The title is different, Shirayu, please. We see. What do you see? Yes. The title is different from what in the agenda. That's okay. Please go ahead. Okay, perfect. So I'll briefly give you the overview of small model reactors, and I will be focusing specifically on the design and technological aspect. So I know I'm standing in between you and the lunch, so I will try to be precise, and I'll try to deliver the message in a very coherent way. So be with me for next half an hour, and we'll just go through this journey. I mean, I've created the slides also in a very modular fashion, as it's this slide on the small modular reactors. I was just closing my video because it was blocking my screen, so I might just close my video from time to time if it blocks my screen. So I was saying that I've created this presentation in a very modular manner, so you can just take a specific module from this presentation and then just understand a particular concept from that. So that's what I have tried to do. I did not also get a chance to introduce myself, but I'll take two minutes to introduce myself here as well. I'm working as Chief Technology Officer with DERAPRAXIS and Lucid Catalyst. They're both the strategic consulting firms as well as an NGO, and the main goal for my organization, which I'm working now, is to have nuclear deployed faster and cheaper. So that's what I categorize as the biggest goal for our organization, and that's what I'm working on. And prior to that, I was in the same team as Vladimir, and I was working in the fast reactor team as a nuclear engineer and then project officer in the SMR team at the IAEA as well. I will be with you most probably tomorrow. I could not travel today to Italy, but hopefully I'll be there tomorrow to be with you in three years as well. Okay, let's go ahead. That's the outline of my presentation. That's what I will try to do in the next 30 minutes. I'll give you the broad definition of SMRs. It's always controversial to see what is the actual definition of SMRs, but I will try to define in my way what I feel SMRs are, and then I'm open for discussions. There are already very good discussions happening, and I'll appreciate if we have more discussions after this presentation as well. I'll talk about the benefits that what do the, what do SMRs actually offer? There was some comment on what are real reactors, what are the technological challenges. So I'll talk a little bit on the technology side as well, that how this technology is same, or how it's different from the existing nuclear power plants, and what kind of deviations we are actually taking, and why we are actually moving towards an era of small modular reactor, that why they are so popular. What makes them so popular? Then I've chosen three designs, which are let's say in advanced stages of development in the SMR industry right now, and I'll just talk briefly, describe them briefly, and then touch on the aspects that how they're actually bringing some innovation. And the innovation could be in any aspect. It could be from the technological aspects. It could be from the economic aspect. It could be from the deployment aspect. So we'll see how it's bringing innovation industry. I'll talk briefly on the applications because I feel that the SMRs, they cannot be considered specifically for electricity production, because we always talk about economies of scale and things like that, and this is also debatable. But SMRs have quite a lot of applications beyond electricity as well, and that's where the niche market that they have created for themselves and could actually lead to a better path for deployment. So that's where I'll talk next, what are the challenges for this path to deployment, how they will be deployed. And then I'll touch briefly on what's next. So the global development as well as different deployment scenarios that you can expect. Okay, so that's the first module. I'll talk about the SMR benefits, key features, and then the technology. Let me also try to take out my pointer if I can. Okay, no worries. I'll try to take it out later. So let's talk about the definitions of SMR. So as I said, I talk about SMR in terms of three major things. One is the size. So that's what small model reactor. So by size, my impression is that it should have a smaller land footprint and it might not be necessarily footprint per megawatt of per kilowatt of electricity or energy being produced, but a smaller footprint. And this should be typically less than 300 megawatt electrical. So I've used the word typically here because I don't want to put a strict limit of anything less than 300 megawatt is SMR, anything beyond that is a medium size or anything else. So for me, small is, which has a smaller land footprint. This should be compact and fairly simplified design. So that's what I mean by small because when you make small, you cannot just make it small and complex because that's what we have already done. The nuclear industry has already made large and complex nuclear power plants. I mean, how the evolution actually happened is that if you will see the graph of the first, even the pressurized water reactors that were built were smaller. And that could be because we were also understanding the technology and we did not want to produce high power from this equipment or small machine. So eventually we use the similar design and kept on increasing the size because we were believing in the economies of scale that. And that's true as well in certain aspects, the economies of scale will actually lead to better economics because with more size, you will just get better economies out of it. But what it did to the nuclear industry in general was that we were just simply scaling from smaller to larger without thinking about the complexity. So we made large plants, but we made them fairly complex as well. The P.Depro is probably one of the most complex machines currently on the planet. So the idea for when we go to small is to go back to simplification, to go back to the idea of simplification of the design. So that's what we want to do when we go small. Now the micro reactors which are shown here are just a subcategory of SMRs. They're also typically of the range of 10 megawatt electrical and they have their own niche market. So, and that's why I categorize them together as SMRs, but micro reactors could have a very niche application which the other sources of energy could not compete with. And what I want to also tell you, I mean, one of the impressions that you take from this lecture is that when you talk of the SMRs, just think about them as a resource, as a source of energy which also has to compete with other sources of energy which are currently in the market. So you always have to think beyond electricity production as well. I mean, that's what the nuclear can actually do. It can provide flexibility in terms of power and energy market. And that's where we should also exploit how we can use them. But the next major concept is modular in this definition. So I define modular as it could be in design, construction, or the arrangement of power modules. So these are like say three types of modularity that can happen. And in my personal definition, if the design qualifies two out of three, then I would like to call it modular. If it qualifies only one, then I would not like to call it modular. And modular also has a specific connotation to understand. I mean, AP1000 design, large reactor is also modular. Without commenting on the design itself, but we just cannot dissect or bisect the design into four or five pieces and call it modular. That's, for me, is not modular. The modularity should help in the process of construction. And that's why this two out of three is very important because it should be modular in a way that when I construct it, it becomes easier to construct. And not necessarily just an assembly of the parts, which is very difficult to assemble at a later stage. So not mindlessly cutting at different places, but very intelligently designing it to be modular. And that's what most of the SMR designs are actually doing. Designing it to be modular and not like designing it and then cutting into parts and assembling it. So for me, that's not modular. Now what it does is that it gives the ability to fabricate the major components of nuclear steam supply system in a factory environment and they can just ship it to the point of view. So just make it somewhere and then just send it somewhere and then assemble it. What it also does is that it will reduce the onsite preparation. So this is very important because most of the costs, I always say that a nuclear is not expensive, but building nuclear power plants is very expensive. And most of the cost that comes is actually from the EPC, this engineering procurement and construction costs. So the big EPC companies, they have a design, they then start building that reactor and in the process the design keeps on getting some kind of modifications and this just extends the duration of the construction and with that it also increases the cost of the plant. So what needs to be done is that there has to be a reduced onsite preparation. So again, keeping in mind what modular is and if it's not reducing the onsite preparation then there's no point of having that kind of modular structure. And that's what my next point is that it should substantially reduce the lengthy construction time. So that's what we have to aim. The aspect of multimodule is also very important because sometimes the upfront cost that you can put into the construction of the nuclear power plant is not that much but the country or the organization does not have that much capacity. So they can start with one module and then as per the availability of finances or as per the availability of the, or as per the requirement of the energy demand, these can be increased. And this allows for these kinds of flexible arrangement where one system or one plant can have multiple modules but can lead to different power outputs during the course of this installation. So these are very important. But there are also some challenges. I mean modular is not the solution to everything because when we are doing modernization we are also doing some kind of standardization. So these components will be very standard. What we have to also understand is that when we make the standard components and if one of the components has a fault in it. So that means the whole fleet will have a fault. So this is a very important lesson that needs to be learned that while standardization we also have to do a lot of testing to understand that this kind of some kind of standardization defect will be propagated to all the designs. And that's what happens when you see a car industry. So car industry is a very good example where you have this assembly lines where all the cars get manufactured so fast that you're delivering hundreds of thousands of cars per day. But what happens is like you hear from different companies that they roll back or they call back a lot of cars because they have a defect. Because that's what happens. A defect in one during the assembly line is just propagates to all the cars. So they have to call them back. And this can happen to a standardized nuclear design as well and there will be no possibility to call them back. So we have to be very careful when we talk about modular and standardization. The other issue here is that we also have to consider that this is kind of a chicken and egg problem. So we need factories to build, to mass produce these reactors. So if you want factories which can mass produce these factories will also be huge. So there is a big capital investment that is needed for these factories to make these SMRs. Now, without a demand, who is willing to make these factories is a question that still needs to be answered. That if there is no demand, there will be no supply. And if there's no supply, there's not gonna be any demand. So there's a supply demand kind of chicken and egg problem which probably the SMR industry also is currently trying to figure out how to resolve that. The other part in SMR is actually the reactor itself. So everybody knows about it. So I'm not gonna go for the definition of the reactor.  