Project Pele and the Future of U.S. Military Energy Resilience: A Discussion with Dr. Jeff Waksman

Yeah, I mean, the way you described what Rickover did is amazing.

completely accurate.

And as you said, there were designs that were more efficient and better in basically every way than pressurized water reactors.

But when you're putting a boat under the water, pressurized water reactors are what makes sense.

In fact, I think Rick Ober had a quote that said that if the whole ocean was made of molten salt, some damn fool would try to build a water reactor.

And it's the same basic concept.

So the thing is, from the industry perspective, I mean, there's been lots of studies about this, I'm sure you're aware of, that the pressurized water reactors we build our commercial grid out of are not really the logical reactor design you would choose for commercial reactors.

They have complications.

They are more expensive for a number of reasons.

However, because the Navy had fleshed out the pressure as water technology, that was what we were good at.

That was what we had a supply chain for.

That's what we had expertise for.

That's what we got good at.

And so while these other reactors on paper are more efficient and cheaper, et cetera, We have not successfully actually made them cheaper and better because we haven't been able to build enough of them that we get good enough at it.

And so as we try to finally move to this world of advanced reactors, this is why we have to be strategic about it.

Having 15 different companies trying 15 different concepts is not going to work because you will never build up enough learning.

You'll never build up enough of the supply chain to make it happen.

So part of the idea behind Project Pele was to try to kind of shrink the number of possible technologies and build out a supply chain and a group of experts that we could then move forward with that sort of concept.

It doesn't mean that we're locking in on one company or one specific design.

but just cultivate a supply chain and just people who get hands-on and build enough reactors that they get good at them.

In the same way that SpaceX has gotten so good at building rockets because they build so many rockets.

Whereas when NASA is trying to build SOS that launches once every two years, how good can anyone be at anything that they do once every two years? So this is part of what I believe is a big part of the executive agency in the Pentagon.

This is part of what I'm trying to flesh out internally here is that it's not that we're going to tell the Air Force and Navy what to do.

You know, they can choose different vendors and that's fine.

But we need to kind of limit the option space to make sure that they're not spinning off in completely new directions with expertise that's not relevant to other expertise.