As the world seeks cleaner energy solutions, this session examines the potential resurgence of nuclear power, its role in meeting climate targets, and the challenges and opportunities of a nuclear renaissance in a changing global energy landscape.
At Davos, leaders and practitioners argued that a “nuclear renaissance” is plausible but only if the industry gets disciplined on standardization, risk allocation, and execution. Sweden’s Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch said the country has its “first application for new nuclear… since the 80s,” enabled by a three-part risk-sharing model: state-backed loans, contracts for difference, and downstream risk/profit sharing, plus political “long term certainty” including compensation if policy reverses. EDF CEO Bernard Fontana emphasized safety as the prerequisite and near-term gains from the existing fleet—life extensions, uprates, longer fuel cycles, and shorter outages—while new builds must “replicate” with “no change” to design. He framed nuclear’s advantage as system cost: less grid overbuild and lower peak prices, citing France’s nuclear-heavy dispatch yielding peak prices “half the price in Germany.” McDermott CEO Michael McKelvy warned that cost overruns stem from “continual regulatory changes… during construction,” and argued modularized construction is constrained by local demands for jobs. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries CEO Eisaku Ito described Japan’s new policy certainty (20% nuclear by 2040) and a rare, concurrent pre-construction alignment among utilities, regulators, manufacturers, and 200 suppliers to avoid “rework” and increase predictability. A recurring call: cross-border licensing—“approved in Finland… automatically… approved in Sweden”—but speakers stressed politicians need concrete savings: “Show me the money.”
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our session on the nuclear Renaissance scene with clear eyes. This is clearly the most optimistic moment in modern nuclear power in several decades around the world. Does this mean that the trends that we see, the demand for a clean, firm power, particularly with the rise of AI and data centers, the the desire to see innovative technologies, including new kinds of nuclear technologies that are advancing, such as smrs, as well as, importance and emphasis on energy security and reliability that we see throughout multiple sessions here at Davos this year and around the world. As a world is reminded in an age of electrification, an age of electricity rising that we're going to need more power, more secure power, and perhaps a cleaner power as well all at once. Could this be the start of that nuclear renaissance that many people in the industry look for? Or will it be a false dawn? We have seen this movie before. And there are obstacles. And so this is a session that is not going to repeat what other sessions have done that is to talk up the case or indeed just to talk it down, but rather with clear eyes, with people who are at the cutting edge in policy and technology and construction and design and implementation have a good hard look on what is actually coming. So I'm delighted to be here with you. I'm Vijay Vaitheeswaran, I'm the global energy and climate innovation editor for The Economist, and it's my pleasure to be the moderator for this group of experts and practitioners. I will introduce them now. To my immediate left, is Deputy Prime minister and Minister for energy, Business and Industry for Sweden. Bernard Fontana, chairman and chief executive officer of Électricité de France. Michael McKelvey, chairman and CEO of McDermott international. And Asako Ito, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Please give them a round of applause to get them going. Welcome, gentlemen. And lady. We will come to you first. But before that, I want to welcome our online audience as well. This is a live stream event. We welcome you. Please do make sure to share this on social media. All of you both here as well as there. And after a robust discussion, we will come to our audience here, present for for some questions as well, because we have a lot of crowdsourced intelligence here in this room. So thank you all for coming. And let's let's jump right into it. Deputy Prime Minister, let's start with you. Yeah. This is a moment where Sweden, in fact, is seen as a leader in this renaissance. You've done some interesting things in policy to try to stir the pot, get things going. In fact, a year ago, we were all here together talking about nuclear renaissance and similarly interested way, but maybe a little bit more cautious. Can you update us on what progress there's been and give us a little context on which policy reforms, regulatory changes you think that you're working on that might have brought some of the progress about.
Well, so, good to be back and, good to be able to tell you, we've now managed to start walking the talk. So I was talking here last year, and now I can tell you one year later and also happy to have Anna, CEO of Vattenfall, here in the front row, we now have our first application for new nuclear in Sweden. I think that's almost worth an applause in itself because it's gone.
Let's have a round of applause for that.
