How to Sell Nuclear Power to Save Humanity/Bret Kugelmass - Last Energy, Nuclear, Disagreeable ~ Spark of Ages Ep. 14
Apr 26, 2024Season 1Episode 14
Rajiv Parikh
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com Find more great content like this at: https://www.position2.com/
Episode Description: Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about nuclear energy as we're joined by Bret Kugelmass, the mind behind Last Energy. This electrifying episode promises to ignite your curiosity and offer a fresh perspective on the future of sustainable power. Brett doesn't just advocate for nuclear as a necessary energy source—he envisions a world thriving on its abundance, even as our society's hunger for energy grows with advancements like generative AI. Our planet's health and human progress hang in the balance, and Brett makes a compelling case for why nuclear power stands at the forefront of this crucial junction.
Unveiling the tangled myths that shroud the nuclear industry, we tackle the misconceptions that have skewed public perception and driven up costs. Who knew the narrative of nuclear energy could be as twisted as the plot of a Hollywood thriller? Listen as we dissect the impact of regulatory capture, incentive structures, and how fear has been more profitable than the energy itself. We also venture into the groundbreaking business models reshaping the nuclear landscape, highlighting how these innovations promise safety and grid independence for energy giants.
Buckle up as we tour the audacious idea of 100x global energy consumption using current nuclear technologies. This isn't your typical energy debate—we're talking about revolutionizing transportation and transforming our everyday lives. By the end, we're not just discussing energy; we're questioning the very fabric of societal norms on climate change and resource use. So, tune in, as Bret Kugelmass lights the fuse for an intellectually stimulating journey through the complex world of nuclear power and its vast, untapped potential to reshape our future.
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com Find more great content like this at: https://www.position2.com/
Episode Description: Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about nuclear energy as we're joined by Bret Kugelmass, the mind behind Last Energy. This electrifying episode promises to ignite your curiosity and offer a fresh perspective on the future of sustainable power. Brett doesn't just advocate for nuclear as a necessary energy source—he envisions a world thriving on its abundance, even as our society's hunger for energy grows with advancements like generative AI. Our planet's health and human progress hang in the balance, and Brett makes a compelling case for why nuclear power stands at the forefront of this crucial junction.
Unveiling the tangled myths that shroud the nuclear industry, we tackle the misconceptions that have skewed public perception and driven up costs. Who knew the narrative of nuclear energy could be as twisted as the plot of a Hollywood thriller? Listen as we dissect the impact of regulatory capture, incentive structures, and how fear has been more profitable than the energy itself. We also venture into the groundbreaking business models reshaping the nuclear landscape, highlighting how these innovations promise safety and grid independence for energy giants.
Buckle up as we tour the audacious idea of 100x global energy consumption using current nuclear technologies. This isn't your typical energy debate—we're talking about revolutionizing transportation and transforming our everyday lives. By the end, we're not just discussing energy; we're questioning the very fabric of societal norms on climate change and resource use. So, tune in, as Bret Kugelmass lights the fuse for an intellectually stimulating journey through the complex world of nuclear power and its vast, untapped potential to reshape our future.
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast, where we're going to talk to game changers of all kinds about their big world-shaping ideas and what sparked them. I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh, and I'm the CEO and founder of Position Squared, a digital marketing company based in Palo Alto. So, yes, I'm a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, but I'm also a business news junkie and a history nerd. I'm fascinated by how big world-changing movements go from the spark of an idea to an innovation that reshapes our lives. In every episode, we're going to do a deep dive with our guests about what led them to their own eureka moments and how they're going about executing it. And, perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea can also become a spark for the ages. This is the Spark of Ages podcast For everyone listening.
Rajiv Parikh:
Today's guest is trying to solve a problem relevant to you, your children, your children's children, your children's children's children. Okay, you got it. Climate change is an existential risk for all of us and our families, and our guest, Bret Kugelmass, has a solution. Bret Kugelmass is a Washington DC-based technology entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Last Energy. With commercial agreements for over 50 units across Europe, Last Energy has built the fastest and largest pipeline of nuclear energy projects in human history. Last Energy is the commercial spinoff of the Energy Impact Center, a research institute founded by Bret in 2017 to identify effective and scalable climate solutions. In addition, Bret launched the Titans of Nuclear podcast in 2018, which has amassed over 4 million views on YouTube and continues to be a definitive source for conversations with leaders and experts in the nuclear space. Bret, welcome to the Spark of Ages.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, thanks for having me Appreciate it.
Rajiv Parikh:
Well, great to meet you. I met you originally as my close friend Tim Harris's wedding. He's a great innovator himself and you and I were just sitting back and chatting about nuclear power and I think this was before you even started all these things. You were still researching, and so it's really great to have you, Great to see all the progress that you've made. So I'm going to be asking you questions about your business model, how you do business development. So I'm going to be asking you questions about your business model, how you do business development, how your thoughts about I think you interviewed like 1500 experts across multiple aspects of nuclear power and clean energy, so really excited to have you here.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, no thanks, Happy to share.
Rajiv Parikh:
And of course, I'm a marketing guy, so I'm going to ask you about go to market as well, so let's jump right in. Okay, so let's start off with the basics for this audience. At a societal level, why do you think people need nuclear power versus other forms of energy?
Bret Kugelmass:
Well, I don't think we need nuclear power. I think we should become a high energy society and it should be clean. But we could know like we could just go on burning as much methane as we can get our hands on and, you know, deal with the consequences. I just think there's a better way and I think we can get more abundance and decouple the environmental impact using nuclear. So that's the preferred solution from my perspective. It stands far and above all of the other alternates like nothing else even comes close. So that's a direction I've dedicated my rest of my life to fulfilling.
Sandeep Parikh:
Why do you say it's not a need? It's just interesting that you framed it that way.
