stadium.

And so I said to my mother when we walked out, was like, look, the nuclear building is closer to the football stadium. And she was like, this is not the way you decide your major. This can't be. And I was like, mom, that's three strikes. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made, even if it was kind of a wacky, weird way to do it. a year later, with very little sort of exposure to anything nuclear,

growing up besides, you know, the Simpsons and everybody loves to point to the Simpsons as like a negative thing, but I guess I'm the weirdo growing up that was like, yeah, that's how I learned about nuclear. That sounded interesting. If Homer Simpson can do it, I can do it, right? You know, that was kind of what I took from the Simpsons and I knew nothing. And in my first classes,

one professor, two professors dispelled all myths, everything I heard. And I was, I mentioned this to somebody else the other day, I was immediately indoctrinated. And sometimes indoctrination can be good when it's fact-based and reasonable and the right sort of thing. I'm not an advocate for any of your listeners to get involved in cults by any means or anything, but you know.

There is certainly a cult of nuclear fission and that's one of the healthier ones, I would say, out there. So for me, it was immediate. It was not all positive. I failed in my college classes. I came from a place with lots of great education and great experience and everything was super easy.

And nuclear is rigorous and hard. And the people that I went to school with are, you know, some of the smartest people I will ever meet or interact with in the world. And then I went and met the people that, you know, from other universities and that worked in the workplace in nuclear spaces when I entered the workplace. And they're even more impressive. So, you know, I, as a young person,

experienced a lot of challenges and was lucky to overcome those. I graduated, I was working for General Electric Itachi supporting the existing fleet while I was getting my master's degree. And then after that, I was lucky enough to get a job with Westinghouse Electric Company where I spent five years supporting their side of the existing fleet.

as a fuel engineer and core designer and later the senior core designer and engineering project manager for the Dominion fleet of pressurized water reactors, Millstone, North Anna and Surrey. And my career of course goes on from there, but that's kind of how I got my start. And it was a really, really great opportunity to get a great education, learn about nuclear in the...

what the real nuts and bolts of what is real, the realest nuclear in the United States, our existing fleet, despite any aims for, anyone's ambitions and my ambitions for some other opportunities for other new technologies. And really taught me a lot and put me in a position to be, you know, even more valuable today. So yeah, I really got very lucky.

along the way to fall into this and have loved it a lot along that path.

Mark Hinaman (10:53)
That's awesome. I love the story about the football stadium. It's kind of funny how life takes you in interesting directions like that and how such a seemingly innocuous decision or something that might have not been very

monumental that could influence a decision like that that is very monumental for your life and your career. I've got kind of a similar experience with my major selection. I was at the first undergraduate university that I went to. I switched schools after a year, but when I was touring the campus, I wanted to do physics originally and

the dean of the mechanical engineering school like ran into me accidentally and he's like, oh, you're new student. What are you studying? And I was like, I'm gonna do physics. And he's like, really? Have you considered engineering? And I was like, well, I don't know. And he's like, I mean, we basically do everything that the physics people do. We just make a lot more money. And I was like, maybe I'll study engineering. Like, we'll see. So, yeah.

Brett Rampal (11:51)
Nuclear engineers,

when I was at Florida, were the second highest paying graduating major in engineering at Florida, behind petroleum engineers. no offense, I have only learned a lot more about what petroleum engineering does and how interesting of an industry that can be. But as a 17-year-old kid,

that didn't sound right for me, right? so, yeah, mean, economics, you know, the science around engineering, it makes engineering its own cult as well, right? I don't want this, yeah.

Mark Hinaman (12:32)
It is. It's its own cult. You're the first to admit. It's where we're

a club of people. Yeah, you're exactly right. So that your G Hitachi internship where I mean, they've gone through like 10 iterations of this. BWR was it like Gen eight, Gen nine or something that do

Brett Rampal (12:53)
So

I was lucky enough to start as an intern and then transition into a co-op and then a part-time employee while I was in grad school. so that allowed me the opportunity to engage on multiple different things. So I started my career with GE working on some licensing work for the ESBWR, the original large new

reactor version for GE in, excuse me, large light water reactor version for GE that's kind of been what, that they have been talking about in your and my lifetime. And so that project essentially in a lot of ways is the analog to the AP1000.

the GE version essentially of the large next generation of what we have in our fleets right now. And they were thinking about, you know, how to sell that, how, you know, how does that, you know, what customers would be interested in that. And that's really sort of a utility scale project, the product. And so as

the opportunities for utility demand growth and sort of, you know, the general downturn of things that happened around 2008, 2009, know, GE stock when I started, when I was in grad school starting in 2007 was around 50, maybe 55. When I was leaving in 2009, I think it was 12 or 16 or something. And so, you know, that's drastic.

challenges for the parent company to be facing. And at the same time, we had a fleet of nuclear utilities that were facing their own financial challenges that only became more, you know, amplified and, you know, led to closures and all sorts of things that even in 2007 and 2008, we weren't really anticipating neither, you know, some ways and possibility.

nor in speed. And so that led a lot to sort of GE thinking about how to change the products to be a new offering and essentially enter the SMR space. And I was neglectful in mentioning before when I said, you know, ESBWR was the main offering from GE during our lifetimes because there was the ABWR.

before that and that is the fastest constructed light water reactor in the history of the world. I believe at the Shoka site in Japan, that reactor was constructed in something like 39 or 38 months and that with enough power for 800,000, 900,000 million homes, I'm sorry, I don't.

know the exact energy conversion from homes to in Japan. It's hard enough in America. And so that product was also being considered in places like South Texas Project in the United States, but it wasn't really being considered broadly. so ESBWR was supposed to be the larger, more passive, more safe.

version of ABWR, perhaps in hindsight and in retrospect, somebody might have said, well, why'd you spend all that money? You should've spent that money convincing people to just buy the ABWRs or build the ABWRs or do whatever. But hindsight is always 2020 and they were looking at different demand trends and their customers were asking for different things.

And that led to them to try to make a product that answered those questions. And then.

interest rates, natural gas prices, Fukushima, all sorts of things came together to compound a giant whirlwind of story around why that was a poor decision on their part to kind of make this the product that they were really sort of pushing and driving. But again,

Nobody I don't I don't know a lot of rational or smart or real people or papers I could find from those days that would have said all of this and So spelled out any of this or all of this and said G is doing wrong This is what G should do, you know, and so we were all caught up in it We all thought different things and that's you know time is the best educator as they say

Mark Hinaman (18:07)
Yeah, yeah. And EASBWR, that was their economically simplified or economic simplified boiling water.

Brett Rampal (18:13)
So technically

at some point that was the acronym for it, but now it is acronym lists and just is ESBWR because it's not really simplified.

Mark Hinaman (18:23)
ESP. It was like a predecessor

of their current BWRX, Yeah, their SF.

Brett Rampal (18:30)
Right. So

they took ESBWR and essentially when they were starting on that process to get to BWRX, they put a bunch of engineers in the room and they said, we want you to decrease the amount of material in this reactor, steel, concrete, all that sort of stuff by 90 % while only decreasing the power output by a maximum of 80%.

Mark Hinaman (18:44)
it.

Brett Rampal (18:59)
And by doing that, you automatically double the economic pick, like you improve the economics by a factor of two right there and then. So they thought that would be very helpful in their design thinking and the development of ESBD, excuse me, of BWRX. Of course, know, preliminary designs are preliminary designs. We've seen the BWRX design evolve a little bit recently and we'll, you know, see it evolve further.

So the question is what exactly will it look like when they're ready? Will they have achieved that sort of 80 % 90 % ratio sort of thing? Will it even have mattered? Is ESBWR more expensive, less expensive than they thought it was? These are all questions that we won't really know until people really, really start doing the real hard work here, which is usually around construction.

Mark Hinaman (19:59)
Yeah, which I mean, they're on own path to do that. So that's exciting. we can dive more into, mean, that G, Dachi if we want, but I'm curious to learn kind of a little bit more about your experience. I mean, you, you're at Westinghouse and then kind of step through new scale and did some contracting, I think for deep isolation. Like you've, you've, you've, you've touched a lot of these entities that, yeah, certainly can be public or have had press releases, but just curious if you've got kind of stories or topics or.

Yeah, share with us a little bit of your experience.

Brett Rampal (20:31)
Sure, yeah, no, so I never like to speak too much inside baseball in some of these companies, right, and everything, but all I will say is that...

Mark Hinaman (20:41)
We do podcasts,

so we don't have to sign NDAs with them. No, I'm just kidding.

Brett Rampal (20:46)
All I will say is that I've had good and great experiences at all of these places and terrible, awful experiences at all of these places, just like you do at any job. These are jobs more than anything. Right, right, right. We didn't mention it before.

Mark Hinaman (21:04)
They're paying you to be there.

Brett Rampal (21:11)
You already didn't mention before, I also spent five years leading the nuclear focus area and policy research area for the Clean Air Task Force in addition to my now time at Veriton for several years. And so, you know, I had a really awesome opportunity to like learn about real nuclear and like real nuclear technology at Westinghouse.

you supporting the existing fleet and doing core design or safety analysis or any of the number of other really impactful and important jobs at utilities and vendors to support these teaches you so much. Teaches you so much about the plants. Teaches you so much not just about your niche but about the niche of the guy in the cubicle next to you or even if you're remote.

as I was for some of my time at Westinghouse and a lot of my time at New Scale and other places, the people you interact with, you cannot help but learn. And if you're gonna be good at nuclear engineer, learning should just be something you love and something that you wanna embrace. And so at Westinghouse, as you learn more and as you become more knowledgeable, you can get to a place where you can get

sort of non-standard qualified and you can do work essentially without methods and work that you just essentially make up on your own on the fly there, which is kind of a big deal to be thinking about, you know, oh, hey, you know, this nuclear reactor has operated for 30 or 40 years where they are having a challenge. They have come to their vendor or

you know, that we're working in consultation with our customer to resolve a big problem and nothing that anybody has ever done on any of the other sister plants or this plant for the last 40 years is useful to us or is the solution here. So we need you to apply your experience and your knowledge to help develop something informed based on all of those. As an example of this,

You know, one of my plants, won't say which one, you know, I've already kind of probably, you know, revealed too much by even saying, you know, it was one of my plants, but one of the plants I helped support had an issue with its measurements to predicted bias. It's essentially, we would predict a lot of measurement, a lot of data around how the plant would operate and it would then measure the

plant would measure for startup and for general operations a lot of this data and compare it. And even sometimes, particularly for startup, the regulator would say to you, this is how close you have to be. If you're not this close between measurements and predictions, you cannot start up your reactor. You have to shut down your processes. You have to, you know, all this. And that might be while you have 3000 people on site.

getting ready to just having finished reloading fuel and you're getting ready to start back up and you know, a plant could be three, five, six, maybe even now today, million dollars a day in revenue lost every day. It's down to that utility. So yeah, having a bias can be challenging if it starts to get closer to those review and acceptance criteria.

