073 Stephanie Fishman, Senior Associate and Nuclear Regulatory Attorney at Hogan-Lovells

Stephanie Fishman (00:00)
I think nuclear is gaining huge momentum right now for so many different reasons. First in the previous administration under like a decarbonization umbrella.

The energy transition is what they called it, RIP. ⁓ And then after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it became energy security to reduce reliance on Russian uranium, Russian energy sources. ⁓ And then now trifle data centers. The administration's priority is to win the AI race. the only data centers have such a huge thirst for energy. ⁓ Renewables aren't going to cut it.

Nuclear is 24 seven. It's baseload power. It's carbon free. It's there's no option to win a data center race and AI race without nuclear, at least in the mix.

Mark Hinaman (01:54)
Well, welcome back to another episode of the Fire to Fission podcast, where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can better human lives. Today we're joined by Stephanie who's a senior associate at Hogan-Levels. Stephanie, stoked to have you here chatting. We were just looking at our list of questions before we started recording and we're like, we're not going to stick to the script.

Stephanie Fishman (02:17)
goes.

Mark Hinaman (02:17)
Yeah, Stephanie, for the audience's benefit, give us quick overview on your background, who you are, set the stage for us. Who are we talking about?

Stephanie Fishman (02:28)
Sure, sure.

Well, thanks Mark for having me here today. I am currently a nuclear regulatory attorney at a large firm in Washington DC, specializing in all things nuclear and fusion. But it took me a while to get here. No, we are not. It has got to be, you've got to change your name to fire to fission and fusion. Make sure people know.

Mark Hinaman (02:46)
And fusion? we not calling nuclear fusion? Or are we not calling fusion nuclear? It's different.

Fire and nuclear.

Yeah. Okay.

Stephanie Fishman (02:58)
Yeah, yeah,

But yeah, it took me a while to get here. I studied nuclear engineering at the University of Georgia, Go Dogs, and right out of college was recruited by the intelligence community to come work for them using my technical degree. But of course, you're 18, you want to be a spy, and then you turn 22, and the idea of going to Yemen doesn't sound so great all of the sudden. Very luckily,

My recruiter was like, what do you think about going to work for DOD still doing nuclear for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DITRA? And I was like, yes, sign me up. So I was a part of a team doing global nuclear security, is essentially I was handling ⁓ high threat radioactive material and weapons grade material in various countries overseas, securing it, ⁓ training militaries and foreign governments on how to secure those facilities.

Really fun stuff. The areas I was working were Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Jordan, which have the most exciting, diverse nuclear histories and just sort of nuclear setups, if you will. So like happy to delve into more details on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was awful. It was awful. My GPA was horrible. I studied abroad at Oxford. I was like, why am I doing the hardest things?

Mark Hinaman (04:08)
And you got an Arabic minor? Was that helpful? that surely in some-

Yeah, nice.

Stephanie Fishman (04:20)
⁓

Yes, luckily, taking time working before going to law school, like, separates your GPA in a way that, like, really law schools were most concerned about the LSAT score at that point, which, which was. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But when I was in Jordan, I was helping the government draft regulations from scratch for the new research reactor. They were setting up at the ⁓ University of science and technology. And was like, wow, I love this.

Mark Hinaman (04:33)
That's helpful. Yeah, Easier to game that one than your GP.

Stephanie Fishman (04:47)
I'm going to go to law school and be a nuclear regulatory attorney," said probably no one ever. But that's what led me to where I am today.

Mark Hinaman (04:54)
Peace.

⁓ this, this dynamic is really interesting. I guess I had this hadn't clicked before we started recording right now and you just described it. Like, my, so my wife's an attorney and I'm an, and I'm an engineer. Right. And I've heard it. Yeah. Right. I've heard it, ⁓ described as like different modes of thinking, like engineering, you're thinking from the ground up to find a conclusion, right? Like looking at all the facts and trying to deduce the conclusion. And then like,

Stephanie Fishman (05:08)
Okay. Imagine being both.

Mark Hinaman (05:26)
attorneys start with the end in mind and like work backwards to justify their case. yeah, having, having that dynamism in the same human is, yeah, like good, like the LSAT is like a rational, logical thinking test, right? And like, crazy for that.

Stephanie Fishman (05:36)
It's rare and in fact, I...

But even in my

role every day as an attorney, people are so surprised to know that I have a background, a technical background, because I can speak clearly about technical topics to regulators, policymakers, business executives without like making their brains hurt. So like who knew that like being such a science minded person also meant you probably weren't going to be a good communicator.

Mark Hinaman (06:09)
Right, right. That's awesome. Okay, cool. So working abroad, do you have any good stories from that? Like anything that comes to mind that you could share? I don't know. That's like just such a different job.

Stephanie Fishman (06:21)
Yeah.

It is, it is. like,

⁓ I'm like at a loss of like, do I start with Kazakhstan where I was securing warehouses, a thorium where the Russians did their like original nuclear testing? Or do I want to talk about South Africa, which this is all public information, by the way, at this point, but you know, South Africa was a nuclear weapons country ⁓ thanks to the Israelis. And during apartheid, you had the white government afraid that a new black government was going to

you know, be in charge of its nuclear weapons program that was clandestine at the time. So they quickly said, Hey, United States, Hey, IAEA, Hey, West, please help us dismantle this program. ⁓ DOE did an awful job at the time with a low budget. They just put everything into these drums. So you didn't know if you were going to be opening up a drum with soil, gloves, shovels, or a drum with actually enriched uranium in it, which made the facility quite susceptible to theft, to terrorism.

because if you could get your hands on the lucky drum, you know, it's pretty good. I...