It's, it's the first one since the 80s. We built 14 nuclear reactors in a fairly swift amount of time during the 70s and beginning of the 80s. It seems like it's not going to go as fast this time around, but we now have a risk sharing model in place. We now put money on the table from, public money. We now see, a joint venture of private capital also coming in to take stake in this application as well. They've already put money into this with a pledge, to to move in that direction the next few years as well. We've also increased the risk of changing political course, putting in place, you know, a mechanism that makes the state obliged to compensate, a stakeholder if politics is changed and investments have been made in a nuclear power plant, and that is changed, of course, that is mainly a political signal, that we are really.
Getting long term certainty in the policy.
Environment in both ends, both to get investment there, but also to make sure the investment doesn't go away without it costing the state a lot.
You've put a few very interesting things on the table. Let's let's spend a moment on what you called sort of a risk sharing model, because that's very intriguing. Of course, a huge challenge. And we'll get into this with our fellow panelists in just a moment, that the private sector and the financial sector, have is the challenge. And the question they have is who's going to be left holding the bag if there are cost overruns or if there are policy changes? As you rightly observed, a number of countries in Europe, of course, had a change in momentum, have shut down nuclear plants that were still viable to last for a few more decades and so on. So stranded asset problem. Right. And so, start with the risk sharing model. Give us a little bit more detail on how that works.
So basically consists of three parts. And the first one is is the state backed loans. The second part is contracts for, for difference that we've seen in a lot of projects. And the third and not least is risk and profit sharing mechanism that will hit by a certain amount of, of revenue further down the timeline of, of the project. And of course, on top of that, possible state direct investments in the company. And then, of course, the company is working very hard on getting other private investments there as well, because we're seeing such high demand in the private sector. We're now seeing private sectors and companies in Sweden saying we'll be part of the solution for this. We're the ones asking for, dispatchable power when and where it is needed. And we will now put money into making this happen as well. So we're off to a great start. We're expecting at least one more application this year, but I still believe we have a long way to go in terms of, getting, the processing for, for licensing, for permitting, getting that up to speed. And I think we need to do that countries together. Yes. And my main goal is still to get it to the place where, you know, if a reactor is approved in Sweden or it's approved in Finland, then it will then automatically be approved in in Sweden by default. Of course, everyone knows there will be adjustments, site specific adjustments that need to be made, but that's still what I would like to push for. And on top of that, of course, working together countries with joint purchases if possible.
Well, that is a powerful vision, a compelling vision. I mean, we have this in, for example, in in medicines, for example, the standardization. Indeed, there's even cooperation not only within the European countries as a block, but amongst the US, FDA and and here in Europe and so on. So there is precedent in other important sectors. And there's no really good reason other than history, domestic turf, traditional ways of doing things, presumably for not cooperating on standardized designs or approvals.
Very, very scary for a politician to say, you know, we'll commit to this over, mandate periods. And we're talking about, I mean, this is a commitment that is way bigger than than your average marriage nuclear power plant will last for for generations. We're not even talking about my kids that are ten and eight. We're talking about my grandchildren's children. Right. And so on. So, I mean, it's a huge commitment and asking politics nowadays to reach across the border to another country and say, hey, let's do something that I might be the winner in. You might be the loser in in public opinion. But but that's the courage that I'm looking for in political leadership, because then I think our citizens might actually see this happening to scale. And that's, that's, I think what we need, that's what the industry needs. But also that would be a win win.
Okay. Well that's, that's that's a bold vision you've laid out. Thank you for that. Let's let's see where the rubber hits the road. We have practitioners here who will tell us the reality. And maybe we can start with you, Bernard. The few people, on earth, certainly in the corporate sector, know as much about nuclear as as the chairman and CEO of Électricité de France. Can you give us your perspective on the nuclear revival? Now, obviously, there's an existing fleet you run, one of the largest, and that requires maintenance has been challenges, but also life extensions on the positive side. So there's a legacy, but then the new generation as well. So give us your perspective on where we are on that journey.
