NuScale Power completed its SPAC merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corporation to list under the symbol 'SMR' on the New York Stock Exchange. President and CEO John L. Hopkins joined to discuss the company’s debut as a public company, its light water modular reactors, and combating climate change with nuclear energy. "You take renewables in what we've seen in the great success of renewables today, be it wind or solar," he said. "We have the ability to complement those renewables and provide true 24/7 clean energy by complementing renewables when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining."

Opening Bell

NuScale Power CEO on Going Public, Tackling Climate Change With Nuclear Energy

here with more is john L Hopkins, president and chief executive officer of new scale power john thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on this morning, I know it's a big day for the company. Let's just talk about this. Why was now the right time to take new scale public? And what got you to this point? Thank you Alicia. It's an exciting time being. Standing here on the floor of the new york stock exchange. It's been a, our team has done an amazing job getting it. And you know, we looked back sometime ago, our founder, Dr Jose Reyes founded the technology And as we got through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2020, which was a daunting challenge, we decided to really grow this company. We knew we want, we're looking at a traditional I. P. O. We elected to go through a special purpose acquisition company because we thought timing was good for us were the first mover. And so it's exciting and you know, why go public is to give us the resources we need and also the operating capital to continue to grow this company. So let's talk about growth for a second. What kind of growth potential do you think this is going to unlock for the company moving forward? You know, I was, I attended cop 26 in Glasgow and I had an opportunity to speak with many government representation from all over the world Sub Saharan africa Central, Eastern europe. And what it came to the realization is a lot of people were talking about energy requirements for clean potable water for desalinization or director capture sequestration or hydrogen, hydrogen was on everybody's mind. Well, if you think about the energy requirements, it's it's enormous energy to build or to produce hydrogen or reverse osmosis desalinization. So over the years, we're looking at what are the applications of small modular reactors. What is the growth potential? And to be honest with you, there's a lot of companies vying for position right now. We think it's unlimited at first mover's advantage, certainly going to be a pretty decent advantage in those growth numbers. You know, the company obviously hinges around this SmR technology. Can you break down for us exactly what that is and why there has been just so much recent interest and even investment in this tech in the last couple of months. But the, the technology itself is extremely innovative. It's a very simple light water design, its regulators know it all over the world. That's why we stayed with the light water reactor and we're going to build them in a factory and they come in components and the module itself is 77 MW electric and it will be built in a factory and shipped and it comes in three different pieces. So we have a very robust supply chain that's global right now. And the, as I stated, we're getting a lot of interest from customers all around the world. And what are we talking about powering here. Exactly. Give me some of the use cases. Yeah, it's um here in the United States. We see uh areas of coal refurbishment. We got a lot of fossil fuel plants that are coming off the end of this decade. And when you think about those local communities and where they are, they're generally in rural communities, the local towns, you know, is dependent on that tax revenue. They're dependent on the jobs. And so we're actually working with the, the building trades and look at trans or trans, taking those existing workers and moving them over to a new scale plant, their high paying jobs. So if you take normally a 270 megawatt coal powered plant that could be going out of commission, we could take those same people cross train them and in a lot of instances use the existing infrastructure like like water intake and transfer transmission and distribution lines and also continue to buy the tax revenue for that local town. So outside of this country, our competition is typically state owned enterprises, Russia china, that's who we're competing against right now. We have customers in Romania Poland Bulgaria, we're talking to Indonesia. So again, energy security and climate disruption are key motivators for people to move directionally towards advanced nuclear before I have to let you go here, just want to touch on there is a climate kind of change component to this, right? Uh, this certainly will help in the fight against that. What makes new scale and its tech primed to play a pretty significant role in combating combating climate change. It's an advanced nuclear, it's clean energy. You take renewables in what we've seen in the great success of renewables today, be it wind or solar. We have the ability to complement those renewables and provide true 24/7 clean energy by complementing renewables when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. We could assist them in ramping up in the And provide that 24/7 clean energy. And we, you know, some of the places that we're seeing right now is as an example, the European taxonomy just included nuclear into that taxonomy. I'm hopeful that environmental society, governance CSG funds will recognize also the advantages of advanced nuclear and open their funds to us. Mhm john really appreciate your time. Congratulations Again. I know today is a big company, a big day for the company, enjoyed the time here on the floor of the exchange, john L Hopkins, president and chief executive officer of new scale Power