Podcast - Ryan Pickering-2

This is a conversation with Ryan Dickering, a resident of Berkeley, California, with a diverse background. He has a degree in Political Science and Renewable Engineering, has been involved in various environmental and energy projects, including solar facilities and nuclear advocacy. He shares experiences about his involvement in the nuclear industry, including tours of nuclear plants like Diablo Canyon, and his work with Native Nuclear. Ryan is passionate about nuclear energy and has a collection of nuclear belt buckles. He highlights the importance of nuclear energy for California's clean energy needs and the role of Diablo Canyon in providing reliable power. The conversation touches on his experiences touring Diablo Canyon, the surprise of the warmth in the turbine building, and the normalcy of the work environment in a nuclear plant. Ryan's dedication to promoting nuclear energy and collaborating with Native American communities in the industry is evident throughout the discussion. Our conversation today is with a resident of Berkeley, California, born right up river from the Indian Point Energy Center. He holds a bachelor's degree from Loyola Marymount University in Political Science and Renewable Engineering. When those kids were lobbying for more Minecraft time, he was lobbying politicians about wind turbines as early as seventh grade. He studied abroad in South Africa, focusing his thesis on post-apartheid justice, where his thesis advisor told him he just had too much charisma for academia, crushing his professorship dreams. So, instead, he built 7,200 solar facilities in California. He's a veteran of the Save the Diablo Canyon movement, spent eight years at SunPower Corporation, grew for C-Suite, and then lived in a yurt for seven years in a solar-powered off-grid lie. He completed Stanford Energy's Innovation and Emerging Tech program. He collaborated with Harry Potter Weasley to save the planet, voluntarily demoted himself from executive track at SunPower over convictions for nuclear energy. He booked a flight to Brussels, and the next week crashed a tiny rally and accidentally became a global nuclear rally circuit regular. He co-organized the largest pro-nuclear rally in U.S. history. He led the campaign to repeal Berkeley's 1986 Nuclear Free Zone Act and gathered 4,000 signatures, a global speaker at COP28 in Dubai, policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Energy. His family literally applied to store nuclear-used fuel in casts behind their plum orchard on the family farm. He's the vice president of Native Nuclear and a proud ally of the Waikiki tribe. He threw a nuclear-powered rave with the grandson of Mr. Oppenheimer. He's the author of Real History of Diablo Canyon and Renewable Plus Nuclear, keynote speaker at the 2026 Nuclear Business Innovation Council Conference. He once Googled, who lived here before us, and ended up becoming the biggest public ally of the small tribe, fighting to get Diablo Canyon land back. His top three tweets? Well, it's nuclear advocacy, it's meeting, events, and collaboration, and it's optimism, energy, realism, and culture, with his top-performing tweet being AP1000's smallest modular reactor. He's the man that gave me the coolest belt buckle ever, and we'll talk about that. He's a motorcycle builder, an AI user, a nuclear buckle collector, one of the few people I know that travels more than I do and talks more nuclear than I do. He's the executive director of Oppenheimer Energy, the nuclear hype man himself. Welcome, Ryan Dickering. It's good to see you, brother. Thank you, Bill. Did I miss anything? That is, when you really lay it all out right there, thank you, yeah, it's been a wild five years. Awesome. Yeah, so I was on stage yesterday, I was speaking at the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, had a delegation from the nation of Japan, where the state of Arizona is signing an MOU with the nation of Japan, and they had us nuclear-less focused as one of the tech companies to represent the state, and so I wore this on stage and at the event afterwards, and it got quite a bit of comment. It was still very, very well-received, but you have a bunch of these, right? Yeah, those nuclear belt buckles, I'm crazy about them. I was just fresh into my nuclear advocacy, and I saw one at a flea market in Pasadena, and it just happened to be a Diablo Canyon belt buckle, and I had to have it, and that's what started ... Time went by, and I figured that was just the only one, and then I started looking around on the internet, and I found more of them, and then I thought, hey, someone needs to aggregate these things together, so that has been my tchotchke of choice, and yeah, I think I'm up to 33, and I got to say, I just got back from a trip last night, and I had one waiting in the mailbox. Should we do a live unboxing? Let's do a live. Let's see it. Okay. Let's see here. I have no idea what ... You got it from New York, but you ordered it online, so it could be anything. PWR ... Let's check Polymark for PWR versus PWR. I'm going to go with B. I'm going to go with PWR on this one. Some nice bubble wrap. I'm constantly monitoring online, and new ones are always coming on. Oh, my gosh. This one. Whoa. All right. Here we go. Very unique. What? Look at the light on it. It has glass melted onto the surface, but it is a pewter belt buckle. Wow. On the back side, it's got the project management team, and it's got a copyright on it. 1984 Pacific Gas and Electric. This is the last Diablo Canyon belt buckle that I think was ever made. There was this one and two others, and now I have all three. The only other person I know who has this one is Heather Hoff from Mothers for Nuclear. Awesome. Well, I am thrilled. Fantastic. Yeah, it's got color on it. Most of them are just all a single kind of metallic, and this has glass melted all over it. It's beautiful. It's really outrageous looking. I was just at Diablo Canyon last week. Yeah. Plant tour. It's all feeling connected. Yeah. Plant tour. Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E as we like to call them in California, they have really opened the doors wide for tours. They're doing multiple tours a week. Because the plant was extended to 2030, and now legislators are talking about extending it for the full 20-year relicense. The NRC is going to relicense the plant for 20 years in all probability. So why would we run the plant for the full 20 years if we're going to do everything needed to relicense the plant for 20 years? Why would we only get five years of value out of it? The best time to enjoy nuclear energy is once it's all paid off and humming along. We need cheap, clean, firm energy in California, and that's what Diablo gives us. We're just slowly coming around. It's okay that we only extended the plant for five years as a first volley. That was famously in 2022 after we held the rally to save the plant. Now legislators are talking about extending it for the full 20 years. That needs to happen in the next 18 months or so so that PG&E has the time they need to staff up for a full 20-year run. Outstanding. How was the tour? Tell me about it. The tour was great. It was actually led by Native Nuclear, which is a nonprofit that started last year. Scott Lathrop, who I think you've had on the podcast, started Native Nuclear to get Native American people involved in the nuclear industry and really get them to the table. He's a big believer in nuclear energy. His tribe, of course, their homeland is beneath and all around Diablo Canyon. Diablo Canyon is actually built on top of one of their