Green Giants – Episode 80

Wes Ashworth (02:18)

Yeah, it’s super fascinating, especially starting from the climate question, ending up at nuclear waste, not the usual path, would say, but it’s fantastic and really sets the stage for how unconventional this company’s thinking has been, really from the start. And so, for you, you’ve spent more than two decades in nuclear waste management. What pulled you into just such a complicated and maybe controversial field?

Rod Baltzer (02:57)

Pure blind luck. So, I’m an accountant by training. I’m a CPA and was actually doing work in audit for public accounting. And I was walking across the parking lot one day, and somebody I used to work with said, hey, you know, if you’re ever thinking about changing, we’ve got an opening at our company. And I did change and went there and they had a company called Waste Control Specialists.

They were working to dispose of low-level radioactive waste. I didn’t know anything about it before I started working on it, but I spent almost 20 years there and I came up through the finance side and wound up as CEO. And so, I got involved and once you get in it, it’s hard to get out. And it’s just fascinating, as hopefully we’ll find out on the podcast, but it’s an interesting topic and I kind of love it. You’re making a difference.

So, you’ve got some value added as well as just all the other kinds of business aspects that go with it.

Wes Ashworth (03:54)

Yeah, super interesting. I think we will get into some of those really interesting facts as we get going. You know, it’s one of those; it’s like you’re tackling one of the industry’s deepest pain points really head-on. And I love the fact that I kind of like fell into it. So many great people that I talked to in great careers, it happens like that. You know, it’s not like they set out to this exact path, but ultimately, it’s where you end up, and you find where you’re supposed to be. So, I love that.

So, when you first joined Deep Isolation, I guess what made you personally believe this could actually work so that horizontal drilling could solve a decades-old problem?

Rod Baltzer (04:27)

Yeah, one of the things people probably don’t understand is the deeper you go, the more casing strings there are, the deeper the pressure, the higher the temperature, and it just gets more costly. And so, when I found out Deep Isolation was going to go horizontal, so they didn’t have to go as deep and the canisters could lay on their sides instead of being stacked on top of each other and they’re heavy canisters, so they could crush, you know, I thought, man, this is a game changer. This could really work. And that got me excited about it.

Wes Ashworth (04:55)

Yeah, it’s cool too, just the blend of oil and gas kind of meeting nuclear, maybe an unexpected crossover, but it’s a cool, great example of just tech convergence driving climate progress and just that innovation maybe from other industries as well. And what happens when we open our perspective too and learn from what others are doing and other technologies that are out there. So, I love that, that.

So, with that too, I just want to kind of get into the nuts and bolts of it because technology itself is what makes this such a breakthrough and I think probably few people really know much about it. So, can you walk us through how Deep Isolation’s borehole system actually works, just in plain, simple language, what it is doing and how does it works?

Rod Baltzer (05:32)

Yeah, so when you’ve got a typical nuclear power plant, it has spent nuclear fuel assemblies inside. And so, the one that’s most common in the US is a pressurized water reactor. And so that assembly is about 12 inches. It’s square, but 12 inches on the diagonal. And it’s about 12 to 14 feet long. And so, our idea is, OK, take that one assembly and put it into a canister, a round canister and then put that into a borehole.

So, you take a drilling rig, you drill down, call it a mile deep. It depends on the site and the geology and other things, but it could be anywhere from a little less than a mile to two or three miles deep if you needed to. But turn, it’s a very gentle turn because this is a big canister. It’s about 16 feet long when it’s all done and said. And you’re going to turn about four degrees per hundred feet and wind up horizontal, could be slanted or straight vertical, but using our directional drilling, it would be horizontal. And then you can place individual canisters down through that borehole into the disposal zone in that horizontal section. You could put about 200 or so. It depends on how long you go laterally.

Generally, we’ll call it a mile deep and a mile long. You could place that with nuclear reactors, so you don’t have to transport it, or you could have a centralized facility somewhere if you needed to. It depends on the country and what the community is interested in and all that entails. But the idea is that one spent nuclear fuel assembly goes down a borehole that’s fully cased, it’s submitted into place, it’s a very gentle curve, put these in, it’s about 20 of those boreholes for a one-gigawatt reactor that has 60 years’ worth of fuel that it’s generated from its lifetime.

