Scott Nolan - CEO of General Matter on Uranium Enrichment | SRS #211

[Music]. Scott Nolan, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. Excited to be. here. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I've been, you know, I've been really. interested in the energy grid. I think I. I started looking into that probably. about 2 years ago. And now I'm terrified. at the US's grid and and and our power. consumption versus how much power we. actually produce and how we're relying. on China for all these things. And so.

with what you're doing with enriching. uranium and and being involved in. nuclear energy, I'm just fascinated in. the subject. And so yeah, thank you for. coming. So it's going to be uh very. educational for me. Yeah, thanks for. having me. This is a really important. topic which we'll get into but um you. know our company's mission is to restore. US leadership in enrichment to restore. US leadership in nuclear energy because.

that's what we see as the future of the. grid the future of US growth um power. growth and we'll get into all the. geopolitical reasons why that's really. important. Perfect. Perfect. Everybody. starts with an introduction right. So. here we go. Scott Nolan, CEO of General. Matter, the American enrichment company. enriching uranium in the US to fill. nuclear to fill the nuclear gap. Former. SpaceX engineer who helped develop the. original Falcon propulsion system and.

Dragon capsule subsystem. You worked. with NASA to return US cargo capability. to the space station. You're a partner. at the Founders Fund where for over a. decade you have led investments across. energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, space, and trans transportation. Cornell mechanical and aerospace. engineering graduate Stanford MBA where. you are co-president of the. entrepreneurs club and you're a. visionary taking on the geopolitical and.

technical challenges of nuclear energy. and driving towards real energy. independence. It's quite the background, man. Quite. the background. So, couple things uh we. just got to knock out real quick. One is. everybody gets a gift. Thank you. Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears. Awesome. Legal in all 50 states. Perfect. Made in the USA. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. Um you know, it's.

bad for him to show up empty-handed. Oh, man. Love the presents. I knew I knew. you may give some gummy bears. So, what. I brought is a replica of the Thumper. from the Dune movie if you've seen it. So, we can get into why this is relevant. later. Oh, man. That's awesome. Thank. you. Yeah. Yeah. The quick version is if. you've if you've seen Dune, if you've. seen Dune 2, you know that the Thumper. calls in the worm, and the worm is what. makes the spice. And in that movie, in.

that society, the spice powers all these. different things like space travel and. um so it's this really really important. element basically and house of trades is. sent to this planet to go mine it um you. know to continue continue progress of. their civilization. So we we view there. as being a bunch of analogies there with. uranium and uranium refinement or. enrichment. I can see that. Thank you. Yeah, that's awesome. Um,

last thing then we'll get into it. So, I. have a a Patreon account. It's a. subscription account that we've turned. into a community. They've been here. since the beginning. and uh when I started this thing in my. attic, excuse me. And uh they're still with us. today. And so, they've been just. extremely supportive of me and they're. the reason I get to be here with you. So. one of the things I do is I offer them. the opportunity to ask each and every. guest a question. So this is from Dylan.

Stockman. You invest in a lot of others. Who is. someone who you've invested in. financially or not that enhance the. trajectory of your life? There's probably been a bunch um. direct impact on me. It's going to be. hard to not say Elon. So Founders, you. know, first I worked for Elon at SpaceX, did a few other things and then joined.

Founders Fund and Founders Fund invested. in SpaceX, invested in um Neurolink, invested in Boring Company. And so I. think just looking at the SpaceX. example, yes, I worked there early on, but some of the impact that they had. much later on me was through the. Starlink network. So just the concept of. having internet, you know, internet. comms, internet uh coming from space, from a from a space constellation is. something that seemed like sci-fi one or.

two decades ago and now it's now it's. real, you know. So I'm a customer. directly impacted me founders fund. investment. So that's perfect to go. with. There's a follow- on question. also. Do you believe a person with. financial backing can outperform a. driven a driven individual with less. capital? I think the driven individual. with less capital wins. I think so, too. That's cool to hear. All right. You ready to get into the.

interview? Let's do it. Me, too, man. So, I just want to start off with a. question. Like I said, I've dove into the energy. grid, where these trans where the. transformers come from, where the solar. panels come from. I mean, there's this. big debate on, you know, clean energy. and renewables and fossil fuels and and. I just I don't understand why we're not. taking nuclear more seriously. Or maybe.

we are, you know, with the with the the. new administration, although it's only. been 6 months. But but it just it seems. like it's the cleanest. It's packs the. most punch. It's the most sustainable. I. mean, and and that's, you know, I don't. know much about the energy industry, but. I mean, from everything I've read, that. seems to be true. So why why aren't we. taking this more seriously? I think we. are now. That's the good news. So I. think for many decades we did not if you.

if you think all the way back to the. 50s60s everyone thought nuclear was. going to be the future of energy energy. to at one point they said energy will be. will be too cheap to meter so cheap that. it won't even be worth having the power. meter on your house that was the idea um. obviously that hasn't happened today. nuclear is about 20% of the grid so. still a pretty important chunk of where. electricity comes from But it hasn't. really grown in a long time. I think in.

the last couple years, we're seeing both. political parties now come together to. say, "Okay, we need more base load. energy and everyone's now acknowledging. that nuclear is clean. It's it is green. energy. It's no particulate emissions, no carbon emissions. It's base load, so. you can rely on it. So, if you're. running a huge AI cluster, you can. actually keep the 99 99.99%. uptime that you need.

Um, you don't have to rely on storage. You don't have to rely on weather. So, I. think it's it's just the strictly. superior energy source. I think that's. it's been the reality for a long time, but public perception. was not, you know, is that that's not. the case. We can get get into why that. is. Yeah. Why is that? So I think you had this environment. where. I mean we we could be leaps and bounds. ahead of where we are right now in. everything had we taken you know our our.

our energy a lot more seriously. Yeah. If you look at the grid our production. has been pretty flat since 2010. In that. time frame China's doubled their grid. and they were the same same as us in. 2010. So they're now twice as big. So. that just shows you 15 years you can you. can double your grid if you want to. Um. and electricity production is highly. linked to GDP. And so if you want to. grow your GDP, you grow energy.

production. You do things with that. energy. Um we could be far far ahead of. where we are. But you know what's the. what's the best time to plant a tree? It's like 20 years ago or or today. So I. think finally people are coming around. to the fact that we need to grow the. grid. We need to do it with clean clean. sources. scalable sources, reliable, and. that's just nuclear. And so I' I'd say. it was in the last couple years that. politically there's been support for. nuclear both under this administration. and bunch of recent actions that are.

going to be very helpful as well as the. prior administration. Um and so we're. finally seeing that unblock. The prior. administration was into nuclear as well. Yeah, there was support for it. I didn't. know that. Yeah, it's um couple years. ago really started. pushing on nuclear as something that. needed to happen. So there was a large. desire for these new advanced reactors. that are even safer um than existing. ones. Existing ones are already the.

safest form of base load energy, but. even safer, smaller, easier to. construct, hopefully much cheaper. So there was a push around that starting. a few years ago. And in 2024, the last. administration created a program for uh. availability of that fuel for those. reactors cuz all those reactors have no. source of fuel right now other than uh. foreign adversaries. And so we don't. produce that fuel in the US. So the last. administration did realize that and said. we need to create programs to encourage.