ancestral village sites called Janu, C-A-N-U. He often jokes that they're going to rename Diablo to Janu someday. Scott led the tour and started this nonprofit. We just elected our first board of directors. It's a Native-led board, a majority of Native people on the board. It was great. Tribal people from across the U.S. flew in, had this amazing tour. PG&E, it was very generous of them. I've been on the tour a few times. Usually, PG&E is pointing things out. Right from the start, they said, Scott, it's your tour. Scott was pointing everything out. I think the first thing we did was on the epic drive into Diablo, you enter through the southern road. It's a seven-mile drive of coastline that few have seen. It's really one of the most beautiful places in California, just really dramatic cliffs and no development whatsoever. We stopped by the village of Chi'iwi. There's no evidence of it above ground, but subterranean, there's quite a bit. Scott's family actually descended from that village site. We got to see where his family came from. That's just a few miles south of the plant. Then we hopped back in the vans and drove the rest of the way and got a full tour of Diablo, got to go into the turbine building, got to see the control room through a little window, control room simulator. We got to go through that, push all the buttons, and then down to the marina, see where the water intake comes from and all the incredible marine life in the area. Took some pictures. Then finally, we went up and saw the used fuel. It's the sea, as they call it. That was special to us because Native Nuclear was formed from a Department of Energy grant to talk about used fuel. We traveled the country. At the time, I was working for Scott. We traveled the country and met with tribes and talked about what nuclear fuel is and what our plan is for it moving forward. We got to travel with Mothers for Nuclear and the Nuclear Engineering Department from NC State. That was a great time. That really was my first job in nuclear, so I'm really grateful to Scott. Now I serve as an advisor to Native Nuclear. Now that they've got the board of directors on board, I've moved from founding vice president to just an advisor. I'm happy to continue it as a volunteer. What was the biggest surprise or unexpected reality when you went inside your first nuclear plant? What was in your mind of what you thought it was going to be versus what it actually was? The turbine building is hotter than you'd think. There's a lot of steam in there, so it's warm. I like being warm, so I think it's very welcoming. Diablo specifically, there's an office building right next to the plant, and then there's this beautiful tunnel or bridge that's between the plant and the office building. It's just normal people walking around. There's a cafeteria. There's a gym. Scott did help and was with us on our last tour. He was the plant manager for many years, and he helped build that gym. The guy is jacked. A lot of nuclear workers at Diablo are in excellent shape because of that gym. It's an elevated work environment, but it is just a professional work environment. I don't know what I expected. We mythologize nuclear plants. It's hard for us to picture it because it's not on TV very much. There's kind of like some rules about videotaping and everything. It's an unfamiliar space to see, and then, of course, you just realize they're just regular professionals who take their job seriously. I think that was surprising. I'm trying to think of some of the other plants I've been to. I've been to Sheeran Harrison, North Carolina, Indian Point, Comanche Peak. All of them, I'm really – I think the thing that surprised me most is the warehouses that support these plants. There's a whole warehouse of spare parts that are ready to go at a drop of the hat, and they're just full of beautiful valves and pumps that are worth quite a bit of money. Coming from the solar industry where we build these things out in the middle of nowhere or on people's roofs, there's not a lot of professionals who can care for the system at a moment's notice. There's maintenance, but the machine is totally different. What I like about nuclear is there are professionals that fix these things at a moment's notice. With solar, we would often get a string down or some aspect of the system, and it would take us a long time because we'd have to ship the components to the site. We'd have to get a crew out there that was qualified to do the service work. It's challenging, especially if it's on a private property, a commercial solar power system. There's no one out there, the maintenance guy. If it's not bird droppings on a panel, they're not qualified to do it. It makes it a little bit brittle in relying on solar because we don't have any professionals who can immediately service it. With nuclear, you have an incredible class of people who can fix any aspect of the system at a moment's notice. I like to have engineering professionals taking care of my electricity plant. I get the feedback I hear from folks is the cleanliness of the plant, especially if they're used to other forms of power generation. How clean nuclear plants are kept usually stands out. The safety rigor and the obsessiveness of the safety culture in nuclear, just the amount of rigor of the professionalism that goes into the operations and the maintenance and the organization and the planning of the work, everyone that I know that has toured a plant that's been willing to tell me about it has come away with a sense of confidence that these things are being run pretty well. No doubt about it. It's like the floor of the turbine building in Diablo is famously clean. I wish we could compare all the floors. I'm sure they're all amazing. I've been to a coal plant as well. They run it very professional there, but the yards just aren't as organized. The maintenance and lay down areas are still a little chaotic. Nuclear is just dialed in. I really appreciate that. I think it's cool that nuclear creates enough energy so it can pay everyone to run the plant that professionally. It doesn't feel wasteful. It feels aligned with the value that the plant generates can afford to pay people the right way. In solar, we really struggle with that because we're constantly trying to chop down margins and to get the price down to a place that it can work without subsidy. Nuclear struggles with that as well, but I just love the culture of nuclear, and I think a lot of other industries can learn from it and model after it. I think now that the nuclear industry through AI is becoming more well-known, these processes are now being digitized. I hope that we can kind of share that business culture with other aspects and find efficiencies that way as well. Yeah, I mean that's the origin story of nuclear, and it's seeing plants closing down for economic reasons, especially in unregulated markets where they were trying to compete with energy sources from subsidies or lower-priced coal or gas plants, et cetera. And they were running into those challenges where all of that rigor and overhead and process and paperwork and paper plan and all the things nuclear has to do to manage that configuration control and organization was expensive. It's in the nuclear tax, and so we were trying to solve that problem initially for Palo Verde and then trying to solve it for the rest of the industry, and it's really pivoted, I'd say, in the last couple of years from how do you make nuclear cost justified to how do you scale nuclear, and now it's really a resource challenge. It's how do we use technology and what things can we put in place