So very economical, it’s about 70 % less than a mined repository, which is the other technology that people have thought about.

Wes Ashworth (07:21)

Yeah, it’s incredible. The image really helps. It helps it kind of make sense and get your head around it. And another thing, so you were talking about the universal canister system being really a game-changer. What does that innovation really make possible that wasn’t possible before?

Rod Baltzer (07:38)

Yeah, so our universal canister has really been designed for both that legacy PWR fuel we just kind of talked about and advanced reactor fuels. So, this is your triso molten salts, even vitrified waste out of reprocessing. And that canister, once you put the fuel in it, can be stored above ground. So, if you don’t know what you’re going to do with it yet, you can put it in above-ground storage like all the other waste that’s ever been generated.

You can transport it if you need to between sites or to a disposal facility or a storage facility, whatever you need to. It could go into a borehole. Obviously, it was designed for that with that purpose in mind, but also to be a mined repository. So, if you really don’t know what you’re going to do, you put it in this universal canister, and it really is flexible for waste types. And then you don’t have to repackage it.

So, in the U.S. right now, we’ve got our waste in dry casks. These are much larger, 10 feet in diameter, about 18 feet tall, very thick-walled, and lots of shielding around that, but they hold 37 of these assemblies. If we had to repackage that, it would be about $20 billion. So, a lot of cost. And then of course, you get radiation dose from doing these operations and things. we’re always kind of working with companies, of this universal canister really is something that would allow you to be more flexible in your approach and package it for the long term, even if that long term is uncertain.

Wes Ashworth (08:59)

Yeah, pretty remarkable. In essence, one design that can handle storage, transport, and disposal is, game-changer for sure. And a huge simplification for a really complex issue in a complex industry. You also said costs, which I really want to get into a little bit. Deep isolation is up to 70 % cheaper and dramatically faster than traditional mined repositories. Tell us a bit about that. What drives those economies?

Rod Baltzer (09:23)

Yeah, when the industry kind of started looking at different disposal options, they thought about boreholes, but this was back in the 50s, 60s, and they just didn’t have the technology. And so, they started looking at the mine repositories and really kind of defaulted to that. And so, when you think about a mine repository, it’s about a half a mile underground and it’s about an 18-foot diameter entrance, so you can literally drive a truck through it.

And so, when we look at a borehole, we’ve got a 21-inch borehole and we don’t have to excavate nearly as much rock. When you’re in a mined repository, you’ve got to have ventilation systems and lots of safety for underground workers and miners and things. You’ve got to construct that whole facility at once before you start putting waste in it. But with a borehole, it can be modular.

So, you can do just one if you want to start with. Or you can put several in at a time, but you don’t have humans underground, there’s no ventilation systems or other things. So, it really does help keep that cost lower.

Wes Ashworth (10:18)

Yeah, so cost-effective, cheaper, safer, quicker. It really does sound like a no-brainer when you really look at it. It’s absolutely incredible technology.

Rod Baltzer (10:28)

You mentioned quicker, that’s the thing. So, when you look at the finished program, it’s gonna be the first to open a mined repository. It took them 10 years to build their mined repository. When we talk about drilling a borehole, it’s about 60 days. And so that’s one out of 20, but that’s a lot faster than what you can do in a mined repository.

Wes Ashworth (10:42)

Yeah, huge efficiencies there to say the least. Huge comparison there without a doubt. The other thing, kind of a myth I wanted to clear up, is that a lot of people still picture nuclear waste as this green goo, as displayed on The Simpsons. That’s sort of the visual imagery. Tell us a bit about what the reality is and how you have had such a long tenure in dealing with this and being in the industry? What’s the reality?

Rod Baltzer (11:12)

Reality is nobody takes liquid waste and puts that in a landfill anywhere. So even with low-level radioactive waste, it’s got to be dry. There’s got to be a very, very minimal kind of moisture content because you don’t want this to travel. You want to keep it contained. Same with the spent fuel. You expect this to be dry inside the canister and keep it away from water. And there’s lots of science behind why you need to do that. But that’s the reason.

