Building out the energy transition

With a proven background in utility operations, infrastructure, and supply chain management, I bring deep expertise in modernising power assets, enhancing output, extending operational lifespans, optimising fuel efficiency, and delivering large‑scale new build projects.

I have led complex plant improvement programs that ensured ageing infrastructure continued to generate reliable, efficient power. My focus on fuel optimisation has driven measurable cost savings and sustainability gains, strengthening both near‑term performance and long‑term asset viability.

Beyond operational execution, I have designed and implemented financial modelling frameworks that inform strategic investment decisions - balancing capital allocation, lifecycle costs, and evolving energy demand. More recently, I hold accountability for the delivery of critical components and nuclear‑island manufacturing within a major new build infrastructure project. In this role, I report directly to senior programme leadership and executive governance, overseeing the full lifecycle from component manufacturing through installation and construction, while ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements, engineering standards, and stakeholder expectations.

Passionate about energy investment and sustainable infrastructure, I focus on optimising resource utilisation, driving innovation, and shaping resilient strategies that align with economic growth and environmental priorities. 

Let’s connect to explore opportunities in utility operations, energy investment, infrastructure transformation, and supply chain optimisation.

This chart isn’t about energy preferences

It’s about cash flow discipline

Capacity factor answers one core question underwriting question:

How often does this asset actually earn its keep?

High capacity factor assets do three things exceptionally well:
- Convert capex into predictable utilisation
- Enable long-duration, underwriteable cash flows
- Limit downside through operational predictability

What’s often missed is that capacity factor isn’t static - it’s managed.

Availability, maintenance strategy, outage execution, and supply-chain resilience all move the number. Small improvements compound over decades.

From an operating lens, value is created by:

- Lifting the floor, not chasing the peak
- Reducing forced outages
- Designing for repeatable, auditable performance

In energy infrastructure, returns don’t come from clever narratives.
They come from assets that deliver - consistently, transparently, and under scrutiny.

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Project Management Institute

Project Management Professional (PMP)®

Stellenbosch University

Sizewell C

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd

I show you the inner workings of nuclear energy l MSc (Physics), MBA, PMP

Extensive experience in project delivery, operations, and manufacturing within the nuclear energy and infrastructure sector. Proven track record in strategic leadership, navigating complexities, and driving innovation.

My Substack newsletter, all I talk all things nuclear: https://substack.com/@ruan1

Ruan Steyn | Substack

Institute of Directors (IoD)

Nuclear Institute

Institute of Physics

Energy Institute

Nuclear Energy Leader | Mega-Project Execution, Safety-Critical Delivery | I help nuclear projects move from FOAK risk to repeatable delivery

Paulo Coelho

Nuclear taught me to plan for the decision after this one.

In nuclear, no decision exists in isolation.

Every choice quietly locks in or closes off future options - sometimes decades ahead.

Design for minimal maintenance to reduce outage time?
You may be limiting access and flexibility when unforeseen issues arise.

Design with end-of-life and life extension in mind?
You may be accepting higher initial cost to preserve long-term value.

That’s why the best decision-makers don’t ask:
“Is this the right decision?”
They ask:
“What decisions does this force us to make next?”

At an executive level, decision quality isn’t about winning a single moment.
It’s about preserving optionality, resilience, and control across a chain of future choices.

The leaders who outperform over long cycles are the ones who design decisions so the next decision is easier, cheaper, and safer - not harder.

That mindset applies far beyond nuclear:
- Energy portfolios
- Capital allocation
- Infrastructure build-out
- Grid reliability under stress

Strategy isn’t a single choice
It’s a sequence of commitments.

Curious how others think about managing decision chains when capital, risk, and timelines all converge. Comment below 👇 

Image credit: TVA, Watts Bar Unit 1 PWR NPP, in Tennessee, USA

Ruan Steyn, MBA, MSc, PMP

I help leaders and investors make long-duration energy decisions that still work 20-60 years later - technically, operationally, and financially

As the world races to electrify everything

One technology continues to carry the industrial load.

Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs).

