The Atomic Show

Ho Nieh, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, visited the Atomic Show for a wide ranging discussion about the agency, its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy, the importance of its mission to the energy future of the United States, the benefits of having organization led by a five person commission of decision makers and the ways in which the NRC is evolving to better serve the needs of the United States in an era of rapid technological change. Chairman Nieh’s father worked as a nuclear qualified welder. His experiences during spring and fall outages were part of the inspiration for Nieh’s decision to pursue a career in nuclear engineering. He studied marine engineering at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy. That major was the closest thing to a nuclear engineering program available at the sometimes overlooked 5th service academy. Chairman Nieh at Aalo Atomics Pilot factory – March 2026 (Used with permission from USNRC) Aside: (Everyone remembers the Military Academy, the Naval Academy (my personal favorite) and the Air Force Academy. Many know about the Coast Guard Academy. It’s less common to recall that the Merchant Marines play a vital role in the defense establishment and that they have their own service academy. End Aside. Chairman Nieh told us about how he started his nuclear career as an instructor/operator at the S8G prototype at the Navy’s prototype site in West Milton, NY. He spent more than 4 years as a shift worker at the facility, likely having contact with 16 or more classes of trainees in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. After four plus years on rotating shifts, he was open to a suggestion from a former colleague to apply for a job as a resident inspector with the NRC. (Chairman Nieh is the first NRC Commissioner to have served as a resident inspector.) At his service academy, Nieh was trained to seek roles of increasing responsibility where he could put his leadership training to its most effective use. His career on the NRC staff contains abundant evidence of choices made to deepen and broaden his capabilities as a leader in a complex and vital field. Chairman Nieh described his appreciation of the skills, work ethic and depth of experience of his four fellow commissioners. It’s almost de rigueur for NRC commissioners to praise the collegiality of their Commission, but it sounded like he was describing an especially useful version of that descriptor is applicable to the current group. We spoke about the agency’s evolving understanding of its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy and its growing understanding that the guiding language on that topic has always been included in Article 1 of the Atomic Energy Act. He acknowledged that there have been past leaders on the Commission and on the staff who felt that enabling was too “promotional” and wasn’t part of the NRC’s mission. We spoke about the NRC’s very recent release of 10 CFR Part 53, the long-anticipated, new licensing framework whose creation was directed by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act of 2019. Though analysis of the final, 701-page rule is still in progress, the early returns show that it has generally succeeded in becoming a risk-informed, performance-based, technology-inclusive framework for designing and licensing new nuclear reactors. Though the rule is still under review and the draft has not yet been made public, the Chairman Nieh described how NRC is close to completing another assigned task, this one directed by Executive Order 14300. The Commission is reconsidering the use of the linear, no threshold (LNT) radiation protection model and the associated regulatory requirement to take action to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), even when the doses involved are already many multiples below the regulatory limit. Chairman Nieh emphasized that the agency is maintaining its historic independence and that there are no external forces that are going to detract it from its role in maintaining safety. He also describes how keeping reactors safe does not mean preventing them from being built and operated. The nation needs abundant, affordable, reliable, clean power. It needs nuclear plants that can be built on time and within budget and a regulator that will not inhibit the accomplishment of the goal for safe and abundant nuclear energy. I think you will enjoy the show.

Energy is Life begins with an alternative timeline – Zion Lights describes what her life would be like if her parents had not made the decision to emigrate from their village in India to become factor workers in the burgeoning Manchester manufacturing area before she was born. It’s a sobering and enlightening depiction of the daily struggle for sustenance and survival in a place that is plagued with dire energy poverty. During her education and early career, Zion was deeply embedded in the environmental movement and accepted many of its tenants. But as she repeatedly heard her colleagues and associates idealize simple existence and express a desire to return to the land and the traditional ways, she began to ask hard questions. Did they have any idea what it was like for those people who were still living on the land using traditional, primitive technologies? Her path of asking hard questions and looking for the best scientifically supportable answers to those questions soon led her to become a closeted nuclear energy supporter. She learned how useful the technology was, especially as a way to provide abundant energy while virtually eliminating immediately harmful air pollution and climate changing emissions. But she still traveled in the environmental circles and was sure that she would be ostracized if she openly expressed her conclusions. She tested that thesis several times and received the response that she expected. One of her colleagues once asked “you aren’t pro-nuclear are you?” At a key point in her journey of discovery she was employed as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, an aggressive antinuclear NGO taking direct action to capture the public’s attention. Its illogical but unfortunately common position was to be both opposed to emission-free nuclear energy while also focused on fighting climate change. After finding herself in situations where her choice was to speak truthfully or to do her assigned job, she left the antinuclear group to become a pronuclear advocate, speaker and author. We talked about her life trajectory, her recent book, and her pursuit of an abundant future where all people have access to the energy resources that give them agency and enable them to flourish. I expect that you will enjoy this episode.