Bret Kugelmass:
Well, like what's important to humanity, right, it's like the earth will be fine, even if, like, we screw it up, right? So it's like you know. I'm saying like, yeah, like like the earth has recovered from uh, environmental, you know catastrophe. Like you know, like civilizating, civilization, ending catastrophes in under three million years, you get all of your diversity back. You get a full new, lush landscape back. So the earth doesn't need us. So this really is just all about human existence and optimizing for what you know, the environment that humans want to be in. This is all about us. And then, so, if you're going to make trade-offs around like true need, like what comes first I mean, plenty of people live in cities where they don't have access to environment, access to nature Like, like you don't need it, we want it. Like, and it's a good thing to want, like I'm, I'm pro like a, like a a vibrant, diverse environment, but it's not a need.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's right. I mean, I think what you're talking about is where we're going as a society. We keep wanting more and more energy. I think in South by Southwest recently, you discussed that just in. Everyone talks about generative AI. Just in doing anything in generative AI, you're just consuming significant amounts of energy, right, in terms of what it's doing, and then, as we prosper, we as a society, or new societies, build up a greater need for energy in general, so that keeps growing. At the same time, our planet, uh is, is distressed, or at least our version of it. Our life of it is distressed, um, because of the climate impacts we're causing so we need to change.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, we think we think it's like distressing, but like man, man and this is a tough one, right, Because I started everything trying to fix, quote, unquote, the climate problem but like the environment might be very healthy two or three degrees C higher. I think what really what we're trying to do is we're trying to avoid some sort of like catastrophic positive runaway out of control situation, but we, like you know what we've done so far actually might not be that stressing to the environment.
Sandeep Parikh:
It might be healthy for the environment, but not for us. Basically is what you're saying.
Bret Kugelmass:
No, I think we've. I think we've probably. I think the environment's probably better off a couple C degrees hotter. I think the environment's probably better off a couple C degrees hotter. You can recover more land, more diversity of species, Like, yeah, a couple insects are going to species will die here and there, but a bunch of new ones will come up. Also, it's unclear if we've actually done anything negative so far.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's a new take, yeah, but if we do want to get back to the or slow that change, right, because it's the significant change, the runaway effects that could cause a much more difficult life for all of us as humans, right, so many people live by the seas, the seas rise, that becomes a significant issue of migration. So, you're right, we could open up new parts of Russia, new parts of Canada, we can all move up and migrate to other areas, but it will cause significant change and that's what we're talking about with the impact of climate change.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I want to avoid rapid, distressing change that hurts especially underprivileged populations. That's my goal. But there's more than one way to skin a cat and we could have. I just want to be intellectually as honest as possible, because I hear so many people talk about climate and they're just pandering to their dinner club. Whatever they say is just what other people want to hear, and I'm trying to be intellectually honest and I think, yeah, there's more than one way to skin a cat. We could have rising sea levels but also protect populations in a way where we do not cause harm to those least able to defend themselves. Both can be true at the same time.
Sandeep Parikh:
Wow Sorry In my LA bubble, be true. At the same time, wow Sorry In my LA bubble, where I'm from. This is pretty revolutionary thought for me hearing that. Okay, hey, look this climate change that we're. So it's less about what's happening and it's the rate at which it's happening. It's almost like the AI argument.
Bret Kugelmass:
It's less about. Yeah, but the rate is really slow right now. The rate is really really slow. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just being alarmist. It's unnoticeably slow. Sea level rise unnoticeably slow. The hurricane stuff is totally disputed. Polar bear populations are increasing, not decreasing. So yeah, I understand your LA dinner clubs have a certain social overlay to them, but they're just wrong.
Rajiv Parikh:
All right. So it's not the end of the world as we know it.
Bret Kugelmass:
Not, yet Not yet it could get there. I'm trying to avoid these positive runaway effects also.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's right.
Bret Kugelmass:
Obviously, I'm dedicating my whole life to mitigating climate change, but just want to be honest about it.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah. So I mean, what got like? Maybe you can just talk about how you got into this right. Like you, really, you did a lot of research and then from that research, like you, came out with the statement that with going to nuclear power, you could even remove nuclear power. As you saw it, you could remove carbon from the atmosphere. You could actually power it, which is very expensive to do. Right, you're talking about carbon at a level of 400 parts per billion and rising. Removing that from the atmosphere is high energy producing versus taking it from smokestacks. So you saw this brilliant new future that you could drive with nuclear. And then you went in and did all this research. Maybe just talk a little bit about that.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. So the original thesis was I just sold my last company. This was, I guess, 2017-ish and I just wanted to tackle the biggest problem I could get my hands on. I just wanted to leave the largest impact, and so climate was that problem. And so I said, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to solve climate change. And so I said, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to solve climate change, not be part of the solution. I'm going to solve the problem.
Bret Kugelmass:
And if you just, you know, rederive it from first principles, it actually doesn't make sense to reduce carbon emissions. It like because you have to go negative at some point anyway, because you're already in a like, we're already in a positive feedback loop. It's just very, very slow. We have to go negative at some point. The existing legacy emissions that are already in the air are just going to keep adding heat year after year, even if we added no new ones. You got to go net negative. It totally changes the landscape of solutions that you can employ, because renewables can never go net negative, because there is a carbon cost to implementing renewables and they're extremely low on the amount of energy that they can be used to reduce carbon or to pull carbon from the air on it. So it's like you're going backwards to pull carbon from the air. So it's like you're going backwards. It's like you're bailing water out of your boat, but the thing that you're bailing it with adds more water than you remove each time. That's renewables for you.
Bret Kugelmass:
So that drove me to find nuclear and I, just like everyone else, only knew what I heard about nuclear like that's in society. I thought it was. I thought what everyone else only knew, what I heard about nuclear like that's in society. You know, I thought it was. I thought what everyone else thought. But I decided, okay, well, this is the only solution if you want to go net negative. And then I started digging into it and I realized just about everything I knew was totally wrong. It was just a bunch of myths and you know societal lies. I don't know what do you call them.
Sandeep Parikh:
What were some of the biggest myths?
Bret Kugelmass:
Oh, that radiation is dangerous, right, like, yeah, sure, anything is dangerous at large levels. Let's go back to water. Everyone knows the whole like college drinking story. You drink three gallons of water. It's toxic, you know, at high enough levels.
Sandeep Parikh:
So yes, radiation falls in that category. I have a different college drinking story in my mind.
