The State of Nuclear Power Today with John Cash

20 Feb 2024 · 36 min
36:28

Interview (Feb 2024) of John Cash (President & CEO, UR Energy) by Chris Larsen about the contemporary role and outlook for nuclear power. Cash summarizes his background in uranium exploration and mining and describes UR Energy’s operations (Lost Creek in Wyoming; Shirley Basin development), noting the company has produced and packaged roughly 3 million pounds of uranium and that Lost Creek and Shirley Basin can produce up to about 2.2 million pounds of yellow cake annually. The conversation covers: the aging U.S. reactor fleet (≈94 reactors, many built in the 1970s–80s), economics and policy shifts favoring nuclear (Inflation Reduction Act, concerns about Russian fuel supply), advances toward small modular reactors and microreactors (including Department of Defense Project Pele and a cited projection of ~300 SMRs in the U.S. by 2050), safety and waste (Cash: per-person lifetime waste could fit in a soda can; regulatory occupational limit noted as 5,000 millirems/year with typical highest employee exposures ≈500 millirems), and uranium fuel cycle steps (mining → conversion → enrichment; one U.S. conversion facility and one commercial enrichment facility operated by Urenco in New Mexico).

Questions this video answers

Approximately 3 million pounds.

Up to about 2.2 million pounds annually.

About 94 reactors.

5,000 millirems per year (regulatory limit).

Around 500 millirems (about an order of magnitude below the limit).

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