And so that’s probably the number one thing is this waste is typically heavy. So, for spent fuel, it’s heavy in its metal. And so, it’s a very robust form to keep up with pressures and temperatures and things that get created through the nuclear reaction process. And so that is much different than what you would see in The Simpsons of these barrels, just kind of lying around and people bumping into them with donuts in their hands. It just isn’t going to happen.

Wes Ashworth (12:01)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a funny comparison, but it’s also powerful. I mean, I think most people haven’t seen nuclear waste or had an encounter with it. So, it’s like, what do you have to go off of? I do think visuals matter, and that kind of cultural myth can shape opinion and policy and everything else. So good to clear and kind of just taking that myth busting again, a little deeper, safety and perception are really everything in this space. And I know that comes up a lot.

So, what’s the single biggest misconception people have about nuclear waste?

Rod Baltzer (12:30)

Yeah, I think, you know, but besides the form of it, part of it is also the safety. So, people get very concerned about transportation. But there is a lot of protection that goes in as you transport this. We do transport nuclear waste around the US and around the world. And it happens incredibly safely, but people are very kind of troubled by it. And I think part of that is that it may bring it closer to their home through their neighborhoods.

For an American, about one in three lives within 50 miles of nuclear waste that’s stored. Most of them don’t realize that. But it’s near population areas, particularly along the coasts and things. So, I think some of those myths are out there. And as people start to look more at it and some of the safety stats on it, look up some of the YouTube videos. They’ve got literally a rocket strapped to a train that runs through a nuclear waste canister.

I mean, it’s an incredible video. So, you know, encourage you to do a little homework at home after the podcast.

Wes Ashworth (13:25)

Yeah, I’ll find that video and link it in the show notes as well, so give everybody quick access. With some of the safety concerns, you’ve modeled out safety scenarios for more than a million years, which is incredible, including earthquakes and aquifers. What do those results show you about how secure this really is?

Rod Baltzer (13:30)

Yeah, what we found is that borehole disposal is very robust to a lot of different situations. So, in our normal model, we’re roughly a kilometer, kilometer and half deep, which kilometer and a half is about a mile. and then turned horizontal. We’ve also done vertical testing, but we assume that in a normal situation, how long does that waste take to migrate? It will eventually rust that canister and the waste will get out.

We expect there are some underground transport flow processes and that there is a resident intruder kind of above the facility. There’s an aquifer that he uses for drinking water, waters his garden, his cattle, et cetera. He’s a subsistence farmer. And so how does that dose reach him? What kind of quantities and what kind of time scale? And so, in the normal situation, it takes 1.6 million years for that peak dose to get there.

We assume the regulatory limit is 10 millirem, which is about a chest X-ray. And he’s getting a thousand times less than that, 1.6 million years into the future. So, a thousand times less than 10 millirem, my best analog is it’s eating a banana once a year. So, I typically have one every day for breakfast, doesn’t bother me. The average American kind of walking around gets about 600 millirem just walking around the face of the earth. So, it’s a very, very low amount. Even when we look at faults, let’s assume we missed a fracture of the size of the San Andres fault that ran right through our disposal zone to the surface and created a fast path. It still takes more than half a million years to get there. And it’s still almost a thousand times less than that regulatory limit.

So, it’s faster, but it’s still incredibly safe. It’s just that depth. just takes a long time to get there, and the waste decays and there are lots of safety factors included with that.

Wes Ashworth (15:36)

Yeah, it’s pretty, pretty amazing. Especially modeling out over a million years, and kind of looking at those things. But it’s great you’re doing that work and thinking about the future and long term and obviously seeing how safe it is, which is pretty incredible. I know you’ve also surveyed and show like 80 % of Americans would rather have waste disposed of below ground,  where it’s generated, instead of transporting it long distances. What does that tell you about how people actually think about this issue?

Rod Baltzer (16:01)

Yeah, I think part of this goes back to that kind of transportation and being more concerned with that than some of the other factors. We transport and store nuclear waste. It’s been very safe. part of this is that the communities wanted the nuclear power plant there. And it created jobs and property taxes, and economic development in general. And then after 60 years or so, it shuts down, and they decommission it and they tear everything down, all the buildings, places like Waste Control Specialists go to dispose of that low-level waste. But the spent fuel doesn’t have a home. And so, it just sits there above ground. You can’t reutilize that property, and it’s just taking maintenance, security monitoring for that waste for an unknown period of time.

