Morning Brew Daily - Bill Gates Powers ‘Next-Gen’ Nuclear Plant & The Hidden $18K Cost of Home Ownership

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Episode 342: Neal and Toby dive into the start of a revolutionary nuclear facility being constructed in Wyoming that has the powerful backing of Bill Gates. Then, Disney is set to open a new ride that replaces the longstanding Splash Mountain due to its controversial past. Next, the banana empire Chiquita is ordered to pay $38M in restitution after it was found guilty for financing a terrorist organization that caused pain to eight families. Also, homeownership comes with a price after a recent study found home expenses cost an average of $18,000 in the US. Meanwhile, BeReal is running out of cash and a French gaming company is coming to bail them out. Lastly, the world’s largest convenience store opens in Texas. Yes, everything is truly bigger in Texas.  Download the Yahoo Finance App (on the Play and App store) for real-time alerts on news and insights tailored to your portfolio and stock watchlists. 00:00 - hot dog 3:15 - Bill Gates goes nuclear 8:30 - Big splash in Disney 11:40 - Big banana suit 14:20 - Owning a home is costly 17:20 - BeReal gets bought out 20:30 - World’s largest convenience store opens Get your Morning Brew Daily Mug HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-daily-mug?utm_medium=youtube&utm_source=mbd&utm_campaign=mug Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue, but it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morningbrewerdaily. That's aflac.com slash morning brewdaily. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman.

And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a new ride is coming to Disney World, but not everyone is happy about it. Then it pays to be authentic. Be Real has been acquired for a nice chunk of change. It's Wednesday, June 12th. Let's ride. Yesterday, one of the goats of the sporting world in an American hero to boot dropped out from his marquee event. No, Tiger Woods isn't pulling out of the U.S. Open.

It's Joey Chestnut, who is a lot of the United States. out of the 2024 Nathan's hot dog eating contest. News dropped yesterday that the 16-time champ cannot participate because of his sponsorship deal with impossible foods, the plant-based meat company that launched a vegan weiner to rival Nathan's famous hot dogs. Neil, this is unthinkable. This is the Earth without the moon. The road trip without snacks.

Morning Brewed Daily without Let's Ride. What happened here? Fourth of July is canceled as far as I'm concerned. This is such a bummer. This really raises two questions, though. Does Nathan's really consider Impossible Foods vegan hot dog a competitor? And their press releases about this news, they said that Joey Chestnut was the Michael Jordan of competitive eating, who signed with Nike. And if he won, you know, so he had a Nike contract.

Imagine if he had an Adidas sponsorship as well. So they're saying their Nike and Impossible Foods is Adidas on that respect. And then also another question is, how much is this Impossible Foods deal worth for Joey, chestnut because last year chestnut was played $200,000 to compete in the Nathan's Fourth of July Hot Dog contest and he had this $1.2 million for your contract going forward for Nathan's. So this Impossible Foods deal must be a hefty chunk of change for Chestnut to say, no, I'm not eating in this market competition. I'm sticking with Impossible Foods. It's great PR for Impossible Foods because you're right. It puts it on the same level playing field

as Nathan's famous hot dogs. You know what I'm looking at is the betting markets though? because last year, Joey Chestnut had minus 5,000 odds to reveal. He's just such an overwhelming favorite. So suddenly it's wide open. So checked out the betting odds because there's going to be a new champ this year unless a deal is. I think they're going to. I think cooler heads are going to prevail here and they're going to reach a resolution because having 4th of July hot dog contest without Joey Chestnut,

when he's out there and he could be there, just because of a sponsorship dust up, I think they're going to figure something out. Now let's hear a word from our sponsor, the Purple Prince that was promised, Yahoo Finance. Neil, what's one thing all MBD listeners have in common? Smart, devilishly, good-looking, and a fan of dad jokes? Well, that was three things. But the answer we were looking for is they all want to achieve financial prosperity. And you know who can help you achieve financial prosperity your way? The Purple Prince, Yahoo Finance. Nailed it this time. Whether you're saving for retirement,

investing in the market, or managing personal finances, it's the go-to platform for making informed decisions one step at a time. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, Yahoo Finance gives you the tools you need to manage your investments and achieve your financial objectives. So if you're smart, devastating good looking, and a fan of dad jokes, and you want to achieve financial prosperity, download the Yahoo Finance app on the play or app stores. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill.