Bret Kugelmass:
But, like anything, can be toxic in high enough concentrations, even things that seem benign. And radiation is really benign at the levels that you would ever come in contact with it, including in the case of a nuclear meltdown. So you know, when you reframe the fact that radiation actually isn't dangerous and then you re-interrogate, like the history of the industry, you just figure out that everything you've been told you know. Why is it expensive? Why is it hard to deliver? Why is it heavily regulated? Like you get to re-question all of these things and totally dispute the common wisdom.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah. So, I think that's part of like, did you? When you started going down this path, did you take like, look, I sold my previous company. I want to start. The next great thing I found I'm finding this path. Was it a single person that led you to that, or a single interview? Or was it just an accumulation? Just was it like a gradual, incremental set of discoveries?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, okay, yeah, great question. So there were a couple early influences. I would say Michael Schellenberger's work was an early influence. Stuart Brand's work was an early influence, though I could go through everything that they've ever written at this point and dispute half of it also. But they were pointing in the right track and like very well intentioned, so that got me started. And then, yeah, and then I I set up this podcast as a vehicle to like actually get to know industry experts across.
Bret Kugelmass:
You know policy, technology, economics, you know historical builds, how you know I flew to 15 different countries, saw how they did nuclear, I met with the ministers of energy, other think tanks, whatever. Yeah, that first year, 865 conversations over three years, 1,500-ish. I mean. The number keeps going. I just stopped counting, but I do have a book with my first 1,500 documented. And so then, yeah, I mean I think the first year was all about the first couple of months. I realized everything I ever knew was just totally wrong. And then, uh, the next year was about figuring out how can that be Like what is an explanation for society, for other scientists, for world leaders who should have access to all the best information being so wrong? And it took me at least a year to figure out the underlying root cause, not to be confused with like the proximate cause of the industry stagnation.
Sandeep Parikh:
I'm waiting on bated breath, so I think yeah, so let me help with this.
Rajiv Parikh:
I think one of the things I've watched a lot of your videos after you and I met that day and I think I was a little blown. I was blown away when you would give that description about just in our conversation we give off more radiation than a nuclear power plant is allowed to in a year. It was like there were some interesting analogies that you pulled out that helped me understand why this industry, which was known for high cost, taking forever to get something done, to having huge issues with waste and safety, why it was so different than what was injected into my head right when I was a kid, I think I mentioned to you I used to read these National Geographic magazine articles and one was on nuclear energy and I thought it was the greatest thing and I thought it would change the world and would produce incredibly abundant energy.
Bret Kugelmass:
We would you know it?
Rajiv Parikh:
would be free. We would literally, you know they would be paying us to take it. It would be so inexpensive.
Bret Kugelmass:
What happened? Yeah, and that world is going to happen at some point, yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:
But what was the delay about? What was the root cause of all the misinformation, then about it.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. So, and once again, this took me like a year to even conceive of this idea. It's going to sound pretty simple when I say it, and it took me like another year to validate it, to like I felt sure it's really quite simple. Everything in the world is driven by incentives, right? I mean you know like you go all the way down to like a bacteria or an amoeba being driven by chemical incentives, you know, following different chemical gradient paths, right? Okay, so it's like all the way up to consumer spending is driven by incentives. Everything is driven by incentives.
Bret Kugelmass:
And the way that the the market rules had evolved in the United States, which was leading the path for nuclear globally, was such that it was far, far, far, far, far more profitable for the nuclear industry to sell fear of nuclear power instead of selling nuclear power, of selling nuclear power. And then when you get to the situation where everyone believes that everyone is incentivized to sell nuclear power and they're telling you the most horrible things about the core technology, you are going to exaggerate those even further in your head. You're never going to question the nuclear industry saying nuclear is terrible and for God's sakes, that is like evidence for every other energy industry to point. To look, even the nuclear people say how dangerous nuclear is. So connect the dots for me on who?
Bret Kugelmass:
Redundancy for every piece of equipment, upgrades for every single commercial off the shelf piece of equipment to make it nuclear qualified. They write it into the code books, they lobby standards bodies. The exact same valve or pump it's just like the wedding industry cost 10 times as much if it's for a wedding than if it's for a picnic, but it's the exact same thing. And the nuclear industry, the regulatory capture over the course of decades, wrote in all of these rules, not only to box out their other competition right, the incumbents use regulatory capture all the time to create moats. Well, this was not only creating a moat, this was creating an entire new industry for them. When I say 10X as big, that's documented, it's not like me just saying it offhandedly. The amount of revenue that they earned selling protection equipment was 10X whatever was selling reactors and fuel.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah, they make way more money on services and equipment to provide those services to the existing set of plants. I think the US is still about 20% nuclear.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, and the economics have another term for this. It's called rent-seeking. Rent-seeking and the economics have another term for this, it's called rent seeking. Rent seeking it's when someone decides to, instead of providing new value, just extract as much value from what's already deployed as possible, even at risk of crippling those assets, killing the golden goose and that's what they've done as well. But it's just so profitable for them. It's the right business decision for them. They're not doing anything wrong. There's no conspiracy. Everyone is individually acting according to their incentives and making the right decision. It's just bad for humanity.
Sandeep Parikh:
Right, it's fascinating. It's like don't make the better car because the money we make off of the mechanic services are so great Don't make the car actually better. Yeah, you could imagine an analogy in the car industry with the automotive industry are so great. Right, like, don't make the car. Yeah, I mean yeah.
Bret Kugelmass:
So, yeah, you could imagine an analogy in the car industry, where they where the automotive industry and then thank God, there is like robust competition that drives down costs, drives up innovation, like, thank God that is the case with automotive, otherwise every car would look like a bus, cost a a million dollars, only be able to drive 20 miles an hour and productivity of society would almost collapse. But the automotive industry, whatever it becomes, would make a lot of money, right?
Rajiv Parikh:
Well, or in another case, we'd never be doing EVs unless somebody came in and disrupted it. And so, right the automakers. It's more profitable to keep in the current, the previous situation where you make gasoline automobiles because you have a whole infrastructure around it and you have a whole supply chain around it. You have servicers around it. It doesn't make sense to blow it up because right now it's going to be less profitable than it was before, even if you serve your customers better.
