067 Neil Wilmshurst, SVP at EPRI

Neil Wilmshurst (00:00)
I'll tell you some of the best experience I had were in Spain because the Spanish have quietly run an incredible nuclear program for decades. And very few people realized that many countries when they wanted to learn how to run a nuclear program went benchmark in Spain. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (00:16)
Really?

What do you mean by that? Went benchmark in Spain? Like went and learned in Spain there?

Neil Wilmshurst (00:19)
So you want

to find how to do something well. You want to go and copy someone. You go and spend a week in their plant, whatever. Many, many people have taken the journey through Spain to see how the Spanish do it.

Mark Hinaman (00:32)
Is that because

they have better wine than the Germans?

Neil Wilmshurst (00:35)
I just think they've had very good leadership over the years, very good plans, very good maintenance and a very good attitude about the way they run the nuclear programme. Very impressed with Spain. But the one that surprised me the most in many ways was Argentina.

Mark Hinaman (01:56)
Welcome to another episode of the Fire Division podcast where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can better human lives. My name is Mark Hyneman and today I'm joined by Neil Wilmshurst. Neil, how you doing man?

Neil Wilmshurst (02:07)
I'm doing okay, thank you, good morning.

Mark Hinaman (02:09)
Yeah, Neil's SVP or senior VP at EPRI, Electric Power Research Institute. Really excited to chat with you today, Neil. Neil, I'm gonna steal Robert Bryce's line. ⁓ If you had met someone at a party or an elevator and had 60 seconds to introduce yourself, what would you say? Please introduce yourself.

Neil Wilmshurst (02:25)
Okay, I'm Neil Wilmshurst. I'm a lifelong nuclear engineer. Clearly not from the USA, from start off in the UK, start off in the Royal Navy, came across to the States about 20, well almost 30 years ago now, and really been in the energy field one way or the other, all my crew.

Mark Hinaman (02:42)
How long have you been in debt for?

Neil Wilmshurst (02:45)
I've been at it for over 20 years now.

Mark Hinaman (02:48)
⁓ Wow, okay. I'm excited to jump into that. But let's start with kind of your beginnings. Where'd you get your start?

Neil Wilmshurst (02:57)
Well, I started in the north of England in a city called Durham, which is home to the third, number three university in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge. So I grew up in a very kind of academic environment, let's say. one of my, at about the age of 16, we had a school science trip to Calder Hall nuclear power station on the west coast of the UK. And it kind of all started from there.

I decided, kind of, that looked neat, let's stay engaged with that. that turned into, I went off and joined the Navy and the rest is history.

Mark Hinaman (03:35)
What kind of plant is that or what's that? Is it still operating? I should know this,

Neil Wilmshurst (03:38)
It was, it was, no,

no, no, it was a plant which was designed to really, the primary aim was to reduce weapons material. But it also, the thing about Calder Hall was it was the first grid connected nuclear power station in the world. And it was a Magnox plant, you graphite moderated water-cooled plant.

Mark Hinaman (04:00)
Okay, awesome. what, what? Decommission now, yeah, out of service. Okay. So what, Neil, what drew you to the Navy? What were you interested in that made you decide to go that direction? the nuclear, I guess.

Neil Wilmshurst (04:02)
And it's decommissioned.

Well, yeah,

well, you know, it's the classic story of my grandfather's in the Navy, my father's in the Navy. I wasn't told to join the Navy, but it was kind of like always in my blood, I suppose. And I joined, I interviewed for the Navy and it's an interesting story. was selected in the Royal Navy. You are streamed from the beginning. You either go in as an engineer, you go in as a logistics person, you go in as a pilot, or you go in and the

One, everyone wants is to go in as what they call a warfare officer, where you're gonna be trained to navigate ships, fight ships, and gonna be admirals and all the rest of it. So I was selected to go down that warfare path, which was ⁓ supposedly like the crown jewel, the thing everyone wanted. And I went to the UK equivalent of Annapolis, which is a place called Dartmouth down in the south of England. And a friend and I,

were summoned to the captain's office one day, and it's like terror descends. And he basically said, okay, so you guys have done kind of physics, mathematics, chemistry, all these science things at school. We want you to go off and do an engineering degree and then go back and train to navigate ships and all the rest of it. So we were part of an experiment. So we were sent off for three years to do an engineering degree. Then I ended up...

on a destroyer off the coast of Beirut as the USS New Jersey was opening fire on Beirut. And if you're old enough, you remember it was the time when the US Embassy had been blown up in Beirut and we were flying helicopters into Beirut and rescuing people and everything else. So around that time, I was spending a lot of time on the bridge and one night talking to the captain in kind of one o'clock in the morning, he said, what do want to do?

