Modularity: Lessons from Chemical Process Engineering

00:00:00:07 - 00:00:22:12

Jesse Huebsch

There's kind of two main forms of modularity that I think people are getting a bit confused on. There's the building airplanes kind of modularity, where an airplane is a module, and I think a lot of people are expecting that, that you're going to you're going to have a nuclear power plant come out the end of the factory, and you drive it over to site, throw in a couple of anchor bolts and call it done.

00:00:22:14 - 00:00:28:13

Jesse Huebsch

That's never going to happen, or at least not above the micro reactor level.

00:00:28:15 - 00:00:38:15

Chris Keefer

Welcome back to Decouple. Today I'm joined by very special guest Jesse Huber. Probably butchering the pronunciation. Jesse. Say it again.

00:00:38:16 - 00:00:39:03

Jesse Huebsch

Whoosh.

00:00:39:09 - 00:00:58:17

Chris Keefer

Whoops. Okay. I've never met a Huebsch before, but I've also never met a huebsch I didn't like. So, Jesse, this is kind of like a blind date. we know each other from the Canucks for Knox. which is our Canadian nuclear energy, WhatsApp group, where you've emerged as a bit of a polymath. you know, superb analyst.

00:00:58:19 - 00:01:15:15

Chris Keefer

across a whole number of, of different, topics. and, you know, I've been eager to get you on the episode based on that. but as I said, a bit of a blind date. I really don't know much about you. I think you're a chemical process engineer. That's, But why don't you. Wow. Okay, I got that right.

00:01:15:17 - 00:01:21:19

Chris Keefer

Why don't you clarify, a little more for me, and then we'll get into the kind of, meat and potatoes of, what we're going to talk about today.

00:01:21:21 - 00:01:49:15

Jesse Huebsch

Sounds good. Yeah. So I am a, chemical process engineer. I originally worked in various automotive and cattle plants, and then I've moved into doing actual chemical plant design. including being involved in the fabrication of a lot of the process equipment design of that equipment. dealing with retrofitting existing plants as well as in new plant construction.

00:01:49:17 - 00:02:03:11

Jesse Huebsch

So as a it's an interesting analogy to nuclear plants. there's a lot of similar aspects into designing, fabricating and constructing a chemical plant.

00:02:03:13 - 00:02:28:16

Chris Keefer

Awesome, awesome. Well, yeah, I'm excited to dive in. I have to say, you know, I'm continuously, surprised and flattered by the number of policymakers, that have started listening to decouple and are reaching out. And in my experience, policymakers like, like myself often, don't have a, let's say, like a professional or an engineering experience, in their field, if they do happen to have a technical ministry.

00:02:28:18 - 00:02:48:01

Chris Keefer

and so I'm excited for you to kind of break things down to what, you know about my level of of understanding and technical expertise. You know, full disclosure, the only real kind of industrial sites I've taught have been nuclear plants. And, actually, the most, I've listened as me and stamped, the largest clean room in North America, at least on the civilian side.

00:02:48:03 - 00:03:04:08

Chris Keefer

they build the massive steam, generate generators for our Candu reactors, the refurbishments, the feeder pipes. So that's kind of the limit of my exposure. I know Bill gates, prides himself on bringing his kids to fertilizer, plants and all kinds of, you know, heavy industry plants to really understand, you know, how the built world is made.

00:03:04:08 - 00:03:21:14

Chris Keefer

And, I certainly like to get my five year old out to those, but I've got to arrange a few more tours myself. so I'm excited to, to kind of deep dive into that. And it's a funny way to do that in a podcast. You know, be great to have a video documentary and kind of follow you into the plant and have you explain some stuff to us, but somehow, you know, it tends to work out.

00:03:21:16 - 00:03:36:22

Chris Keefer

so yeah, super excited to, to deep dive this. something I'm always communicating when I meet with policymakers is, you know, it's just really hard to get your head around nuclear. I had a great guest, kind of blanking on his name at the moment will come to me in a second. CEO of Exergy Energy.

00:03:37:00 - 00:03:58:07

Chris Keefer

and he said, you know, man is blind until he has a metaphor that allows him to see. There's no perfect metaphor to understand nuclear. It's it's very unique in a lot of ways. I've been comparing it a lot to, hydroelectric facilities, mostly in terms of, you know, high capital costs. you know, high construction risk type project, high, high long term proposition value.

00:03:58:07 - 00:04:20:21

Chris Keefer

You know, not not something that gives you a quick return on investment. but with all the talk about, modularity, factory fabrication of nuclear components, certainly interested in seeing what kind of allegories we can draw between your experience building chemical plants, and nuclear and really just, you know, I'm a guy who likes to get, you know, from the grocery aisle out to the farm and see how the sausage gets made.

00:04:20:21 - 00:04:39:09

Chris Keefer

So even if this just is to help enlighten me about another, you know, vital part of, you know, what underpins our modern civilization that is the chemical industry. I'm all in for that. So, Yeah, I don't know where you, where you want to start. but, I'm going to let you take that. Take the reins here for a second, Jesse, and see how this goes.

00:04:39:10 - 00:05:10:10

Jesse Huebsch

Sure. yeah. Looking forward to it. I was figuring we start with basically, you know, what actually goes into building a nuclear power plant, which has a lot of analogies to, a chemical plant or a coal plant or or a, natural gas, turbine plant or, Rankine plant, anything like that where the basic physical plant has a lot of similarities.