to really grow this technology, scale it, and make it the responsible choice, both economically and environmentally. So that's how I got into it. So talking about scaling nuclear, there are some opportunities potentially in California with the modernization of their legislation. Tell me about that. Yeah, you know, California's been flirting with nuclear for a while. In 1976, we put a moratorium on new nuclear, and the moratorium states that until we have a solution for nuclear fuel storage and until we can reprocess nuclear fuel, you cannot build new nuclear plants. And at the time, I don't think it was an anti-nuclear piece of legislation. It was just saying, like, hey, we need to responsibly figure this out. But it's turned out to be an effective moratorium because we haven't, as a nation, figured out, you know, storage and recycling, though I think we're going in the right direction there. And so, you know, we haven't built anything. And the current plants are exempt from that. So, you know, in 1976, we were still building Diablo at that time. Diablo has come online. It's now run for 40 years. But this moratorium has been in place for 50 years, and we haven't even been able to explore nuclear. And it's, you know, the whole world is getting into nuclear again. It's so fascinating to watch these former anti-nuclear places who were once pro-nuclear, like New York and Illinois, who were the leaders in nuclear, and then they became anti-nuclear. And California, of course, was very into nuclear in the 50s and 60s and 70s, with plans for 14 gigawatts of nuclear in California as late as the 80s. 100%, right? They wanted to get 100% nuclear. Yeah, it just made sense to everyone working in it. And so it's all coming back around. And people have been introducing legislation about modernizing the moratorium over the past few years. They haven't been very successful. I personally didn't like the way they were written. Last year, for example, there was an assembly bill that was introduced, but it was very limited. It said, like, only certain kinds of nuclear would be exempt. And people were like, well, we should just be happy with it because it's pro-nuclear. And I was like, no. I personally didn't feel that way. I felt that we shouldn't be prescribing solutions. Let the market do that. Let the regulators do that. Why do we have a moratorium on safe energy, and why would we limit ourselves? And so Climate Week was coming up in San Francisco, and I noticed that there were no nuclear events. And there ended up being one. The Oppenheimers hosted a really cool event with Anthropocene Institute and kind of talked about our nuclear history. So that was good. There was one talk, but I was like, I want to throw just a party. I just want a party. It's all these lectures and all this highbrow stuff. And I'm like, why can't we just have a party that celebrates nuclear? And then I was like, it should be a rave. Let's rent a nightclub. Let's turn the lights out. Let's turn the music up. Let's just lose ourselves in on-grid power. And back when I was in renewables, we used to do these off-grid raves, and they were cool. We could take it into a state park with some batteries, and they were charged by solar maybe. And that was cool, but they weren't very loud, and they were outdoor and kind of dusty. And I certainly couldn't run a nightclub in downtown San Francisco. But I just rented an 18-plus nightclub and thankfully nice club at UC Berkeley. The students there were super helpful. They were like, yeah, let's throw an on-grid rave. Like let's throw a Diablo-powered rave because Diablo had been extended. It would have been shut down by the time of the rave, and now it's like 9% of all California electricity is nuclear-powered. So that was the idea, like let's throw an on-grid rave. And then let's write a zine. You know, you print out a single page and you fold it like kind of a rave zine about this bill that's coming out that we don't technically support. And, you know, the students also didn't like the way that this bill was written. And so we wrote this little zine that was like, hey, here's what nuclear is. Here's the moratorium. Here's why we don't like this pro-nuclear bill, and thanks for coming to the rave. And then we had like some cool art on the back that we stamped down. This local artist named Ralph did some cool art for it. And so, yeah, we just partied. Did you have any nuclear-themed food or drinks? There were. There was this Cherenkov blue drink, and it was like this curacao drink, and it was delicious. And then we had like all this like pro-nuclear. There was all these screens, so we had all this like archival footage from what is nuclear playing in the background. You know, like all this like grainy, cool, early black-and-white nuclear stuff. It was pretty outrageous. And I think we had like 300, 400 people there at the peak, and it was so fun. And that piece of legislation never got introduced to the floor. It never even made it out of committee. And so I'm not saying that they were like, well, the kids are raving about it. But it did get written up in the paper, and it was confusing, right? They were like, I really liked how it went down because it was like, let's discuss it. Like there's good laws and bad laws, you know. It's just like in nuclear. There are good rules. And if like I was talking to some nuclear engineers, and they were like, we like good rules. We don't like just rules for rules. We like good rules. And if there are bad rules, we should change them to good rules. And I was like, well, we should do the same thing for legislation, you know. Like we should write it the right way. So that was a year ago. I'm hanging with Oppenheimer. He runs into Gavin Newsom, our governor, at a party. And Gavin was like, what's up with nuclear? Like why aren't we doing this? Charles was like, well, there's this moratorium. He's like, hey, well, it seems like we should change that. And you should talk to this assembly person about it. She was talking to me about it. And we were like, oh, okay. So we wrote it up. And I had been thinking a lot about how to modernize the bill because I think we still have an obligation to fix the fuel cycle. And to just lift the moratorium, be like, we're not worried about the fuel cycle anymore. I don't think that's the spirit that Californians wanted. And so I wrote it to just modernize it and accept all new reactors. You know, anything NRC licensed from 2005 on is an advanced reactor. And we can still build those while we work to solve the nuclear fuel cycle. And we pitched that to Assemblywoman Calderon from Southern California. And she picked it up. And we were like, okay, well, it was me and Oppenheimer just hanging out in our office. And she's like, so what's your plan to, you know, get this passed? And we were like, well, we don't really know what we're doing here. But we were like, you tell us. She's like, well, you should help me find some co-authors for it. We said, okay, who did you have in mind? And so she gave us some names. And then she said, hey, I need some pro-nuclear groups, though, or like people to support this. And so we got all the grassroots together. Native Nuclear signed on. Generation Atomic signed on. And they were like, hey, we support this legislation. We like the way that it's written. And then Senator Doug Jones, the minority leader of the Senate and the highest-ranking Republican signed on. And then the Senate minority leader, who I guess she had just graduated from that position, but she's a very powerful Democrat, signed on. And then some Democratic socialists and progressives