Mark Hinaman (07:25)
Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (07:28)
⁓ As someone who's not boots on the ground. I didn't appear military ⁓ or threatening in that way to our sensitive South African counterparts. They sent me as like someone to manage this project now and do a material ⁓ breakdown and like characterization of each drum so that we could, you know, implement high security for the ones of value and maybe leave the other ones on the outside of the gate. And it's fascinating. I was probably the only

female from the US to ever step foot at this site out in Pellandaba and like such an invaluable experience. I really cool, especially because like for the first half of my career, I couldn't even talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. It's in Pretoria, which is in Pellandaba. So like an hour outside of Joberg. Yeah. And it's pretty far. It's pretty far. like

Mark Hinaman (08:06)
That's awesome.

Is it in South Africa? Where in South Africa?

We miss that country on our life around the world. I still want to go. So, yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (08:26)
I, know, it's also quite dangerous country, you know, at times, you know, they speak 12 national languages. ⁓ It's politically really volatile, but a really exciting place to go. I've never been to Cape Town. heard that's the place to be.

Mark Hinaman (08:40)
Yeah. Okay, so we got introduced by ⁓ Jared Berg, right? Like mutual friend. ⁓ I went to college with him and you guys went to law school together? High school together. Yeah, in Denver, right? yeah. Nice. in Dallas. Okay. Nice. Okay. I just saw him. We had breakfast two days ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (08:46)
We're done.

We didn't. We went to high school together. Yeah. So you like throw it back even further. Yeah. In Dallas. Yeah.

Oh yeah, because he was at the Peruvian Basin Conference as well.

Mark Hinaman (09:08)
Yeah, he was at the Powering the Permian conference. Awesome conference. Have you kept up with him much?

Stephanie Fishman (09:11)
Cool.

No, in fact, he reached out to me because his firm, he's interested in like building out more of a nuclear practice at his firm. There's only four large law firms that do nuclear, ⁓ all of which are in DC. But ⁓ it's funny, a topic I've been talking about for so long is now like,

dinner party conversation and like my parents are asking about it, which they've never asked me about it before. You know, all of a sudden, like everyone wants to talk about it and it's, yes, there's a ton of nuclear influencers and everyone's now an expert, but it's kind of nice to have been someone who's established in the nuclear world who can now talk about these things with people who are for the first time interested.

Mark Hinaman (09:54)
Yeah, that's awesome. ⁓ Why do you think it's becoming popular? And why are there only four law firms that specialize in this?

Stephanie Fishman (10:03)
Others will say they do it. Like you probably could go to a variety of like firms that have energy practices and there would be like a bullet point on nuclear. But you really need to see like which attorneys are actually doing the nuclear work because there's really not that many of us in such a small world. So I'm not sure. And maybe more will come like even take Jared who's has that he's a partner at his firm and he has an interest in growing out a nuclear practice. And even the fact that states

which historically had been very anti-nuclear or just had no nuclear opportunities whatsoever. Like multiple states have new legislation opening opportunities for nuclear. firms follow, attorneys follow the money, follow the business opportunities. So that's just like one reason on the law firm side. I think nuclear is gaining huge momentum right now for so many different reasons. First in the previous administration under like a decarbonization umbrella.

The energy transition is what they called it, RIP. ⁓ And then after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it became energy security to reduce reliance on Russian uranium, Russian energy sources. ⁓ And then now trifle data centers. The administration's priority is to win the AI race. the only data centers have such a huge thirst for energy. ⁓ Renewables aren't going to cut it.

Nuclear is 24 seven. It's baseload power. It's carbon free. It's there's no option to win a data center race and AI race without nuclear, at least in the mix. So all three, I think large concepts and themes and priorities have what made nuclear such a hot topic today. Plus there's like influencers now on TikTok. So people are seeing it that maybe wouldn't have seen it before.

Mark Hinaman (11:53)
you. ⁓ I love it. love it. So you mentioned this I think briefly, but why did you decide to pivot from doing like the security stuff to going back to law school and saying, wow, I really want to do this? What attracted you to law?

Stephanie Fishman (12:11)
Yeah, it's a huge question

because I was, I mean, living the life. I had a diplomat passport. I was traveling to all these countries. ⁓ But I was doing the most, you know. I didn't need to be my boss, who at the time was like a Navy Admiral sitting in an office managing people like me. And I didn't need more countries added to my Rolodex. ⁓ And I also think I was working in a pretty exclusive weapons field.

weapons-grade materials, high threat rad materials field. I always knew nuclear energy would be important just by virtue of having studied it. So it just seems like such a natural pivot. Like I could talk the talk and like, you know, walk around the Pentagon pretty proudly as like someone who was understanding the concepts of nuclear, the buildup of it all. And then, yeah, the law thing, I'm not sure.

I don't even know. I had heard, I knew there were nuclear lawyers in DC. had seen partners, Amy Roma, Jeff Merrifield, they existed. And to me, they were combining such fascinating topics, both on an academic level and on a technical level. So that was probably the draw.