US companies to actually make this fuel. since that was something that happened. in 2024 that um we we are now a part of. that program but it's getting even more. support under current administration. There's been recent executive orders a. couple weeks ago that dealt with nuclear. by this administration that's going to. further accelerate things. So it's been. become totally bipartisan the last. couple years. I mean do you think do you. think it's the fear of nuclear we like. is it a misconception between nuclear. weapons and nuclear power? Yes. that.

that that. has created the setback. I think there's. there's two things. There's the fear of. weapons. There's also the fear of. accidents. But if you look at the, you know, most. famous US accident, 3M Island, no one actually died from 3M Island from. radiation exposure, from anything else. What happened there? Uh, so good good. question. And so 3M Island was a famous. uh meltdown that happened in the US in.

uh in Pennsylvania. And so there were. two reactors on 3M island, an island of. land um in a river and a series of. operator mistakes caused one of them to. have a meltdown. Um and what that means. is the fuel overheated. there was, you. know, some issues caused by that and. then potentially some um the fear of a. meltdown is that you get some radiation. leakage, but you have containment. vessels that contain all these things.

And that's where a lot of the cost from. nuclear comes from is making sure that. in no circumstance can any radioactive. material ever release from the facility. And so three-mile island um one of the. reactors shut uh shut down melted. partial meltdown. due to human error series of human error. that due to process controls would not. occur today. But even so this thing that. people view as this crazy disaster and I. think it happened right after a movie.

came out called the China syndrome which. was about a nuclear meltdown. So this. movie came out and right after this. accident happened and just drove the US. into a state of fear about nuclear that. lasted decades. And so fast forward to. today, one of those reactors is still. out of commission, but the other one. Microsoft is planning to turn back on to. power AI. No kidding. So they renamed. Three Mile Island to Crane uh Crane. Energy Center, I believe. And so one of.

those reactors is going to come back. So. this thing that people really worry. about, they site three-mile island, they. cite accidents. Hey, nuclear can't be. safe. Nuclear is extremely safe. It's. the safest form base load. And even the. worst accident in the US history, which. was caused by human error that would not. occur today and can't occur with the. more advanced reactors, even that one. result in z in zero deaths. And so by. not building nuclear, we instead did. lots of other stuff. We did coal,

natural gas, wind, solar, all those. things we need, but uh none of them are. as safe as nuclear. Yeah. Well, I mean. do you think that do you think any of. the setbacks are you know big oil and. gas industry and. I mean I don't blame them. I think I. think the fossil fuels industry, oil and. gas have been doing what they've you. know they're on their mission. Let's. have US energy independence. Let's, you.

know, pull from the natural gas reserves. we have. Natural gas being half the. carbon output of of other types of. fossil fuels. And so, you know, that's. that's been a big part of how the US. actually reduced its carbon emissions. the last few years was was natural gas. So, I think those companies are just. laser focused on what they're trying to. do. I think the fact that nuclear has. not become bigger is a US policy. decision and it's the nuclear industry.

um maybe not pushing hard enough for for. progress really defending themselves. because there's a lot of great people in. nuclear who have believed in nuclear for. decades and diligently worked away at it. and it should be much bigger than it is. Can you. help the audience understand how much we. could advance, you know, talk about the. how important energy is in everyday.

society and and especially with, you. know, with the AI boom hang uh happening. right now and all the data centers that. we need and how much power that's going. to consume. I mean, can can you go into. that a little bit on on how important. this actually is? Yeah, just to so set. the stage overall if we just talk about. the US, US has 94 reactors operating. produce 97 gawatt call it 100 gawatt of. electricity and that's roughly 18 1.5%.

of our grid energy production. Um, in terms of how big this could be, I. think total, so you know, call it 5x. that for the overall grid average. production. And then total installed. production capacity in the US is like. 1,250 gawatt. So a lot of that's not operating all the. time. That's like peaker plants. It. might be wind, solar. Not everything is. base load. And then just to calibrate.

internationally, US and China neck. andneck in 2010 on production capacity. on the grid. Since then, China doubled. By the end of the decade, it'll triple. So you can double and triple the grid if. you want to. They've done a lot of that. through nuclear, but much more with. coal. And so other countries are. expanding and they're doing it not in. the cleanest way. So us doing it with. nuclear, us doing it with other things, you know, it displaces manufacturing. that might happen there with a cleaner. source of energy here. So.

geopolitically, if you think about US. versus China, people are worried about. conflicts of all types. AI conflict, kinetic conflict, economic, all three of. those come back to energy. So if you want to have the US being in. the lead on AI, manufacturing or. economic influence, you need to have the. most energy. It's directly linked to. GDP. Um as a company, we believe in high. energy societies. Energy societies that. consume and use effectively a lot of.

energy. And if you look at all the. countries on earth, there is not a. single country that is low energy and. high GDP. So, he's sent us a graph. Mhm. Energy. consumption versus income per capita in. 2022. I'll overlay that on the screen, but it it shows high income, low energy. countries don't exist. Yeah. If you want poor countries to get.

the standard of living that we have, it's going to take more energy. So, that's you, you know, we can we can look. at the global lens and that's simply the. reality. If you want if you want. everyone to have a good quality of life, you know, be able to heat and cool their. homes, have refrigeration, have all the. things we have, it's going to take a lot. more energy. And there's there's no way. around it. One of the big Oh, is this. India? Are they do they produce more. energy than us as well? Uh per capita.

No. Let's see. Where's India on here? Yeah. Per capita, no. But um overall, yes, India, China, huge, huge production and consumption. You've heard me talk about Patriot. Mobile for a while now. They've stood in. the gap for Americans who believe that. faith, family, and freedom are worth.

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or enter SRS to get 15% off your first. order. That's tr.com/srs. These statements and products have not. been evaluated by the FDA. These. products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or. condition. I mean in on top of that I mean I've. been talking to a lot of innovators a. lot of tech innovators which you said. had Dino Leverukas on who's um founder.

of Seronic. Mhm. Um been talking to a. lot of a lot of AI types. Alex Wang had. Sham Sankar in and and I mean they're. all talking about how much energy that. we need, you know, in in in the race AI. And so. I mean I've heard of these mini reactors. that people are starting to. build. I don't Are those I mean are they. using those yet? Is that legal? Not yet.