I have been always emphasizing that we have to see SMRs beyond electricity production. And that's what this slide tells mainly about that they can provide an options for wide and versatile applications which were not previously seen from the nuclear industry itself. So things like district heating, industrial process heat, nuclear desalination, even grid level storage. As Vladimir was mentioning about one of the designs from TerraPower which is the Natrium design which can allow some molten salt storage also happening there. And there are several other cogeneration applications. There we can, and I will cover that in one of the modules of my slides as well. This is just to show that when we talk about SMRs and as I already said, we have to think about them as a nuclear power system. Currently the nuclear power plants or let's say most nuclear power plants currently are just producing electricity. So what do you see here are different options that the SMRs could be used for. I mean, we can connect to the grid as all of the plants are being connected. But then we have to understand whether this whole power system can be cost-competitive to other sources of energy that are currently in the market. If not, then nobody's gonna use it. So we have to make sure that this happens. Same goes with another line which is say going to the non-electrical applications. So whether in this ecosystem they can be competitive to others or not.  Other niche applications like the industrial applications or sometimes also in the remote locations. I mean, one of the recent examples that we call, let's say the first SMR is the Academy Glomonosov project which is actually giving heat also to the district of public. So it's a very good application of SMRs. It could be expensive. Then the competing, but it has its own market because it's in the remote location providing heat application where sun might not be shining all the time, wind might not be blowing all the time and the diesel generators could be very expensive for the fuel to transport. So they have created their own environment and I think with more production this could also be cost competitive as well. So this is what we have to see when we talk about the SMRs that where do they actually fit? So the approach has to be more customer-centric. Understand where the demand is and then produce the right solution for that kind of application. So now coming to the technology side, SMRs are not new. So you will see that in one of my slides in one of my coming slides as well. So the technology has been existing but let's say if we categorize them into different major lines, this is what I have done here basically into water-cooled reactors. So they could be land-based or marine-based and the main reason for that is because they could have different applications whether they're on land or where they are marine-based. The others are liquid metal cooled fast neutron reactors which Vladimir also explained in his lecture a little bit and this could be sort of cool fast reactor, sorry, lead-cooled fast reactor or lead-bisphotic-tech-tech fast reactors. The main reason for development of these and which I will cover in my lecture on Generation 4 International Forum's designs is that they have the better utilization of uranium resources we can actually extract. I mean, the current PWRs are able to extract a fraction, only one or 2% of the possible energy that could be extracted from uranium whereas these reactors will be able to extract beyond 60 to 70 and theoretically beyond 90% as well. Then the other technology lines are modern salt reactors which also have their own market because of the high temperature applications and then the high temperature gas-cooled reactors specifically because they claim to be walk-away safe and I will discuss why they are called as walk-away safe also in coming slides. And then there is this small market for micro-reactors but this is very much driven by the application not necessarily by just producing the design itself. Now, these are the key attributes of SMRs. As I already mentioned that economics is always first. The cost will beat any other thing. So we have to make sure that they are economic. Otherwise, it's gonna be very challenging to deploy the SMRs. So what they do is that they have better affordability in a sense that there will be a lower upfront capital cost but probably with some design configuration it could also turn out to be a lower levelized cost of electricity as the parameter is being used for comparison of different energy sources. Modalization I already covered which will just help in the shorter construction time. There could be flexible applications which can lead to wide range of users and for me users is very important. They have a smaller footprint that also leads to site flexibility. So what happens is that in case you have no limited emergency planning zone which is currently for large reactors is quite different depending on different countries but it ranges from few kilometers to few tens of kilometers. This can actually bring SMRs closer to the community where the energy is needed. So this can have different applications like the next one which I talk about the replacement for aging fossil fire plants. I think you will have a specific presentation on that. So if you are able to bring them to the existing coal site locations then other than the bigger goal of decarbonization it will also have this flexibility of bringing the energy source closer to the point of use. And then it also has potential for hybrid energy system because there is a lot of renewable integration happening. These days this is inevitable this is gonna happen, this is gonna increase as well but how can actually nuclear fit into this energy mix is very important and SMRs could have this capability of load following that will let them fit into this hybrid energy system as well. Then I have put just one slide on repowering coal because this is the project that I also work upon and as I said you will have a separate presentation on it tomorrow. But here you just see a simple schematic that what the SMR application could be. So this is just a rendering of a coal plant site which has been repowered by nuclear reactors. So here you see a series of small module reactors. I don't know if you can see my pointer but I'm assuming yes. Or I can try from here. Okay probably now. So we can see no problem. Thank you Vladimir for confirming. So these are like a series of SMRs that I applied here. So what has been envisioned is that there is a huge possibility to replace the boilers of coal plants and put this SMRs instead while utilizing the existing assets of the coal plant. So we can use the balance of plant of the coal plant. We can go into technical details but the broad idea is this that keep using the secondary site the balance of plant which is also very expensive. Nuclear itself is not expensive as I always say. So rest of the part is already made that the design itself is not very expensive. So this could be a very cheap solution for repowering the coal plants. And this is on the left side you can see this schematic which shows that how a standardized heat source system could be used. This could be anything with fusion or geothermal whatever you like to call it. Then we can have a molten salt or any kind of thermal energy storage system through which we can separate the nuclear island with the balance of plant. And then the existing coal plant systems which could be the cooling towers or it could also with the steam generator system could also be used. We can also reuse the existing grid infrastructure. We can use the existing road infrastructure. So this is a huge cost saving in terms of deploying SMRs. But this was briefly touched by Vladimir so I will not go into too much details in this one. But this is basic nuclear 101. We all know that how we are classifying the nuclear technology by fuel, by moderator or by coolants. The important thing that I want to emphasize is that we have deployed all of these reactors in one way or the another through the experimental reactors, demonstration reactor or commercial reactor. So there is nothing new in the type of reactor in terms of when I talk with the SMRs. The only innovation that SMRs is bringing as I said is in terms of maybe some kind of passive system innovations in terms of deployment innovations or in terms of small technical simplification. So that's what the SMRs are trying to do. And with that, they're also able to achieve a high, let's say secondary side efficiency, which is also important when we talk about sustainability or the economy costs. And then also leads to high temperature ranges which then allows for multiple applications. Now this is in terms of IAEA, not in generation four international foreign terms, they're evolutionary reactors and innovative reactors. However, SMRs fall into both the categories. And this is in continuation of my previous slide where I was saying that in terms of technical or the technical know-how or technology, it's existing. It could be evolutionary or innovative or it's a combination of both. So SMRs are already there. This is again agency definition to understand what are advanced designs. It comprises of evolutionary design as well as innovative design. What we have to understand from this graph is that the cost of development, you have to see from the right to left that as we move from innovative designs to current advanced design. So what's gonna happen is that SMRs which are classified as innovative designs, with sooner or later will become current advanced designs because when we deploy or when we build multiple of them, we will not have to do substantial R and D, we'll not have to do some confirmatory testing, we'll not have to do some kind of engineering testing and we'll just remain with the site-specific engineering and that will reduce the cost of deployment quite a lot in the coming years. And that's what it's called as that, going from first of a kind to end of a kind, so end of a kind. So from moving from technology demonstration to actual mass deployment. Okay, so with this I move to the second module where I talk about the SMR designs. What I want to highlight first is that most of the information that actually I've lived on by this portal called as ARIS, the Advanced Tech Information System. It's a very authentic database because it's the vendors who upload the information on this database. So I'm hoping that the new version of ARIS will be logged by the end of this year, but please take a look at this very authoritative and very accurate database. And most of my information is also actually coming from the information that's actually provided by ARIS. A filtered version of ARIS is this IES SMR booklet which actually is published every two years, but also gives a very comprehensive information of all the SMRs currently