So, I think communities are concerned about transporting past schools or through neighborhoods or anything. But, know, you also don’t want it just to stay above ground and be stored forever. And so, if you could put it in a safer configuration, deep below ground and be done with it, I think that’s where we’re seeing there is some positive momentum toward that. It’s a little different than, hey, I want to bring waste into your backyard that’s not there. They already have waste in their backyard. Now, what do you want to do with it?

Wes Ashworth (17:14)
Yeah, absolutely. And digging into the transportation side of that a little bit further, I know it’s one of the most protested parts of nuclear, and where that concern is, and we’ve talked through that a little bit. So, why do you think that is? And then how else do you address it when you’re addressing those transportation concerns or those concerns about that piece of the puzzle?

Rod Baltzer (17:34)

And but part of it also is, when you live next to a nuclear power plant, you probably have neighbors that may work there or you’ve taken a tour of it or you see it in the news a lot and they’re contributing to the community, coaching little league, what whatnot. When it’s just being transported, you don’t get that context. You don’t know how safely it’s being handled. You don’t understand some of that. And so, I think that’s part of it. I think there’s not a lot of education we get on nuclear just in our daily lives. And so, it is a little bit of a mystery. You can’t see it, taste it, or smell it. So, it’s just this weird thing that you don’t understand. It’s hard to wrap your arms around.

You might see a transportation accident with a semi who’s hit a car, and you can understand that immediately. And you worry about nuclear waste doing the same thing, not knowing that for transporting that, for spent fuel, they have to go through a battery of tests including a drop from 30 feet onto a solid sphere object, put it in jet fuel and burning it, and then put it in water and let it sit there for a while and making sure it’s leak-proof through all of that. So, it’s really kind of amazing, the technology, engineering, and just robustness of the system.

Wes Ashworth (18:36)

Yeah, incredibly safe, especially once you really know all that. And as you said, most people probably don’t think about it. But the more you learn and you find out this fact, you’re like, OK, it’s done obviously in an extremely safe way. We’ve touched on a bit of the technology and how it works, and all those sorts of things and shift a little bit just to policy and politics that often make or break progress. And I want to talk about that side.

See, the US still legally limits waste disposal to Yucca Mountain, a site that’s been dormant for over 15 years. Tell us a bit more about that, and just how do you navigate that?

Rod Baltzer (19:20)
Yeah, the US has what we call the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and it basically says you can only dispose of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Yucca Mountain is about 60 miles from Las Vegas, and Nevada has been very opposed to it forever. And in 2008, funding got pulled, and so the Yucca Mountain project stopped. The US had spent, I think, $13 billion on Yucca Mountain, and it just kind of stopped.

So, we really haven’t restarted it. It’s gone through changes of administration and different politics in the White House and whatnot, but nobody’s wanted to restart it. And so, we’re just kind of stuck. We can’t use Yucca Mountain, but you can’t use anything else because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act says you can only use Yucca Mountain. So, we really just need a change to kind of open that up, allow us to look at a second site, allow us to look at other technologies, and be more kind of generic toward that, non-descriptive toward that.

Wes Ashworth (20:19)

Yeah, and it’s obviously pretty telling, not necessarily as much of a technology problem anymore. It’s a policy bottleneck. You’d also shared that Europe, especially Eastern Europe, is really moving faster on solutions like this and always comparing to what else is happening out there. Why is the US lagging behind and what are some things that we could learn from what Europe is doing?

Rod Baltzer (20:37)

Yeah, so Europe has they’ve had some interest in Europe with the EU taxonomy. And so, they had this debate and they basically said, is nuclear green? Are we going to include that and allow the financing of that to be deemed green, which gives you better financing terms? They said, well, we’ll allow it, but only if you can have an operational nuclear disposal facility by 2050.

Well, with these mine repository programs, it’s almost impossible to meet that, but you could with a borehole. And so, Europe has been pretty interested in looking at some of these borehole technologies, sometimes as a supplement to a mined repository. I mean, I’ve been talking badly about mines, but I’ll note that we will need one in the U.S. Not everything fits in a borehole. We’ve got some waste forms that are too big. Same with the UK or other places.