And one plant in the fleet always has to be worst. And that was one of my plants. And so as we were getting closer, it was an effort between me and my utility counterpart, a brilliant core designer as well to, or excuse me, I should have said brilliant core designer. I wasn't talking about myself, I'm an idiot. He was very shocked. A brilliant core designer. And he and I working together were able to diagnose the issue.

develop a pathway and a methodology for kind of improving the plant's predictions. I left before they kind of, we got to see it installed on the next cycle and everything, but nobody ever called me to tell me everything was burning down and nothing was working right. And I hope that laid the groundwork for my replacement to have a good place to stand on and to then modify it and work with.

the counterpart of the plant to then further resolve future problems for that plant. And I never heard a story about X, Y, and Z plant having to extend its outage or not doing this or failing to meet review and acceptance criteria. And so that can be a very fun and empowering experience. That's one of the really exciting things I did at Westinghouse. In line with that also, I got to...

help roll out like a new code package. This doesn't sound exciting to you, but we do simulations and predictions and those are regulatory and federally and the federal government and the NRC has to qualify a lot of these tools. So to roll out new prediction tools and everything is a big deal and working with your customer to develop new methods with those new tools might've been the first time that anybody was doing that.

for that plant in two decades-ish and everything. So that sort of stuff can be few and far between. And I had a really unique and great opportunity to kind of jump in places, either because of the plants I was supporting, where I was located, or just what was going on at Westinghouse at the time. And then, so I left Westinghouse in 2000.

and 14 and spent three years as a fuel engineer at New Scale Power. I supported their design certification application, which has led to this talking point that New Scale likes to throw out there all the time about them being the only licensed reactor design in this country. A design certification is a tool to support the licensing.

of an actual project. they are the first design certification for an SMR in this country. And it was a really interesting and fun experience to participate in that. I got fired from New Scale in 2017. And then after leaving New Scale, I spent five years working, as I said, for the Clean Air Task Force.

which is a really amazing and unique way to kind of experience and learn about policy advocacy and our federal government and how to interact with stakeholders and policymakers and to kind of be in the right place in the right time to experience this drastic sort of bipartisan and

amazing growth in support for nuclear energy, which was a lot of what my job was focused on. So when I started at Clean Air Task Force, we were talking about tens of millions of dollars in support and a little bit of regulatory reform. And when I was leaving five years later, we're talking about billions of dollars in support, tech neutral tax credit, know, wide ranging.

reform of our tax codes to support, you know, energy technologies of all different types. And so that is a really amazing sort of escalator to think that I had an opportunity to ride along with, and maybe I, you know, polished the glass somewhere or, you know, turned a bolt or two somewhere with, along with, you know, hundreds of thousands of other people to make

this new world that we are living in potentially possible.

Mark Hinaman (29:49)
That's awesome, man. I gotta say, one thing that I love about you, the self-deprecating humor is often a sign of intelligence, and you're obviously a very smart guy, and so every time you've got self-deprecating humor, like, I got fired from New Scale. Just come out and with it. I love it. It's admirable. So I gotta come. I'll be watching you on that.

Brett Rampal (30:08)
Well, you know, lot

of people fear the failure and they feel, you know, and they fear, excuse me, you know, embracing the negative aspects of like their careers and their life or even their personalities. But, you know, if you can't learn from it, then it was definitely a mistake. If you can learn from it, it was never a mistake, right? And everything.

Mark Hinaman (30:33)
you

Brett Rampal (30:38)
That's the way I like to look at things. And if somebody else can learn from my experience and, you know, or not get fired or I could not get fired again or any of those things, right. It's all about learning from and getting better along from. And, you know, I, you know, as on a personal note, I think this a lot comes from, you know, I have a

I have a, you know, God rest his soul, but I have a twin brother who unfortunately passed away from a fentanyl overdose five or six years ago. Amazing person. And he, you know, but it was, his addiction was very shameful, know, lots of shame, know, shame is very challenging and is very difficult for anybody. And so I don't try to live.

a shameful life. I don't think anything is shameful. Live in the bright light. Embrace what it is. I'm kind of, I am kind of an idiot. And I have met tons and tons of people sharper and smarter than me. And if I'm walking into those rooms thinking I'm smarter than all of these people, even if I may have more experience or I may perhaps

come out with the better idea at the end or who knows, right? You I don't know what's gonna happen in my life, but I'm just saying, you're never gonna have that, you're never gonna be in a good place to interact if you think you're the smartest person in the room and everything. So the wise man knows they're an idiot, I am an idiot.

Mark Hinaman (32:25)
I love it. Okay, let's skip ahead to your current position. yeah, I mean, you left Clean Air Task Force, you did some consulting, then found your way to Veriton. How'd you get hooked up with these guys and what motivated you to go in this direction?

Brett Rampal (32:46)
Yeah.

So I was super lucky. I was thinking about what was next for me at the end of my time at Clean Air Task Force and mentioned to a bunch of colleagues that, you know, I'm looking for opportunities. And I was very lucky that a colleague at the Nuclear Energy Institute ran into Maynard, my boss, my current boss at Veriton, our CEO and founder.

and Jeff, my other boss and our COO, ran into them and they essentially sat down and said, we're starting something new. We're moving on from this great bank that we have founded and run for 20 years and has just got acquired by another public bank. We're gonna create something totally new in the energy space in terms of supporting traditional companies, industrials.

you know, utilities, manufacturers. And the NEI guys were like, great, that's awesome. Let us know how could we help. And they're like, Maynard and Jeff responded and they said, essentially, we think nuclear is cool, but we know nothing about it. Can you help us? Or do you think you could introduce us to somebody that we should be talking to? I was very lucky that they introduced me to them. And I guess I was also, you know.

infinitely more lucky that they decided I was the type of person that worked at Veriton and that we were the type of people that jive together. And so I got an opportunity to fall in very quickly into a lot of a new world for me. I know for you, Mark, some of this world is probably more your bread and butter, right? The, you know, oil and gas or the traditional energy or the traditional

industrials, but as a, you know, sort of electricity utility world and nuclear world kind of guy. My two and a half years or so at Veriton so far have been so informative, so educational, and just so fun. The companies that we get to interact with, the questions they ask about nuclear or other technology are

maybe some of the most impactful things I think that are going on in nuclear and broader energy discussions or activities right now anywhere in our country. So yeah, the only reason I managed to land at Veriton, luckily, is again, because of the places I was and because I essentially...

put a toe out and started looking and was fishing for the next opportunity. So I used to run the American Nuclear Society's Young Members Group. It's a collection of 3,000 or so, maybe more, maybe less now, about 3,000 nuclear engineers and nuclear energy professionals around this country under the 36 or younger.

And a lot of them would normally come up to me a lot of times and ask, know, how do I find the right opportunity in the nuclear industry? What should I do? You know, where, how do I, you know, I don't know if I like my current job. And I always tell them, always be open to opportunities, always be looking. It's always good practice. And for years, I had gotten very, I was very, very happy at Clean Air Task Force and I had stopped looking.

And so I was very lucky that I spent some time looking and found such great people to connect with. And now at Veriton, in addition to sort of our activities supporting our client and partner companies, we also have about a hundred million dollar investment fund that we use to make investments in all, you know, energy opportunity, you know, all sorts of energy focused companies.

that can hopefully really have an impact over the next 10 years or so. as I said, it's about hundred million dollar fund because it's targeted kind of at small scale investments to support companies that may be in that valley of death, as they call it. This opportunity where, this place where their capital needs aren't really so drastic, but they may still be far away from, a little bit further away from revenue.

It's hard to connect the dots on funding things and that sort of world of capital is just a smaller sort of place. And so we're hopeful that we can be really impactful there. We haven't found a direct nuclear investment that we can make. am really, you know, it's not, I can't say too much. It's not public yet, but we will be.

making an investment pretty soon, I believe, in a uranium-focused company. And maybe even when this episode goes live, might be old news. But we'll see. So that's really cool for us. It's been great to learn a lot about companies in the world. And my colleagues have also used

the fund and the engagement we've had with nuclear companies and other companies to expose themselves and learn so much more about the nuclear world at this point, to the point that I often joke with Maynard and Jeff and I'm like, you know, don't fire me now that you know so much and you're so smart about nuclear and everything. Now that you don't need me because, you know, rolling up your sleeves or being a smart financier or being a smart, you know, person that read

led or looked at energy research at banks, those should be people that should be able to, when exposed to nuclear and nuclear companies and nuclear should be able to swim in these waters pretty

Mark Hinaman (39:18)
Yeah, that's fascinating. I, you know, I mean, our whole brand fire to fission, right? It's like, was an oil and gas guy and then got curious about nuclear and have always kind of thought about it one direction like that or directionally. And that they are very different communities, right? You go to these oil and gas conferences versus you go to a nuclear conference.

just the energy is very different. it's, hadn't really considered somebody like yourself that yeah, it was traditionally in the nuclear space and then gets exposed to, mean, Veritan, especially like investment bank that has these heavy hitters talking about Maynard's height, as weight, right? But that are excellent in their profession and are very, very astute in the oil and gas space. So.

Brett Rampal (39:57)
I want

Well, and I want a funny anecdote. My old boss's boss from my time at Westinghouse is Dr. Rita Baranwal, our former assistant secretary of energy for the office of nuclear energy at the Department of Energy. And we stay in touch and we were joking one time, we were at a Texas event together and I...

I had just come out of a bunch of partner meetings at some oil and gas companies and she had just gone and visited a bunch of oil and gas companies and we're coming out of them. And I think I had seen that she was gonna be in the same office that we were in earlier in the day. So I was like, how was it? What did you think? What was going on? And she's like, It was like.