Thank you. And first we are all focused on nuclear safety. I always recall it because this is the prerequisite and this continues. And the this revival exists already on the existing fleet. As you mentioned, everywhere in the world we increase the life of the reactors. When it is possible, we increase the power of the reactor, of the turbine when it is possible. We have now nuclear fuel that allows to have outage not every 18 months, but every two years. So this is happening every day. And all of us, we work to reduce the time of outage. It's the efficiency on the big construction effort. Now there is the new nuclear and here we all go towards the vision you have is to replicate. And this is happening. Currently EDF is building, I think in the UK two reactors to Eprs and the British government has now launched. Final investment decision is taken. Financial closing has happened. A replication exactly the same. And this requires discipline at all the level that we make efforts, maybe a regulatory, maybe political environment, maybe also our own engineering team who love to improve the things, say no, no change. You do exactly the same. And a discussion on the risk allocation that has happened and it did. Financial people have been able to come. And financial closing has happened in France. We prepare a fleet six plus potentially or hopefully six plus eight reactors. And we had this exactly same approach. We want to start out, and we had a discussion with the French government on the risk allocation. It has to happen. We concluded it. And this allowed us to agree on the financing and go to the European Commission. And all my focus is to take advantage of the stability of the referential, the stability of the design and to move the supply chain and the construction side to go fast.
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because, you are not only an operator, but you're also a builder, and that's not always true. And so, maybe you can tell us some of the things that, you are implementing concrete changes, on the building side, standardization, project governance, workforce supply chain, because some of these things have been lost along the way or need to be upgraded. You know, again, there have been challenges in the industry, in part because we weren't building in the West for, for for a long time. What have you learned and what are you fixing?
So we all know it's a question of skills. And you need to to get prepared with the skills. So currently in France we hire 10,000 people every year to to to fuel the the new new programs. So this is happening every year. The French supply chain was 230,000 employees three years ago. Now we are 250,000. So this is happening. Second, we need to have a supply chain and to prepare the industry. So we ramp up the supply chain. Sometime we integrate them, but we are happy to to work. And it's a good opportunity for cooperation. Once you have standard, you can gain the scale effect in the factories. Typically for me I give targets to Framatome Arabel reduce your lead time by 25% every two years, and they do it because they repeat they can be more efficient. We reduce the the waiting time. We control, things that are not necessary. We don't reduce the quality of the control, but we make it efficient. So this is the focus is the lead time. What can we do to go faster and, to, to be successful? We come back to relationship with the supply chain as partners.
Good. I'm glad you emphasized the supply chain. And we'll hear more from our lead EPC in a minute. But, I want to press you on a point, a challenge, that the Deputy Prime Minister has put on the table. That is the beautiful dream of a pan European approach that is having economies of scale standardization. If we look at, for example, Airbus, we have a European success story, vital industry supported by the state, but also market minded, globally successful, but where the supply chains are pan European, can you see France going along with European supply chains, or are the politics of it too difficult at home?
I love your example on Airbus. They also built helicopters that are sophisticated equipment like a steam generators and high teams share how to gain to organize and flow the industry. So perfect example. And yes we have this cooperation I mentioned UK there's a supply chain there. We built on the same standards and we help each other. And some French company work in the UK and some UK company will help us for the French nuclear program. And as we build standards it helps us to develop supply chain. For example, in other countries of Europe. We can help them, we can use them for their own program, but they can help us also. And that's why you see, typically even in Poland, it's American reactor. But you will find French turbine there because we play with compatible standards. And the key is there. Our customers want certainty on time and budget and it comes through standardization.
So I'm going to say the French position is that France is open to this idea. So we'll see where your progress goes.
We promote it.
We'll see. We'll have to always have to see behind the scenes what happens with France. But we'll see an openness, at least in public. All right, Michael, let's come to you. You know, it is wrong to start by saying that the nuclear has slowed down because, of course, if you look around the world, there are many nuclear plants being built. They're mostly being built by China. You know, and they're building them at China speed and cost. But it's also wrong to say, well, that's a China special case, you know, state capitalism and we don't really know the true economics or what conditions there are. I was our bureau chief in Shanghai for many years, so I know something about China from the inside. It is a dynamic, innovative place. And they figured out how to build nuclear power plants, at scale in batches with trained workforce. But it has also been done in South Korea, which is not on the Chinese model. Right. It's a different model, more akin to perhaps Europe or the West or other countries around the world. And they're doing very successfully in South Korea. So in building and expanding their fleet. So I would suggest that, there are lessons to be learned and not simply to wave it away as an anomalous Chinese example, you are involved with world scale projects across the energy industry and the energy transition, not only nuclear. Can you help us understand what are the challenges, that have to be overcome to build, to implement these ideas, these dreams, if the financing can be found, if the politics can be sorted and people turn up and say, here's what we want, Mike, can you get it done? What's still missing or what more do we need to do in nuclear construction?
