Welcome back to decouple. Today I'm joined by Gary Rose, who is VP of new nuclear growth at OPG. Gary have a very warm welcome to decouple.
Thank you, Chris. Glad to be here today. Looking forward to the discussion.
It's been a long time coming. I think we met for the first time at COP 20. I always get the numbers mixed up cop, 27, and Egypt. And we've got to circling each other so glad to finally make this happen. You gave us a fantastic tour of the Darlington mock up. And today, we're definitely going to be focusing in part on the refurbishment program. Because it is my thesis, I'm interested to see if you share it that Ontario is the best equipped jurisdiction in the western world for the deployment of new nuclear. I'm not sure if you agree or not, but we'll get into that. So your career I mean, that was a very brief intro, VP nuclear growth. You've been, I think, probably at Ontario Hydro, because that's what it was before it turned into OPG. But you've been there, what was it 35 years. So just take a minute or two, to walk us through your career path, and sort of some of the things you've been involved with before before getting into this VP nuclear growth thing?
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Yeah, 35 years at Ontario, hydro OPG will call OPG. From this point forward. I will say, I did two semesters of food and beverage management at college and decided I did not want to work every Friday and Saturday night for the rest of my life. So ended up at OPG in 1988. As a clerk typist, I've had a fantastic time at OPG great company to work for a really give me opportunities to grow. First five years I was in energy management, ironically enough, back then, I was working to promote energy efficiency, for the purposes of not building new nuclear plants. That was the goal. So it's kind of ironic, where my career has come to at this point where I'm out there promoting new nuclear growth in your earlier point, I think we are certainly ready, and the best equipped to to execute new nuclear projects in the future here in Ontario. So what happened in the middle of all that 1993 declared surplus will be stopped the energy management program ended up in corporate finance, and nothing about finance, I decided I'm gonna go back to school, did my Commerce degree, my accounting designation, worked in corporate accounting got involved in projects in preparation for y2k? Thought it better I learned something about projects, When did my Project Management Professional certification at Durham College, which I am now the chairman of the board at Durham College, which is a nice, full circle as well. So, you know, first half of my career really in finance, and I think that defines me, I'm I'm I think people would conclude that my biases cost, right. To me, it's all about how much does it cost? And what are the value proposition of spending said money, so to speak, right? In, in the early 2000s. I, you know, I moved to Pickering was on the piggery returned to service project where I learned an incredible amount in concepts like Earned Value Management, predict controls construction management. That was my job as in this intersection of finance and project controls. And it was really unique time because I, you know, finance is all about how much money I've spent against a Budget Project controls is how much work have I done against that budget. So the ability to measure day to day work really changed my outlook on things. So I spent a few years in Pickering a return to service of course, we decided not to proceed to two we start units, Pickering units, two and three, I ended up in our in our nuclear projects and modifications organization, which was modification based projects. I lead a project called cost and schedule improvement project, which is all about getting much timely or cost schedule information, to be able to evaluate performance of product delivery, you couldn't wait to the invoice showed up to understand where the product was at. You needed to know where the product was at real time. So you can take real time actions and make real time decisions. So that has been really instrumental to to what we're going to talk about today. 2008, I shifted to the dogs refurbishment program that was the first executive on that team. That that has actually been been here through the total duration of unit two.
And at the refurbs. The refurbs haven't started until I mean, I'm actually not sure on that dates, but 2008 That's that's a long time before we started actually doing the work right
in 2008. It was really we were asked to do a feasibility assessment on the decision to to refurbish or not to refurbish both Pickering and Darlington at that point in time right. Okay. So I was involved in that business case in 2009. We decided to proceed with the refurbishment of Darlington so we sanctioned the pro jekt and put a project charter in place, I was the ultimately the vice president of product planning and project control. So I was accountable to establish the baseline for how we would measure performance on the project that culminated in what we call a release quality estimate, in 2015, that we took to our board into our shareholder for approval of a $12.8 billion project. So we set a cost and schedule baseline in 2015. At this time of release quality estimate, we took that to Ontario Energy Board, and added evaluated there. And that baseline is how we're measuring our performance. And, you know, we'll talk about how that performance looks, I'm sure this discussion, and how it is that we were able to stay on that baseline that the current refurbishment program at Darlington is ahead of schedule and on budget, which is not said too often in the same sentence as nuclear. So we certainly have a very positive story to tell. And and you're right, we spent seven to eight years planning this project. And you know, my adage is, planning doesn't guarantee success, but lack of planning, planning guarantees failure. And I truly, truly believe that. So it's planning, you need to plan and then you have to have meticulous educated execution against that plan. So that's a little bit of the career summary, I then transitioned over the last couple years to support the decisions with respect to the decision to proceed with the DNP Darlington new nuclear project and the selection of the Gen. G atashi. bw RX 300 project, which was transitioned over to the enterprise products organization here at OPG. And I've transitioned to be the vice president of new nuclear growth, where my job is to look at what other nuclear opportunities exist in Ontario, how do we approach those projects. And of course, we support other provinces in the pen, Canadian SMR approach, and through a subsidiary called Lorenz Energy Partners. We're also supporting nuclear deployment in places like Poland, Estonia, and a number of other discussions going on with a number of different countries like Australia, Czech Republic and others.
So like, what I'm struck by here is your background. You mentioned kind of I think food and beverage management. And you've moved from that over your career into managing, you know, some of the low, I think, the largest infrastructure project, contemporary infrastructure project in the country. You know, I believe these refurbishments are, as you mentioned, about 12 billion, I think that that divides down to about 3 billion per reactor. And that's pretty extraordinary. Like you hear a lot about nuclear how people can get in. And maybe this applies just to utilities in general, but how people can get in with a basic level of education and really level up and it seems like you're walking talking example of that. Are you are you the exception to the rule here? Is this a more common phenomenon,
I certainly don't have the exception to the rule, because I think we're going to need all types of people to make a nuclear program successful. It's not just engineers. It's not just operators. It's it's finance folks. It's HR folks. It's media folks. It's all kinds. It I was blessed to be at a company that recognized my, my desire to want to move forward. And the company supported by education, I had leaders that saw potential and gave me opportunities to do new things. And I worked really hard at at learning from others, and implementing what I thought were the best strategies to go forward with. You know, I share my story to as many people as I possibly can. And my message is, decide what you want to do, and go after it. Don't wait for somebody to come and ask you to do something. Let your let your leaders know what you want to do network, have a plan. Be honest with yourself about what you need, what developed, you need to get there and go after it.