Mark Hinaman (13:30)
There's not a lot of these attorneys that are like specialists, but do you think there's a growing need? Like if somebody's listening, they're like, man, ⁓ I wish you go explore this in our law practice.

Stephanie Fishman (13:36)
Absolutely. And I-

I

get calls from law students all the time who like maybe have an interest in energy but now want to specialize in nuclear and like know want to know what courses they should take to get the attention of like a law firm that does nuclear. You know what kinds of articles should they be reading? Should they be you know what kind of topics should they be writing on to get published in this area? Absolutely in need but it is such a specific field that the interest has to be there first. You can't it's not you hear a lot of FERC attorneys who just fell into it.

I would say you don't need a technical background to be successful in nuclear regulatory work, but you do need to have an interest.

Mark Hinaman (14:20)
You have to be able to read a lot and read fast.

Stephanie Fishman (14:23)
That's for sure. yes, for

sure. Reading is pretty key.

Mark Hinaman (14:27)
key to ⁓ being a lawyer.

Stephanie Fishman (14:29)
You

can't do it without it.

Mark Hinaman (14:32)
That's why I became an engineer. It's tough to read. ⁓ Yeah, right? just do audio and video platforms. We've written some stuff too. Okay, I want to touch on ⁓ export controls. I don't know. This is topic that I'm curious about because we're developing like SMRs in different countries, right?

Stephanie Fishman (14:35)
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And like, honestly, now you could probably do more podcasts and like audio books. Yeah. Yeah.

Fascinating, okay. Why?

Sure, yeah.

Mark Hinaman (14:59)
There's like Copenhagen

Atomics and then there's a bunch in America and like some in Canada, but like we can't have people from all over the world working on these things, right? Like this is kind of a nuance of the industry. How do you, I don't know.

Stephanie Fishman (15:13)
In the U.S.

we can't have people from around the world working on this or over skis.

Mark Hinaman (15:16)
I don't know,

can we? Yeah. Like, are there special rules about this or?

Stephanie Fishman (15:22)
There are, and they've actually somewhat changed in the past year or so. During the Cold War, just to take us back there, the Atomic Energy Act had a provision called Foreign Ownership Dominated and Control, FOCD, which effectively prohibited foreign entities from owning or controlling or having like 50 % ownership domination over nuclear assets.

Mark Hinaman (15:29)
Nice.

Stephanie Fishman (15:49)
Or entities in the US, and that was for national security purposes. So, this is two fold up. We can get into like, export controls of like, the technology itself, but in terms of like, personnel and international partnerships, generally, ⁓ we were sort of. Limited the US was limited in the partnerships that could establish international collaboration because of this pretty dated pretty specific provision under the atomic energy act, the F. D.

The Advance Act, 2024 Biden Advance

it redefined FOCD from the ADA. So it

an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act to eliminate the FOCD restrictions. And it has some qualifying language that like partnerships can only be with OECD nations plus India. India is like very specified as like a separate entity on its own, which has its own rationale. But

Now, foreign entities can not only invest in like US nuclear operations industry, they could be an owner. ⁓ No one's done it yet on paper because you still have to declare it and like file with the NRC. But this is a huge opportunity for both foreign investment massively and just for partnerships generally. ⁓

Mark Hinaman (17:07)
Yeah, that's like really impactful, right?

Stephanie Fishman (17:14)
If we, and like, I could talk about this forever, but like, think about construction in the US. We don't do it very often. Hence why our grid is so old and why bridges are crumbling. We repair things when they are broken. And that's goes, that's the same for large scale nuclear projects. We don't build them well. Cue Vogel. It's the poster child for being out of budget and over schedule.

Now look at China. know, they deploy AP 1000s on a mass scale. They've got 40, I think, under construction and 30 planned. It is a rinse and repeat operation. Also take Korea. They built, Baraka is the poster child, the opposite of Oval. They built it on time, on budget, because they do it all the time. They're not in first of a kind mode. They're in enthevacine mode. So like leveraging...

skills, experience, technology from other countries, I think will also help mass deployment of nuclear in the US, both on like a large light water reactor level and on advanced reactor level. So that's, that doesn't really get into export control if we're talking technology and like how does like a Westinghouse get its parts over to Belarus? That's a

Those are a different set of laws that falls under NRC jurisdiction and DOE jurisdiction, depending on if we're talking about foreign assistance, which would be under DOE part 810, or if we're talking about actual nuclear reactor components, which would be NRC's part 110. That's very technical.

Mark Hinaman (18:42)
Um, why, well, first off, I think you just underscored like, uh, why attorneys are necessary. Um, yeah, right. I mean, let me just quote standards.

Stephanie Fishman (18:45)
Yeah.

I mean, I can just like quote regulations like with my eyes closed. Don't test me.

Mark Hinaman (18:56)
When you think about...

Well, there's been a lot of talk about reducing regulations. ⁓ That's really impactful for nuclear, right? Like people say, when I talk to investors or when I was talking to investors for the last couple of years, people were skittish to invest in nuclear because regulations were too onerous and permitting timelines were too long. ⁓ And that was like a primary ⁓ veto card that, know, partners at investment firms would

Stephanie Fishman (19:20)
Yes.

