Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

A post that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued at 9:45 a.m. EDT on August 5 proved to be a stimulus for conversations during the first day of the “Southeast Energy Policy Forum” at the University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville’s Student Union.

The discussion about the post came as the second panel of the day focused on answering a fundamental question: Why aren’t we building more nuclear in the U.S.? Four hours earlier, the Secretary promised to build three next-generation Gen IV reactors by next summer. Dong Kim, a Partner at Precursor who formerly worked at the Department of Energy for 31 years, described it as “aspirational.”

Hosted by the Center for Energy, Transportation and Environmental Policy in the Howard H. Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, the third annual event drew an overflow crowd. The two-day event came exactly two weeks after the East Tennessee Economic Council’s record breaking “Nuclear Opportunities Workshop” that attracted more than 1,000 attendees.

Jeff Smith, who recently retired as Interim Vice President of Research for the UT System after a long career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was asked a question that, if he could be king for a day, what we he change about the nation’s approach to nuclear energy. That caused the always direct and candid to decry the approach for at least two decades.

“I’m concerned that we have this wrong,” he said. “We should have been here 20 years ago. What has happened? We just chose not to do it.”

Smith suggested that settling on a limited number of technologies, which France has done, is the right approach. He also advocated for small modular reactors and getting first-of-a-kind costs out of the way.

Energy Security and the Nuclear Supply Chain

Joe Hoagland, who recently retired from the Tennessee Valley Authority and joined ORNL, noted as the moderator of a three-person panel that the representatives of the companies that have planted flags in the region are all “building stuff.”

The panelists were:

1. Jean-Luc Palayer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Orano USA;
2. Nikki Hashemian Sizemore, Government Affairs Manager at Kairos Power; and
3. Christina Waldron, Director of State Government Relations for X-energy.

Much of the conversation focused on the two different business models that the companies are pursing. While Kairos Power is focused on becoming vertically integrated, both Orano and X-energy are concentrating on more of a partnership model.

Sizemore said that nine times out of 10, Kairos Power is able to build what it needs itself. “We are controlling our own destiny,” she explained.

There was also some discussion about domestic versus an international focus, Waldron said that X-energy is pursuing work in the United Kingdom and Canada, while Sizemore said the focus for Kairos Power is on domestic markets.

What does the industry need?

Sizemore said, “consistent policy and predictability,” with Waldron adding “government cost-sharing with private capital.”

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