All right. Well, that's I think that's a great summary of kind of who you are, what you've been up to, or the little motivational speech tacked on the end. I love it. So again, I want to talk a little bit more about some of the eras I guess, that your career spans, so 1990s, from what I understand, not a great time for nuclear. Bruce a was laid up my understanding, you know, it's very vague and patchy here. But, you know, the, the things that contributed to that were kind of underinvestment or disinterest by the provincial government at that time and nuclear. And again, this this thesis of being the best equipped jurisdiction in the western world now, there's been a lot of changes. So just wondering if you can just briefly give some context of why things were so bad in the 90s. You know, there's this really interesting dynamic between coal and nuclear that you watch over those years where, you know, Bruce A is laid up and no surprise here. We need baseload power, coal skyrockets. And, you know, finally, we got rid of coal using nuclear but Just walk us through some of the context and how we've gotten to where we are now where, where we're the best equipped.
And Chris, I don't know that I'm, I've got the perfect history of understanding the 90s, of course, I was in corporate finance. And, you know, it was ironic, you know, I spent my first 15 years in the company, or 1314 years in the company in corporate, I had not been inside a nuclear plant until 2003. And what was really amazing for me is that, that first day of walking into that nuclear plant and sitting at a meeting and, and during the time, there was actually a safety incident where the whole whole organization rallied around it, it was really it was like I had woke it up into this, this production world, that was very new to me, I'd been into financial role very important role, but, but certainly not connected to the production. So when you look back and think about where I started energy management, we had the was called the demand supply program, at that point, this expectation that there was going to be growth in the the in the generation need and, and we had just come off at Darlington that was that was expensive due to stop start stop start. Right, which is, you know, cumulated huge amounts of, of construction interests, which really increase the cost, that is not a good way to execute a project. So certainly, there was a time of, of why would you invest in new nuclear at those types of costs. But I think what happened is, is that the demand never materialized and your economy shifted, we lost a lot of manufacturing capability, you had some financial crisis of those points times. And, and I think in parallel to that, there was some struggles in in the maintenance of the units that we had. And you know, we had 18 operating or sorry, 20 operating units in Ontario at that point in time, and as a declining energy demand. So I think the company's we laid up some units and focused on core units to increase our capability. That's my recollection and an understanding of it. Of course, in time we, we started to improve our performance in managing and operating those those projects. And we are now of course, you'll recognize this top tier operator in the world of both Darlington and Pickering. And I'm sure Bruce is in similar similar vein, but we went through a period of laid up didn't you the generation that a period of restarting those those those reactors especially during the time of of closing out our eight gigawatts of coal and creating a clean air environment Ontario we started Pickering Bruce restarted their units. That was the that was the reason why we were able to meet the the the energy offset by closing down down. Cool. So you know, I think it was a time of different time we we learned from that time, I think we clearly we've improved our performance. We've got 18 operating or under refurbish units here in Ontario, right in the whole world class performance, I think both OPG boost power have demonstrated that we can execute refurbishment projects Well, and that's given us the credibility to be able to do other things. I think if we failed to execute refurbishment, I wouldn't be having these conversations about new nuclear.
Right, right. So I want to I want to get into refurbishment. But first, I think like there's this interesting sort of three phases. And phase one is the building of our fleet. Pretty impressive, you know, 20 units commissioned in around 20 years, we've done some of the math comparing the CANDU build out to other, you know, mega projects when it comes to Canadian energy. And, you know, in terms of the output of our CANDU fleet, it's greater, despite the James Bay project, you know, being a higher capacity, we run our candles a little at a higher capacity factor. So that's, that's pretty remarkable. And they were both built over a similar time period. So that's, that's been something in a little side analysis that we've been doing and found to be very interesting. So we have this, you know, very proficient, you know, building of the fleet, as you mentioned, things get a little snagged up with Darlington. And then I think we're in present moment in that refurbishment moment, which is kind of gearing up for capabilities. And then the third phase here is building new nuclear and that's, that's pretty exciting. And we'll get into that later. But being in this refurbishment phase and your expertise lying there, simple question. Like what is the what is the refurbishment? What is it can do refurbishment
so it can do it for so the design of the member I'm a finance guy. So yeah, I've picked up I picked up the technical knowledge by asking questions about scope that relate to cost.
Sometimes it's the best thing because I get an engineer on and they're gonna go into some micro detail here. So it's not for the humility.
So the design of a Candu reactor is like limiting component is the pressure tubes right due to hydrogen uptake or or or extension of the of the of the pressure tube within the Quadra tube and the potential for cracking breaking Got upon touch sagging over time, different technical stuff much way beyond my ability to comprehend but I think that's the general storyline. So, at a mid life by design at midlife, you need to replace those those pressure tubes Calandra tubes and feeder pipes in order to extend the the operating life of that reactor for another 30 plus years. So, when we started to evaluate this for for Darlington, you know, the, the timing for the for the refurbishment of those units was in that 2018 to 2020 timeline, but you can't do them all and you can't refurbish four units overnight. So you have to start planning early and start staggering staggering when you when you do these refurbishments but but the essence is we're refurbishing those reactors replacing the feeder tubes, the sorry, the pressure tubes planter tubes, the feeder pipes in order to allow 30 more years of operation. So how do we do that we we drain we d fuel the unit, we drain the unit we separate the roof, the unit that we're refurbishing it from the containment system of the other operating units, we remove all of those, those Calandra pressure tube feeder pipes, we do Calandra inspections, we put those new Calandra pressure tubes and feeder pipes back in test, refuel commission restart that isn't as critical path, the course notes while you're doing the critical path, of course, you're doing other things that that make sense to do while you're in a long outage, you're doing turbine upgrades, you're doing ballast plant refurbishments, you might be doing safety upgrades, or new systems, etc. All kinds of off critical paths of of the refurbishment. But you know, one of the lessons of project execution is Don't overcomplicate your project, and protect critical path. Don't let something else could become the critical path. That is not necessary.
