Simon Wakter, pro-nuclear engineer in an ambivalent country

There's a way, a way such a better way today, today. The nation's voice tells the world there's a better way, today there's a better way. This is right, Adams, and it's time for another atomic show. With me today I have Simon Walker, a young consultant and consulting engineer for a company called AFRY, which the company I never really heard of, but they have 17,000 employees. Simon is from Sweden and has some very interesting things to say about nuclear energy and particularly small nuclear reactors. I didn't know Simon very well, but somebody, John Alberg from Carneville Energy, recommended that I taught him because he's got some great things to say. So welcome to you, Simon. Thank you, Rod. It's really nice to be on the show. I'm glad you're for the lovely introduction. I'm glad you can make it well. It's always good to get younger voices here. I used to think of myself as a young guy and interesting in the nuclear world, if you started into the profession sometime in the early 1980s, you ended up being the young person in the room for about 20 years. Because very few people followed on after that. There was this big trunk, trench in the workforce. I'm no longer the young guy in the room, being a grandfather and also, I think that you, in fact, are younger than my children. Tell me a little about yourself and your interest in nuclear energy. Absolutely. Yeah, so I think I am a lot younger than most of your other guests. If we start from the very beginning, I was born in 1991 with some perspective, but I will get back to that later. Then, as I was growing up, the nuclear debate has always been quite heated in Sweden. And I felt that most people that taught about nuclear, everyone was very strongly opinionated on the matter. But perhaps not always, so well, read up on the subject matter. And so I was always interested in it. And then I went to university and studied engineering. I did my bachelor's in sustainable energy engineering. And then after that, I chose, I always had an interesting nuclear, and I did lots of projects in nuclear during my time, I did not know what that safety and risk analysis was quite interesting. But the nuclear is the area that has the most expertise perhaps in safety and risk assessments and so on. And so for my masters, I chose to go into nuclear and I never looked back since. Yeah, then after four of my thesis, for some perhaps background to this podcast, my professor is Janavadyanius. He has a company called Lead Cold Rectors. And so I chose to my thesis within an application for small modular reactors used for this salination within my supervisor. And following that, I then started to work for, I don't know if you want some background on the A3 as well. Sure, since I am a big company that I've never heard of, so please. It started, I think, in the 1800s already, and did boiler inspections. Boiler used to explode all over the place in trains and so on. So it was called on-part of the beginning and a web. And then it's always been like a huge engineering company. And then what is it? One year ago, I go also. They merged with a Finnish engineering company called Perry. And became a web Perry and then following that, it was a few too many exotic letters in the name, I think. For it to make sense, was someone else for your email address. So then came the rebranding to A3. And perhaps that's why not so many people have heard of it because it's a brand new name. But it's the same old company. So your company does a lot of engineering consulting, safety analysis, maybe marketing analysis. What kinds of things do you do in particular? Yeah, so we work with, I think, almost literally everything in lots of different situations. And even within energy, we also do everything. I work in a small part in the energy division. It's called nuclear. And within the die work with nuclear safety and licensing. And so about, I'd say now I spend about one third of my time doing safety analysis work for one of the nuclear power plants in Sweden. Writing F-star, which in Sweden stands for final safety assessment report. But I think you could fund a mental safety assessment report. Actually, I think it's final safety analysis report if I'm not mistaken. Oh, yes. Yeah. I do some work for a power plant here updating their documents, basically doing safety analysis work. And then for another third of the time, I work in a product for the OECD nuclear energy agency, where we collect data on what's called CCF faults. So that's common course failures. And those are faults where you have the same root course that causes several components to break. Not necessarily at the same time, but within a short span of time. And those can be quite serious and troubling. So we have a, for this, it's essentially a data gathering project for the OECD, where we gather data on those problems. And then write reports on it. And then for another third of my time, I would say that I do what's maybe called business intelligence. So I keep a lookout on markets and on nuclear technology to see what's happening and see where we're headed and so on. And I also write a new selector on nuclear technology for energy research agencies. You know, that's one of the areas I think that maybe got John interested in having you talk to me. Your newsletter is probably not available in English. So tell us a little about some of the topics that you're writing about. For the news that we cover any nuclear technology events from a Swedish finish, well, I would say no one is Sweden and Finland happening in the nuclear power plants in Sweden. In the Nordic countries. So we cover any nuclear technology developments from a Swedish finish perspective. From