Mark Hinaman (19:27)
play. Is that changing? Like there's a lot of talk about it changing. How is it changing? I timelines like NRC has said that they're accelerating some timelines. Like what's what's kind of your view on this?

Stephanie Fishman (19:39)
So first I'll talk about the NRC and what's happening right there, but then I'll also talk about investment in the space and why I don't think there's, yeah, exactly, Got it. Got it. was like, I feel like there's, if you've got a slide deck, you'll get investment.

Mark Hinaman (19:46)
Sure. Oh, investments change. Yeah. All right. When I said previous, right? Like, so like when I was talking to folks in like 22, 23, 24, it was, it was like, yeah, yeah,

it was, was like, nope, never gonna happen. We're never gonna touch nuclear because regulations. And then like in the past 12 months, you know, it's exploded, right? So it's a move.

Stephanie Fishman (20:04)
Yeah.

Right and it's going to be

the regulatory impact to like, advanced reactors and deploying small modular reactors is going to be so interesting. I think 1, like application to watch will be the Fermi application. ⁓ Because from a technical legal perspective, it appeared to have significant deficiencies in it, but this will be a good test of whether the NRC is going to be.

steamrolling these applications through because of political pressures and because of negative propaganda on regulatory structures being too slow? Or are they going? It is, the name is, no, no, of course, it is, I don't even think Fermi is the actual name, it's not an acronym, but it's the advanced nuclear reactor that will be constructed in Texas. I actually think it's called the Donald Trump Nuclear Data Center. Yeah, exactly.

Mark Hinaman (20:43)
I guess people may know what Fermi is, sorry to cut you off. Like they're going to work now, right? Yeah.

It's like a whole campus of

energy center, right? Energy sector, very, yeah, his project, ⁓ previous energy sector, right?

Stephanie Fishman (21:04)
Exactly. Right.

Yeah, so the NRC has always had this pressure. Now they've said they can start reviewing these applications within 18 months, and I believe that they can. The Commission, we've seen them do it before. We've seen them do it with Kairos. Like, we know it's possible. It just takes a two-way street. ⁓ Applicants, businesses need to engage in pre-application with the NRC so they know what the NRC is looking for and vice versa, and that will make things go smoother. I think fear of regulatory hurdles.

is attributed to a lack of understanding on how the agency works and what the regulations require. Because we're working with companies every day on submitting applications and we have contacts at the NRC on getting these through and understanding what's needed. We respond to requests for additional information. I think when you work with qualified attorneys who specialize in this space, there are way less regulatory uncertainties associated with these types of projects.

⁓ not to like plug working, you know, with me, but like, not, it's not that scary actually, if you just hire a great council, but like at the same time, we're seeing such a paradigm shift, like back to like the capital, like VC is just pumping money into all of these new companies, startups. ⁓ you know, it doesn't matter if bets are being placed on failing products because we won't know that yet. And the NRC has never experienced that.

Mark Hinaman (22:12)
You're like, well, it might be hard, you can just power up.

Stephanie Fishman (22:38)
operating under the paradigm of the Westinghouses and the GEHs that are the owners and the operators and the designers and the developers. And now they're going to have to field applications and pre-application engagement from all these new entrants and new designers and without utilities in sight, like these companies want to own and operate on their own. ⁓ So,

a regulatory shift will need to happen. And you can tell the NRC even before this administration has had an appetite for it because before even a Part 53, which is a framework that's been drafted to specifically license small modular reactors and advanced reactors, they were reviewing applications for this technology under the existing Part 50, Part 52, which isn't best case, but the fact that they were even willing to review them under an existing framework is illustrative of their appetite to get these technologies online.

That's ⁓

Mark Hinaman (23:29)
A

great answer. The pre-application process, how long does this typically take? mean, there's a range of things, but what is it? Because we said, okay, 18 months to get a permit. And coming from the oil and gas base, we're like, federal permits take the longest. It's 12 months. You submit the permit and you go. If you have to do an EIS, God forbid, then it's five years. And maybe in Colorado, it's like 18 months to two years to...

Stephanie Fishman (23:33)
Yeah.

It can take, depends. Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (23:59)
get a drilling permit. ⁓ But like in Texas, I've gotten a drilling permit over the weekend, like submitted Friday, had permission to drill on Monday afternoon, scheduled to move her again three weeks later. Like, I want that in the nuclear industry, right? ⁓ But like, yeah, that's what we're aiming for.

Stephanie Fishman (24:04)
Love that.

God bless Texas.

Yeah, sure. And maybe one day we'll get there. Like, we're

like these things haven't been built yet. Like we're still in first of a kind. Like once like something stands up, once steel goes into the ground and electrons are put onto the grid and that we can get into like an of a kind situation, you know, it'll be de-risked for investors. Resources can be streamlined. The regulatory approvals will be streamlined.