I think something interesting here, so compared to like the other, and it gets it's to me, this is fascinating, right? Because, you know, there's there's been about five reactors that have been economically viable. Two of them have sort of fallen out of favor, you know, the Chernobyl reactor, the RBMK, and the gas graphite reactors, partially because they have no option for refurbishment and they have a lifespan of about 40 years and you can't do anything with them. The the PW or the BW are, you know, this is your pressure cooker type reactor, the rate limiting thing there is the pressure vessel. My understanding is once that's pooped, and we don't really exactly know when and these plants are getting extended, extended. You know, generally speaking, that's that's the end of life thing. But with Canada, we can keep replacing these lots of places we've done one refurbishment, people are saying maybe we could do a second refurbishment, maybe we could extend these plants a really long time. And I've seen this sort of in the in the OPG public relations stuff, you know, we're restoring these reactors to an as new state. You know, I've also heard people say we're restoring them to a better than new state because we've learned things improved instrumentation, improved alloys and things like that. Is that is that your impression as well? Or are we just being, you know, a little too enthusiastic. You know, Candy fanboys here?
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, Unit Two that went back into service and in June of June 4 2020. And they operated something check. I may be off a couple of days. But in the big picture, it's rounding 563 days of operating from from returning to refurbish and a 44 month refurbishment operate 563 days, I think that's quite incredible Sebastien in the industry, so that just a testament to the quality of those units coming back the new units you have there, shake it down. We actually planned in our in our business case, outages in the first couple of years because the expectation was you would have some challenges coming in a unit back with a brand new core. And and so we plan that in we didn't need to draw on any of those it was the quality was was that good. You're right we did make alloy changes to the to the feeders and the pressure tubes themselves into the the garter springs annulus spacers that separate the the pressure to from the Kendriya tube and the capability the technical capability to test our wells today the Radiography techniques that weren't available, we built the plant. The quality inspections to such tight tolerances are incredible. That the the amount of detail that goes into that I'm of the perspective that we have a much better quality core than we had probably an original construction. So does that mean we should potentially be able to get longer than the nominal 30 years out of these units, I will tell but I'm a believer that we will.
What's your response to, you know, on the other side of the spectrum, and you'll hear a lot of media figures asking this question or making this comparison. You know, they'll say, Listen, I have a Dodge Caravan, you know, 2008 Dodge Caravan, I wouldn't want to be driving that thing any any longer. What do you think the problem is with, you know, the comparison to the car metaphor for Canada reactors and refurbishment? Is there a better metaphor that you use just in terms of public communications?
No, I mean, I've used the car analogy. I think that's a man thing to do. Right. So we just default to that. And, you know, the way I looked at I looked at my explanation, terminologies, we're replacing the engine. And we may be doing some upgrades that Dodge may not have had had seatbelts, the time it was issued, we're putting a seat belts for improved safety performance. But we're not replacing the tires of the brakes. That's ongoing maintenance. So the core, you know, and up, you could argue that we also, if the chassis is the turbine generator set, we did some upgrades and maintenance on that. So. So, you know, I don't think that you can just replace the pressure tubes and declaratory tubes forever, I'm going to do this three, four or five, six times, there will be other life limiting components. But again, getting back to the design of the of the Candu reactor is a nominal 60 year life with a mid life refurbishment. It's not a 30 plus 30. And so it was designed, it was designed that way. There will be other things that will need to be evaluated beyond the pressure tubes, the clarity of vessel itself, the concrete containment structure, that surrounds it and other systems to really make that decision. And that's going to be quite a bit of engineering analysis. There has been no unit refurbished two times yet, right. So that analysis will need to be done. But but I'm sure in time, somebody will we will, somebody will do this analysis, or we will do that analysis and evaluate that but but refurbishing a unit is, at least at the state that we've done it now is is the most cost economical thing that you can do. It's it's, it's from a levelized cost of energy perspective, everything we've seen it's it's lower, lower cost better value to the ratepayer than new unit. But it you have a limited time span. So as we grow in our generation, you can't just keep refurbishing units, you've still got to bring in new generation as well.
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only other things I've added to you know when it when I get that question is that, you know, yes, this Dodge Caravan is, is doing highway driving, it's always in the right lane. It's always driving according to the laws of the road, 90 kilometers an hour, essentially forever highway driving, and it gets an oil change every you know, 5000 kilometers or something.
You're right on cruise control. So on cruise, yeah, like best thing to do is just let it operate. Right. Yeah, that you can let a nuclear plant operate is the best place for it to be. That's why, you know, baseload, 24/7 365 day power. It's the only thing that we've got that can can do that.
So refurbished ones haven't always gone. Well. You mentioned being around in the Pickering days of unit one and four being refurbished what what went wrong and what lessons have been learned such that you know, you have several units finished, or through the refurbishment at Darlington and things have gone ahead of schedule and stayed on budget.
I can go on about this, I can make this your longest podcast ever, in what we've done. But I'll try and get to the really key salient points. First off, Pickering a RTS was a restart not a refurbishment. So the restart in 2000s was a a originally it was planned to be my numbers may be off but it was it was a billion dollars to restart all four units and end up being a billion dollars for each unit. It it wasn't it wasn't it, we did not replace the pressure tubes or cleaner tubes or feeder pipes. That was not the plan it was that units were laid up. They were laid up in some respects in haste, and perhaps not done in a way that make them make them easy to restart. So you have equipment that was decaying valves, piping, etc. That was really what electrical current that's really what the restart was about is doing an assessment of all of that information from a system that systems that have been laid up in haste in some cases and and not not fully thinking about restart and the timing of the restart, when I say in haste. So totally different project. But it has some lessons learned from it. That I would say are lessons learned from many mega projects. So when 95% of mega projects go bad in terms of cost and schedule overwrites piggery restart which was one of those, you know if you really be honest about it, the first number we put out, we didn't complete the scoping Part of the project we hadn't done a proper estimate of the project, and didn't have contracts in place didn't have execution models in place. We started the project with an expectation of what it was going to cost. And as we got into it, we started to understand that better. I know, in the end, I wasn't there in uniform. And it's not an excuse, I was back in finance doing some good work there. But I joined in the planning unit for was wrapping up, which was the challenging unit, we were getting into unit one. And we did set a new budget for Unit One was the 160 $5 million for the restart of unit one. And we were we were a little bit over that. But in a bomb emergence perspective against that estimate, we were in pretty good shape, but certainly overrun from the estimate that I put out years earlier, without the benefit of scoping and proper cost estimating schedule development.
But you never you never want to go over budget, but it was interesting. We were looking at the finance Accountability Office, you know, when they were assessing, are these refurbs viable? What is the risk of them? And you know, they're like, if the project goes, you know, 40 50% over budget, we're looking at, you know, if nuclear is currently eight cents per kilowatt hour going to like 8.7 cents, so that mean that that's not good. But it's also not as bad as one would think, because we're spreading the cost out over a lot of kilowatt hours. So not to make excuses. But it's, you know, I think a lot of people think it's devastating if these projects do go over budget. But yeah, let's let's pivot to Darlington, and your analysis of why things have gone. So well.
