The Importance of Tennessee in Creating a World of Green Energy with Dr. Hash

Julia: Hello, everybody and welcome to another episode of Connect the Knox, connecting Knoxville to the nation. I’m your host, Julia Hurley. Today’s guest is one of the most esteemed people we have literally ever had on this podcast. Dr. Hash—we call him Dr. Hash as his nickname—this man has a bio—I’m just going to turn it around here—he’s got a bio 25 pages long, so we are going to let him introduce himself. One thing I will say is he is the most prolific nuclear energy expert in the world today. And we’re lucky enough to have him here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I wanted to start it off that way. Dr. Hash thank you so much, as always, for supporting all of our endeavors here at Connect the Knox and for being here with us today.

Dr. Hash: Well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate you getting me on this, and I’m very excited to be doing this.

Julia: Wonderful. Start us off with what exactly it is that you do. Nuclear energy is such a small pocket of expertise, and what you offer the world and the community is so amazing. Can you let people know what you’re doing here from Knoxville worldwide?

Dr. Hash: All right. We test the control systems of nuclear power plants. So, nuclear power plants are designed to shut themselves down in case of a problem as quickly as possible because every second really, really counts. So, we verify that if there is a problem, the plants can shut itself down as fast as possible, and there is a requirement or how many seconds. For example, some things have to work in less than four seconds, some things has to work in less than two seconds. We go into plants and the control system that the plant that keeps the plant running and shuts it down, and verify that they can actually shut the plant down in four second or two second, depending on the episode.

Julia: Interesting. So, for anybody out there, and I will tell you, nuclear energy is something that is either really loved, really hated, completely misunderstood. Having Oak Ridge National Lab here in Knoxville’s backyard gives us a different perspective and respect and appreciation for it, but not everyone around the world, or even the nation, understands nuclear energy or nuclear power and what that contributes nationally and internationally. Can you help us understand that?

Dr. Hash: Of course. Julia, that’s a good question. Nuclear energy has really come back in the last five years because of the environmental benefit of nuclear energy. Basically, it’s a non-polluting energy source. So, you can make electricity out of burning coal or gas, or you can use nuclear. And of course, you can use dams and wind and solar, but those things are almost maxed out at some point. Anyway, but all the people in nuclear and mostly non-nuclear people and politicians are coming to realize that to get to what we call net-zero—meaning that almost no pollution in the air—by 2050, we’re going to have to start ramping up nuclear power.

We are trying—I’m a member of the governor council on making Tennessee the center for nuclear energy and we in fact, have a meeting today with the Vice President of TVA, and in my company and director of Oak Ridge National Lab, they’re all coming here at three o’clock for us to work on helping the governor make Tennessee the center of nuclear energy in the United States. So, the reason things have changed for the better is government is putting a lot of money into nuclear because nuclear have to be subsidized, it’s a very expensive process. But it is the key to getting rid of CO2 and greenhouse gases and all the flooding and hurricanes and those things that you see increasing every day. Now, there are people who don’t believe that this is really caused by environmental effects, but we think it is.

Julia: Okay. Tell us about what’s going on in just the Knoxville area. I mean, just being able to have you here in Knoxville and having the governor’s offices and nationally having someone here connected, you’re a professor at the University of Tennessee, you’ve given speeches. I don’t know if you know how good your speeches are, but the kids that graduated UT last year started a Subreddit just to talk about how motivational your speech was to them when they left, so you are impacting generational conversations around nuclear energy. Let’s talk about nuclear waste and how that’s handled and what you’re doing to also facilitate conversations with controlling that side of things, which is a concern?

Dr. Hash: Well, that’s a critical question with the use of nuclear energy worldwide, the nuclear waste, but we have a very good handle on nuclear waste, at least in the United States—it’s even better in other countries—and that is that we keep the waste on site because it’s secure. So, there is technologies that have been developed over the last 20 years so that you can actually keep the waste there and not even bring it out. There is enough space to do that. However, eventually, you’re going to have to move it from there.