They had like a car in their parking lot, excuse me, in their lobby and like all of these old really cool like gasoline pumps, you know, from like the 50s. And it was airy and beautiful and people were smiling and happy and having a great time. And I was like, yeah, it's different, right? And she was like, yeah, it's really different. And I'm like, you know, it does that. And she's like, what do you mean?

What does that? And I'm like, profit, profit, profit, know, like profit does that. And even at the times that we were there and we were talking about this, a lot of the oil and gas companies were still coming out of this several decades of misery that they were in around profit and revenue, right? And everything. But it's, you know, different mindsets, different thought processes. A lot of the nuclear industry and, you know, places I worked and places I didn't work.

And even the whole concept around SMRs and all these startup companies is because it's a beaten down, downtrodden, struggling place in a lot of ways. I was doing a focus group with some NGOs recently. And in that focus group, what the media group that was doing it asked,

questions around what is, know, how should the nuclear, how should we think about the nuclear industry doing this or doing that or saying this or saying that? And I stopped her and I, when they came to me to answer my question, to answer that question, I was like, well, what is the nuclear industry? I'm gonna need you to describe that to me and explain that because I know there's a couple of vendors that wanted to build reactors that could never do it.

really successfully and now have lived on fuel and warranties and services businesses. And there's a bunch of utilities that do stuff that is nuclear related and have nuclear businesses, but there are other aspects of their businesses are huge in comparison. And there's a whole other sort of vendor and component and supply chain activities that are mostly the same as well.

And none of this is connected and there's no, know, even if you say that, you know, the Nuclear Energy Institute is like the lobbying group for the, you know, know, nuclear energy groups and nuclear utilities and everything, it's certainly not the American Petroleum Institute, right? You know, and yeah, yeah, not even close. And I love that people have both of those, right.

Mark Hinaman (43:39)
Not even, not even, yeah. I can talk about that at length, that specific

dichotomy, but yeah.

Brett Rampal (43:48)
Right, and I

love the people at both of those institutions, but API exists as large as it does to support a large, you know, like real, like with partners that kind of, you know, collaborate together a lot. And the collaboration, the nuclear industry is getting better. It's, you know, now things are leaning in more, people are doing...

You know, even, you know, we'll date. I'm sorry, Mark, we're dating ourselves, but I just saw today that there was an announcement from TVA and GE and Duke and I think a third utility around the fact that they're all collectively going in to bid for $800 million in federal grant money to support collectively driving down the risk on BWRX, SMR projects for the United States. Right. So

those sort of collaborations and pathways and things in the nuclear industry, we hear it and we're like, wow, that's amazing. Why didn't other people think of this? And then you and I well know in the petroleum industry or the oil and gas industry or the fossil fuel industry, people are doing collaborations and relationships and partners.

Mark Hinaman (45:07)
We need to ensure

it's a common business structure that happens all the time.

Brett Rampal (45:11)
Right.

Right. GE's fuel line is a joint venture between GE and Hitachi and Toshiba. It's called Global Nuclear Fuels. GE's nuclear business is an alliance between GE and Hitachi. So there are these things around underneath here, and people don't pay attention. Westinghouse bought combustion engineering. Westinghouse.

Merck got the B, I believe Westinghouse merged the BNW nuclear division into it when both were owned by, maybe it was BNFL, British Nuclear Fuels Limited, or maybe it was CBS. I think it was BNFL. But you know, these, there have been some of those activities, but there hasn't been a lot of those activities until, you know, somewhat recently, you see the Brookfield and Cameco.

Acquisition of Westinghouse and people are like, wow, this is amazing. This is fantastic. Huge deal. Right. And everything. And I mean, Constellation is buying Calpine. That puts that deal to shame. Right. And everything we talked about it for two days and now we're like, okay, yeah, Constellation buying Calpine makes sense. Right. You know, so real industries have real activities. They make sense.

Mark Hinaman (46:23)
Thank you.

Brett Rampal (46:35)
They're vibrant, they're successful, they ebb and flow. We don't have a bankruptcy and everybody loses their mind. We don't sue each other into oblivion, you know, those sort of things, right? So that's kind of why it makes it challenging for people, excuse me, for people that like myself before I came to Veriton to really understand what this is all about.

And I was even a guy that was exposed to a lot more than just the quote unquote nuclear industry, because I spent time working in NGOs and government. And did that make me better positioned? Think of oil and gas companies as they actually are? I don't know. I don't know if that's a real question I can answer here, right? But it's fascinating to come from the outside and kind of see this

major, huge, huge, huge part of the global industry. And it's just like what I said earlier about like when I went to school and that one day of classes learned all this stuff about nuclear that I didn't know and was like, why don't they talk about this, right? You learn so much about oil and gas that folks don't talk about and is not a part of the dialogues and mainstream. And you're like, why don't we talk about this?

And I'm not, you're not an apologist for fossil fuels and emissions. I'm not an apologist for fossil fuels and emissions. That's one of the things that people don't get here. Most people in the fossil fuel worlds or in the oil gas worlds, one of their first and one of their leading tenants in their life, they'll say to you, yeah, we gotta clean up. We gotta clean up the methane. We gotta do this, we gotta do that, and everything. They get it.

But the other dialogues around everything dominate rather than the rational ones. And it's really fascinating to roll your sleeves up and learn more and see companies think about owning nuclear technology as oil and gas giants for the first time in decades. And that can only be good for every.

Mark Hinaman (49:00)
I agree, I totally agree. I wanna continue on that discussion, but I wanna circle back first to Veriton. So we talked a little bit about the fund that you guys have, the $100 million fund, and we already mentioned that you guys throw great Christmas parties, so got that covered. But what else does Veriton do? I mean, the boutique investment bank, what other kinds of things? I you guys got a couple podcasts, tell us about your other services.

Brett Rampal (49:27)
Yeah, so I wouldn't call

us a boutique investment bank at all. That would be where Maynard and Jeff and some of lot of that. Right, that's where they came from, which I wish I had spent as much time as they did at a boutique investment bank of that caliber and scale and what they managed to accomplish because they accomplished great things. And I'm sure it was super rewarding to everybody involved. I'm not sure. I know it was super rewarding to everybody.

Mark Hinaman (49:34)
those Maynard's legacy.

Brett Rampal (49:57)
And so what we do in addition to kind of look at, you know, things through the lens of our investment fund is that we also, as I said, work with a lot of these traditional companies, industrials, utilities, manufacturers. They will, you know, develop a relationship with us. That relationship will allow them to call on me if they have a nuclear question, call on

my colleagues for broader market questions or other energy questions, calling us to do some analysis, calling us to attend meetings with them, work with them on some project they have internally. We like to think of ourselves in those sort of capacities as like outside the house, out of the house, R &D, energy R &D, thinking about where it's going. And we can also...

be really helpful to them in making connections across our partners and clients, as well as the folks we meet otherwise. And otherwise, one of the vehicles we use to drive those networks and to inform our partners, inform our broader network is our streaming shows and our podcasts that we do.

Close the Business Tuesday is our flagship show and it is fantastic, I have to say first, right? course it's, but yeah.

Mark Hinaman (51:30)
I

You're supposed to say that as an insider. I get to say that as a consumer. I think it's wonderful. I listen to it every week. That's awesome.

Brett Rampal (51:38)
That's very kind of you. High praise from such a, right, a renowned podcaster yourself, you know? The COBT really takes a really broad look at the energy dialogues and just anything related to energy. We've had population, global population experts on, we've spent time.

Mark Hinaman (51:43)
From a fellow podcaster.

Brett Rampal (52:05)
talking to people about German coal, anything in the energy world, or you think could possibly touch on the German, in the energy world, I'd like to think it's been somewhere in COBT at this point, or it's in the hopper right now. And so we use that platform in a way that Maynard describes, which I think is great, as a never-ending conference that you get once a week.

Right? So it's essentially good for us as the participants. It's good for the audience. We talk to people that we wouldn't normally have the chance to talk to. We engage, we learn more, and then maybe we take things back to our partners or we introduce people and things happen in the future that way too. So it's a really unique sort of multi-pronged organization and it allows us to do really unique and different things.

On top of COBT, we have another podcast, Generate, which I host alongside our COO, Jeff Tillery. It's a little bit more infrequently released because we like to put it out when we find real, you know, useful things to share with our audience. And it's more focused on nuclear and electricity and industrial decarbonization directly.

versus the more broad focus of COBT. And yeah, and like you said before, we throw parties, we keep our network connected. Veritin is all about getting together the right people in the right places and at the right time. And we think the right time is mostly now to be thinking about the future of energy. Veritin means truth and energy.

Mark Hinaman (53:59)
Yeah. That's Latin or Greek or... Yeah. Truth and energy. Very cool. Very cool. Okay. Fantastic overview of the business. Yeah. I like Generate Podcast also. You guys have had some stellar guests on that and you do a great job hosting that show, asking very intelligent questions. So if listeners can't get enough of this topic, then those are two easy ones to add to the subscribe list.

Brett Rampal (54:01)
Yep, truth and energy in Latin.

Mark Hinaman (54:27)
shameless plug for you guys over there.

Brett Rampal (54:29)
that we

will send you a check. really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Mark Hinaman (54:34)
No chick needed, just keep inviting me to your Christmas parties. The other one, the Super Spike, the origins, which we've already had on the show. Yeah, yeah.

Brett Rampal (54:37)
Done.

Right, should,

I'm neglectful in not mentioning Arjun's content. Arjun's content is fantastic.

Mark Hinaman (54:50)
Well, we've already had them

on the show, so listeners should already know, right? Yeah.

Brett Rampal (54:53)
Okay,

good, good, good, I knew that. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, Arjun's fantastic. Arjun's content is great. Arjun's content is also really great for somebody like me who, you know, doesn't have like this macro energy world experience and doesn't, hasn't spent a lot of time thinking about that or spent a lot of time.

Mark Hinaman (54:56)
If they're up to speed. Yeah.

Brett Rampal (55:20)
in this isolated micro business, right, and everything. So even for nuclear people, there's so much you can learn. It's like drinking from the fire hose. And a lot of times I have to send notes to Arjun and my bosses and be like, all right, can you help the dumb kid out in class? What did this mean? What were you talking about? What was I not getting? And they're like, no, this is a phone call. We got to explain this to you.

