Ep74 Small Nuclear, TRISO, and Data Centres Decarbonisation, ft Stephen Edkins, Koya Nuclear

Stephen Edkins, CEO of Koya Nuclear, examines how TRISO fuel and small modular reactors could reshape Asia’s decarbonisation pathways. The discussion explains what TRISO is, why its high-temperature resilience and safety profile matter, and how it changes the economics of SMR projects. Stephen also explores government policy, financing hurdles, supply-chain needs, and why he expects a significant SMR build-out once a handful of designs reach commercial scale in the 2030s.

ABOUT STEPHEN: Stephen Edkins is the Chief Executive Officer of Koya Nuclear, a company that focuses on producing and supplying TRISO nuclear fuel for small modular reactors. He has been working and investing in the clean energy space for over 20 years. He was part of the team that took solar and battery companies to the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol SOL) and the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol IKA) respectively, and was also involved in the early stages of Envision Energy. Prior to that, he was an investment banker in New York covering Latin America with Banco Santander. Originally from the United Kingdom, he holds a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

FEEDBACK: Email Host | HOST, PRODUCTION, ARTWORK: Joseph Jacobelli | MUSIC: Ep0-29 The Open Goldberg Variations, Kimiko Ishizaka Ep30-50 Orchestra Gli Armonici – Tomaso Albinoni, Op.07, Concerto 04 per archi in Sol - III. Allegro. | Ep51 – Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G, Movement I (Allegro), BWV 1049 Kevin MacLeod. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Transcript

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: THIS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED TRANSCRIPT IS PROVIDED FOR CONVENIENCE ONLY AND IS NOT THE OFFICIAL OR COMPLETE RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS. THE ORIGINAL AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING REMAINS THE SOLE AUTHORITATIVE RECORD, AND NO RELIANCE SHOULD BE PLACED ON THIS TRANSCRIPT FOR ANY LEGAL, EVIDENTIARY, OR DECISION‑MAKING PURPOSES.

Episode 74: Small Nuclear, TRISO, and Data Centres Decarbonisation

Featuring Stephen Edkins, Koya Nuclear

Joseph Jacobelli: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever you may be. Welcome to episode 74 of the Asia Climate Finance Podcast. In this episode, we look at how next generation nuclear technologies could support Asia's energy transition and the massive rise in electricity demand driven by AI data centres and green industrial zones in the region.

Today's guest is Stephen Edkins, Chief Executive Officer of Koya Nuclear, a company that focuses on producing and supplying TRISO nuclear fuel for small modular reactors or SMRs. Stephen brings a rare combination of investment banking experience in Asia's early renewables boom and hands-on work with advanced nuclear fuel supply chains in Europe, Asia, and the US. Some of you may know about TRISO, but in case you don't, just a quick explanation. TRISO stands for Tri-structural Isotropic Fuel. It consists of millimetre-sized particles of uranium dioxide coated in three protective layers that keep radioactive material contained and stable at temperatures of around 1,300 degrees Celsius. This makes it effectively meltdown proof in normal and many accident conditions. This proven technology, first developed and tested in Germany and later replicated in Japan, China, and South Africa, is widely seen as one of the safest forms of nuclear fuel and a key enabler for high-temperature Gen Four reactors and SMRs.

In my conversation with Stephen, we explore how SMRs and TRISO fuel fit into national decarbonisation strategies, what it will take for these projects to become bankable, and how Asia can use nuclear innovation to build competitive low-carbon industrial zones. We also discussed supply chains, regulation, and why Stephen expects a sharp acceleration in SMR deployment after the early 2030s. So please stay with us as we unpack where TRISO-based SMRs might generally add value alongside renewables and what needs to happen on policy, finance, and technology to move from pilot to large-scale deployment. As always, please do send us comments, themes, or guest ideas. Our email is at the top of the show notes.

Hope you enjoy the discussion.

Hello Stephen, thank you so much for making it to this episode of the Asia Climate Finance Podcast. How are you today?