I said, you know, I've done this engineering degree. I want to use it. She said, OK, what do you want? So said, I want to be a nuclear submariner. He said, well, leave it with me. Six months later, I was off doing nuclear training.

Mark Hinaman (06:15)
just like that.

Neil Wilmshurst (06:16)
So there,

yeah, and there's a lesson there though. It's kind of, don't be scared of making decisions. If you want to change direction, just ask and quite often, if you don't ask, you don't get. And the other one is no one's gonna look after your career apart from you.

Mark Hinaman (06:29)
That's fantastic advice. I couldn't agree more. ⁓ So how long were you in the Navy?

Neil Wilmshurst (06:37)
I was in the Navy 13, 14 years. 13 years I think, yeah.

No, no, I was in the Navy and it was the early 90s and again, you have to be old enough to remember, but peace program. Berlin wall came down, everything else. And then, and the UK and like many countries decided, okay, we're going to scale back our armed forces. Interesting timing. Now we're going to scale their armed forces back up. But this was the start of the dip and

The way the Navy went about it was, said, we are going to let go 15 % of the And it's not going to be merit-based. It's going to be a vertical slice in order to keep everyone's promotion prospects even. Which you think about, it's a brave thing to do. Also a very fair thing to do, take a vertical slice. So I sat there and I decided, you know, if I'm going to leave the Navy now is the time. So I got ahead of the wave of people in the Navy.

And ⁓ that is when I jumped from the Royal Navy into the Civil Nuclear Programme at size well be in the UK. So I joined what was then British Energy, which became EDF Energy.

Mark Hinaman (07:52)
And how long were you there? What was your role?

Neil Wilmshurst (07:54)
I

was, well, I was there, who?

10 years maybe. There's a 13 in here again, it's about 13 years ago. I'm look at the dates because yeah, it's 13, 14 years when I was there. There's some theme there around 13s and 14s. I get bored after 13 years or something.

Mark Hinaman (08:12)
Well, so this I mean, yeah, you're you're 20 years of your career here. And then that what some time ago to I mean, not to age you, Neil, you don't look that old on camera for those people just listening to this. Right. Like I was surprised that, you know, the to just learn just now that your career had been that long. So ⁓ surely you've had lots of projects that you worked on and experiences that kind of have been interesting. You just highlight a couple for the audience.

Neil Wilmshurst (08:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (08:40)
mean, when you reflect on that time, ⁓ what comes to mind? Yeah, real easy question, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (08:42)
Okay. Yeah, I've

been really, I've been really lucky. Many things, probably the first one, if I pick one from the Navy, it was we, we took a submarine, what the UK calls refit, I think the US would probably call overhaul. We took a nuclear submarine through overhaul. It was the first one done in a commercial shipyard in the UK. And we came out with a brand new design reactor core as well.

So that was very interesting and you're taking a submarine through that, all the testing, bringing it out. So you learned a lot Then if you go to the move from the Navy, of course, going to Sizewell being part of constructing a brand new PWA power plant, starting it then taking it through the first couple of that was something quite amazing. And then, of course, I was given the opportunity as part of Amagen.

when British Energy and PECO got together, came to the US buying nuclear plants. I was given the opportunity to be part of that. So not many people get a chance to come and kick the tires on a gently used nuclear power station, decide whether to make the investment decision to buy it. So I got to do Then I came to EPRI. before, what straddled me to EPRI was we ended up buying Three Mile Island and I was asked to stay at Three Mile Island, which is how I came to the States.

And one of the things I was involved in at TMI was replacing the reactor vessel head. So that got me going to Japan, to Japan Steelworks, for the forging, to France for the vessel, the vessel head being manufactured. vessel head was flown from France to Pennsylvania in the Russian Antonov jet. So all that kind of thing was really amazing. But that was the link that got me to EPRI.

because the conferences around around vessel head replacement, it became the touch point. So I joined EPRI. And then of course EPRI, it's been multiple Many years ago, EPRI started looking at plant lifetime extension, re-licensing nuclear plants, getting from 40 years to 60 years. So we asked the question one day, well, why not 80? And people thought we were idiots.

And then it's turned into now what we call long-term operation and all plants go, all the plants in the US are one by one going to an 80-year extension. And again, a few years ago, we asked the question, why not 100? And again, people thought we're stupid that things people are talking about. So those have been some of the really kind of exciting things I've been lucky to be involved in. And of course, along the way Fukushima happened, which kind of became the turning point for many things.

Mark Hinaman (10:55)
Thank

Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about Fukushima, I mean, just recapping, that's awesome, Neil. build submarines, but watch PWR get built and commissioned and like replacing huge pieces of equipment, traveling the world. What a dream career. That's excellent.