They are the backbone of global nuclear power.
They don’t chase headlines. They deliver outcomes - quietly, continuously, at scale.

Over 60% of the world’s operating reactors are PWRs. That’s not historical inertia. That’s selection pressure.

Across every programme I’ve worked on, one pattern is consistent: PWRs outperform because they’re engineered for pressure.

Why capital keeps flowing to PWR assets:

1. Industrial robustness - designed to operate under sustained thermal, mechanical, and regulatory stress
2. High availability - long, predictable cycles with capacity factors other assets struggle to match
3. Fuel efficiency - extreme energy density 
4. Proven safety case - decades of operating data across diverse regulatory regimes
5. System resilience - firm, dispatchable, low‑carbon power that strengthens national and grid security

From an investor’s lens, this matters because:

- PWRs convert complexity into predictable cash‑flow infrastructure.
- They behave like long‑duration, inflation‑resilient assets in a world where volatility is the new baseline.
- They anchor portfolios that can’t afford intermittency risk.

As power demand accelerates - from electrification, re‑industrialisation, and AI - the premium isn’t on novelty.

It’s on assets that perform under pressure.

PWRs aren’t just part of the energy mix.
They are the reference design for reliable, scalable clean power.

And the real question ahead is simple:
Can we build them fast enough?

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Eliminating execution variability to protect nuclear project delivery and long-duration asset value

Robotics is accelerating faster than ever.

Nuclear construction brings a distinct set of requirements.

Most robotic systems are built for clean, predictable, repeatable environments. In contrast, nuclear construction lives in a world that’s QA‑driven, physically demanding, and deeply intolerant of rework.

That’s why automation in the nuclear sector tends to sit at the edges rather than at the core.

Where the gap becomes visible:
• Keeping people safe 
• Operational efficiency unlock 
• Inspection innovation 

The impact is rarely immediate, but it compounds:
• Persistent labour pressure
• Repeated first-of-a-kind execution
• Schedule risk amplified by complexity

At a strategic level, the real challenge is definition.

What exactly should automation solve in nuclear construction - and how do we design for nuclear realities rather than industrial assumptions?

That question will shape the next wave of construction innovation in the sector.

How working with uranium reshaped my leadership

And sharpens long‑term decision‑making.

Uranium is more than a commodity.
It sharpens how on think in high‑consequence, long‑horizon environments.

In nuclear, strategy, governance, and execution come into sharp focus.
The margin for ambiguity is small.
The time horizon is measured in decades.

Lesson 1: Long-term thinking is a strategic advance

Uranium rewards leaders who think beyond cycles.
Fuel strategies outlast political terms.
Contracts outlive executive tenures.
Decisions shape infrastructure for generations. 

Enduring value comes from continuity, not acceleration.

Lesson 2: Governance enables performance

Clear roles reduce friction.
Defined processes increase predictability.
Disciplined oversight builds confidence.

Good governance doesn’t slow progress.
It stabilises it.

Lesson 3: Trust is the real currency

Credibility is built through transparency, traceability, and consistent execution.

Boards ask more than what.
They expect why, how, and assurance.

Trust isn’t optional.
It enables everything else.

Lesson 4: Strategic alignment is non-negotiable

Uranium exposes misalignment quickly-
across supply chains, owners, investors, and operators.

When alignment holds, momentum follows.

For leaders shaping long‑life energy infrastructure, uranium is a reminder: Leadership lives in the systems, behaviours, and governance
that allow decisions to endure.

How I see the strongest nuclear portfolios allocate capital

They don’t choose between extension and expansion

They sequence them deliberately.

Recent agreements between Meta and Vistra are a clear reminder of a pattern seasoned operators already understand.

Life extension and expansion aren’t competing strategies.
They’re complementary ones.

Life extension does the heavy lifting first.
Extended units deliver predictable cash flow, known operating envelopes, and balance-sheet resilience - stabilising the portfolio under real regulatory, market, and execution pressure.

Expansion comes next - selectively.
Uprates, new units, and optionality are layered onto assets that already earn trust with regulators, lenders, and system operators.