Abandoned uranium mine waste has been a big deal for decades, but almost no one had an inkling about what we should do to solve the problem. The scale of the challenge is huge, with various estimates ranging between 1 and 8 billion tons of uranium mining waste rock spread over more than 10,000 sites, nearly all of which are in western states and Native American sovereign nations. The Navajo Nation is the jurisdiction with the biggest burden – a substantial portion of the waste is on Navajo lands and spread over 500 or more sites. Some have dismissed or minimized the problem by pointing to the relatively low material concentrations and the low radiation doses emitted. But low concentrations multiplied by tens of millions of tons and thousands of sites calculates to distressingly large numbers. It’s also important to remember that the contaminating minerals of concern are heavy metals that might be lightly radioactive, but they also have a level of chemical toxicity that also causes negative health impacts on humans and animals. Though billions of dollars have been allocated for cleaning up the waste piles, there hasn’t been much progress because the available solution set has been limited to on-site burial in engineered landfills or moving the material “somewhere else.” The landfill option doesn’t remove the potential threat to groundwater and the barriers are designed to last about 100 years. The vast majority of the contaminating minerals will still be there after the designed barriers have deteriorated. There has been little or no success in finding suitable or agreeable places to take the waste and even if there were, the mass of material means that most of the available clean up funds would be consumed in transportation. Not surprisingly, there has not been a shortage of large established contracting companies willing to be paid tens of millions of dollars to study the issue and move some dirt around. Enter John Lee and Greyson Buckingham, a pair of innovative entrepreneurs. They recognized the scale of the problem and the importance of effective solutions. They developed a patented technology called High Pressure Slurry Ablation that separates the contaminating minerals – mostly uranium and radium 226 – from sand and rock and concentrates those minerals into about 20% of the mass of the input stream. The clean fraction can meet stringent NRC unrestricted release criteria while the fraction containing the minerals will have a high enough concentration to turn a pile of contaminated material into valuable ore. John Lee, with deep experience and education in mining and materials processing, developed the initial idea for HPSA. Greyson Buckingham added his legal training, business acumen and political experience. They formed a company called Disa Technologies in 2018 and patiently began the process of refining their ideas into useful and reliable machinery. Additionally, they entered into a plodding process of obtaining permission to deploy their problem-solving technology in an environmentally beneficial and cost effective manner. Starting with a state regulatory engagement in 2018, Disa Technologies was recently – September 30, 2025 – awarded a service provider’s license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That license comes with a significant, but reasonably achievable condition to demonstrate HPSA on a commercial scale before entering into wide deployment of multiple units. Though it took about half a decade of staff engagement and Commission decision-making to determine the proper licensing framework, the NRC was able to review Disa’s service provider license application in six months (March–September 2025). During the regulatory engagement process, Disa Technologies developed strong alliances with political representatives from affected states, with leaders among the Native American nations and with communities that have been seeking solutions to the waste issue for decades. They also produced solid scientific evidence of the efficacy of their inventions and demonstrated it to the satisfaction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The saga is fascinating. For Atomic Show #339, I spoke with Greyson Buckingham about his company, its technology, the importance of cleaning up abandoned uranium mine (AUM) waste, the utility of HPSA in processing other critical mineral ores, the sometimes frustrating interactions with the NRC during period from 2020-2024 and the refreshingly competent and mission-oriented NRC that has been evolving during the past year. Neither I nor Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights, have any financial interest in Disa as of January 5, 2025, the date that this post and the associated audio recording are released.

