THE CRUDE TRUTH Ep. 53 Grace Stanke, Nuclear Engineer and Miss America 2023

What an honor to Have Grace Stanke on THE CRUDE TRUTH! Not only is she Miss America 2023 BUT she is also a Nuclear Engineer and she is paving the way for our younger generation to see all the great and clean energy Nuclear can bring to our world. In this episode we learn how a little bit goes such a long way in the Nuclear Energy World. Did you know that America is already power is supplied by nuclear power plants? Now you know and tune it to this episode to learn even more with Miss Stanke. . . . Thank you so much Grace for coming on the show!

Please reach out to Grace Stanke on Linkedin

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Highlights of the Podcast

THE CRUDE TRUTH Ep. 53 Grace Stanke, Nuclear Engineer and Miss America 2023

Rey Treviño [00:00:00] My guest today is bringing glitz and glamor back to nuclear energy here in America. We talk to her next on the Crude Truth.

Rey Treviño [00:00:53] NAPE is a proud sponsor of the crude truth. Be sure to register for the NAPE Expo 2024 February 7th through the ninth at the George R Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. Hurry and register today. NAPE where deals happen.

Rey Treviño [00:01:42] Thank you, as always for listening to another episode of The Crude Truth, My teaser just now. Here I am talking about, you know, glitz, glamor, bring you back fun. My guest today is somebody that is just literally world renowned. They are a senior at the University of Wisconsin. But more importantly, she is Miss America 2023. Grace Stanke. Grace, how are you?

Grace Stanke [00:02:11] I am doing so good. It’s been a busy day right in between to do trips, but always, always so excited for podcasts. I love them.

Rey Treviño [00:02:19] Oh, well, hey, I cannot thank you enough for coming on to the crude truth. You know, we had a chance to talk in a little pre-production meeting and adjust what what all struck I am and I’m still trying to come down for that. So if I you know, I do apologize. But, you know, Grace, the reason that I invited you on is, well, you are a senior in college getting a nuclear engineering degree. And you have been representing Miss America all year as a nuclear engineer and advocating for nuclear engineer for out for nuclear well, for nuclear engineers, but also for nuclear energy to provide us the power here in America that we need. And I just cannot say thank you. Thank you so much for doing this over the past year.

Grace Stanke [00:03:09] Oh, well, thanks. I appreciate it. It’s it’s a ton of fun. You know, I part of Miss America and competing is you’ve got to pick a program or a purpose or a social cause that you’re really passionate about. And for me, you know, I have a lot of different stories that I think I could have gone with. But going into nuclear engineering, one of my biggest frustrations in life was I was like, why was I so wrong about what the nuclear industry is? And we can get into that story in a bit. But why is everybody seemingly having these misconceptions about what nuclear power has to offer? So I really decided to make that cause, you know, talking about electricity, talking about reliable and clean energy in America, and how can we get there in a logical manner and how can we get there in a manner that will work in the long run?

Rey Treviño [00:03:55] You know, you brought up a logic and work in the long run. It’s like, you know, I’m not against any other forms of energy. You either wind and solar, but they need to be logical, they need to be reliable and they need to be, most importantly, affordable. And right now, I think, you know, nuclear and natural gas and oil are the most affordable. You know, I think, you know, obviously oil and natural gas are still the most abundant here in Texas. Just I think you you were just recently down here. So you know how hot it gets down here in Texas.

Grace Stanke [00:04:31] Oh, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:04:32] And our ERCOT grid, we were at over 50% natural gas producing our energy and we were at about 15% nuclear because we do have one of those in Glen Rose. And then I think the rest of it was all spread out. But wind and solar were less than 15% by themselves, they all combined. So it’s like they’re not reliable today. And here it is, the middle of summer in Texas at over 100 degrees. And you know, next to oil and gas, nuclear is probably the most sound transition that I think we could make moving forward. What do you think?