Bret Kugelmass:
And like, yeah, and you can even see. Like you know, even the airplane industry might even be a better analogy. We see it kind of like a halfway towards industry collapse. All the planes look the same as they have for the last, you know, 60 or 70 years. There's so many rules and regulations, like you know, layered on top that they can't even build their own planes right. You know, they're falling out of the sky and there isn't healthy competition. So when a culture just becomes so sick, like Boeing's safety culture, there is no competition to just kick them out and take over their market position.
Rajiv Parikh:
How can you?
Bret Kugelmass:
start a passenger airline company today, with all the rules.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah, good luck with that. I think that you're right. It's huge, it's regulated, it's expensive. There are new innovations and they're going to have to come in with a little bit of regulatory help. So when you came in and said I see this industry it's huge, it's complex, the few players are making all this money just perpetuating the fear of the safety argument, and then you came up with the concept of last energy, where you could say I can modularize this, I can change it, I can use existing technology and I can make a huge difference. Talk to me about that.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, so it took two years, by the way. So I spent two years just studying the industry before launching last energy and yeah, and so the thesis was that there was nothing wrong with the existing nuclear technology. But it was impossible to navigate regulations doing things the way that they'd always been done. It would drive up costs, drive up timelines, collapse projects. The US regulations half of them don't even make sense. Just because you have a lot of regulations doesn't mean your thing is safer. I think we can all understand that. And so you've got like 10,000 rules you have to follow in the US nuclear code, including how many pushups the security guards have to do per week. That's not a joke. It specifies what the BPM of their heart rate during exercise for a certain number of minutes per week needs to be Not a joke.
Sandeep Parikh:
Are they my gymnastics coach from from when I was 15?
Bret Kugelmass:
Like what is going on and now think of all the overhead that a company needs to implement that document that you know, qualify that, send it to you know, send the proof to the regulator, have a regular come and verify and check it out. Okay, so all of that adds cost. But like, does that even solve the problem? Like, what's the problem to solve? It's like hey, have a good security team, like other industries, that's just what the right, like the regulation, is like. Yeah, be secure. We're not going to tell you how many pushups your security guards have to do.
Rajiv Parikh:
Anyway, hit the standard. It's not the way to get there and this happens a lot in regulation, so that big cross you saw that madness and said there's gotta be a better way.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I said there's gotta be a better way. So, um, we went regulatory shopping. Uh, so I went you know I'd already gone abroad, you know, to study different regulators and how they behave and perform and enable and encourage innovation. And I found there were two distinct models within the nuclear industry. Uh, one model was prescriptive. That's like we tell you exactly how to do it and then you have to file for an exception if you have a reason.
Bret Kugelmass:
But they love to argue because that's another means to extract fees for the industry and we can get into that more later. So you can do endless arguments on exceptions from a prescriptive basis. Or you can do something that's called a performance basis. The know the regulator sets a goal and then you show them how you get to that goal. And so we chose regulators in Europe that have high energy prices. That's one reason we went to Europe. But also, the regulators set performance goals and then we show them the simplest possible way that we can meet those performance goals, assuming the most conservative margins, those performance goals, assuming the most conservative margins.
Bret Kugelmass:
So so, basically, we shrunk our reactor down, so we could. So we could, you know, down to 20 megawatts from. You know from, usually a thousand, so we could bury it underground, so we can show them, like on one single page, the calculations that like nothing can get in or out of this thing. No radioactive material, like throw anything that you want to add it. The maximum credible accident scenario the worst hurricane at the same time as the worst you know, a tsunami at the worst earthquake, all at the exact same time. Simple model to show how it performs and how it behaves in those circumstances. And that's our like regulatory hack to get through the process with our minimum viable product. It's like get to market, build a bunch of these, ramp up our manufacturing process, reduce cost over time, act like an automotive company from a manufacturing perspective.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's pretty cool. So you said I'm going to take existing technologies. Right. I think light water reactors is your path. It's a well-known technology. It's been around since the beginning. It's not a graphite reactor like Chernobyl. It's actually known. It's safe, right? I think you talked about at one point when it melts down. It's actually not a bad thing.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I mean, like Fukushima, you had three gigawatt scale reactors melt down, every single safety system failed, including the roof, and not a single injury was caused. So it's like, yeah, I actually struggle to call nuclear safe because it was never hazardous to begin with. You know I'm talking about, yeah, light water reactors, not to go at Chernobyl, which is like a whole different category of things. That wasn't even a power plant, that was a weapons factory. That is like relabeled as a power plant in modern era. So it's like, yeah, that's still a nuclear meltdown, right?
Sandeep Parikh:
what's that? Like chernobyl, chernobyl was still a nuclear, was not a meltdown. Was not a meltdown, no, it was a super critical explosion right, it was a.
Bret Kugelmass:
It was a nuclear explosion like a little bomb because it was designed in a way to make bombs. That's what graphite reactors were designed for. By the way, we had a bunch of graphite reactors in the US for our weapons program that were the exact same technology as the ones in Russia for their weapons program.
Rajiv Parikh:
So Fukushima is more the analog. There's Three Mile Island, there's Fukushima, and that was the part I found interesting. When you actually melt down, you're actually halting, in a way, halting the process, and it's actually part of the design. All things can fail, yet no one died off of this.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. So my claim is that you don't need a single safety system to make a light water reactor non-hazardous like none, and Fukushima empirically demonstrated that. I don't need to argue it it happened in 2011. What we're doing is we're layering on all these extra safety systems to be able to navigate through regulators in a cost and time effective manner.
Rajiv Parikh:
And you're doing it in a really cool way, right, you're taking a whole bunch of things that have already been proven and you're putting it together. You're making it modular. You literally drop a building down with all the equipment there as part of powering. It could be a factory, it could be a fertilizer, it could be a plant. It could be powering a small city.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yep, and so that's one of our business model innovations. So we have our go-to-market innovation. So we have our technology innovations. So we have our go-to-market innovation, so we have our technology innovations. Those are all of the work, the systems engineering work, that we've done to shrink down a nuclear power plant. Then we have our safety innovations. This is everything that we've designed and built to bury this thing cost effectively, and that's part of our licensing innovations. So we're innovative on all those three fronts, without taking on any material science risk, without taking on any chemistry risk, without taking on any physics risk, without taking on any fuel risk, without taking on any supply chain risk. We've already demonstrated how innovative we are there. Then we're also innovative on the business model.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's right, it's really cool.