Neil Wilmshurst (11:41)
Well, yeah, it's

time for a rest, I think. My passport's

Mark Hinaman (11:45)
people have that goal after they retire, right? Like to fill up the past. the PWR project at size well, size well C or B, B, B, B. Okay. you join during design, construction? Were there lessons from that that the modern industry might be able to learn from?

Neil Wilmshurst (11:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. So it will be. Yeah.

Yeah,

I joined about halfway through construction. We started up in kind of mid-95 and I joined in 92, 93 timeframe. So it was pretty well along on the construction. The challenge with size well in many ways was uncertainty around the project. Learned the need

at least some effort to control budget. So during the project, that was when the conversation about size will see started. And size will see just had the final investment decision two days ago to put it in context. we're talking. Yeah, yeah, we're talking. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking 1993 1994, the conversation about size will see started.

Mark Hinaman (12:41)
Yeah, and like two days ago now, like we're recording this July 23rd, 2025, right? Like.

Neil Wilmshurst (12:54)
And size will see was going to be of a whole fleet of PWRs built in the UK. And if you're building a fleet, it's really good. You've got continuity workforce, continuity supply chain, lessons learned, and everything else. But what happened is it turned into a single plant project. Size will be everything else was canceled.

and under kind of budget pressure. And the thing that sticks in my mind is we were doing things which at the time felt wrong and we transpired to be wrong. In order to control budget, we cut things out of the program. Like we deleted the air conditioning in the admin building to save money. We deleted, it's the UK, you don't need

Mark Hinaman (13:37)
It really makes people happy, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (13:42)
And then you've got things like lots of access platforms around the plant were removed from the project scope in order to trim the budget. But then in the years following the plant startup, what did we do? We'd retrofitted air conditioning. We started building the access platforms. And that was okay. We justified it on, well, the build cost was reduced and that retrofit was done on O dollars. You know, so I think...

The real lesson from Seiswell though was you need the certainty of the future of project and also having the certainty of subsequent build. And we learned that in the US with We went through the pain, the growing pains, the learning for Vogel three and four, then we stopped. If you keep rolling, things get a lot better.

you

Mark Hinaman (14:32)
That's

a repeated story in industry that, people need to fail to learn and industry hasn't really had a chance to fail and try again in a lot of circumstances. Okay, so you took on your role at EPRI before Fukushima, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (14:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I was,

I was running I was in various roles at EPRI in the years from about when I started EPRI, I joined EPRI in 2003, I think. Yeah, so I was doing various roles in about 2010. I took over as the CNO, the chief new prophecy.

Mark Hinaman (15:01)
According to LinkedIn, 2003.

So I'm curious about this because we have 14 years or so of hindsight now since Fukushima. Do you think the industry reacted correctly to that event? And just kind of walk me through what I guess if it happened again today, would things have been done differently? Would reporting be done differently?

Neil Wilmshurst (15:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course, Fukushima was, you've got to wind your mind back to think how were you thinking before Fukushima and how do you think today? And I tell you, the result of Fukushima all kinds of positive things happen to the industry. All kinds of things are different. I'll give you an example. We never really considered the impact of multiple nuclear plant failures on the same site.

We always tended to look at like a single plant, a single hazard. What happens to that plant? Fukushima and the multiple plants on the same site. That was a wake-up call. And just a side thing, the first nuclear plant I ever visited in Japan was Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. That was years before the accident. That would have been about 2011. Exactly, in an outage in Daiichi Unit 1. So whenever I go back there, I've always got that thought.

Mark Hinaman (16:23)
serendipitously. Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (16:31)
Yes, we never thought about we never really dealt the issue of how do plants support each other after an And the other one, we always had idea, this thought that organizations across the world would help each other. But we never really set up an infrastructure.

and a protocol and practiced it for what we would do following an event. So those things were out and the Fukushima event kind of caused us all to change. You know, there's now emergency response set that have communication protocols between each other, EPRI, IMPO, NEI, the NRC, the IEA in Vienna, exercises talking to each

all kinds of stockpiles of equipment around the both in nuclear plants themselves and in centralized locations. So equipment can be deployed should an accident happen All kinds of changes to the way we look at events and multiple units on single sites. And there were things...

There were questions asked, know, Fukushima, BWRs, hydrogen venting, the explosions and all the rest of which we all remember. So the problem was that the contamination, which kind of went out in the plume from Fukushima and the discussion over were the delays in venting the hydrogen because of concerns of contamination, that started a whole conversation about do we need to install what became known as filtered vents?

vents filters scrub gases coming out the reactor before they're vented at the stack. So that caused us to look at the design of ask what we were trying to protect against. So again, all kinds of things that changed post Fukushima. But one of the real lessons was never convince yourself you know everything.