00:05:10:12 - 00:05:51:09

Jesse Huebsch

obviously there's differences in fuels and specific economic factors and other things that go into that. But largely they're all similar in that you basically have to start with by digging a some form of pit in the ground building, something civil to hold everything up, while in the meantime getting a bunch of equipment fabricated largely of metal and largely very big, pieces that you bring together on site and then connect via various piping, ducting, conveyors, whatever you want to call it.

00:05:51:11 - 00:06:32:17

Jesse Huebsch

wired all together, put in sensors, encapsulate it and then have some sort of control and operations management system to it. The so from a kind of broader structure of all the things that go into it, they're fairly similar in terms of the specific details. Obviously there's some differences. nuclear tends to have, you know, much more substantial civil requirements just due to the nature of really wanting to make sure that things are not damaged during a seismic event or anything like that.

00:06:32:18 - 00:06:44:06

Jesse Huebsch

although a lot of those other parts, refineries and stuff like that, we're not exactly, playing with our Cheerios or something like that at that point. So, you know, there's some analogies there.

00:06:44:11 - 00:07:14:23

Chris Keefer

It's it's speaking of analogies. It's funny. I mean, I'm using my medical one here and just saying, okay, this this sounds like kind of mammalian anatomy. And you know, there's a number of sort of structural elements, skeletons and organ systems that are similar. And of course, each species, you know, quite different. and, yeah, I mean, in terms of those, those nuclear differences, we did, go into some excruciating detail with James Collins Dean on one of our vocal episodes, just talking about the excavation, the Phil, the bass.

00:07:14:23 - 00:07:36:11

Chris Keefer

Matt. The specifications on the rebar at Vogel. what a headache that is. Because I think when we again. As as I'll say myself, I want to include you in this, but as non-experts, you know, a lot of, advocates in particular, when we think about nuclear, maybe the ones who aren't engineers. you know, it's not with a lot of depth and, and understanding of each of these processes.

00:07:36:11 - 00:08:02:09

Chris Keefer

And just for me, James walking me through, you know, getting that nuclear basement, it was wild. And these that process takes years, in terms of excavating, you know, at least 100ft deep and 50ft of, you know, certain graded cells and things like that. It's, it's pretty wild. And I think probably the biggest cost driver, in terms of nuclear and just, interesting to hear you say, though, that, as you're saying, an oil refinery needs to be, pretty robust as well.

00:08:02:11 - 00:08:26:18

Jesse Huebsch

I mean, you you have a whole bunch of stuff filled with all kinds of things you really don't want to release. If you go look at the the body count of various disasters, the chemical industry has a far, far higher toll than the nuclear industry. so it's not exactly low risk, mellow processes a lot at the time.

00:08:26:20 - 00:08:34:12

Chris Keefer

What what are like the kind of highest risk ones? I'm thinking, like of Bhopal. but I guess, like chlorine gas. Like what? What what kind of stuff for your handling?

00:08:34:14 - 00:09:00:03

Jesse Huebsch

so anything that has, low concentration toxicity, especially that can turn into a vapor. So Bhopal was one of those any of the, you know, chlorine is a good one. Ammonia? one that's, very popular in the, alternative energy, but it's, spectacularly toxic in large releases. hydrofluoric acid or fluorines. Another good one.

00:09:00:05 - 00:09:25:11

Jesse Huebsch

a number of things like that. There's also, processes like, flixbus, which was a hydrocarbon process where it was at high temperature and pressure had a rupture. And you're getting into the, you know, half kilometer fireball kind of scenarios or what's known as a levy. and I've worked in a chemical plant that had the same process that they had in that one.

00:09:25:13 - 00:09:39:16

Jesse Huebsch

And needless to say, safety was a top of the mind at every moment. Consideration, when you're when your worst case scenario is, you know, bits flying across the Saint Lawrence, it holds your attention.

00:09:39:16 - 00:09:59:13

Chris Keefer

That becomes an international incident if you get all the way across to Saint Lawrence just for international listeners, that's a big ass waterway that separates Canada and the US. Okay, so you kind of you outlined this, again, for my frame of reference, this sort of like anatomy of, of, you know, of these, these, bits of infrastructure and some of the similarities they have.

00:09:59:15 - 00:10:25:00

Chris Keefer

I don't know if you want to jump into kind of the, the modularity element of things. I understand that, you know, people talk about, the modularity of a gas plant, for instance. And I think nuclear is sort of trying to, to chase that. there have been large modular reactors like the Abwehr and the, the Japanese Advanced Boiling Water Reactor and the, you know, the Ap1000 in the US, which have, you know, chase that modularity.

00:10:25:00 - 00:10:35:13

Chris Keefer

But it sounds like that's been, much more well-established part of, the chemical industry and, and, the gas industry. But let's talk a bit about that and, and get our heads around on modules if we're ready to go there.

00:10:35:13 - 00:11:02:01

Jesse Huebsch

And why don't I take it one step further back than that? And, yeah, ask the question about, okay, people, there's a lot of advocacy for well, every reactor design needs its own factory. And that leads into the modularity. But the question there is, what exactly are people envisioning as a factory to build stuff that goes into a nuclear or a chemical plant?

00:11:02:03 - 00:11:30:15

Jesse Huebsch

so I think the one of the kinds of factories that most people are familiar with from your videos on them are basically ones that build either cars or airplanes on an assembly line. But fundamentally, we're talking about quite low volume components here that are very large, heavy, and have a lot of hold points and quality control and very dissimilar types of components.