in the Bay Area signed on. So currently it is the most bipartisan piece of legislation in Sacramento, or so I'm told. And it's called Assembly Bill 2647. So it will be assigned to committees. Probably the Energy Subcommittee and the Natural Resources Subcommittee will have the opportunity to make some public comments. And I don't know. I have a good feeling about it. People are really supportive. Oh, and then a lot of the labor unions have signed on to it as well. So those are really great to see. And, yeah, I plan to go back to Sacramento, do some, like, lunch and learns with people, make sure questions are asked. We built the first draft of the FAQ, so, you know, what are we doing with nuclear waste, a lot of the things that we're hearing out there. And I'm just grateful that California wants to have this discussion right now. I think it's, you know, we're trying to get in on the action. We don't want to get left behind here. That's great work. That's exciting. It's really good to hear that you're getting that kind of little support. You were just in New York, too. Are you seeing a lot of traction and movement in a lot of these other areas that have been less supportive in the past? Yeah, really impressed with New York, right. I mean, closing Indian Point kind of started the pro-nuclear movement, in my perspective, you know, in 2021. Like, they closed the plant. And that was kind of a wake-up call, like, wow, anti-nuclear groups that are funded by environmentalist NGOs can kind of, like, kill the plant. You know, and then we saw a bunch of other ones. That was Palisades, Diablo, and the Illinois plans. And so I think that really woke people up, like, whoa, you can lose these things. And here we are, fast forward four years later, and Governor Hochul is, like, super into nuclear and announced a plan to build five gigawatts across the state. And I just think that's killer leadership, and she didn't lose any votes at all. I mean, it's just made her more popular. And I think that's so important to show, is that, like, businesses who embrace nuclear, your stock's going to go up. Politicians who embrace nuclear, you're going to get more votes. And the data – and it's okay that they haven't been there in the past, because only recently do a majority of Americans support the expansion of nuclear energy. I think we just crossed that 50% threshold within the last few years. And it's kind of – it's going up pretty steep, and that's great. And that's, you know, that's what public opinion is all about, and living in a democracy. So, yeah, I went and I met with the New York Power Authority. They're soliciting a one to two gigawatts for their purposes. You know, NYPA is this publicly owned quasi-utility, has an amazing history in nuclear. Actually, NYPA owned, built, and operated Fitzpatrick Nuclear Plant, and that was in the early 60s they built this plant. And it was the first publicly owned and operated nuclear plant in American history. And it's still running today. It's a killer plant. And so I think they have this, like, amazing example. They're no longer the operator. When the markets got liberalized, Constellation or some subsidiary bought Fitzpatrick, and they run the plant. But now NYPA's leaning in again, and they're saying, hey, we're going to be the first one. We're going to break the seal. We're going to, you know, contract a bunch of gigawatts and jumpstart this effort. And I really like the way they do it. You know, a lot of times these RFPs are NDA protected, and everyone's all secretive about it, and that's okay. But NYPA's like, no NDAs. We're putting it all in the pot. Everyone put their best foot forward. No promises, and we're going to sort it out. And I think that kind of bothers some people. Nuclear is, you know, very particular about our intellectual property, and, you know, we're all working hard and everything. But it is the most visible nuclear RFP in the country right now, and, you know, it's wide open. You can learn as much as you want about it. So I think I'm going to, you know, Oppenheimer, who I work for, by the way, I said, like, should we hold back on sharing all of our ideas with NYPA? And he said, no, just tell them everything. Tell them all of our best ideas. Who cares? And I feel like it's more important that this thing all goes off. And, you know, Charles, I'll say a few words about him. You know, I've been working with him now for almost two years. He invested in my startup, and then I was like, I'd rather just work for you. Let's finance nuclear plants. My startup idea was like trading carbon credits and, you know, doing retail energy with nuclear. But it doesn't really work because we're not building new nuclear, so there's no new stuff to trade. There's no additionality. So Charles was like, I think we need to finance, like, plants and, like, break this stalemate. And so that's what we've been doing, just going around and bidding all of these. Anything RFP, we're, like, putting a bid in, you know, and learning every time and trying to, like, compound that learning and try to absorb risk, be a new risk sponge so that the other people who have been stuck, like the utilities and financiers and all these other players can move forward because there's not so much risk on them. And so we call it the developer model or the catalytic developer model. And it's very common in other industries, you know, renewables, standard generation and real estate. They all have developers who take early risk. And the nuclear industry hasn't yet benefited from that. And I think we're close. People are kind of coming around to the idea that the utilities don't have to be the ones who build this whole thing and take all the responsibility anymore. They could just work with the developer, and we could do it off their balance sheet. So I hope it catches on. I think it will. And what's interesting about Charles is, you know, of course, his grandfather is J. Robert Oppenheimer. But he, Charles grew up coding. He's a software guy. He's been coding since he was, like, 14 years old, grew up in the Bay Area, had a bunch of software companies. And he's taking this, like, software approach where it's customer development. It's, like, asking the utilities what they want and just, you know, doing, like, what the market is asking for instead of trying to be, you know. Nuclear has been entrepreneurial in the past, but it's also been, like, very, you know, I think it has to do with, like, its Navy nuclear history and, like, utility history. Like, these are very risk-averse, very, like, rule-oriented people. And Charles is, like, sorry, like, rules. Just, you know, like, build something that people want, and that's it. Like, the rule is build a product that has market fit. And so, you know, we've been doing that. And with this – and I just love his spirit. He's all about transparency and bringing people together, and there are no enemies. Everyone is on board. You know, we want to work with every country in the world on this. He's into, like, a whole – well, he's got critiques of the original Atoms for Peace, as it was written up. I think that's some family deep. But he does believe that we can bring the world together through science and technology, an interconnected framework of science and technology. And that's how we move beyond nuclear weapons is be so interconnected with science and technology that what's there to fight over? If we all have unlimited energy and we're interconnected in these economic chains – chains might not be the right word. If we're all – if we all have energy sovereignty, then a lot of the motivation for war goes