Mark Hinaman (18:34)
Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (18:34)
because we'd assumed

and then we got surprised. The industry's in a far better place now.

Mark Hinaman (18:39)
That's good. when I look at the Fukushima event, I think it's like one of the best examples of how safe the technology is. mean, it's like the worst case scenario ever. how many people actually were hurt from radiation?

Neil Wilmshurst (18:54)
⁓ so I'm going to... I can't remember the exact numbers. I tell you, it's less than 10. It's way less than... I'd say by radiation, like no one. But there was a couple of people drowned in one of the basements. I think it was one or two people died because the crane they were in collapsed. There maybe at a stretch, there's a couple of people who might...

might have negatively impacted by radiation. But most of the deaths associated with it, of course, were due to the Fukushima and drowning and the public and everything else. And the sad thing in many ways, the reaction to the caused so much turmoil and probably deaths due to people being relocated, their lives being disturbed. But actually the direct impact from the nuclear plant, very, very few.

And I hate to throw numbers out because there's always someone can do some analysis and all the rest of it. But it's certainly a small handful of people on the plants were killed. And the vast majority was industrial, not radiological.

Mark Hinaman (20:03)
Yeah, which in my mind that says like the radiological hazard is remarkably small. mean, relative to the tsunami risk, right? I think, well, so my mother-in-law was actually over on the ground. She's a nuclear engineer and she was on the site during or after the event. So she tells the story of there was a tsunami wall built and they had a line on kind of like a higher wall that said, this

Neil Wilmshurst (20:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (20:30)
You know, a line that we could have built the wall too, and that they had anticipated building them all too, but then they stopped early. So was like protecting against the could have saved way more lives than maybe protecting against radiation. So, yeah, I find that fascinating about the nuclear industry and kind of the mythology about nuclear is what are we actually protecting against? So. ⁓

Neil Wilmshurst (20:41)
Yeah, exactly.

Well thing is,

you can't see radiation, that's the problem.

Mark Hinaman (20:56)
Yeah, yeah, it's a ghost, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (20:58)
Yeah, and then you

put the in the con having spent so much time in Japan, my wife had me count up the stamps in my passport the other And it's like over 50 times I've been to Japan over the last decade. ⁓ And you put

Mark Hinaman (21:12)
It's had more radiation

from the the flights from the cosmic rays than any nuclear plan, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (21:14)
Yeah.

Yeah,

but you put Fukushima in the Japanese context following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a completely different dynamic in Japan. You have to recognize that. That the public perception of nuclear is different in Japan than most other countries.

Mark Hinaman (21:34)
in a good way or bad way.

Neil Wilmshurst (21:36)
In a different way, no kind of, I think probably fear. Yeah. Yeah. But it's notable in the last 10, 12 years or so that's turned around. And it's really in many ways driven by two things. One is the younger generation, because you've got the generation that remember the war of passing away, but also climate change.

Mark Hinaman (21:38)
healthy respect.

Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (22:03)
So Japan has actually, over last 10, 12 really turned the corner is majority kind of nuclear support in it, which would be unheard of 12 years ago.

Mark Hinaman (22:14)
Okay. So I guess anything else to say about Japan or their reaction or I mean, you speak a

Neil Wilmshurst (22:24)
Again, life's full of lessons. again, I've been very lucky. Fukushima gave me lots of great opportunities to meet lots of great people and some many lifelong friends. But the Japanese made a kind of a problem for themselves on the day after Fukushima, which is worth When they established the new regulator, the NRA in Japan after the accident,

one of the early statements made was they were going to ensure there would never ever be a nuclear accident in Japan again. You can't promise that. You can't promise that. You know, none of us want one. Yeah, none of us want one. Yeah, we're going to do everything we can to prevent one, but to say then there'll never be one, what it does, it sets a context for regulation.

Mark Hinaman (23:01)
Yeah, that's a foolish, foolish promise, right? And dangerous, yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (23:17)
which is basically going to be going to strangle an industry. And that's what Japan went through for a while. So there's a lesson coming out of Fukushima. Be careful what you promise.

Mark Hinaman (23:29)
On the outcome of that is trillions of dollars of natural gas, right? Liquefied natural gas to fuel their economy. I mean, their economy, if you can correlate economy and energy, use or as expensive energy, it's, they've struggled since then, right?

