The short answer I'll give off the bat is this: The most important thing government can do, when it comes to new technologies we're using to confront the climate crisis and lower GHGs, is to be consistent. Be consistent in talking about the tools we are going to use to tackle this crisis. While the federal government—your government—has made significant progress, especially over the last short number of years, in identifying nuclear and small modular reactors as essential parts of a net-zero future, we see how that language is not being used consistently by all policy-makers. It is not being applied consistently with various financial and tax incentives we see coming out of this government, including the most recent green bond framework, tax incentives and rapid amortization measures that have been extended to other clean technologies.
If we want investors, industry, academia and the whole nuclear ecosystem to be able to deliver on its full potential, we're going to need a strong, consistent signal from all levels of government that nuclear is needed for a clean, net-zero future.
When I started in solar just over 20 years ago, that is exactly what they called solar: an “expensive science experiment”. I find it ironic that some of the people who are the biggest proponents of solar are now looking at small modular reactors and calling them an “expensive science experiment”. We are a handful of years away from deploying various technologies that will demonstrate that if we can put them out and they can deliver on the promise of mass production, which small modular reactors are promising to do from a price standpoint, we're going to see, the same way we saw with wind turbines and solar panels, that the cost is going to come down very dramatically, and it will be a very important tool.