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A Bill Gatesbacked startup he co-founded in 2008 called Terra Power broke ground on a new type of nuclear reactor in a small town in Wyoming. This project won't resemble the big hulking reactors of old. No, these will be smaller and cheaper while still delivering the same carbon dioxide-free electricity that has always been the promise of nuclear. Gates and Terra power are riding a wave of support for nuclear.

Lots of startups are jockeying to build the next gen of reactors, while the Biden administration wants to triple nuclear power generation by 2050 and is offering tax credits to speed things along. both tax credits and a more cost-efficient reactor are going to be necessary to make that vision of reality because new reactors are prohibitively expensive. The only two new nuclear power plants that have come online in the last 30 years were at Plant Vogel in Georgia and cost $35 billion to build while finishing seven years behind schedule. So Bill Gates has poured over $1 billion of its own money into terror power

with the hopes that a smaller, simpler reactor can usher in another golden age of nuclear power. What makes these reactors so special, Neil? So I haven't worked at a nuclear plant like Homer Simpson, but I do now have a general sense of how this all works. Inside of a reactor is a core where the reaction known as nuclear fission takes place, and that produces heat. But for this heat to generate power, you need to send it from the core to another section of the plant where you can turn that heat into electricity. So in the 90-plus plants, currently in operation in the United States, the way you move the heat from one section to the other, is water. It's super simple. But the problem with using water is it as a circulating fluid. It's that it needs to be very highly pressurized, which means you have to put in this heavy piping and thick containment shields to

prevent accidents. Bill Gates, on the other hand, wants to use liquid sodium instead of water as a circulating fluid because it's way more efficient at this job and can do it at much lower pressures, so it needs less shielding, less piping, and can overall bring costs down. Yeah, one of the advantage of using a liquid metal like liquid sodium is it's just very chemically stable at very high temperature so it doesn't require the immense amount of pressurization that water does. The boiling point of liquid sodium is 1,155 Kelvin, which is around 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That's almost triple that of water. So you don't have to, yeah, put it under this immense pressure because it just boils at a hotter temperature.

Yeah, so it's a much simpler nuclear reactor in general. That is the name of the game here. we want to simplify these nuclear reactors so it doesn't cost so much money, doesn't require just an immense amount of dollars in time to bring online. And so they think that making it simpler gives both a safety and a cost benefit. It's still not cheap, though. It's not cheap, and there's still a lot of hurdles remaining. And one of those is procuring the fuel to run the reactor. And what's interesting here is there's only one type of enriched uranium that can power this particular reactor, and it's only made in Russia, which the U.S. does not buy nuclear fuel from

anymore. So Bill Gates' terror power needs to find another way to get this particular type of enriched uranium over to Wyoming to power this reactor in the first place. That's just another hurdle, and this thing is not going to come online until 2030, maybe even later. So the cost that the company estimates is around $4 billion with the energy department contributing half of that. So that's definitely pricey. It's pricier than most renewable energy plants or modern gas power plants. But they do have a secret weapon here, which is Bill Gates. He's basically said that he knows it's going to be expensive,

especially the first one as they worked through the learning curve. But he said he's not here to make money. He's very much putting his money where his mouth is. And he says, I just want to bring these power plants online. I have deep pockets. Like, we're going to make this happen. So the secret weapon here for Terra Power is the fact that they have Bill Gates backing it. Energy experts say that bringing more nuclear power online is absolutely key to transitioning to a clean economy because wind and solar are great, but they fluctuate over the course of the day.

In Chicago, how are you supposed to power, you know, all these homes and businesses with solar power? I mean, it's half, it's dark out half the day. Currently, half of all zero emission electricity generated for the grid in the U.S. comes from nuclear reactors. And the Biden administration wants to triple that by 2050. So we'll see. It's also a lifeline for these communities where they've had these coal plants and these mines that are closing down. Hundreds of coal plants all across the country are closing down. But they're actually amazing sites for nuclear reactors because they already have these transmission lines.

And Terra Power does have one customer already as a California utility. And just so happens that in this little Wyoming town, they have this transmission line that goes right to California. So that is one sort of lifeline for these communities that have lost a lot of jobs with coal plans. closing, maybe they'll be able to rejuvenate with nuclear power. All right, you must be this tall in order to listen to this next story, because it's about a major new ride coming to Disney World, Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which is set to open later this month in Orlando. But it's not an expansion of the park.