00:11:30:17 - 00:11:57:13

Jesse Huebsch

Even when you're thinking about a car factory or an airplane factory, there's hundreds or thousands of other factories in the background that feed in the parts that stick them all together. So those are those ones that you see on the videos are, for the most part, aside from doing generally a bit of made metal forming for the framework and putting some paint on are really just sticking together the pieces from other factories.

00:11:57:15 - 00:12:14:14

Jesse Huebsch

So maybe with a micro reactor that might make sense to have a so, you know, an airplane style assembly line that's taking all those pieces from those disparate other factories and sticking them together and maybe fabricating the biggest pieces on site to avoid having to transport it.

00:12:14:16 - 00:12:28:19

Chris Keefer

Maybe you're talking a lot of a lot of units here. I mean, and yeah, in terms of I mean, I'm always astounded about the number of airplanes in the air. And I think the 4.3 billion unique passenger trips, around the world. But like when we're talking about, you know, big Boeing assembly plant, how many units are they?

00:12:28:19 - 00:12:32:18

Chris Keefer

Are they kind of pushing through? Is the global aviation industry pushing through? If you happen to have that, you know.

00:12:32:20 - 00:13:03:04

Jesse Huebsch

Airlines typically are between one unit a week and one unit a day. Depends on the product and the orders and stuff like that. So they do and they have a very similar form factor. So they do literally have an assembly line there. but that's by, you know, the by far the largest spot that has that. The other fundamental thing on using an assembly line there is they're meant to be discrete things that move, as an assembly.

00:13:03:07 - 00:13:19:22

Jesse Huebsch

They're not meant to be, you know, stuck onto a foundation permanently forever after. There's a lot of stuff that you'd have to design into it to assemble it all together that doesn't actually make sense. If you were just going to then bolt it to a foundation later.

00:13:20:00 - 00:13:24:02

Chris Keefer

Okay. Okay. So I'm on an airplane on on Wheels that you can sort of drag around. Is that kind of.

00:13:24:05 - 00:13:40:15

Jesse Huebsch

Exactly. It has to be a coherent thing where everything's connected to itself and it's self-supporting, with only really being supported by the outside world, by its wheels or wings when it's in operation. So it really makes sense to treat it as a discrete lump.

00:13:40:17 - 00:14:00:15

Chris Keefer

So this is like essentially a terrible category error to be making because I've, I've heard this before. Like we need to stop building airports. We need to build airplanes. Let's just have a big factor facility that can pump out small modular reactors like airplanes. And so again, this is another example of we're blinded to we have a metaphor, that allows us to see I'm remembering in that was David March, of exergy energy.

00:14:00:15 - 00:14:14:16

Chris Keefer

And he said he was quoting Euripides, I mean, to find it, but I just love that quote. But I basically I just feel like nuclear is plagued by bad analogies, and it's important to understand why they're bad. But I think you're starting to give us a good perspective on at least why the airliner one is not not a good one.

00:14:14:20 - 00:14:57:20

Jesse Huebsch

Yeah, my my thesis would be we need to build natural gas plants there. They're a, I think a much better analogy in terms of what a project and supply chain looks like and how you go about building them, and they're ones that we know that we can do consistently and economically. so from a kind of project to target, it seems both to fit the realities of the kind of equipment and components that go into it as well as fits the industry that would be using it, and the kind of facilities that it all ends in.

00:14:57:22 - 00:15:05:18

Chris Keefer

So you're suggesting a, a better analogy, an imperfect one, but a better analogy to try and get nuclear construction to look more like a natural gas plant.

00:15:05:20 - 00:15:06:09

Jesse Huebsch

Exactly.

00:15:06:09 - 00:15:22:11

Chris Keefer

Construction and project delivery. Okay. So before we get into sort of like what, what the differences are, and I imagine a big part of them again, is that sort of civil site prep stuff and maybe just smaller individual components. Let's, let's talk about, you know, what what it takes to build a gas plant. Let's do a little compare and contrast with with nuclear.

00:15:22:13 - 00:15:56:02

Jesse Huebsch

Yeah. So a gas plant or a similarly to a chemical plant. but gas plants are particularly good because there's very much standardization in their design across the plants with relatively minor configuration differences or major option selections. Are you picking the open cycle or the combined cycle? Are you put, you know, a few different capacity options, different cooling methods that you're somewhat plugging into it?

00:15:56:04 - 00:16:22:07

Jesse Huebsch

maybe some fine tuning of the, turbine for the specific conditions. but beyond that, the general attempt is to try to have a specifications package that says these are all the things that we need on a site, including the utilities. This is what you have to prepare for. the civil works, including all of the loads that would it would support.

00:16:22:09 - 00:17:03:20

Jesse Huebsch

And here is drawings for what that all looks like. Even if you have to do some of the, the detail for different, ground conditions and stuff like that, but then everything that goes on top of that, we're trying to make as standardized as possible, and then reaching out to a supply chain that produces these kinds of components, but isn't dedicated to only producing for in particular, this particular model of gas plant, and largely that it's not dedicated to producing specifically for gas plants at all, other than maybe the actual, turbine itself.

00:17:03:22 - 00:17:28:21

Jesse Huebsch

all of the other things like the heat exchangers, the pumps, the instrumentation, the sensors, those, the factories that produce, those are producing components for pretty much any type of chemical and power industry and will be switch between projects, across that range of industries. And that's how you keep the factories fully loaded.