Together, this unlocks something more important than MWs: portfolio-level risk reduction.

Stable nuclear cash flows de-risk growth capital, improve financing terms, lower blended WACC, and increase strategic flexibility.

At scale, this isn’t project selection.
It’s portfolio architecture.

Extension builds resilience.
Expansion creates upside.

Judgment is knowing when, where, and how to deploy both.

That’s where durable nuclear value is created.

For executives responsible for capital allocation, this sequencing isn’t theory - it’s a discipline. 

It’s already shaping how the strongest portfolios are managed.

Follow me, Ruan Steyn, MBA, MSc, PMP, for portfolio-level nuclear insights

The largest AI companies are quietly becoming infrastructure operators.

Not by owning the grid - but by shaping it.

Anyone who has ever delivered a power‑constrained megaproject knows this shift well. Interconnection queues, site selection, transmission access… these aren’t back‑office considerations. They dictate how fast you can scale, how reliably you can operate, and ultimately whether your strategy survives first contact with reality.

For AI, this is now the battleground. 
Grid access has become a competitive advantage, not an administrative hurdle.

Electricity is not an input cost anymore.
It’s becoming a strategic moat.

This mirrors the telco → cloud shift: the winners weren’t those with better servers, but those who understood and controlled the infrastructure layer - availability, reliability, and scale. The ones who could see upstream.

AI leaders are now making the same move into energy.
Not because they want to be utilities, but because they can’t grow without thinking like one.

The implication is straightforward: 
When growth becomes power‑constrained, infrastructure decisions are strategy. And the organisations that understand this earliest - and build accordingly - will define the next decade.

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Why spares strategy is a generation strategy.

And why it matters at the executive level.

Because spares shape output, not only logistics

It’s easy for spares to be treated as a logistics task.
Inventory. Warehouses. Procurement.

In nuclear, the implications extend well beyond logistics.

A spares strategy determines whether you generate power.

One delayed component can:
- Add weeks to an outage
- Erode capacity factor
- Turn availability into uncertainty

At fleet scale, that’s not a maintenance issue.
That’s a generation issue.

The strongest operators treat spares as:
- A hedge against forced outages
- A lever on capacity factor
- A way to remove blockers in life‑extension and refurbishment

For operators managing ageing assets and long‑term refurbishment cycles, spares aren’t overhead - they’re insurance against lost clean energy.

Across the utilities I’ve worked with, the strongest results always came from treating materials as a generation asset, not a cost centre.

If you want predictable megawatt‑hours, you need predictable materials.

No spares strategy → no generation strategy

Safety culture isn’t a poster or a course.  

It’s what people do when no one is watching.  

In nuclear, safety culture isn’t a destination.

It’s a constant focus.

It’s absorbed.
Observed.
Reinforced.

Built through thousands of small decisions made by people who care about the work they do.

And those moments show up every day:

The technician who pauses because something feels off.
The engineer who asks the uncomfortable question.
The supervisor who escalates early, not late.
The colleague who explains the why, not just the what.

These aren’t grand gestures.
They’re quiet, repeatable actions.

And they’re what create trust, predictability, and reliability.

Leaders don’t create safety culture by talking about it.
We create it by modelling it.

In how we plan.
How we listen.
How we respond to bad news.
What we reward - and what we don’t.

If we want people to speak up, we have to prove it’s safe to do so.
If we want quality to matter, we have to show standards are never compromised.
If safety is non‑negotiable, schedule pressure can never outrank doing the job right.

Safety culture isn’t an initiative.
It’s a habit - and it is a mindset.

Built one decision at a time.

Gas-fired electricity enables AI growth.

Nuclear locks it in.

That’s the logic behind AI Energy Zones.

AI doesn’t scale gradually or wait for grid upgrades. It arrives fast, demands massive amount of electricity, and expects 24/7 uptime - forcing a new energy architecture.

How AI Energy Zones form

Phase 1 - Speed
Gas moves first. It’s dispatchable, financeable, and quick to permit, letting AI clusters break ground now.