away. And so respect to his family for really, like, putting that forward with the Oppenheimer Project, the family nonprofit. And we also carry that forward at the family for-profit, Oppenheimer Energy. And I'm really grateful to work there, and I hope we're helping push the industry forward. Now, that's exciting. You made a comment about some of the areas that you're visiting. The tide's turning, and it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg of, you know, I can get more votes being pro-nuclear than I can. And so it's, you know, is it following or leading? I get the strong impression that Ryan Pennery is not a guy that's chasing likes or chasing votes and is only pro-nuclear because it's become popular. I get the impression that you care about things deeply. And early on, watching Inconvenient Truth and other things said, okay, I see a problem, and I'm going to help solve the problem, and it's going to be solar everything. And then you ran into some energy realism, physics smacked you pretty hard, and you realized, wow, the world actually works a certain way, and we need to respond to the way the world actually works. And you made this pivot, and that's not a risk-adverse thing to do. You could have been ride or die, sun, everything. You used your open mind, and you made a pivot, and you have strong convictions that you held loosely enough to change that conviction when you saw a better way. What about you let you do that, and what lessons have you learned and been able to apply to other areas of your life having been through this already? Yeah, in so many ways. I think it's growing up in California. I was born in New York, and my dad is a computer scientist, and we came out to the Bay Area so we could work on computers when I was little. There's a saying in the Bay Area, strong opinions loosely held. Have an opinion, but don't marry it. Be open-minded. I think we're generally open-minded in California. I think we've certainly all gone through these iterations and fallen in love with different modes of thinking. But yeah, I was famously anti-nuclear. I really thought we could do it all with solar and storage particularly and maybe some other things. But yeah, when I went to Stanford, the cost curves I thought were just amazing with solar and storage. I was like, this is going to take over. But then you start learning about grid inertia and grid congestion and power quality, harmonics, voltage drop, and you learn like, hey, you kind of need this blended thing, and that's why we keep building renewables, but the fossil assets stay on. We're closing coal plants, but we're building a lot of gas plants because you need big spinning magnets. There's just not a lot of exceptions to that rule, especially in an industrialized society. And so I changed my mind, and for me it's like a dopamine-filled experience to change your mind. It's fun. It's expansive. And I think that's why California is flipping very hard on nuclear. The Bay Area especially was once famous for anti-nuclear, and I was like, hey, here's a fun thing to talk about at dinner parties. By the way, one of the staffers of the bill that we wrote was like, hey, make sure you write the FAQs in a way that people can talk about it at dinner parties and social events. That's how these big ideas go. It doesn't have to be perfect politically. It needs to be perfect from a sociological standpoint. And I was like, yes, it is. It's partying. It's all about partying. And so I don't know. The inconvenient truth and living in a yurt in my 20s, I was a big de-grower. I was like, we've got to go back to the land. We've got to grow our own food. We've got to never use plastic again. In my 30s, I got more into politics and economics, and I look at working-class people and they don't have anywhere to grow food in their backyard. They don't have a compost pile. They have busy lives that plastic helps them eat nutritiously and in a way that's expedited so it works for their busy schedules and their families. And I just, I don't know. I think everyone kind of, I don't know, some people with a de-growth mentality, you start to become angry at humanity. You start to see litter, and you're like, oh, and it bums you out. And you start to like, it can be an impressive mindset. And I think it's also important. I think, you know, I don't throw away all the de-growth tenants. I'm like, we should be in touch with everyone. We should know what food looks like. You know, we see, you know, like, profit food. Like, I think we went pretty far with it, and it causes inflammation in our bodies. So I'm trying to jam all of it together. And what I loved about nuclear, though, is that, like, instead of having to revolutionize our energy system and totally invert it and everyone has to have their own power source and yada, yada, we can reform what we have. And, you know, this utility death spiral where, like we see it in California, our utilities keep getting more and more expensive, more people are defecting from the grid, but our businesses are like, we can't generate enough power from our roof to run our business that you use every day. And so this, like, off-grid aesthetic is just not that real. It's just an aesthetic. And so I'm like, how does it all work? And then you go back to the wisdom of our ancestors, and, you know, I've got this PG&E belt buckle on right now, and the logo for PG&E for a short time was an atom. And it said PG&E in the middle because they understood that they could own plants or operate plants and make enough money by selling cheap, clean energy into the system that it could pay for all the wires and transmission and you could deliver great prices to customers. And, like, I still have a lot of empathy for utilities. I was so angry at utilities because it feels like a monopoly, and that's what solar was all about. It's like giving the middle finger to utilities and making your own power even though at night you're still charging from the grid, you know. Or when you have extra solar, you're dumping it on the grid and net metering. But, like, who cares about that? You've got solar panels. And, like, once again, it was just more of an aesthetic and kind of this, like, libertarian thing that I wasn't totally down with. It's just so much can be solved through the incredible energy density of uranium. And I think we've just removed that variable from the equation. We've forced ourselves to remove it from the moratorium. Many states still have a moratorium. Some aren't lifting them. And now if we reintroduce that variable with everything that we've learned about nuclear, you know, for me, I don't get mad. Sometimes I get mad at myself for being anti-nuclear. I get mad at other people for being anti-nuclear. But I'm like, the data, though, it's more robust now than it's ever been before, you know. So for people who are anti-nuclear, I just say, hey, give it another look. You know, we have a lot of operating data recently for you to reference. And I hope that, you know, like knowledge over fear, Scott Lathrop says that a lot from the tribe, you know, traditional native knowledge. And he's like, you know, fear is a very dangerous thing. And it can be solved through knowledge. And he's an educator in his, you know, during his career. And he feels the same way with nuclear. And I have, too. You know, we learn like things, especially like nuclear, nuclear fuel, use nuclear fuel. People are so freaked out about it. And once you really learn about it, you're like, wow, you know, people have put a lot of thought into this. And we hope that we can just keep the message interesting and compelling