00:17:28:23 - 00:17:45:08

Chris Keefer

And that's going to differ, I guess, on a number of levels. And one thing I've heard is that a gas plant, I mean, the individual components, I guess there's some big ones there in terms of the turbine. I'm really spitballing here because I'm out of my my, expertise, clearly. Right. But probably some heat exchangers and things like that.

00:17:45:10 - 00:18:03:10

Chris Keefer

again, I'm exposing my ignorance here. the, the individual sort of modules or items or not, these, you know, 600 ton, you know, Ap1000 modules that are getting craned in. I don't, I don't I've seen a few gas plants go up in Ontario. I don't remember like, you know, Big Curl crane type lists of, of heavy equipment.

00:18:03:10 - 00:18:05:06

Chris Keefer

So that seems like a big differentiator.

00:18:05:08 - 00:18:38:09

Jesse Huebsch

And that's fair. Those are the particularly big heavy components. those have more logistics and crane implications. They're not really that different from a project standpoint. It's not really that different than bringing it, bringing in the big turbine module that you have a whole bunch of other stuff around it that has to connect to it. And, you know, you just pay special attention when you're bringing that in, you're hoping or crane size, you're upping your transportation, and logistics challenges.

00:18:38:11 - 00:18:42:05

Jesse Huebsch

but it's not a category difference, per se.

00:18:42:07 - 00:19:01:21

Chris Keefer

I mean, I'm thinking of, talking to some folks up at Bruce. They're doing, steam generator replacements on their Candu units up there. And, you know, they're really timing it. So they don't have to bring. I think the crane comes in and over 100 C cans, takes, you know, I'm a bit off slightly here, and it's probably important how far I'm off, but a few months to assemble the crane.

00:19:01:23 - 00:19:23:19

Chris Keefer

you know, massive cost driver. And this is this is just for. I mean, they're not small. These are for these scuba sized steam generators. it's not a, you know, reactor pressure vessel. Even a 300 megawatt reactor pressure vessels pretty goddamn big. so, I mean, that that does seem like a pretty major difference. I don't want to minimize, like this crane work, because from what I've seen, you know, at these reverbs, it is it is not insignificant.

00:19:23:21 - 00:19:48:07

Jesse Huebsch

We're we're in the category of some of the major vessels in a refinery. Okay. Not not fundamentally different than some of the, main distillation columns or, a cracker unit or something like that, or to an extent, the, boilers in a coal plant where, I mean, those are there's a reason why these cranes exist and they're not specific to the nuclear industry.

00:19:48:07 - 00:20:09:12

Chris Keefer

Just for new as well. Yeah. In terms of kind of, I guess, like the regulatory differences, you said, you know, the components are built for these gas plants is obviously a lot of these gas plants getting built, but still the, I guess the factories feeding in, are not specifically just building these parts. I guess they're also not kind of ASM and stamped, and there's more facilities that that can do that.

00:20:09:12 - 00:20:17:01

Chris Keefer

If you see that as a kind of fundamental barrier or kind of where this allegory breaks down when, when compared to nuclear or. No.

00:20:17:03 - 00:20:44:16

Jesse Huebsch

not really. I mean, obviously there is a barrier there because there's a lot of paperwork and systems on a quality control standpoint for getting a shop that would normally be able to heat exchangers for chemical or other power industry to be able to build it for nuclear industry. Same goes for any of the other components, but it's nothing fundamental to their actual, you know, shop floor capabilities.

00:20:44:16 - 00:21:14:14

Jesse Huebsch

It's much more around traceability. Are you doing are you getting it exactly what you said you were going to get that's already been certified in the appropriate way. Are you testing everything the way that it's specified to test tracing each component all the way through? I've heard at the most extreme, you might need to run weld coupons for every welder every day ahead of doing a nuclear job.

00:21:14:16 - 00:21:21:21

Jesse Huebsch

Where on a chemical job, you would do those coupons once per project.

00:21:21:23 - 00:21:22:08

Chris Keefer

wow.

00:21:22:13 - 00:21:59:11

Jesse Huebsch

Wow. So the the actual costs from that might be a forex factor on the equipment, but that still ends up being a very small part of the overall nuclear power plant project. Right? So while it would be very helpful to get that more streamlined, especially to lean on the existing quality systems that already exist for some of these other high hazard industries and not having wherever it's practical, a parallel, but broadly similar in a lot of aspects.

00:21:59:14 - 00:22:38:12

Jesse Huebsch

Quality system that really limits who's going to spend the effort to get certified, unless they can see that there's enough market there to make it have a return on investment for spending that upfront effort to get the certifications. But that being said, if the market's there, the kinds of facilities that can make these components are out there other than maybe the largest pressure vessel type, forging facilities that are somewhat unique, now, that might be an advantage for some of the, generation for type reactors that aren't as high pressure.

00:22:38:13 - 00:22:55:13

Jesse Huebsch

So they don't need the, forged component, level of, main equipment and can instead use, welded plate fabrication, which there is a enormous experience base in building out there.

00:22:55:15 - 00:23:14:15

Chris Keefer

Right, right. Right, right. I mean, I think the in terms of this quality control and sourcing and tracing, the most extreme example I think there was a US congressman who held up, you know, a nut, or a bolt in Congress and said, you know, this is like a NASA bolt and it costs like $400. I went to my hardware store and I found one that cost $0.30 or whatever.

00:23:14:15 - 00:23:34:12

Chris Keefer

And of course, I think the scientists walked him through the fact that they can, you know, trace and have documentation right back to like the ore body that it came from. And that refining process and, you know, the whole the whole journey, in your understanding, how how similar is that, to, you know, the kind of end stamped side or the nuclear side of, of, nuclear plant?