Bret Kugelmass:
Direct to large energy consumers. And yes, we buy a plot of land next to a factory or a data center. Data centers are biggest growth market right now. We buy a plot of land next to them, we own it, we drop our pre-built equipment in place, we literally plug what is like an extension cord into the factory substation. Literally just dig a hole, lay down a cable, plug it into their substation and then we become their utility. So they can get off the grid if they want, or, for a majority of their power, get off the grid. And then we fix their price for the next 20 years so they know exactly what they're going to pay, so they can make capital investments, so they can grow their operation and we just become their utility.
Rajiv Parikh:
That's right. So it's a really cool go-to-market model. You're not buying the plant that you're going to operate as a utility, or utility has to operate. You're basically buying the power.
Bret Kugelmass:
Exactly, and by selling power, instead of selling power plants, we've been able to line up over $30 billion in bookings already, without our first product even coming online. Wow.
Rajiv Parikh:
And did they come to you or did you go chase them? No, we chased them as you know I'm a growth marketer, go-to-market person, so I care about.
Bret Kugelmass:
How'd you sell this? Yeah well, this is like very much like classic enterprise account-based sales, like we just have a sophisticated sales team and we just hunt large deals that are complex you know deals to get across the finish line require a lot of stakeholders and we just send them out into country and we usually hire people in country as well to help bring the linguistic and the cultural and the business aspects as well, and then we pair you know them up and we go sell electricity.
Sandeep Parikh:
What was some of the challenges around? You know, like trying to lay all these fears or like what were your biggest challenges in trying to convince yourself.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, for like startup, you know best, go after the lowest hanging fruit, right? So we did a survey of, we did a survey of about 30 different markets and we spent almost a year collecting data on about 30 different markets that we could potentially would be our first ones, and we narrowed them down along about a hundred different qualifying criteria that we could potentially would be our first ones, and we narrowed them down along about a hundred different qualifying criteria that we had to answer internally and we developed a very comprehensive rubric. And one of those sets of criteria was the social acceptance, and we just dismissed any countries where the population was against nuclear because, like, why pick that extra fight if we have to?
Rajiv Parikh:
I think you found in Eastern Europe, right Eastern Europe especially. It might've been accelerated by the recent, you know, the invasion of Russia from Ukraine helped you actually have those people contact you, right oh?
Bret Kugelmass:
yeah, that was pretty lucky timing. Yeah, that was pretty lucky timing. It's like we were in the right place, right time for that one. We had already kind of outlined our pitch and then all of a sudden, and like we'd been doing a lot of ground work in these countries and all of a sudden the war breaks out and I've got like ministers of energy like calling me to figure out how that we can bring our technology to their country to essentially set up a more secure grid infrastructure that doesn't rely on oil from Russia. Essentially.
Rajiv Parikh:
Are your buyers the government or the companies in those countries?
Bret Kugelmass:
They're companies in those countries. But when the Minister of Energy walks you into a sales meeting, it's not bad, it's a little helpful.
Sandeep Parikh:
That's a good intro. Wow, it's a warm lead.
Rajiv Parikh:
It's a warm lead because they're on your side. As you mentioned, they have performance-based regulations, as opposed to the other form, which is like telling you exactly what to do and how to get there, as opposed to just getting there yeah.
Bret Kugelmass:
Performance versus prescriptive yeah. So we narrowed down to four countries that were performance instead of prescriptive, had high energy prices, had high social acceptance for nuclear, and then, like I said, like 100 other criteria that we graded against, and then those became our early go-to markets. We spent a year picking our first four markets. This is amazing.
Rajiv Parikh:
And are they buying because of the consistency of nuclear and the ability to get baseload power, or is it cost related? I know one of the things you were pushing towards was cost. At least in some of the research I was looking at, that was saying that even small modular nuclear is higher in cost than utility wind and utility solar. Is it because your approach is actually taking that cost lower or they're making other trade-offs?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. So let me walk through the framework for how we determine and ascribe value to a specific customer. I'll walk through that comprehensively. But to answer your question more specifically, no, we don't ever try to compete on cost. As a matter of fact, we do the opposite. We say we're selling a Lamborghini, you go buy a Honda Civic from someone else, and then we go after the customers that are least price sensitive and most desperate so we can command premium purchasing power and increase our profitability on our initial rollout of units. Remember, we're selling electricity, so we try to reduce the cost to produce that electricity, but at the same time we sell it for the absolute highest price humanly possible and we just go to those customers first that are desperate enough to pay those high prices.
Rajiv Parikh:
So you're taking that cost curve down. They have another need, which is consistency and reliability, and then you're taking the cost curve down. And as you take the cost curve down, then it becomes-.
Bret Kugelmass:
And we open up new markets. Yeah, so we follow the Tesla model, so we're going to saturate the market with those who are capable and willing to buy roadsters first. Then that's going to build out the infrastructure such that we can do higher volume production, which reduces the cost, which allows us to maintain profit margin while accessing larger, more price sensitive customers for the Model S, let's say, all the way to the Model 3. So we follow that exact same playbook.
Rajiv Parikh:
Right. Much better way than doing it the GM way originally, which was trying to build this ugly, underbuilt, underutilizable vehicle. Start from the high end first and work your way down. So what we're going to do is we're going to jump to your background and what got you here. You've been in startup land for quite some time. You've started your own company. You've been in the energy world. Even prior to that, you worked at NanoSolar as an engineer. You have your mechanical engineering degree from Stanford Going through your life. Was there something that drove you to say, hey, I'm going to be an entrepreneur someday? There's something in me that makes me want to change the world in a different way than working for someone.