Grace Stanke [00:05:12] For me personally, You know, I think if I had sort of my ideal energy portfolio, ultimately what I want is a diverse energy portfolio and the necessities as the baseload source of power. So the type of power that you need night and day, right? The stuff that that kind of like powers your alarm clocks or your AC and you’re here to help stay warm or cool, depending on the weather. I’m in Wisconsin, so we need our heat more than our AC. But truly, that baseload source of power needs to be reliable and it needs to be always available. You know, you’re you’re in Texas. I think Texas kind of experienced what happens when you lose that baseload source of power a few years ago when you had that deep freeze and lost access to electricity for weeks, You know, people people died in that scenario. So baseload is a really essential thing to have reliable energy. For now, I’m all about zero carbon energy. I’m all about clean energy. But some forms of clean energy or zero carbon energy are not reliable. But nuclear is the most reliable source of energy. It’s tied with hydroelectric just because those two are pretty much always available and always on, which is just so incredible. So to me, if I had to, you know, make an ideal energy portfolio, I want the baseload source of power to be nuclear and hydroelectric after that. You know what? Use what makes sense. You know, in Texas, solar panels work pretty great down there in Wisconsin, not so much. We have snow for like eight months a year. So it gets a little bit tougher for us to rely on solar for that extra source of energy that we need.

Rey Treviño [00:06:43] Well, I like how you call it in the energy portfolio and talking about, hey, we need to have that base because in any portfolio, whether it’s a financial one or an energy, you got to have that that that constant that one thing you know is going to work. You know, when we talk about nuclear, you know, it technically has the highest capacity to produce energy. And to my listeners out there, what that means is, you know, you don’t always harness all the energy that is that you’re able to grab from that energy source or that power from the energy source. And, you know, nuclear has the highest with over 90%. Is that correct, that you can capture most of the energy to use for power?

Grace Stanke [00:07:24] Yeah. So nuclear is pretty incredible because we have, I would say, with energy density, the best way to think about it and look about it is just compare how much fuel it used to power your entire life. So I actually I don’t know if you guys have visuals, but I’m just going to grab something here really quick. So this is the size of a fuel pellet, right? And if you’re listening, it’s maybe the size. It’s about half of a knuckle about the size of a gummy bear. Right. A fuel pellet is a very small thing. This is just a 3D printed plastic piece, not an actual not an actual piece of nuclear fuel. Okay. But that’s what fuels nuclear reactors, right? Is a bunch of these little itty bitty pellets that are stacked on top of each other to make rods. And you put a bunch of rods together to make bundles and you put a bunch of bundles together to make a whole reactor. And that’s what powers nuclear reactors throughout someone’s entire lifetime. When it comes to the energy density and the incredible ability of a nuclear reactor, the thing is, is that. You would only produce about a soda cans worth of this fuel to power your entire life. If your entire life was powered by nuclear energy and nuclear power plants, your entire life creates a soda can worth of nuclear waste. So not to put it not to put a value on somebody’s life, but it’s something that I think speaks a lot to the comparison of of other forms of energy production, where a little bit goes such a long ways within the nuclear realm.

Rey Treviño [00:08:54] Well, you know, you mentioned that a little bit goes a long way in how how much comes out of a little little basically out of that pellet, you know. And so here we are in this day and age that we now use nuclear power on our submarines and on our our aircraft carriers. Why? Because it doesn’t have as much waste or not waste? Well, not as much waste. But also, the ships are not as heavy as they would be carrying fuel and having to stop in port. So that right there alone is another key reason why I think nuclear is such a great opportunity for the future. But let me ask you this. Let’s talk about the negativities, because I use that example right there as a positive example. When somebody says that nuclear energy is dirty and that it’s dangerous, you know, we need to show that it’s not. And, you know, how can we go about doing that? Because technically, if nuclear power was dangerous, would it really be in the oceans every day of our lives and in our ships protecting America?