Stephen Edkins: Thanks for inviting me. I know I've been knocking on your door for a while, and thanks for finally letting me in.

Joseph Jacobelli: We're really happy that you can make it because it's an important topic. It's a very timely topic, and I think it's one of those things that people are going to be talking about more and more. We've got your bio in the show notes, but could you tell us something about yourself?

Stephen Edkins: I'll start off with the fact I'm CEO of Koya Nuclear, which is an Irish-domiciled company focused on producing and promoting the use of TRISO nuclear fuel.

Something which we're going to get into a lot more detail later on, but in terms of my background, originally from the UK, I got into investment banking, like I think most people did in the mid-nineties. I ended up on Wall Street doing Latin America primarily M&A relating to Spanish banks buying Latin American banks, which was a big thing at the time. And then in 2004, I wanted a change, and I'd been reading with interest what was going on in China at the time. I went out to have a look and a friend of mine said, hey, why don't you come out, and we'll see if we can do some deals together.

And so then I set up on my own, and it wasn't any great strategy of ours, but we ended up focusing exclusively on renewable energy. So we really had a ground-level view on the birth of the solar industry, the wind industry, and the battery industry in China between 2004 and 2012, which is when I went back to Europe.

Joseph Jacobelli: That's really the early days of renewable energy.

Stephen Edkins: Yeah. There are so many ways to think about it, but I think the best way to think about it would be the size of a factory. When Suntec went IPO in 2005, that year they produced 50 megawatts of solar panels. I went to see Shi Zhengrong at their factory, and 50 megawatts was a good-sized plant. I mean, I don't know what it would have been, 10,000 square metres.

When you think about it now, you've got JCO Solar doing a hundred gigawatts. It's 2,000 times larger. You can go onto Google Earth and see the size of some of these factories in China, and it's just square kilometres. It really is amazing. I never thought it would get this big. We knew that China could scale up, but it's something to behold.

Joseph, I remember just before we started, you were talking about BYD. BYD now has their new factory in Zhengzhou. It's already 50 square kilometres and it's just about to double in size again.

Joseph Jacobelli: Yeah. It's basically the size of a city, right? So, given your long experience in Asia Pacific, and I know that now you're global, so you're looking at Europe, North America, etc. But given your long experience in Asia Pacific's renewable energy industry, what are your personal views on the future evolution of the energy transition in the region, just in general?

Stephen Edkins: I know China best, so I'll continue with China a little bit more, because that's what I have the most data points for. China now produces more than double the electricity of the US. It's well known that the majority of its electricity comes from coal.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right.

Stephen Edkins: And the absolute amount of coal used continued to grow throughout the 2010s. But we have now seen, if you look at the last five years, basically coal electricity has stopped growing and all of the incremental generation capacity that's been built in China is coming from non-fossil fuel sources.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right.

Stephen Edkins: So next year I think fossil fuel will be below 50% for the first time, which is already a pretty big achievement. Now if you ask me what the government policy is towards decarbonisation, I think that's a long-term goal. Yes, they do want to reduce the amount of fossil fuels, but I think it's of secondary importance compared to some of the other goals they have, particularly now with AI boosting electricity demand. I think, like the US also now, we are seeing what I would call an all-of-the-above strategy, which is combining different types of electricity to meet power needs.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right. Moving the conversation to small modular reactors, SMRs. So SMRs are often pitched as a scalable solution for low-carbon baseload power. How are investors and governments currently, very broadly, responding to SMRs within the broader climate finance ecosystem? Are they seen as bankable assets yet?

Stephen Edkins: The policy encouragement level is quite high at the moment. Everyone is saying the right things. A number of European nations have gone from being outright anti-nuclear to pro-nuclear, and I think a lot of them see SMRs as the way to do it. I think in Asia you either have countries which are very experienced with nuclear or you have countries which basically have no experience.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right.

Stephen Edkins: And so there it's more about, before you even start talking seriously about policy, you need to talk about just getting them comfortable with nuclear in particular. You asked why SMRs are attractive. One reason is they have a much lower footprint than traditional large Gen Two PWR reactors. You don't have an exclusion zone of a kilometre or more. You should be able to have much smaller sites with lower requirements and lower waste.