being developed. And you can see that the number of designs currently being developed, this could be anything. And that's covered in my next slide, that it could be a concept reactor, paper reactor, PowerPoint reactor, whatever you like to call it, or your advantages of licensing. But there are almost 83 designs which are in this booklet. This has been increasing, as you can see here, there are 16 more than 2018 edition and 11 more than 2020 edition. So this is in addition. So this is cumulative. So you can assume that they have in more than 27 designs from 2018. So in last four years, you have seen proliferation of 27 designs coming to the market in one form or the other. And most of them have some kind of funding as well. A lot of countries are involved. So you can see this, it's not limited to one or two countries, but 18 countries are actually developing. You can also see the classification that most of the designs are actually land-based water cooled. And part of the reason is coming from the previous discussion that we had during Vladimir's presentation that we already have a lot of know-how of PWRs. We already have a lot of experimental facilities. So why not just use that technology? But that should not be only motivating factor. And that's why we have other designs also under development for SMRs as well. You can find the downloadable version of the booklet online. And it will give you nice four-page summary for each design. And I was one of the co-author for this book. So it was an interesting experience also to work on this booklet. As I said, this is just to add to my point in the previous slide that most of these designs could be in any stages. So these phases of the design, they correspond to the activities which are being done during the design development. So the concept description could be only a paper design. The conceptual design could be an extended description. So you have more information than that. Basic design means that a good amount of marketing plus licensing application has been docketed. Whereas the detail design is nearly complete documentation and should be ready for deployment or for final construction permit in a matter of time. So the final safety analysis report are done. Very site-specific engineering has been done and should be more or less deployable. In the booklet, you will also find which phase these designs are. So you can read that booklet and find out which design is actually at which phase. And this will give you a good idea on which designs you can actually see happening in the near future or maybe by the end of this decade. This is just a review. As I discussed in the last slides before I go more into designs for each reactor that they have simplification. They can have a multi-module configuration. They could also be underground to have some enhanced security and seismic qualifications. And they have a lot of passive performance through the passive systems. And this could also be debatable whether the passive systems will also work. But as long as we can rely on physics, they should work. But there's a lot of qualifications done for these passive systems also to understand their operations during the cases of transients. There are more than 80 designs are happening all across the world. And these slides just give you a brief overview of regional overview of how many designs are happening are being under development. And this also gives an idea of the companies which are involved. And you can see it's not limited to one or two companies. There is a lot of startup companies as well as established companies which are pouring into this market. And everybody's very excited about the SMRs. Okay, now I'll move to the first example, which is the integral PWR type SMRs. I'm hoping everybody knows about this symbol which is integration symbol. So what we are doing is we're trying to simply integrate this large PWR into one module. And that's what is integral PWR type SMRs. Now there could be some other SMRs or let's say water cooled SMRs under development which might have pumps outside, like the KLT-40S which is called as SMR has the pumps as well as team generator outside the vessel. It is just a smaller version of a large PWR. I would be hesitant to call it an integral PWR design. So the integral means that you have to assemble all the components within one unit. And that's what some of the designs like new scale or SMART or CARM are trying to do. So what they do is that they integrate major components within the reactor pressure vessel. So you see all the component like pumps, team generators or the pressurizer which is here at the top separated by a baffle plate. They're all integrated into one vessel. What it does is that it eliminates the loop piping and the external components and eventually leads to the smaller neutral island. And that's what the focus is to make the reactor small. Then it also eliminates the possibility of accidents like loss of coolant accident and things like that because there is no piping where it's gonna break. There might still be a slight possibility of loss of coolant accident through the inadvertent opening of the pressurizers relief valve or things like that. But a large break locus is practically eliminated from these kinds of designs. There are certain other features which are offered by the IPWR types of SMRs which includes the natural circulation but this is limited to certain designs. Some designs are still going for four circulation. So when we have natural circulation that means we cannot have a loss of flow accident. So it also practically eliminates locus as well as locus. Then the control rods, the reactivity control is also done through the internal control drive mechanism which is also another innovation that comes in IPWR designs. The passive heat removal systems are also applied in most of these designs and this could be done either through steam generators or some kind of heat exchangers which could be somewhere in the water pool. Some designs like SMART and a new scale are deploying that kind of solutions. Then safety injection systems like passive injection systems which are run by pressure difference. They also have some active injection systems but usually the passive system should be enough. But in case of nuclear, there is always a set of redundancy that we try to have and then it allows to have some active injection system as well and various other safety features are implemented. Most of the advantages I have already explained but we can also look at some of the challenges because it's always important to understand what challenges this new technology also brings in. So there will be increased number of small bore piping connections to the RPV and the more number of connections, there is more chances of kind of weld breaking or other kinds of things that can happen with that or structural integrity which is in the second point which says the structural strength of the reactor pressure ratio in the joints. There could be mechanical vibration. There could be flow stability issues which can happen in this kind of long vessels because we need natural simulation so by default the height of the core increases quite a lot. Then there is issues of in-service infection because we are cramming everything inside one small vessel. So we don't know how much space is actually available for in-service infection for these instruments to go in. There could be lower driving heads like low pressure heads for these passive systems and that's why some of the designs they use the automatic deep pressurization system. So beyond a certain pressure this ADS walls they open and just try to forcefully depressurize the system so that some of the passive systems could actually start working. So just to explain this more properly is let's say you have a passive system which works at five megapascal and your reactor is at 15 megapascal. Now you need to put that passive system into function but if the pressurization is happening slowly during the transient the passive system will not activate till it reaches five megapascal. So what you can do is you can open this ADS walls which is the automatic depressurization system walls. What they will do is they will rapidly depressurize the system reach quickly at five megapascal so that this passive systems can then start working. So there are engineering solutions for that as well. And then as I said there could be larger and taller RPVs because of this natural circulation requirement and that could also lead to difficulty in transporting these. Now the second design that I want to talk about is the pebble bed type high temperature gas school reactors. They could be either prismatic or pebble bed but I'll talk about the pebble bed design which have this spherical graphite fuel element which has the coated fuel particles. So I'll try to explain that through this graph through this schematic on the left side this blue scheme where you can see this funnel shaped reactor where the pebbles are coming down coming from the top and they are removed from the bottom. Usually they pass the core 15 times before they are discarded. And I think the normal time from this this is very slow moving. So it's not, it doesn't move very fast. So let's say this top layer takes almost one year to reach the bottom of the core. So it takes almost one year to reach there. This fuel spheres, this pebbles are almost of the size of tennis ball. They are 60 millimeter in diameter. They're made up of graphite and trisoparticles and each of this fuel pebble has around 15,000 trisoparticles. So these trisoparticles then are zoomed here and you can see that it has a kernel of uranium dioxide or some reactor designs also have uranium carbide. So use your UO2. This is a very small kernel which is then covered by graphite and pyrolytic carbon. So what it does is that also of course provides for the moderation which is required for the thermal designs but it also keeps the structural integrity of the pebble. So that means the triso does not break and then the pebble also does not break so easily. So the fission gases are retained within this. And that's why this design is considered as walk-over safe because it can withstand very high temperatures and does not lead to release of any of the fission gases from it as well. Here you can see some images of probably one of the German reactor as well as the STR10 reactor from China. These are some design parameters from the STRPM which is currently operation in China. This is actually a two-module reactor. Each module is 250 megawatt thermal. So the net output electrical is 210 megawatt. So don't consider this as 90% efficient. They are 45% efficient but because there are two modules connected to the same system and that's why the electrical output is shown as 210 megawatt electrical. So Vladimir is it okay to go beyond 1230? Can I continue? Probably you're saying yes. Sure, please go ahead. We will have to leave five minutes before one. Okay, so I will try to shortly cover it in next 15 minutes. Sometimes for the questions so we have like 10 minutes more. Sure, I'll try to cover it in next 15 minutes. I'm almost done actually. Just one more design to explain. Okay, so here I will also try to explain that during my lecture on GIF technologies but let me also independently explain here that what happens here. So the helium coolant in this design, it comes as 250 degree Celsius, goes up, then goes through all the pebbles and comes out at 500 degree Celsius. This is when we are using a steam cycle but if you are using a