Mark Hinaman (55:44)
Yeah,

yeah. One of our team members had a question about engagement and thoughts on renewables or energy technologies kind of outside of nuclear. Do you have a broad view of how these compare? And just as I'm reading this kind of question, I mean, some of your...

Brett Rampal (55:59)
Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (56:04)
Portfolio, I don't know how many of your portfolio companies are public, but I got a little bit of a feel. think I met a couple of them when I was in Houston and that might be an example, but yeah, I guess just kind of more broadly. How do they compare? How does it compare to some of the work that you do with oil and gas companies?

Brett Rampal (56:19)
Sure, sure. You know, we're across the board. We're technology neutral. We support anything that makes sense. You know, I should say we're smart technology neutral. A couple of our investments, we were profitable, Yeah. And that, and in a lot of ways, that point that you touched on right there, profit, in many ways becomes the

Mark Hinaman (56:33)
Profitable. Good chance for profit focused technology.

Brett Rampal (56:49)
differentiator a lot of times between a nuclear and even say a renewable investment that might on the outside seem as challenging as a nuclear investment. We've invested in some micro wind, commercial wind technology, rooftop wind, micro scale, as well as micro scale hydro power.

technology. And before I sort of interacted with both of those companies, when we started talking about it, and they asked me to participate, I was like, my God, why? What am I doing here? Right? And every, you know, like, how could this be smart? And then we listened to the founders, and we listened to the story they were telling. And we ran through their financials. And we sent people out to their sites to look at their technology and touch

real things.

And I was like, why are these better stories than all the stories that I'm hearing from the nuclear people? And so that becomes a little challenging to then think about when you have tons of your close friends and people I went to college with and people I adore and love and respect doing startups and leading these things. And they found out we have funds and they want to.

engage and have conversations and we talk to them. And then I talked to my partners and they're like, yeah, that was good. I'm glad we gave them one call. We learned about it. Who gets to let them down? And I'm like, hopefully not me. Hopefully that's not me, right? know what I mean? But, you know, it creates a challenge. you know, these things that I've talked about that I've mentioned that we've invested in renewables wise, micro-renewables.

micro hydro, micro commercial wind, rooftop wind. Maybe they won't work, but they still came to us and they had stories that were tied in with like manageable capital needs, manageable timelines to deployment or already in deployment and like real, like transparent, auditable and

and things that you can check with potential customers that have already like real financials. And so those sort of dynamics, I mean, I'm not trying, many nuclear companies have portions of these or all two of these or three of the, but then when you try to put it all together or you're asking for all of it, which is just sometimes what our investment picture needs, maybe it's not what other.

investment pictures need, but it's for us sometimes, it becomes very challenging. So I'd love to say that nuclear companies are the most investable thing on the planet out there. And that it's gangbusters at Veritin and where the doors are swung open and basically anybody with the halfway decent story gets dollars. But that's...

That's not the world and that shouldn't be the world. And we need the really good, tough, innovative stories and innovative thinking in order to make real change here. And hopefully one of those comes through my door, because I'd love to give them money, right? But I'm sorry that I haven't heard that in its entirety yet, and I hope I hear it soon.

Mark Hinaman (1:00:38)
Yeah, so having, guess the lesson there is having the full story, miniaturizing capital needs, making it tolerable and having real tangible evidence, right? With like supportable financials that people can point to and tell a competent story.

Brett Rampal (1:00:59)
Well, I mean, there's lots of different ways to think about it. There's companies that fund development of real expensive things by making revenue elsewhere, right? You know, there's lots of different ways to do it, but what you can't be doing is coming into a bunch of places that have money and being like, hi, the government, U.S.

is pledging with other nations to triple nuclear and climate change is important and all of these things are true. All of these things are true. But the person you're talking to with money would not have even opened the door to you if they didn't already know these things. So why are you different? Why is your story different? Where do you become something where a

Any sort of investor can look and say, yeah, this is not money being thrown on a flyer and that I'm going to get my money back in some sort of way and everything. imagine X Energy had some answers for Amazon around that, right? And everything. imagine Oklo investors pre their SPAC. Oklo had some answers for them. Probably the answers were the SPAC.

right? You know, and everything. that's, that's that, but that, that worked for people, right? And for a lot of other folks, it does it, you know, and, and I mean, we, you know, I, you know, we could have potentially, you know, probably invested in the new scale, it's me in the, close back if we had wanted to, but that our fund is also about, you know, having our money be

you know, supportive and make real change and where we could be helpful and all that sort of stuff and every. And if they were in the pipeline and the way it's gone and the way their stock has performed in retrospect, they didn't really need it. Right. And they didn't need it from us because things seem like it's going OK for them. We'll see if they continue to go that way. What they need costs a lot of tons and tons and tons of dollars and a lot of money.

but they say they've got that now, right? So, rock and roll, you know? But that then creates the other questions, you know, like who and where and did everybody on the planet when, you know, before the Okloos back, six, eight, nine months before the Okloos, did they think, were they writing down that it would be mid-January 2025 and Okloos stock would be 26, 25?

you five times or two and a half times it's opening SPAC props. I'm not sure that a lot of people were predicting that. So these are, these are, these are things to be thinking about.

Mark Hinaman (1:03:57)
I didn't make that and I wish I would have, right?

Brett, you're very intelligent about kind of all of these different nuclear technologies. You're really well versed on it. And I mean, it's your job, right? It's your job to be smart about these things. But how have you stayed up to date on a lot of these things? And, you know, I mean, I guess you can take these questions in one or two ways. It's either, well,

tell people how to inform themselves or convince people that it's just overwhelming and they should just call you and hire you to be their specialist and go-to guy.

Brett Rampal (1:04:29)
Well, always hire Veriton. That's the best way to do it. Very always hiring Veriton is always the best way to do it. But no, maybe the answer is to you, like you said, to open this because it's Friday night and we're doing a podcast for an hour or so far and we're probably going to be going strong for a little bit, you know, for a bit longer here and everything. You know, it it.

Mark Hinaman (1:04:32)
Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:04:55)
It takes a lot. mean, like this is in a lot of ways my life and my focus. I apologize to your viewers. Well, I am passionate about it. I apologize to your viewers that the two bums who have entered in during our viewing and everything like that. But I live alone with my two dogs. Right, yeah. They should, yeah.

Mark Hinaman (1:05:02)
You it.

Dogs in the background for those that are just listening. In the background of Brett's camera.

Brett Rampal (1:05:22)
Sorry, I called them bums for our listeners, They're not actual bums, right? They just don't have jobs, right? Yeah, they're dogs, but they don't have jobs. And so, you know, I live alone with my two dogs and everything. You know, as I mentioned earlier, my twin brother has unfortunately passed away. I lost my mom about 11 months before we lost him and we lost her to cancer.

So my immediate family has shrunk down quite a bit since then. I love my family. I see them when I can and as much as I can. yeah, but otherwise I spend a lot of time trying to keep myself up to date, reading things about nuclear, hearing about things and reaching up and down my network to try and understand that.

better and connecting with folks and people do the same thing with me and that I'm able to ask follow up and learn more and everything. So, you know, I think the best way to answer your question is to say it takes a lot. Just blanket statement. And then the other way to answer your question would be to say that, you know, if people wanted to kind of gain

better, more of this knowledge and do this more is really about having these, you know, like not, I hate to say it because I think in some of the, know, when we were, when we were shooting back and forth about what this podcast might be about, I think in one of the questions somewhere, the word, you know, cynic might have been mentioned somewhere and you know, something, and maybe we'll get to that. And I'm sorry if I, if I took that, if I'm taking that out of turn and everything.

But I think that there's a lot of hype and there's a lot of great feelings and joy and advocacy in the nuclear and in the energy space more broadly. And it's really important to be a pragmatic, practical, informed speaker. It's me, informed listener, speaker, and learner.

those like a lot of the dialogues we often hear around nuclear fundamental things around you know people that say you know we would build a million nuclear power plants but for the nrc goodness you know all of these different you know things that we hear and whatnot that may be you know

unless you are really just willing to drink the Kool-Aid, in any other discussion, anywhere for any other technology, for anything, you'd be like, so we'd be on Mars, but for NASA, is what you're saying, right?

So, to me in a lot of that, I'm like, I'm not the most informed person about, you know, going to space and Mars. I love it, you know, spaceman Norman Rockwell behind me, right, and everything. But I know that there's a lot of science and technology and things left to do before we get to Mars and work to be done.

And maybe Elon will launch this year, next year, whatever the hell it is, but Elon had to do so much in order to get where they are today in everything. So I just tell people that it is really easy to hear stories around nuclear and hear dialogues and repeat.

it is really hard to research those dialogues and claims and understand them better. And that's why I have a job, right? You know, and everything. So I really recommend, you know, taking your time, trying to find, you know, rational spectrum of experts to kind of pay attention to either that or just me. Only me would work too, right? You know, I'm just, no, no.

Mark Hinaman (1:09:48)
You

Brett Rampal (1:09:51)
a rational spectrum of experts to look at and then to read the things they share and say, I don't like to use advocacy without providing sources. I think, Mark, I shared with you the regulatory, the nuclear regulatory paper that we put out at Veriton recently. I think that was a 12 page paper and four pages of it were references in like 8.5.

right? You know, and everything. I don't want you to trust me because of what I'm saying it. I want you to trust me because I gave you something to go back and look at so that you could come to a conclusion yourself whether or not what I was saying was true or not. And I think we struggle sometimes with that in the nuclear dialogues and the nuclear world.

