Everything You Need To Know About The Nuclear Energy Boom - EP 70 James Krellenstein

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the US once had ambitions to build 1,000 nuclear reactors. These were all meant to be done by roughly the year 2000 We were gonna be energy independent. It was gonna be glorious. Richard Milhouse Nixon was pushing for this agenda. I will let you guys know, we did not build a thousand nuclear reactors. The US topped out at one point with a few more than 100 We're now down around 94 or 95 reactors over the last 30 years. I think we have built or brought online a grand total of three new reactors. People soured on this type of technology. Even environmentalists somehow mind-fuck themselves into being anti-nuclear. And it's been a costly, depressing industry for a long time. But there is new energy, I'm sorry, around nuclear technology. We have the ton of startups building these things called small modular reactors. It's meant to bring down the upfront cost of building a nuclear system. You get these small reactors. You can place them right by a data center, by a town, whatever. Early days in many ways for this technology, still trying to prove itself out. We also have a ton of fusion companies that are telling us fusion is finally real after all this time. So there's in the Trump administration is trying to make all this stuff happen. And so it's exciting, but we need a reality check. And this is why we've brought in today's guest, James Krellenstein. He is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Alva Energy, based in Massachusetts.
James also happens to be remarkable. His knowledge of this industry is unmatched. He is going to walk us through the last few decades of the nuclear energy industry. What happened? What went right? What went wrong? Are these new technologies real?
His brain is going to blow you away. Alva Energy is trying to make a kind of add-on to existing nuclear power plants where they can add a turbine to these plants and pull more power out of them. It's this relatively easy, I use that in quotes, way to give us, to make the most out of the power plants that we have. James is kind of a contrarian in some sense around all these startups and thinks a lot of them are making mistakes and are not going to pan out. But he's just, this is incredible. If you ever wanted to, if you just want to get up to speed, now what's happened with nuclear technology over the last, call it like 80 years, why we are where we are, what's good, what's bad, you are going to find all of that in this episode.
I am Ashlee Vance. This is Core Memory. Let's get nuclear. Here we go.
All right, James, you have a lot to live up to after my introduction.

**James Krellenstein** (3:36)
Oh my God.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:37)
No pressure. I was like, I like to put people on the spot. I think people will be quite taken with your brain. I was taken, we've only met once, and I was blown away by your encyclopedic knowledge of the nuclear industry, both the current state of things, the history, and then I've caught a couple other talks you've given. I mean, it's incredible, the way you know this industry backwards and forwards.

**James Krellenstein** (4:02)
Thanks.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:03)
And so it's a huge privilege to have you here.
I'm gonna selfishly use part of this to inform myself and our listeners on some very big picture stuff, and then we'll dig in deeper on these areas that you know so well. But yeah, I wanted to use this podcast as an excuse to give people a real knowledge about the state of the nuclear industry, the pros and cons. There's so much going, being talked about with all these startups these days, doing very different things. Bit of a reality check on what's going on. Obviously, the US and China is kind of top of mind. I see what China is doing with this technology. And so I want to come away from this with a handle, a better handle on our world. And then I also want to get into your background a little bit.

**James Krellenstein** (4:55)
Yeah, my background and the startup that I run.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:57)
Yeah, well, absolutely, the startup you run, and then just after hearing you talk about a couple of the things. Yeah, I just want to get into your life and how you got here a bit. But okay, so let's do this. Let's set the very big picture for people assuming, they're just casually familiar with nuclear. I think they probably think not a lot is going on in the US. Maybe they hear reports that China is building tons of new reactors.