Bret Kugelmass:
If I'm being honest, I think it's just like a disagreeable personality, that you have one yeah or that yeah, I'd rather.
Rajiv Parikh:
I'd rather work contrarian in the room.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I'd rather work twice as hard and and like not have to listen to other people. You know, then, what most people decide is like I'll just get a job somewhere and do what other people tell me to do and be nice.
Rajiv Parikh:
Was it always that way, brett? Was this something that you grew up with Like you? Were you the disagreeable contrarian when you were growing up, the one that was causing trouble at high school? Or saying you know, you're always like taking a different point of view of history or taking a different point of view of technology? Was that you always like taking a different point of view of history, or?
Bret Kugelmass:
taking a different point of view of technology.
Rajiv Parikh:
Was that you? Yes, yes, you were that person and you get that from your parents, from friends you're around or things that you read. Is there anything that drove you to be like that?
Bret Kugelmass:
I don't know. I grew up on Long Island. Like people are made a little differently out there. Like people don't take things so personally. Like the culture has just gotten so soft and like people are just so easily insulted where it's like where I grew up. Like insulting someone is affection, like so I don't know, maybe we're from.
Sandeep Parikh:
We're from from new england, you know boston. All right, so like I think we can, you know, we can throw some insults around for sure. So you're like okay, listen, I can sort of throw bows whenever I need, so I should just do my own thing and start up my own thing. Was technology always a passion of yours?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yes, yeah, was there something early on that inspired you Like, oh man, I want to be able to invent something that changes the world like this, like the computer. What was an early innovation that really? I was really into robotics in high school, so I started my high school's first robotics team, 1546 Chaos Inc. Nice, and that was very foundational to my technical interest and prowess so you started playing.
Rajiv Parikh:
You started, you went into robotics. It wasn't the hot. Was it the hot thing or was it? Was it the geeky thing to do in long? It was the geeky thing to do. You went to the geeky thing to do in long island. You you weren't playing all these sports and things. Maybe you were, but actually that's interesting because I hadn't talked about this or thought about this before. Do in Long Island, you weren't playing all these sports and things.
Bret Kugelmass:
Maybe you were but you weren't necessarily-. Actually, that's interesting because I hadn't talked about this or thought about this before, but I tore my ACL. I was playing soccer. I tore my ACL freshman year, so that definitely freed me up to, but I was always a nerd, so-.
Rajiv Parikh:
There you go, so you got into it. You started playing with it and you're like hey, I can do things that people. Maybe that's where you first found that you can do things that weren't expected. You had more room to play.
Bret Kugelmass:
Maybe, yeah, I don't know.
Sandeep Parikh:
It's hard to psychoanalyze yourself Did you eventually convince, like the head cheerleaders and the cool kids, that robotics was cool. Did you win them over, brett?
Bret Kugelmass:
I don't know you guys know high school it's like it's a losing battle well, I think, I think you got them now um you got your way forward.
Sandeep Parikh:
Well, let's uh, let's jump into the game. Um, thanks for uh, you know, taking us through what you're up to, but now we're going to drop you into enough funny games, let's get into the real stuff. Let's get serious. We're dropping you into the spark tank. This week we're going to play two facts and a fiction around failed clean energy initiatives. Okay, okay.
Rajiv Parikh:
Truly test your knowledge, Brett Truly test your knowledge here.
Sandeep Parikh:
Usually you get to go in all prepared.
Rajiv Parikh:
We're going to throw you off your knowledge. Brett, Truly test your knowledge here. Usually you get to go in all prepared. We're going to throw you off your game. Okay, let's see what happens.
Sandeep Parikh:
Truthfully, brett, like my brother, doesn't know these. Rajiv doesn't know these either, so I'm hoping I'm going to get his answers as well, hoping you do them dirty and take them down. In fact, I got a lot of money riding on this, okay, so no pressure, but it's a future, depends on it. I'm going to. Okay, I'm going to read you both three statements about some wild swings that we took, as humans, to in the pursuit of clean energy, and you have to get guess which one is the lie. All right, so I got three rounds at the ready. We'll have a tiebreaker if we need it. So let's find out who's got the spark and who sputters out like a gas stove after those annoying California-mandated earthquake valves are tripped by your four-year-old hitting it with a basketball. Are you specific? Okay? Anyway, here we go Round one. Tell me which one is the fiction.
Sandeep Parikh:
Number one the Aurora Project, was a secret initiative by the US government in the 1960s aiming to create a nuclear-powered aircraft that could fly indefinitely without landing, using nuclear energy to heat the air for propulsion. Okay, that's number one. Number two the Ford Nucleon was a concept car designed by the Ford Motor Company in 1958 that was powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle. The idea was based on the anticipation of a future where nuclear energy would be more portable and accessible. However, it never went beyond the model stage. Number three, project Pluto, was a United States government program to develop nuclear-powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles. They had a successful test in the Tory 2A nuclear ramjet engine. However, it was abandoned due to the development of the ICBM, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Bret Kugelmass:
Okay. So how do we guess without influencing each other? Is there like a one, two, three, and then we say the thing oh, I love that.
Sandeep Parikh:
I love that idea One, two, three, you know what?
Rajiv Parikh:
In my head, I've already chosen.
Bret Kugelmass:
I've already chosen too. All right Honor system Honor system.
Sandeep Parikh:
Let's go. Honor system, fred first.
Bret Kugelmass:
Okay, I say the first one was the lie.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah, I actually said the same thing. I said two and three are true.
Sandeep Parikh:
Okay, I'm going to believe you guys, that is correct. The Aurora Project there is no flying indefinitely without landing for super surveillance, correct, but. But the Ford Nucleon, real deal and Project Pluto, real deal.
Rajiv Parikh:
All right.
Sandeep Parikh:
So you guys are tied, I'm going to force you to pick. If you guys keep tying the last round, I'm going to force you to pick opposite ones and we'll let Brett go first because he's the guest and like I said I have a lot of money riding on this.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, we'll do the Indian thing.