Mark Hinaman (1:10:50)
I think that was a phenomenal answer. I love that answer, Brett. It does a couple things. First, I I just want to highlight how impressive your network is and your ability to, I'll say connect with professionals throughout the industry. And there is a lot of hype currently, and I think people need hope to invest and go and try new things, right? And it takes courage and it takes...

guts and then hopefully also a lot of intelligence and hard work that go behind it too for these projects to be successful. But I think your view of, well, you've actually done real stuff in the nuclear industry, like you said at the beginning of the episode, and worked on projects that were hard, but they offered autonomy and purpose and forced you to be creative. And then you've come into this other...

energy space where you get to vet new companies and kind of get exposure to the whole traditional upstream, downstream, downstream oil and gas industry, which does real projects all the time. And so yeah, I think you did say the word cynic and yeah, that wasn't one of our questions. What does a cynic bring to the industry? But I think it's more, you're trying to be pragmatic about it.

and identify the real gaps that might be present and say, where is the hype train end and where do we actually need to focus our energy? And what's, I mean, my dad had a great question that resonates with me a lot. It's look for what's missing, what's missing in the current environment. And I think a lot of your work and your analysis and take on the industry can be cynical, but also is pragmatic in helping to identify.

what's actually missing. And I commend that. think it's awesome. I think it's excellent.

Brett Rampal (1:12:36)
Well, I appreciate your mark. You're way too kind to me and everything. I hear the check is already coming. No, I'm just kidding. But the the no, I think. No, I'm not paying. I'm not paying. I don't have a check. I don't have a check for getting more. The the I think, you know, one of the things that I always like to think about with my life is my life has always been a pursuit for the middle ground. Right. You know, and I'm the middle child.

Mark Hinaman (1:12:43)
To be clear, you're not paying me to say any these things, right?

Yeah

Brett Rampal (1:13:05)
Right? You know, and everything I, when I was working at, with the, as a, at a vendor, when I would do my reloads, I used to have to say all the time, a good compromise is when everybody leaves the table unhappy because everybody had to give something up. And like I had, you know, my reload team carved it in wood, you know, before I was leaving and everything. And I broke it one day and anger smashed it, you know, like that next job and everything, in which I regret now many, many years later and whatnot. But.

You know, these, that was as I was, you know, moving away from the middle ground, right? You know, and everything. That was even what led me to Clean Air Task Force because Clean Air Task Force is a little bit of a left of center organization. I'm a little bit of a right of center guy. And I was hopeful that moving together and getting, you know, to CATF, we would come in the middle somewhere.

but maybe working with them for five years, I just got moved to the left a little myself. Who knows? I don't know, right? You know, and everything. But I think that a lot of this is about the middle ground in a lot of these discussions because people don't recognize that these dialogues around nuclear or building large, building small, building more.

Outside of the other side, which is just build less, all of these dialogues are so new and so young and have so little, in many ways, factual basis behind it. I'm a scientist, I'm a statistician in a lot of cases. And a lot of things I look at, like, where are my 30 cases? I can't even find 30 cases to look at to make a statistically useful sample here.

Mark Hinaman (1:14:58)
To do a pee test or a

tea test, yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:15:01)
Right, do any,

no, just to say that this was statistically useful sample size, right? And, you know, it's challenging then to sit there and say, you know, well, I got all these people out here saying one thing, you know, the world is dumb. Everybody should be building nuclear as fast as possible. Build large reactors.

You know, build small, you know, like, it's not, it's not, and it's not a, it's not a concerted and straightforward dialogue. can find people on the extreme and they're like, large reactors are great. Small reactors are dumb. Small reactors are great. Large reactors are dumb. Right. You know, you can find it all on this extreme side here in everything. And then the other side.

Mark Hinaman (1:15:51)
I just want to know who you're impersonating

with that voice.

Brett Rampal (1:15:54)
I don't know who I was. wasn't,

I was definitely not trying to impersonate anybody. If you, if I'm doing an impersonation, we'll, we'll know it for sure. But that was just my, that was just my extreme nuclear advocate voice. Large nuclear reactors are good. I'll do it differently. No, the, but, and then the opposite side of that equation is all nuclear is dumb and no nuclear is good. And so you're telling me that

Mark Hinaman (1:15:59)
Ha ha ha.

I like.

Brett Rampal (1:16:24)
That's it, right? That there's no middle ground where it's like, hey, good nuclear is good. You know, like, let's do it smart, right? Let's not do the dumb thing that the people are saying is dumb. And let's not be crazy about it either, right? There's not a place like that to exist. Because if there's not a place like that to exist, I have literally wasted my life, right?

You know, so, but we'll, but we'll see, you know, I'm hopeful that a place like that exists. And that's where we end up. If it, if, if I'm wrong, because I played the conservative game and we end up in a place where it's like, yeah, one of the, you know, we're built, know, we're, we're a hundred percent nuclear, you know, in 30 years and everybody's got molten salt reactors in their backyard and I'm digging thorium.

with my robots in my yard and everything, like, you know, whatever, like, yeah. Yeah, right, I saw another Enron ad came in. The new video's wild, they have it like steaming.

Mark Hinaman (1:17:25)
Just the Enron Egg Man, that's it. That's the only thing you're gonna need.

Brett Rampal (1:17:36)
But it's funny how that's very, that's very, that is the microcosm in many ways of what we're talking about here. Because like, this is a joke focused energy company. It's kind of like a practical joke overall. And what is the first target like that they come out like mainstream for like, I mean, maybe other people, maybe they did other things.

but I didn't see it, maybe it didn't go as viral or maybe it's just the world I live in, in everything like that. But the first thing they pick is nuclear micro-reactors. Because there's hype, there's so much hype here, right? And it can work, it can be good, we should be able to do this. But there is hype, there is this world of don't do it, there's this world of...

Mark Hinaman (1:18:13)
Yeah. It's great. Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:18:26)
We have to do it and you're dumb if you're not on the wagon and any of those things and you're not ready to just throw your money into every nuclear company and everything like that. And I can't live in either of those worlds, right? I don't want to and I just physically can't. It would make me sick. It would make, you know, all of those things, right? So yeah, middle ground, man, middle ground.

Mark Hinaman (1:18:52)
I like it. like it. We had this question. I don't want to make you pick. I don't want make you answer this one, but maybe the second part of it. But do you have a favorite technology or least favorite technology or developer and why? But I like the second part of this question. Like if you had to pick an amalgamation of accomplishments like that you might highlight as being positive or maybe missteps, like what would those look like? So maybe not catch all for

Brett Rampal (1:18:58)
Yeah.

Sure, sure.

Mark Hinaman (1:19:20)
you know, which, which group's doing best, which group's doing worse, but rather what are steps or things that folks have done that might be more likely to be successful and then things that might've been, yeah, not as great of an investment.

Brett Rampal (1:19:32)
My favorite reactors and reactor technologies are the reactors that people want to buy. Right? Right? But that is important because I think a lot of people are just really distracted by the fact that we have a lot of people that want to want to buy reactors right now. Right? Like Google, Meta, all of these people want to want.

Mark Hinaman (1:19:42)
Great answer.

Brett Rampal (1:20:02)
to buy the reactors. putting money in, they're doing things and everything, but they don't wanna buy the reactors right now, right? You know, and everything, they're waiting until the demand is really drastic or it's, you know, any of these things, and then they will want to do it. So they're willing to be a part of the discussion, but they're not 100 % there yet. So I don't care what your technology is.

the customers' association with the nuclear technology.

A lot of times we talk about technology in nuclear space and a lot of times I hear about that. They come into my office all the time leading with technology discussions and I hear all the time. And essentially what I'm getting is technology solutions for business problems. When I need business solutions for business problems, right? There's lots of ways to do nuclear technology.

lots of different ways. But I do not think I am going to reactor physics. I'm a reactor physicist. I'm not the best reactor physicist. I did it for several years. I like to think I'm pretty good, but I don't think I'm going to reactor physicist myself out of $10 billion of Vogel cost overruns. Right? That's not what did it. So I want

I am not so interested in the technologies. I'm interested in questions around the business and what they do and why they do things and how they're pursuing things. And if I can like squint a little and open some books and find a way to say that this technology should work or can work or has worked before anything like that. What more do I care if it's a

high temperature gas reactor or molten salt or any of these things and everything like that. But yeah, that question does come into it at that point. Like, can it work? Will it work? Can their claims be validated? Because that's, the claims, I only look at the technology to really validate the claims. And the claims are the business plan. So make good claims, make a good business plan that's validatable.

I don't care what your technology is, right? Now, talking about things like that are good, milestones, otherwise, all this sort of stuff. A lot of times this alphabet soup that we live in, as I was mentioning before, the MOUs, the LOIs, the PPAs of the world can get somewhat distracting. MOUs and LOIs don't necessarily mean that those companies are really, really

deep skin in the game. It might give a little bit of exposure, it might get you the opportunity to learn more from the customer perspective, get some support in some ways, but it's not direct investment. It's not direct purchasing or contracting. And so it's in a lot of ways a play to say, hey, we'll be there when you're ready. We want to want.

to buy your reactor. And so that's great, that's good. Start collecting those, get together and everything. I want to make the transition and I want to, or excuse me, I want to help them or I want to be there for the transition beyond that for when we're saying, okay, I'm ready to invest like Amazon did in X energy. That's a good signal. Who knows where that goes, X energy.

Got direct investment from Amazon, I believe is $100 million and a $500 million round that's being anchored by Amazon, alongside Amazon pledging direct investment in the projects. One project in Washington with Energy Northwest and another project where they haven't directly pledged the funding, but I'm assuming they're gonna fund that project as well.

because it was all the same sort of know, try, you know, multi-party agreement being all presented with Dominion in Virginia, likely North Anna nuclear site. So, you know, those things are super interesting. Investment is super interesting. One of the things, and we recently at Veriton wrote this paper on how to understand the nuclear regulatory environment and...

understand the milestones and what they mean as well as recommendations for potential owners, developers, and Congress and the federal government for changes to our nuclear regulatory environment or recommendations for how to think about the environment. You one of things that we pointed out is that folks aren't really or haven't really even used our regulatory pathways.

the way they were designed or the way they were ever anticipated to be used. We're trying to use them for different things now, like certifying a design before you've even completed a single piece of construction of it when those design certifications were originally developed when the NRC was thinking about how you standardize and do

repetitive deployments and duplicative deployments of plants, not necessarily how to lower the burden of a first of a kind deployment. And so we had a design certification for AP1000 before Vogel project even started, multiple years before it. And that design certification was amended close to 200 times before Vogel.

was finished. so each amendment, because a design certification is a rule, which is like in NRC parlance, that's like a law. And changing the law is hard. Like physically, the design certification of the AP1000 and other design certifications is a law, like the law of the land, right? So if you're going to change it, it's going to require a lot of changes. So if you've got a, it's going to require a lot of work.

a rulemaking, all of this other stuff. So in hindsight, perhaps, perhaps if one were to ask Southern and Georgia Power and Westinghouse, know, maybe we shouldn't, would you, do you guys feel like you maybe should use the other regulatory pathway, the older one for the first of the kind plants rather than the newer one that, you know, nobody had used before and everything and was maybe in retrospect is more for a second or third deployment or

or not even a second, maybe a third or fourth or fifth deployment, maybe some people would say yes.