It's replacing an existing ride. Splash Mountain, never heard of it. Back in the summer of 2020, as protests for George Floyd swept across the country, Disney said it would shut down Splash Mountain and swap it out. for a new ride. Splash Mountain, while an iconic log flume ride, is based on a 1946 Disney movie called Song of the South, which contains racist stereotypes about African Americans and plantation life.

Enter Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the first marquee attraction based on a black character in Disney's 69 years in the theme park business. Tiana is the princess from 2009's animated musical Princess and the Frog, and the ride itself is a love letter to New Orleans in all its multicultural chaos. The log flume will journey along the same tracks as Splash Mountain, but everything else has been ripped up and replaced with the new setting,

storyline, and state-of-the-art animatronics. Toby Disney finally seemed to distance itself from its central role in the culture wars, but this new ride will be a test of whether people have moved on. Yeah, last year when Splash Mountain finally closed down, people were starting these makeshift memorials. They were like leaving things at the entrance. Some fans jarred up water and brought them back with them. And 100,000 people signed this petition.

So it was this really big hubbub. But if Disney's like, this happens basically any time we revamp a ride. In 2017, they closed the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which is another just iconic ride. And they remade it around Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Everyone was very, very upset about that. Not even with a, there wasn't even a culture war around that particular thing. They just didn't like change. But then when it opened, everyone loved the new ride.

So this does seem to be something that Disney, has withstood in the past. They are, of course, going to update their rides to more modern materials. So they basically say, just try it out. See how it is first before you get mad at it. Right. I guess whenever you do anything, anything changing at Disney World, people get upset. And then a few years later, they're like, oh, this is perfectly great. They're pouring in $60 billion into their theme park business, which just so happens to be their most profitable unit and their unit that produces the most sales of any, like the movie business, the TV business, all is small cheese compared to these parks.

So they're pouring so much money in. And the reason what they're doing with Tiana's Bayou Adventure is that's just sort of a portal into extracting more money from you related to merch. They're selling a hot sauce around it. They're going to do a Disney Plus TV show around Princess and the Frog. So this is just one tent pole of a broader strategy to sell you more stuff around this particular piece of IP. I am just happy it's on the same ride tracks as Flash Mountain, though, Because have you ever been to Splash Mountain?

I did. I've been on Splash Mountain once, and my hat flew off as we were going down. I thought I lost my hat. But it turns out the guy behind me had caught it on the way down. So that's my one memory of Splash Mountain. But I do like the general log flume rides in general because I don't like very scary roller coaster. So that's like the nice and moderate way of doing things. So I'm excited to go on this ride. The banana you might eat for breakfast has a darker history than its bruised exterior might betray.

A jury in federal court just found the popular. banana brand Jakita liable for deaths during a Colombian Civil War. The Florida jury ordered the banana company to pay $38 million to the families of eight men killed by a far-right paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004. It's a landmark case that stretches back to the late 2000s when Chiquita admitted to paying the paramilitaries $1.7 million as part of a DOJ investigation. Chiquita benefited from the group terrorizing farmers in the region, allowing the company to buy up land for pennies on the dollar and convert plantain farms into more profitable banana farms in the process. This is a very unusual and groundbreaking case. It is not often that a corporation

is financially held liable for human rights violations, especially beyond the country's borders. Yeah, it said this is actually the first time that a major U.S. corporation has been held liable for rights abuses in another country. And advocates for human rights and advocates of the victims here said it was a powerful message to corporations everywhere that you cannot finance bad things going on in other countries and get away with it. So they said this was a warning shot to others. And it's also a warning shot to Chiquita because this opens up the pathway for a bunch of other victims to get compensation. I mean, back in 2007 with a settlement with the DOJ, they pled guilty this company saying that, yes, we did pay this paramilitary group known as the AUC. And they say it's because we were being extorted.

They said they would harm our employees, harm our property, if we didn't pay up. So that's their defense. And in general, they say that these claims have no legal basis. But they weren't at the time in 2007, they didn't pay out any compensation to victims. So the victims filed a lawsuit. And it's been winding its way in courts through 14 years. So finally, they get some sort of retribution here. Just going to Chiquita's Wikipedia page is a wild experience.

It used to be called United Food Company. and it just have sections on sections of controversies. There is this Honduran Banana Republic area. There's the Banana Massacre in the 20s in Colombia. The list is just so long. This has just been a company with a lot, a very bloody history in a lot of different countries. So it is interesting to see it finally come to fruition. A bunch of lawsuits kind of rolled into one.