Grace Stanke [00:10:03] Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest things when it comes to danger and safety, when people are really worried is I do try to put it into perspective of what people are worried about. So with large scale nuclear power plants, right, they’ve been around for about 60, 65 years across the globe and they power 20, not 20, 20% of America, but 10% of the globe overall, which is pretty incredible. That’s that’s an a large amount of power.

Rey Treviño [00:10:29] Yes.

Grace Stanke [00:10:30] Rob just walked in.

Rey Treviño [00:10:32] It’s okay

Grace Stanke [00:10:33] Join or not, but they power about 20% of of America and 10% of the globe. Now, 60 to 70 years of that much energy production, there’s only been three major incidents. And I don’t even have to list them for you to know what those major incidents are right now. I hate to I hate to do this because I tend to do this to compare the level of risk and the level of of comparison. But compare that to just 15 years of, you know, things of more like the fossil fuel industry. In America alone, there has been significantly more deaths and significantly a lot more dangers on that front than there is on the nuclear side. And I like I said, I hate to do that, but it tends to rationalize it in a way for people to recognize that, wait, this is truly just what happens over 60 years. And then from there, you know, talking about nuclear waste, those used nuclear fuel rods over the 60 years of producing 20% of America’s power, all of it fits in a Walmart. We know how to store it. We know how to take care of it. We’ve been doing it for 60 years. And we can continue doing that, which I think is an important thing to recognize that the amount of waste that is produced by nuclear is so minuscule and we have the science to solve it. We can actually reprocess it, we can recycle it, we can reuse 90 to 95% of the materials in that spent nuclear fuel. It’s just the government’s got to give us the say So the yes, the okay to do that. So it’s going to be interesting to see where that goes when it comes to that waste management for the nuclear round.

Rey Treviño [00:12:07] No, you know I will walk

Grace Stanke [00:12:11] Round some. So like I’ve never said that before up until today and now I’m just like, why am I saying nuclear realm so often?

Rey Treviño [00:12:17] Well, but you know what? You think about it. And if we could actually power so much more with just the source like nuclear, it would be almost a realm. And this whole area that, like you said, it just powers so much. So No, no, I think it’s a good word. I think it’s a good choice in words. You know, you were talking about, you know, the very few disasters that we don’t have to list them off. And I feel the same way in the oil and gas industry. I tell people all the time that if you got somebody that’s born before 1990, what they remember is the Exxon Valdez. And then if they were born after 1990, they remember the BP oil spill. And after that, there’s not too many dangers that go on other than people risking their lives to provide that energy so we can have the power in the oil and gas industry. And no different then, you know, with with what’s going on in nuclear. Now, you mentioned the administration and government. More importantly. Let me let me let me say that, you know, what can we do? Because, you know, how is it that that we can’t get more nuclear literally out of being built? You know, we don’t have a lot of it that’s going on right now. Grace, how can we do that? What what do you see how we can do that?