Yeah, part of the issue is that there are pockets of the world in France. And as you say, in South Korea and China, where current construction has been successful, and there's a track record in recent memory of building nuclear power plants. But a lot of the developing world has not done this in many, many years. And so the really the aspect of building a new large scale nuclear power plant or even a small modular reactor is something that is scary or daunting to them. And so they pitfalls that occur when you have overregulation or over concern of security and safety issues then cause the scope, delivery and the schedule to be uncertain. So most of the really horrific projects through history, at least in North America, for sure, that we remember or that have frightened the construction industry away from nuclear power, resulted in the fact of continual regulatory changes, security changes, during not during design as was mentioned before, but during construction. So you're already far down the path, and it's much more difficult to change scope once concrete is going into place and once you've, you've really committed. But if you can make those changes up early in the design phase, together with government regulation, you can achieve a much greater certainty of outcome. But it's complicated because the available labor for construction globally is really, really, we're at full employment just about everywhere around the world. So at this particular time, technology innovation, artificial intelligence model modularization, not of the reactor core, I'm talking about of the construction components is vital for us to get these projects done on time and on budget.
But are we going in that direction? Because when I kicked the tires on some, you know, the summers are terrifically exciting and opportunity for prefab or standardization cut and paste right where we need to go, perhaps to come down the cost curve. And there are dozens and dozens of SMR designs around the world that have been documented, and a number of them are actually getting financing, but the two leading ones that are financed and in building phases in the UK and in Canada, certainly are neither small nor modular, right. I think it's fair to say they're mid-sized, perhaps. And for example, in the Canadian case, when I did look into it, there were design choices made that do not allow it to be replicated. Exactly. It is partially stick built, which in a way undermines the argument. Right.
You've got.
They have their reasons for doing it. But but learning by doing and.
Smrs are still a first of a kind technology.
Exactly. Especially the first of them.
You're right. And so there's one one operating SMR in the, in the world right now. Actually, there'll be more this summer and there's many more that are under development and construction. But there's one operational, that we know of and, you know, 70 projects around the world under construction, like you said, most are in China. So I think there's got to be and I think the atmosphere and the desire from all the different stakeholders that can make these projects real, we all want this renaissance to occur. And we do see that there's a potential to make use of all these different methodologies to avoid the pitfalls that you've even seen on the Smrs up to date. Because an SMR is $8 billion project. I mean, we make it sound like it's small. It's it's not small. And some of the ones that are in process now, they're trending over budget as well. But I think to the point that's been made, we've got to change the mindset going forward because the world needs this renaissance. It's 9% of our global gigawatts come from nuclear power. Used to be 18, 20%. I know in Europe and other parts it's much greater. But the United States is way, way behind on this.
What's the real world obstacle to moving towards this vision of modularization efficiency? Because I've seen this movie in LNG, for example, another very CapEx heavy industry historically, stick built often cost plus contracts, lots of cost overruns, delays is typical. And because hard engineering, only a couple of companies around the world are trusted to do this. But then we had a disruptor, a company that came in with a different idea, Venture Global, which did an IPO a few months ago, and they financed themselves. And I've spoken with the company and they showed it can be done much faster, cheaper using, you know, a lot of parts that are off the shelf as it were made in a factory in Italy and so on. Baker Hughes, in other words, Standard Oil Services company using knowledge from other industry that know how to do this quickly at scale. But there's been reluctance, resistance, suspicion, skepticism from other others in the industry. Is it culture? Yeah.