I think in a market like the US, where AI seems to be the main preoccupation and that's what's really driving policy, the advantage of an SMR, once you're convinced to do nuclear, is that in theory you should be able to do it a lot faster. Once you have modularisation in production, you could have an SMR coming off your production line every week. In theory, it would only take a couple of years to commission an SMR. As we're going to discuss later, the problem is getting to the first one. You get to the first of a kind, you get that modularity in production going. That's where the delay is right now.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right. But in order for these assets to be bankable, the first step would be government policy. You need government policies encouraging SMRs.

Stephen Edkins: It's multifaceted. With something like solar, it was very easy. All it took really was Spain and Germany having a chunky subsidy for solar power, and that pretty much activated the whole of the solar industry, because solar production got up to sufficient scale and then costs started to come down.

With nuclear, yes, you are going to need some sort of subsidies. They can take a variety of forms. It could be a straight subsidy to payment for electricity coming out of electricity bills. Ideally it could be a carbon credit, which can make a significant difference. But at this stage, the early stages, it's more important to see support on the Capex. And then, non-monetarily, just having a supportive regulatory environment.

The biggest problem in the US that I can see is the cost of getting approval for both the reactor design and an individual site. Those costs are very high, and that's acting as a barrier. Despite the Trump administration and most states being pretty pro-nuclear now in the US, the regulatory costs are still very high.

Joseph Jacobelli: Got it.

Stephen Edkins: And I think that's somewhere where Asia historically has done much better. If the government gets behind something, it can reduce the amount of friction around getting approvals.

Joseph Jacobelli: You can turbocharge the whole industry. Still talking about governments and nuclear. Now several Asian nations, including China, South Korea, and increasingly India, are investing heavily in nuclear R&D. And actually China is building quite a few reactors as well. But how does your startup Koya Nuclear position itself within the regional momentum, and what lessons or partnerships are emerging from Asia's approach?

Stephen Edkins: Yes, China, Korea, and now India, are increasingly promoting both the use of and R&D, especially in some of the newer nuclear technologies. Japan, historically, has been the biggest supporter. In the nineties and 2000s, they were investing $5 billion a year in advanced nuclear. They were the first country to do Gen Three nuclear. They built the HTTR, which is the first working Gen Four project after the one that the Germans built in the eighties. So they definitely have the technology to support it.

Why would you want to use TRISO, which is what Koya Nuclear is all about? TRISO is a way to make nuclear fuel effectively safe from meltdown. You take a millimetre amount of uranium dioxide and cover it in three different coatings, which make it resistant up to a temperature of 1,300 degrees. That's the basic proposition. This was designed and rolled out by the Germans. It was tested throughout the world. The Japanese then recreated it. The Chinese have recreated it. South Africans also had a very successful programme, which we're very close to.

The only reason that Gen Four never really happened and TRISO never really happened was the long spell in the wake of first Chernobyl and then Fukushima, which dampened overall enthusiasm. But the technology is proven, and as importantly, it is in the Dre's words the safest form of nuclear fuel that exists. That's why we're behind TRISO: because it's proven and it's safe.

Joseph Jacobelli: So that's how you're positioning it in the region. Talking about financing a little bit, early-stage SMR projects face unique financing hurdles, from regulatory uncertainty to long lead times. What instruments, be it blended finance, sovereign guarantees, green bonds, etc., are proving most viable for unlocking capital for projects?

Stephen Edkins: To get to first of a kind, in other words, to prove not just to investors but more importantly to regulators that the technology is safe and works, equity is still the predominant form of financing, especially in the US. But we are seeing in other countries, including in Asia, significant government support available. I wouldn't expect any bank financing at that stage.

As soon as we get the first of a kind out of the way, then quite quickly you can see other forms of financing come in. I'm not an expert in green bonds. I think you know a lot more about it than I do, but I'm pretty sure that's going to come into it.