In the United States, we built what’s called Yucca Mountain, which was supposed to be the place to put the nuclear waste, but due to political issues because Nevada’s senator was against it and was a Democrat, and—he has passed away now—but that really killed after the United States have spent $10 billion dollars building that, it was actually put on hold and nothing is—so eventually we have to find something like that to put it in. But for now, we have a good handle on it for the next I would say, 10, 20, 30 years, and then we will find a permanent solution for the nuclear waste. It’s not a big—

Julia: Wonderful.

Dr. Hash: —problem. It’s not a big problem.

Julia: That’s good to know.

Dr. Hash: Yes.

Julia: It’s good to know because we live right next door to Oak Ridge [laugh].

Dr. Hash: Well, there’s nothing here to worry about. Nuclear waste is not dangerous. Nuclear waste is pretty benign if you know how to handle it.

Julia: Very good. So, one of the things that we like to talk about on this podcast specifically—because it is Knoxville-focused—but a lot of people outside of the nation, I mean as you’ve seen, the growth in the Knoxville area has doubled. Exponentially.

Dr. Hash: Exactly.

Julia: It’s going to continue. We’re the next Nashville. We’re the next Nashville. It’s going to happen.

Dr. Hash: Exactly.

Julia: I’m very excited about that as a realtor [laugh]. Very excited about that. However, managing the expectations for the job market and the school districts the, you know, socio-economic changes, gentrification, et cetera, Knoxville itself is in a unique position because we offer so many job opportunities. The conversation we’ve had specifically on this podcast, as we continue to have with everyone we interview, is where do you see the job market in your industry growing and being able to not only recruit but retain younger employees in your field, so we can grow Knoxville, its base, and keep younger people here?

Dr. Hash: Very good. So, that’s probably among the biggest challenge for every industry, especially nuclear because we are so specific. We are fortunate here because we have the University of Tennessee, we have Oak Ridge National Lab, we have Tennessee Tech, we have Roane State, we have Pellissippi State, we have a lot of educational resources here that are pumping in young people.

Keeping them here, I’ve tried everything. You got to pay them good, and take good care of them. So, the world of employer-employee relationship has changed. I want you—I’m going to send you, and you can put it on the public, my commencement speech. I was a commencement speaker for the College of Engineering at UT. I don’t know if you saw that, but I have that, and I’ll send it to, Julia.

And there, it says that the key to keeping the people here is to treat them as well as you can, pay them as good as you can, and know that they have so much choices around the country—or around the world, actually—and they will leave if you don’t treat them well. Flexibility is very important to the young generation, so I said that in my commencement speech. That’s one thing we started with: letting people basically come and go as they wish. Now, we have not gone as far as Microsoft, which says you have unlimited off time. I don’t think we’ll ever go that far, but some companies are doing that. You can just be off as much as you want to on your own discretion.

Julia: Hm. That would be interesting [laugh]. That would be a change. That would be a change. So, as I’m reading through all of your accomplishments and all of the things that you are doing, explain what you’re doing in Europe and Asia and as far as your control system testing. Like, how are you continuously making that better, faster, stronger, more capable, more hands off?

What are your—I guess the end result of this question would be what would be your requirements or opportunities for younger people? Where do they need to be looking for education? What specifically do they need to do now to be able to, in eight years once they received their doctorate, work with a company like yours?

Dr. Hash: Very good. So, actually digitalization and artificial intelligence, it will be used to optimize our operation. I mean, you can’t find people. I mean, the United States, in my opinion, is short of at least 20 million workers, probably at least 5 million engineers. Really. That’s really true.

And, you know, you can think of ways to do this, one would be immigration, the other one would be to use technology to replace people. That’s what I’ve done here. We have brought a lot of technology to take care of a lot of our needs on both the operations side, on the business side, and also on the technical side. So, that’s what we do. And with respect to—something I want to say, over the last two or three weeks, we’ve had a bunch of workforce development conferences here in Knoxville around nuclear, and everybody is emphasizing this: we need masters, PhDs, and bachelor, but more than that, we need plumbers, welders, electricians.