Neil Wilmshurst (23:34)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. I'll tell you, but the plants are coming back and that again, you talk about projects proud of. So we worked on license renewal in the US near 40 to 60, 60 to 80. So you've got the plants in Japan have been shut down now for 10 to 14 years, depending on what plants they are. And some of them be shut down even for much longer as they go through all the work. Considerable engineering work to bring them back.

to a standard which they need to be. So you think of the business case for doing that. You've got a nuclear plant shut there down for 10 years, 12 years, whatever. You're building seawalls. You're spending millions, billions of dollars putting new pipe supports and everything else. You're paying all the staff. What's the business case? The only business case is if you can run the plant for longer. So it's not just extend the license from 40 to 60.

like the US, what about the years when the plant is shut down? Is the clock running when the plant is shut down? So we actually spent years working with our Japanese to develop the technical case which said the clock isn't running when the plant shut and actually given the basis to extend the life from 40 to 60 years. And that has been in many ways the biggest impact that EPRI's had in Japan.

is because without that work which we did based on the work we did on the US fleet, the Japanese nuclear utilities wouldn't be able to restart.

Mark Hinaman (25:18)
That's awesome, Neil. You guys should be so proud of that. That's an untold story. That's fantastic. Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (25:23)
It is, EPRI is full of

untold stories, that is probably the one of, and there's dozens, know, but that is one which we should be proud of, should talk about. Without the work we did, there wouldn't be a Japanese nuclear industry today.

Mark Hinaman (25:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's I mean, during your time at EPRI, the nuclear ⁓ sector, guess at EPRI, perhaps their global expanded a lot, right? Like, what was the drive behind that?

Neil Wilmshurst (25:48)
Yeah.

Part of it was, you know, every business has to grow. If you don't grow, you're actually declining because inflation takes over and everything else. Every business needs to grow by 5 % or more a year in order just to stand still. So when you've got a business which is kind of fully embedded in the US, you've got to look other places to grow. That was the first thing. It was pure business.

But then you look at the nuclear industry and it collaborates so well across boundaries. So we were surrounded by people saying, can you help us? Can we interact? Can you actually do this for And it became a nuclear industry kind of drive that people were coming to us saying, we want to join EPRI, we want to work with EPRI, we want collaborate with others. And we...

just grasp the opportunity to be this hub of global technical But the challenge for us and this is an analogy I used to use, you have to be careful. People could show up and join because they wanted the lapel pin to say, we're members of EPRI. It's like joining the health club. They could join the gym and claim they're wonderful because they joined the gym.

Mark Hinaman (27:01)
you

Neil Wilmshurst (27:11)
what we had to do was make sure they showed up at the gym and used the gym. And that is really what the big effort came over the last 10 years or so, is actually going around the world, meeting with all these people who were very happy to have the lapel pin, but actually teaching them the machines that were in the gym and how to use them.

Mark Hinaman (27:30)
I love that Were perhaps countries or people that more fit than To keep the analogy going?

Neil Wilmshurst (27:37)
Yeah,

I tell you it's been a surprise like then every Nucleus different nuclear people are the same though You know, they're all at the same drive the same mentality everything else the some of the places I've enjoyed tremendously is China You we first went to China when they had one

Well, they had two nuclear companies, had CGN and CNNP. CNNP was up near Shanghai, was the kind of indigenous nuclear company. CGN was down near Hong Kong, was Western Technology. And they had between them about 10 nuclear So we got in there talking with them and we've been part of the journey with them to now that China is amazing the way that nuclear.

nuclear programs going. So they've been amazing and you think that they had very few budgetary constraints they were wide open to learning and just seeing how they've learned and helped each other has been amazing. So China's been Europe, you know Europe has had nuclear for a very long time but there's so much going on in Europe it's always

I'll tell you some of the best experience I had were in Spain because the Spanish have quietly run an incredible nuclear program for And very few people realized that many countries when they wanted to learn how to run a nuclear program went benchmark in Spain.

Mark Hinaman (29:09)
Really?

What do you mean by that? Went benchmark in Spain? Like went and learned in Spain there?

Neil Wilmshurst (29:13)
So you want

to find how to do something well. You want to go and copy someone. You go and spend a week in their plant, whatever. Many, many people have taken the journey through Spain to see how the Spanish do it.

Mark Hinaman (29:27)
Is that because

they have better wine than the Germans?

Neil Wilmshurst (29:30)
I just think they've had very good leadership over the years, very good plans, very good maintenance and a very good attitude about the way they run the nuclear programme. Very impressed with Spain. But the one that surprised me the most in many ways was Argentina.

So the view of Argentina, of course, is this Latin American country. It's always in turmoil. The budget's a mess and everything else. But in the middle of all this, they're running some interesting nuclear plants. They've got Embalse up in the mountains, which is can-do plant. And they're running it. They've just extended the life of it. They're running it very well. But then you go down to Atucha. They've got PWRs. But they're

Mark Hinaman (29:46)
Okay.