First off, you bring my product management heart, because, you know, we don't set we don't do plans to overrun, the goal is to be unplanned, right. So that's, that's the first message. So that is the goal is always to be on plan. That's what we set out to do here and refurbishment, but shifting the refurbishment, and let you ask us that question there. But you're right about the cost, right. So when we do the analysis of refurbishment $12.8 billion to refurbish four units to get 30 years of operations at 92 eat at night, I can't remember the exact number but 9893 ish percent capacity factor which was was was based on the operating performance of different units in the past, if you did better than that, you lower your costs ultimately, if we were billion dollars over, right, so the in 2015, when we set the arc up the budget, the result was levelized cost of energy and less than eight cents in 2015. So that's probably 1011 cents now, in refurbishing those units, a billion dollars over on the capital cost of the refurbishment would have added about a third of a set to that LCD. So not dramatic, right. So to your to your point, right? It's not a dramatic. And the reason for that is that about a third of the capital costs for the LCD was related to the refurbishment where two thirds is related to the operational performance over the life of that asset. So so we had to evaluate both new build the capital costs is more because of course, you it's a brand new investment from grounds Greenfield up. It's probably about two thirds capex 1/3, operating in over a certain period of time, the operating costs from a net present value perspective doesn't matter. Right? I mean, the discount rate, it's so far out there, the time value of money, it becomes irrelevant.
Okay. Interesting. Let's Yeah, let's focus now on on, you know, Pickering, I had some troubles with those refurbs in the early 2000s, late 90s. What's changed now, I think you take a lot of pride in this. You said there's a seven eight year planning period, I got to visit this markup. Maybe describe that for our listeners. And, you know, two or three of the biggest takeaways, I'm sure as you said, you can talk about this for hours, but highlight highlight what had been the really proven elements of the success story and we reviewed this book on project management by bent fleet Berg, you know, he has this database, as you're mentioning 95% of projects go over a cost over budget or don't actually delivered the value that they're, you know, plan to deliver nuclear has these fat tails, it, you know, has been done well and on budget, you know, in country over country. But when it goes wrong, you know, it can go badly wrong. And the cost overruns can be can be quite massive. So I think again, this is one of the factors that makes us the best equipped but walk us through what are the kind of top three parts of what we've learned and what we're what we're applying at Darlington to get these things ahead of schedule. Let me
tell you, I was gonna break it down into three categories planning, meticulous execution and post execution lessons learned. Okay, let me just let me first off what planning we you know, this mega project planning execution of mega projects, whether it's nuclear or not, is probably 95% of them fail. So when we went into the room version, the first thing we did is we wanted to learn from megaproject experience. So we looked at what were the what were the successes or failures of Heathrow Airport, London Olympics, nuclear plants, our own projects, or hydroelectric projects or nuclear projects. there's lessons to be learned from all of them. And I would, I would probably boil it down to a few points. Take the time to understand your scope. If you can't estimate a project, if you don't know what it is that you're doing, right, contemplate I want to refurbish my bathroom. Well, do you want linoleum floor or ceramic tiles without understanding that scope? You cannot estimate or plan these jobs? So understand the scope. We went through an exercise of what what what is required, what do you have to do to restart the unit and allow it to operate for an additional period of time? Versus what can you do in a normal maintenance outage. So it's a really a must, we kind of broke it down to you must do it from regulatory perspective, you must do it to allow it to operate continue to operate, or there's value enhancing reasons to do it while you're in a refurbishment state. If it could be done online, we do scoped it because or it could be done in a normal outage, we just scoped it, because you need to manage the complexity of the amount of work that you need to do, we needed to protect the critical path, we wouldn't allow anything on the project that was that had that was off critical path that had less than 30 days float to critical path, ie, you had basically you had a 30 day window if went long. And if there was any risks that it could go beyond 30 days, we were very careful about putting it in the project or to look for different ways of doing it breaking up the work so that we can always maintain FOTA critical path, we protected the critical path that at all costs, right, we really made sure that that and that was that was OPEX from other projects from other refurbishment projects that they ran into trouble with the critical path. But if a critical path hadn't gone, well, they would have run into trouble for the non critical paths, stuff that would have become critical path so so understand your scope and protect that. Without that you can't do a schedule, or an estimate. So when you get the scheduling, our lesson learned is you need to have one schedule, we were a general contractor, so to speak, we were would call a multi prime approach here where we had multiple EPC vendors, one of them being the APC vendor that did the actual v two and V two replacement work itself which was which, which was Canaletto and a joint venture between SNC, Laughlin and a con. We we were the because we were the owner and ultimately accountable for execution of this project. We said everybody will use one work breakdown structure, cost breakdown structure set of codes, and one schedule in our Primavera planner system. When I visited Vogel many years ago in the middle, and of course, they were in commercial discussions and the each of the vendors had their own schedule A wouldn't share it with the other because they were commercial discussions. So the owner had no true visibility where the project was that we weren't going to make that mistake, we ensured that we had one master schedule that fed into obg so we had complete visibility, and all the costs lined up that now, what were the durations of the schedule, we built a mock up, right, which is why we built the mock up is we had tooling that was developed, that was factory tested, and we all went out, to demonstrate to to, to see the factory acceptance tests that were done, before those tooling were delivered to our site. We then use a markup, we took that tooling to the markup, we ran it through its processes over and over and over and started to understand what is the time that takes for these tools to do whatever step it needed to do, what was the maintenance time, the human interface time etc, etc. And from that, we started to add all that up together on a single fuel channel and you times that by the fact you do it 480 fuel channels, maintenance windows, etc. And started to develop the schedule that way. So meticulous amount of detail in the schedule that allowed us to do a SAS this question as a product controls, manager, director, ultimately VP at some point, what are you counting today? He says the product manager this What are you counting today? And if they didn't know what they were counting, how could they know where their project was at? So it was a simple about, you know, if I had a schedule that said today, I need 10 people to install six widgets. And I got 20 people and only installed four budgets, I have a problem. So we developed our schedule and our resource profiles to be able to evaluate performance on a daily basis. We ran on a critical path. Every morning we had a production curve that showed us what our plan was, how many units we were supposed to have installed, how many people were on that job. And if we weren't hitting the mark, we had a discussion as to what the issues were, what were the actions that we needed to take to get back on track. So it's that meticulous execution that oversight, and you need a plan to be able to do that if you don't have a plan and don't know where you're supposed to be at. How can you evaluate your performance against that? And I know, I'm beyond three, I've got about I'll say the next one is, is risk management. Anticipate that your analysis, you know, a lot of products, thinking about risks at time of business case. We, we documented all our risks, we broke it down between what are