“Nuclear Opportunities Workshop” sees record attendance
Exponential growth reaches 660 registrants as two-day event wraps-up on Wednesday.
“No other state matches Tennessee’s ability in nuclear, and we’re just getting started,” Governor Bill Lee said in a pre-recorded video that launched the first day of the “Nuclear Opportunities Workshop” at the Hilton Knoxville Airport.
The event, which started with 80 or so participants in 2017, achieved another record attendance – 660 attendees including 160 students. The exponential growth in the interest about nuclear energy in the State of Tennessee was at the forefront during the early part of the program. It is organized by the East Tennessee Economic Council.
“We’re going to put a Generation 3 (small modular) reactor at the Clinch River site,” Third District Congressman Chuck Fleischmann declared in his opening remarks that preceded two keynote speeches.
Key themes that permeated the presentations ranged from the acceptance that the East Tennessee community has related to nuclear to the companies that are moving operations here truants to that acceptance, the technology assets that exist, workforce initiatives, and the availability of land.
The first two keynote presentations – one national, the other more local – set the tone. The first featured Brian Smith, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors in the Department of Energy (DOE), while the other came from Brandon Gibson, Chief Operating Officer for the State of Tennessee.
Noting that the U.S. needs to triple its energy capacity by 2050, Smith said nuclear already accounts for a fifth of the nation’s energy supply and one-half of the source of clean energy.
“Public-private partnerships are critical,” he added, noting they will be required to reach the 300 gigawatts of power needed by 2050.
Smith referred attendees to DOE’s report titled “The Pathway to Advanced Nuclear Commercial Liftoff.” It was a fast-paced and at times humor-infused presentation by the certified Sommelier who also has a background in professional golf before joining the U.S. Navy.
Gibson, who said Governor Lee is as excited as anyone in the state about nuclear, described a conference she attended last week in Pittsburgh, PA along with 900 other women. It was the U.S. Women in Nuclear event.
When they heard what her role is in state government, she said attendees asked, “Why are you here?” She found the answer when the participants in a capstone project described the title of their work: “Hype, Disrupt. Connect.”
“I’ve been pondering that for a week,” Gibson said, adding that it “has seeped into my mind” and, perhaps more important, has become her mantra for the nuclear priority that is clearly a major emphasis for the Governor and his administration during the last 18 months of his second term.
She cited references to the nuclear industry and the Clinch River site in the Governor’s “State of the State” speech in 2022, the May 16, 2023 Executive Order 101 that established the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council, and two rounds of funding – one in 2023 and an additional one in 2024 – that created the incentive fund for nuclear companies interested in locating in the Volunteer State.
Ken Rueter, President and Chief Executive Officer of UCOR, the Oak Ridge clean-up contractor, provided an important and perhaps under appreciated comment during one of the panels that was focused on the role of clean-up in terms of nuclear opportunities in the region. He said every other nuclear community wants what “this amazing place” has figured out.
“People, supply chain, and acceptance have come together,” Rueter explained, a point that Jay Mullis, his fellow panelist. The Field Office Manager for DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management asked a simple but powerful question: “How many Governors are actively recruiting nuclear?”
Other panels on the first day focused on everything from fusion energy to the nuclear fuel cycle, energy security, the work and pending report of the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council (more about that panel in Thursday’s edition), and the pathway to deployment of advanced nuclear including a small modular reactor.
Prior to the “Atomic After Party,” attendees heard from Candice Robertson, Senior Advisor in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
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