enough to keep people's intention and allow them to transcend that fear. And I think partying helps, you know, like leaning into like, hey, you don't have to feel bad about your life because we can innovate out of this challenge. And, you know, I think that will continue to be a challenging mental headspace for humanity. Like do we shy away from the challenges or do we like innovate out of them? And how do we balance that over the years ahead is going to be interesting. Do you think we're going to go through that exact same thing with AI? And so here's my pitch. So I've got two adult children, and I do AI for a living. And they're very generative AI wary concern. Their biggest concern is the impact or perceived impact it has on the environment. Obviously, we're doing our part to try to make that pro-nuclear so that AI is powered responsibly. But at the same time, it's that how do you power your way out of it? I am a huge fan, obviously. I shifted my career to focus on this. My belief is that it's going to lead to prosperity. It's going to lead to a lot of problem solving for all kinds of dimensions and health and energy, et cetera. And so build AI for nuclear so nuclear can power AI so you can build more nuclear. AI for nuclear so you can power more AI and solve more bigger and bigger problems. But there's that similar culture shift of, you know, the high school students I mentor and coach, similar hesitancy. They've been told or they've perceived from whatever sources that AI is bad, and they don't want to use it. And my concern is that's exactly the generation that needs to be mastering this technology to use it for good. Do you think we can make that pivot with them as well? I think that retaining our humanity will be important in this time. And, you know, I read about the ethics of AI, and I want to continue to struggle with it. I want to intellectualize it. I want to do this the right way because I think in nuclear we know, like, there's a right way to do things, and there's, like, things that are less than the right way and are in the wrong way, you know. So, like, why would it be different in AI? And what concerns me is the profit motive and that we're just, like, running, running, running. And, you know, I think, you know, I like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I think they do a great job, and they're, you know, iterating and learning and everything, but it's all based in thoughtfulness. And I hope that we can continue to take the same thoughtfulness to AI. And I just, like, I'm a California hippie. Like, I'm walking around, like, naming plants, foraging food, and I want to continue to do that. Have I used AI to help me forage food and not poison myself? Yes, I have. So as long as it stays a tool, I'm cool with it. You know, I'm still, like, you know, things like Neuralink and, like, implanting technology I'm still thinking about. And I just don't want to be bullied for being wary. You know, maybe I'm, like, maybe I'm old school and everything, but I'm, like, I want to, like, I want to think through my decisions. And, you know, for me, like, the essence of style and coolness is, like, that you give a damn. You know, like, hey, I just, like, you know, yeah, I wore this outfit for a reason. Like, I think it looks good. You know, and, like, I drive this car for a reason. I like the way it is. Like, I curate my life, and, like, I feel like individuality is just, like, the highest tenet of importance, and I'm scared that we're all just going to be a automatron and we're going to feel like we're going to miss out on this, like, AI arms race. So we're all going to put ships in our head, and then we're all going to be, like, the same person, and maybe we'll all be right about everything all the time. But, like, is that the world that I want? These are the things I think about with AI. And then I try to just use it as a tool, and I don't want it to cook my food for me. I don't want it to – does it help me aggregate the things in my refrigerator into an inventive dish? Yes. So I don't know. And I worry about my ability to learn because, you know, that MIT study came out about, like, when you're learning things on AI, it's not like it doesn't soak in at a deeper level, and I don't know what that's about. Maybe it's, like, the immediacy. Like, you don't really need to learn anything anymore because it's there just in your pocket, and maybe all these people are right. Like, just put it in your brain because it's already in your pocket. You're already a cyborg, so it's just a step away to just put it inside your brain. I don't know. I'll continue to remain wary of it. I just know, like, I'm at my highest self when I'm, like, walking a trail with my friends or alone and feeling like I'm just naked to the world and I'm just having that experience. And as long as I can preserve my intellectual independence, you know, that's what I'll be advocating for as we go forward. But I do think that energy is upstream from everything, and I am wary of saying that we're doing nuclear for AI because I think nuclear is for everything and for everyone. And, you know, as someone who, like, believes in institutions and taxpayer-supported things that benefit people and, like, going back to NYPA and a publicly owned nuclear plant, I'm like, that's what it's all about. You know, of course nuclear powers AI, but it also powers every other aspect of our lives. And isn't that beautiful? I just think that we can, just like we're supposed to use AI as a tool and nothing more in our daily lives, I hope that we can use AI as a tool for nuclear to scale our growth and ensure these hyperscalers want to pay buku bucks for nuclear energy, and we can use that as a tool to grow nuclear energy for humanity, for humanity's sake and for the opportunity to preserve wild spaces. I love the energy density of nuclear and, like, just walking around Diablo. I think that was the other big surprise is it's not some industrial wasteland around Diablo. It's some of the most beautiful land in the world with rare species in the water and in the lands around it and in the sky, just incredible golden eagles flying around. I mean, it's like, it's psychedelic, man, being around a nuclear plant. And I just never want to lose our humanity to it, and I also don't want to be a boomer that's just scared of new things. I don't know, I'm sounding anti-nuclear now. But let me bring you back. Let me pitch you here for a second. And so a couple of things that I think are super interesting. One, for sure, from a learning ability to learn, my abacus and my slide rule skills are way treated from the generations before me. They were way better at that skill set than I am, and I don't really care. I think I'm good never using a slide rule, never knowing how to use a slide rule. I'm totally fine with that, right? I think a lot of that is going to repeat itself going forward. But my pitch is democratize intelligence, intelligence for everyone. We're going to turn carbon-free, clean, atom-based energy into intelligence, and then we're going to make that intelligence available to everyone, and we're going to use that intelligence to figure out how to make that energy more abundant, cleaner. Imagine that house bill that was written. Imagine every piece of legislation has infinite intelligence available to it so it gets written perfectly the right time, and that all of those amazing species that you see on Diablo's coastline, that we have infinite intelligence that can explain to us how important those things are to us personally, what the benefits of preservation looks like. Imagine infinite