scheduled risks, what are discrete risks, events that could happen that are independent of schedule? And what we said is, what are the mitigation plans that need to be put in place for those those those risks? And if those mitigation plans were in place, and fully mitigated? What is the residual risk and probability residual risk of that? And we so what we did is we added costs to prepare the mitigation plans. And we added contingency if those residual risks came true. What we then did is we said, well, what's the trigger date that I have to have the mitigation plans in to avoid that risk. And we manage that hard, we made sure that there were mitigation plans on the shelf or built into the plan, overall. And when risks happen, we had plans in place already to deal with them, and kind of had the foresight to say we were perfect, there were things that came up that we didn't anticipate, but because we anticipated some risks, and mitigated them, well, we didn't have the consequent we didn't see the consequences of that. So in the end, we were able to balance out the contingency. So you got to you got to really focus on risk and planning, the contingency that you require to mitigate those risks, the actions you would take to mitigate those risks when they come in, and you didn't manage, you need to do risk management every single day as you go through this type of project. And I would say the last thing from sorry, to the last slide, I'm from a, this would be the contracting model. We started off in the refurbishment with an EPC model mindset, we were the owner, we were going to oversee contractors to do work and we were independent of them, they would submit us an engineering drawing, we will review it and send back comments, they would revise those, send it back to us we review it again send back more comments and, you know, time went on. So this is crazy, right? We obviously have some skill sets as the owner, that the vendors, we could help the vendors if we integrated the teams. So that was the shift to this from this EPC owner oversight model to one where we started to integrate the team. So like where it made sense. We said who is the best athlete from the vendor community from the owners community. Let's put them together. And let's motivate everybody in the same way. So this one team terminology came out of the refurbishment, right? Quite frankly, came out with my kids that played hockey in this day. That was one team one goal was the mantra in the dressing room. We brought that to the refurbishment program and created this one team concept where we would have vendors and OPG in the in a room working to solve a problem. We didn't know who was who that didn't matter. They're all motivated on the same goal. That is a that is the premise of the integrated project delivery model that we now have for the DMP. It is a continuation of what we we learned and Darwin can move forward. So I know there's a lot there, you can probably unbundle this, and we could talk about this this all day. But but the end of the day, you got to do all of those things, then you need to capture the lessons and get better on the next unit.
And I do really want to pivot to nuclear since you are the VP of new nuclear. But this has been fascinating. One thing that came up again, in this bent flav Berg book, you know how big things get done is the concept of modularity. Modularity is this. You know, it's, it's all the rage right now. But you know, Canada is the only reactor that has a modular core, and a lot of the work you're doing was modular and repetitive. Is that part of you know, what lays behind the success in terms of being able to do the same process over and over again and optimize it? Well, I think
certainly, we use modularity to a point where it made sense in the in this in this refurbishment we brought in instead of replacing components you brought in skids that you could basically that had all the components artists have their fabricated side brought in and connect it up. So they were put in position and then you had a window to to to connect them and then you could then take the time to dispatch all the other stuff so it saved you get a critical path time in that. But, but I think modularization especially when you shift to new nuclear is is going to be going to be a game changer. I think it'll be something that we'll get better at when you get MIDI like I think talking about one nuclear plant does it engage HD supply chain to actually optimize the this modularity. But I think when you start talking about a fleet of reactors and supply chain start to perk up and become interested in how do I become innovative to do to create production capacity to modularize components and ultimately increase quality and reduce costs and shorten scheduled times and costs. I think that is certainly the path going forward. And I listened to you one of your recent couples where the gentleman referred to Ella Mars, large modular reactors, which I I thought was quite unique. And I've used it a couple of times since then, I've caught people I think, you know, modularity is not a not a unique to small. In small modular reactors are done by the fact that they're smaller, simpler, therefore modular, become more predictable and, and shorter durations. But it's all about predictability. I think there's a lot that can be done in large Modular Reactors, as well, especially if you're going to install a fleet, which may is something that Ontario will have to consider based on the ISO report. And the scenario which requires updating gigawatts of nuclear.
So I'm gonna pivot any second to, you know, applying lessons from the refurb to SMRs. A new nuclear, no secret that I'm a huge fan of the idea of a Pickering. refurb. Just very quickly, in terms of ganache, because there's some changes, you know, it's an older plant more complex systems, you know, the degree of confidence in the Pickering refurb. Certainly, I think it'd be not controversial to say that it's higher based upon the success at Darlington, as you were saying, If Darlington had lost control of costs and schedule, that would really make the pick and refurb less likely. I know this is kind of behind closed doors seen as you guys work on your viability plan. Any any comment that at all, I'll let you off the hook if you have no comment, but just
I've always had something to say but most things I'm not obviously in the team, the team is I actually did do some initial feasibility planning of this, this decision to continue to evaluate the option to refurbish to evaluate the refurbishment or restart of the refurbishment of Pickering beak, we'll call it and, you know, my perspective is you're right, we have a we have a team on Darlington that, you know, we spent 44 months spent 3.4 billion this is all public, we're very transparent, open regulated company, I have all this information goes in front of the FBI. So, you know, first unit 44 months, three point 4,000,000,002nd unit, likely going to come in at approximately 36 months, not done yet. But tracking very well. That's a that's a significant improvement. And, and $2.6 billion. So, you know, quite a substantial, less less. So you have a team that is learned a lot on unit two, they documented 3000 lessons, we use the COVID period, when there was a delay, we decided to postpone the start of unit three, we kept some of the senior trades folks here the superintendents, the Foreman's etc. And we asked them to go through their their construction work packages with the lessons learned in hand and be creative and and find ways to improve performance on the subsequent units. And, and you know, if your three lands where we expect it to land right now, they will have done it better than the what we call the working schedule. This is means that they didn't even need to use the contingency, the product is not done. There's still risks there startup risks, replacing the turbine control system on unit three. So there are risks that are unique to three that weren't on two as well. But but but I tell you the performance of the lessons learned on unit two, and the application of those lessons learned on Unit Three is incredible. And it's gonna get better on on unit one, which is, you know, in the midst of its removal phase right now and uniform will start nominally in July of this year. Assuming unit three gets done by that time, and it's it's gonna get better and better and better. So that team that is top performing right now they're there, that team needs to then move over to Pickering. And that needs to be you know, my perspective that needs to be Darlington units. 5678 from a from an application perspective, is probably not as simple as saying that. But we have a team that is highly capable, and motivated to continue on this great performance that I think would would make equity more attractive today than it might have been when we were thinking about doing this and years ago.