Oklo is rapidly becoming a household name, at least among households with members who pay attention to energy industry developments and/or the headliners in the financial press. Oklo is in the process of designing and permitting a family of small modular reactors that it plans to own and operate to produce electricity, heat and isotopes that it will sell to its end customers under long term power purchase agreements (PPA). The specific type of SMR that Oklo has chosen as the one with the best chance to economically meet its needs as a power and heat producer – over the long haul – is a liquid sodium cooled, fast neutron reactor designed to closely match the features and performance of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). That impressively successful demonstration reactor, which produced about 20 MWe, ran reliably for 30 years (1964-1994). Oklo has stated that it intends to produce 15, 50 and 75 MWe versions of the system in order to best meet the needs of the customers it is aiming to serve. An integral part of the Oklo vision is to recycle used nuclear fuel, the material that is often referred to as spent nuclear fuel or even “nuclear waste.” The fact that the material still contains about 90-95% of its initial potential energy is finally becoming common knowledge. Oklo believes that fast spectrum reactors are the technology that is best suited for converting used fuel materials into useful energy, and it also believes that affordably recycling fuel is essential to meeting its long term economic projections. Architectural rendering of an Oklo Powerhouse – Used with permission from Oklo Part of Oklo’s business model is focusing on community acceptance for its powerhouses. They are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to the point where Oklo powerhouse images are often used to illustrate articles about advanced nuclear energy that focus on other companies. The company has talked about designing the stations to be community gathering places and also talked about beneficially using waste heat for purposes like heating swimming pools or district heating systems. For Atomic Show #338, I spoke with Craig Bealmear, Oklo’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Craig described his 30-year background in the energy industry, mostly working in finance and accounting for BP. He spent most of his career in their marketing arm selling gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to large customers, but also ran several commercial enterprises within the company. We discussed Oklo’s experience as one of three publicly traded pure plays in advanced nuclear energy during a period when excitement about nuclear energy hit an inflection point and dramatically increased demand for a commodity in very short supply. (Note: The supply of publicly traded pure plays in nuclear has recently doubled, creating a situation that is testing the strength of the demand for those companies.) We spoke about the company’s vision, its business model and the way that its business model drove the selection of liquid metal fast spectrum reactors. Oklo’s founders – Jake and Caroline DeWitt – were attracted to their ability to operate at near atmospheric pressure while achieving high enough temperatures to create steam at the conditions used by modern Rankine Cycle steam plants. They believed that characteristic, along with the impressive results of EBR-II passive safety tests, will allow them to reduce the portion of their systems that are classified as safety-related. Sodium has been proven to be chemically compatible with stainless steel over a long period of high temperature operation, a characteristic with cost reduction potential. Of course, we also had to talk about the design and operating provisions needed to mitigate and minimize the impact of sodium’s well known chemical reactions with water and moist air. That characteristic requires almost as much attention to keeping the primary coolant system leak tight and reliably separated from the clean steam site of the plant as has always been invested in pressurized water reactors. Low pressures make fabrication of the primary coolant pressure boundary for sodium cooled reactors a little less challenging than it is for very high pressure water. Early in its development, Oklo invested a substantial amount of time recovering data from the EBR-II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. Craig and I talked about the value that quality testing and design data and how Oklo’s investment in organizing, understanding and using that data gives it a valuable head start compared to others who also have access to the government’s results. During its decade+ period of operation, Oklo has developed strong relations with the Department of Energy and its national labs. It has recently announced several partnerships with others that are interested in fuel recycling, uranium enrichment and fast spectrum/liquid metal cooled reactors. It is interested in the potential for

NexGen Energy is a uranium mining company that is nearing the end of a long transition from a successful exploration entity to a uranium producing company. The company is in the final stages of hearings and approvals needed from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to allow it to begin constructing the mine infrastructure for its Rook 1 project. In a term that might be familiar to petroleum energy geologists, Rook 1 is a supergiant resource. Aside: In the petroleum business, a supergiant field is one that contains at least 5 billion barrels of oil. There are more than 250 million pounds of uranium in the measured and indicated mineral resources in the Rook 1 project. Google’s Gemini says that one million pounds of natural uranium contains 31 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). It follows that 250 million pounds contains more than 7.5 billion BOE. End Aside. The ore in the Arrow deposit part of Rook 1 has an exceedingly rare uranium concentration that is as high as 69% uranium oxide. On average, the deposit measures out at well over 3%. Leigh Curyer, NexGen’s founder and CEO, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his company’s successful and continuing exploration program. We talked about the growing need for uranium fuel as the nuclear energy market expands, the tightness in the current supply chain and the impacts of a new production source that is planning to supply between 22% and 25% of the current annual uranium supply. Curyer spoke about NexGen’s investments in planning and engineering a mine that balances the needs for profitable extraction, minimum environmental impacts and maximum community benefits. He described the company’s strategy of remediating impacts as the mining continues so that there is less to do once the mine closes. If you are interested in uranium mining or if you are concerned about the sustainability of nuclear energy in terms of ensuring an adequate fuel supply, you will find this to be a fascinating conversation.