Sandeep Parikh:
In the end we're going. S Department of Energy funded an experimental project known as Solar One. It was a tower surrounded by mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a collector to produce steam for electricity generation. What year was that, did you say? I said in the 80s. Okay, okay, so early foray into concentrated solar power. Number two, a venture in the 70s aimed to develop bio bl gyro bus, developed in the 50s. It was an electric bus that stored energy in a large onboard flywheel. The flywheel was charged at a special charging station using electricity from the grid and then used to power the bus's movement. Despite this innovative approach to energy storage and electric transit, the gyro bus was ultimately overshadowed by battery-powered buses and trolleybuses.
Rajiv Parikh:
Okay.
Bret Kugelmass:
I've got mine.
Rajiv Parikh:
You've got yours, I think it's. I'll just say mine. I think one and two are true and third, one's false.
Bret Kugelmass:
Okay, okay, we differentiated here. Great, great, great. So I think the BioBlimp is the false one.
Rajiv Parikh:
I was leaning towards that differentiated here great, great, great.
Bret Kugelmass:
So I think the bio blimp is the false one. I was just because I can't imagine methane. Like why would someone choose methane over hydrogen, if so?
Sandeep Parikh:
I don't think. Right, that is correct, brett. Um, yeah, we're not using farts to power bio blimps by the way you know, there's like a comeback in airships now it is about that, and I think they should use hydrogen.
Bret Kugelmass:
I don't know if that's, yeah, a comeback in airships. Now it is, I think they should use hydrogen. I don't know if that's how it works, yeah man, you're just.
Sandeep Parikh:
you know everything that we're afraid of from childhood. No, let's do it, let's go back.
Rajiv Parikh:
I love it. Bring back sharp edges.
Bret Kugelmass:
Like I said, the culture has gotten soft. I think so.
Rajiv Parikh:
I actually agree with you. I think hydrogen's never been as scary as we think it is.
Sandeep Parikh:
All right, final round. Right now we got Brett in the lead two to one. Let's see if Rajiv can make a comeback. In the late 19th century, inventor Augustin Mouchot developed a solar power engine that won a gold medal at the 1878 Paris exhibition. His solar concentrator used mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler to produce steam, powering a steam engine. Okay, so this is 1878, using solar power. The lunar hydro plant was a fantastical idea from the late 1800s, where engineers dreamed of harnessing the tidal forces generated by the moon's gravity. The plan involves constructing massive underwater turbines in the ocean, directly aligned with the moon's path over the earth, to capture the immense energy from tidal surges. Number three the.
Sandeep Parikh:
Clifton Nonpareil, an experimental airship powered by a windmill. Sail was an early attempt at combining lighter-than-air flight with wind energy in 1910. And the idea was to use the windmill both to propel the ship and generate electricity for onboard needs. What do you guys think? I have no idea. Can you believe two of these are true, like that's that's incredible.
Bret Kugelmass:
They're all concepts, right? So all three were concepts.
Sandeep Parikh:
They would none of them won the gold medal. Let's see. I believe.
Rajiv Parikh:
I believe one is true. I think that one's true. So then, for me it's between two and three. See if they're all constant.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I'll say that the moon title one is false because maybe they didn't know enough about titles stuff back then. I don't know that's where.
Rajiv Parikh:
I'll go with it, Just to see if I could beat Brett. I'm going to say three is false.
Sandeep Parikh:
Why, otherwise, you would have gone with the lunar thing.
Bret Kugelmass:
I mean just to see if you can tie me. You have no chance of beating me at this point. I can't beat you.
Rajiv Parikh:
So I'm going to go for the tie, right? So guess what? You doubly lost.
Sandeep Parikh:
You doubly lost, because you took it down.
Rajiv Parikh:
There is no lunar hydro plant but there was, yeah, I thought that was nuts, yeah, so you know, Reggie.
Sandeep Parikh:
Hop on your windmill sail and get the hell out of here you lost. Yeah, windmill sail is the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine, which I'm all for, All right.
Rajiv Parikh:
Well, thank you for jumping into the spark tank. That was amazing.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, two men enter, brett Kugelmas leaves.
Rajiv Parikh:
All right. Well, I just want to say, actually I have one more question, brett, if you have time. Do you have time? Yeah, actually I have one more question, brett, if you have time.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll, yeah, yeah, this has been too much fun. One more question.
Rajiv Parikh:
Okay, You've been a multiple time entrepreneur. You've been you were a troublemaker growing up, you know changing the rules, being the nerd that you were, who is a historical event or a person or movement that inspires you?
Bret Kugelmass:
I mean, listen, I think in the modern era the answer is Elon. I don't think anyone else even comes close. But if that's not historical enough I would go back to, let's say, eisenhower, because of the relationship to both nuclear and him getting it right with the military-industrial complex and just kind of being a military guy who wanted to not see as much war like hard to beat that. So I I'll go with eisenhower, maybe.
Rajiv Parikh:
Then all right. So eisenhower, less of less because of his presidency, but more because of what he did up to the presidency no, I think well no, or actually as a president, he talked about the military industrial concept of complex.
Bret Kugelmass:
He talked about wanting to reduce yeah, and getting nuclear, you know, on the right path for, uh, peaceful uses and everything. Yeah, he's a real, he's a real gem.
Rajiv Parikh:
So you're talking about building a whole new future for the world. You really want to take on the impacts of the potential impacts of climate and make the world a better place. So paint us a world of what. What will occur if last energy and similar solutions like last energy are able to gain mass acceptance throughout the world.
Bret Kugelmass:
Let's start off with. I say that we're going to 10x global energy production and it's going to be entirely with nuclear. That's the gauntlet that I'm throwing down. But even 10Xing, that is the bare minimum of what we should be considering as a future civilization. 10xing just brings all of the poorest people up to our standard of living and cleans up the air and a few things like that. That should be the bare minimum that anyone accepts. And yet you say that and in virtually any crowd you go to. That's a crazy claim to 10 X global energy consumption. But once again, I think you are like morally reprehensible if you feel any less. Okay, like that is leaving most of the world in poverty, in sickness, breathing garbage. So it's like okay, so 10x is the minimum bar.
