Natural Resources committee  It just depends on how much is needed in a specific case, but I'll answer specifically the point that Mr. Binder brought up, because we believe that this is a very important lesson learned from history, which is that you should have no safety interconnection requirements between

Natural Resources committee  There are two applications. There's the industrial type application—for example, smelters and that type of this thing. I think the size of this reactor is perfectly suited to match up with one smelter, let's say. That maybe gives you a sense of the power output of this thing. Of

Natural Resources committee  Our reactor is a single-size 180 megawatts, but you've almost got to think about it like Lego building blocks. Each reactor, of course, has its own fully independent safety system, but it's really meant to be modular in the sense that you can group any number of these together de

Natural Resources committee  I think there are two answers. One is the general answer, which is that whatever assessment or mitigation we come up with will have to get past Mr. Binder's agency. We'll have to make the safety case and will have to satisfy him and all the stakeholders. The specific answer i

Natural Resources committee  The CSC, which is what we're talking about, the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, seeks to harmonize the overall backup across borders and in other countries. What we are proposing and asking for would be something that would be harmonized with what the U.S. has today, be

Natural Resources committee  Sure. I'd be happy to do that. In fact, I grew up 50 miles from Three Mile Island. I was in high school when that happened. So I have a very personal and deep connection to that event and happen to know quite a bit about it. The consensus from every industry expert who's evaluat

Natural Resources committee  The change to the act is more about the magnitude of the liability protection and the cross-border aspect of this thing.

Natural Resources committee  There are two things. One is that we have moved beyond, let's say, a more deterministic approach to safety, in which you try to guess what the specific catastrophe would be, to more of what we call a risk-informed design, which is more a defence in-depth strategy. If you look, f

Natural Resources committee  With that type of carbon tax, a small reactor would be the lowest-cost baseload option available, when compared with coal or natural gas.

Natural Resources committee  I don't think there is consensus in the industry. There are a lot of different stakeholders involved in this, and our company is involved in a lot of different clean energy technologies, including biomass. We think that the environmental impact of different technologies should be

Natural Resources committee  That's a great question. When you look at a truly economic competitiveness environment, you have to look at both the construction costs and the long-term operating costs, that is, with a total cost-of-ownership perspective. It's not only imperative that the construction costs be

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for your question. There are a couple of things. One of the advantages of small reactors is their siting flexibility. Our reactor is 180 megawatts, which is the baseline for one unit. That is 15% of the size of a standard, large 1,000-megawatt type plant. As a result

Natural Resources committee  Yes, and our view right now is that the cost per kilowatt, including the owner's cost, would be under $5,000. That's backed up by detailed civil structural cost estimates from our EPC partner.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, that's a great question. Our reactor and containment building—the nuclear island—is approximately 140 feet deep. That would result in basically a single-storey building that's above ground, similar to a supermarket, which has no safety function whatsoever. It has a number

Natural Resources committee  Yes, and we've done calculations to look at the incremental costs of having the nuclear island completely underground. For a two-unit plant, which would be 360 megawatts at $5,000 a kilowatt, you're talking about an overall investment of about $1.8 billion. The extra cost for dig