Brayton cycle then this can be very high. It can come at 500 degree Celsius as inlet and go out as 900 or 1000 degree Celsius even. So this can improve the output temperature from the reactor if it's required in such kind of reactor configuration. And what you can also see in this graph is the control rod. So usually the diameter of this reactor is very small. It's around like three meters. Why it is done? Because it relies a lot on passive cooling. So for example, in case of an accident and you want to remove the decay heat, if the diameter is larger, what it relies is that it has got a large surface area. So the heat will be removed through conduction and convection through the surface area. That's what it relies on the passive system but if the diameter is large, then this can take a lot of time to go to the outside. So that's why the diameter has been kept small. And also because of this configuration, if you put the control rods within the pebble, there's a chance that they will get stuck. So one solution is just have specific guiding tubes where it can go but that has also shown its own challenges. The other way is to put the control rods in the reflector region on the sides. So where you see in the spring side, they are in the reflector region. So if the diameter is large, again, in this case also, the control rod's worth will not be that effective. So that's why we also have to keep the diameter small for this. So the HTGR vessels are really, really thin and tall for the specific reasons of the design itself. This I've already covered that they are very good, they have a very good application for non-electric applications, they are walk-away safe because the kernel is stable till 2,200 degrees Celsius and the operation temperature is not expected to reach beyond 1,500 degrees Celsius. So this will always remain the integrity. The gas coolant itself is very inert. So we move away from the problems of the coolant corrosivity and things like that. And there is also a possibility of a very high burn up because you can just keep on moving these pebbles in the reactor and can reach very high burn up conditions for the HTGR designs. It of course comes with challenges as well. It has low power density, which leads to large pressure vessel as you can see in this slide as well. And then the forcing capability might not be available in all the countries. So this can limit the supply chain considerations and also for the transportation. Vladimir already explained that this has low density, helium as a coolant. So that means it requires a very high pressurization if you want to move it through the course. So approximately seven megapascal requirement is there. So we always try to avoid the pressurization but we cannot do this in this case. The cost of trisofil particle is currently high but we will see how it evolves. And then of course the licensing has not yet been done. So they will have its own challenges when it reaches the licensing stage. There are many developments happening. So there is a development for high temperature materials because it reaches such high temperatures. So we need metals which can actually withstand this high temperature. There's also developments happening for having the Brayton cycle to just improve the efficiency more and also get more higher outlet temperature as well as various other things on understanding how is the source and analysis of high temperature gas could react towards the performance for STGR fuel. So these are all ongoing research in this area. There is a range of STGR type SMRs that are currently under development and you can find that all in the SMR booklet as well. I have chosen just these five designs to show you that they could be either pebble bed as you can see on the STRPM or they could be prismatic as you can see the STGR reactor design from France or this one from the Japan is also prismatic. The rest all are pebble bed. I have not covered the prismatic design but this is typically, it's also quite similar. It also has trisofil particle embedded in a graphite block. Okay, moving next is the third example which is the micro reactor. So two examples were from small model reactors. So this one is micro reactor. So what heat pipes do is they can enable a simple planter so they can eliminate the need for reactor coolant pump or the bulk coolant that is required to flow all through the equipments and unlike this high temperature gas to reactor that we just saw the heat pipe reactor is not pressurized but still can operate at very high temperature such as 650 degrees Celsius. They're also naturally driven but they can also self-adjust depending on the amount of heat required to be removed from that. So this has let's say the self-regulating behavior for load following as well. There are no reactor coolant pump. There's no reactor coolant system. There is no requirement for primary coolant chemistry control and all other auxiliary systems. So it's a beautiful system. It's very small, very monolithic designs but it can eliminate a lot of things and for me simplicity is something that's gonna help the micro reactors quite a lot. So some of the benefits are they have excellent heat transfer rates. They're completely passive. They're completely sealed systems in terms of proliferation. They can also have some benefit. They can be transported easily from one place to another. They can be like plug and play. So it's kind of a very niche design and it has a niche application as well. I'll try to briefly explain how this, how these reactors actually are starting from the image on the left. You can see that they can be of the size of a container and on the right you can see this big monolith which has a lot of heat pipes running all across this, across this horizontal axis and how they actually look. You can see from this graph, from this image that this is how the reactor, whole reactor will look like and we can just take out one of this hexagonal element and then this image on the left shows that. So at the center is the heat pipe where the working fluid will go and it's surrounded by the claddings as well as the fuels. So fuel here in this case is uranium dioxide but other fuels could also be used. It can also be used in any configuration in terms of spectrum. So it can be a fast reactor or it can be also a thermal spectrum. The image that I've taken is from the Edenchee reactor from Westinghouse and this is a thermal reactor. So it will have some graphite blocks also to moderate the reactor because it still uses liquid sodium as the coolant or as the working fluid for the heat pipe reactor. Okay, so it has some design advantages. Like it's very compact, can operate at high temperature. There is no positive white coefficient. There is reduced corrosion issues. It can be oriented independently depending upon how you want to orient the capillary. So in terms of flexibility of the orientation that's also another benefit. There are some challenges. The working fluid could have high thermal neutron absorption and that's the reason they're typically fast reactors but there are configurations for thermal as well as I said. There are some operational advantages. There is load following. It can use multiple coolant loops. It has fewer components. It's got fewer operating parts as well. Then there could be operation disadvantages as well because the lifetime of the reactor could be smaller than the required. There could be lack of experimental data which always comes into the picture and fewer than operational challenges that you can find here. Now these are just overall rational for why we are developing microreactors is that it has the potential to meet the needs in energy portfolios where fossil fuel dominates now so it's a very good solution for decarbonization of some sectors. So I will not call that the microreactors are decarbonization broader solution but for some sectors it can easily do it. It has multiple applications. It could be for electric and non-electric applications and the current development, you can see that all the major technology lines are developing the microreactors currently. We only discussed the heat pipe reactor from all of these designs. These are the specific characteristics which I've tried to compare with the SMR characteristics that you saw in one of my previous slides but you can see that more or less they are similar with some added benefits of rapid deployability because they are smaller, they can be transport easily so they have high mobility from moving from one place to another and they could have much smaller radioactive nuclear inventory which could then reduce the source term and then it also makes it easier to place it here to the end users. One important thing that microreactors bring is they have very small land footprint which is two orders of magnitude lower than nuclear power plants but you also have to understand in terms of how much in terms of production of electricity or thermal power as well but I have been emphasizing all across it's very application dependent. If you need something to be deployed in a very small source with a very high power density then microreactors are a very good solution for that. These are certain microreactors which are under development. I have chosen some of them from the SMR booklet and then here also you can see which are at which stage of what is their status. One of the designs that I want to highlight is this one by Oakloo designed by Aurora which is a liquid metal cooled fast reactor so it's a heat pipe reactor using liquid sodium as a working fluid. They submitted an application to USNRC but that has been now returned so hopefully they will be resummiting it and this is also a proof that I say that if your reactor does not qualify it will never be licensed so they will have to qualify it for the licensing process before they can deploy it. So hopefully this happens soon and then we'll be able to see some microreactor. There are other designs like Marvel which is a kilowatt reactor that could also happen soon. There is another design called as Project Pele which is a defense project from US Department of Defense and that is also expected to be ready by 2024 so we will be seeing some microreactors very soon. Okay so beyond electricity production what I mean by that is that so far I've been talking about that we have to use more applications but what do they actually mean? So from a nuclear power plant what we can do is we can use direct electricity and do whatever we want. We can use electricity for some other processing plants like we can do water desalination we can produce hydrogen or we can just produce steam for some other applications like steam, methane reforming which can also then again lead to hydrogen. Or we can also use directly the heat from the reactor and do the same things which can actually deploy the heat applications much more than they can deploy the electric applications. So for example, if I take example of hydrogen production it can also be done by electrolyzers so we use electricity but we can actually also use the heat directly to do the hydrogen production. For example, in some of the chemical cycles like SI cycles we can use the heat and in that way the nuclear power plants becomes an obvious choice. So there it does not have to compete with any other source because that's the only possibility to have a system which can produce temperatures beyond 800 degrees Celsius some of the designs and the kind of process that you're using also demands that. So it becomes a natural map. So that's where