I mean, and it just speaks to I think the Human Factors element of nuclear, just, it's hard to and I think it's often neglected the value that lies there. And you know, certainly in my amateur analysis of what went wrong, Vogel and over in Europe with the EPR is, I mean, first of all kinds challenging designs potentially but it seems like one of the biggest factors was that Human Factors element. And I guess it's proof of point that we're seeing those improvements unit to unit, you know, happening in real time. And when you have, you know, this number of reactors to do, you're gonna learn a lot of lessons and bring scheduling and cost down. So
I always tell people, I built two, two sheds in my life, I built two sheds in my life, the second one went a lot better than the first one, right? I mean, we can all relate. Or he's right. So yeah, that's true in this industry, as well. And I think it's going to be true to SMRs, or Allah Mars. The more we do, the better, we're going to get to this. And I think that's been our experience to date. You know, we need we will learn things, the first one will be more difficult than the second one, that's okay, we'll learn things. And we'll play those lessons. And we'll get better the second time, the third time. So that ends the the kind costs for SMRs are all on Mars is going to get better.
Your sense before we get to SMRs. And it's kind of a teaser, and I do want to spend some time and hope we have enough time that we go a bit over. But what's your sense of you know, we move the refurb workers over to Pickering. There's a lot of you know, I'm sure there's there's a lot of lessons for you know, other reactor design coming out of that just in terms of the general culture of excellence that's delivered these projects. But in terms of some of those candies, specific skills, does the refurb work? If we do choose to do large Modular Reactors in those large Modular Reactors, those new builds are can do? How well does the refurb work prepare us for new build work it can do, obviously, it's a bunch of civil engineering concrete pours, and things like that, that we've not got the familiarity with. But in terms of that, reactor, component, turbine stuff that's maybe can do specific, how well does that experience and that, you know, excellence in the human factors that have been developed, apply to potential new builds can do.
I mean, I like your perspective, it's really the culture of this, right? It's that if we entered into a new build, project, and forgot all the lessons learned that we learned on refurb, I would be a betting man to say we will fail. So I think there's a lot of transference of, of the methodology that that drive for performance, setting yourself up to be able to manage performance very well, you know, how, but also say that, you know, when we started to refurbishments back in, you know, in 2010 2011, we started planning and started scoping this and started to look for vendors that could provide the materials that we needed, engineered materials or commodity materials that we were we had gaps, because the industry was dormant for such a long period of time. And we went out and talk to vendors that had done this work in the past, and some cases where the tooling was in a warehouse somewhere or a different company and bought it and got reengaged supply chain. And so that is certainly a help as well, going forward, we have a strong nuclear supply chain, we have a strong planning management protocol. And we have a large number of trades who have under now understand what it means to be working on a nuclear project, the quality that's required on a nuclear project, the safety that's required on a nuclear project day in year two, and in 2017, which was the first full year we had, I think it's over 13 what we call maximum potential for harm, we got lucky, right, we really could have hurt somebody, and to where we'd go years without one of these now
you're talking about injuries to workers in their store.
We we've been at a great record, I think we had one last time accident in the two units of refurbishment where an individual tripped and and broke their knee. So walking accident, but beyond that, no lost time accidents in nuclear and an exceptional for like 10 times or more better than the general commercial construction role. But we had people come into this project that came from an office building where the safety practices of protocols were not what we expected a nuclear that fleet of trades people have learned that we expect them to operate safe we don't we do not want them to to make risk decisions in the field. And we keep them safe and they're very appreciative that I think have grown to understand our bases and and buy into this this nuclear safety culture, which is incredibly important. So I think we have good processes ability to execute. We have a great supply chain. We have great people that understand what nuclear safety, culture, culture, safety, quality performance is to to execute good projects.
So just just explain, I guess the underlying rationale I've heard it described to me, especially with the kind of international collaboration that's occurring specific to the BW RX 300. I've had the analogy of you know, when countries develop, fight or jets, they often will collaborate, you know, amongst a number of countries and spread out some of the risks and some of the development costs. Does that apply? And I mean, I'm putting too much into one question here. But I guess the rationale for the SMR is, and I guess some of the collaboration that's occurring, you know, Ontario is taking a risk during the development work on on, you know, first of a kind, if you could walk us through a little bit the decision making around this pivot to to SMRs in the x 300.