So, we really want to send that message that two year degrees or vocational degrees are very, very important. You know, nuclear power plant—or any process—uses a few PhDs and few masters and a few bachelors, but use a lot of electrician, welders, plumbers, and that’s what I want to emphasize. With respect to our work outside the United States, we basically work internationally. Every nuclear power plant that has been built by an American designer or builder is our customer, whether—our single largest customer outside the United States is England. There is a new big nuclear power plant in near London. So, we are in and out of there.

We have our own company partner in Spain. So, we are partners, so we do [unintelligible 00:11:44] Spain plant. We do this English plant, we do Switzerland, we do Even Slovenia in the Eastern European countries, we have done work in Ukraine, just basically all of Europe, we are partnered with what used to be Rolls-Royce in France. Framatome came aboard [Rojo 00:12:05], so to them, we work in the French fleet. We have done a lot of work in China. There is four nuclear power plant that was built by Westinghouse of the United States in China, so we did all the commissioning tests of the instrumentation systems of that plant.

In fact, we brought the plant online as one of the things they have to do to certify the plant. And then Covid hit, and we couldn’t go there, so we had to train the Chinese people over the internet to do the testing themselves because they couldn’t start the plant without this. And then Korea, we have our own people in Korea and China. We do all of the Korean nuclear power plants. So, we do the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, and we’re getting ready to go to Vienna here in two weeks and then onto UAE for the COP28. So, we’re very active internationally, working out of Knoxville.

Julia: I bet. That’s a lot of travel out of a regional airport [laugh].

Dr. Hash: Exactly [laugh]. And I just came back from Europe five days ago.

Julia: Oh, my God. That is so—I don’t know where you find time to do anything else, but you do. Perfect segue because you’ve written three books.

Dr. Hash: Right.

Julia: Tell us about—

Dr. Hash: You know, Julia, you know a lot of famous people, at the top of them being Randy Boyd, and then I look at those people, you’re asking me that question later, but I can tell your audience that the people who do a lot, do a lot and have a quality of life. So, you take a guy like Randy, I mean, he does everything. He runs the university as a billion-dollar company, he manages you know, kids, sport, he’s everywhere, and when you look at him, you can’t tell that this guy is as busy as he is. And he runs marathon. He went to the [Ice 00:14:00] Marathon, and is, you know, not that old, but he’s not as young as you are. And actually came out, like, number 15 or 16, which is awesome. And so, when I look at a person like that, my message to your audience is that if you know how to manage life and [how to 00:14:19] manage time, you can do everything. And in face, I think that people who don’t have anything to do are busier than people who have a lot to do. We get it done.

Julia: That is very true. Time management is the number one system that I personally coach. Of course, I don’t coach real estate agents in Knoxville; that would be coaching my competition. I coach all over the world and my number one thing is time management. If you can manage your time properly, everything else falls into place.

Dr. Hash: Exactly.

Julia: Exactly.

Dr. Hash: I’m late for everything. I’m late for that, I have to admit because if somebody that works for me this in company, listen to this, “Really, you’re taking lessons from Hash on time management? He’s always late.” I got [unintelligible 00:15:00] [laugh].

Julia: Well, you know, there’s exceptions to the rule [laugh].

Dr. Hash: That’s right.

Julia: You just need to know when to bend just a little bit.

Dr. Hash: Right, right.

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Julia: Tell us about your books.

Dr. Hash: So, I’ve written three books that are technical, so it’s in my field. I got it translated to four languages. So, my books are in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Russians. The reason I did that is because those are the countries that are really going nuclear big time, right?

Russia, of course, is not going to be easy to deal with any more because of the unfortunate war in Ukraine—very unfortunate war in Ukraine that our hope it comes to end as soon as possible. I have friends there, I’ve worked there. I was just in Europe, dealing with Ukrainian counterparts and things. So, the books are used as a textbook in some places. Then I have written about—not the book itself, but chapters in another ten books, I’m co-author. And that’s what we do. We do research, we learn things, and we put that in the public domain for everybody to see.

Julia: That’s fantastic. I think it’s one thing to write a book about whatever and then to write a biography or write an autobiography. It’s another thing to actually write technical knowledge and teaching skills that will either make or break an entire world in the future, and have it revered. That is very difficult and props to you for doing that.