Mark Hinaman (1:28:03)
Yeah, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just,

Brett Rampal (1:28:15)
Right,

but what people don't understand is that the license, you gotta license any nuclear technology, you gotta license anything. But Boeing planes need licenses, right, and everything. I shouldn't use Boeing as an example because they were having some serious challenges, reason. But cars need certifications.

Mark Hinaman (1:28:32)
Thank you.

Also, maybe

that is a good example. Statistically, they're doing great still. Like, I'll get on a Boeing any day of the week.

Brett Rampal (1:28:42)
But I

don't even look anymore, know what I mean? People were for a while. I wasn't, and I was probably flying more than most people at that time.

Mark Hinaman (1:28:52)
Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:28:53)
A design certification is, what people don't understand is that the owner is the one who licenses the plant, right, when you build it. Some people don't understand this. And so that means that the owner, the utility usually, is taking on a lot of upfront risk to spend on licensing when, before the plant is even under construction or anything's going on or any of that stuff.

So a lot of these, and the more money, the money you spend, just like money in our pocket is good, any consumer, any investor, anything, money in your pocket is good. Money out of your pocket is bad. Money out of a utility's pocket, money out of your pocket earlier on is bad, is even worse, right? Money out of a utility's pocket early on is bad. Earlier, earlier on is...

even worse. So they struggle with that risk paradigm and the challenges there. How long will the licensing actually take? Will there be a lot of requests for additional information and therefore will we have the licensing cost spiral out of control? And so Westinghouse and others come forward saying, hey, we've done this design certification that removes the safety review portion out of your license.

Fantastic, let's do it. And so the license that they apply for becomes easier. But the challenge is easier than if they had done it without the design certification, right? And perhaps not easier if they had yet done different pathways, all that sort of, but all that means is that they're then tied into that before they even start construction. So the previous pathway,

did a split sort of construction permit and then an operating license. So you could do, you you could work for as built conformance later on when you're getting your operation, your operating license and everything. But that also created a unintended incentive.

to proceed with the projects on as preliminary engineering information and data as possible, right? Get up, do all I need to do to get a construction permit, get it done, start building the damn thing and we'll clean everything up on the backend, right? And that's how you ended up with every, with when you've been every nuclear power plant in this country, every we've built on average, we've never.

done good cost estimates or never delivered the plants on time, right? On average, cost estimates have been exceeded by 100 % and schedules have been exceeded by 100%. Even on the glorious 60 plants, 100 reactor fleet that we built

in this country that everybody points to and is like, look, we did it before, we can do it again. And I'm like, I don't want to do that again. I want to do better than that.

Mark Hinaman (1:32:19)
Yeah, I like your phrase business solutions to business problems. I remember when Brett Kugelman started Last Energy, he posted on LinkedIn and said, the technology wasn't really the problem, the business plan was broken. And so he was gonna try and solve that. It's interesting to see companies like the nuclear company popping up that wants to use.

AP1,000s that people will buy or they have bought in the past and take those to build. And then yeah, your example of X energy investing. What I thought was really interesting about that deal too is NGP, right? The traditional private equity, one of the big guys out of Dallas and Houston that's funded over 400 oil and gas portfolio companies got in on that deal too, which I think is a pretty good proof point.

What does this look like? mean, it sounds like we don't need to really innovate on the technologies, but what would you innovate on? And what are some more examples of business problems that we have? I mean, it sounded like maybe project management that you just kind of identified, but what other business problems might we have that we can solve with other business solutions?

Brett Rampal (1:33:36)
Well, you know, Mark, think that's the right question to be asking. And if I had answers to give you to satisfy that curiosity, I wouldn't be here because I'd be sitting on a pile of money building reactors somewhere, right? You know, and everything and

Mark Hinaman (1:33:52)
I think I answered that

exact same question previously, like offline, and you gave me the exact same answer. I like it. You're consistent.

Brett Rampal (1:33:56)
Did I really? I'm sorry, I apologize. I guess I

was about to say I'm consistent. And I love Kugelmas, we're old friends, know, brets unite. We have a secret monthly meeting, So nuclear bret.

Mark Hinaman (1:34:14)
Yeah, there's a couple more in the

industry that I'm best friends with too, so you know.

Brett Rampal (1:34:17)
yeah, right. Nuclear breaths are monthly meeting. There's just two of us sitting in a room. Right. You know, so the now I'm to get like 14 emails from nuclear breaths after this. You're like, you forgot. the. They're like, there's no, there's no club. There's no club. The the, you know, when you talk about development companies, whether it's the nuclear company, whether whatever it is right here and everything.

Mark Hinaman (1:34:23)
you

We want to be in this club. How can we get an invite?

Brett Rampal (1:34:46)
What are folks doing? Right. You either, you either got to come to like a lot of people sit and point to the existing site, licensed sites, AP 1000 or otherwise. And they're just like, well, look, the utilities won't do anything. You know, like we just got to go in there. We'll just get them. We'll just serve it. And I'm like, what do you mean? Just we'll get them. And they're like, well, we'll just get, no, no, no. Explain that more. Right. How do you get access?

to the site the utility owns. Like, well, they're not moving forward with the plant right now, so we'll move forward with the plant. And I'm like...

Mark Hinaman (1:35:27)
Go on.

Brett Rampal (1:35:27)
So the utility,

right, yeah, I was like the utility which spent, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a license for this site, which has then spent tens and hundreds of millions of dollars more over the course of the year since they've gotten the license to maintain the license and maintain the site and continue regulatory engagement with the state and other things. They don't, they don't care about those sites. They're not investing in their future. They're not there.

creating it in a place that is ready to go when they are ready to go, when they want to buy the reactor, right? And everything instead of wanting to want to buy the reactor right now. Cause I think every utility in the country wants to want to buy an AP 1000 right now. But I, I, I don't, I,

So unless you've got a secret sauce to go into a utility and tell them, hey, these are the ways I can alleviate your risk and make you want to buy an AP 1000. Okay. And that's probably some sort of secret sauce around project management, deployment, development, construction management, all that sort of stuff. And maybe groups are putting things like that together. But then also I see groups putting out like

that call it solicitations where they're like, hey, if you have construction or supply chain experience and you want to support our activities to build reactors, come respond to the solicitation. I'm like, so who's doing what already? I forget what, hi, I'm sorry. I forget what movie it is. excuse me, Office Space. How could I forget?

What would you say you do here? Right? You know, and everything. What would you say you do here? Because I've never heard anybody say to me, we would build more nuclear power plants in this country, but for more layers, more companies involved in the process. If we just had more entities involved in the process, we would get this done. Right? And everything. I've never heard that before, but maybe I'm just traveling in the wrong circles. Right? And everything.

So if you don't have a special sauce, then you need to go to the utilities and you need to tell them, I recognize that these sites are valuable and that what you've done is valuable. Here, I've got money, I'm bringing it. I want to invest in your site. I want to invest directly in the project, all that sort of stuff. And if you've got the money and you can do that, who, I would hope I'm not hearing about you.

Right? Why would you be publicizing? You would, I wouldn't, if it was me, I would just be at the utility with a check. Like being like, okay, here's my blank check. How much do I have to sign? When can we get started? Here's the people that I want to say.

Mark Hinaman (1:38:26)
gonna work.

Just making it work, making it happen.

Brett Rampal (1:38:31)
Right.

I want to be wrong. I want to understand this world a little bit better here in everything. And I want this story to be real, but a lot of times I just don't get what they're saying.

Mark Hinaman (1:38:48)
So Brett, these new nuclear developers, yeah, figuring out what their secret sauce is, if they bring the financing, well, I like what you said about just kind of keeping their head down and I'll make a comment. Some of the most effective people in industry that I've ever met are also some of the most invisible, meaning like they're wildly effective leaders internal to their teams and they're readily available.

to their teams, but they're not very public. Have you seen similar examples?

Brett Rampal (1:39:24)
Well, think, yeah, I

mean, I think so. mean, there's a lot of, I mean, a lot of people talk about real company, know, big companies, like, why won't, you know, Exxon get into nuclear, right, and everything, or why won't folks do that? And then I say to them, and I'm like, you know, Exxon has had a nuclear guy for like 20 years, right? They're like, what? And I was like, not just one, like multiple.

Maybe they didn't spend their time doing nuclear all the time over all 20 years because Exxon wasn't always kind of thinking about it, right? But all of these big companies thinking about nuclear is good for nuclear broadly. everybody is doing that. Do we think that Microsoft developed this

agreement with TMI and Constellation out of nowhere? Absolutely not. For those of us that were paying attention, we know that there was a bunch of hiring that Microsoft was doing. Microsoft hired TVA people, all from Tennessee Valley Authority, to be their nuclear leadership, or excuse their nuclear kind of analysis and research team.

Mark Hinaman (1:40:48)
Internal

consultants research, yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:40:51)
Yeah, yeah.

And then for a while people were like, well, what's Microsoft doing? They hired these people. What's going on? And then it comes out that they went for the lowest hanging fruit to get lots of nuclear in the easiest utility nuclear deal you could make. It's not an easy deal. And it's certainly not a low hanging fruit in comparison to like building a natural gas plant, right? You know, and everything. But if you wanted nuclear,

in this country, what's more low risk than restarting a plant that Constellation invested a lot of money upfront in to make it restartable when they were shutting it down? And so

Were people not paying attention when Microsoft was hiring TVA people and being like, why I want them to buy small modular reactor company, PQRS, you know, for whatever it is, right. And everything. I'm like, no, they hired a bunch of utility people. Of course they were going to do a utility deal. So, you know, and it is one of the biggest and most impactful nuclear and utility deals of last year.

and it was really quiet until it wasn't. So these are things that we need to keep in mind when we think about nuclear and think about energy and otherwise. What's the old saying? Bad news is good news. No news is good news. And good news is bad news.