So the big the big picture dress of ours is that, you know, large, large nuclear certainly struggled. We didn't have a lot of great projects, I think we were the exception, and during the refurbishment, the financial community. It was I think it would be reluctant to years, I think it's maybe improving, but I think still, I was at a, you know, when I first joined this team, I was at a conference and there was a financial panel that stood up there and basically said, we would never invest in large nuclear projects, for at least a generation. Because of the experience of existing projects. We're starting to show we're stuck. We're climate change. And, you know, the things we heard at COP 27, is, people start to realize that we need to, we need to get into nuclear, which may require us taking some risks, but the value is just not gonna say this, again, my product perspective, it hurts me to say this, there's value at any cost from an environmental social perspective, but we got to find a way to do them cheaper, and more predictable. And I think there's there's ways to get there. But the shift SMR is, is that because of that, the shift SMRs, there's there are smaller and, and therefore will have their simpler, they don't have as many components. And therefore, the construction durations can set up six 810 years can be three for five years. So that alone from an investor perspective is less risk. So it's much more contained schedule, much lower cost point, because it's simpler, shorter. And so in turn, you get a much more predictable outcome. Right, it's not as large and monstrosity of multiple large units it can, it can be much more contained. That's one thing why it's more more interesting, I think the modularization, the smaller, allows more vendors to get involved. One of the one of the challenges I see with large pressure reactor units is that you have a limited capability globally to to forge steel and fabricate these large pressure vessels, right, we're small, we will be WX t here in Canada that can that can manufacture these, they still need forgings, but they you can manufacture these pressure vessels. So it opens up more vendors to be able to do this, or modularization because they're smaller, easier to move components etc. But the other reason for doing and get involved, the smallest small opens up a larger nuclear market. There are jurisdictions that do not have the generating capacity for large nuclear and that, you know, it will be decades and huge economical changes in some of those countries to really need a large, you know, Saskatchewan and Canada province. You know, they're looking at it that way. And they've got they got sites, old fossil core sites that that you can replace with an SMR, right, the grids there, it's the guy, many of these coal plants, maybe a shift from Saskatchewan to places like Poland, they have sites that have coal plants that have 300 to 600 megawatt capacity, it's a little bit of demolish coal insert SMR connected grid and go to the next site. It's that's the model that they wanted to get into doing. They do. And in Poland, they're talking about up to 80 of these SM ours and X number of years. So smaller jurisdictions that don't need large amounts of nuclear. So you open the door for that, it creates an opportunity to connect to the existing grid where you might have smaller amounts of grid they're like these coal plant replacements. So So I think there's a lot of there's a lot of advantages to SMRs. The question for large is my pivot is that there are going to be jurisdictions that have high population centers, that are going to need larger amounts of electricity, where we need to evaluate can can a larger unit be delivered with manageable risk at a price point that is less than a sum ours and that is a that is not an easy question to answer. But that is one that we will have to answer and it will go through that analysis to understand
so obviously, you know lower construction risk, you know more enthusiasm from the finance community. I think demand is a big Part of this as well, and why there's a pivot to talking about, we use the Mark Nelson term lot large Modular Reactors. You know, there's obviously, you know, as we see with refurbishments, multiple units, lessons learned, I mean, the early, you know, our entire CANDU build, we had these four, eight units stations, you know, lessons and schedule improvements, you know, building the same reactor on the same site tends to tends to work. And if the demand is there, it seems like it can be large, but if the demand is not, then you're not, you're not gonna be able to get those benefits. So that's, that's kind of something that that fits in my head. What was I going to ask you, it seems like and again, I know, he might be constrained in terms of what you can talk about, but certainly OPG is looking at moving out beyond Ontario in some way, shape, or form to lend that expertise to other jurisdictions domestically. And, you know, I've got lots of folks that stop, it would be in our, you know, meeting with Todd Smith, and meeting with you guys a lot of interest from around the world, you know, Estonia, Poland, Australia, others. So tell us a little bit about domestic and international cooperation and what role OPG would have in that.
So I mean, I think your point is, is the point I would make, we have 50 plus years of nuclear experience in Ontario, you know, operating a fleet of reactors, we have great product experience, for jurisdictions like Saskatchewan that have recognized the need to get the nuclear evaluating them the option to go into nuclear and though they have not made their their final decision that will be made in 2029. But, but certainly, they've indicated the desire to move forward with nuclear and quite frankly, follow PGS lead, same technology. After we deploy ours for all the benefits, we talked about, to this entire discussion, right, they're not going to go first, they're going to learn from us, and it's going to make their product more attractive, what best way to de risk their deployment is involving and engaging with us, we bring operating experience we're going to bring experience from from this project. So I think that is that is some really good synergies that actually will de risk for the deployment in both provinces. And, you know, when you look beyond internationally, and, you know, countries that we're your friendly countries to Canada, Poland, certainly being one of them, you know, their decision to follow Ontario's lead TBAs lead and selecting a the same technology and the application of a standard design to the extent possible in North America and in, in Poland, their alignment with the Canadian regulator that was announced a few weeks ago, you know, they start the model their deployment program on what we're exactly what we're doing here in Canada. And that's all to de risk their deployment. And so there's an obvious reach out to us. And we have, like I said, we have a subsidiary of our interest Energy Partners, which becomes our commercial entity that is interfacing with Poland and Estonia and others, to for us to help them in what it means to be a nuclear operator, managed systems organizational structure, interface with the regulator, all those things we are bringing to the table, we can also bring our lessons learned experience from actually deploying the first DWR x. And we can also bring our lessons learned and experience from being an operator, whether we are training them to be how to be an operator, mentoring them through that or participating in a larger role time will tell. But But certainly there's, they're there, they're selecting the same technology, and they're buying into a standard design for a reason. Right, and that is to help de risk their deployment. And by buying into a standard design, with a standard regulatory framework, it will also allow us to the creation of an export market for Canada. Right standard design that's already been manufactured, a pressure vessel is already manufactured and BW XT that can be built for Canada reactors, US reactors and polish reactors, at least initially to help expedite their deployment there. Europe is in an energy security crisis. That is, as a whole podcast on its own. You've had those conversations. So it's certainly it's the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the climate situation there. They need to deploy these reactors as soon as they possibly can. Working with us all of our lead will help them get there faster.
I'm curious about the technology choice and the decision making behind that. Obviously, there was a competitive bidding process for Darlington, you know, one of my concerns about SMRs has been that there's just a plethora of different companies. And you know, the promise of economies of multiples over economies of scales is that we do the same unit over and over again. What was the rationale behind the choice for the x 300.
We went through the spent a couple of years going through, I think 100 ish, different designs and different Different levels of development, we, we narrowed the list down to 10, we know that it's down to six, we then narrowed down to three. So we went through this downselect process, we then spent a better part of a year with three different teams working with each of three vendors and ultimately selected the WX for a couple of reasons. One, being x, the x is 10th generation design. So it's it's fundamentally largely based on existing operating boiling water reactors. In the US and globally, it uses the same fuel that those larger reactors use many similar components. So in a jurisdiction like us that wanted to get a BF be a world leader in this first of a kind, get it deployed at a site that was already licensed this decade. The BW Rex was a very good manage risk for us. Good, you know, 10th iteration design, existing fuel, it's, it's it's probability of success is very high. And, and, and deployment timeline based on design, etc. And this decade is very possible. Some other designs, which I think are great, are, are probably not going to be deployable, as fast. And so a little bit for us is wanting to get wanted to have the first unit deployed this this this decade, wanted to mitigate risk wanted a product that we could, that we thought was going to be successful and gave us economic value for for Canada. So that was ultimately why we selected this. And there's no second guessing that we still believe today that it's a great choice. It's a great technology, that we're seeing the merits of us working with TVA in Poland, the standardized technical collaboration agreement where we all work together in a standardized design. We're seeing that meanwhile, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also impacted many of those reactors with the supply of Halo fuel. So if we had a selected another reactor, you would we might not be able to deploy the timeline that we want because of the fuel costs. So we recognize some of those risks going in. We didn't have no idea that there was going to be this war. But But bin lock is a part of that sometimes, we select the reactor that already has an existing fuel supply.