But we're just not there yet. We're still on first of a kind, which is a really difficult spot to be in, especially when we need to be seizing today's unprecedented political, public, private momentum, you know, for nuclear. Like, if we miss it, it may, public opinion may swing in the opposite direction and that could stick. But pre-application engagement can take anywhere from six months to a year.

on average, generally speaking, depending on how well prepared you are having some nuclear regulatory counsel, you know, having worked at the NRC myself right after law school, like it's nice having friends, the ones that are still working there, you know, at the agency. It's nice to be able to make phone calls, set up meetings with senior staff, do drop-in meetings with the commissioners to make sure like they're aware of your technology before you even begin pre-application engagement. like when your official

Transmitted letter comes through the door. They already know who you are like all of those things help

Mark Hinaman (25:44)
Cause I mean at the end of day, there's people on the other side of this, like managing these processes with it, right? It's not like, it's not like a TurboTax wizard, which is also set up by people, like, you know, trying to negotiate with like an AI chatbot.

Stephanie Fishman (25:55)
Yeah, yeah, and it's hard.

Like, if you just look at what's happened to the NRC right now, their general counsel was dismissed. There were two commissioners fired. Their EDO is gone. staff is gone. Like, it's a different agency. But maybe it's good thing because we're in a different paradigm. Like, the calculus for nuclear applications, for nuclear technology has completely changed. So, like, maybe it's not such a horrible thing that the agency is going to be physically shifting as well.

Mark Hinaman (26:25)
What's, so I give the analogy of like ⁓ getting these things licensed without actually building them first. It feels like never skating on ice in your life and being expected to make like a shot from all the way across the ice, like hockey shot ⁓ on your first try and like not practicing, not having any experience. ⁓

Is that an apt analogy or do you think that like this is, I don't know, I've got the view of like, we should just be able to go and build a bunch of them. the maybe faster way to summarize it is like this paradigm between asking for forgiveness and asking for permission. And it feels like there's a lot of asking for permission in the nuclear industry. ⁓ And like, nobody will ever, there's this view that like, if you have to ask for forgiveness, then it's going to bankrupt you and like ruin your country and destroy your community.

Stephanie Fishman (27:25)
Yeah, it's horrible. You know, it's not an industry where you can build a prototype. You know what mean? There's that.

Mark Hinaman (27:34)
But

it is that we are. We're building 10 of them, right? Like with the DOE.

Stephanie Fishman (27:38)
But they won't be,

but they won't be. Okay, so sure, that is the workaround. Like look at Oakloat, fully put its shovel into the sand and it does not have an NRC approval to start construction because it's used under the DOE reactor pilot program. ⁓ And that's another thing that we're seeing. the president has, rather than previously where politicians will get behind a business and throw money at a technology, the current president is throwing authority at DOE. So now,

Mark Hinaman (27:41)
Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (28:08)
I don't want to say it's reprising the olden days of the Atomic Energy Commission, but DOE now has, through the EOs, its authority to circumvent NRC processes to stand some of these designs up on their own. And that's never happened before. So we'll need to see what happens. DOE will have to indemnify because of the Price Anderson Act themselves, because they'll be owner operator.

with these companies. Yeah, it was.

Mark Hinaman (28:38)
Okay, can you just talk through what that means? There's some legalese in there. I understand it, but

I don't know that everyone is just gonna take a look.

Stephanie Fishman (28:48)
The Price Anderson

Act is actually like one of the biggest things to give investors some like confidence. It is the nuclear liability regime in the United States. And it basically says if there's like a nuclear incident, a nuclear event, a nuclear occurrence, and those are also terms of art in the act, ⁓ that liability is channeled strictly to the operator. So now contractors, ⁓ tech companies, owners won't be afraid to invest in this space and set up projects because

It is a strict liability mechanism for the operator. And there's a pool of money that the US and DOE and private companies all ⁓ play into that money would come out of. And this is huge. ⁓ So in Colorado, a few years ago, more than that, 10 years ago, ⁓ there was a leak at Rockwell. There was a lawsuit between Rockwell Chemical and Dow. Rockwell and Dow.

Sorry, this has been so long. And there was contamination that had gone into the soil. The community sued.

And they sued under regular tort law. And Neil Gorsuch in the circuit court said that price, didn't qualify as like a Price Anderson Act event. It wasn't like a nuclear occurrence. He thought it was like a nuclear one-off and there was billions in the payout under standard tort law versus money that would have come out of the pool that's designated for this type of

Under Price Anderson Act. It's really meant to protect the industry, but while also compensating for any potential harm and injury Yeah ⁓

Mark Hinaman (30:24)
So we said,

here's a carve out in tort law that nuclear gets because it's impactful.

Stephanie Fishman (30:33)
Not even that. This

community used tort law instead of filing under the price, a claim under the Price Anderson Act. Neil Gorsuch agreed, know, defendants, the nuclear industry were like, this needs to be covered under Price Anderson Act and like the liability insurance that's associated with that. And the judge said, no, this would fall under a regular Colorado tort law. ⁓

And that was a pretty impactful case in the industry. it's in 2015.

Mark Hinaman (31:02)
When was I?

2015. yeah, that well, was that a so is that Rocky flats then or okay. Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (31:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Rockwell and Dow. Yeah. And like, don't quote me on like the particulars, but I just know the Price Anderson Act wasn't utilized. There was a small technical wording glitch that made it so. And huge amounts of money were paid out under our regular tort law structure. And that hurt. That hurts the nuclear.

Mark Hinaman (31:36)
That's infuriating, right? My backyard. Literally, like, you like I can even like jog from all the flats. It's a long jog. Bike, you know, but like, yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (31:38)
Right there. Yeah, of course. But and like you should be compensating.