Mark Hinaman (1:42:33)
Ah, yes, yes, makes sense. I like it. I want to circle back to this point that we touched on about kind of collaboration in oil and gas versus nuclear industry, because I think like, you know, there is a balance between like the public stories that come out and

Brett Rampal (1:42:36)
I'm dyslexic, so I had to think about that for a second. It was hard putting that together, I apologize.

Mark Hinaman (1:43:00)
kind of access and information and like holding stuff close to the chest and what's important internal to each of these organizations, right? I mean, and like you go work for BP or Shell or any of the big majors, oil and gas companies, and all those employment agreements, have the language that you are totally screwed and your career will end if you tell anyone any secrets and don't tell anyone any secrets. And then all these people go to these industry events and conferences and present and talk and share.

ideas and collaborate and trade business cards. And then everyone calls each other and says, Hey, I've got a problem. How do you fix this problem? How would you fix this problem if you were me? And people collaborate and they get stuff done. I guess on the technology side and nuclear, I've seen a little bit people are, people can be really tight vested. can hold stuff really tight to their vest. And I think an example.

Brett Rampal (1:43:52)
Nothing to

protect, nothing to protect, but protecting it fiercely.

Mark Hinaman (1:43:56)
An example that comes to mind is like Nick Taurin, I think was on the DeKalb podcast and talked about.

Brett Rampal (1:44:01)
Love

the dude, one of my oldest and best nuclear buddies. Love Nick.

Mark Hinaman (1:44:07)
Yeah. And he's like, there's no spreadsheet for like how much fuel each reactor needs. Right. And, and like, there's no publicly available repository for each of these advanced reactors. so like, if you're doing the material balance of what does the fuel industry need to fuel all these guys, which people would need to make an investment in, that's just right. You can see there's this huge data gap that's just completely missing and people view it as proprietary.

for whatever reason. anyway, that's kind of one anecdote that I'd like to point to, but how do we balance this, Brett?

Brett Rampal (1:44:42)
Well,

I was just going to say, you might say they say it's because it's proprietary and that might be what they're saying to you. More likely and in many cases, the answer is they have no clue.

Mark Hinaman (1:44:56)
It's, yeah, touché. Yeah, we'll give you a range. What do you want it to be? Yeah, I've got a different story for another time, but how do we balance these ideas then, right? Like the trade-off between...

Brett Rampal (1:44:58)
Yeah, we have an idea.

Right, right, right, right.

Mark Hinaman (1:45:16)
collaboration and competition. I mean, in my view, like nuclear should not be competing against nuclear. Nuclear is competing against natural gas.

Brett Rampal (1:45:28)
Yeah,

and you know, that makes a lot of sense in a lot of worlds where it's mature technology, right? You wind turbine people don't, you go to a wind and renewable conference and everything, it's a very sort of different event. Lots of, you know, patting each other on the back, know, elbowing, all that sort of stuff. And nuclear conferences and meetings, they'll do that, but then,

You walk around the corner with one of the participants or you catch them in the bathroom and they come up to you and they pull out their knife and start stabbing them in the back, right? know, and every... So, you know, this whole thing is exactly the same sort of story that I was saying to you before around what Rita and I were talking about in our engagements with oil and gas companies as compared to, you know, nuclear companies.

Mark Hinaman (1:46:05)
Sorry.

Brett Rampal (1:46:26)
When you, when the pie is big enough, it's easy to share. And when it's easy to share, people are more willing to help each other, right? And everything. I can remember when growing up, you know, my mom made really great chicken cutlets, know, growing up, she'd make a giant mountain of chicken cutlets for dinner and everything like that. When it was just my brothers and I,

Plenty of chicken cutlets, everybody sharing, everything's fine. Nobody got stabbed in the hand with forks going for the last chicken cutlet or any of that stuff. When somebody would bring home little Donnie from school to join for dinner and everything like that, and the ratios were off and everything, there might be violence, like real violence over like, you got one more chicken cutlet than me.

Mark Hinaman (1:47:17)
Lawsuit? No,

we're fist fighting, yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:47:20)
No, no,

somebody stabbed him in hand with a fork, right? Like, no, I'm not fist fighting. Like, there might be real violence. You know, so I mean...

That is not dissimilar from the phenomenon that we're talking about right now. If you're fighting for slices of a tiny pie that you think might be your only way to survive, if I get pieces of those tiny pieces of the pie, yeah, you are going to be like...

Do you to die? Do you want to meet me the back? Like, let's, you're carrying switchblades, you'll be doing whatever you can. If you come from a whole different sort of place where it's like, yeah, there's abundance, there's opportunity, we can share, everybody can succeed. Hey, I want my slice of the pie to be bigger than yours, but I can kind of do that without you seeing, right? You know, and everything. Or maybe, you know, if I'm the one that goes and buys the pie to begin with, then.

I have an easier pushing, divvying it out to the sizes I want. You know, they think about things differently than when you're fighting.

Mark Hinaman (1:48:29)
or I carried the

pie or I bought a pallet of pies or yeah, yeah, these are all, that's a great metaphor. Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:48:33)
Right, right. You fight, you're fighting over

a pie versus fighting over a donut hole, right? You know and everything, so...

Mark Hinaman (1:48:40)
Yeah.

So how do we make the pie bigger then? is it, I see a need for maybe more capital investment and smart, yeah. Like we said already, smarter project management. Like, and maybe the is the secret sauce. We don't know what the secret sauce is yet, but.

Brett Rampal (1:48:56)
Right, I mean, yeah.

No, well, think you're hitting on the right sort of thing. It's chicken or the egg, there's 14 different pieces to that cycle, right? I don't know what sort of loop would look that way, right? Maybe it's the rain cycle or something like

Mark Hinaman (1:49:18)
Maybe

we'll have to make a list of them and then have, yeah. Have you on for more to dive into each of them, right? Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:49:22)
Well, Yeah,

no, but more I mean in particular is that it's a harder thing to answer, right? You know, and everything. If you're hungry, I can either kill the chickens or scramble the eggs, right? You know, and everything. You know, who cares chicken before the egg, right? You know, and everything. But if it's...

the dialogue that we're talking about here, we have a lot more questions everywhere around every piece of the discussion. And so it becomes a real harder question to answer and a real harder place to even begin starting to look for an answer because we have so much more to do. So I don't know about you, I'm a big like,

do-it-yourselfer and what you know like I like to pretend like I know you know how to repair my home and shit like that whatever you know and I often find that you know I'll find I've lived in my house 11 years now often find that as I'm doing something and I find work I did eight nine ten years ago or everything I start taking it apart and I'm always like my god what a fucking idiot

pardon my, you what an idiot, you know, like who, did you do this? You know, like you have a book, you could have just read the book, you know. So, and I didn't, I didn't become much better because I started reading a lot more or I went to like trades class or anything. Became better because I did it more. I had done that same thing 14 times since then. And so I figured out a different way to do it and how to run electrical better or how to, you know,

Mark Hinaman (1:50:47)
Yeah.

Brett Rampal (1:51:16)
do the plumbing or how to do the right vent for any of these different things. So again, the only way that anything happens here is by doing. The only way we have anything get done is with money. The only way we get money is by having a decent story. The only way we get anything done is

we need to create a story that we can act upon, right? And then there's your circle, right? You know, and everything. So this is one of those things where it's like, hey, I don't even pretend to be the smartest person on the planet, right? You know, I will say often I am not, I'm just lucky and I have a unique and what I hope is somewhat a smart perspective.

And the things you're talking about are like some of the big questions of our time, right? You know, and everything. And if the answers are just like, like, oh, cause Brett figured it out in his little office in North Carolina and everything like that. That sounds to me like a million monkeys banging on a piano, or banging on typewriters to write War and Peace, right? And everything.

So I think that this is not gonna be something where it's like, know, yeah, you know, this guy just secretly figured out the secret sauce or did whatever or whatever, you know, maybe it will be some technology thing or whatever, some technology secret sauce, but it's not gonna be a nuclear technology because we haven't built anything.

And I don't know what you're talking about. So maybe it's like the construction robot tech, maybe Japan's building, you know, giant construction, mecha robots or whatever. And that's the way we solve all these construction challenges or somebody figures out how to enslave giant space aliens to make them build our reactors for us. Right. You know, I don't know. Like those would be ways to cut down on construction costs though. Right. You know, and everything they're not rational. They're not real.

But there are ways, and I don't even hear things that are that much more real than that. A lot of times what we're talking about is just like, the prices are going to be lower. Like, why? Because they will. So, right, right, right. I'm like, thanks Obi-Wan. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (1:53:43)
Trust us.

Right. Well,

I like your point about reps. One of the research analysts, well, respect the guy that I like at Enverus, made this comment to me when I was in Houston last year. He said, we got so good at drilling shale wells because we had so many reps. And we get good at building facilities because we have lots of reps. And until nuclear can get lots of reps, I

I just don't see it. don't see costs coming down. I don't see them getting better and I don't see the pie getting better. So my kind of my takeaway and how I like to think about the world is like the collaboration among technology designers, fuel providers, et cetera, like the whole industry is you get more reps and if you can learn from other people that, you know, got got a shot on goal and you don't have to spend the money to do that and you can actually collaborate, then there's there's value there. So

Brett Rampal (1:54:40)
Yeah, I agree. mean, TerraPower has signed an agreement with GE to work together on fuel and some other aspects of their project and everything. You know, I can only imagine that we'll hear more sort of relationships like that, hopefully in the future. You know, these are challenges and it's better not to relearn the lessons of the past every time we want.

do so.

Mark Hinaman (1:55:11)
Yeah. You mentioned customers want to want to buy these reactors, but then Amazon kind of made a step and put their money where their mouth is and Microsoft hired a research team. What?

These are examples of kind of what customers can do. Would you agree? And if there are other industrial end users or potential customers, what else can they do? Should they emulate Amazon and Microsoft and be hiring their own teams and making investments in SMRs like this? Or should they be thinking about something else?

Brett Rampal (1:55:47)
Yeah, so I mean, Amazon is probably the furthest out there in terms of the things they're doing in the nucleus, at least the public things they're doing. Nobody's put the real investment behind like they have in the data center sort of world, right? All the other announcements we've heard have been more the PPAs and sort of speculative relationships. And so...