So you mentioned one of the key success reasons for success for the refurbs. Was this role of OPG, integrating itself with the EPC. Does that extend in the same way to units that you're not currently operating? Does that extend to this SMR project in terms of just how it's going to be organized? I understand there's a consortium s&c, Believix T AECOM coming together for this? What's OPG is role in this and why is that going to be leading question but in ways that can lead to greater success than you know, again, what happened to Vogel,
the basis of what we did a darn well, like I said, we started off the traditional multi prime EPC model. When said that we weren't integrated, but we weren't as integrated as we are, we ended up in this one team approach and refurbishment, right? That model. 's integrated project delivery model is what is happening at the director, new nuclear project. And as you said, the consortium of of OPG G H, the OEM for the design, original equipment manufacturer for the design SNC Lavalin, as the architect engineer doing the detailed design for construct construction of the unit, and then a con as the constructor, having those four parties, integrated in a way that allows that the decisions are made in an integrated way, with a project first mentality. It's what it's all about. So they're all They're all in it for the project to be successful. The if the, if the project wins, they win if the project loses, they all lose. So it's that alignment of goals. And and this ability to work together in this integrated model where you don't have the designer develop a design and then throw it over the fence to the constructor who scratches their head and say I can't do this, I cannot construct this design. You integrate them early with the same goal. And you know, constructors are involved in the engineering it at certain points to make sure that that there is a successful solution that benefits the product as a whole. That that is proven successful. Darn it has proven successful elsewhere. But that's the model that we're going forward. So absolutely. It's an extension of what we did a refurbishment and we think it's the best way to go on this type of approach again in this environment that we're in anyway.
So obviously there's no competition with the candidates. supply chain, you know, being a Canadian reactor, you know, the 96%, you know, made in Canada supply chain? I think that's lifted that statistic from the refurbs themselves. Do you have any idea of how much of the supply chain we'll be able to capture replicate? With the x 300? I, you mentioned b2b x t, possibly doing the not that heavy foraging but building a pressure vessel? What's that looking like?
I don't know the exact number. But I'll give you a couple of thoughts on this. Are we're motivated for domestic, economic economic value, here's where we want. We want local localization to the extent feasible, but not at the sacrifice of economics either, right? So, you know, localization is great, but not to a point where everybody's building their own, and you get no economies of scale. I mean, so you gotta you gotta balance that out. You know, what we're lucky is that because we have an established supply chain nuclear supply chain in Ontario, even though the designs may be different, right, but a valve manufacturer is a valve manufacturer that can produce a valve for a can do or they can produce a valve for a a BW Rex. You know, we've obviously got to be WX T, who've produced vessels for can do that are producing the pressure vessel for BW Rex. The other thing I would say is that these projects are our most of it, a large percentage of it probably in the 70% is labor. Right? Whether it's engineering, labor, product management, labor, trades labor. So right off the gate, you get localization by bringing local people to do this, the trades, the trade communities of those jurisdictions will execute these these projects, the material component, the engineered components, you know, we shouldn't be in the 60 70%, maybe even better than that for the BW Rex. You know, that's not an official number. But I think that's the motivating number.
We're going to wrap it up, I have one last question. And that my apologies for the kind of smorgasbord of questions here. But it's been amazing to pick your brain, Gary. So in terms of, you know, the constructability, the smaller size D risks things to a degree, in terms of the precedent for deploying small reactors from a, I guess, more like an OP X and return on investment value over the operation period? You know, like, we've seen small reactors in the past on the grid, and basically, everything under 700 megawatts, say in the US, you know, has been shut down, because it's not been economic. And obviously, that's because of challenges with Ultra cheap natural gas and other things. But small hasn't competed well with large. Again, not talking about construction, but just in terms of of operations and ongoing economics. Do you have any comments on that? Or reasons things might be different? In this in this new climate? Like, what what percentage of the overall cost of nuclear is, is the construction? How much does that affect things over the life of the plant, I guess, is another part of this.
So the overall cost of construction for the capital investment is probably in that 60% range. I wouldn't say the this is this is I don't have the definitive numbers there. But just based on my experience, being in projects, and and, you know, I was involved in the original class five estimate reviews of this, you know, your that 50 60% range for the construction phase of the project. You know, what it is over the life, that's difficult, because, of course, you got 60 plus years of operation that of course, cumulatively adds up over time. You know, when you get back to the real core of your question is really, it's an economics question, right? You're really saying is there economical value in in doing a small budget reactor versus a large reactor? And our assessment has concluded that it has now you know, one of the lessons learned I would tell you from a refurbishment is that we did a phased process. We prepared a class five feasibility estimate took that to our board. We then did preliminary design, we did a class for a better definition, better defined estimate. We took that to our board. We then did the detailed engineering did a class we estimate our QE we call that our QE released quality estimate. We took that to the board that was in 2015 for refurb for GNP one that will be in 2024. When the design is done, at each of these stages, they're reviewing the economics of that first and we have approval to buy one a Darlington but we're planning to build for we're sizing the site the infrastructure for for and because of course, it's in the same way refurbished refurbished, one is more expensive. The refurbishing for building one is more expensive on a megawatt per megawatt basis and building for so you look at it from a planning perspective of for the economics are very comparable to to other options and and attractive. We He will do an evaluation once again. And at that point, we will finalize our estimate and report on what that estimate is. But that'll be late 2024, at which point the design will be done. Another lesson, don't start to structure though design being done, we will have the estimate done at a scheduled develop that we can have confidence in. We will have the regulator's licensed to construct application complete another lesson learn. And we will package all that up and take that to our board and our final release quality business case and get their approval to proceed. If if the numbers don't make sense, I would expect that they will let us proceed.
Okay, carry my producer is gonna kill me. He's been trying to hold me back to 45 minutes, we're an hour and 12 in. It's been really wonderful talking to you. I've learned a ton and I'm sure listeners will, you know, especially our Canadian listeners, but internationally. Again, I think Ontario is in the spotlight, you know, poised to deliver the world's one of the world's first SMRs. There's been small modular reactors deployed in the past, but I guess in this modern era, and in a really having come off and being I guess, continuing to be in the process of these refurbishments, which again, in an era of mega projects, going completely out of control. I think we got something special here in Ontario. Thanks for joining us, Gary.
We probably enjoyed it and more than happy to do this again, Chris.