access to intelligence for everyone that we can all understand what reality is, what world we're operating in, what's optimized for us, what's optimized for our individualism, for the ability to recognize, hey, this thing's good for Ryan, but it's not good for me, but this thing's good for me, and it's not good for Ryan, and I can respect that, and we can appreciate that, and we don't have to talk past each other because we're not knowledgeable enough or intelligent enough to grasp it. And so it's making that intelligence for everyone. I think there's an infinite need and demand for intelligence for everyone, and that intelligence comes directly from electricity if that's what the data centers are doing or converting electrons into intelligence. Yeah, I like that, and certainly I think it goes back to what Scott was saying, knowledge over fear, you know, like fear is very dangerous. Dr. Robert Hayes from NC State wrote a paper on it recently, and it said that radiophobia is more dangerous. It is dangerous. Thinking that you're dying from exposure to radiation causes cancer. He, like, proved it. That's crazy. Versus, you know, the realities, and this is prescient because a paper just came out recently that said that living around a nuclear plant could potentially expose you to harm, which, you know, there's a big debate about that paper going on, and I think the Breakthrough Institute wrote a really good rebuttal to it. But anyways, if AI can abolish fear for us, that's great. And if we can keep building this in a transparent way, that's also good. You know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and so I don't really believe that people are putting the weight on the scales. But things like things that happened with Grok, like showing that, you know, people can put their mind and bend truth, you know, I'm like, hey, these are powerful people, and I'm like, this world's for everybody, you know. So as long as we're building tools that truly benefit everyone, and as long as we're talking about it publicly, I think nuclear and AI are very similar in this way. Like, let's be more transparent about it. Let's not be the smartest guys in the room. You know, like, nuclear is the smartest guys in the room, and let's try to interact with the public as little as possible as we're building this out because we know we're right, and everyone else will just enjoy the benefits of it. Well, it didn't go down that way, and that's how we got this whole, like, anti-nuclear movement for 50 years in this country. And I'm concerned that we do it the same way, but I love the way you talk about it. I love the way that nuclear is doing it. You know, like, let's bring people together. Let's discuss this openly. Let's have a podcast. Like, let's be public, public, public. I'm totally down with that. Radical transparency is what Oppenheimer calls it. We do the same thing at our company. It's like, ah, we're an open book, you know. Like, we're publishing white papers all the time. No, some people do. That's on me. It just needs to be more interesting. And, you know, like, I do, again, like, knowledge over fear, seven-generation thinking, everything that Scott Lathrop has been saying this whole time, and he predicted that Diablo would be saved and extended and run for 40 more years, and everyone said, they're crazy. And he said, you'll see, you know. And that is why, you know, I just admire the educators around the world and the communicators in nuclear and the technologists. And I'll continue to dare them to be transparent in this time as we all learn and adapt. And, you know, I think that humanity always will survive. You know, like, oh, are the kids okay? You know, they're such dorks. And, you know, I went out with some students, well, some graduate students last week in San Francisco, and the kids are all partying, and they don't have their phones out. And, like, life goes on. They're dancing. Like, everything's cool. So I think humanity is incredibly resilient, and the joy of life is still very apparent. So I'll continue to challenge myself to learn, and it will always, you know, that open-mindedness is an active practice, and I'll continue to commit to it. Awesome. Yeah, I love the approach. I love the philosophy. Sometime when we're together next, it would be kind of fun to, I don't want to do it here, but it would be kind of fun to talk about if losing control, you know, of the narrative, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That's something I've been thinking about recently with how AI could be the new media and other things, but totally off topic. Great conversation. What are we missing? What do you want to get out there that we haven't talked about that's not going to end up pressed? Well, I think native nuclear is just doing the most important work. So, you know, I think, you know, it's my job to kind of think about new white papers for native nuclear to write about, and I think a native AI take would be good. I would really like to interview Scott and some of the other tribal elders that we're working with about AI. I think, like, listening to our elders who have done all of this before, you know, is just amazing, and also listening to our elders of how to build nuclear, because, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s, we were building big things on time, on budget. How do we get back to that? So, you know, I continue to look for more elders and mentors in this space, and I think AI can help us in that regard, too, to, like, digitize their knowledge and pass it on. I think it also, like, that's how I learn best is, like, hearing it from people that I admire who have succeeded in doing things before. So I think, you know, a continued gratitude for the mentors in this space and the teachers and a continued call for curiosity from young people to learn to do it the right way and then, like, just bring all of our coding brilliance to do it in a fresh way, because we've got to build these plants on time and on budget, and that will be the great challenge, right? There's all this exuberance right now, but if we can't deliver and drive down the cost of energy, then I think the window's going to close on this opportunity. So that's certainly what I'm interested in moving forward, and if anyone wants to talk about that, that's what we're obsessed with at Oppenheimer Energy is just building on time and on budget and structuring things in a way that aligns incentives. How can we all align our incentives to deliver on this big idea? Everyone wants it to succeed, and now I think it's about aligning it so that we're not in this, like, litigious thing, but that we're in this collaborative environment to just build, build, build, and graduate a scarcity mentality towards this thing, because we have so many gigawatts of nuclear to build. Right now it still feels constrained. It feels that there's only a couple new projects coming on, but once we open the can, it's going to be a lot of work and we're going to need a lot of help and we're going to need to welcome a lot of people into this space, and I'm looking forward to doing that together. Yeah. Are you seeing the open-mindedness? You know, like, are you seeing, like, other folks thinking about doing this that way? Like, you know, you worked with Dwayne Alfari. He and I worked together in the past. I mean, there's not a lot of folks from our generation in the south that are, like, super open-minded about trying lots of different things and thinking of problems a different way, and the volume of art, if possible, coming out with new discoveries and new capabilities literally