And so, a borehole can take some of that higher heat-generating waste out of that mine repository and make it easier, simpler, and lower the costs for the whole program. But what we see in Europe is that they’re looking forward. There are countries like Estonia that have said, we don’t have nuclear power right now, but we’re interested. But if you bring it, bring a disposal solution. So we see a lot of interest, I guess, in Europe, with looking at some of this, trying to meet some of their deadlines they’ve got.

Wes Ashworth (21:58)

And Estonia’s approach kind of, you know, it makes sense to me in saying like, if you build nuclear, you must also build disposal. It seems like they should go together, but I guess why isn’t that more just common sense everywhere?

Rod Baltzer (22:10)

Part of this was when nuclear power started, we finished World War II, and we had all the kind of destruction associated with nuclear bombs. And then we had Atoms for Peace and started building reactors and putting those out. And people didn’t think much about the waste. We’ll deal with that when we get there, and we didn’t realize how hard it would be. And we’ve learned a lot about how to manage this waste over time. And we’ve improved the safety and reliability of nuclear in general, but particularly on the waste side.

So, I think for some of the countries, they’ve been in nuclear for a while, and they’ve got this legacy and they have a hard time turning programs or changing policy. But for new countries like Estonia, they’ve got a blank slate, and they’ve also got 70 years of history. And so they can look back on what has worked and what hasn’t worked and what do you want to do now to make sure you’re set up for the future. So, kudos to them for being forward-thinking and looking at this as they start to hopefully deploy new nuclear in those countries.

Wes Ashworth (23:09)

Yeah, again, their approach makes a ton of sense. And if you use it, you own it, and you should dispose of it. I think that’s good common sense. Obviously, nuclear has come roaring back into the climate conversation. So quiet for a good while. Now, in recent years, it’s like you’re hearing nuclear a lot. SMRs and small modular reactors and everything kind of related to nuclear and all this sort of stuff.

Thinking about that and a bit more focused attention, more of the stuff is coming online now. How urgent is it that these disposal solutions are just ready before this next wave of plants, and you know, do you see when you’re thinking about that?

Rod Baltzer (23:44)

Yeah, one of the biggest questions still out there is what are you going to do with the waste? And so, you know, there is concern that if you don’t have a waste solution, you don’t have a really solid plan, what are you to do with it? Why should you build new nuclear? You’re just adding to the problem. We’ve already got 400,000 metric tons of this nuclear waste produced globally. And so, I think there is some urgency and a need to get this done.

The other piece of this is we’re now exploring a lot of these new advanced nuclear plants, and they use different types of fuel. And so, as people have started to plan for mined repositories and things, we see Canada, they are going through a siting process right now for a mined repository, but it’s for their CANDU reactors, but it’s only for CANDU fuel. And now there are different SMRs and things being proposed for Canada that wouldn’t quite fit that criteria.

So, I think having a variety of tools in the toolbox, so you can handle a variety of different waste and some of the new advanced ways that haven’t been as common. So, I think there is an opportunity there.

Wes Ashworth (24:46)

Yeah, and what are you seeing? Do you feel like the problem is being worked on in terms of policy and things like that as well? Are you seeing progress happen at the same time as we talk about bringing some plants online and things like that? Where is that? And do you feel hopeful about, hey, I think we’re gonna get there?

Rod Baltzer (25:04)

I do think we’re going to get there. I am an optimist by nature, and that probably saves me because things move slowly in nuclear waste and nuclear in general, but particularly nuclear waste. It’s at the back. If I go to a conference, we’re usually the last ones on the agenda if we’re going to talk about waste. So, I’m tickled pink that we’re here leading the podcast here for Green Giants on nuclear.

But I do think there’s been interest. The US government has provided a lot of grant funding for us, looking at this universal canister and some of the safety processes and things. So, I think there has been an understanding that we need to do something about the nuclear waste and that we can. There is technology out there. It is hard nowadays to get the government to kind of move forward cohesively; nuclear seems to be one of those bipartisan things. And so, I am optimistic that we can make more progress on nuclear waste than we have in the past.