Grace Stanke [00:13:35] Yeah. So two of the biggest challenges with nuclear is is it is it’s very it’s a large cost investment. That initial investment to start building a nuclear power plant is massive. Now, I will say on the innovation front, the industry that the types of reactors that we’re creating are so cool. You know, you brought up the Navy and aircraft carriers and submarines, so submarines use nuclear reactors because it’s not producing carbon, so they’re not poisoning themselves within their submarine. But it’s almost what I would call a small modular reactor. It is a small modular reactor. Now, 4 years after those were created in the subs, they’re just now starting to be introduced to the commercial world. Right. And they’re going through NRC sorted certifications and things like that. NRC is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So our our governmental organization that helps mandate and regulate all things nuclear. And it’s and it’s just like that’s a fun thing to me with the Navy, though, is because I’m like, you know, I wonder how much stuff the military has that we could be using on a commercial front to help people get clean energy. It just took us 40 years to be able to innovate to the point on the commercial side where these small modular reactors are going to be able to be manufactured in a factory and just shipped to a site and built on site. It’s kind of like going to be an IKEA, but for nuclear reactors, instead of, you know, having to do everything on site custom for that specific plant, which is what one of the challenges with constructing large scale new nuclear reactors is, You know, we just had the first nuclear new nuclear power plant open up in America in the past 30 years. This year, mobile Unit three down in Georgia. And that’s a huge step in the right direction. But it took twice the time and twice the budget. And I’m not afraid to acknowledge that. I’m not afraid to say that that’s a problem. Right. That’s just there’s something not right going on there. And one of the biggest things is because there were so many regulations and so many things that held them back as they were constructing this plant, that it led to more costs. Yeah. If there wasn’t new things proposed in place of EPA regulations and things like that, which there is a good reason for that, that wouldn’t have gone over budget and over time as much. Now I would to to say, you know, look back to the seventies when we did build 90 different nuclear reactors across the country. Actually more than that, we did that within 1 to 2 years of each power plant. They were built within two, three years. And now why did it take us 20 years to build? VOGEL Yeah. So that’s something to to recognize that when we have consistency, when we have a design that strong and common, then we’ll be able to perfects that building technique, that cost technique and things like that. The folks at Vogel are the folks that took that first leap, and I say thank you to them for making that happen. But it’s also it’s also a step in the right direction towards this innovation and supporting these cheaper costs, you know, using this IKEA, but nuclear power plants essentially, and then being able to go through and and build them in an effective manner.

Rey Treviño [00:16:40] Well, you know, Grace, you mentioned that you had a chance to go down to that new nuclear site, right. A couple of months back. What was your favorite thing about being there?

Grace Stanke [00:16:51] But. Well, you know, it’s really exciting. So for me personally, I was sitting in the control room when they hit 75% power for unit three for the first time, because that was the first time they were going up to full power. Right. And that’s like for me as a nuclear engineering student, I was geeking out. I was learning out it’s the coolest thing in the world to see that happen. And I’ll be honest, it’s like not that exciting because typically what a nuclear reactor control room looks like and is when under normal operations and everything, it’s just okay and press that button, right? Confirming press that button. Yes, confirmed press that button so and so presses the button and like, that’s it. That’s when we are control rooms are they’re very calm, very collected, they’re very planned, very well communicated. We always use three way communication. And it’s something that like being there in that control room, even though it was a very boring thing to hit 75% power because it was that calm, cool, collected experience, it was still just so exciting to be a part of that history in a sense.

Rey Treviño [00:17:54] Well, that was big history because, like you’ve you’ve highlighted that, hey, this is the first one we’ve done in 20 years. And, you know, there are so many more rules. And the same thing in the only gas industry. The EPA is adding more to what we’re doing and which truly add to the cost, which it’s like that cost has to be spread somewhere, right? It’s like it doesn’t just magically disappear once it gets paid, somebody else is going to pay for that cost. But also, you know, I’ll describe it like when you go drill a new oil well and some were brand new, okay, some brand new area, that cost is going to be tremendously higher than the last. Well, that you drill out there. Why? Because by then you’ve streamlined. You’ve figured out a way that you can save here. You can, you know, add more here by doing this and cutting this cost and being more safe and effective doing other deals. So I really hope what that nuclear power plant in Georgia will do is at least give us more excitement to go do more. And, you know, I think with you in the position that you’ve been in this year as Miss America 2023, I’m still in awestruck. You have really done a great job because you are promoting clean energy. I mean, and one of your great quotes that you’ve been seeing as reliable energy in addition to clean energy, and that is what nuclear energy is at the end of the day, is a great reliable energy that’s inexpensive and is long term, as you’re just saying. I want to get back to the IKEA nuclear deals real quick, if I may. That is really awesome. And and I won’t even touch on the government having things. And here we are for you. Like that’s for another. I’m sure there’s a ton of podcast out there. Yeah, that’s a whole.

Grace Stanke [00:19:41] It’s like it’s one of it’s one of those fun, like, conceptual things to think about where you’re like, Oh my God, what kind of science do we have that we just don’t know about? It’s kind of a fun thing, just conceptually for me.