Neil Wilmshurst (30:11)
that they're unique design, PWA, like unique plants in the world. And you think, how does a country like Argentina not just run a Atucha, but finish an Atucha unit after the Germans have walked away from the program? So they internally in the country completed the construction startup and operation of the second Atucha unit. And I went down there and it was amazing. It was like this.

wonderful kind of group of what I call early to mid-career people. All these, from my perspective, young people who were really smart, really motivated, and had really done a great job actually working on this unique technology. So Argentina's been a revelation to me around how people can do it. Then don't forget UAE started from nothing.

We've been working with UEE for the past decade or more now, and we've been with them kind of hand in hand as they've gone from nothing to four nuclear plants operating in the Gulf out there. And they're a great example to be how to start from nothing, how to do a program right. And one of the things that sticks with me the CEO of Enec, Mohammed Hamadi, he made a tough decision at one point, which has been lost in the kind of the annals of time.

Unit one was complete, but the organization wasn't completely ready to run it. So they didn't start. They waited till everything was ready before they actually started the plan. How tough is that when you've spent billions of dollars building something to sit and look at it while you make sure the organization's ready?

Mark Hinaman (31:53)
Yeah, got to make sure your people are ready to go. That's that is impressive. ⁓ You know, with just hearing you talk about all of the various places around the world, ⁓ I've visited many of those places. I've not been to China, but did attend a conference in Prague conference was moved to Prague from the US the Chinese weren't allowed to attend if it was held in the US.

Neil Wilmshurst (31:57)
there.

Mark Hinaman (32:18)
because global tension is international stuff. I found that echo what you said. I was very impressed with the Chinese at the conference. They are smart, they are very technical, and it's because they have experience. They're building this stuff. I think there's sometimes a bunch of hubris the West and in America that, Chinese stuff isn't built quite as well as

I'm really concerned that that's not true anymore. Is that?

Neil Wilmshurst (32:48)
Yeah, without

getting into politics and export control and everything But to say, know, everything we've done and are doing in China has to be within that bubble of what you're allowed to do and with complete transparency with So, and that's been that's been a journey in of itself, but probably shouldn't cover that here, but making sure we stay in those boundaries. But

You're right. I think there is this perception from the good old days of China and toys being made and things being low everything I've seen in the Chinese nuclear program is really high quality, really well done. If there's a challenge in it's something I learned a while ago, proficiency.

is the product of qualifications and The Chinese have a proficiency challenge. They can qualify people, but they're growing so fast. You've got to ask yourself the question, do their people have enough experience? And if I had one in China would be, yeah, they're great, they're building plants, they're operating the plants well, they're maintaining them well. How would they deal with something like Fukushima?

all of a sudden they're outside the procedures. And I know they're aware of that and I know they're trying to deal with it, but this whole thing proficiency is something the industry needs to be concerned about. You don't just qualify someone and become a world expert on day one.

Mark Hinaman (34:19)
So.

⁓

Argentina is another really interesting one. I love Argentina. I've been to Buenos Aires and Patagonia and the wine country. I think it's an awesome country. Super friendly people. a lot of really, really hardworking people that, I mean, they've been dealt like a really rough set of cards. And so, I mean, your story about Argentina doesn't surprise me. they're gonna follow through with stuff and get stuff done ⁓ despite the circumstances.

Neil Wilmshurst (34:24)
it

Yeah, exactly. And people forget they're building an SMR.

Mark Hinaman (34:49)
⁓ Okay, so why, why, let's see, you said that expansion was necessary for business. Has played a role with kind of the culture of the organization, what you guys have been able to accomplish over time?

Neil Wilmshurst (35:03)
Well, yeah, the interesting thing is EPRI has been viewed for years as an American organization. And when you start dealing globally, be it in the Gulf or Japan or Korea, wherever, or our need to understand not just the culture in the country, but they need to understand the regulators. They need to understand the different business

all of a sudden it changes the way you look at things. And it's very easy to show up Seoul, South and try and explain to someone how to do something and use the American way of doing something. But the culture shift is, you there's multiple ways to do things. Finding the way that fits the culture that you're in is really important. And that's been the big change in the organizations.

understanding the culture we're operating in and actually taking the lessons from around the world and bringing them together. And what our members see isn't just that we bring the American perspective, but you can show, you're having this conversation in Seoul and you can be talking about what you've seen in France, what you've seen in South Africa, what you've seen in And there's no other organization has the ability to bring that

global context to a local conversation. And that is the real focus of what I've been trying to do for the last 10 plus years, is bring the organization along to have that, to recognize that unique opportunity we have to bring that global perspective to these conversations.