Phase 2 - Lock‑in
Nuclear follows to anchor the zone with long life, predictable output, and stable costs. This is when the zone becomes permanent.

Phase 3 - Resilience
Gas shifts to the flex layer. Nuclear carries the baseload AI never turns off.

Why it matters:
This isn’t gas vs nuclear - it’s sequencing.
Gas solves time‑to‑power.
Nuclear solves time‑horizon.
Together, they solve AI reliability.

The strongest AI power strategies design zones:
Firm power at the core.
Flexibility at the edges.
Long‑term certainty for capital.

AI isn’t just reshaping compute - it’s reshaping entire energy system around it.

Robotics doesn’t replace people.

It replaces variability.

I’ve seen outstanding teams deliver the same task in slightly different ways - different shifts, different access conditions, different interpretations of “good enough.”

No single decision was wrong.

But the accumulated variance became visible later as rework, inspection friction, and schedule noise.

In nuclear delivery, variability is risk.

Every manual interface introduces human variance - across fatigue, access constraints, and judgement under pressure. Over time, that variance compounds.

Robotics is how you cap variance without removing skill.

It shines where:
- Repeatability matters
- Access is constrained
- Quality must be demonstrable, not assumed

The real win isn’t speed.
It’s predictability.

Predictable execution.
Predictable quality.
Predictable outcomes under scrutiny.

Robotics doesn’t remove people - it removes surprises.

And on long-duration nuclear programmes, predictability is what sustains confidence over time.

This is less about technology, and more about how delivery risk is governed.

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Most energy debates used to stall at ideology.

Boards have moved beyond that lens.

Today, capital allocation is being forced back to fundamentals:

- Cash yield vs asset life
- Policy risk vs physical reliability
- Terminal value vs optionality
- Short-cycle returns vs multi-decade moats

In practice, the answer most boards arrive at isn’t binary.

It’s about portfolio construction:

- Oil & gas for cash generation and flexibility
- Nuclear for duration, baseload certainty, and strategic resilience
- Hybrids to smooth policy, market, and demand risk

AI load growth, grid constraints, and energy security are now repricing long-term returns across the energy stack.

👇 Vote below

Data centres energy needs: opportunity or risk for nuclear?

Proud to see how far the project has come in just two years since triggering the DCO - real progress on the ground and even bigger opportunities ahead for the region

Two years ago today, we marked the start of formal construction on our site with the triggering of our Development Consent Order. 

It was a huge moment, giving a big boost to our site earthworks and unlocking major funding for a range of activities. 

 Looking ahead, we're keen to:

🏫 Kick off construction of our College on the Coast 
🚘 Progress works on the two-village bypass around Farnham and Stratford St Andrew to ease traffic on the roads
🙋‍♂️ Discover and hire more fantastic local talent

Our CEO, Nigel Cann said: "Only two years after triggering our Development Consent Order and beginning formal construction, I’m delighted to see Sizewell C is already delivering on its promise to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for this region. This is just the start of the lifechanging opportunities that we’ll bring to this area during construction and subsequent operation of this power station, when there will be 900 well-paid, high-quality jobs available here."

More details about our progress here 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e7w9EuaZ 

#SizewellC #Construction #Nuclear #Jobs #MegaProject

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As AI and data-centre demand grow, the cost of electricity and grid upgrades doesn’t disappear - it gets allocated.

The real question is who should carry it.

Vote below

Would you accept higher power bills to support AI and digital growth?

Where do experienced leaders see the real differentiator?

Vote in the poll.

Insights from major builds welcome in the comments.
The nuance sits in why each choice matters under pressure.

Under sustained pressure, what actually defines a strong nuclear build programme?

How do you prioritise capital for energy investments
  
Leaders across the sector are making tougher allocation decisions than ever - balancing stability, growth, risk, and system needs. 

I’m running a focused poll to surface the primary lens shaping capital decisions across today’s utilities and energy companies.

Your perspective helps reveal how the industry is actually sequencing investment under real‑world constraints.

How do you prioritise capital for energy investments

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