Rey Treviño [00:19:53] It no, it is. It gets you out there and you get to think all these awesome, wonderful things and are what is what are more importantly. Well so they Heidi you know The X-Files, right?

Grace Stanke [00:20:03] Oh, God.

Rey Treviño [00:20:05] But but no, we’ll get back to getting back to nuclear. Oh, I hadn’t heard about these little modular deals that they’re going to start making. And what a game changer. Absolutely right. That is. I’ve always heard that you could literally take a nuclear reactor the size of a soccer ball and that could what, like power your whole neighborhood or something like a very small neighborhood or a house or something like that. Is that correct?

Grace Stanke [00:20:32] Yeah. You know, I, I haven’t heard that before, so I’m not going to not going to speak to that. But, you know, these are some are these these small modular reactors that are starting to really come out. You know, I think we’re going to be seeing the first one built in America by about 2028. That that’ll be the first kind of test run for all of them. And then we’ll go from there. It’s a really exciting opportunity because, you know, I think people are used to large scale nuclear reactors where they take up a decent amount of land, you know, for the amount of power they produce. They’re still very effective with their land usage, which is just another pro when it comes to nuclear, is the fact that, you know, it takes up such a small amount of land. I’m from I’m from Wisconsin, I said. And agriculture, we need land, right? We need to be using that land for farming to help feed people, to help produce that, for people to eat. So when it comes to producing electricity, small land usage is important and essential and small modular reactors, the whole entire complex and everything about it, it can all be built within about the size of a football field, which is really, really incredible because now we’re talking about the concept of, you know, having a nuclear power plant. Yeah. In your backyard, that power is not only your neighborhood, but potentially your entire town and your entire city. And it provides high paying jobs and it provides reliable energy for people to always use.

Rey Treviño [00:21:51] You know, I’m glad you mentioned jobs just in general. Whether you know, it high paying was because of that Georgia plant. I mean, how many jobs did he create in building it and all the jobs that it creates now that it needs to be ran. So here we are, you know, providing Americans with good hard work. And it’s just it’s honest work. And that is also something that you’re doing by promoting nuclear energy for the future is like, hey, we’re going to need people, we’re going to need real work work force to go do this thing and provide a real reasonable living for people for the next 50 to 100 years.

Grace Stanke [00:22:28] Yeah. I mean, I just want to add on to that, too, when it comes to working in, you know, not just the nuclear industry, but I truly feel like this applies to all of the energy industry overall. I feel like for me, growing up, I felt like you had to be an engineer to work in this sort of industry. And I want to emphasize that you 100% do not need to be an engineer to do it. And it took me getting three years into my degree before I could realize that. Right. But we need welders. We need marketing people, we need communicators, we need politicians. We need everybody on board to help out this cause and to help out the mission of supporting a reliable energy grid. And that’s something that I think I really just want to light reinforce. You know, especially I want to double reinforce the whole welding concept and like that sort of blue collar award. They get paid so much money in the nuclear industry. If you get the nuclear certifications, I’m like, Man, why would I go get a four year degree? I could have done that.

Rey Treviño [00:23:27] All the will. The welding is no joke. I’ve done I’ve checked out the underwater welding for offshore oil platforms. And things like that. Dude.

Grace Stanke [00:23:36] Yeah,.

Rey Treviño [00:23:37] It’s no joke what they get paid. I’m like, Excuse me, You get what I’m like, Yeah, but.

Grace Stanke [00:23:42] Then.

Rey Treviño [00:23:42] It it’s crazy.

Grace Stanke [00:23:44] It’s crazy. Like, this is one of those, like, super uncommon jobs in the nuclear industry. But we always talk about it as kind of like a fun story and a fun thing, but it is an option for very few people to go into. So some people have to like dive into the nuclear reactor core or the spent fuel pool when it’s shut down and when it’s all safe and everything, obviously. And obviously when you’re diving in and you’re getting exposed to a certain amount of radiation now, you never get exposed to over the legal amount of radiation just because safety standards were all on top of that. That is our number one priority, right. As as nuclear people and as people in general. Those people will work literally one day a year. They will dive once and they get their paycheck for the entire year based off of that one dive. And I’m like, That’s insane. That’s just insane.