They're not using them yet. In terms of. the AI demand, if you just project out. AI demand, it's going to be equal to our. grid by 2030. It's just this exponential. growth curve. And those are always hard. to predict, but reasonable predictions. say it needs as much as we have on the. entire grid by 2030, which means we have. to start right now expanding production. of reactors, of fuel. And so to your. question, are they using them yet? No,

not yet. There's a lot of companies. building, designing and now building and. will be testing advanced reactor types. and I expect those to we should start. seeing those plug into the grid in about. 5 years. and so we need to do that now if you. know it's 5 years out okay AI is going. to consume equivalent to the US grid. today in 5 years potentially that's. crazy we need to go full speed on. reactor licensing construction.

deployment. And all those reactors need fuel. So. existing reactors need fuel, advanced. reactors need fuel. I think a lot of. people forget about this. You think, okay, I build a nuclear reactor. And nuclear physics is really. complicated, but maybe it's like a, you. know, almost like a perpetual motion. machine, but it's not. It consumes fuel. You reload the fuel every year to 5 to. 10 years depending on the reactor. design. And you need the fuel. production, too. And that's what we're. working on. What what happens if we.

don't advance and AI sucks up that much. energy? But in 5 years, what would. happen? If it soaked up all that energy, then. you're going to you just don't have. enough to go around. So, I think at a. minimum you see electricity rates go up. for homeowners, for your for for businesses. If that happens, you know, in. California, there's occasional. brownouts. I think you see that more if. there's not enough to go around. So. you're getting brownouts, you're getting.

more expensive electricity, you're. probably losing manufacturing to. overseas where there is available. electricity, or you're not getting AI. So you're just going to halt that. progress. Man, I think the the good news. is a lot of the AI builds that people. are doing, the big data centers are. looking for a gigawatt plus. And so a. big part of how they're planning to get. that electricity is by bringing new. production online. um often behind the. meter or plugged into the you know. plugged into the grid for some smoothing. so that they don't have to have you know.

perfect uptime. They can use other. sources like natural gas but we're going. to see a lot of new capacity come online. to feed AI denators that they are. bringing online and that could actually. benefit the grid. So if we do this. right, a big data center builder will. figure out production on their end and. probably overdesign a little bit so. there's margin and be able to feed back. onto the grid. So the rest of through AI. growth through new nuclear that might.

happen at those sites, we should see. rates actually come down over time and. production go up. And so it's the usual. like innovation cycle where in theory, if we're just thinking about the world. as a a fixed sum, zero sum game, the pie. is only so big. Things get worse when you have more. demand. But in reality, as you develop. new technologies to meet this demand, you're going to see things get better. Let's talk about your company.

Yeah. So companies general matter. What. we're doing is enriching uranium to make. nuclear fuel for these reactors. The. reason we're doing that is the US. currently does not have a significant. amount of uranium enrichment or fuel. production. So the US US cannot. currently produce its own nuclear fuel. in any quantity beyond R&D quantities. Are you serious?

So where do we get it from? So currently. we uh we get all of our so there's five. steps in making fuel. You have to mine. it out of the ground. You then turn it. into a gas for enrichment. You then. enrich it which is just it's essentially. a refining process. So enrichment is. separating the element of uranium into. its two couple different types based on. its isotope which is how many neutrons. it has. So it's really a refining.

separation process. So a lot of people. hear in Richmond and they think okay. this sounds dangerous or sounds like. there's going to be a lot of radiation. or there's going to be some sort of. dangerous chemical reactions. It's. actually just separation. So we don't. even have any you know in a enrichment. plant there's no nuclear reactions. happening. You're not making anything go. critical is what they call when there's. a chain reaction and there's no chemical. reactions. You are doing phase change. You're taking some material from a solid. to a gas, but you're just separating it.

So that's the middle step that the US. doesn't currently do. We'll talk more. about that. And then you bring it back. down into a solid, which is called. deconversion. And then you form it into a pellet or a. particle, a pebble, whatever form the. reactor needs. That's called fuel. fabrication. So these five steps, the US. has mining. We have mining in Texas, uh, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado. So there's. mining. Canada has mining a lot, you.

know, a lot of mining for uranium and. Australia has great deposits as well. So. US and its allies have plenty of. uranium. On conversion, we have one. conversion facility in the US that's. operating in Illinois and then Canada. has one too. Um that's again going from. solid to gas. But enrichment the US has. no commercially operating capability. So. we get all of our enrichment from. foreign companies which are statebacked.

entities. Most of it's overseas. So. that's uh we get we get enriched uranium. product from Russia, from France and. from a European consortium of a couple. countries that produce. And then that. consortium at the request of US. utilities built a facility in the US to. produce some of what we need but it's. still less than a third. So twothirds. comes from overseas one/3 produced by. foreign a foreign company in the US. using their technology. And then on the.

on the downstream side of making the. pellets. good capability in the US for doing that. right now. some of the more advanced uh. forms of like little pellets that are. maybe poppy poppy seed size called. trico. It's got some ceramic coatings. around it that Did you say poppy seed. size? Yeah, they're poppy seed size. So, um to get into the details of some of. the fuel forms, there was a type of fuel. that was developed decades ago and. tested for a really long time. Um, so.

it's it's been proven to be really. robust, but you take a tiny piece of. uranium and you coat it with ceramic. And that ceramic means that even in the. worst case scenario where your reactor. somehow disintegrates, these little. pellets are self-contained. So they. can't even release any radioactive gas. So it's another layer of safety on top. So a bunch of the advanced reactor types. are doing that. But if we zoom out, you. know, for to really have domestic. capability, you need all the steps. And.

so the step that's missing right now is. enrichment. And that's why we're working on. enrichment. Why why don't we have. enrichment right now? We used to have. enrichment. Um global map of enrichment. right now, Russia's about half. Europe's. about 40%. China's roughly 10%. Growing really. fast. So the 10% was a couple years ago. It's it's north of that now in the US. just in terms of how much total. enrichment we're doing it's less than.

0.1%. And so you ask how did we get here? Um. these these things are usually it's you. know it's usually over constrained. There's a bunch of reasons why we got. here. We didn't think we needed it. We. thought maybe nuclear isn't growing. anymore. It's fine. We have these. reactors. Up until a couple years there. wasn't agreement that we needed more. reactors. And so why build a bunch of new capacity. in the US for enriching if we're not. going to build a b bunch more reactors?

We can just get this stuff from we can. get enriched uranium from our allies in. Europe and you know other countries as. well. And if you rewind to the history. of this in the 50s the US built a bunch. of enrichment. This was you know cold. war era. We were the world leader in. enrichment. We had these plants spread. out throughout the country that used an. old technique that was expensive. It was. required a lot of energy to do it, but. we were we had the most capacity. And we.

built up a lot of enriched uranium that. we stockpiled. And those stockpiles, we. knew they would last a really long time, you know, decades and decades. And so. with the fall of the Berlin Wall, we. said, let's start trading with our. former enemies. We're allies now. We can. work together. free trade's good for the. world and we can get this product. elsewhere. And so over the next couple. decades um we move towards free trade. and imports and decommission those old.

facilities. assuming that that would be a fine thing. to rely on with a bunch of different. partners. But now we're in a position. where we need to grow nuclear energy. And if you look at how much enrichment. the US is going to need right now we. produce less than a third of what we. need. And the the administration a. couple weeks ago said we are going to. quadruple our nuclear energy by 2050. So. now we went from producing a third of.

what we need less than a third to less. than a 12th. And so we need to create a. massive amount of new nuclear reactor. builds. We have 94 now. We got to. quadruple that. And the fuel production. we need to to increase much more than. that. How much when you're talking about a. poppy seed? Mhm. I mean that's like. nothing. How much energy does that. produce? So a a pellet roughly an inch tall of.