Some of the reluctance comes back from, the whole aspect of employment and local areas, local municipalities, local countries wanting to see this project, that LNG project can go, you know, several years as well, over $10 billion. How many people are we going to employ? What is this going to do to our economic development of the area? And if you say we're going to take 20% of the work outside of the battery limits, we're going to modularize this, and we're going to build that kit in another country and ship it in. That's 20% of the craft labor that you're not going to be hiring. Now from a productivity perspective and a quality perspective, that's a great thing to do. But the local stakeholders want to maximize employment and want to grow the economic development. And what we don't want you to cut back the employment. We want 10,000 people on this site, not 7500. Now, that's not insurmountable, but that's been part of the impediment up to this point.
Want to jump in, please? And we'll come. We'll come to you in just a moment.
And then there comes the the visibility for for the various supply chain. And you should consider programs not only built 2 or 3 objects, because if you have a program, you can activate a supply chain in a, in a country, focus them on some standards, use them also for the other programs. So clearly the concept of program is key to allow and support all this momentum. And it's it's in there. It's happening now.
Let's come to you. Give us your experience.
Yes. In Japan, the first at first I would like to say thank you to the Japanese government to show the very clear, long term energy plan of the nation and that that says in 2040, the 20% of electricity is covered by nuclear, and also that they made a very, interesting system, the so-called long term decarbonize, the power, equipment auction that can, enable the operators to, long term revenue. So that is much, much safer, safe feeling of the safety of the new challenge.
You can have confidence in that. long term policy certainty.
Yes. And also the, then we are going to the looking forward to the new power plant and then the, the important thing, as everybody said, the standardization of the design is the key. So the, the most important thing to avoid, before the construction is the rework to avoid rework is very important in the varied, the enormous investment of nuclear power plant under the very lengthy construction period and investment, the payback period also lengthy. So the, what we do is we, proposed a new design, our new design 1200 and, that, are based on our long term, experience as well as the incorporate the new technology of the more enhanced safety. And the important thing is, before, fixing the design, we are now concurrently the cross discussion between the operators. That means the four, utility companies and MHI, we are now discussing the real using the real design, basic design. What is the issue and what is the problem?
So you are talking to your customers and also the regulators. If I understand it, you're bringing them in.
The room. Yeah. Yeah.
To get an agreement before you proceed.
Yes. So the that is a very important point. The industry and the regulatory,
Normally they don't have this conversation, am I right?
This is not. the convention. I think that is very interesting, very rare case. And then but important thing is that using the realistic design, real design. So the we are, looking forward to the new power plant and we share the old information before we start the construction. And then the new, very important thing is the predictability of the new regulations. Right. Then the, we are feel very safe, confident to go forward. Also, the operator, the utility companies are very confident to, to do before concurrently. And one more important thing is we share all information. The customer. That means operators, manufacturers and supply chains. The we talked we have the discussions more than 200 suppliers in advance to start design. And they are very I would say the cooperative with our plants. And in Japan, the coverage ratio of the supply chain domestic, the coverage ratio is over 90%, so that we can control almost all. So that means the, that can make sure that, real, construction is so the time management, also the issue management and even, something happened. But we can cooperate.
And it also enhances energy security, right. In this day and age. Right. Really one of the top themes at Davos. Yes is security. Yes. You're able to show that your supply chains are not vulnerable in times of crisis.
Right. So the government operators and manufacturers, suppliers all together concurrently were now very detailed discussion.
Okay. So this is a heartening example. So we've seen some concrete, as I promised I would do on behalf of our, our audience to push our speakers to be specific, concrete, give examples. One topic that we danced around a little bit though is economics. That is cost. Now everything we're talking about should reduce future costs. But nuclear has a particular challenge that it's CapEx, heavy light on opex. It's almost the opposite of a gas power plant. Right. And also the lump of capital is enormous, as we all know. Right. Although it may change in future with Smrs. But that's a promise for the future. And how do you think? Let me start with you, Deputy Prime Minister. But anyone else who wants to weigh in on how to deal with the challenge of the economics of a very large outlay, not just for one plant, but as we're hearing increasingly, not only do we need standardization, there's the thinking that one needs to have fleets that are committed to that is, a six pack is a common phrase in nuclear economics or in business thinking. There are indeed, there are a couple of companies, private equity backed and otherwise, the nuclear company and others. Their explicit model is to try to get aggregate multiple potential buyers to agree to a fleet of six, on the same design, standardized, so that you can do an order book. What I've noticed is the challenge is that utilities are willing to be number six. Nobody wants to be number one. Especially if you have to explain to your customers or regulators why the cost overrun, number one is being socialized onto your plant number six, which that has to be the deal, right? If your risk sharing, your cost sharing. And so you have to socialize some of the learning by doing that comes with the project. One. So as a politician, how do you deal with this challenge of explaining to voters and taxpayers who may not be nuclear advocates? They're just want to go about their business and enjoy energy services, cold beer, hot showers. And they say, what is this? What's this bill? Why am I paying for something for your grandchildren to put it in your words?