Mark Hinaman (36:44)
I feel like, I mean, we've had several members of Eprion. I feel like I ask them this every time. So folks can go back and listen, but if they don't want go back to listen to old episodes and only want to listen to you, Neil, like how can people get involved with this? And with that, I mean, you guys post a ton of research papers online, are there physical conferences, ways to get involved and how do people join this conversation?

Neil Wilmshurst (36:47)
Yeah. ⁓

So, you know, I could say all this now, now, kind of getting towards the end of the career, if you like, but the challenge with that pre is we've got a lot of and for years, years, I've been saying to people, the challenge is you've got to meet people where they are. We could stand in the room and talk about whatever you want, but what we have to do is

Mark Hinaman (37:17)
can be daunting. You're like, I don't know, how am going to navigate this?

Neil Wilmshurst (37:32)
talk in the way that addresses your problems, your issues, your needs. And that is the ongoing challenge of actually messaging you've got in EPRI to meet what your needs are. We don't need to talk about what we have, we need to talk about what you need. So that's the difference. So just dipping into the EPRI website, isn't gonna be the most fulfilling thing in the world because you're gonna see lots of

things and you're gonna have to filter out the bit you want and find it. I'm not saying don't go there, I'm just saying it's hard because there's so much. So there's lots of conferences you'll find EPRI popping up all over the Not just EPRI conferences which tend to be really focused on members but you'll have EPRI people on conferences all over the presenting whatever. For example I was a cop in Baku in

November last and things like that. So EPRI is all over the The best way to interact with EPRI in some ways is, I say go back to the website and if you find something that piques your interest, there's a way to kind of connect with EPRI and get in that website to get connected to someone who can help you guide yourself through and find where to interact. But the EPRI interaction is mainly with our members, but we do pop up all over the place.

Mark Hinaman (38:55)
Yeah, so it sounds like you guys need a feedback loop and need to bring information back into the organization, right? So like as much as you tell people and you've it's just as important to you guys for people to give feedback and communicate where they're at and what their needs are. important for you. Yeah, important for you guys to listen. So I guess that's an encouragement, right? Reach out if folks here want to be involved and want to learn more than step one might be.

Neil Wilmshurst (39:01)
Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (39:22)
Yeah, go to the website, also reach out and tell you guys what their needs are.

Neil Wilmshurst (39:27)
Yeah,

and know, and recognize that now EPRI is a very global operation. There's so many different perspectives. And what is the priority in the US might not be the priority in Japan, might not be the priority in Argentina. But at the end of the day, there's a huge amount of work going on. And all of it can inform each other.

Mark Hinaman (39:50)
Yeah. I've got my notes. World Energy Council. Talk to me about that. What is Why is it important? Did you have a role there? Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (39:55)
Hmm.

World

Energy Council set up about 100 years ago, coming out to the First World War, where it was recognized that countries needed a forum to talk about energy issues. And if you go back and look at the first meeting of the World Energy Council, the people at Einstein were there. It was that big a So the World Energy Council is affiliated with the UN, and it's kind of the place where

people come together to talk not just about nuclear, not just about renewables, not to talk solar or fossil, whatever, is to talk about oil and gas, is to talk about energy and energy issues. And what it's really become over the years is not the technical place, because we're all very at going straight to technology. But energy has an economic, a societal kind

angle as the World Energy Council really based its conversation on this trilemma of energy security, energy sustainability, and energy affordability. And if you think about and have a conversation, bring your people together, and this is what World Energy Council does. It looks at that societal aspect of energy and decisions that are being made,

policies are being made, opportunities out there. What can we do to bring along society? And I was talking, I mentioned I was at Baku. I was talking to a gentleman who'd been chair of one of the and I can't remember which one it was now. But he said to me, the challenge the world faces now is not making the cheapest solution to clean energy, but making the right solution.

And if you think about it, you know, where we may sit there thinking, okay, it's got to be the cheapest, but there's a right solution which addresses all the saddle aspects as well. And that's what's going on at the moment. And a great example I heard someone talking about was think about electric vehicles. So you want to increase the deployment of electric vehicles. First thing people say is you need more charges.

So where do you put the charges? And actually what some people are saying is, you need the charges in low income areas. Why do you need the charge in low income areas? Because that's where the taxi drivers live. So they need to able to charge their cars when they're at home. And like there's issues like that which don't come up if you just look for the cheapest option. Because you and I would just put the charges in the high income places. Because that's where the people have the big.

have the expensive EVs. But the societal thing says, no, no, no, you need to find a way to put charges in the low income area because of cab drivers.

Mark Hinaman (42:48)
it's kind multifaceted impacts or the compound effects, right? Like second tier. a great Do you have another? Not to put you on the spot. I'm just, yeah, I'm just curious.

Neil Wilmshurst (42:50)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm

It'll come to me in a minute. Give me a minute. It'll come in minute.