And like, of

course, there should be compensation for communities that are, you know, susceptible to any type of contamination, but let it come out of the liability framework and the insurance pool designed for it.

Mark Hinaman (31:56)
Right, Okay, and so with this new authority that DOE has been given...

Stephanie Fishman (32:02)
So if DOE is gonna be setting up these nuclear projects in the contracts, I forget who they've awarded. ⁓ let's use Oklo for instance. They'll have to channel liability as the operator, because it's under their program.

Mark Hinaman (32:16)
have to channel the ability of the operator.

Stephanie Fishman (32:18)
The liability

will be on them if something goes wrong because of the Price Anderson Act. And this is actually good because you don't want the cost of liability to be channeled to ratepayers like you and me in our utility bills. It should.

Mark Hinaman (32:30)
Right. And if you channel it to

the private company, then they can't take the risk. Right. Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (32:35)
Correct.

Correct.

Mark Hinaman (32:37)
That's good. That's a good thing for the industry, right?

Stephanie Fishman (32:38)
But it's good. It's good.

It's good. And to your point, it like completely circumvents NRC regulations.

Mark Hinaman (32:44)
⁓ Give them a chance to go and build something. Try it out.

Stephanie Fishman (32:48)
It does.

It does. does. You know, unlike Fusion where like, prototypes, devices, they all can be built in advance. Make a demonstration of it.

Mark Hinaman (32:58)
Well, and it's funny that you're saying that they don't want to be characterized as nuclear. We ran into that. ⁓ I ran into a fusion company and then I was like, hey, you guys should join the Colorado Nuclear Alliance. And they're like, no, no, we're not going to join the Colorado Nuclear Alliance. We're not nuclear. And I was like, what? But you're nuclear fusion. ⁓

Stephanie Fishman (33:14)
It's at least not yet.

But the risk profiles are so different. Like you've got to at least assert some distinction now while they're, cause there's not a licensing framework yet. the worst case scenario would be for the NRC to like need to license individual fusion devices and fusion facilities like a nuclear reactor. That would be horrible. It would be like, it would be like if the FAA

had to certify and license every individual aircraft. Like the airlines industry would halt completely. You know, it should be like.

Mark Hinaman (33:53)
It's just like the

nuclear fission industry halted, right?

Stephanie Fishman (33:56)
Well, and once,

yeah, well, once every design, yeah, once these designs get approved, we hope that it is just like rinse and repeat. That's the goal, but we're not at the end of a, once we get first steel into the ground, electrons onto the grid, we're in a whole new, a whole new game.

Mark Hinaman (34:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Energy and energy demands. think we mentioned that briefly. Do you have thoughts on kind of the current existing market? know, I mean, everyone knows we've been flat on electricity for a long time. Now it's, you can't escape like a day of news or podcasts without hearing people talk about electricity growth and power demand. ⁓ But how do you feel if you like from a legal... ⁓

legal framework. Like, are these data centers going to be harder to permit than some nuclear power plants? Probably not. I don't know. You probably can't speak to data centers.

Stephanie Fishman (34:49)
Probably not.

⁓ you know, and I, I think I use Virginia as a case study and I'm, I'm, I'm going to like pull out an economist article quote really quickly, just like a super quick quote, but like,

Mark Hinaman (35:01)
Okay, great.

Like I've got it on hand. No big deal.

Stephanie Fishman (35:07)
Yeah,

The Americans GDP is growing at 2%. That's what they said, which is normal for a developed country. But the 40 % of that growth is attributed to AI and data centers coming online, which they don't say upfront. You know what I mean? Like that's a huge number. AI is doing the heavy lifting. And then I look at Virginia, which is as a case study, because let's just call it data center capital right now.

Dominion reports, I think 40 gigawatts of contracted or pending data center load. That's double last year. Data centers already consume 26 % of Virginia's electricity, which is expected to grow 30, 40, 50 % by 2030. And like, yeah, like P-Jam, they're all warning of shortfalls that could happen as early as like end of this year, early next year in these zones. It's,

The grid is old. I'm pretty sure when it came online movie tickets were $4. There are parts of it that are 20, 30, 40, 50 years old. So there is a question of how can this work? How can this happen? one way to stay ahead of these challenges, and I'm just now off the cuff, but obviously accelerate clean energy deployment, all of it.

wind, solar, nuclear storage, all of it, and streamline permitting, like the talking points, modernize interconnection and permitting. I last checked at the interconnection queue was still like five years long. And can see that this is happening. So DOE just announced last week, they just put out an RFI where they're going to be giving

over 100,000 acres of DOE federal land at the Idaho National Laboratory to private development of AI data centers, co-located with new energy projects with a preference for nuclear and geothermal. ⁓ So that's a super unique opportunity. That's new. ⁓

Mark Hinaman (37:08)
Yeah,

that coincides with, there's like a data center conference in I &L.

Stephanie Fishman (37:14)
Okay, yeah, yes, because I

think they had an industry day recently. they're, yeah, I think they're taking applications like through November 7th. I'm like, this is a huge deal because like, it just is an example of like, this should be also happening in Virginia. You know what mean? Like, incentivizing opportunities to like co-locate clean energy, Q nuclear with data centers. They shouldn't be able to stand them up without it.