Dr. Hash: Thank you.

Julia: Oh, there’s so much in here, I don’t even know. Well, we’ll make it a little more Knoxville-centric because I can talk to you all day about what’s going on in the world. I think that that’s—I think that’s one of the most important things. I don’t think that people truly understand politically, the issues in the entire world that affect all of us, nuclear energy is one of those. Every time we have a war, every time we have a problem in another country, our energy is affected.

Everything that we do on a local basis, whether it’s from a town of 300 or a big city of 3 million, energy is affected by every political conversation and vote and threat that we could ever encourage. And again, Knoxville, Tennessee, housing Oak Ridge National Lab is always affected by that. Tell us about what you do—if you can; tell us what you can tell us about what you do with Oak Ridge National Lab and how that is a great partnership with the University of Tennessee and Tennessee system.

Dr. Hash: Right. So, we work High Flux Isotope Reactor—HFIR—we provide services to them. We work with Y-12, which is the nuclear weapon complex in the United States or defense complex in the United States. We work with them, we do some testing of some of their equipment.

We do joint research with Oak Ridge National Lab. I worked at Oak Ridge National Lab when I was a graduate student, so we have a connection there. Actually the reason—one of the reasons I came to Knoxville, my aunt, my mom’s sister was a cancer researcher doctor in Oak Ridge National Lab. And I remember I used to be able to go through the thing with her in her car and nowadays, you can’t even get close to it. But this was like 45 years ago; world have changed.

So, we are all in and out of the place all the time, both doing collaboration research, but servicing some of the facilities, working at Y-12, and so on, where Y-12 sends their stuff here to our labs. So we are, but you know, our job is mostly commercial nuclear power, and we are not a research house. We are not as academic, but we do do things with National Labs. Not just Oak Ridge, all—there’s 17 national labs in the United States; we will fit six or seven of them closely.

Julia: That’s [unintelligible 00:19:34] all from right here. Again, just not—again, this podcast is very much focused on what’s in Knoxville that people don’t know about, and I would almost guarantee you unless someone had a reason to know about nuclear energy, they would have no idea that your company was here. Not a clue.

Dr. Hash: Yeah, one thing I want to let you know that I even was surprised when we saw—this governor’s council that is 15 [unintelligible 00:19:56] to serve the governor on this pro bono, and the things I’ve learned over the last month or so [we’re 00:20:03] working, one of which, Julia, is this: there is 229—229—nuclear companies in this area. 149 of them are in this vicinity. 229 in Tennessee, but mostly concentrated on East Tennessee. This is going to be the center of nuclear energy. That is why the Governor, Bill Lee, put in $50 million to jumpstart this activity, and then we feel like we are going to get both federal and state money to continue this and make this center.

Because there is no other reason not to do this. TVA is here with seven nuclear power plants—and the United States have 95 operating—seven of are TVAs nuclear power plants, right? We have the Oak Ridge National Lab, the isotope reactor that I told you about, we have the SNS, Spallation Neutron Source, yeah there’s so much nuclear. And you also have fusion. Everything we talked about so far is about fission which is the conventional form of nuclear energy, but now fusion is actually growing here in Tennessee.

Dr. [Cathy McCord 00:21:14] is one of the top people in fusion, and she’s the director of the fusion activities at the Oak Ridge National Lab. So, there’s so much going on here. Then we have added manufacturing, we have the material thing in the [unintelligible 00:21:27] form which have been here. So, there is so much, it’s amazing that I even wonder, there’s so many cities like Knoxville around the United States and I go everywhere in the world, and when I come back to Knoxville, I’m amazed that the city that I live in is so rich in a nuclear, and other industrial process history.

Julia: I think that one thing that surprises people about Knoxville is that it’s still a home. It’s a small town with really big capabilities, and we keep it that way for a reason people enjoy coming home, and know that they have the community to be involved in.

Dr. Hash: Exactly. Well, that’s why so many people are coming here and the price of housing, as you know better than anybody else, is almost, you know, going pretty crazy. And it’s not stopping because, you know, there’s so many people that they realize what a fanta—and you don’t ever have to come here to work. There are people who come here to retire.