the nuclear could also deploy into other markets as well. This also shows that how the efficiency could actually increase. I mean currently the steam Rhein-Kain cycle is usually 30 to 33% efficient but by using the extra heat for other applications we can make our power plant much more efficient than it currently is and it could also improve the economics. This shows the temperature ranges where we can have these non-electric applications. So you can see that this is the outlet temperature. So this bar shows the outlet temperature that you can expect from different designs. On the top you see all the designs. So there's water cool reactor, liquid medical reactor, super-critical water reactors all up to the very high temperature reactors and then you can see what temperature ranges they can create and based on those ranges what applications can be used. So you can see that ballistic heating or sea water desalination or petroleum refining this can be done by any of the nuclear reactor. But if you go for some higher temperature application like thermochemical hydrogen production then we might need temperatures which are operating in higher temperature range like HTGRs or gas proof ice reactor or molten salt reactor. Now what I want to emphasize here is that this is not new. Nuclear has been doing this ballistic heating or water desalination for years and actually the 71 nuclear power plants out of the fleet of almost 400 reactors that we have in the world they are already operated for non-electrical applications. So it basically has one more cycle coming out from the secondary side. They need a licensing approval for that. This has been done. So this is tried and tested method. And I also explained that the floating nuclear power plant academic low-monosov also is doing heat applications exploring heat to the district of Pavak in Russia. This is another example that there are at least four projects which are trying to also use electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. So the other applications could be for desalination or the sick heating but these ones are specifically for producing hydrogen through electrolyzers. This I want to emphasize that we also have high temperature gas proof reactor experience. So there has been a lot of past experience. So this is again not a new technology. So they have been test reactors. They have been demonstration reactors. They have been fully functional commercial reactors also. It's a mature technology. So if you need to use them, they are available as well. This slide just summarizes that nuclear is not only electric application. The major output of nuclear is actually heat. We have been using it for electricity for a long time but I think the kind of applications that require heat are also immense. And that's why in the global scenario the electricity contribution is just 20% and the rest 80% is the energy, the other energy applications. And if you want to decarbonize that nuclear provides a very good solution in terms of raw heat which is very high quality heat that we can get from nuclear. Okay, quickly on the global scenarios before I wrap up, this is my last section. This is just a summary of what designs are currently under development and you can find this in the annex of the SMR booklet. So you can see that US and Russia are leading in the number of designs that are happening. The data under design or construction or different stages of development but you can see that the other parts of the world are also working on different designs. This is just an estimate and I will not claim this to be super accurate but this is based on the information that is being received through these vendors in public domain that when we can expect these designs to be operational. So KLD for TS and ACRPR are operational but we can see the other reactors also coming into operation in the coming decade. So by 2030 we can expect at least these reactors to two are in operation and these three current ACP 1000 and new scale. They are in very advanced stages of either construction or licensing and should be operational in this decade. This was my thought experiment on what actually is needed for the development deployment on SMR and you can take it with you in a sense that if you want to deploy an SMR these are the major things like you have to understand the technology you have to make a business case. You have to make sure the public accepts it's where it's required. You have to have all the legal and institutional infrastructure. If you're from a developing country or a nuclear newcomer country which does not have a nuclear and they want to go on a pathway of SMR deployment this is something that needs to be considered before you can even think about it. So broadly and this is my second last slide which talks about the SMR deployment needs to be competitive. So for that competitiveness the demonstration of safety and operational performance of the first of a kind of global designs and technologies are must. There needs to be a continuity of order that means it has to be cost competitive against alternate sources. A robust supply chain needs to be developed and we also have to work on several financing options that could enable that. There is a regulatory framework that's already there if it's not there it needs to be developed and there has to be different licensing pathways which can lead to the faster deployment of this and most important of all is the nuclear infrastructure and especially in the parking countries. So that's my summary. I will not read the summary because this is just to highlight what we have seen in the previous slide and with that I conclude my lecture. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Roy. I'm sure you have many questions.


So look, the significance of today's event is quite plain in many ways. We hear about the changing strategic challenges in Australia's extended region, the Indo-Pacific, almost every day. I had the privilege of speaking here myself recently about this unfolding concept and what it means for our interests. But of course, one of the big themes when you're looking at the regional response to these security challenges in the Indo-Pacific is very much about partnerships. And of course, for Australia, beyond partnership, I guess, the alliance with the United States, such a fundamental element of our security interests and our response to regional challenges. And so it's not every day that we get the opportunity to hear from really one of the key voices in command but also in practice of security in the Indo-Pacific region, which is why the college could not pass up the opportunity to host our speaker today. So we'll hear in a moment from Lieutenant General David Berger, who of course is here in his capacity as the commanding general US Marine Corps Forces Pacific. I'm sure that will be Indo-Pacific for long, but we'll go with the title we were given for the moment. But look, I had an opportunity before we came in here to speak for a few moments with our visitor, with General Berger, and it was really impressed on me, I think, the scale of the mission, the scale of the challenge that he has. I'll just give you, I guess, one or two points of context before I invite our visitor to speak. So Lieutenant General David Berger is the senior US Marine Corps commander in the Indo-Pacific. In other words, he commands something like 90,000 US Marines right across the region, which is around about two-thirds, if you like, of all operational forces in the Marines. Now in his career, he's had, I think, quite a persistent and intense focus on the broader Indo-Pacific, including a lot of work in relation to Japan being stationed in Okinawa and so forth. But also, I think, at a practical level, he's had really the exceptional experience of leading in the US Marine Corps at every level from platoon commander right up to division command, and has seen and led in service in theatres right across the world. He's had a great set storm, enduring freedom, Iraqi freedom, and so forth. As with, I think, so many of the distinguished senior officers we meet from the Marine Corps in particular, he hasn't been, as we say, a slacker in the academic front either. And I note, and this is, I guess, putting on my university hat now, that somehow our visitor has managed to juggle that practitioner career with gaining a couple of master's degrees along the way, including from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. So as I say, a scholar-soldier, just the kind of practitioner we like to meet and cultivate here at the National Security College. General Berger, the floor is yours. We're on the public record, and I want to ask you all now to join me in welcoming our guest. Well, good afternoon, first of all. The introduction was way too long, and I would never clap before somebody starts talking because it's a big risk in doing that. But I do genuinely thank Roy for that. Not just the introduction, but the invitation, because the opportunity to speak at a place like this university is pretty rare, and I don't take it lightly. So I'm very happy to have the chance to spend time with you this afternoon. This is probably my sixth or seventh time visiting Australia in the past two years. First time on the ANU campus, as I mentioned to the doctor beforehand, so I'm very grateful for the chance to spend time with you this afternoon. Here's what I thought I'd do, probably for the first 30, 35 minutes. I think I owe you a couple things. I'll talk a little bit about the Marines in the Pacific and what we're doing, why we're doing it, and where we're doing it, so that you understand more about what my mission is. I'll talk a little bit about a national defense strategy, and I'll also wind in there some about partnerships and alliances and what that means to a commander like me and my job. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the Marines that are in Darwin and have been since 2012 on a rotational basis. I'll explain to you, hopefully, in terms you can understand why they're there and how they contribute to a sort of collective security of the region. But I got to say at the beginning here, and it may not be intuitive to you, there is tremendous value for any leader, me included, to listen. And this afternoon is a learning opportunity for me. And again, that may not seem apparent to you, but your questions, your thoughts, your opinions really inform us as leaders. And I would tell you, for a guy like me, they actually help you avoid blind spots. Because we typically will think and talk with other military people, and an audience like this helps me avoid a blind spot. So I'm very grateful for the chance this afternoon. Really, we'll be looking forward to your thoughts and your questions later on. You have a different lens than I do. Let me start with Marines in the now Indo-Pacific. We haven't changed our stationary yet or our coins or anything, but I'm sure you're right, that's coming. The first thing I think I would emphasize when it comes to the Marines in the Pacific is our history in this region is not recent. It is 200 years deep since the war of 1812. And I never pass up an opportunity to poke US Navy guy in the side, because in that war in 1812, there was a Marine Lieutenant who commanded a US Navy ship, which has never happened since 1812. We're waiting for the second one, but it hasn't come yet. A long way of saying that's almost the entire history of our country. And that's how long the Marine Corps has been in this region, about the same length. And especially, I would say for the last 70 years since the conclusion of World War II, on another level are focused on this region. And I would say also about six years after the conclusion of that war, the alliance that was formalized in 1951 really again codified the relationship that we have. And as Marines, we take that to heart. As Rory mentioned, the Marines in the Pacific are on the west coast of the United States, across the Pacific, through Hawaii, to Japan, and into the Indian Ocean. Altogether, that's give or take 90,000 on any given day.  