Mark Hinaman (37:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great perspective. Do you, so we talked about financing. Do you have other thoughts on like corporate structure and like there's a lot of companies going public now, right? We said Fermi's going public, Oklo's performed really well, the public equities, but like, I don't know. Do you have a view on corporate structure?

Stephanie Fishman (37:49)
Yeah.

I, yeah. So like there's no one size fits all. ⁓ And you are as, yeah, I'm getting my words together here. If you, there's the right financing corporate structure mechanism really depends on the role you want to play. So if you want to be both owner and operator of the plant, like a power purchase agreement, a long-term power purchase agreement, or even a contract for difference is going to be able to provide the revenue.

Mark Hinaman (38:17)
That's okay.

Stephanie Fishman (38:35)
certainty that you want, at least to make the project investable. But if you're more interested on just owning the facility like Dow and X Energy, Dow will be the owner and they'll bring on a third party to operate, letting someone else run it, or maybe a regulated asset based model would be the better fit because it gives predictable utility style returns without any of the operational risk being taken on. ⁓ Then you have companies like TerraPower,

and X Energy exploring federal support. ⁓

and those come with off take agreements, ⁓ which help make those projects more financeable. So like, there's a lot of different ways to, it's a full Rubik's cube, just depending on how you want, what risk you want and how you want it to run. So like being an owner and an operator versus just an owner. You know, I sort of mentioned this already, but like so much VC money in this space right now, there's always been some investment, look at example, Bill Gates and Terra Power, but it's now that on steroids, like,

there are more entities entering the market heavily capitalized by VCs. And the one downside is that bets are being placed potentially on failing products, but there's a lot of FOMO. If you have a good slide deck, VCs are gonna throw money at it. ⁓ But this is ultimately changing and it's putting pressures on the regulatory state because the NRC was designed under

Mark Hinaman (39:52)
Yeah. I think there's a lot of.

Stephanie Fishman (40:00)
a utility paradigm using large light water reactors as the operational mode. And now they're just dealing with new companies, you know, no utilities in sight. And maybe utilities will want to come on the scene after some of these are proven and stood up and the risk is de-scaled. ⁓ it's a little bit of the Wild West with all of the financing and corporate restructuring that's going on.

Mark Hinaman (40:23)
Interesting. ⁓

Why does that matter? Like the different financing structure and the impact that like the regulator or impact on the regulator. I guess they're used to dealing with utilities, but then like these VC back startups show up and they're like, hey, we want to move fast.

Stephanie Fishman (40:42)
Yeah, just government agencies move so slowly, like really all of them. And they're so precedent-based. so, they operate so well in areas of familiarity and comfort and like, correct, correct. And like, does this meet the checklist?

Mark Hinaman (40:53)
We have a form and we fill out the form. I don't, I can't, I don't know how

to check this box or I can't check this box. ⁓

Stephanie Fishman (41:00)
And like no one wants to be like the

face of like a first of a kind novel policy or decision, especially with nuclear, because it could be scary. I mean, I don't know. But like, I find that.

being in the private sector, we can make legal arguments to push the NRC. But like, I understand if you're the regulator, you would be weary to like, wanna implement, but like, it's way more fun on the private side. It's way more fun to be the person to push these arguments. I'll give an example.

If you were going to be submitting a licensing action for a large light water reactor, the NRC has a hearing process in place where a member of the public can request a hearing on it or try to intervene to stop the process, whatever it is. If it's like an application for construction or even like an amendment to the license, really anything. And the first part of the hearing process to be initiated is that the person raising

the request for a hearing or intervention needs to show standing. They need to show traditional standing, that they have a potential injury that would be caused from the licensing action. ⁓ The NRC for large light water reactors has like a standing shortcut called proximity standing. ⁓ Essentially saying that if you live within 50 mile radius of the licensing action being submitted,

you in essence have standing like just by virtue of proximity. Okay, which then makes which is a sort of a low bar given how few nuclear accidents there have been in a large reactor 100%. So

Mark Hinaman (42:32)
And that does make a lot of to me.

Well, zero public deaths. So what standing

does anyone have? Like, it harmed me. You're gonna hurt me. Never.

Stephanie Fishman (42:47)
Exactly.

Exactly. They love to say it. Anti-nuclear

groups, members of the community, like people love to say it. We fight them all the time. But now that new advanced reactor applications are going in...

People are going to be challenging these left and right, requesting hearings, interventions. People are scared. The risk profiles, we already know the risk profiles for an advanced reactor, a micro reactor are vastly different than a large scale reactor. But the NRC's policies for admitting a hearing or granting intervention have not changed. So,

you will see a company, ⁓ a new scale in Oak Low and X Energy submit an application to the NRC for a construction permit or an operating permit or a combined COLA construction and operating. And people from the community, members of the public, anti-nuclear groups are going to make the same arguments to standing that they would have for a large scale, large light water reactor. They're going to include a proximity standing argument and like.

Me, my team, we love every chance we get to put an argument together that proximity standing should not exist for an advanced reactor application. Makes zero sense. Will the NRC say they agree? Will they change this hurdle and make it more difficult for people to impede on this type of work? I don't know. I don't know. And like, know that I do know the staff and I know the people who are signing the decisions that are going to be on the other side of the arguments we're making. And they're junior.