00:23:34:12 - 00:23:44:21

Chris Keefer

I've heard that sometimes those, those kind of qualifications are in areas which probably are not as safety critical. I'm not sure if you have expertise in that or understand that as well, but.

00:23:44:23 - 00:24:16:00

Jesse Huebsch

I'm, I'm not into or deeply into the actual, nuclear quality program, part of it. I have some high level understanding of it. I mean, that sounds similar. That being said, there's a lot of the higher hazard chemical industry that has quite significant traceability requirements, maybe not as exhaustive, but they still have a lot of requirements about programs that are called positive material identification and similar things.

00:24:16:02 - 00:24:47:10

Jesse Huebsch

making sure that the correct material ends up going to the correct spot, the correct weld materials used, which lot? Those are traced back to the end product. And there is a reference book that has who welded which weld, what their qualification was, what piece of metal, what their what plate that came from, from which sheet lot at which mill.

00:24:47:12 - 00:25:20:01

Jesse Huebsch

along with doing direct checks of those metals to make sure it's the metal we think it is by, you know, various sensors that can, analyze the composition of the metal, as a scan, that kind of stuff. so there's a lot of it that is not completely foreign. The intensity is obviously dialed up. And there's always a good question about at what point are we spending, you know, too much on the intensity there.

00:25:20:03 - 00:25:30:21

Jesse Huebsch

One sort of saying that there is in plant engineering is you can spend steel to save engineering hours, or you can spend engineering hours to save steel. So there might.

00:25:30:21 - 00:25:31:18

Chris Keefer

Be.

00:25:31:19 - 00:26:00:16

Jesse Huebsch

Areas where you could say, okay, could we dial back the no, eliminate the quality control, but just dial it back to say, high hazard chemical industry levels and say, okay, let's use a slightly higher overdesigned factor that would let us say maybe we didn't get that one weld out of 20 passes. Quite is exactly to spec as we thought.

00:26:00:18 - 00:26:23:06

Jesse Huebsch

How much would that weaken this world? Well, if we allow 10% more wall thickness or something, will that code cover the sort of worst possible deviation? How much would that 10% extra thickness cost us to back off from a lot of this other, indirect costs that we have going does that.

00:26:23:08 - 00:26:27:18

Chris Keefer

Is that kind of reasoning, employed in, in the chemicals industry in your experience?

00:26:27:20 - 00:26:57:13

Jesse Huebsch

Absolutely. there's write in the ask me code. There are factors for if you use this kind of end on your nondestructive examination on your weld, you can rate it at 75% of the nominal value for strength. If you use this other type, you can read it at 90%. And then if you go to like 100% radiography, you can read it at 100% of the strength.

00:26:57:15 - 00:27:22:05

Chris Keefer

So I'm just struck you're, kind of following my nose on this one, but like, having visited, quite a large number of nuclear plants now and seeing the kind of safety culture sometimes, I guess what I'll call the radiation theater, I mean, going through, sensors that are that are so sensitive that they can pick up, natural background radon contamination if it's rained and you're wearing a fleece, your alarm, the radiation detectors on the way into the plant.

00:27:22:07 - 00:27:41:06

Chris Keefer

you know, in the chemical world you're talking about, you know, ultra high pressures, very hazardous materials, waste that's generated just to sort of get, an understanding, I guess, of. I mean, it sounds like the safety cultures are pretty intense at these high risk chemical facilities, but I'm just trying to kind of get a sense of, I don't know what it's like to kind of go in and out of them.

00:27:41:06 - 00:27:56:21

Chris Keefer

What sort of, maybe it's too granular. but just those questions, I guess, of, of, kind of daily operations moving through these, these plants. And also I'd be interested to talk about sort of like making a comparison with, with kind of waste streams and handling these, these high hazard scenarios.

00:27:56:23 - 00:28:36:00

Jesse Huebsch

I mean, fundamentally, the a lot of those kinds of checks just don't exist. one reason, of course, is that it's much harder to detect chemicals. my opinion is that it's a lot of the basis of a lot of radio phobia is that if we had, handheld sensors that could detect, let's say formaldehyde, one part per billion, we'd be panicking about it everywhere, especially since there's natural background formaldehyde to make it a particularly, appropriate example where we'd be going.

00:28:36:02 - 00:29:07:07

Jesse Huebsch

you know, this is contaminated. We have to dispose of it, but we don't. I mean, you have to send it off to a lab, and it takes a week to get an answer back. You don't have a handheld meter that can do it. For the most part, if it's a particularly toxic chemical system, basically you do what you do before you do any service on it is you clean it, flush it, and segregate those wastes, and then you're prepared to work on it as a much more normal piece of equipment.

00:29:07:09 - 00:29:33:06

Jesse Huebsch

It's a much more upfront decontamination that way. But you're not checking people coming on and off site, or anything like that. So it's a lot less of a intrusive process that way. The, I mean, there's on and on site or on and off site training and depending on the tasks that you're doing and orientations and stuff like that.

00:29:33:07 - 00:30:05:07

Jesse Huebsch

I haven't been in a, nuclear plant to, see exactly. all of the procedures for access and stuff that way, I expect it's, you know, not as intrusive, but there's still significant access controls, especially going into operating area as well. They're actually in operation. You still have things like having to check in with the control room to make sure that the operators understand who's doing what they're, why they're going in, where they're going to be.