And finally, justice was paid to these families of victims, stretching back to the early 2000s, but also much further than that. Up next, it's not your imagination. Owning a house in 2024 is a lot more expensive than it has been before. Hey, honey, it's mom. Did you know if we switch to Verizon we can get four phones for $0, plus four lines for $25 a line? Call me back.

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surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. You're well aware that since the pandemic began, the cost to buy a home has surged with the median price of 40% since March 2020. But as all the homeowners listening to this know, buying a house is just the start of your journey dipping into your bank account to keep a roof over your head. Setting aside the mortgage, you've got to pony up for maintenance, insurance, internet, energy, taxes, and all of those costs have been soaring to A new report from bank rate found that U.S. homeowners are now paying an average of $18,118 a year on hidden fees linked to owning a home. That's a 26% increase from four years ago. As bank rate analyst, Jeff Ostrowski put it.

Simply upkeeping your house is like buying a used car every single year. He warned first-time buyers to be prepared for a rude awakening and to build up a savings buffer to deal with the rising costs of homeownership. Yeah, it shows you home ownership. is definitely this wealth builder. That's what we've all been taught. But it certainly isn't cheap in the process. The same bank rate analyst said, unless you, until you own a house,

it doesn't dawn on you how much money you're throwing into the house every month and every year. It actually, reading this made me feel a lot better as a renter because, yes, you're not building equity in your home. It feels like you're throwing money away into a pit, but it is very expensive to own a house, and it's only getting more expensive. You just see that in the rising costs even compared to 2020.

Yeah, one of the main factors, here is homeowners insurance. I mean, insurance rates have jumped across the board in the past couple years. Last year alone, home insurance rates jumped 11.3% nationally. A lot of that has to do with all these natural disasters that are threatening homes, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, all of that. They're jacking up premiums. And homeowners, homeowners insurance industry writ large across the U.S. lost over $100 billion last year. Some are even pulling out of markets altogether. So you're not paying insurance, but it's also terrible. So this is. is what's happening. The insurance industry is completely being royal, and you're seeing that

an increased homeownership costs in general. Another study that I found interesting, too, was the longer that you own a home, you feel like things should get cheaper because you fix things up, like you redid the bathroom, you redid the kitchen, but some things definitely don't get cheaper. A survey from tractor supply found that homeowners who own their house for a decade or more spend $721 a month on lawn care. You compare that to homeowners who have owned their house for less than a year and they only spend $142 a month. So once you put that new grass, then once you put the new landscaping in, the upkeep becomes more and more. So it's not like homeownership gets cheaper. It almost snowballs into larger and larger costs. And yeah, it's just brutal. If you look

at some of the states where the hidden housing costs are the highest, it's places like Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Jersey, places that are either have really high insurance rates or have very high tax rates, the lowest amount of additional homeownership costs, according to bank rate, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana. So maybe head south if you don't want those hitting costs. BeReal has secured the bag, the social media company that was really fun for about three months back in 2022, sold to the French video game and app developer Voodoo yesterday for 500 million euros.

If you don't remember Be Real, it rose to prominence on the back of its unfiltered take on social media. A timer goes off at a random point during the day, prompting you to snap two picks in quick-through session, one from the front camera and one from the backfacing camera on your phone. No filters allowed. But despite its innovative approach to the space, Be Real has seen user growth stagnate since 2022. Downloads have fallen from a peak of about 35 million in the third quarter of 2022 to 5 million in the first three months of this year. Still, it's not a small app by any means with monthly active users somewhere in the 20 to 40 million range. What does Voodoo want with it? Well, it wants Be Real to be profitable. It plans to turn on the monetization switch by

introducing paid advertising onto the app for the first time because who doesn't want to see a brand take an unfiltered selfie? I think the general consensus around this deal was like, what? Be Real. 500, over 500 million dollars. That's an insane exit for a company that really hasn't grown at all since 2022, did not have a path to monetizing either until Voodoo said, let's stuff your app with ads. So I think this is a pretty incredible exit for Be Real, probably one of the best social media exits of the last decade or so. And they did say they were like, we're the most successful social media company in the last decade, maybe since TikTok came. And you can't argue with that at least from a dollars and cents point of view.

I think Voodoo saw that six people were logging on the app six times, or six days a week still on average. So that is just a very engaged user base. Even if that user base has stagnated in recent years, they probably think that they can turn on some paid acquisition growth. The advertising piece is very interesting to me because they said that they want to be integrated in a quote, extremely fluid format to avoid damaging the user experience. I don't exactly know how they're going to do that. Some people on Reddit were speculating that before you would get the opportunity to take a picture when the B-Real timer goes off, you'd have to watch like a 30-second ad. That does not feel seamless or fluid by any means.