conventional enriched uranium. that one pellet. which roughly like cocaine dimensions. just shrunk down to 1 in tall would. contain as much energy as. a ton of coal or 100 barrels of oil. Wow. And yeah, that's that's also if. that that pellet is conventional uh. nuclear fuel, which is about 5%. enriched. And when you run that through, most of.

the energy is still in there. So you you. put it in, you know, the way that. nuclear reactors work is you have. uranium inside. The fizzile material is uranium 235. you get uranium 235 in proximity to. itself and it starts releasing neutrons. which create heat and it forms a chain. reaction. These chain reactions are. controlled in reactors through the. control rods that they have through. water in the vessel. And so it just it's. basically a heat generator and you take.

the heat traditionally you boil water um. you either do that directly, you know, all the rods are sitting in water and so. they're making heat, the water is. heating up. You can either keep that. really pressurized like a pressure. cooker and exchange the heat and run a. steam turbine outside or you can. actually just let the water boil and use. the steam there to power to power. turbines directly. So that's how. reactors work. And. like a really simple analogy I give is.

it's almost like a compost heap. It's. like you know food scraps and yard waste. spread out isn't going to do anything. Mhm. But you pile it enough, you start. getting some heat production. And that's. essentially what a reactor is doing is. except it's doing it with a much. different type of reaction. It's a. nuclear reaction and it's doing it with. uranium. And so that's how every reactor. works. It's just fuel held in some. configuration with some element of. control over how much heat's produced. and some coolant that's around it. Wow.

So one one little 1 in pellet is. equivalent to a ton of coal or 100. barrels of oil. Yep. That's also. enriched at conventional levels 5%. So. the big reactors we see today, the ones. with the, you know, the Homer Simpson. reactors, the ones with the huge cooling. towers, those run on 5% fuel. So in. nature when you dig up uranium it's. about 7%.

uranium 235 which is the the fizzile. material. and so you do this enrichment process to. get up to four 4.95 3 to 5% a lot of. reactors want to run at 4.95. and so you get it up to that level and. that just means it's more potent energy. and so for any given reactor size you. get that heat production happening at. that enrichment level. If you're talking. about the advanced reactors, a lot of. them want to go to 10%. Or just under. 20%. Because you're going to get that.

much more energy density. Your reactor. core can get smaller or you might not. have to refuel it as much because you. can just let it run all the way further. down as it burns up. And so that makes. economics better. So if a lot of people. want to go to 20% because smaller. reactor core means you can build that. reactor in a factory and maybe you can. just ship it to the site. So now you. avoid a huge construction project and as. you build things in factories. the cost just naturally comes down as. you as you build more and more and scale.

up. Wow. Wow. So. how are you enriching? How did you get into this anyways? Yeah, good question. It's not not something. people really wake up one morning and. say I want to do enrichment of uranium. It's pretty esoteric industry. Um, for me, the background was, you know, I'd worked at SpaceX early on and seen.

what it looks like when people just stop. doing something and completely lose the. capability. And, you know, in SpaceX's. example, I was always in I was aerospace. I. always wanted to do aerospace, rockets, airplanes. And during college, I worked. at Boeing. and I worked on a big government. project. Um, but knew I want, you know, it wasn't moving that fast. We weren't. making that much progress. I knew that there was a future that we.

never had in in space and found out. about SpaceX. Went to work there. We. were 30some people and the whole point. of SpaceX was let's make humanity a. multilanetary species. A lot of people. at the time were really focused on. satellites. and saying, "Okay, there's this. revolution in satellites. They don't. need to be school busiz satellites that. are a billion dollars. We can make. smaller ones using modern technology. Compute, computer chips, all the things. that are just offtheshelf available. through the electronics industry. Let's.

put those into satellites and use them.". And so satellite costs came way down and. satellites got much smaller, but there was still this step of launch. Launch was still bottlenecked, still. super expensive. And so SpaceX's whole. thing was let's bring down the cost of. launch. Let's restore US capability at. the time 2002. um that SpaceX got started. That was. really the focus. And then this became. really urgent with the loss of the space.

shuttle and the grounding of the space. shuttle by the mid 2000s. And so it was. really clear, hey, we need this. capability if we want to have a future. in space. So that SpaceX experience is. really analogous to what what I saw a. couple years ago in nuclear. So post. SpaceX did a bunch of other things. Started at Founders Fund in 2011. So. Founders Fund's a venture capital firm. based in San Francisco. big investor in a bunch of companies. including SpaceX,

um, Palunteer, Andreal, Facebook, um, long list, Airbnb, Spotify, but most known for some of these. incubations of companies that are. solving big national security problems. like Palanteer and Androl. and spent over a decade there meeting. many different nuclear reactor. companies. And in the last couple years, you know, nuclear companies and other forms of. energy. So last couple years was really.

focused on energy, not even on purpose, just it was it was where a lot of. interesting stuff was happening. And starting a couple years ago, the the. common refrain from every nuclear. reactor company was we don't have a. source of fuel. We need this more. enriched fuel enriched to 20% because we. want to make our smaller reactors. We. want to make them in factories. We want. to get really low on cost and you know. high quality, low cost. The whole six. sigma manufacturing strategy, but let's.

use those concepts and apply them to. nuclear reactors instead of treating. every single one as a bespoke one-off. construction project. We're going to. factory produce these. So that that's. pretty much everyone's vision. But they. said to pull that off, you've got to. make it smaller. You can't build a huge. thing, a thing the size larger than a. factory in a factory. You've got to make. small things. And so if we're going to. make the reactor small, we need more. energy dense fuel. How small are they.

making these reactors? So one company. that Founders Fund invested in makes a. reactor that's fits in a shipping. container. So you can truck it to the. site, drop it off, put some perimeter. security around it, put some active. security around it. and minimal sight preparation you can. operate that's how much would that power. those that are in a container like that. one megawatt so that's meant to just. replace a diesel generator so not a lot.

but if you can make them cheap enough. you can tile them together and build you. know a big array of them like you see. with solar yeah solar gas generators. grid scale battery storage same thing so. that's one approach I think you go that. small and it's going to have some really. unique applications that are off-grid or. you know defensebased resilient power. You can go bigger and still achieve some. of the same things. So it's a question. of there's this range called micro. reactors which is anything from a. megawatt. to 20 megawws. And so different people.

have different opinions of how what's. the optimal size but you can go as small. as a shipping container and there's. people trying to go smaller for other. applications. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. So all these. all these ones taking the small. approach, they need this more enriched. fuel enriched to 20% because we want to. make the small core. And what everyone said was, "Yeah, we. don't have a good source of fuel. We. really need to figure this out." And so. I would ask, "Well, where are you going. to get your fuel today?" And the answer.

was, "Hey, only Russia and China make. this fuel. They're the only ones going. to 20%.". And so I would naturally, you know, ask, why don't why don't the US enrichment. companies make this fuel? Is it a lot. harder than making the fuel up to 5%, enriching up to 5%. And they would say, what do you mean US. enrichment companies? They're we're not. really enriching in the US. There's. there's people trying to and trying to. get commercial going, but we we're not. doing it today. And so I spent over a.

year looking for a company to invest in. at Founders Fund that would that was. doing this that could do this that had a. path for bringing the cost down and. bringing production up and regrettably. couldn't find one and said okay what. would it take to getting back to your. question of how did this all start just. asked what would it take to start a. company. to go do this and it was you know you. are going to need financial backing.

to your to your question of who would. win um a really dedicated passionate. founder without much capital or someone. with capital a lot of capital and. capital is important for this I'd say. why not have both and so you need the. capital you need a great founding team. ideally the team would have both. people from the nuclear industry that's. mandatory you need the best people. plucked out of the nuclear industry who. are scattered everywhere.