00:30:05:09 - 00:30:13:13

Jesse Huebsch

If anything happens, you know who's around and needs to be, dealt with in one way or another.

00:30:13:15 - 00:30:32:14

Chris Keefer

So, I mean, we're meandering a little bit, which I love, but, let's, let's jump back a little bit to, some of these kind of, factory analogies. and I think we're ready to maybe jump into, you know, just, I think demystifying this concept of, of modularization, it is it is all the rage in the nuclear world.

00:30:32:16 - 00:30:51:19

Chris Keefer

these days, it's it's kind of what's being pitched is sort of salvaging an industry that's been struggling to to complete, again, we do have the example of a highly modular reactor, the advanced boiling water reactor. I think setting the build time in world history, certainly for gigawatt scale plant of, under four years, from, shovel on the ground to grid connection.

00:30:51:19 - 00:31:00:07

Chris Keefer

So, help us understand, more, modularity outside of the nuclear industry and in your space in the, in the kind of chemical process world.

00:31:00:08 - 00:31:37:10

Jesse Huebsch

Yeah. So modularity is unfortunately one of those words that is so broadly applied to become practically meaning meaningless in the end. but there's kind of two main forms of modularity that I think people are getting a bit confused on. There's the building, the airplanes kind of modularity, where an airplane into a module. And I think a lot of people are expecting that, that you're going to you're going to have a nuclear power plant come out the end of the factory and drive it over to site, throw in a couple of anchor bolts and call it done.

00:31:37:12 - 00:32:10:11

Jesse Huebsch

that's never going to happen. Or at least not above the micro reactor level. And you know, I have some skepticism about how just how portable we're going to let that kind of stuff be. But leaving that aside, so modularity in the actual chemical plant industry, to a very limited extent, there's what we'd call, you know, sked modules where the complete process fits on a skid that you could ship to site and then connect in.

00:32:10:13 - 00:32:42:17

Jesse Huebsch

And a nuclear plant might use a few of these, not as the plant, but something like a, water purification package for the boiler feedwater. Something like that might be this kind of, semi complete system that's all assembled. Put on a frame, has its, controls and pipes and wiring and stuff like that. Preassembled. But for, you know, most of the things on the site are far too big or interconnected to make that really make sense.

00:32:42:17 - 00:33:10:06

Jesse Huebsch

Instead, we're looking more like the kind of modules that are built for, offshore platforms or refineries where basically you take a section of structural steel and pre mount all of the equipment that would be supported by that steel. So that might be a heat exchanger and a pump, and you just pre do as much of the piping as possible.

00:33:10:06 - 00:33:48:21

Jesse Huebsch

That's internal to that skid and bring it up to the edge of the skid or that, you know, a little bit back to have a a piece that would be field assembled to make sure that you have, some allowance for fit up. and you might pre wire all of the instrumentation and motors in that skid back to junction boxes that are somewhere on that skid that are then easy when it's in place to wire back to the, main control system or to the motor control centers where the power is, distributed to the various, equipment.

00:33:48:23 - 00:34:21:16

Jesse Huebsch

So for the for the most part and that's my understanding of the, a BWR, that they have, a lot of these kinds of, structural plus equipment modules, and if that's done well, that can greatly speed assembly time, by having most of your labor hours being done in factory conditions where the workers are widely dispersed, you have a number of factories working on it.

00:34:21:18 - 00:34:48:00

Jesse Huebsch

There's no weather. You're always inside. and you have stuff like having overhead cranes where you don't need a special crane operator. You have someone that has a keypad. They can use it directly to put the parts in. So you can actually have considerable staff savings. By having equipment replacing staff, you can use automated welding machines that might not be particularly portable.

00:34:48:02 - 00:35:17:09

Jesse Huebsch

Instead, you're bringing the components to them. a number of factors like that. So from a nuclear power plant, probably the best analogy, there would be shipyard construction. We want to build those modules like a shipyard. The only difference is we're not sticking them together in a ship hull right on the at the shipyard. We're instead shipping those similar modules off somewhere else where we're putting them together in a concrete hull.

00:35:17:11 - 00:35:42:12

Jesse Huebsch

That's the, containment and the, structure, or the basement below it. Now, if you do a poorly like your interview on the Ap1000, you can have all kinds of other problems there because you've done a, a lot of pre-commitment work. we're pretty committed to a lot of work before you've tested that, it actually fits together and then it's done correctly.

00:35:42:12 - 00:35:53:06

Jesse Huebsch

So obviously the the supply chain has to have the ducks in a row to actually deliver consistently exactly what the drawing says it's supposed to be.

00:35:53:08 - 00:36:15:05

Chris Keefer

And in terms of, you know, justifying these, these, factory facilities, I mean, this is the kind of promise and challenge of, of the smart paradigm is, you need to standardize enough around a unit to be able to justify a factory, and that involves a whole whole lot of units. And, I mean, it's happened on the large scale before, I guess, in terms of industrialized, like large industrial hubs.

00:36:15:05 - 00:36:31:22

Chris Keefer

So I'm thinking of the I think it's a shoes shoes factory in France that was banging out a, massive reactor as a heavy forging facility, not a module manufacturing facility, and to my knowledge, but, I think that's that's the kind of major challenge which we don't see with, you know, chemical plants and with, gas, turbines, for instance.

00:36:32:03 - 00:37:01:15

Jesse Huebsch

So that's where I push back and say, why do you need a specific factory for nuclear modules? If you have the market there, those same shipyard or chemical plant module factories should be happy to be able to have the quality programs in place to be able to build those as well. And not they don't not need to be specific to one particular model of reactor either.