Obviously, the key to getting the financing done in the end is going to be the offtake. We've had a number of conversations not just with traditional off-takers but actually some of the big technology companies are interested in getting involved because they want to build data centres or they want to make sure the data centres they are contracting have access to green power. If you get the technology company comfortable with your technology, then they will become the off taker, and bank financing becomes a lot easier.

Joseph Jacobelli: Understood. Talking about climate-aligned infrastructure planning, as countries update their nationally determined contributions and COP 30 is going on right now in Brazil, how are SMRs being integrated into national decarbonisation pathways? What role do you see SMRs playing in complementing renewables and grid modernisation?

Stephen Edkins: I've talked about private sector drivers, which tend to be technology companies if it's a data centre, or people worried about CBAM in Europe. Then it could be a smelter, especially in a country with a lot of coal-fired electricity. That's one type of customer we're talking to.

That would be especially true in India, for instance South Africa, still China, although to a lesser extent given the renewable quotient they now have. On the government side, nuclear as an overall concept, yes. Does that mean they would specifically promote SMRs? I'm not sure. But I do think we're seeing it more at the state level in some Asian countries, where they want to set up a green industrial zone. We're talking to a number of jurisdictions in India, for example, that want to have an SMR as part of their new industrial zone. At that level it seems to be resonating quite well.

Joseph Jacobelli: Understood. Can we talk a little bit about the supply chain and technology localisation side of things? SMRs promise modularity, but localisation remains key, obviously for cost reasons and other reasons. How are you approaching this kind of supply chain issue in development in Asia or elsewhere? And what are the implications for cost, resilience, and regional competitiveness?

Stephen Edkins: You would certainly think that Asia would be a good place to build and scale up modular production of anything, including modular reactors. Over a 10–15 year time horizon, I would imagine that Asia would become very strong, not just for domestic markets but even for export. If you're talking about a container-scale SMR, which many of the mini-SMRs are trying to achieve, then absolutely you'd expect this to be an export good.

If we're talking about slightly larger SMRs, one of the key things you need to think about is certification of key components. With any nuclear plant, all the key components need to be certified. We're not just talking about a standard ISO certification here. They need to be produced by a certified nuclear plant, which is very difficult to achieve. The number of companies or plants in the world certified to build a nuclear reactor is counted on one, maybe two hands. So if you're looking at the nuclear supply chain, that's a medium-term project. Of course, Asian countries are very interested in developing it. In discussions we're having with India, that issue comes up a lot. They're very keen to build up their local nuclear production base.

Joseph Jacobelli: Talking a little bit more about TRISO, which is in some ways the bread and butter of Koya Nuclear. The TRISO fuel market is gaining traction due to its high-temperature resilience and safety profile. Maybe you can talk a little bit about those as well. I think global research funding is surpassing something like 50 million US dollars in 2024, and Asia is ramping up feasibility studies. How is Koya Nuclear leveraging TRISO's investment momentum, and are financiers beginning to view TRISO fuel reactors as commercially viable assets?

Stephen Edkins: I've seen a big change in the last 12 months. Previously, even people who had invested in companies with TRISO-based reactors either did not really know much about TRISO or didn't seem to care about it. I think people are starting to care because they realise it's a very different skill set from designing a reactor. It needs a very different team, and almost inevitably the reactor companies we know find it very difficult to maintain those two skill-sets in the same company.

But more importantly, if you look at the cost component, when you're calculating the LCOE for SMRs, especially in Asia, that's what it comes down to. The first question is always: how much is it going to cost? With a traditional large nuclear station, fuel is probably only 10–15% of the LCOE. In the case of an SMR, it's 30–40%. That makes a massive difference. A lot of the reason why you see calculations suggesting SMRs are going to be very expensive is that people are putting in a very high number for the fuel. We believe there's actually a lot of cost reduction possible, based on our team's experience.