It's great to sort of see all of those activities, but we need it from elsewhere as well. You know, there's a great company that we work with a lot known as called NOV and they have been there in oil field services company, one of America's largest, one of the world's largest. They do real big billion dollar engineering projects and

and manufacturing on a regular basis, all the time. And in collaboration with their customers, because they have an existing power leasing and sales business, they have been looking at the nuclear opportunity for multiple years to a point where they have now started a subsidiary company with former NOV people, new former NRC and nuclear people joining the company.

to think about becoming a customer to own and operate hundreds and perhaps micro reactors for oil and gas field purposes to sell the power or heat or electricity to their existing customer base. So when you think about that, they're still probably a few years off from the first reactor that they could buy.

from somebody rolling off of some factory or being delivered. I don't know how these microreact, I hope it's a factory. But they're probably several years off from that, but they've been spending real dollars for three or four years at this point. They've hired people, they've created a subsidiary, they're getting into the game directly. And they're working with their customers to make that a reality.

So it ties in with a lot of things that you said around collaboration, but it also highlights another thing that is this takes time, no matter what you're doing, no matter where it is, whether when you're actually pursuing the projects or whether you're thinking about pursuing the projects or when you're thinking about thinking about pursuing the projects, when you're thinking about developing a structure when you could pursue projects, right? All of that takes time. So I'm really...

I'm hopeful for what they're doing, but I know that they need more time to cook and they need to just hit some milestones and continue along on this climb that they're doing. that hopefully should they do that, maybe we can see some real change and real effectiveness and something that would excite you, myself, probably a whole bunch of people all over the place. Real large oil and gas companies.

adopting nuclear heat, electricity or power to decarbonize and clean up their operations. That sounds like a great story to me.

Mark Hinaman (1:59:19)
Yeah, I think the Sheppard Power Story is awesome. That's the name of the series, Yeah, great. I mean, great recommendation. It's like, hey, look at what those guys did. Great thing to emulate. there's so much opportunity in the space that other companies can still come in. I think the more companies that take that approach, that my...

Brett Rampal (1:59:25)
Yeah, I'm sorry if I didn't mention it. Yeah, Sheppard Power, yeah.

Mark Hinaman (1:59:49)
interpretation is there will be a direct impact at reducing the cost of building these nuclear systems, which will make it cheaper for everyone, which will give us more reps, which means it'll be more standardized and yeah, we can build more of it. So great.

Brett Rampal (2:00:08)
Well, Shepard excites me.

Well, I was gonna say Shepard excites me. I love it too. I think it's super exciting. And they excite me a lot, particularly because reactor developers and, you know, the nuclear industry is always saying we need real owners. We need to build an order book, all of those things. Right. And here's a company that's saying, Hey, I'm willing to be the owner and build that order book for you. You just have to.

be able to sell a story that I'm willing to buy. I want to want to buy your reactor.

Mark Hinaman (2:00:46)
Yep. I love it. Brett, one of our team members had asked, what happens when you run into an anti-nuclear perspective? What if you find a hater?

Brett Rampal (2:01:01)
I mean, I don't run into them much, but I mean, I run into them on social media. And a lot of people like to characterize me as not the kindest, I guess, on social media or, you know, maybe a bit of a jerk or perhaps asshole would be the better sort of way to characterize it and everything. If you want to know what it's like when I'm...

trying to be mean at an asshole find when an anti-nuclear person tries to engage with me. But then again, there's anti-nuclear folk out there that like I do engage with sometimes to just try and get perspectives and understand things. And I try to treat them with, you know, respect if they treat me with respect and aren't just outright stupid. Like, and I doubt he would call himself anti.

Mark Hinaman (2:01:33)
you

Brett Rampal (2:02:00)
nuclear, but he's anti nuclear. Like Ed Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists and everything. You know, Ed is always great a lot of times about responding to things I ask him, trying to gain a little bit more on his perspective and everything. But most of the time I agree with like 97 % of what he says and puts out there and everything. But he at least puts it out there with something and he's

trying to, you know, so again, it's just, just, it's just what you say and how you say it. And, you know, when you come in with really, really uninformed takes, anti-nuclear takes, which a lot of those anti-nuclear takes are really, really uninformed. you know, don't expect me to really care what you have to say. And if I don't care, I'm not, you know, I'm not about to be super polite.

Mark Hinaman (2:02:53)
you

Brett Rampal (2:02:59)
So, yeah, I engage best in things I care about, and I engage worst in things I don't care about, and I don't care about unreformed.

Mark Hinaman (2:02:59)
Yeah.

Okay, we've now been going, I think for almost two hours or over two hours, depending on how much this one might cut out. But Brett, leave us with kind of your most positive view of the future. What's the world going to be like in five, 10, 20 years? And I know that you don't have a crystal ball, maybe paint a picture for us about where we're going and what it looks like.

Brett Rampal (2:03:38)
Well,

I mean, as long as we don't shoot each other or blow each other up or any of that worst, which I don't want to, there's a lot of that. At times in my life, it has been said that I lived in the safest time in history. I would have to go and see the statistics for it right now. I wish I could say just on the back of everything.

that we're living in the safest time in history. people are dying from conflict at rates that I would prefer not, all of that sort of stuff. So as long as some of that can get resolved and cleaned up. Knock on wood, had a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel recently signed, maybe a war in Ukraine ending might be on the horizon. I would rather see.

you know, Russia, you know, spent into oblivion, but, know, I'd also rather see people stop dying too. So I'm okay if we can, you know, resolve things in a compromise where everybody's unhappy, right? You know, and everything. But as long as we don't kill each other, all I know is that I feel like the conversation around energy, the conversation around nuclear, any of these things has just become

more and more rational over the last few years and over the last several, know, the last decade or more. I, you know, I still interact and I see a lot of advocates and talk to them a lot, you know, nuclear advocates a lot, but, you know, I tell them often, I'm like, you can get 10 million people to march on

Washington for nuclear power wearing, you pink cooling tower hats or something like that if you really wanted to. And a week later, no one will care. And it won't matter, right?

Where's the product that somebody wants to buy? Right? So I think that we are going to be moving into an era of nuclear products that people want. Now, how hard it's going to be to get there or who is going to have to build a nuclear plant they don't want before that?

in order for it to become a nuclear plant that they eventually wanted or that somebody else wanted after them or any of that stuff. I don't know how many of those people or how many of those projects we're gonna need and everything. I hope not a lot. But I think that things like we saw also this week, we're dating it again, I apologize. The announcement of this deal between Westinghouse and Korea.

hydro and nuclear power and KEPCO around resolving export of APR 1400s because it was an intellectual property dispute between the companies. That paves the ground for big projects to proceed. Reactors in Czechoslovakia, or excuse me, I'm sorry, not Czechoslovakia, my God, I can't believe I just said it. The Czech Republic, wow, that's terrible.

the Czech Republic and, you know, this, the, the opportunities here are really growing day by day by day by day. you know, two, three years ago, if I did this podcast with you, I would not be like a weird or abnormal person to sit there and say, yeah, I don't see a lot of opportunities for new.

AP 1000s in this country. And I don't think we're going to build an AP 1000 in this country. Two, three years removed from that in today's date, I think we're going to probably build another AP 1000 in this country at some point. I sure hope so. And a lot of that really just came from people seeing Vogel turn on and it being like, wow, okay, yeah, it's on. It may have been challenging and struggle, but

That's a lot of power that Georgia power just got and you know, and there's another vocal that just turned on right now. That's even more power, right? So those things like real things finishing, doing what we said we were going to do, even if we did it poorly, but doing what we said we were going to do, doing it good would be better, right? You know, and everything, but if we do it poorly, I get it.

But eventually we need to not do it poorly. And the only way to not do it poorly is to try or to just do it poorly a few times. So I think we're going to see some projects that are up and down, things that we may not necessarily have wanted to go the way that we wanted them to go. But we're going to need to stick with it and figure out ways to deal with that. It probably shouldn't be.

blanket cost overrun insurance things and everything like that, because that doesn't create the best incentive to kind of do better. But that might be the only viable option. if we can just get enough done where you still learn despite perhaps not doing the best job, then maybe we'll get somewhere. So I think

You know, it's 2025, right? You know, and everything we're at the bottom half of this decade. You know, I really, really want to see and would like to see a commercial microreactor online and in operation in the next five years. I really don't think we're going to see, in the United States, I really don't think we're going to see a commercial.

small modular reactor online in this country in the next five years. I think that'll be a post 2030 thing. And I'd really love to see an announcement of a new AP 1000 project in the next five years or so. So I think what we want is some small wins, some real announcements starting on real construction and then

and real regulatory engagement for those real projects and then follow through and then maybe, you know, set your, you know, set your, your clocks and everything. And maybe we visit back together on your podcast in 10 years. God, I hope not. hope all our podcasts are done at 10. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You know, right. Yeah. The 10,000th COVT episode.

Mark Hinaman (2:10:49)
The 10,000th COBT episode or whatever, 3,000th.

Brett Rampal (2:10:58)
I hope that maybe we sit down and we say, yeah, we just had to do it. We had to get over the hump and everything like that. And once we got over the hump, we were able to actually prove this the way we wanted to. And that's what I hope the future is going to be about, right? Because if we don't do it, there's going be plenty of other technologies that can fill gaps here and everything, whether it's, you know.

less desirable collaborations of technologies, making natural gas as expensive as nuclear or any of those things, right? There's ways where nuclear can be left behind. So these dialogues everybody makes all the time where it has to be a part of the discussion. And I'm like, it should be a part of the discussion. It only has to be a part of the discussion if we stop screwing it

Mark Hinaman (2:11:57)
Yeah. That's a way to leave it, Brett. I think you ended up or provided fodder for 20 additional episodes with all the topics that you listed in the end there and hot takes and good takes, good takes and good recommendations from the industry. So this has been fantastic. I really appreciate the time and the insights and yeah, thanks so much.

Brett Rampal (2:12:21)
No, it's been my pleasure, Mark. It's always a pleasure. Hope to see you somewhere in person soon. And to all your listeners and viewers, you know, don't forget to check out Veriton and we hope to see you all somewhere soon too.

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