00:37:01:17 - 00:37:32:09

Jesse Huebsch

So if someone builds a Candu in order some modules from that, great. Next orders for an AP 1000, great. Next orders for a SMR, great. you might end up fitting for, you know, a similar shipping envelope, have a smaller number of modules for an SMR. Or you might do it having smaller modules because the, access is not as good to bring as big of a shipping envelope.

00:37:32:11 - 00:37:58:05

Jesse Huebsch

Maybe it's truck delivery instead of, pure side delivery, but it's the same module shops that would be doing that, building those, and then going back a step further, you know, the same sorts of heat exchanger shops that would build the heat exchanger that go on those to a large extent. the same factories that build pumps, a pump factory doesn't build one kind of pump.

00:37:58:05 - 00:38:37:02

Jesse Huebsch

It builds a number of similar pumps across a wide scale, basically jet castings and stuff like that. Machine them out. machine impellers, each one is independently machined. They do not have to be the same design. And if they're broadly similar types, you even have a lot of your learning on the factory side that comes there. It's really only when you have a completely new configuration or material or something like that, that on the factory side, you have a little bit of more of a reset in, how you make them efficient.

00:38:37:04 - 00:39:17:13

Jesse Huebsch

I was going to say. So from that standpoint, it's good to standardize on a relatively small number of designs to make sure that you have enough supply chains that's familiar with those, and especially for the site work sides of things. But a lot of it is really more units of a smaller number of designs, means those designs end up being really well polished, with really detailed and thorough execution plans and, you know, detailed drawings at all levels of this, with a lot of learnings or optimization having come in where there might be assembly sequence things, what fits best together on a skid.

00:39:17:15 - 00:39:46:14

Jesse Huebsch

Maybe you, move some of the equipment in the, balance of plant flat to make it easier to assemble or more efficient or easier to access. But it's not strictly necessary that you have just one design that you keep producing with exactly one set of supply chain that's uniquely, dedicated to that. And no other part of the, chemical or power industry works that way.

00:39:46:16 - 00:40:06:16

Chris Keefer

Sometimes I think, we think that, you know, we live in a brand new time and a brand new paradigm. But, I mean, it strikes me I'm thinking, like, let's say the heyday of, of Candu deployments when we commissioned 22 reactors in 22 years, a significant amount of that work was happening in factories. There was enough work going around that those factories are very busy.

00:40:06:18 - 00:40:23:14

Chris Keefer

you know, certainly there's there's talk and aspirations about trying to get those build rates, back again. but, you know, are we just sort of revisiting an old paradigm that's there if you have, the amount of business required to stay tooled up and, and keep these factories humming to it?

00:40:23:15 - 00:41:07:14

Jesse Huebsch

Absolutely. To an extent, especially from nuclear, where the certifications and the programs take a fair bit of active effort to sustain, to basically have them in place for if you call on them. So it would be a far more sustainable industry to have a relatively steady build cadence for the next 30 or 40 years. until we start getting back into another round of refurbishments, for example, if we were going to try to build out every reactor that we needed in ten years and then stop again, we would just run back into similar problems that we have now in 30, 40, 50, 60 years.

00:41:07:14 - 00:41:25:19

Jesse Huebsch

Whenever it comes up that we need to do a replenishment program or staff reaches end of life, and we have to replace it to, absolutely steady cadence is much better than, a very lumpy, supply chain.

00:41:25:21 - 00:41:52:14

Chris Keefer

What strikes me, you know, looking at, I mean, just my local, my own backyard in Canada and in the US, where there's really not any sort of national industrial policy or national nuclear industrial policy, a play like we're thinking really just about looking at one site or another site. And our strategy is based around that. And, you know, we we at some degree that's that's changing with plans to build better in Ontario and then maybe deploy in Saskatchewan very early preliminary days.

00:41:52:14 - 00:42:10:01

Chris Keefer

But what strikes me is that there's not enough thinking, you know, if Canada's now embracing nuclear federally, and we're thinking that it's a part of our national climate plan, one would think that you would start planning, for a strategy like that and again, stop thinking about just what, what infrastructure we need to build around this singular sites.

00:42:10:01 - 00:42:27:23

Chris Keefer

But what's it going to look like, you know, right across the country. And that will shape decisions, I think, on sort of where to obviously site these, these factories and facilities, on design choices, on standardization. I just I don't know, it's just a general commentary. I don't feel like I see enough of that mature thinking that comes with the technology that's so difficult.

00:42:27:23 - 00:42:44:09

Chris Keefer

Like, I was talking with a friend earlier and he was like 10% of nuclear projects have come in like on budget or under budget. Like the assumption is that these things are going to go a bit over. So we need to have zero hubris. Sorry. Yeah. Zero hubris and a lot of humility in terms of charting a lowest risk pathway to that.

00:42:44:09 - 00:42:51:06

Chris Keefer

And, you know, getting the lessons learned lined up so that we don't, you know, we eliminate the chances or reduce the chances of going over.

00:42:51:07 - 00:43:33:00

Jesse Huebsch

Fundamentally from a process engineering standpoint, this, you know, a lot of analogies, the overall, grid and energy system is a much bigger scale chemical plant. The vast majority of the effort in chemical plants actually about heat integration, energy integration, moving, moving energies and components around within it, as well as managing what I call corner cases, which is combinations of operating parameters that are maybe imposed on you or maybe desirable that are the most challenging for different aspects of the plant or the system.