Yeah. Now that's I'm going to use that as a tagline for my life. I just want to cold beer in a hot shower and don't need much more. But so obviously I've shared what we've done in terms of financing and trying to to cut risk in Sweden. What we're now doing, in essence, like the political movement that I'm trying to achieve, the best testament to that is basically we held, a nuclear, investment summit in, in Stockholm together with the government of Finland this fall, with very heavy representation of both innovators, investors and vendors, some of them in the audience today, from all over the world. But it circulated around NBA region. So the Nordic Baltic countries, consisting of of eight, eight countries trying to see how it would be possible to sort of position us as a region to invest in as a whole, making it a little bit easier, both for capital but also for the ones that might be interested in selling a program or a full pack of, of, of nuclear power, but also to even keep on lowering the political thresholds for companies or countries that are. Absolutely. I mean, they're depending off of the nuclear power that Sweden and other countries have already, or the baseload that we have in our hydropower, for example. But they might not be the ones building it themselves for many different reasons, political or geological or whatever. And it might not be, you know, the quickest solution. It's better we build a couple, but we work together on it. And the response was massive. So, I was very happy to, to see that. And there is political movement going in this direction. If you zoom out from the NBA region around the Baltic Sea, we are now 16 countries that are part of the European or the EU nuclear alliance. If someone would have, if I would have stated that this will be the case four years ago, people would have laughed. And then we started the nuclear alliance together with France during the Swedish EU presidency. We're now in major majority. And then Germany also visited one of our meetings. Just pushing, not as a member, but pushing technology neutrality. So basically in that sense, things have moved and you look globally.
Being taken seriously now.
Yeah, definitely Japan coming back. We're doing cooperations both with the Americans, of course, with Canada. I was visiting the Darlington site just a few weeks ago after a state visit to, to Canada. So, I mean, this is becoming more and more tangible,
To creating coalitions of the willing to forge ahead, even if the entire EU cannot go at that pace.
But my main message to, to my dear European friends, apart from this is stop closing down existing nuclear power plants. Since 1999, we've shut down 30GW in worth of nuclear power. 30GW. That's a lot.
That could have gone another decade or two.
And if we keep on doing this up until 2035, the trajectory that, for example, Spain is going in will we will in total have have closed down some 46GW. So let's not do that. It decreases our possibility to support Ukraine. It it will increase costs for grids and transmission. We're seeing that on Swedish household bills now. Why have prices for electricity gone down. But the bill has gone up because I'm now paying much more for grids and transmission. Believe me, that is not a good way to win elections in Europe moving forward.
Well, in any, any country. And affordability is the number one issue in the US politics this year as well as we know, and we know the American president will arrive, has probably arrived already and will talk almost certainly about the affordability issue back home even while he's here in Davos. I want to give the warning to the audience. We're going to come to you in just a moment for questions. So please collect your thoughts. A couple of ground rules for when I come to you. Stand up when I, when I've selected you, we'll get a microphone to you. Wait for the microphone, identify yourself and make it a question rather than a long winded speech. And I know you have a quick intervention before I go to the floor, so please, you're.
On cost. What is important to have in mind the total cost of the system. You have mentioned the grid and you can see a nuclear competitive there. Because we have we don't need to overinvest in the in the system. There's a merit. It's there whenever you need it. Then yesterday I was I followed the dispatch. France was 80% nuclear price is not only the cost, but peak time price in France was half the price in Germany. And for what price are lower for half the price of Italy? So we can be competitive. And when you have the fleet effect for us, every two reactors, we want to cut by 15%. And when we say we can insert in the fleet, say, okay, you take the fifth or the sixth and so on, have this fleet approach and this is powerful.