Rey Treviño [00:24:32] But oh my gosh, I’ve never heard that. I did not know that. And it makes sense. Excuse me about the radiation, because don’t we use it for other things to help heal us? So if it’s just like that, I mean, while one day a year, could you imagine working one day a year? I can’t.

Grace Stanke [00:24:49] I can’t either. I can’t either. Crazy things.

Rey Treviño [00:24:52] Will. I’ll say this. You know, speaking of working, you’re graduating here about the end of the year and your your your ten year of of your year of about doing Miss America is, you know, one obviously, you’re part of a group now that’s just so unique. But what’s what’s going to be next for you here as you continue into 2024?

Grace Stanke [00:25:16] Yeah. For me personally, I I’ll be working as a core design engineer, but also still advocating for nuclear energy just because this is forever my passion and forever what I want to be doing. But it’s going to be really exciting. I’m helping provide clean power to Americans to use, and it’s an inexpensive power. I’ll be working with the largest nuclear fleet in America, so I’m super stoked about that. To be working with 12 different nuclear power plants across the country.

Rey Treviño [00:25:44] Well, I just I’m so excited because you give you’re literally a bright shining light. And what unfortunately, as engineers and nuclear and petroleum industries are going down like they’ve dropped tremendously over the last ten years. And I really think you are going to be I’ll I’ll compare you to the movie Top Gun of the 1980s when all of a sudden the Air Force just shot up and recruitment. I mean, I have a feeling what you’ve done this year has really inspired a lot of people to go, you know what? It’s okay to go into a field that’s not 100% like you have handled it like a champ. You have been so professional all year, and I think you’ve just given so much motivation and more importantly, inspired people to go into these other fields that aren’t. Yeah, sexy, if I may, that, you know, it’s like and you know, I do I do want to see this also. And, you know, I’m interested that you know what you guys at this America are really diving into some awesome causes. Here you are with nuclear engineering and trying to bring in reliable energy to a clean energy. Like you’re not just saying, hey, you know, world peace and down with fossil fuels. And I think even one of the other contestants brought up agriculture and how they need to represent Feeding America. And I just think these causes that you guys are that you ladies are doing nowadays are definitely a lot different than I. You know, I remember growing up, which was world peace. And it also I do got a real quick shout out to Miss Texas. She was second runner up. You know, she did lose to New York, which, you know, that’s a sting right there for any Dallas Cowboys fan that think about the New York Giants. But but, hey, she was second runner up out.

Grace Stanke [00:27:37] You had to you had to take the barrels down and buy it. Oh, my God.

Rey Treviño [00:27:42] But I just think what you’re doing and what your organization is doing is just awesome and really paving the way for young women to do more. And in the industry, you know, I mean, that’s one thing that’s also that you are doing, that you are now breaking barriers as a woman in nuclear engineering and STEM, which is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And so I just thank you so much, Grace, for that.