Wes Ashworth (26:03)

Yeah, good to hear progress is happening and again, that you’re feeling hopeful and positive as well in what’s unfolding. I want to switch a little bit, just talk about business for a moment. Innovation at the scale only works through collaboration, and I know Deep Isolation has MOUs with reprocessing companies and governments. How do partnerships like these help prove your model and accelerate adoption overall?

Rod Baltzer (26:24)

And one of the things we wanted to make sure of with Deep Isolation was that we didn’t recreate the wheel. And so, as we partner with some of our supply chain partners, whether they’re on the drilling or make nuclear canisters or provide high-hazard specialty services, that’s something we want to make sure we’re leveraging. But we also want to partner with governments. These are typically: our customer is going to be a radioactive waste management organization.

So, in the US, it’s the US Department of Energy that’s responsible for spent fuel. The utilities typically pay a price per kilowatt into a nuclear waste fund. And then that agency would supposedly dispose of that fuel to be done yet, but in process, and so working with these governments, making sure that they understand what borehole can provide for their budgets, for their technology insights and just planning those are important for us as well.

Wes Ashworth (27:17)

Yeah, it is really interesting and I think more and more you see the importance of these partnerships and collaborations and really becoming a main focal point as well too as the industry moves forward across a lot of different parts of the industry. Another thing I wanted to address so there’s this persistent myth that reprocessing or even fusion will eliminate the need for disposal. I guess why do those ideas keep resurfacing and what’s the real story there?

Rod Baltzer (27:41)

As you talk about the MOUs and things, we do work for Oklo and Shine, and we have MOUs with Curio, and these are all leading reprocessing companies in the US looking at that technology. We recognize that reprocessing or recycling could reduce some of the volumes, but all of these are still going to have a waste product at the end.

And so, if you could couple borehole technology with that, you might reduce the waste, and then you still have a safe solution for that at the end. But also, some of the fuel that has been there in storage for such a long period of time it’s old and cold, and it may be more challenging to reprocess some of the new advanced fuel types. Some of that is a little more challenging to reprocess. And so maybe not everything fits through there. It’d be great to have a magic bullet, but none of these are.

Wes Ashworth (28:27)

Yeah, it’s one of those like, sounds great, but know, physics still wins out, and there’s still a waste product that needs to be dealt with. This is just a normal part of it. You’ve also worked with US federal agencies and global partners as well. How different are those conversations in DC versus abroad?

Rod Baltzer (28:44)

Yeah, and like I said, we’ve gotten government grants. DC, there is a favorable view, I think, of nuclear and what that can do. And particularly, as we see the AI and data center usage and whatnot, there is so much more power that we’re going to need to generate in the U.S., and having something that’s clean, consistent base load, it just makes a lot of sense.

We would love for them to spend a little bit more attention on the back end. There have been a couple of executive orders recently that kind of nudged that way. But we would love to see a little bit more attention there. When we look internationally, there are fewer hamstrings. We don’t have the Nuclear Waste Policy Act internationally. The guidelines that they’ve got for safety and other things related to disposal are a little bit more agnostic for technology. They’re not specific to a mined repository, but a borehole would fit better in there.

And so, we see a little bit more favorable insight internationally. We think our first customer is probably international and not in the US, just due to those reasons. Hopefully, the US can catch up and kind of take a leading role in that international scope.

Wes Ashworth (29:47)

Yeah, it is fascinating, and we tend to kind of lag behind. Hope one day we don’t, we’re sort of at the forefront of that. But also, good to see these use cases in other countries as well. And sometimes we need that little bit of extra case study to kind of look and go, all right, it worked. Maybe we should change our tune. But hopefully one day, maybe we’ll lead the charge in that as well.

Rod Baltzer (30:08)

Lead it again. Yeah, the US used to be a leader in both nuclear power and waste development and whatnot, and we’ve just really kind of given up the ghost. So yeah, when you get our second legs under us and take off for the race again.

Wes Ashworth (30:10)

Yeah, absolutely great point, and I agree. We’ll get back to that. Pivot a moment from the technology to the person leading it and kind of just learning a bit more about you. So, you mentioned you’re a CPA by training, not necessarily a physicist or engineer. How does that shape your leadership and approach to solving highly technical, complex problems?