We have more water here. I wonder at one time how many boat company, why do we have so many boat manufacturers in Knoxville? I was talking to one of the VPs of [Sea Racers 00:22:36] because this place has more lakes and accessibility to water than anywhere else. So, we got that, you got all the parks and you got some champions. One of the questions you’re asking me is for my heroes in Knoxville. We’ve got some people here that really have made this community what it is.

Julia: We’re very lucky. We’re very, very lucky. And we’ve kept it small, and there’s only been a couple of decades where there’s been a power shift, and it’s really been a pleasant one. And we’re not—not every city can say that, you know? So, we’ve been very lucky. We went from the Butcher Brothers to, kind of like, the Langley-Alexander era, and then Alexandra kind of shifted to Haslam, Haslam’s kind of shifting—I personally think—to Boyd, but that’s just a personal preference.

Dr. Hash: That’s very true. That’s very true. And since you brought that up, you know, Jim Haslam and the whole Haslam family have been so awesome to the Tennessee, to Knoxville, to really the nation. But let’s just talk—I mean, they have been exceptional. I don’t know how this place—what this place would have looked like without Jim. We call him the Big Jim because there’s another—

Julia: Yeah, Big Daddy Jim [laugh].

Dr. Hash: Yeah. And you know him very well. He’s just like a best friend of ours, and he and his wife have done so much for the community. And you’re right. I think Randy Boyd is also contributing a lot, a lot. Then we have you know Claytons, we have Pete DeBusk. We have a lot of champions here who are really helping this community and so generous. The other thing, Julie, I want to tell you, Tennessee, in my opinion, have the best people. I said this publicly a lot that United States have the best people in the world, and Tennessee have the best people are the United States, and I have the best people of Tennessee working for me because I have employees that I don’t know why they work for me for 30 years. I have a lot of people have been here between 15 and 30. When I send you my commencement speech, you see that I address that. I think the reason is because they’re just wonderful people. They are loyal, they don’t—they’re just as great. I’m very lucky to be here.

Julia: Well, we’re lucky to have you here, honestly.

Dr. Hash: Thank you.

Julia: Honestly. And I think people know that. I don’t know if you get told that enough. So, we are very lucky to have you here and very appreciative that you are.

Dr. Hash: Thank you, Julia.

Julia: So, we have a very limited time and I want to get to the locality of it. So, the fire-round questions: what’s your favorite restaurant in Knoxville?

Dr. Hash: I knew you were—so I go to Carrabba’s for—no, to Bravo and Carrabba’s a lot for lunch because it’s near my company. When I have outside guests from other times, I take them to Fleming’s and Ruth’s Chris because those are the ones that have tablecloth and all those. So, I love Vida. Jim Klonaris and his wife are my friends. I like Vida, [unintelligible 00:25:45]. We have a lot of great restaurants. Used to be that—you’re way too young to know, but used to be that the best place to go and the only best place to go was Copper Cellar. That was the place to go.

Julia: I used—do you remember when Copper Cellar had the blue crab?

Dr. Hash: Yes, yes.

Julia: It was the be—it was the bes—I am—I look younger than I am [laugh].

Dr. Hash: Well.

Julia: But I remember that. We used to go, we used to go after football game days to the one across from what used to be [Doc’s 00:26:19] or Michael’s or whatever—they torn it down; it’s not even there anymore. But we would have the blue crab. And they don’t even—nobody in town serves it.

Dr. Hash: Right. Yeah, but Copper Cellar restaurant system have now 27 restaurant. I also like Connors. You know all guys have lived here so long, I know all these guys that own these restaurants. So, Mike Connor is a friend of mine and things. He has 17 restaurants.

You don’t know this, but they are all of these guys started as dishwashers and cooks and stuff at a restaurant here in Knoxville, 40 years, 45 years, I call it [unintelligible 00:26:56]. But these are the kids—they were all kids. Now, they all own a lot of restaurants, and very good ones. Chesapeake’s in West is a great restaurant for—and it’s a big—I like cozy places for when I go with, you know, [unintelligible 00:27:12], but for lunch, and you know, big crowds, Chesapeake is good. West. The one in West.