You raise a question that's a topic of a different session coming up here at Davos tomorrow, which is power systems and market design. Because you know, as you say, value nuclear has value as do other forms of technology, energy technologies. But sometimes the markets and the market design doesn't appreciate firm power for example, or other attributes, zero emissions. And so in markets that don't have externalities pricing. So this is a challenge to policy makers to think more holistically about how they reward technologies and over what time frame as well. Long duration storage often gets short shrift, for example, without all of its benefits being appreciated and monetized. And so I encourage any regulators that are watching or with us to think about a holistic appreciation through the rules of some of these attributes, including energy security, which at the moment falls through the cracks. Now, as I promised, we're coming to questions. I know we have with us, the Joe Dominguez President and chief executive officer of Constellation Energy. Let's get a microphone to him. I think you are the largest operator of nuclear plants in the world, if I'm not mistaken, but certainly dominant in the US. Joe, I'll ask you to stand and maybe ask a question to our panel. As you've got a lot of experience in this area.
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you very much. And I will just make. You didn't want to speak, but I'm going to just give you this one factoid. Vogel. Horrible example of construction.
Is the plant in Georgia. The most recent.
Plant in Georgia, enormously over budget, twice the schedule Covid. We had Westinghouse going into bankruptcy. It delivered the units cheaper than offshore wind in New York. Just I don't know if that's.
A praise of nuclear or damning offshore wind in New York, but either way.
Or a bit of both.
Your point or a bit of both, probably.
Yeah. The point is on systems costs, we need to be fair. The problem with Vogel's, they promised it was going to be half. So we have to be clear eyed about what these things are going to cost. Just one quick answer from each one. Large reactor or SMR.
Great. Good. Sharp question if you have to choose. And just to put a point on it, either you're not your personal preference what you were, but let's say which is more realistic to happen in the next decade, something like that. Which let's put the question more sharply. Go ahead.
Yes. My answer is a large, nuclear power plant. We are now in Japan, a very special case after Fukushima accident, the whole nuclear shut down. And also the government announced, as I said, by 2040, the 20% electricity should be covered by nuclear. That means we have to, make a quick action. So that's why we we are now, doing the concurrent engineering, including the regulatory authority, the operators, manufacturers and suppliers. And, also the important thing is after the accident, the social acceptance is very important. So the, we have to do the, the secure, the, the safety. So the that means that we need the big preparation or the R&D. Also the design standardization. Also the some the special treatment for the in Japan, the the earthquake, tsunami maybe, as well as the terrorism. Okay.
So you're going with big. Big okay.
Yeah. As a contractor I would go with big also. However, I would prefer small modular nuclear reactors in a cluster. So where we could do half a dozen of them and we could get economies of scale and we could have standardization of design, standardization and steady state on regulatory. If we could do that, that's what I would prefer to do, but that's probably not practical. So just building something that's 10 to 15 billion. Yeah, we'd love to do that all all the time. If we can do it.
Your shareholders would love that. Yeah.
So in France the problem six eight is big reactors because we put them in existing sites and this matters. But still we have a if you like, a small modular reactor, we have one new scale and we cooperate with framatome and solutions to 30 small modular reactors. I believe.
You'll look at the small lovingly, but you'll build the big.
Yes, they can have specific application. It's not the silver bullet. but specific application. You must have them in your game. But for us we do with big ones.
Yeah. Deputy Prime Minister, how is your perspective?
We're going to do both. So first off, for the Ringhals site.
The pocketbook is large, folks. This is what what you're hearing what's ready to spend.
Yeah, but in competition. Believe me. That's why I'm more want more applications for this year. But so for the ringhals side looking once again to to Vattenfall. They be building multiples either of GE Voronova or going with Rolls-Royce. We're all very excited what the decision will will be. And that's site specific. It's hard to build a large scale conventional one on this very specific site. Things have changed since the 70s with some, regulations. But from a system perspective, large, the large scales make sense. We that's what I need for my system as, as well. And that's what I'm hoping for specifically for for the Oskarshamn site in Sweden. But I think we will see both. And the advantage to the Smrs if we can get this up and running now is of course, you can place it close to load also and more.