what's relevant from that perspective. And then of course, anything that's really big, but perhaps not still applicable, we try to cover that too. And now recently we have seen some really interesting developments in small modular reactors. So a lot of the articles have been about that. The development in the US and Canada in the UK and in Russia and the northern eastern part of Siberia as well. Yeah. In the US and in Canada, we're very interested in very small reactors for our northern communities. Places where they're not well served by current grid lines and where they have to have diesel delivered remotely. Do you have areas like that in the Nordic countries? No, not in the Nordic countries. We have quite well built out electricity grids. I think Sweden was one of the first countries in the world to have a well developed central grid. Because we had to bring the power from all the hydropowerdowns that were in the north and bring that power down south to where most people live. And where most of the industry was. So no application for that, but the young Navalians who was my professor at university. He developed his reactors called Lead Cold. What a reactor is called, the Silicon is called Lead Cold. Forward Canadian for the Canadian conditions really aimed at very good debt-based Canadian communities that are now powered mostly with diesel fuel, which is expensive and quite polluting. In your research and your determination, where do you see the biggest applications for smaller reactors? Well, I think that one of the biggest advantages with small molecular reactors is the size. And then that brings several sort of secondary advantages in turn. Because when the reactor is smaller, you have a much short construction time. You have much less capital cost for the reactor, you have much less interest cost because now both the capital and building time are shorter. And then that fits with a lot more different investors. So for example, municipalities could invest in this or process industry and so on. And that brings up a whole new market in turn. And then you see all of these new applications that you can go into. For example, district heating, process heat, re-powering coal power plants. What do you mean by re-powering coal power plants? Are you simply going to use all of the steam plant secondary and use a nuclear heat or what? Yeah, so one option that we looked a little bit into is the potential for re-powering coal power plants. Because there are a lot of coal power plants in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. And some of those are relatively small in size that we fit with sort of the range that you see is more modular reactors in. And while there's more modular reactors that we're seeing being developed now don't exactly fit with a coal power plant. Because the temperatures that you would see with steam are not quite high enough. There are high temperature gas reactors that would basically fit perfectly with existing coal power plants. And then what you would do is remove the coal boiler and replace it with a nuclear reactor unit. And then keep the rest of the plant as is. So have you been following developments in China along those lines? Yeah, so I've been looking at the developments in China and now they're constructing the HDR, PN reactor. They're high temperature, the pebble battery after the scaled up version I think of the HDR 10. And so the exciting ones they had that up and running. But there are many other countries that have also been running high temperature or gas reactors. And I think if I'm not mistaken you were also involved with this with the atom's atomic engine. Well, yes I was. Sometimes I ask leading questions and of course there are times when I ask questions that I know the answer to but the audience doesn't necessarily know that. Tell me one area since you've been covering Finland. There's been a project going on at Oklahoma Ludo for a number of years. How close are they to starting up that EPR? Well, it's like the store top is ever over the horizon. I know that the lost message from them was that they had some trouble following the corona crisis obviously. And there was also a problem with a valve leaking that they had fixed or are fixing. And after that I think they will be up running by next year. I'm not sure what time it is. Spring summer meeting. Of course it is a project that's going on for a long time so maybe just give them to the end of the year. What's it like growing up in a country that has an official position of closing down nuclear plants? Almost from the time of your birth, yet you're going to want to be a nuclear engineer. Yeah, the nuclear question is Sweden. And that's always been very sensitive. Not only because the Turaldal disaster was detected first at one of the Swedish nuclear power plants with their radiation detectors. But it's just an infected question. And so from we had a referendum in the 1980s, actually in 1980, or actually let me go back even further because the history is so complex. So Sweden decided basically that we needed to get rid of our dependency on foreign oil, both because it was not so secure to supply it. And also because you were very exposed to price increases following the two, especially of the oil prices. So Sweden started building nuclear reactors essentially. And we built 12 nuclear reactors, so I think between 1972 and 1986 in 12, 13 years. But before some of the reactors could even be started up, there was a big protest saying that without a way to handle the waste, the reactors should not be allowed to start up. And so that led to a ban or basically, yeah, for them to start up. And then that led to a very quick development of different options to take care