Imagine you're a reactor provider talking to a client. People ask how much it's going to cost, and they realise the most critical conversation is going to be with the TRISO producer, not the reactor producer. That's what people are realising. They're saying: what I really need to know is how much does the TRISO cost? That's why we started talking to some of the big tech companies. They're investing in reactor producers or projects, and then they realise TRISO is the most important component. Then they wonder how to de-risk that.

The way you de-risk it is:

You have a TRISO producer that has done it before and already certified TRISO fuel, which our team has done.

You have a clear rollout plan, ideally with a diversified mix of customers.

So we are de-risked, and that also means the individual customers are de-risked as well. My prediction is that in the end we're going to see a sort of futures market for TRISO fuel, because it is such a key component in the overall cost.

Joseph Jacobelli: But just to be the devil's advocate here, isn't there a danger that you're talking about a very volatile commodity, just like natural gas for gas-fired power plants? If you've got 30–40% of your cost base relying on a commodity with a volatile price, doesn't that change the economics of the project?

Stephen Edkins: The volatile part of it is the uranium. Uranium prices have been going up quite a lot recently. But that's true of all nuclear power plants, and there are ways to hedge that, for example by buying uranium forward so you know what that risk is. Where I'm talking about the unknown today is the extent to which we can get costs down in TRISO manufacturing.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right.

Stephen Edkins: Based on the designs we have, once you get to larger scale and improve quality, the biggest cost is rejecting TRISO because it hasn't met quality standards. But if we have a clear scale-up roadmap, we know our costs today and we know what they'll be when production hits 10,000 tonnes a year or 100,000 tonnes. We can predict that. We've seen it in batteries; we've seen it in solar. So when we're talking to clients, we're saying there's no reason to believe TRISO won't follow the same trajectory.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right. Maybe I should have asked earlier, but could you talk a little bit about Koya Nuclear—what it is, how it was born, what it's been doing, its mission, its targets, etc.?

Stephen Edkins: Absolutely. As I said, it's an Irish-domiciled company. We have offices in South Africa and Singapore. Our business model is to produce TRISO fuel for other reactor companies and project developers.

That TRISO, as I described, consists of millimetre-sized particles that can go into multiple formats. Some people use spheres, some use cylinders. We can cope with all of that, but the core particles remain the same. Where we are now is we're about to negotiate a deal to restart production at an existing TRISO line. I can't give you the scoop on that yet.

The reason we want to do that is we know that line has produced certified TRISO in the past. We can put together enough of the old team that did it before. Then we'll create samples which potential clients can use. This is the first stage of our business model: create samples, and then other people can test those samples in their particular format and reactors. That's a big issue because right now all of these TRISO-based reactor companies—where do they get their TRISO formula? Many are in a design phase or non-nuclear prototype phase, but very soon they'll need TRISO if they're going to successfully enter the market.

Joseph Jacobelli: And is there any specific geographical focus, or are you just looking broadly in terms of clients?

Stephen Edkins: No. We have a pipeline of clients in the US, Europe, and Asia. We're trying to understand regulatory rules around moving both uranium and TRISO across borders. We have partners helping us with that, but as it stands right now, in theory we could supply anybody. Especially at the early stage when you're just providing samples, it's not such a critical issue. Eventually, once demand hits certain levels, we'll build full-scale commercial plants in different jurisdictions closer to where the final demand is.

Joseph Jacobelli: Understood. If I can talk about another type of SMRs that has been hitting the headlines in the last few months and years: thorium reactors. China's activation of the world's first commercial thorium molten salt reactor in 2025 has reignited global interest in thorium. Given thorium abundance and safety advantages, do you see thorium-based systems playing a meaningful role in global or Asia's long-term decarbonisation strategy? And what barriers remain to scaling thorium deployment across the region?

Stephen Edkins: That Chinese reactor announced the successful conversion of thorium. Actually, when I was in Shanghai about 10 days ago, the announcement came out, and I subsequently had a meeting with a Japanese scientist involved in that programme. Originally it was a collaboration between the Japanese and the Chinese. But that's not the first time people have successfully used thorium. The original TRISO prototype was THTR 300 in Germany in the eighties.