Rod Baltzer (30:39)
Yeah, one of the benefits of being in nuclear waste is that there is a lot of technology. I go to a lot of tech conferences and stuff that focus on the science behind some of this. I’ve sat through so many geology lectures, I’ll say, for licensing processes and things that you learn a lot on the job. think part of what comes through is by learning the technology on the job, but having that finance background.

It helps us lead a leaner organization, helps us keep focused on some of the business things that could kill a company, but really make sure you’re developing the technology in the right ways to see that grow and really take hold. So, I try to kind of balance those, but it’s good to have that kind of ingrained in my personality, so to speak.

Wes Ashworth (31:23)

Yeah, and I think the business discipline shows obviously thinking about scalability, cost effectiveness, where others might only see the science. It’s great to have that marriage of the two. I think even more so today, just making the business case and making things make financial sense, and talking about a lot of those costs and the business case versus just talking about green initiatives or climate change or what have you. I think it’s becoming really, really important to help move the industry forward, too. So, I think it’s a great marriage there, having both.

Having led both Waste Control Specialists and Deep Isolation now, what’s been the hardest leadership challenge that’s unique to the nuclear space?

Rod Baltzer (32:00)

Yeah, I think part of this is just the back end. I know the waste is the last thing people kind of want to talk about. That’s the last thing they think about and usually by the time it comes to us. It’s already kind of developed into a form and they’ve got it in a box of some kind and it’s like, well, how do I get that into a compliant kind of configuration that can actually be disposed of? And so that gets a little hard as we get through that that piece.

Wes Ashworth (32:26)

Yeah, no, absolutely. Anything else you do, thinking about that and just knowing that sometimes it’s a bit of an afterthought, right? That’s the last thing people think about. Any approaches, strategies, things you’ve done that help, I guess, bring that earlier in the conversation or create awareness that it’s maybe not the last thing thought about.

Rod Baltzer (32:44)

One of the things I tell everybody at conferences and whatnot is if you spend just a little bit of time upfront thinking about the backend and the waste product, because we spend a lot of time thinking about fuel types or reactors or enrichment processes. But if you could just think of the backend a little bit, it will save you so much time, cost, and dose from radiation. And it’s really kind of worth the investment as you go through it.

Wes Ashworth (32:57)

Yeah, absolutely. And if you were able to speak just directly to the global nuclear industry or those connected to it or interested in it, what’s the message? Do you like direct messaging? kind of share with them, give them about waste. What would you want them to know?

Rod Baltzer (33:24)

Yeah, I want them to know I think we can do something about waste now. We have the technology. I think we’ve got enough willingness to do that. Let’s not punt it to the next generation, and let’s do something now. It’s been sitting out there just waiting for somebody to do something for 70 years. We should do something. We can do this.

Wes Ashworth (33:43)

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Powerful call to action. I agree. Take action now. And I think that follows suit with how we are thinking about things and how we are starting to go about things, and not just punting it down to like, oh, it’s somebody else’s problem, another generation’s problem. They’ll take care of it. I think we’re starting to really take ownership to like, we got to do that. Something now creates something that is going to take care of future generations and not just leave issues and problems for them. So, I think that’s a good one.

Again, thinking about the overall nuclear industry, waste, everything that you’re dealing with, any other things that you commonly have to clear up as you’re talking to friends, family, even maybe, at some of these conferences and things like that, where it’s not directly nuclear, just misconceptions people often get wrong. Are there any other things that you typically share that people are a bit misinformed about?

Rod Baltzer (34:32)

It’s probably different than the question you asked. The thing that has struck me is that some of these conferences we’ll go to are kind of combo conferences. It’s not specific to nuclear. We’ve got a diorama set up, so it shows our technology and the wells, well underground, and all this. And we’ll get drilling people who come and don’t know anything about nuclear. And it’s fun to ask them, what do you think about this? You talk about the technology for five minutes, and they get it immediately.

And then it’s like, do you think this is safe? And they inherently are like, yes, absolutely. And it’s just kind of fascinating to me that they get what depth does and how that rock interacts with different things and how safe it is under there, how hard it is to get things out without having that nuclear background.