of the waste, which was essentially reprocessing it together with France. And they signed contracts also, I think with French companies encompassing the UK to reposs Swedish, reposses Swedish waste. And then the other option was, of course, to put it in our final repository. And that solution was accepted by the government. And then following that, the reactors were given an okay to start up. And one day later, three mile island happened in the US, which led to another ban on the reactors to start up. With, I think what was then called the Rudrum's logan, which was a rule put in to give the operation adequate amount of time to react. And so following that, they had to make some adjustments. But then after those adjustments, they would then allow to start up and load the reactors with fuel. And before you guys started building the nuclear plants, there was obviously somebody supplying electricity somehow. What was the source of electricity before your nuclear program began? To a large extent, it was oil, but not so much oil used only in power production, but also for heating your homes. So there was a lot of coal and oil used in boilers at home to heat the houses. And that was a large part of the energy usage. And then this was replaced through electrification and through a build-out of municipal district heating. Which, of course, is an opportunity for motor reactors. Do you, in your research, have you seen any indication of the backing? Who was the big supporters of the effort to slow down the nuclear plants from starting up and displace them? The previous sources of power? I'm not sure. I think I'm only speculating. I think that the nuclear movement grew out of the peace movement in Sweden, like in many other nations, and through completing nuclear weapons with nuclear power. But Sweden did have a nuclear weapons program. And I think that just grew an escalated also there and include any nuclear power effort that came off. The Sweden stopped the nuclear weapons program. And I think it's something that is still true today. If you don't tell your own story, someone will tell it for you. And that's just what happened in this period. They were a little bit asleep and the story told the nuclear power sector had the story told for them. So you've been active in the, basically, the Swedish equivalent of a young generation's program, right? Yeah. So this year, unfortunately, with the coronavirus, I was meant to participate in the young generation network, which is, so it's the European nuclear society as a young generation network. And in Sweden, you can participate. So companies will basically pay for their employees to participate in this, and you do different activities and travel to different locations to learn more about nuclear, or parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, for example. Also traveling within Europe to learn more about it and to lead to other people that work within nuclear. But following the corona events at the beginning of this year, all of those stands are now on hold. What has the conversation about nuclear done in Sweden in recent months as car and full energies offering of 100% nuclear electricity? Had any impact on how people respond to, think about, talk about nuclear energy? I'm not sure how big an impact they've had by themselves, but there has certainly been a very big turn, I think, in opinion. In the 1980s, we had a referendum on nuclear power, which said that we should get rid of. It was kind of, I think that John and Christian already told you about this when they listed on the podcast, but that in 1997 was the only real effect of that referendum when they made a decision to shut down to reactors prematurely in the south of Sweden. And then in 2009 it was again allowed to open up nuclear units, and then in 2016, and the energy agreement was made, which also removed a nuclear tax that we had an effect on nuclear units. And then ever since that, really, I think that the opinion on nuclear has sort of swung back more and more towards being a favor of nuclear. And this kind of escalated, I think, last year when some of the parties in this energy agreement left, the agreement. And then we also saw this handful, I think, was the first one, but I believe there are five different companies that now all offer 1% nuclear energy. So there's been a real proliferation of these companies that are taking advantage of this guarantees of origin system. The country or customer is 100% nuclear electricity, which I believe is nice, instead of only being allowed, for example, 100% renewable or something else. So if you were to make a prediction, do you think that there'd be anybody building any new nuclear plants in Sweden in the next 10 or 20 years? This is a really good question. It's also a good illustration of how complicated the question is in Sweden, because through the ban on building new nuclear was already removed in 2009 to 2010. Then in through this energy agreement, which is still in effect, essentially you're allowed to build new nuclear units, but only to replace any of the 10 that existed at the time, since then one has been shut down, one other one is shut down at the end of this year. And so you're only allowed to build a new nuclear unit to replace one of the existing ones that has been permanently shut down and also at the existing site. And then obviously it's not free to build nuclear power at all, since only the two companies Sweden that own nuclear generating units are the only ones that can build new ones, because they own the locations and they also own the new nuclear units. Well, there has been mixed messages. I know that, but in fact, there was a new squad recently that they are involved in Estonia, in a project