And it has been pointed out that's the explicit business model of some of the SMR companies, is to integrate tightly with even chemical plants. In the case of X-energy and Dow, or there are others that are following an explicit model of being close to where the load is. Let's see if we have a little bit of time. A quick question, quick answer. I think I saw a hand before. Let's get a microphone here quickly.
Very.
Please identify yourself. Please stand up. Sorry.
Michael Seuss, CEO, executive chairman of Swiss based tech company what's the Technology base? It's still third. Third generation pressurized water. Well, when do we take a first generation? Because whatever you do now, it's 60 years down the road.
Good question. Okay, who wants to take this? Someone who is on top of the tech, please.
Hello to. And, yes. So we already work on the next generation, including the fast reactors. We even have cooperation with Japan on the on this. And in France, it's the vision that we have to be there. The time is still to be decided, but we have the technology, we maintain them, we work on them so that we can use what is called the waste. Because just for France, in our waste, we have 1000 years of fuel for the future. So the sovereignty and the availability of the resources there. So it's definitely part of the agenda. And then it's a question of timing. And timing is a political decision.
Commission a 300 megawatt first generation.
Sorry, the audience can't hear you on stage, but we'll leave that there.
There's a technology out there.
Yeah.
Of course, generation or your first power plants megawatt commission.
Yeah.
We'll have to take that on. But let's have a lady in the front. Quick question. We just have a 32nd question. A 32nd answer, please. Before we wrap up. Thank you. Please stand up and identify yourself.
Sorry. My name is Anna, and I'm the CEO of Vattenfall, the European energy company, and the ones also responsible for the project at the Prime Minister is referring to. Thank you. I very much believe in the renewal of nuclear for many reasons, not least for geopolitical and security reasons, where energy resilience will be more of a topic also locally compared to what it's been before. And I.
Ask you for a question for our panel because we're running out of time.
The the reason I'm saying this is that my question is, I think we will need all technologies we can get our hands on and competitive and innovative technologies to make this good. Just as in any other part of the business, the main lever for that would be exactly what was mentioned earlier, which is how can we make sure that a reactor that has been approved by one authority can also be approved in another country? That would immensely decrease the cost and the timing for building new reactors. What can we do in the industry in order to support that development? Because that seems to be a hard track to go down right now.
Okay. Well thank you. You've underlined a theme we've heard several times. And from the industry perspective, what can we do? I like that. Do you want to jump in?
There's already a cooperation between the nuclear safety authorities, some of them in Europe, to define the similar standards. So this is happening and it's up to us also to have the discipline of developing standards and promoting the standards with the standardization policy. I think it's both both from a regulation and the engineering teams.
Something practical. You want to jump in.
Show us, show us the money, show us what could be saved if we worked together. And give me an example of how much could be saved if we got our ducks in a row, because that could get things going. Politicians are now much braver when it comes to the nuclear projects, but still, we don't have the incentive to go all the way across the border to our neighbor and say, hey, let's work on this together.
Show me the money. Show me the money. 30s.
Yes, the important thing is the international collaboration like France and Japan and also the. We have a very, special organization in our company that is MHI is a conglomerate. And so the technology base is common and we can use for the nuclear, GTK, aerospace and rocket and defense so that everything. So that means the core technology platform can be brushed up the year by year. So that that can be the, from the for example, idea from GTK, we can apply to the nuclear right like that. So that that is save the time and also increase the reliability and quality.
Excellent. Thank you. I love the practical nature of some of these interventions. We've all been to nuclear discussions that are 30,000ft and, you know, either pro or con, but they're not grounded in the practical reality. So I think we've really benefited from this session. We can all agree. We've learned some of the real world obstacles, but also some ideas on making progress and people who are working on them. I hope you'll join me in giving a nice round of applause to our panelists. Thank you and I wish you all a happy.
Enjoy the rest of your time. Thank you, thank you.
Thank you once again. It was great. Super.