Mark Hinaman (43:05)
All good.

we've got another question. The Gulf region has been an emphasis recently as debris is expanding Why? What's driving that?

Neil Wilmshurst (43:16)
Well, I mentioned earlier about Baraka, but the other one, if you've been to the Gulf and look at the Gulf, we all know intuitively there's, sovereign wealth funds are pretty well stocked there. So there's a lot of money And also there's a drive there to look beyond the oil economy. They start saying, well, what comes next?

Mark Hinaman (43:19)
Yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (43:39)
And you know intuitively like Dubai is focused on Abu Dhabi is looking at education, they've got this buzzword, the knowledge economy and healthcare and things like that. So trying to diversify the But what's happening massive investments in energy being built, generation being built, different looks. The biggest solar park in the world is outside Dubai.

It's 40 square kilometer solar panel. all this is being built, look, you're at Saudi, they're talking about amounts of solar, huge amounts of transmission, they're talking about building nuclear plants, everything else. So all this is being done, and it's being done in a pretty unconstrained capital environment, an environment where a lot quicker.

because there's lots of wide open spaces. You want to build a transmission line, you can build it. There's only camels in the way. There's no settlements in the way. So what's going to happen is the Gulf in many regions is going to be a testing ground. And it's an awful pun, but almost a sandbox of technologies around the world. So there's lots of learnings in the Gulf that the rest of the world can see.

But the other side is the people making the decisions in the Gulf want to learn from the rest of the world. So EPRI can bring lessons from rest of the world to help them make better decisions. And then we can actually learn from what they've done and share those with the rest of the world. So that's really the driver. It's an incredible opportunity to be on that cutting edge of technology deployment.

Mark Hinaman (45:09)
you

Yeah, that's I've been to Dubai, very impressive, impressive city. ⁓ Simultaneously dry and humid, hot and humid. It's bizarre, yeah.

Neil Wilmshurst (45:25)
Yeah.

But I'll

tell you an example of that solar park. was last year there was a storm in the Gulf and you've probably seen the photos, the streets of Dubai were flooded and all the rest of it. As part of that storm, the wind going through the solar park wiped out a million solar panels. 10 % of the solar park was destroyed then.

So again, you can learn from that for the rest of world. What's the impact there? Actually, the standards you built the solar park What standards were built to, the designs of the solar panels. So learnings from Dubai can help the rest of the world as they're deploying solar panels.

Mark Hinaman (46:06)
Yeah, that's crazy.

Okay, Neil, we're coming up on our We've mentioned or alluded to it a couple times in the You're calling it quits. You're retiring from soon-ish.

Neil Wilmshurst (46:17)
Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (46:18)
Are you excited to retire? Are going to be staying in industry? Talk to us a little bit about the future for you.

Neil Wilmshurst (46:23)
Yeah, I'm excited. It's time. I've spent a whole life in the Navy or whatever traveling. So it's time to pay back to my wife if nothing else. But like I said, you never quite retire. So what we're going to I'm going to train as a sommelier, which everyone's jealous I've set up a workshop in my basement and a steam engine.

And, but the other thing is like, you never quite retire. I've actually got staying in the industry and working with ASME, the American Society of Mechanical and really focusing on what has been a core part of what I've been trying to do for the last few years is looking at training and development and nurturing the next generation of engineers.

And there's a part of ASME called the ASME Foundation, which is all finding ways to STEM programs at schools, the way through universities, all the through career support, bringing the next generation of engineers in. So I've been very fortunate, been asked lead the efforts of the ASME Foundation. So that's going to be my kind of, hopefully about a day a week kind of...

contribution to giving back. Try and make sure that we can maximize the effort of the ASME Foundation to help the next generation of people follow on because I can tell you that you can have all these dreams of tripling nuclear, whatever it may be, or tripling solar, whatever. It's going to need people. Even with AI out there, you're going to need people to run the plants, to build the plants, design the plants, or

There's not enough engineers being developed, not enough people staying in that's what we've got to do. So that's going be in between the wine tasting and the steam engine building going to be doing some giving back through ASME.

Mark Hinaman (48:14)
What a retirement, I'll air quotes, retirement, right? Like most people are like, yeah, now I'm going to travel the world and, you know, hang out with grandkids. And you're like, no, take up a brand new hobby that some people have as a profession, you know, be a mechanic and machinist in my basement. And then, oh yeah, help develop a whole new generation of workforce.

Neil Wilmshurst (48:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (48:33)
Well, Neil, we've really, really appreciated the time. Yeah. Thanks so much for chatting with me.

Neil Wilmshurst (48:39)
Okay, thanks a

Mark Hinaman (48:40)
Cool.

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