together with the newly created company Fermi and a nuclear. And also with Tractable, I think, the Belgian engineering company and the Fokum, the Finnish owned energy company. And they are all looking at the deployment of small modular reactors in Estonia, which I think is a very interesting prospect, because they both have quite a dirty electricity mix, which will get, it's not only polluting, but it will also get expensive as the price of emissions increase in Europe. It's also interesting to see if we will see what the reactors are, because I know they're looking at a few different options, see what reactor they finally go with. And if we will see one of these perhaps new applications for it too, like distributing, for example. And this is a T is an interesting application for a conventional light water reactor, because you don't need too high a temperature to make that system work well. One of your neighbors, or close nearly a neighbor, I guess Belgium is getting ready to shut down all their nuclear plants. And of course Germany is progressing within two years now of completely closing nuclear. What effect is that going to have on the regional electricity supply? Of course, when you take loads of dispatchable generating units offline, there are amount of energy that you can depend on to generate. For example, because throughout Europe, or at least more than Europe, the highest load period will be winter. So the amount of generation that you can depend on obviously decreases. And that's also what we're seeing throughout Europe. In Sweden now we're seeing in winter we have a deficiency in dispatchable electricity supply for the winter. And that is also coming to Germany and also to France, I think. That they will also see a lack of dispatchable generation capacity. So what does a young person do about this stuff when you see this happening? Well, of course I think it's the wrong decision. You may think whatever you want of nuclear, but when you're still burning lignite, it's the wrong decision to take nuclear units offline. Of course, Germany is now taking a new cold unit online, which is kind of underlining the irony of it of the decision. But so I've tried to engage more and more, because like I told you before, I think if you don't tell your own story someone else will tell it for you. And I think in nuclear energy has a very important place in the energy system, along with solar and wind and other sources of power. I was elected now to the board for the Swedish nuclear society, where we tried to lift a positive advantages of nuclear power. And also other peaceful uses of nuclear technology. And last year it was autumn. We started the Swedish econ modernists. Now this is not all about nuclear power, far from it. But we see also nuclear power as an important solution in future energy mix to decarbonize the energy system. And to decrease the overall footprint of our energy usage. If you had a chance to see some of the recent documentaries that are focused on future energy, for example, have you looked at planet of the humans and how does that position strike you again from the point of view of someone who still has a lot of living left to do? Yeah, so I watched the humans. I also actually only just this morning watched the juice documentary, which I know you watched as well. I saw from your website. And my impression of planet of the humans was not a great perhaps. It was very dramatic, I think, dramatic, editing, dramatic music, not too many facts and also quite outdated information. I was not so impressed. And I wasn't impressed either with the overall outlook of the documentary. It's a very pessimistic outlook, I think. And I don't subscribe at all to the whole D-Growth mindset. So contrast that was what you say you just saw a juice. Obviously you got an early, early opening since it's not quite released. What do you think of the way they portray the importance of electricity and energy? In our modern living? Yeah, exactly. So it's not released yet, but I got access to an early viewing of through generation atomic. I think it provides a much more interesting and overall sort of human positive view on energy usage. And I think really the energy poverty perspective that it obviously is really important. A million people don't have access to electricity and nearly three billion people. don't have nearly the same access to electricity that we do in most parts of the western world or the developed world. I think it's really a shame mostly because of the kind of the human potential that goes to waste. So do you see energy as some sort of commodity that needs to be carefully conserved or do we have options that would enable us to live abundant lives without as much impact on the natural systems as a planet? Oh no absolutely I think we have plenty of options to increase the energy usage. I'd like to say two things but first I like to make the parallel I don't know internationally but at least in Sweden we like to think of ourselves as like big exporters of music especially pop music. We have loads of bands like ABA obviously different sounds. But we also have many songwriters Max Martin and many others that basically every number one song you've heard is written by a Swedish songwriter and I think this is much thanks to the Swedish musical program where every person in Sweden has access to basic musical education when you're in school. You have to apply and you may have to queue for a while to get access to play an instrument and you may not get exactly the instrument you want like guitar or piano but everyone can play an instrument and access to musical education and then you reach the potential all of those people and that's exactly what it's about having access