every single day is so impressive that every day it's a new idea of how we could build these plants better, build these plants faster, safer, better, faster, cheaper. That's the idea. Every day, safer, better, faster, cheaper. Yeah, I'm so lucky. You know, I've got this great mentor in Dwayne Alfari that I get to work with every day. He's the head of our project delivery, and he's built many nuclear plants, worked with your dad in the past, and dude is a legend. Talk about strong opinions loosely held. You know, he's got some very strong opinions, and he's willing, and now he's incorporating AI into all of that and constantly learning, and he's teaching classes and getting so much feedback from young people. And I think that's the driver is the young people love nuclear. We see it with all these nice clubs that spread across the country, where it's not a nuclear ñ if a nuclear is a clean energy club, it's not a nuclear engineering club. We don't talk about nuclear engineering. We're talking about what is possible when you have unlimited energy, you know, so we're getting all kinds of different majors involved. And so the kids are saying yes, which I don't think we've ever had that kind of social license before, especially not recently. And the hardcore nuclear pros are still so game, and I think they're being fed by this moment. And, you know, I was talking to some bankers this week in New York, and they're like, what do you want us to do? I was like, just sign the thing, sign the deal. We're ready to go. And they're like, no, we just need these big signals to pop. Shuffle money, man. And then I said, well, just project some damn confidence then. And they're like, okay, well, you've got to keep talking a big game. And we look forward to proving it, and we've got kids who are ready to go. So, you know, there is this chicken-and-the-egg moment, and that's going to continue. But I can tell you, and we were talking to some of the biggest banks in the world, and they were like, this is very interesting. How many projects are very bankable projects are coming to my desk? I was like, great. Yeah, we won't let you down. Just keep it rolling. So I think it is headed in the right direction, and there is, like, a lot of prudence going on. And, you know, a lot of these nuclear companies are going to fail, or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll all succeed. I don't think that's the case. That's not really how business works. But we should be ready to roll with the punches for years to come. This is not going to be easy. But it's our responsibility for the projects that are real to come together early on, understand the project very deeply, read the book, how big things get done. And, you know, in the book, it's so interesting because the book says, think slow to go fast. And Scott Lathrop said the same thing, like, years ago. He's like, you have to go slow to go fast. You have to work with tribal communities up front so that we can all get on the same page and go forward. So it's like traditional native knowledge and industrial development are all kind of aligned, you know. And it's like we just got to keep bringing people together up front instead of trying to go really fast with this really small group and then run into a bunch of challenges as the group expands. Like bring everyone together. And it takes humility to do that. You know, it takes like an interest and a care for others. And we've got to just embody more than just engineering. We have to embody the soft skills of bringing us all together and, you know, expanding our teams to make sure we have great communicators who can carry these projects forward. We have to build a very durable coalition as we build these plants out for the next 30 years. It's going to be a slog. And there's not a shortcut in that. Everyone's got to come with us. We've got to bring everyone. And it can be fun. And we can party through the whole way. It'll be great. What should people of each generation and each occupation, what should they be doing to break this chicken and egg cycle? How can we get this going? Let's scale, man. Let's start building. I think the curiosity, I think publishing about it and writing about it and encouraging these conversations is great. I think bringing young people to these nuclear plants, like the commending, I think we should restart all of our tours. The nuclear tours really fell off. And I know it's expensive and it's a big investment from the utilities, but, like, this is how we save the utility model. You know, like this is the saving grace. And this is the idea that our great-grandparents gave us. So I think, you know, sometimes leadership is about finding something that's good enough and going with it and committing to it. And I think in this country we love innovation. We're constantly innovating to the point where we almost don't rekey ourselves and we don't get a lot of efficiencies that way. You know, I heard this old-timer in nuclear say, in France they have 100 kinds of cheeses and one kind of reactor. In the U.S. we have 100 kinds of reactors and only one kind of cheese. And I thought that was funny. And, you know, I think we can have a couple reactors. We will have dozens, you know. But we do have to learn and replicate, and that's a big part of how big things get done is you have to, like, iterate. You have to do it over and over again. And we have to figure out how to make that fun. And, you know, I just want to live stream our next build and get the barbecue going and, like, celebrate our humanity as we build this. And, yeah, get the barbecue going. You know, we already have the firing ranges at our nuclear plant, so let's, like, let's shoot some pumpkins with some high-caliber rifles. You know, like, let's, like, bring our American-ness and our individuality into these builds. Because that's what the successful builds did in the past. It was a whole cultural movement to build it. And I'm constantly reminding politicians and bankers, we make money. Everyone starts making money as soon as the project is announced. We don't have to wait until the electrons are coming onto the grid. The party starts right away. So let's just get to work. So keep writing your elected officials and saying, I'd like nuclear energy on my grid, please. And keep supporting the people who are sticking their neck out to do it, you know, like Kathy Hochul and now, you know, let's dare Gavin Newsom to get it. And every state can participate in this, whether they have nuclear or not. We're all part of the nuclear supply chain. And let's do this new industrialism the right way. And, like, let's listen to our trepidations. And approach them with courage. I love it, man. I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for helping me think through these big ideas. It's a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Can't wait until we see each other at the next event or next road trip. So it's been a pleasure, man, as always. Enjoy that new buckle. I'll be looking for what belt buckle you're wearing next. I only have the two. We should make some new ones. That's right. We need to build new plants. And then we need to CNC some new belt buckles. Scott Lazor was already talking about it. He was talking about a John New generating station, a new Diablo belt buckle, a native one. Stay tuned. We've got some CNC machines at the robotics lab. Might be coming out with an aluminum one. Interesting. I'd like an aluminum one. Yeah, I like it. I'm going to be thinking about it. Use AI to help me design it. All right, Ryan. So much fun. Thank you. And great talk. See you soon.