That's about two-thirds of our operational Marine Corps, two-thirds. And if Admiral Swift or now Admiral Aguelino was standing here, he'd tell you the same thing about the U.S. Navy. It's about two-thirds of the U.S. Navy. Why is that relevant? It's a big globe, right? It's a big world. A lot of problems around the world. The fact that the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy put two-thirds of their forces in this region should tell you something about the priority that we place on it. And over the years, because of different conflicts in different places, those numbers have fluctuated a little bit, but the ratio, the two-thirds, has been very, very static for about 70 years. I would add to that, it's the only place in the world where the U.S. Marine Corps has a large overseas basing arrangement, and that's in Japan. And that's 30-some-thousand Marines. And those are permanent overseas bases. I bring all that to the front because if this was a map behind me instead of a screen, the geographic context of that, I think, is important to know. And as a service, it actually shouldn't surprise many of you because we're, as Marines, we are maritime. We are naval in character. We view our contribution to national security through a naval lens. We're part of a naval service, first and foremost. And when you look, if this was a map behind me and you were to close your eyes and you were to look all the way from continental United States all the way across the Indian Ocean, you would, if you weren't familiar with this region, you'd see a lot of blue. There's a ton of saltwater that stitches this whole region together. And that's one of the reasons I think why the name changed from Pacific Command to Indo-Pacific Command. It didn't actually change our boundaries militarily where our boundaries are at all. They were the same the day before, the same the following day. But it's an acknowledgement that the continuum of the region doesn't stop at the Malacca Straits. It doesn't stop on a piece of land short of the Indian Ocean. There's a connecting tissue that runs from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean, as do we. And it accurately really reflects the strategic reality, I think, of where we are. So both Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean power, I think for Australia, that's very easy to view, right? Because you straddle the two. It should be, I think, instinctive to anybody living here. Last week in Singapore, which is, I think, a very important set of meetings of an important dialogue, our Secretary of Defense, Matt, has talked at some length about the enduring commitment to the region. In his words, that commitment transcends America's political transitions, which I thought was a very concise way of saying, no matter what the government is at the time, our focus here has been very consistent. It transcends that. So our 200 years in the Marine Corps, a little bit more, a couple of decades more sort of mirror images are our nation's 200 year history in this region. And I think as a Marine Corps, it's absolutely in line with our national commitment and our national strategic priorities. Secretary Mattis also calls the Indo-Pacific region our priority theater. Two very powerful words. This is our priority theater. So I think as a service, as a Marine Corps, we're absolutely in step with how he views our national priorities. That's directly lined up. Where we've been here for a long time, we're here to stay. This is our natural operating area. Now a few years ago, or a few months ago, about four or five months ago, our country published a new national defense strategy. And I thought for a few moments I might share with you how I view our national defense strategy through my lens, which is, of course, a couple layers below the Pentagon as an operational commander, just viewing things through my eyes. And I would tell you there's some folks in here have been knocking around a while. Also, I've seen a number of strategies, national defense strategies in my 37 years. All of them well written, all of them appropriate for the time. This one, I would tell you in 2018, is a little bit different. This one, this national defense strategy, for a commander like me, with two-thirds of the Marine Corps operating forces, very clear guidance. It doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation. And I think that's by design. And for those of you like me who have worked around or for General Mattis, you won't be surprised by that. There's not a lot of room for interpretation. He's a very concise thinker and speaker and writer. It's very clear. You can work with that. It doesn't surprise me. It shouldn't surprise you. That national defense strategy does a couple of things for a commander like me. First of all, as I mentioned before, it clearly prioritizes the Indo-Pacific theater. This is the region of most consequence for the United States today and into the future. And it states that explicitly. And I think it's sort of easy to see why. You don't have to be an NDU student to really grasp why that is the case. This region, and many of you live here, is, I think, the most dynamic region by almost any measure. Economically, and I'm not an economics major by any means, but I understand that the economy in this region drives the global economy. And I think that's a fair statement. Minister Payne, I think four or five, six days ago in the same set of dialogues in Singapore, the way she characterized it is 44% of the global GDP is in this region. 2 thirds of the global growth over the last decade. And these are hermetrics. 2 thirds of the global growth over the last 10 years in this region. Demographically, this is clearly home to the world. This is the largest center of population in the world. And if you add up, like you all know, India and China alone, that's a third of the world's population diplomatically. And I'm not by any stretch. I think diplomatically, if you looked around the world, you would be hard pressed to find any other region that keeps you near as busy. There's apparently a big meeting in about five days or six days. And somewhere in this region, in Singapore, there's all the diplomatic activity that happened before that. Our former CIA director, now Secretary of State, back and forth to Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un, back and forth to Beijing. Russia's foreign minister, also traveling to the region, a whole burst of diplomatic activity.  It's diplomatically, it's pretty dynamic. Keeps all of them plenty busy. And finally, I think from back to the US, my lens that I look through, this region has been, always will be, of incredible strategic significance to the US and the rest of the world in a larger, more macro sense. Our national defense strategy lays out five principal threats to the United States. Of those five, four are in this region. The top of those two, like some of you who may have read that document, at the top is China and Russia, who, in our view, are strategic competitors for the United States. And they are attempting to rewrite the rules and norms and internationally accepted behavior, the international order in their favor. North Korea and Iran below them in the national defense strategy terminology rogue regimes. They threaten the neighborhood within their region, want to become more dominant over their neighbors, militarily. And number five, violent extremist organizations, which in this region, and Marawi in particular, as an example, are not Middle East only threats. And they're not going away anytime soon. So out of those five, four, and I guess Iran is a stretch, but at least four of those here central in this region. And all the militaries in the world, six of the largest ones, are here in this region. And some of the most, in my view, some of the most pressing, some of the most challenging scenarios, the biggest challenges for our countries are in this region. North, no surprise to anyone in this room. But the maturation of North Korea's ballistic missile capability, intercontinental ballistic missile capability, which they are pursuing, and their nuclear weapons capability, which they have been pursuing, continues. China's militarization of the South China Sea, terrorism, which again, I think Marawi in the Philippines, a wake-up call for a lot of people in this region and a great example of how problems cannot be contained to one area of the world, and it's going to continue for the foreseeable future. All those, including the last one, the terrorism part, I think brought home two weeks ago in Indonesia with the attacks there that it's not a problem that you can easily contain at all. And every country needs to focus on it. In addition to the Indo-Pacific, I think, as a region, the National Defense Strategy are for a commander like me, very specific guidance that it tells each of the military services, it provides us a clear focus, and it tells us how to address those priority threats. And it does so by starting with, and this is penned by General Mattis, and those of us who've worked around them before, you can recognize his thoughts. He begins that conversation with a description of lethality as a military force, and that that has to be our focus as war-fighting organizations. The second part of it that I drew from that National Defense Strategy is the importance of both alliances and partnerships around the world, internationally, in other words, multilaterally. So I'm going to talk just a moment about those two parts, the lethality part, and the international alliances and partnerships. I'm going to start with lethality because as a military commander, that's really where it begins and ends. It doesn't always end there, but it very definitely begins there. Here's the reason why. When you have a military force that you command as a tool to execute, to carry out your national priorities, I think it's as much about preparing for war, the potential for war, as it is about preventing and deterring war. There's clearly a direct relationship, but both drive what I do. And there's a linkage because having a lethal force, a credible, capable military force underwrites, underpins the other part, the deterrence part. Because you're not going to deter any behavior. You're not going to deter another country or a faction if you don't have a credible capability. So lethality, in our words, that's the credible military capability part. And you have to be prepared. You have to have a force that's capable of fighting and winning across the range of military operations because we don't know where or when or what type the next crisis might be. So if you're me and your challenge, your task is to increase your lethality, how do you do that? Well, I think as a Marine, I would break it down into four basic areas. First, as a Marine Corps. And I'm going to drop you down into my shoes for just a moment. As a Marine commander, it means understanding that first and foremost, you are part of a naval force, which means