electricity you know how most of the women are the ones that will take on the labor of cooking collecting fuel wood or collecting water and you if you can free up more of children's times time and of the time for the women in households and I think you can make a real difference to realize their potential sounds like a very echomonderness point of view. I'd like to say the things but what is it then yeah so what is it about that philosophy that really attracts you? Well I think that there are a lot of people with a lot of potential and I think we could really do great things realizing more of that potential then of course the more of the echomotonous appeal of it is that if we can because these people or like collecting fuel wood and so on is still burning biomass which is what we did in the in the Western world not too long ago like if you go back not even two generations you will have my great grandmother washed by hand in a river and collected fuel wood from the forest there's a there's a fantastic video from Hans Ruhsling who has rosling maybe so everyone knows who I'm talking about you know what it is? Yes she should go talk about washing machines yes exactly the magical washing machine which turns laborious washing of clothes into books in education and so I think that's a really appealing that's what's really appealing of energy use it's it makes it saves you a lot of time which can be spent much more productive. You tell me a little bit. I'm sorry. Yes so the second point I'd like to make I think is that I told you before that I was born in 91 that's close enough to 90. I caught myself 30 years old now and then in 2050 most timelines would like to see us not having any carbon dioxide emissions that's another 30 years from now in the 30 years almost that I have lived we have gone from basically having around 63% fossil fuel in our electricity production and today the amount of fossil fuels in our electricity production globally that is is still 63% in 30 years we have done nothing in the meantime our energy usage has increased I think about 60% and the electricity usage has increased more than doubled in that same time all the while we have countries like India and China that are growing at a tremendous rate as these people are so resourceful and working really hard to create better lives and they are growing at about a rate of 7% a year their electricity the energy usage in these countries that means that it doubles in 10 years so every 10 years we will have another China and another India to decarbonize and I think it's really a sort of our moral duty to enable other countries not to repeat the mistakes that we have already made through burning fossil fuels and so on and I think we must tell that story and enable others not to really do this mistakes that we've done you know you talk about the importance of nuclear telling its story and one of the challenges that I have every time I talk to engineering types from the nuclear world is to ask them to look at the world at least temporarily through a different set of lenses and from our set of lenses it's been a failure that the market share of hydrocarbons has remained constant in the last 30 years but if you live in a hydrocarbon world if you work for a hydrocarbon company you have a great market success to talk about you know you've got this wonderful set of alternatives to your product but you've managed to fight them off you've managed to continue selling more and more of your product every year which is what every good businessman wants to do right absolutely I completely agree with that great success on that part so let's go back to the question that I had for you earlier who do you think really had the most means motive and opportunity to slow down the nuclear development in Sweden I think globally it's absolutely fossil fuel interests I think in Sweden I'm not so sure we don't have any big fossil fuel companies yeah but somebody was selling product in your country somebody was importing it somebody was making money by bringing that product into your country and burning it in power plants it even though you don't have a supplier there was certainly an industry that was interested in defending its turf oh yes absolutely but yeah I'll have to look into that and get back to you I'm not aware of any big conspiracies I know there are some now come on please I have to every time I don't be argumentered with the guests but it's not a conspiracy when you point out that businesses have a means motive and opportunity to defend their markets it's their job to do that okay and they don't necessarily do it out in the open I mean you know going negative on a on a competitor is part of the normal business right you know you people will talk about a beer is being watery not necessarily telling you that they happen to sell a different brand of beer yeah now I think that's true I just don't know if any examples of it yeah not with him sweet and of course you have a very large what we call a petro state just to just south east of you that may have had some impact on the marketing of of fossil fuels and natural gas and those kinds of things in your area yeah absolutely no one always an interesting case I think there of the world's biggest fossil fuel exporters almost completely sustained by their export of fossil fuels and but on paper one of the greenest economists yes they're very good at doing that of course you know if you're a Norwegian you have a very nice with sovereign wealth fund that's fully funded by oil and that pays for a lot of very nice things for the Norwegian people which is a good thing I I mean I'm I'm happy about that but that it's not exactly a petro state I was talking about I'm talking about Russia