That's part one. But part two is you. need people from Silicon Valley, the. tech industry, the hardware industry. And this was actually the formula that. Andre used, that Palunteer used, even. SpaceX used. And then part three is you. need a team that can get security. clearances and um is like highly. passionate about this problem and has. worked on things before with the. government. And so zooming out, I. realized, wait, that's that's us. We. need to incubate a company. we need to,

you know, pull together the team and. then it felt like I was the right person. to run it. And so that's how we got. started. That was 2023 was that process. and then really got going full speed in. 2024. How much progress have you guys made? We've made pretty good progress for, you. know, a year and a half in. At least we. feel like we have. So, one of the first things we did was even. before starting the company, we had a. lot of conversations with the DOE.

Um, you know, going back to that. question of what's the best way to start. a company, it's it's by understanding if. there's a need. And so, some of our. first conversations were with people. within the DOE saying, "Hey, this seems. like um seems like a need based on all. the startups that we're talking to. They. say that they have to get their fuel. from foreign providers. is that really. the case and the you know DOE would. confirm that yes we currently get all of. our enrichment from foreign providers. and we asked is this something that we.

should go and try and do is this. something the DOE would be supportive of. because this is a controlled technology. and again same thing yes this would be. good we we could use more people doing. this this would be a good thing um we. also talked to the DoD people on our. team were involved in the DoD at the. time and we're looking around saying, "Do we have an answer to this fuel. problem?" And the answer was, "We have a. stockpile, but someday that runs out and. it would be great if we could get.

production going.". And then we talked to the reactor. companies and not only did they not have. a source of enrichment or a source of. fuel at the enrichment levels that they. needed, but they also pointed out, hey, it's also really expensive at the prices. we're going to have to pay these other. companies. that's going to be more than half our. cost. And so we do want to get the cost. really low and we're going to do the. factory builds, but even if we got the. cost of the reactor to zero, we can only. have this unless the fuel cost comes.

down. And so that was very similar to. the space industry. 2000s where yes, the satellites had. gotten a lot cheaper and smaller, but. the launch cost was still there. And so. if you really wanted to erode the total. cost, you had to hit hit the launch cost. next. And so we're trying to do that. with fuel. So our whole mission was. let's make let's bring back domestic. production of enrichment. Let's do it. yes at low enrichment levels but also at.

the halo levels the 20% that all these. reactors need. And let's figure out how. to do this much much lower cost so that. we can make nuclear better than every. other form of energy. it's already the. safest base load, uh, the cleanest base. load. We're also going to make it the. cheapest. And so that's the whole north. star is let's bring back domestic. production. Let's make nuclear so cheap. and safe and reliable with, you know, fuel supply chain certainty throughout.

that it becomes the dominant form of. energy. So that's the goal. That's how. we got started. Wow. So that it didn't sound it doesn't sound. like he had a ton of red tape government. bureaucracy. to deal with. The DOE stepped up. and said. we are going to help catalyze this Halo. production by being being the market. maker. We're going to be the offtake. partner. So they created a $2.7 billion. government uh program contract ceiling.

to purchase enriched uranium from. providers. and then the DOE would then. hold on to that and sell it to the. reactor companies as they needed it. That's the start of that program in. early 24. So we applied to that and you. know um we we submitted what what we. thought was a really strong application. and in October of last year the uh the. DOE selected us as one of the the. awardees in that program. So that one.

was US and three statebacked entities uh. the French company the European. consortium and a company in the US. called uh Centrist that spun out of the. DOE a few decades back and so it's you. know us and those three governmentbacked. entities. were the only only startup in the mix. and so we were in stealth for a long. time and when that got announced I think. a lot of people wondered who are we and. so now we've started talking about what. we're doing. how much of this will you be able to.

produce? Depends on the year, but we're we're. going to be producing by the end of the. decade. That's our commitment to the. industry and to our government partners. And we're going to try and, you know, go. as fast as we can on that. And the. sooner we get started, the more we can. produce cuz our production will. naturally ramp. But the the goal here is. by the you know in the 2030s we want to. make sure the US can actually produce. what it needs to consume for all its. reactor fleet today and for future.

reactors. So the goal here is restore. domestic independence on fuel production. and do that in the 2030s. So this means. you know uh at least a couple large. facilities that we'll have to construct. over the next decade. Do you know where. you'll put those facilities? Right now, um, we do we do have a few states that. we're we're deciding between. So, these. are all pro- energy states, pro- nuclear. energy states who have taken actions to.

prove that they're really really excited. about nuclear energy and really want to. do things. And so that's currently our. our top ones that we're looking at that. um are for a big commercial green field. facility. are uh Texas, Wyoming, Utah, Washington. And so we have some, you know, there's. front runners there. There's there's. ones we're really excited about. We're. excited about all of them, but over the. next couple months, we're going to be. making some decisions about which one is. really the first one we go to. How big.

will these facilities be? They're the. way to think about it is it's you know. people think about nuclear and they. think of. you know either the the classic cooling. towers with steam coming out. Ours is. going to look very much like a Amazon. warehouse or a data center or like a. pharmaceutical plant that's just a. rectangular building. Gotcha. And the. size of these buildings depends on how. much capacity you want but we're talking. a few hundred,000 square feet. So think,

hey, it looks like a big Amazon. warehouse and there's a lot of equipment. inside, but it's a self-contained thing. I mean, how many I'm I'm just curious. how many different You're talking about. poppy seed size with ceramic around. You're talking about inch inch high. I. mean, what's the what's the biggest? Yeah, the traditional reactors operate. off of these small fuel pellets that are. the inch high ones and then they.

assemble those into fuel rods that then. get bunched together and then go into. the reactor. Okay, so classically the. biggest you would have would be those. 1-in little cylinders. Some new reactor concepts are using the. poppy seeds, but they form them into. larger spheres. So for that, you've got. something that's roughly the size of a. golf ball. Okay? And those will be. sitting at the bottom of the reactor. generating heat as gas flows over them. to cool them off and to harvest the. heat. So these little tiny poppy seeds.

get, you know, basically formed together. into that golf ball size. Okay? And then. some people are even trying to use uh. molten salt approaches where the whole. coolant that flows through contains the. uranium in it and so you have a mixture. of of fluid. So in that case it's just. it's basically like a liquid flowing. What about the waste? Is there any. waste? There's yeah the the waste that. people talk about is really spent fuel. That's the way to think about it. It's.