The reason it was called THTR was because the "th" stood for thorium. It was called the Thorium Test Reactor.

It was designed to use TRISO, and it was designed to use thorium. What they proved was that using TRISO, you could successfully combine uranium and thorium in a sustainable nuclear reaction. You can't do it without uranium, because thorium itself is not sufficient. You need uranium to get it started.

Once you do, then you can combine it with thorium. That's important because firstly, the cost of uranium is high. And uranium is running out. There's only about a hundred years' supply left at current demand, and of course people are building more nuclear power stations, so that's only going to decrease. Whereas, as you pointed out, there are at least a thousand, if not 10,000 years' worth of thorium. So there's a lot of interest in that. I'm not familiar with the exact details of the Chinese molten salt reactor yet, but I do know that the TRISO-based reactor in Germany worked. It was in operation successfully producing electricity for three years. It was a 300 megawatt plant. I think the one in China is only a couple of megawatts, still very small. So if you want to build a thorium-enabled reactor, I would go for a TRISO-based one.

Joseph Jacobelli: Gotcha. Thank you for explaining all of that. I don't pretend to be a TRISO-thorium expert in any way. Looking now at your outlook, what do you think are the biggest opportunities and challenges over the next 10–20 years?

Stephen Edkins: The key to SMRs is that it's horses for courses. There's not one standard design that's going to be dominant. You've got a number of different use cases. For example, marine: there are people trying to do SMRs for commercial vessels. I'm familiar with one of them, and they're using TRISO. The common denominator is TRISO, but the format for that reactor is very different from someone who wants to build a co-located data centre. It's very different again from someone who wants to use an SMR for mining.

So you've got different formats, different criteria. What we've found is that when you talk to potential customers, it's useful to go in not as a reactor vendor but as a TRISO vendor, because then they ask you what SMR you recommend. We're not trying to sell one design. We're familiar with a variety of different form factors. You've got reactors you can refill dynamically, reactors you refill every two years, reactors you refill every ten years. Very different profiles in terms of maintenance required. Every client has different criteria in our experience.

That's something the industry is struggling with today, but in the next two or three years I think people will start to work out that you need to match the reactor to the use case.

Joseph Jacobelli: So where do you think we're going to be by, say, 2040, 15 years from now?

Stephen Edkins: This is going to be very asymptotic, in the way all renewable energy technologies have been, but probably even more so because of the dynamics of development and the lead times. Once we have four or five proven SMR designs in circulation, and scalability around production sorted out, things will go very fast. That's going to happen somewhere around 2032, would be my bet.

Which is not actually very far away when you think about the length of time it takes. On our side, in many ways TRISO is quicker than reactors, but planning to build a completely new TRISO line in a new country with a new team, training them up—these are all things which take three to four years.

So when we talk to customers, we say: do you know where you're getting your TRISO from? Typically the answer is no.

We say: that's all right. You've got a reactor, but there's nothing to go in it.

I think that's the realisation—you need to put as much focus on ensuring your reactor and your fuel are both on time.

Joseph Jacobelli: So, potential boom post-2032?

Stephen Edkins: Potential boom of the industry post-2032? Yes. Nuclear is currently about 10% of electricity globally.

Joseph Jacobelli: Very small.

Stephen Edkins: I see nuclear as part of a mix, but certainly over that timeline, and if decarbonisation is really held to, it should rise. Nuclear could go up to 20 or even 25%. I see SMRs being maybe 20% of that, so 5% globally. I think that's reasonable. What will make it grow faster is if we can get to a point where you could commission a new SMR in under two years. Then you're really going to get your boom. If we can get that time down from five, six, seven years, once you get it below two years, all bets are off.

Joseph Jacobelli: I absolutely tend to agree with that. Stephen, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for participating in the Asia Climate Finance Podcast. It was a really interesting discussion. It's definitely a discussion we need to pick up in a few months and get an update on what's going on in this area.

Stephen Edkins: My pleasure.

Joseph Jacobelli: Thank you so much again.