00:43:33:02 - 00:44:02:15

Jesse Huebsch

While we have, you know, the future is a bit of a black box. It's not entirely we have broad decarbonization plans. We have some idea of what our overall demands may look like, what the big hitters are, especially for things like, heating. we have a little bit more visibility into what the transportation infrastructure might look like, as well as some of the big industrial users.

00:44:02:17 - 00:44:32:11

Jesse Huebsch

We really should be trying to draw. What does a or what are plausible and reasonable instincts for the overall energy system and not and as in it's static but and as in where the system's going to start looking fairly stable again. like it might have 20 or 30 years ago where the, the general mix of infrastructure wasn't evolving all that quickly.

00:44:32:16 - 00:45:08:21

Jesse Huebsch

So what are plausible end states? What are those look like? And then start drawing plans of, well, how do we get from here to there? And what are within the range of those states that look plausible? What's the no regrets pathways that we should be taking now that would, you know, lead closer to that. And yeah, that's a a much longer view and would have a much broader program than we see now.

00:45:08:21 - 00:45:09:06

Jesse Huebsch

00:45:09:08 - 00:45:45:20

Chris Keefer

And it seems to work better in authoritarian governments with five and ten year plans than in our, least worst political system of, representative democracy. And like, it is interesting like even saying, you know, we need some kind of national industrial policy around the deployment of nuclear, like, that's not required around the deployment of combined cycle gas turbines, for instance, that is just, you know, unfolding organically because of some difference, and the imperfection of that allegory between, you know, gas plants and nuclear plants, there's some difference there that that is, I think, leaning towards historically efficient deployments of nuclear, having some degree of state involvement in, at least in plants that.

00:45:45:20 - 00:45:52:02

Jesse Huebsch

Well, think of it a different way. how many airports would we have without state planning.

00:45:52:04 - 00:45:52:22

Chris Keefer

Or hydro dams.

00:45:53:03 - 00:46:33:18

Jesse Huebsch

Or hydrogens or. Yes, but hydro, not just for power, but for irrigation systems. How many canals would we have without state planning there? Larger scale, longer duration, then the free market can easily do on its own, entirely up front, having the free market supplies bits that go into it, maybe even operate it afterwards. That can make a lot of sense, but there's definitely a some aspects of a centralized plan that's required to get through this kind of, transition as well as to build this kind of infrastructure.

00:46:33:23 - 00:47:12:05

Jesse Huebsch

My view is we're not going to get through to a deep decarbonization without some significant centralized planning, no matter what technology package that you prefer. The natural, what I call the default plan ends up being a firm natural gas system with as much fuel saving from wind and solar as can, get into it before the cannibalization of high output hours erodes the profitability until to the point no more gets built.

00:47:12:07 - 00:47:19:06

Jesse Huebsch

It's potentially lower carbon than a lot of grids are now. But it's not the end state that we're after.

00:47:19:08 - 00:47:40:15

Chris Keefer

And I think we're really tapping into something important here. And it's precisely because, you know, those those technologies don't require, a significant degree of state planning or coordination. They're not like bridges. They're not like airports. They're not like nuclear plants or not like hydro dams. They're amenable to subsidy, driving a free market, private developers building just by nature of of how they're constructed.

00:47:40:17 - 00:47:56:14

Chris Keefer

and, you know, their degree of modularity and their, their paucity of civil works, etc.. And, and again, I think I think that is like as useful as it is. And there's I think many lessons to be drawn from what you can take from chemical processes or from, gas plants and apply to nuclear. I think that is a really interesting dividing line.

00:47:56:14 - 00:48:19:07

Chris Keefer

Like why does one require some degree of state involvement in the other? Not? And I think I think we've kind of sum that up. I won't I won't beat the dead horse there. But that that is interesting to me in terms of path dependencies, which way they point and why potentially in the West we're going one way and, and these other, you know, countries that are a little more amenable to state involvement and planning, not just, you know, Chinese and the Russians, but also the Koreans or the Emiratis.

00:48:19:09 - 00:48:37:23

Chris Keefer

it's interesting how just, you know, the politics of a society is is kind of impacting these, these energy choices. We've just, again, run out of large hydro, potential. And so, you know, that we're moving away from that. And no wonder governments are a bit allergic, given how muskrat falls in sight. See, for instance, in Canada have done.

00:48:38:01 - 00:48:54:08

Jesse Huebsch

I mean, it's interesting. It's again, one where the hardest part of nuclear is essentially all of hydro. And that's the the civil works that's unique to the site. And you don't really know what you're getting into until you have the shovel in the ground.

00:48:54:10 - 00:49:10:13

Chris Keefer

Just I think that's a good, good place to leave it. it's, great to have you on for your premier, on decouple. I'm very proud of, you know, a lot of people whose kind of first the treaty was on decouple, and then you know, kind of come out and end up having quite a presence.

00:49:10:15 - 00:49:30:12

Chris Keefer

so I'm, I'm thinking you're going to be in that that fine tradition here at decouple. so, yeah. Great having you on here. Great having you and, of course, the Canadian WhatsApp chat group, which, never, never ceases to kind of astound me in terms of the, the analytical compute we have there. so thank you again for for making the time to come on the show.

00:49:30:14 - 00:49:35:09

Jesse Huebsch

I more than appreciate that. And, I will be happy to be back. And thank you for hosting.

00:49:35:11 - 00:49:36:13

Chris Keefer

All right. All the best.