just hey we took this pellet classically. the 1-in tall metal sort of pellet and. we put in the reactor for a while and a. lot of the U235 it reacted. It released. heat. It released neutrons. It's. something else now. And so it decays. into other things. And so now you've got. that pellet and what do you do with it? You put it in water, cool it off for a. period of time. And then they put it. into cement cylinders. And these. cylinders are,

you know, uh probably roughly 10 ft. across. Um bigger than human size, but nearly. indestructible. That's how they're. designed to be. And today we just keep. them next to the reactor that they were. operating at, and they they sit there. Um, if you look at all those and you. know there's ways to potentially recycle. some of that spent fuel and get more. energy out of it, which is something. people are talking about and thinking. about now, but. that would just, you know, that's a. longer conversation about what are the.

benefits of that. Even if you don't do. that and you just take these pellets. that we've run through and put to the. side and you put them all together in a. pile, all the nuclear spent fuel that the US. has generated over the entire history of. nuclear energy, if you put that all into. an Olympic size swimming pool, it would. be half filled. So that's it. That's it. And it's metal. People think of nuclear. waste or spent fuel as,

you know, green green ooze that's going. to trickle out and get in the water. supply. These are are spent metal fuel. ingots. again that altogether are are only half. the volume of an Olympic size swimming. pool. So this is not actually a big. deal. I think the waste issue has been a. red herring. I think it's been something. that people bring up who don't want. nuclear energy as hey we can't do. nuclear energy until we solve the waste. issue and good news there is no waste. issue so let's do nuclear energy that's.

that's my perspective wow there's still. things we could do about waste and. should we store it all together in one. place that's very inert and stable. that's a discussion should we somehow. recycle it and get the remaining energy. out of it because there's still there's. still U23 35 in there. We could still. utilize that energy. Um, that's a. conversation. But yeah, we should not. let this idea of waste be a stopper for. doing more in nuclear. What do you think.

we should do with it? I think for now. what we're doing is is not terrible. Just keep it where it is. The US should. decide on how what are we going to do. with this long term? Um, is that one. site where we can just store it? Is it a. couple sites? And so we should continue. looking for places to place it um as a. backs stop. But you know recent some of. the recent executive orders talk about. how should we think about recycling. Are. there ways to to do better? Recycling.

may not be as cost effective as just. going and mining and producing new fuel. France does recycling and reprocessing. but the US doesn't. So there's some. economic argument there about what's the. total cost of these different solutions. So I think that's that's something we'll. just the industry is going to be looking. into for the next few years. What else has the what else has the. government done to to. what have they done to quadruple. our energy production by what when did.

you say by 2050? By 2050. Yeah. Yeah. So. we're just taking action now. So. really the last couple years there's. been the programs to um if you if you. zoom out there's fuel side and there's. reactor side. On the reactor side there. was a program that was about deploying. advanced reactors. There was a couple of. companies that were involved in that. that started a few years back and so uh. Terrap Power X Energy are both part of.

that. um. that's a program to try and accelerate. their deployment. So that's probably the first action that. was taken in recent history that's. really spurring things. And then you. have the Halo availability program a. couple years back that launched uh a. couple subprograms under that that are. funded by that Halo availability. program. one of which is the enrichment. that uh we're working on.

And then with some of the uh there was a. Russia sanction pretty much across the. board except for a couple categories and. uranium actually got banned from Russian. imports uh middle of last year. And so. that triggered another program focused. on the lower enriched uranium. So you. had the ARDP, the advanced um. demonstration reactor program. You had. Halo and LEU enrichment programs.

And then what we saw a couple weeks ago. were a couple uh four executive orders. focused on accelerating nuclear. So. these are some of the biggest actions. that have been taken in a long time. So. yes, you have more funding for things, but that's like the gas, but there was. this break on things. And the executive. orders are meant to address the break. Okay. And so you had, you know, a lot of. people say it's all about regulation. That's been the thing that stopped it. These I don't think that's the whole.

story, and we can get into that. But. these executive orders, they're going to. focus on the regulation piece because. they can't tell the industry what to do. the industry's got to actually go go do. it. But the executive orders did address. four different things. Uh one was the supply chain, one was the DOE. So supply chain meaning. fuel and other elements that uh elements. of workforce and things that need to go. into the industry. So how do we how do. we support that and bolster that? Second.

executive order was around the. Department of Energy. and saying we haven't done anything new. with reactors for a long time. Pretty. much any reactor we build is going to be. R&D and so we should treat it like R&D. and the Department of Energy has the. right to test reactors under R&D. So we. should give them more top cover or. ability to go test these reactors on. their land. So this creates an. alternative for companies just trying to.

get started to prove out what they can. do and now they can do that on DOE land. even more than they could before. So. that's that's one action. There's. another executive order that said the. defense department should stand up the. capability to deploy its own reactors so. that they can you know have uh energy. resilience on their bases. Another executive order said the NRC. should reform. Historically, it just. looked at risk and said, "We need to get.

radiation risk as low as possible, even. lower than background levels in some. cases." This policy was known as Allara. um as low as uh reasonably achievable. and there's really no floor on that. So. that meant that while the safest the. safest nuclear is no nuclear and so. there's naturally a bias towards really. restricting. nuclear and you know just creating an. incredibly high safety bar that's higher.

than any other source of energy. And so. this executive order said hey let's take. a look at the regulations and let's. update them. Let's not deregulate. Let's. just reeregulate and think about given. modern technology how should we be. thinking about this? Yes, every energy. source has some risks but nuclear has a. lot of benefits and we should factor. those in just like we do for um air. travel. Mhm. There's risk, but there's. benefits. So, you can't say that it has. to be zero risk. Otherwise, you're going. to do other things like driving to.

somewhere, and that's higher risk. Mhm. So, same thing on energy. Um, and so there was NRC, DoD, DOE, and. the supply chain. And all four of those. executive orders went out a couple weeks. ago, and they all just get back to the. core themes of let's get more industrial. activity, more economic activity in the. US. Let's remove unnecessary regulations. that just slow things down. Um, two, really, let's bring stuff back. onshore and have our own capabilities so.

that worst case we can produce what we. need. We should still trade, but let's. make sure we have a backs stop to that. And then three, if we want to have. national security and be able to have. influence across the globe, we need to. be leaders in these industries. And so. for nuclear we need to lead um and we. need to turn around the trend of 87% of. reactors that are out there in the world. are designs from other countries not the. US and so as people deploy those. reactors that comes with fuel contracts. and really locks them in to be dependent.

for a long time on these other. countries. And so the US should be. actually leading there and being able to. work with our allies to give them. reactors and give them fuel. Now I got a question. I mean. is is somebody who's jumping into this. with both feet and you're going full. speed ahead. I mean with the polarized. political climate of the country right. now. I mean, do you worry that and I. think you said by the end of the decade, so there will be a, you know, there'll.

be a change uh before. Do you worry that. political. rivalries are going to get in the way of. of your success? I don't think so. This. Yeah, this has been a really bipartisan. issue. Mhm. So even the programs that. we're working with the DO DOE on those. were under the last administration. And. then this administration's doing great. things to try and accelerate nuclear. too. And I think last couple years you. saw this bipartisan support emerge where.

