#092 – Conversations & Nuclear

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#092 at a Glance:

• Quote: Money vs Wealth vs Poverty.

• Podcast: Nicolai Tangen x Ken Griffin.

• Deep Dive: Nuclear in Australia.

• Hack: How to keep any conversation going.

• Tweet: The courage to act.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Podcast I listened to:

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen: Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin

Since founding Citadel in 1990, Ken Griffin has become one of the most successful investors of all time.

In this episode, Ken shares his journey from starting Citadel after university to leading the world's most successful hedge fund. He also shares valuable advice on politics and maintaining resilience in a volatile economic landscape.

These were my favourite takeaways and key insights:

• Where you win as an investor is when you have a clear competitive advantage in assimilating information, processing that information, and reacting to that information.

• Investing is a research business first and foremost. Trading is simply the monetisation of research.

• Increased productivity is the path to sustained prosperity in the western world.

• WFH is unquestionably reducing mentorship, collaboration, leadership development, and innovation.

• Investing is the undertaking of world class teams.

• You need to turn your investing process into a formula which is constantly iterated based on learnings from your success and failures in order to create operating leverage.

• The ability to convey an idea through effective communication is the most important thing in any commercial undertaking.

• Multi-period portfolio optimisation is one of the toughest problems that Citadel still hasn’t managed to entirely solve.

Nicolai Tangen – the interviewer – is also brilliant. He’s the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, with $1.1 trillion assets under management. Highly recommend checking out the show.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Podcast Length: 44 minutes]

Deep Dive:

Nuclear in Australia 

I had the privilege of attending a fantastic event hosted by AusIMM at EY’s offices in Sydney the other night that was all about the feasibility of Nuclear in Australia.

The guest speaker, Jasmin Diab, is a nuclear engineer, the Managing Director at Global Nuclear Security Partners, the President of Women in Nuclear Australia, and an Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Agency Committee Member.

Safe to say, she’s one of the most highly-esteemed authorities on the subject.

This is everything I learned in 2 hours:

• Australia holds 32% of the world’s uranium.

• Nuclear power plants have been designed to optimise for stable electricity generation and the maintenance of a reliable grid that minimises fluctuations, which is especially important for computing and AI.

• Capacity factor measures a power plant’s actual generation compared to the maximum amount it could generate in a given period without any interruption. It is also the most important variable when comparing the efficiency of power sources:

  • Nuclear: 93.1%

  • Geothermal: 70%

  • Natural Gas: 58.8%

  • Coal: 42.1%

  • Hydro: 34.2%

  • Wind: 33.5%

  • Solar: 23.3%

• There are 3 types of nuclear waste:

  • Low level radioactive waste (LLW)

    • A nuclear power plant produces approximately one shipping container worth of LLW per year.

  • Intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW)

  • High level radioactive waste (HLW)

    • There will be HLW generation under the AUKUS submarine agreement.

    • Best practice for the disposal of HLW is through a deep geological depository.

• Australia has the capability to own and manage the entire nuclear value chain.

• The licensing and regulatory processes in the western world are vastly different to China and Russia when it comes to nuclear.

• South Korea has been building nuclear reactors for the last 50 years non-stop.

• According to data coming out of the US, there is the creation of an additional 90 jobs to operate a nuclear power plant as opposed to a coal-fired plant.

• Nuclear’s biggest challenges in Australia:

  • Public perception

  • Politics

  • High initial capital costs

  • Construction time

  • Skills and expertise

• A nuclear power plant only requires a couple of nuclear engineers. The majority of the labour requirement comes from tradespeople (boilermakers and electricians as well as mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers).

• Australia’s grid stability is not currently at a point where coal can be shut down entirely. Whether we go nuclear or not, we will require coal for longer than is currently anticipated.

• There are currently two pieces of legislation that completely ban the use of nuclear power generation in Australia. Both would need to be amended in order for nuclear to be able to operate within our country.

  • Politicians have proved that with a bi-partisan approach, as was taken in AUKUS, the legislation can be amended and in a rapid fashion.

What are your thoughts on Nuclear?

Hack I came across:

How To Keep Any Conversation Going

I really liked this fascinating conversation technique that I came across on Instagram courtesy of speaking expert, Vinh Giang:

There’s a brilliant language technique called “Yes, and…”

No matter what someone says to, even if it’s negative, reply with “Yes, and…”

For example:

• Potential Customer: “Look, your product is just too expensive”

• Entrepreneur: “Yes, and the reason why is because we invest more into R&D….”

Any time you use “Yes, and…” in a negative situation, it steers the conversation in a positive direction.

Most people say “Yes, but…”

And when you say “Yes, but…” you negate their thought.

When you say “Yes, and…” you build on their thought.

And it doesn’t matter how negative it is.

If someone says, “We decided not to go with you guys for our new kitchen renovation”.

Reply with: “Yes, and I’d love to know why”.

Always keep it positive.

Pretty cool.

Tweet I liked:

The Courage To Act

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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