The other thing is that nuclear and oil, and gas don’t talk to each other as industries very much. So, we did a small-scale test and we took a three-foot-long canister that was about five inches in diameter down an existing oil well. And we left it there and brought all the cables back, and then went back and retrieved it and pulled it out. Non-radioactive, but just a test. And everybody in oil and gas said, that is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Of course, we can retrieve things. We call it fishing. We take tools in and out of wells all day long.

That’s kind of what we do. And everybody in nuclear went, man, that was the best test ever. I did not know you could retrieve anything out of a borehole. And it’s just kind of bringing these two cultures together has been kind of fascinating to see their misconceptions or perceptions and how they interact with each other.

Wes Ashworth (35:50)

Yeah, I love that you shared that. And I think there is a really a true need for collaboration across industries, kind of breaking those echo chambers and starting to share and collaborate and talk across those different sectors, which agreed, most of the time they don’t. But we can learn so much from each other. And I think we all have the same goal in mind, that we all want energy, we all want a future, we all want a planet going forward. And we can talk and collaborate and share, and a lot more happens that way, so I love that message.

Kind of like as we end and get closer to the end, I wanna start by looking forward a bit. The story isn’t just about managing the past; it’s about shaping the future as we shared. So, if Deep Isolation’s model is adopted widely, what does the world look like 20 years or more from now?

Rod Baltzer (36:54)

Yeah, for Deep Isolation, we want to be successful, and we see that as actually disposing of nuclear waste. So, we think we can be operational and start disposing of nuclear waste in the next few years. So in 20 years, I would expect this to have been implemented in several countries around the globe. It’s been safely done. There’s been, I’ll say acknowledgement that this is a safe, cost-effective way to do this. And it gets implemented, and it’s kind of recognized as just the kind of the status quo, I guess, for disposal in the industry.

Wes Ashworth (37:29)

Yeah, it’s an inspiring vision, one that reframes waste as part of progress rather than a barrier. On the flip side of that, if the world fails to solve the waste issue, what’s the risk?

Rod Baltzer (37:39)

Yeah, the risk is, would that provide a stumbling block for implementation of new nuclear, which I do think would help with, you know, clean climate and just clean air goals and other things as well. The thought is that once waste has been in storage for about 100 years, you may have to repackage it. As we’ve crossed the 60-year mark and are heading quickly to 80. We don’t want to keep that out there very much longer.

So, hopefully, we can have this solution and not have it still stuck there and have to worry about all the repackaging and other efforts that would go into it if we fail to dispose of it now in a timely manner.

Wes Ashworth (38:15)

Yeah, it’s an important point and a good reminder, like climate progress, any of this energy progress can’t be selective about which problems we solve; we need to solve the problems directly and head on. Let me ask you this, so for the next generation of clean energy innovators, ones that are coming up, as experienced as you, kind of getting involved and getting started, what advice would you give those, just they’re tackling big messy challenges like this one from your experience?

Rod Baltzer (38:40)

Yeah, you definitely have to go big. mean, you know, do the impossible, but don’t always have an action plan as well. I mean, trying to go big without having a detailed action plan is kind of hard. There are lots of pivots along the way, but it is one of those. You’ve to have that overarching vision. Go big, make sure it happens. But, you’ve got to do your block and tackling to make sure you get all the details. Nothing can fall through the cracks, unfortunately.

Wes Ashworth (39:04)

Yeah, love that. Good advice, sound advice there. Final question, anything else that you didn’t get to share, final points to leave with the audience. It can be points of advice or hopeful messages, or anything else related to what you do and what people should end on.

Rod Baltzer (39:20)

Wes, I really appreciate the conversation today. I think we’ve covered everything, and the message really is we’ve got solutions for waste, nuclear waste. We can handle this. We do need to get kind of politics out of the way and just kind of focus on getting it done, get her done, and make some progress, have some leadership back in this area again.

Wes Ashworth (39:41)

Yeah, like that. Get her done. Don’t make it a political issue. I love that. Let’s make progress. Let’s make it together. Great way to end it and kind of wrap up. But Rod, thank you so much for joining me today and for the important work you’re doing to help redefine how we think about nuclear energy and waste. It is a complex topic, but conversations like this are exactly what move the industry and public understanding forward.

To our listeners, as always, thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and share the show with others who care about the future of clean energy. Check the show notes for some important links as well. And with that, we will see you soon.