Just in general, though, if we zoom out, it was a great day for the France's technology industry because Voodoo is a France-based company. The accusation came on the same day that this one-year-old AI startup called Mistral AI, another French startup raised 600 million euros at an almost 6 billion euro valuation. So it's been a very, it was a day of a lot of culmination. France has been investing in its technology sector, and these two deals, happened on the same day. This mistral deal was the biggest deal for an AI company outside of Silicon Valley. So this is really the French champion. Maybe the premium placed on Be Real, which is also

based in France, is because they just wanted to keep it in the country. So Macron has really started to promote this tech sector with Mistrel, Voodoo, Be Real. They have a few kind of success stories here that they can say, look, our investments are starting to pay off. For our final story, here's a riddle for you. What is 75,000 square feet, has 120 fuel pumps, and allegedly the world's cleanest bathrooms? The world's largest convenience store, that's what? Buckies, the Colts gas station your friend in Texas, won't stop talking about, opened this giant location on Monday that's 30 times the size of traditional convenience stores, which average just 2,500 square feet. Buckies was basically only competing with itself for the title of World's

largest convenience store. The new location in Lolling, Texas beats out a recently opened Buckey's store in Tennessee by less than 300 square feet. It also represents a milestone in another sense. It's Buckey's 50th location across nine states in the south. Since its expansion play was set in motion in 2019, Buckees has opened travel centers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Colorado. And it's not done yet with its famous Beaver Nuggets coming soon to Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona, and South Carolina. Toby, 120 gas pumps, the cutest little beaver mascot, Texas barbecue, homemade fudge, jerky. I love America.

Calling it a convenience store feels like a misnomer. This thing is a convenience kingdom in terms of places to ride out the zombie apocalypse. Buckies is very high on the list. I mean, it's got the thousands of food and drink. It's got the gas. It's got its beaver nuggets. It's got an entire wall. of beef jerky. It's really crazy. I do think one thing, too, about Bucky's that you hadn't hit on as much is just how otherworldly their bathrooms are as well. That was their big insight. It's like when you're stopping on a road ship, you really, the first thing you want to do is go to the bathroom. So they keep them incredibly clean. They have these, they're very famous for their billboards as well. One of their billboards says the top two reasons to stop out of Buckees, number one and number two. So they've definitely doubled down on their image. They know what makes

them popular, and they're just getting bigger and bigger. Speaking of big, this is not the only record that Buckees currently holds at another section, at another location in Texas. They have the world's largest car wash, which is 250 feet long. It has 32 vacuum stations. It was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's longest car wash, and then they gave away free car washes all day. So this company just goes big, it goes hard in the paint, and I love them for it.

They're expanding. What's really interesting to me is all these little regional gas station chains convenience stores are expanding because they've seen so much success. Wawa is expanding. They want to be in every single state. I just mentioned I basically listed all of the states that Buckees is going to. So there might be some interesting culture clashes here with Buckees going up against a Wawa. And it will be interesting to see whether people in regions other than the South or Philadelphia will embrace particular regional gas station. How could you not love Buckees?

got to put you on the spot. You've been to Buckees, correct? I've been to Buckees a while ago. I don't quite remember my experience. Put it pound for pound versus Wawa. It's different. It's different. Yeah, it's completely different. Buckies is like an emporium of everything you could ever want. Wawa, you go in and you have particular items that you

want, and they really revolutionize this touchscreen ordering, which is just still magnificent and everything else has sort of fallen in place. But another good one is Sheets in Western Pennsylvania. They go up against Wawa, Pennsylvania.

Some other iconic gas station brands. You got Quick Trip, Royal Farms for the fried chicken. That was big in Maryland when I was there. Cumberland Farms and then Casey's Pizza. So I want people to sound off in the YouTube comments of this podcast about what their favorite local, regional convenience chain is gas station. Because people are very intense about it. And I'd love to hear what y'all think. Mine's 7-Eleven.

Oh, stop. I mean, 7-Eleven's great. There's 13,000. I wouldn't consider that regional. I know. I'm joking. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Wednesday.

If you've got any feedback on the show, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Ed Lewis is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is out with a torn medial red enaculum allowing dislocation of the posterior

tibialis tendon. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production. of Morning Brew. Trade show day, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly

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