people who were more focused on clean. energy realized nuclear emits no carbon. and no particullet and it's safe. And. the waste issue, the spent fuel issue is. so small compared to the waste we. generate through every other form of. energy. This is the cleanest base load. It's the safest base load. We should do. this. And then on the on the other side, people who are more focused about energy. production and cost realize with the new. technologies, nuclear could actually be.

this the cheapest, the most economical, and our best path for just expanding. production like, you know, like we. haven't in a very long time. And so I. think this is this combined with the. safety profile of existing nuclear and. the even better safety profile of. advanced nuclear. I don't think there's. I don't think there's going to be a lot. of disagreement. I think people have. realized hey this is one thing we can. come together on and say that this is. positive and I don't think there's any. reason for it to become a political.

thing. That's great. even some of the states. we're we're looking at um Washington for. example that's a classically blue state. um but they're doing a lot of things in. nuclear and so I think everyone's come. around to this that's good to hear I. mean will we be able maybe we already. are I don't know but I mean will we be. able to mine our own uranium here uh we. already do we already do yep so on the. five steps just to to go back so mining.

converting converting into gas, enriching, deconverting back into solid, and then fuel fabrication. The mining, we already we already do it um and we've. been doing it for a long time in Utah, Colorado, um Arizona, and with newer techniques in. Wyoming, and in Texas. And so there's a. bunch of places in the US that have. uranium that we can go mine either. through conventional techniques which is. classic mining underground or open pit.

um or the new modern technology which is. um insitu recovery ISR which essentially. people are just they drill wells they. flow a fluid through the under. underground and then pull it back up and. that fluid manages to dissolve and. extract the uranium. And so that's a. newer technique that looks more like. fracking or something um to to get to. get uranium. So we do mining in the US. Our allies do a lot of mining. Canada. does mining. They have great ore.

deposits. So does Australia. So between. us and our allies, there's plenty of. plenty of mining and plenty right here. in the US. Do you think we would wind up. exporting? I think we could. Enriched. uranium. Yeah, I think we could. um our. focus is let's get the US back to. completely meeting its own needs. But when you think about other countries. that want nuclear and they say, "Hey, you know, why can't we have nuclear. energy? Why can't we have nuclear fuel?".

I think the US should at some point be. the provider of that fuel, especially if. we can do it really cheaply. So, think. of an argument of a country like Iran. that says we want nuclear energy for for. commercial use, non-military use. If we. told them, hey, we make a lot of fuel. we we do it at very low cost. Why don't you buy it from us? You don't. need to enrich. I think that could be a, you know, a win-win. Um, if they're.

willing to agree to that. And I think at. some point if the US is producing a lot. of fuel at low cost and we're willing to. sell it at that low cost to other. countries much cheaper than they could. ever produce it for. And if they're new to nuclear and we're. building new reactor types and we say, "Look, let us do this for you. We're. going to give you the reactors. we're. going to give you the fuel. It's going. to be far more economical than you could. ever do it for. And you know, there's going to be some. details that have to be worked out in. who's in control of that. Um,

but you have to imagine if they should. say yes to that unless they have other. goals through enrichment. And so that. quickly reveals like who's being genuine. about just wanting clean, safe nuclear. power and who has other other things in. mind. Great point. Well, Scott, let's. take a quick break. The national debt is spiraling out of. control. Trade wars are causing record. volatility and inflation continues to. rise. Are you prepared for what might be.

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thank you. But do you do you see. nuclear, how do I say this? Do you see everything. moving towards nuclear in the future? Automobiles, planes, rockets. Do you do you think that's. going to powering neighborhoods? I don't think everything. I think grid. I think we're going to see nuclear. increase from just under 20% to. hopefully much more than that.

cars. I'm more skeptical. You know, it's the reason we use fossil. fuel and and batteries in cars is. because it's it's so energy dense. And. while, you know, a nuclear piece of. nuclear fuel is very energy dense, a. reactor is not quite as energy dense. And, you know, you have safety concerns. of that. What if the car crashes? All. those sort of things. And you could. design around that. But I think it just. makes a lot of sense, a lot of sense to. just either do electric or fossil fuels.

for cars. I think if you're talking. about a neighborhood that's a grid, that. should be more nuclear. Nuclear should. be the future of that. Airplanes, people. have talked about nuclear airplanes in. the past. Um, out in Idaho, they. actually tested a reactor that was meant. to be for an airplane, but reactors are still pretty heavy. Probably better off just, you know, either doing electric or or what we have. today for airplanes. So, I think, you. know, there's some people who might. think, okay, nuclear should be every. single source of energy. And I would.

argue it still could be um even if it's. not used in those applications because. those applications run on on fuels. But. what if your nuclear was so cheap that. you could use it to make like synthetic. aviation fuel or synthetic automobile. fuel? That's that's conceivable. Um. that's a that's a further way away. I'd. say let's let's get started with. deploying a bunch of reactors. let's get. their cost down and then when their cost. is really low then we can we should do.

those things but it's going to be step. by step. It's going to be gradual. That's like a 20-year project I think to. get to get everything. How far do you. see some of these mini reactors going? Yeah, if we go back to the one I was. talking about earlier. So containerized. 1 megawatt of electric, 2 megawatt. thermal. I think those could be, you. know, you're going to start in really. more niche applications like the remote. Alaskan village that doesn't have a good. source of electricity and, you know, solar is unreliable, wind's not going to. work. Okay, we're way up there in middle.

of nowhere, Alaska, and we need to. actually import diesel every summer. through a tanker. And then we store it. and we just run our diesel generators. Examples like that are just seem like a. no-brainer for a nuclear reactor that. could be containerized and run for 5 to. 10 years or an army base um that is. going to run off of small ones like that. maybe for radar maybe for some other. critical systems. I think those those. applications we're going to see right. away. And I think for the small ones, you could see as they deploy into those.

applications, they get more experience. building things in the factory, the. factory cost comes down. All of a. sudden, you realize, okay, these small. ones, maybe you can combine like the. generators, like the solar panels, like. the battery storage, and we could have parking lots of these. that in aggregate produce a pretty good. amount of power. I think at some point. once you're trying to go to bigger. amounts like okay we need to do a. gigawatt maybe there's a more efficient. way where maybe it doesn't have to be in.

a shipping container but it should be. truckable or put on a train and it. should be able to be made in a factory. So then you're getting more into the b. midsize which people you know those. really small ones are like generally. called micro reactors. How big are they? like 1 to 20 megawws uh contain shipping. container size to something. a bit bigger than that. Um you know not. quite 20 times bigger but a few times. bigger cuz this how things scale.