Bret Kugelmass:
Let's now talk about 100xing, like what we can do. Well, I mean, it's hard to imagine, right, it's hard to imagine things that will emerge from future technologies across all domains biotechnology, obviously, artificial intelligence. People are not going to stop talking about that for the next few years, and rightfully so. So it's like there's just so much. But when you think about just moving physical goods, when you think about moving people, when you think about what can an airplane do with today's technology in terms of getting us across the world. If you were willing to be as energy inefficient as you wanted, I could get to Japan pretty quick, right, I could get anywhere pretty quick. I could get. I could get good, I could get services, I could get medicines, I could get whatever I need from any point A to any point B, right. So, and that is still like the least imaginative thing that I could share. But once again, it's like we should all look forward to that world where we can be anywhere, we can build anything, we can reshape the world around us to meet our needs and create a healthy ecosystem, not just for humans but for the environment as well.
Bret Kugelmass:
And so I think we need to set our targets higher. We need to be more ambitious. I can demonstrate a path towards 100Xing global energy consumption using today's nuclear technology, today's no advanced nuclear, just today's, manufactured at increasing orders of magnitude. And I can plot that cost reduction for you. So I think it that cost reduction for you. So I think it's well within our grasp. It doesn't even have to be me to do it. I'll pave the path if no one else will. But that's where I hope we all get Wow, wow.
Rajiv Parikh:
Brett, that's a fantastic concept and vision. I think it's just amazing for you to lay out that way of looking at the world and then building, doing your research, building the kind of company that can get you there, and I I really hope you succeed. I'm so excited, I'm so excited to have you here today, after meeting you so many years a few years ago and so I think that's a that's a future we can all get excited about. So I really appreciate you having having you here and having great disruptors like you come and join us. So thank you so much and playing our games.
Bret Kugelmass:
Thank great disruptors like you, come and join us. So thank you so much. And playing our games. Thank you for playing our games, thank you for having me and great to see you again.
Sandeep Parikh:
I'm so glad you reached out. Yeah, thanks, brian, I'm going to do some push-ups, try to get a job at security. Okay, pretty wild conversation. That was really cool, rajiv. What are your thoughts? What are?
Rajiv Parikh:
your takeaways. I think at the beginning I was a bit taken aback by Brett's notion that maybe two to three degrees climate change is not a bad thing, sounds warmer.
Sandeep Parikh:
You know, I like I always argue with my wife about the thermostat and wanting it to keep it warmer, so maybe that's what we should be doing. I mean, I was kind of hoping we would work our way about the thermostat and wanting it to keep it warmer.
Rajiv Parikh:
So maybe that's what we should be doing. I mean, I was kind of hoping we would work our way a little bit back to the way we work so I could have better skiing in Tahoe and ensure that the seas don't rise and we don't lose all our cities. But I think what's interesting about-.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, skiing and not losing the cities, those go hand in hand for sure, left hand, right hand. I think they're really important.
Rajiv Parikh:
Ski Chalet and the entire state of Florida or Bangladesh, right, you know 300 million people, yeah, but I think what's amazing about Brett is that he takes this contrarian, open view of how things are. He doesn't just believe what you're supposed to believe or what you read in popular culture and popular press, and he's intrigued by notions of great change. And so he's able to take the turn from a person who was mostly in technology in building a drone company which was ahead of its time anyways, back in 2017 or 2016, to go full force towards nuclear power, and I find his way of viewing the world to be really interesting and it could be incredibly I hope it is incredibly helpful for the whole world around us.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, I agree it was cool to have someone that was kind of chest-beatingly world-changing. If his company does work out, it would truly change everyday life for every person on this planet. It was pretty exciting to to hear that vision. You know, I've, I've, I'm, I am, I guess maybe still my LA diners club. I don't really have an LA diners club. I don't know what that is, but like there's still some skepticism around some of the stuff around climate change, I guess so, or read too much news.
Sandeep Parikh:
I don't know. Yeah, it's totally possible. Listen, I haven't hung out with the polar bears to know if they've been copulating at a faster rate than before. So you're right, I don't have the boots on the ground information, I think.
Rajiv Parikh:
But he has interesting points of view and they're worth digging into and challenging A hundred percent, and they're worth digging into and challenging.
Sandeep Parikh:
A hundred percent, yeah, a hundred percent. I love that. I love the. I want to dig in more. It makes me more curious. It sort of sparks me to become more curious about the things that I, you know, my preconceived notions around. You know, everything from nuclear to climate change to how we should hire security guards. It's a truly fascinating conversation. One of my takeaways and this is like a little moment, but he talked about like using a podcast as research for three years. That was kind of cool. I'm like what a great way to sort of innovatively use the medium to essentially do a bunch of research for your company and to educate yourself.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah, I think when you're coming into a podcast, you're going to come in with your best material and you may not take no for that meeting, because it is a way for you to get knowledge, information that you want to share out to the public, and Brett used it very effectively to help build his thesis, and so uh, so forget that PhD program, or don't.
Sandeep Parikh:
don't spend money on that graduate degree, like, just go ahead and start a podcast. By the way, it costs just as much, that's true. That's true.
Rajiv Parikh:
I hope you all learned a lot. We did. We learned some things that were new, that were unexpected, and please comment and talk about it and, for sure, tell us what you're thinking. I'd love to see this as a debate that we can then involve Brett and others in the industry to talk about and try to understand more deeply, because most of the time with people like Brett, he's speaking to an audience and he does take questions, like at South by Southwest. I think he took about half an hour questions, but this is your chance to really get in deeper and fire away 100%.
Sandeep Parikh:
I bet a lot of you listening have the same questions that I do about climate change and about how he's challenging it, so I'd love to read that in the comments and get people's sense.
Rajiv Parikh:
All right. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and everywhere podcasts can be found.
Sandeep Parikh:
This show is produced by myself, Sandeep Parikh and Anand Shah, Production assistance by Taryn Talley and edited by Sean Marr and Aidan McGarvey.
Rajiv Parikh:
It's a truly fantastic team. I'm your host, rajiv Parikh, from Position Squared, a top-notch growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Come visit us at position2.com.
Sandeep Parikh:
This has been an F and Funny production and we'll catch you next time.