And you know what I mean? And like, I try to put myself in the shoes of like that person. And I'd like to think I'm forward thinking enough and I like support the industry enough. I'm like technologically savvy enough to like say like, yeah, like there shouldn't be proximity standing and an advanced reactor license application.

Mark Hinaman (44:37)
Yeah, I just, I don't understand the hazard.

Stephanie Fishman (44:42)
Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (44:43)
like, like, what, what is that junior person protecting against? We're sitting here too, like, I'd call us like, pretty smart nuclear experts, but that in their quotes, nuclear experts, but like, and we're like, wait, so you've got a regulatory

Stephanie Fishman (44:48)
I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's scary, maybe a fear of like overturned decision, fear of like the NRC not taking safety into, I don't know, because like, and we're gonna go.

Mark Hinaman (45:09)
Well, but

like just tracing it, tracing it upstream or downstream or whatever. Like, okay. So you, you have a release and some radioactive dust gets into the environment.

Stephanie Fishman (45:21)
and soap super unlikely.

Mark Hinaman (45:23)
and then somebody braids it in and they get cancer. Is that what we're protecting against?

Stephanie Fishman (45:28)
No, because it's got it. That's not traceable. You'd have to presume that person doesn't smoke. There's too much. You know what mean? There's too many other factors that can be involved.

Mark Hinaman (45:36)
Like that's more compared

to all of their, right, and improve causation with it, right? And so, yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (45:40)
Yeah, yeah, you get really legal on like how this works, but that's why

like proximity standing sure if you live within 50 miles of a large the reactor core of a large scale light water reactor, the NRC was more lenient on granting standing ⁓ that that. It is, but that that framework and mind you, there's another component that these people have to prove in order to get a hearing or to have a successful intervention. They also have to have an admissible contention, which the bar for that is much higher.

Mark Hinaman (45:53)
Which I just think is silly. I disagree with you.

Stephanie Fishman (46:08)
But the standing piece, like instantly these requests for a hearing and intervention should be thrown out instantly for proximity standing being asserted on an advanced reactor license application. And this is happening right now. So I can't get too deep into the arguments and the details and who's saying what, but you will see it soon.

Mark Hinaman (46:28)
Yeah, nice. Well, we'll keep our eyes peeled for that. Stephanie, this has been fantastic. We're running out of time, but leave us with, I can tell we're gonna have to have you back, but I feel like we've covered, mean, shoot, we've been all over again. We got some of your background, we got licensing, we got some export controls, corporate structure, investment. Like I think this wasn't meant to be a commercial for you and your firm, but I guess it might've turned out that way. It's like, hey.

Stephanie Fishman (46:44)
Yeah.

I can't help it.

We do such great work. yes, it's with advanced reactors, like, and nuclear and the existing nuclear fleet. But I also have worked with Amazon on ensuring that Amazon sellers don't have uranium in their products and put together frameworks and internal procedures on how they can know. We also worked with a well-known apparel company that had radioactive contamination show up in a shipment of their product at customs and like.

It's so fun to talk to rooms of executives on decay chain and trying to explain that to them. I explain it as like, imagine your family tree, you've got your grandparents and your in-laws coming to visit you for 30 years and they don't leave. And I think they got it. if we're talking about like cesium-137. So it's really all the things. right now is such an exciting time because there's so much momentum. If we can't get it right now,

Mark Hinaman (47:40)
Thanks

Stephanie Fishman (47:50)
I don't, yeah, I worry public opinion will change, but it's a really fun time to be talking about this right now.

Mark Hinaman (47:56)
Yeah, well, blue sky this for us. Like, what's it gonna look like in the next five to 10 years? ⁓ And let's make it optimistic, right? I mean, know lawyers can have a tendency to defer to pessimism, like, you know.

Stephanie Fishman (48:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, let's assume that the reactors being built under DOE's reactor program, SAN's NRC licenses, are the prototypes.

Of the industry, and they'll demonstrate, you know, all of this passive safety features that advanced reactors are supposed to have and the smaller cores and like the less radioactive materials that are going to be associated with it. And then the NRC all of a sudden gets part 53 stood up and there's enough shift within the agency that they get rid of proximity standing for a license application for an advanced reactor. And all of a sudden companies are getting permitted for construction and they're breaking ground and steel is going in.

I think we will get to an end of a kind construction situation. We will be advancing partnerships with international players, hopefully, mass deployment of AP 1000s, working with the Koreans, Team Korea on their technology of reactor. And I think once we can just get this really awkward phase of strong push, nothing existing yet, and... ⁓

getting at the NRC comfortable licensing these on mass scale. once you have one license, you don't need another license again. You don't have to come back and recertify every aircraft. ⁓ It's just binding across the board. ⁓ I think once we get to that, I think we can get there. I think it's I understand the hesitation and I understand skepticism, but I think we can get there. All of the pieces of the puzzle are in place.

Mark Hinaman (49:26)
general environmental impact statement.

Yeah.

Stephanie Fishman (49:44)
It just needs to start happening.

Mark Hinaman (49:46)
I love it. Stephanie, I've

really enjoyed chatting with you. I can tell we're going to have to have you back on. Thanks so much for your time.

Stephanie Fishman (49:52)
Yeah, thanks Mark. Appreciate it.

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