oh yes I want another fourth yeah one fourth or a way we have Russia yeah they're not very far away and they certainly have an impact in the energy markets within Europe sometimes they're not particularly open about how they go about ensuring there's a market for their product no I know especially with perhaps a very controversial matter we should avoid this non-strain to pipeline and so on but I don't avoid controversy I'm sorry this is this is a podcast we never avoid controversy here and we have no advertisers to worry about so go ahead what do you want to say about Nordstrom I think it's problematic well I like to make a point that a lot of people talk about Russian implants through their nuclear power plants is something problematic but not the dependency on perhaps Russia also fuels as much I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate description of of the events I know for example that following unrest in Ukraine that the Ukrainian power plants now get a lot of their nuclear fuel from Sweden and which shows that you you do have a choice and it actually enables you more independence over for example a pipeline you can't really draw the pipelines somewhere else well of course you can build the new pipelines just takes an awful lot of effort I mean the whole Nordstrom system is partly motivated by a desire of Russia and Germany to avoid pipelines going through Ukraine as part of their supply then again I also have the theories at Nordstrom amazingly enough brings almost exactly enough gas to Germany to make up for the output of 17 nuclear power plant it's that's accurate then it's so incredible it is it is pretty accurate it's very close in numbers to exactly enough gas to make up for 17 nuclear power plants and the guy who has been running that program for German for Russia is the former German chancellor name Gerhardt Schroeder he is the director of the Nordstrom pipeline program for gas problem very familiar with further and I think it's problematic yeah because we've already seen what we saw on I'm also a big fan of privacy and integrity for everyone is a citizen in the country and in in Europe a while ago we had a new copyright law which created opportunity for perhaps more surveillance and also more a strange imprinted of sharing content online and what was reported in German newspaper was that France who had the veto on how Nordstrom too would be treated actually pressured Germany to agree with the French line on this new copyright law and in return France would not oppose the Nordstrom too pipeline politics always ruins ugly head but of course politics and business co-hand and hand it's an interesting world we live in and this is why I I do resist when people accuse me of looking for conspiracies when I'm simply looking for the why the things that people don't quite understand that seem almost illogical and for me growing up in a household full of environmentalists and having a father who really liked clean nuclear energy because it didn't have any smoke stacks I could never stand why the environmentalists were the ones blamed for slowing down nuclear. Just didn't make sense. Why would somebody who wants clean air and clean water fight against nuclear and allow coal and natural gas and oil to keep prospering? Yeah, and it's part of what we're trying to change with a echomodenist movement in Sweden and I think in many other countries Finland, Germany, Netherlands. We have a lot of European colleagues and also in the US. But I think it's easily lost on people that I think every world at least quite far majority have good intentions and we all want the same thing with a smaller footprint on the natural environment and it's the sometimes you forget that when everyone is so entrenched in their positions. Yeah, but some of the things that have been happening in our modern world just don't make sense. When you have people whose basic underlying philosophy is reduce, reuse and recycle. Fighting to close down and already build piece of infrastructure where all of the investment has already been made, all the concretes already been poured and dried and the steel is there, the concrete, the copper, everything's there. Why would those people want to close down that operational facility? It just doesn't make sense. Unless somebody in the background is suggesting that they do that. Somebody in the background is maybe even giving donate possibly laundered through a foundation or an NGO or something, but there's some money involved. You don't organize people for free. It takes money. It takes effort. It takes real dedication to get a movement going and I don't believe for a moment that it happened by accident. Well, I might agree with that. I still think that most people are not the ill intentioned. They are maybe not so well informed of all the advantages that you can bring. I think also that in nuclear and different forms of renewables also have a lot of overlap sometimes. You could for example see overlapping molten salt reactors and concentrated solar power that are both benefits from the research into corrosive effects on different materials and so on. I think it would really be of benefit if people could see more eye to eye. Absolutely. I'm a big fan of solar and one of the interesting historical context here is one of the first Manhattan Project scientists who really, really wanted to use nuclear fizzin to empower the world and empower people was a guy named Farrington Daniels. Farrington Daniels was unlike most of the atomic scientists in the Manhattan Project. He was but an older guy who had a lot of industrial experience and a lot of experience and high temperature processes and saw the potential for nuclear to bring power to people. For many