Do you have any general advice for countries considering pursuing nuclear energy programs? Ex. Estonia is actively working on legislation to enable nuclear energy production (likely through a small modular reactor) and it'd be great to hear an experts advice on how to best pursue developing a domestic nuclear energy industry.
Also curious if there are any parts of the industry you think are particularly exciting and/or neglected (ex. there was just a startup that raised gobs of money to enrich HALEU since most of it used to come from Russia)
It's a huge topic. The UAE is probably the biggest most recent example of what has to be done to set up the legal and regulatory pathway and then move into good technical execution. I think they did it really well; bringing in experts to help, choosing a well-understood tried-and-true design rather than a cutting edge Gen IV never-before-tried technology, building 4 in a row rather than just one. Of course that all takes an absurd amount of capital.
I think the most neglected thing in the nuclear industry is the ABWR design. It's a good-enough boiling water reactor that Hitachi was able to construct with record-breaking speed.
Also curious if there are any parts of the industry you think are particularly exciting and/or neglected (ex. there was just a startup that raised gobs of money to enrich HALEU since most of it used to come from Russia)