Julia: Yeah, the one out West is also, it’s closer to where I am, so it’s a little easier to get to. So, I appreciate that part of it. And that is one heck of a list of restaurants for people to take on, for sure.

Dr. Hash: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Julia: All right. Favorite bar or pub?

Dr. Hash: Okay, so Vault. I don’t know if you’ve been to Vault, which is under the Vidas restaurant. So, this used to be the vault of a bank that they converted it into a really awesome bar. In fact, I have guests from everywhere and I take them there, and they are amazed that such a nice and cozy place exists in Knoxville. They are the best flatbread pizza ever. They quit doing that, so I got to get to Jim and find out why, why did you get rid of it? So, there are—that’s one of my favorite places to go for drinks, in terms of a bar.

Julia: I love that. I love that. One last question. When you bring someone here that’s never been here, and they want to experience something that’s completely not known, where do you typically go?

Dr. Hash: So, we know [laugh]—that’s a very selfish answer. We normally give them a lecture about our company’s history, and then we’ll give them a tour of the place. We are in a campus of three buildings in my company, and we keep it up, we keep this place up. So, that’s one of the attractions [laugh] to.

Then I take them out on downtown and show them all the—I normally—because we’re academics, so we normally have—give them a tour of the University of Tennessee. I have taken people to football games. I have five seats in the stadium that I’ve had them probably for these 45 years. I don’t like to sit in the boxes—don’t tell the UT people that—because you’ve been there, and I’ve been there; that’s just not watching football. So, I sit in the middle of a bunch of hooligans, and we really have a great time. So, I take some of my guest, I’ve taken some very important people to those bleachers and that stadium. They loved it, you know? And so, that’s what I do.

Julia: Where are your—where our seats are in… we’re on the first row in, I think it’s [X-6 00:29:38], wherever—the Power—they run out of the Power-T, we have the first two seats on the first row.

Dr. Hash: Okay, well we are not too far from that. We are on X-10. And the only problem with my seats, they are not under the cover so when it rains—so I invited the—one of the—this is a while ago, one of the VPs of TVA. He was running the nuclear plants building, actually, [unintelligible 00:30:03], and he assumed that that Hash is inviting me to a football game, it’s going to be in the box because he said [crosstalk 00:30:12] invitation to the box every week and I don’t go.

So, he [laugh] sat there, and I could tell that he was just questioning. And it also rained, so I had sent my wife to go buy some of these $5 poncho. Well, you know what happened? That was the game that, in the last second, Arkansas fumbled, and we went to national championships. So, he turned out to be the best game of Tennessee history.

Julia: Oh, I agree. The boxes are for basketball, but if you’re going to do football, you do it in the stadium.

Dr. Hash: Absolutely.

Julia: That’s the best experience, one hundred percent.

Dr. Hash: And when we Alabama, I went to the—I went to the field and I actually laid on the field. I didn’t break the goalposts, but I was [unintelligible 00:30:55]. And I sent my picture to Randy Boyd, and he said it was a great picture.

Julia: Well, he was stuck in the boxes and you were having the experience.

Dr. Hash: Exactly. [crosstalk 00:31:05].

Julia: You guys [crosstalk 00:31:05] [laugh]. Well, we host the tailgate every year. Feel free—we’ll talk offline. I’ll send you an invitation to the tailgate. We do one every home game.

Dr. Hash: Okay. I’ll be there, Julia. You invite me and I’ll be there.

Julia: It’s an invite. It’s already on the books. Consider it invited.

Dr. Hash: All right.

Julia: All right, that’s all the time we have with Dr. Hash today. That was the best conversation, and I appreciate your time. I know it is worth so much. And I know that the nation is going to learn so much about Knoxville today that they did not know, so thank you so much for taking time for us on another episode of Connect the Knox. Thanks for visiting.

Julia: Thank you for tuning into the show. Make sure to like and subscribe, leave a five-star review on your podcast player of choice, and if you would like information on moving to Knoxville, send me a private message. As always, this is Julia Hurley, connecting Knoxville to the nation.