reasons, his reactor got defunded and he got disappointed and tried for years to get people interested in building the power plant that he wanted to build. Eventually Farrington Daniels turned to solar and decided that was the poor man's atomic energy and he became one of the biggest proponents of solar and solar research. An interesting little factoid is that the reason that he I mean he was excited about solar for many reasons but the reason he focused on solar and decided to devote the remainder of his career to that was he got pretty good support for solar even though he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin which is not exactly a sunny place. That support came from the Rockefeller Foundation which chose to support him because he was there and they I think they wanted to let him be distracted from ever pushing for his reactor program again. So anyway, yes so there are there are many alternatives to fossil fuel. The effort needs to be understood though by people like you and others that this is a very big business. World's energy market is a six trillion dollar a year market and when nuclear wants to make inroads it has to push somebody else out of the way and so sometimes we have to recognize that there will be people no matter how much information we give how many times we educate the public there will be people who don't really like our music that's just the way it is. I think that's always true in perhaps in any business area but I think there's a real opportunity now that we have a personal holy but at least partially agree to get rid of fossil fuels and rid ourselves of that and at the same time we know that energy use is increasing. In Sweden I think the increase is about 50% increase until 2040 in all of Europe there's also a substantial increase in energy energy and electricity use to electrify industrial processes and so on. So I think when this is free and that's a real conflict between renewable and nuclear I'm not sure that's telling the whole story because there is room for everyone we want to go create a fossil fuels and we want to increase our engine and electricity usage there's definitely room for everyone to fit into that and everyone has to participate to make that happen. My point to you and my point to all the people listening is don't think that we all agree that we should get rid of fossil fuels because some people are still selling fossil fuels and they still have as you mentioned about 63% of the electricity market and about 85% of the overall energy market so they're not going to give up lightly they're not going to back out of the way so we have to be ready in some cases for some sharp elbow fighting. Agreed that it's not a competition between nuclear and renewables but in some cases there are many people in the renewable energy industry not the people who are fair-minded and well motivated there are people in the industry who have partnered up with natural gas suppliers and agreed that natural gas is a perfect partner for renewables they won't necessarily they they've already said they don't want any nuclear they don't want nuclear to come in and in some cases I don't know if I can help those but I can't make friends with those people I hope you can but I think there is a real potential for for all of the different energy or power sources especially when we're looking at those sectors that are perhaps more difficult hard to evade sectors like shipping different industrial processes district heating for example you know in the UK for example I think over 80% of households are heated by natural gas and the the share of natural gas in Germany is high as well and to get rid of that it's going to be a big challenge and I think perhaps not in Germany but in the UK and in Finland for example that the new case an interesting place to play our interesting role to play there I agree with you all right Simon we'll come into the end of our my allotted time is there anything that that I haven't asked you or challenged you about that did you like to discuss well I like to take the opportunity to call on the people that live here and I know there are a lot of younger people that are now going into nuclear and I think there is a momentum for nuclear that we now need to try and really seize this momentum to make the most of it all the interesting developments that are happening in the US and Canada in the UK and Russia as well I think that there is a serious potential now to actually see this to see this through and see nuclear deployment as a much larger piece of energy puzzle that's that's great I agree with you hope that we continue helping people understand the benefits of nuclear what it can bring to us the things that we're giving up by trying to push nuclear away really are it's sad to think that people are willing to give up so many benefits so thank you very much for your time hope that you have a good rest of the day and talk to you soon thank you all the United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military but it is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldier it must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip this military case and adapt it to the arts of peace peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future that capability already proved is here now today who can doubt if the entire body of the world scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fishable material with which to test and develop their ideas that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal efficient and economic use a special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power starved areas of the world now region boys tell the world there's a better way the way is the atoms way