naval integration, operating as a naval force. Now, why do I highlight that? I highlight that because as a Marine Corps, for times during our 200 plus year history, we have been conducting operations extended ones ashore on land because that's what our nation needed us to do. And Afghanistan and Iraq are the most recent examples of that. That's what our nation needed to do. But that's not really our DNA. That's not our strongest suit. Our best contribution to national security is when we operate as part of a naval force. We are a maritime service, part of a naval service. And we're strongest when we're partnered with the Navy. Why do I bring that up? Because when we operate as a naval force, Navy plus Marine Corps, we operate from the sea. We can project power from the sea. And we operate as a Marine Corps, we operate it as an integrated air, aviation, land, logistics, ground, all that built into our team. It's baked into our composition of our force from the beginning. And when you have that, no one else in the world can do that. And when we're operating as part of a naval force, it's very powerful. It's very strong. So to that end, for the last couple of years, during my tour as commander of the Marines in the Pacific, I have focused a lot aggressively on naval integration. We're using a lot more ships and different kinds of vessels than we have in the past. When I grew up as a young officer, we operated off of amphibious ships, and that's what we did. Now we operate off of a whole variety of vessels. Important for us to know, because neither one of us is ever going to have enough pure amphibious ships. We're exploring ways to operate from sea platforms and land platforms and back and forth. And we're operating towards tasks, mission sets, that we didn't really have to do for decades, like sea control. And I'll talk about why that's relevant in just a moment. This year, as an example, this year, earlier this year, for the first time, we put F-35 Lightning B's on amphibious ships in this region. First time we've ever done that. It won't be the last. So sailing underway with three ships, a whole amphibious-ready group, and a marine expeditionary unit embarked on there with F-35s. And we did it here in the Indo-Pacific, sailing out of Japan. But why is that important? Why is that big news? Well, for a commander like me, it takes your capabilities level to a whole other plateau, a whole other platform. When you combine what a fifth-generation fighter or jet, like the F-35, brings to what already is a very capable, very powerful force with an infantry battalion of nearly 1,000. Everything from artillery to amphibious vehicles. And you add on the fifth-gen fighter portion of it that has the sensor systems and weapon systems that it has. You've just extended your range way out. And you link that into a naval force. Now you can do a whole lot of things you could not do before. A lot of learning happening. A lot of advances just in the past year. And that's all happening in this region. Second, I think in terms of lethality. And this is almost back to the future for us. How do you operate in a contested environment? And I'm talking now about a strategic competitor that has very capable systems. How do you relearn how to work in that environment, which we haven't done in a while? Now we do. Part of that, I think, is the exponential technological changes which have allowed countries to rapidly build their military and become a strategic competitor to the United States. That's clearly part of that. And that's closed the gap technologically between us and a couple of our strategic competitors. But it's not gone away. And it's not the only dimension I would offer to consider. The other factor, or one other factor that a guy like me or a gal like in my position needs to focus on is the adversary weapon systems, the radar systems that have greater reach, much more precision, higher payloads than they had before. So the distances that we're operating at, my operating environment is deeper, much deeper. The sensors, and I'm talking about in the air, on the ocean, and subsurface, the intelligence, the collection sensors are ubiquitous. Now that was a domain that I think Austria and the US and others could operate in pretty freely before without much threat. Now it's not the case. And those also have longer ranges. Basically, there's more eyes and ears on my battlefield times 10 than there were five years ago. And it's only on an upward trajectory. There were some domains that we operated in freely, either because we had a technological advantage or just another country wasn't their priority, now no longer the case. And I'm not talking about the conventional domains of air and land and sea. I'm talking about the domains of cyber, electronic warfare. And those weren't challenged sort of domains before. They certainly are competitive space for me now, for us now. And I think to use a microcosm of that or to lift up a microcosm of that I would use, and you can pick five or six or seven, I would just offer to you Syria. General Thomas is our commander of US Special Operations Pan. He has forces operating alongside a bunch of international partners in and around Syria. He characterizes Syria as the most aggressive electronic warfare environment on the planet. Now he has special operators around the globe. Syria is not a very big place. That's the density of electronic warfare in a place like Syria. And he goes on in his public statement to say that the adversary's electronic warfare systems that are being employed in Syria are trying to disable some of our aircraft, some of our ISR systems. Shouldn't surprise anybody in this room. They're trying to take down our command and control systems, our communication systems. Electronic warfare is competitive space right now. It's going to be that way. And unfortunately, I think from my view, from where I sit, what's happening in Syria is not going to stay in Syria. That's not an isolated case. That competitive space is here in this region this afternoon while we're sitting here. So we have to be prepared to be targeted. We have to be prepared to be seen. We have to be able to fight in all those domains, and they're going to be contested. Number three for lethality for me means realistic training and experimentation. And they're two different things but related for a commander. In simple terms, if you're going to be able to fight in that kind of contested environment, we've got to amp up. We've got to improve the sophistication of our training. We've got to practice against more realistic threats against a thinking adversary in a much more realistic environment. And we're headed in that direction, and so is the Australian Defense Force. And lastly, when it comes to lethality viewed through my lens, I would offer the last part, but not number four in priority is readiness. And I'm talking about combat readiness. That has to be the focus when you're talking about lethality. As a Marine Corps, we are a crisis response force. That's what we do for our country. We are first to fight, a poster from World War II. Our Congress mandated that the United States Marine Corps will be the force that is most ready when the nation is least ready. So it's more than a bumper sticker or poster. It's actually legislated to us. So for us, readiness, not just responsiveness, but responsiveness with a capability. Readiness, that's a key component of being a lethal force. Here, I think, in my experience over 37 years here, we have a lot of similarities to the Australian Defense Force, actually. This, the Australian Defense Force, like the US Marine Corps, in its DNA is an expeditionary force. This force here is trained, thinks that they're going to be the first to get called out, doesn't need a lot of fancy infrastructure, doesn't need a coffee bean place, doesn't need power, doesn't need water. They're going to go quickly. Well, the rest may come later on. On a golf course, when the Air Force gets there, but not right now, there's a culture, a culture of being expeditionary that I think the US Marine Corps and the Australian Defense Force share. And I know that, and I think it's demonstrated in the ADS response to cyclones just in the past couple of years. And we talk back and forth from our headquarters in Hawaii to the headquarters here. So when the Cyclone Winston and the Cyclone in Vanuatu happened, I think less than 48 hours, Australian Defense Forces were going, headed there. And that's the same way we are. We don't need a week, we don't need a month. Sorry, we're not ready. This Defense Force here is go quickly, same as us. Textbook examples of being ready. So for a commander enhancing readiness means all four of those things. And I'll finish up the lethality part with what's actually at the centerpiece of lethality for a commander. And that's the human part. You cannot have a lethal force if you don't emphasize the human being that's at the center of it. Marines, Marines, the people part are center of gravity in the Marine Corps. It's not equipment, it's not doctrine, it's not training, it's not techniques, it's none of those things. At the very center, the strength of our lethality is the human being. And I would say, if you flip the coin upside down I would, my way of explaining it is you can buy your way to technical capabilities. You cannot buy your way through the human part. That's what separates us. And I think there's a centrality of really tough training for the rigors of combat to prepare a human being for that kind of thing that's at the centerpiece. And all the equipment in the world can't get you past there. We have to recruit, retain, train the very best we have, the very best we can find if we're gonna be able to fight tonight. And we will. The second part, I'd like to switch gears to after lethality is the partnership and alliance part. I think first in just plain language terms, why would Secretary Mattis and why would our national defense strategy focus on that? I think it's reassuring our partners and allies that we will be right next to them. And we need to do that all the time. We should. And that can mean whether the crisis is natural or man-made either way. That means in plain military terms, you have a fight, we will be in the foxhole right next to you. You need a hand, let us know, we will respond quickly. It's a confidence factor. It's a trust thing. Second, the second part of that past the trust though is what we spend a ton of time on in the military, which is interoperability. With really the closest most capable allies. Now, my view interoperability is a buzzword, probably overused. Here's how I view it. What we cannot do. We should never do is show up to a crisis and figure out if our radios and our systems can work together. We cannot afford to do that. So interoperability for me means upfront, before the crisis, doing all things to make sure that when we arrive at that place, we can operate together if we're tasked to do it. And we will be. And I think that runs the gamut from training every single day to seminars all the way to our professional military education where our officers go to your schools, your officers go to ours. To me, all that is part of interoperability. It's the corollary to trust. We can't show up there and learn it. Third, I think a third aspect of that alliance partnership for me is actually helping those countries that ask for it, building their capabilities. Their military capabilities. Why is that important? Because the more the load they can carry, the less, even not the less necessarily we have to carry, but it allows us to use our capabilities in a better way. So if the Australian forces and the US forces are in some, respond to some crisis and other countries can contribute, that should be a good thing. We should work towards that. And some of, if they can provide the kind of net security at home, that's great. There's about a dozen Marine Corps in this region. Either they call themselves a Marine Corps or it's a naval infantry, either way's the same.  