Grace Stanke [00:28:10] Well, thank you for all the kind words. First of all, I really I really do appreciate that. I just want to mention, like about nuclear engineers, it’s been exciting, you know, with Vogel opening up in Georgia. So Georgia Tech actually saw an increase of 40% in their undergraduate enrollment for nuclear engineering. So I’m hoping that, you know, it’s not just me that’s putting this effort forward. It’s the combined effort of a lot of different advocates and a lot of different groups that are that are helping represent and recruit people into the nuclear industry. So it’s super exciting to see that number slowly coming back up. But, you know, all the women that I competed with for Miss America, I think one thing that people don’t realize is you only compete for Miss America once. And, you know, you brought up football. It’s kind of a fun thing that every year on Super Bowl Sunday, every pageant girl ever says, you know, you are more likely to have a daughter, you are more likely to have a son compete in the Super Bowl than a daughter compete at Miss America. So it’s already a huge accomplishment just to get to Miss America and meeting all of those other women. You know, I think each and every one of them could do this job and could do it incredibly. But it’s truly so exciting and such an honor to be the person that was selected to represent them. You know, I always say that I represent the women who can. I was always a person that was told I read like a mad. But, you know, those those little stories when as a kid that I, I was talking to my dad about Mad Libs and I realized he didn’t know what they were. So now I’m going to explain it. But like a mad lib is like a story that’s got blanks. And you would ask a person who doesn’t know the story for like an adjective or a noun, and you just fill it in and it always ends up being a really crazy or random story then because of that. So I’ve been told I read like a Madlib nuclear engineer, Miss America, a violinist, Division one water skier. I love the outdoors and hiking and everything like that. So it’s really about representing the women who can, you know, it’s not about putting people in boxes. It’s not about really limiting them in any way. We have hobbies. We’re human beings, but we can have incredible passionate and powerful careers, too.

Rey Treviño [00:30:15] You’re absolutely. Right. And I did want to bring up the violin. I did see that. Wow. You can you can play that violin. You know, It’s awesome. Yes.

Grace Stanke [00:30:25] Thanks. I appreciate it. I took lessons for since I was eight up until through high school. And it was it was always it was always a really big part of my life growing up. Now, as I as I kind of move into my adult life, we’ll see how much it stays around. I don’t think I’ll ever do it more than just a hobby. I don’t think I’d ever want to do like gigs or anything, but it’s a ton of fun and I love it. It’s a great way as a as an emotional escape.

Rey Treviño [00:30:51] Well, good know everybody has to have something that they want to do just to kind of check out every now and then. So I will say that. Grace Miss America 2023, again, what you and your ladies did this year, congratulations to all 51 of y’all. Is that correct? competitor are 52 now. 51

Grace Stanke [00:31:10] 51.

Rey Treviño [00:31:10] Okay.

Grace Stanke [00:31:10] All 50 states plus D.C.

Rey Treviño [00:31:12] D.C.. Yes. Okay. All 51 of y’all. I did not know that stat about being more likely to be in the Super Bowl. I have a son, so I’m pretty excited that maybe he can be in the Super Bowl because obviously I don’t have a daughter, so maybe in America is out. But Grace, again, thank you so much for coming on to the crew true today. So all the women out there, I will ask you to do this on the spot. You know, one more one more thing of positivity from you, if you don’t mind. Our motivation to tell everybody out there that’s listening for sure.

Grace Stanke [00:31:43] For sure. I think the biggest thing in terms of in terms of thinking that I’ve been doing recently, and this is actually coming after thinking about what I want to be speaking about next year post America, Miss America, truly, you’re always going to have stereotypes. You’re always going to have somebody assuming something about you. And I know personally that I get so frustrated with that. People assume something when I walk in a room wearing a crown and a sash. People assume something. When I’m a woman in nuclear engineering, there’s always going to be assumptions and stereotypes, but it’s learning how to manage those, learning how to maybe be able to use them to your advantage, almost to to help, you know, change that that conception or that misconception that people have. So truly stick with it. Be confident in who you are, know your place in the world because you got this and you’re going to do incredible things. And that’s not just for women, That’s for anyone and everyone.

Rey Treviño [00:32:39] Jolly well, Grace. Thank you, Miss America. 2023 Nuclear Engineer Major, thank you so much for coming on to the Crude Truth to talk about nuclear engineering. The Miss America pageant and just again, being an inspiration, not just motivational, but being an inspiration to little, little girls and everybody out there in the world. So thank you for representing America. And so thank you so much.

Grace Stanke [00:33:07] Thanks so much, Rey. I really appreciate it.

Rey Treviño [00:33:10] And we’ll see you next time on another episode of The Crude Truth.