Dr. Hash Hashemian has been an inspiring leader in the nuclear industry for half a century. He was recently inaugurated as the President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) after serving for a year as the Vice President/President Elect. His company, AMS Corporation, provides key services and products to nearly every nuclear power plant in the United States and a growing portion of those located outside of the United States. He founded AMS with a partner in 1977 and became the sole owner in 1986. Even though it is a relatively small company with an average head count of 100 people, AMS maintains a strong research and development organization. AMS employees, including Dr. Hashemian, have published hundreds of papers in academic journals and produced a significant body of original research. Hash is a nuclear energy industry expert with an enormous breadth and depth of experience. On this episode of the Atomic Show, we skimmed over a sampling of his knowledge of the industry. We talked about his visions and plans for the next year as the President of ANS, his view of the future of nuclear energy and our slightly differing views of the role that the government should play in getting a nuclear power plant building effort off of the ground. We discussed Dr. Hashemian’s successful, inspiring effort to obtain not one, not two, but three PhD’s over a 10 year period while running a business and raising a family. Besides his incredible work ethic, he shared another tactic – he devoted the hours of 9:00 pm to 2:00 am to study each day during that decade. Dr. Hashemian is a proud graduate of the University of Tennessee. His business is headquartered in Knoxville, not far from Oak Ridge. He is an active member of the East Tennessee nuclear industry, which currently includes 156 companies. We talked about Tennessee’s leadership within the industry, the investments that the state is making in maintaining its leadership and the special advantages of having Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 and legacy defense-related nuclear sites that are being cleaned and leveled. These sites provide large tracts of land that are available to nuclear-focused companies at attractive prices. Colleges and universities in East Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and Roane State Community College are academic assets that are training engineers and technicians in fields relevant to the nuclear industry. Dr. Hashemian reminded us that states like Texas and Virginia are also racing to be nuclear industry leaders. We took advantage of Dr. Hashemian’s special knowledge of nuclear power plant instrumentation and control systems to discuss the reasons why the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet almost exclusively still uses analog protection and alarm systems. We talked about some of the changing I & C needs for advanced reactors and the usefulness of a wide variety of sizes and configurations for nuclear energy facilities. Dr. Hashemian is a believer in an “all of the nuclear plant sizes above” catalog. Dr. Hashemian also shared his nuclear energy origin story. Like several other prominent nuclear industry leaders, he grew up in Iran during the period when it was still ruled by the Shah of Iran. Throughout almost all of the 1970s, the Shah was pursuing a plan to build 20 large nuclear power plants to provide electricity to his rapidly modernizing country. That plan was openly aimed at reducing Iran’s domestic oil and gas consumption so that more of those valuable products could be exported into the world market. Aside: As Atomic Insights has said many times, nuclear fission heat can replace other sources of thermal energy including oil, gas and coal. That gives those whose wealth and power is sourced from combustion fuels a powerful incentive to shape public and political attitudes about their most capable competitive technology. End Aside. The Shah’s government supported thousands of students – including Hash Hashemian – in programs to study nuclear science and engineering and other related fields in some of the best universities in the world. The expectation was that those student would return to Iran and help develop the Shah’s expansive nuclear power program. After the Shah was overthrown, some of the students returned to Iran, but many – like Dr. Hashemian – chose to remain in the United States and build their lives and careers here. Those enterprising, hard-working immigrants – first generation Americans – continue to play an important role in nuclear energy development. The second generation is also contributing their skills, work ethic and intellect. You’ll enjoy this show. We’re sure of it. Now a word from our sponsor. As you’ll hear during the show, there is an intensifying interest in building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world. Customers are clamoring for power sources that are clean, abundant, reliable and afforda