They can handle the problems at home and net contributor, it's a good thing. Last part of this alliance partnership thing for me is actually learning. Here in other words, for a guy like me, for a US leader, it's actually using your, using your mouth less in your ears more. This is humility. Yeah, but humility so that we can learn from our partners. Secretary Mattis a few months ago, I had a better way of characterizing than I could dream of, he was talking in some form and he said, you know, all the best answers in the world don't come from the country with the most aircraft carriers. We need to listen. Australia, as some of you all, some in here are involved in it, Australia is gonna be the world's first, all fifth generation air force. World's first, before the United States, before anybody else. Their entire air force will be fifth generation. So guy like me figures they're gonna learn about command and control. They're gonna learn about logistics, they're gonna learn about sustainment, they're gonna learn about how to network, sensor systems, how to move information. Why would I not wanna learn from that? We need to learn from our partners, learn, learn from our partners. Basically we need to learn from them, we need to understand their opinions, we need to appreciate it, and we are. Earlier this week, this is Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I was in Darwin. We were in Darwin in the Northern Territories. I think that is a microcosm of what I'm talking about, and I'll explain why in a moment. Because in Darwin, the Marines there are training alongside Australian Defense Forces, and this has been going on for, this is the seventh year of that. Very much in line with how do you work alongside partners and allies, and how do you mutually develop each other's capabilities. I came to Australia first time as a lieutenant in 1998. I was deployed to Japan for six months. Came down here with another captain, met by an Australian officer who put us in a land cruiser in Darwin, and we drove for, seems like 12 hours, is probably only two. But we were going like 150 kilometers per hour across God knows where. Nothing but a huge dust cloud, stop. That's the training area. We were like, this is perfect. You know, if you're a military guy, this is perfect. 150 kilometers per hour the other way.  It's Darwin and the Northern Territories has come a long way since 1998. In a good way is my point. If you were, if you were. Yeah, yeah. I'll probably go to clarify that a little bit. In 1998 I came here to train with a small group of Marines and it was a great place to train and it still is. But now today, 10 times more than that. When each time I come to Darwin to see how the Marines are training and this is a rotational force, some people ask, well, what's the big deal about Darwin? First thing I would tell them is that's where we land and start to train and we quickly spread out. This is Friday afternoon, right? Right now, while we're sitting in this auditorium, there are Marines from that rotational force that's kind of centered in Darwin. They're on three Australian ships this afternoon. Three different ships. With, they're operating in three other locations in Brisbane and Darwin and we're just, I don't know, third place. Townsville with three different of Australian Defense Force Brigades. So, operating with three, training alongside three brigades, they're also on three different ships. Later this summer, they'll be on one of those ships headed to Australia to train as part of the rim of the Pacific exercise for probably three or four weeks and on that ship will be Australian diggers, US Marines, Sri Lankan Marines and Tonga Marines. That should tell you something about the strength of partnerships and why we need to train alongside each other, why it's so important. That's, if that's not multinational, I don't know really what is. And it's great training and it builds the relationships that we need. So, we started in the Northern Territories, started in the Northern Territories have now spread out across Australia and throughout into the region alongside Australian forces, Defense Forces have come in a long way. Why would we train up there? It's for the same reason it was great in 1998. Plenty of room, we can fly and shoot anything that's in our inventory and we're training alongside a peer partner who has exactly the same howitzers that we do, the same tanks, the same systems. Why would we not want to train there? It's great. The only other place we can do that is in back in the United States. And if we did it back in the United States, which we do, we couldn't train alongside Australian forces. This place central to me. So, we train at a high end alongside a high end ally. Long way of saying that that rotational force Darwin for me that's a platform for learning. That is a platform for learning. Lastly, I'll just finish up with, we do a lot of exercises like the Australian forces do around the world, two or three weeks, four weeks and they're great, they're all great. We're in Darwin in Australia for six months. You can take a relationship and interoperability to levels you could never dream of in a couple weeks. So it's phenomenal. And not the personal relationships and everything else is great, but it's really about military capabilities. And if you look like you all do, if you picture where Darwin is in relation to the region, it's great to have Marines and Australian defenses forces at that point on the map, right, it's pretty powerful. Great place to engage regional partners from. We don't take that for granted. Oh, that's sort of the Marine rotational force and where we've come since 2012. And there's about 1,600 Marines up there right now and it'll grow to 2,500. All that progress in pretty short amount of time actually. Never would have been possible by ourselves, but we've had your Australian defense force and defense ministry leaders really putting their shoulder into it and that's what's allowed us to get in five years, six years where we are today. But I think you also have to view, if you view the Marine rotational force, I think it's great to put that in the context of a larger bilateral relationship. The strength, in other words, of the alliance, I think has made that learning possible over the last six, seven years. This is 100 years of mateship, right, this year. 100 years of mateship, a century. And there's a lot of talk about that and a lot of positives in that. Here's what it means to a guy like me. I know for 100 years that meant a lot of blood sweat and toil in some pretty tough fights alongside each other. It's not lost on me. A lot of sacrifice shared by our two countries over 100 years when we really depended on each other. And in my career and going back 100 years, there's never been a crisis where the US had to send military forces and there was not Australians right next to them. It's never happened. I don't see it happening in the near future. I don't see it happening. And why is that important to a guy like me? Because I think looking forward, looking forward is not gonna get any easier. The world's more complicated. We need to rely on that 100 years of shared toughness going forward. Because I'm concerned, we should be concerned that the future's not gonna be easy.  But we have a partnership and alliance that we should lean on pretty heavily. Long way of saying 100 years of makeshift is great. We should celebrate it. We should have a great time talking about it. But the world does not stand still. Our partnership, that alliance cannot stand still because the world isn't gonna stand still.


ackages in the district this year it's a security thing if everything is digitized it's once people learn it so Sue will frown for a little while because she's been learning everything that's why I'm here but once everything's digitized it's not smoother and a lot more secure instead of having 500 years of paperwork sitting down in our basement that the rats are called for all the time so so if you're finding stuff we've got to flag it so we can get the software vendors to get them to fix it well it's just on that thing that I'm signing it has me as the chair and it's got you as the vice chair is that for the I don't know what I saw the new system but that was copied over from the old system so we'll have it changed well you still have all of our signatures so so action items recap I'm going to try to do this here in terms of the community letter going out I'm going to create a front porch form account and Sue and I will be coordinated in our sending on October 28th August wow I even wrote 10 you guys thank you we are a subcommittee and we're going to be looking at the annual agenda and I will send you what Anne shared with us we'll bring recommendations to the board Anne you're going to send me the charts for the review and I will update them or maybe I don't need to and send them out for 4.2 and 4.3 for the September meeting we have an ed subcommittee please send your thoughts about the ends things that are particularly important to Rachel, Megan or myself or Heather and please send Heather any portrait of a graduate at its ASAP so she can get it to print I think those are the action items no I haven't had a higher graphic artist I wish I would do that did we have heard minutes property oh did we vote on the consent agenda yeah as a whole a whole package when everybody was nervous about all the money we got a little distracted okay so there's a green packet that's missing some data I think it fell out right here it could be this one oh do we need to have an executive session about the Garo property tonight it's typically I don't think you have an actual policy on this because it's not really an appeal I would say if you get something to writing them in 30 days that would be the maximum I would I would try to do it in 10 and so as a board you don't have to vote or anything but you should talk an executive session get a general consensus of what you'd like to do and that's what would be in the letter 10 would be best practice I would say don't go more than 30 just out of appropriateness and he's been a really good sport the last couple months he's been a joy of the work with okay then I have a pretty quick question but I'll wait until we go into executive session because we said that's where we would discuss it so to discuss real estate yes make an emotion over there make an emotion over there do you have the Vermont League of Cities and Towns regulations in there that I can look at for the purposes of yeah real estate is uh I think it's one of the reasons I am a rule follower I can follow the rules I looked it up I promise you it is I move that we enter executive session to discuss the real estate real estate transaction transaction a potential a potential real estate transaction yes I second thank you all those in favor any invitations beyond the board well Heather and Lane thank you all those in favor please say aye all right unanimous we will enter executive session at 8.59 is this maybe that there is nobody yes