And then the the SMRs the small modular. reactors that's generally considered 20. to 300 megawws. And that's where you're. still now you're getting into a little. bit of construction project. You're. going to prep your site. You're probably. going to dig barriers for the reactors. to go. You're going to have to pour some. concrete, um, build some structures. But the idea of modular there is, hey, we bring in the reactor core and then. separately we'll bring in maybe the the. cooling loop and separately we'll bring. in the turbines and we'll plug it all.

together there. But we can keep it. pretty simple versus one big integrated. thing. So once you go to the traditional. style of a gigawatt scale reactor, it's. a lot more complicated. you're doing a. lot more assembly and construction on. site in an integrated way which much. more complicated. um still has merit because the amount of. power you're getting out of that is a. gigawatt plus and so the payoff is. pretty big and so if we can get good at. those construction projects that's a.

viable path too. So people ask me which. one do you think wins? Which reactor. wins? I think these are three pretty. different segments where the really big. reactors that's that's straight onto the. grid. You're competing at grid scale. grid energy costs. You have to hit. really low cost. Middle end of the spectrum. It's about speed and about yeah how fast. can we build this construction project? This can't be a 10-year project. It has. to be a 5year project or less.

We need energy now and we need it. We. don't care if it's quite as cheap as the. grid, but we want it to be extremely. reliable. So 100% uptime and so that's. going to point you towards small modular. reactors. Um that many people are. working on and that's probably for data. centers. So data centers has been a huge. push for this. Previously they went out. and they looked for stranded. electricity. You know where can we find. a few hundred megawatts? Where can we. find a gigawatt of stranded wind in, you. know, West Texas or solar that's not.

being used and or where is there maybe. solar and wind in a natural gas pipeline. and we can just put it all there. Those. sites are largely. uh now claimed. Everyone's been. searching for them the last couple. years. People found them and people. locked them up and they're building data. centers on those sites. Now it's about. okay we need new production or we're not. going to you know those days are over. where there's just latent supply we need. to create supply of electricity and so. that middle segment I think is for the. data centers it's that's where we're.

going to see rapid adoption day one it's. going to be higher price points than you. could get from the grid but it's certain. and it's you can do it in bulk so. they're going to sign up for that and. then I think the micro actors are a. whole separate story of you know we're. not even thinking about the grid because. we're going to places where either the. use case has to assume the grid is not. working or there is no no grid. I think. that's where we're going to see that. first. So I think there's room for many. of these different reactor designs to. succeed. And the biggest variable I.

think of between them isn't what fluid. they have inside the system isn't. exactly whether they use the poppy seed. size kernels particles or golf ball size. or little cylinders. It's how big a. reactor are you making and how much does. it cost to build? How about the. transmission point? Transmission's the. next the next big piece. So, you've got. fuel, you've got the reactors, and now. what about actually moving the. electricity around? I think that's. that's going to be a challenging piece.

And that's that's something we hear from. friends in the data center world is that. um you know the grid is going to be. challenged to grow as fast as we need it. to with a bunch of bottlenecks. You've. got you know takes a long time to build. transmission lines based on. environmental permitting and the supply. chains. You know an example of supply chain. issue is transformers. So transformers now have a long lead. time. we didn't build up a ton of. capability in the country for making as.

many transformers as we now need. So now. there's there's weight times and lead. times. Um. yeah, so I think I think we're going to. see supply chain challenges there that. are going to they will bottleneck how. fast we can go and so you know do you. see new companies getting stood up to. actually address the transformer. shortage? I think you could see things. like that. Are we are we already at the point where. a private entity can put in its own.

reactor or is that so for these data. centers you know that you're talking. about all the land that's you know that. has. everything going for it the lin the gas. and all that that's all sucked up and. and is being built on or has been built. on. So now you know what can can the. data center just buy their own reactor. and just totally bypass the public grid? Yeah. So Utah just put out uh.

legislation that that actually did that. So previously in Utah, my understanding. is you weren't really allowed to do. behind the meter generation. you had to. produce and hook into the grid as a way. of supporting the grid and helping make. sure that Utah's grid was strong. I. think there's enough of this concern. over bottleneck that recent reg uh. legislation and regulation said if you. can't get the power you need from the. grid, you can go do a reactor behind the. meter. And that was Utah. I think other. state, many other states allow for this,

too. the real, you know, the real thing we're. going to have to wait for on that front. is seeing some of these smaller reactor. formats um and reactor designs actually. get uh licensed by the NRC. And so. that'll be a few years. Um you know, that'll be them doing some testing. initially on DOE land, for example, proving that the reactor works. If. they're small enough, they can do that. out at Idaho National Lab in a facility. that they call the dome. So, it's an old.

containment dome from a different. reactor that they, you know, emptied. out. The dome is there and they can. bring reactors in and test them. So, what we're going to see probably. starting 2026, 2027 is reactors going in. there, putting in small amounts of fuel, proving that things work the way they. expected to, using that data in NRC. license applications, showing, hey, we. we ran it at a small scale. we see that. the models actually hold, we see that.

the predictions are true, and here's all. the reasons why not only will it work, but it'll be extremely safe. So, then. that's a two-year process. And then. we're going to see them building them in. parallel with getting um approvals or. preparing to build them and then. shipping them to the site. So, all in, you know, that's 3 4 years before you're. seeing them behind the meter. So, it's. actually it's not that these companies. are not allowed to do that. It's that. we're just at a point right now where. we're still a couple years out from. seeing those shipments of reactors.

Gotcha. Do you think this gets to the. point where. it goes down to the consumer like. consumer grade under their home? Yep. Something like that. I think that's a. long way out. I think at some really. tiny scale you start to lose scale. efficiencies. So now you have to build. something so small that. you know you have all the systems you're. trying to build it really compact. You're trying to make it safe. I think you're going to get so little.

power out of that for the average home. You know average home consumption so. small that that's not doesn't probably. doesn't make sense. Just like you know. at any of our homes we don't have like a. natural gas mini turbine that's making. our electricity. We just get it from the. grid. So, I think the grid still has a. major role to play and it's going to. help us unlock the bigger formats that. are going to be more cost effective. Um, rooftop solar is maybe the one. exception. It's like you already have a. roof, just put some solars on it. You. don't have much civil cost of building.

the structure that's going to hold it. Mhm. But in general, we don't people. don't produce their own power because. it's it's just so much more efficient to. do it in some sort of centralized. manner. Will the lines be able to handle. the load. um that we need? I mean I think say by. 20 2030 that a that AI and the data. centers will will suck up all the energy. that we have right now. Yeah. Their. demand is projected to be the same as. the grid capacity today. Mhm. Good news. is I think a lot of that stuff is not.

really going to hit the grid. So if. they're finding an isolated site to put. their data center and they're going to. put reactors there and maybe they're. going to put natural gas there, that's not going to really put a big. load on the grid. So the grid in that. case could stay pretty much the same. If. we are trying to quadruple nuclear. production though and maybe double the. grid overall to keep up with China or do. something like what they did, then yeah, the grid's going to have to expand quite. a bit. Have a major overhaul, huh? Do.

you do you see. I mean, does does oil and gas and. wind and solar do they have a place. anymore? I think so. Yeah. Why? Uh, if. this is the cheapest y then the most. efficient, why why would those have a why would we. need them? I think you could do it could you do it. all with nuclear? Yes. Other than the. automobiles, but Yeah. Yeah. And then. even the automobiles maybe they run on.

fuel. Maybe you know there's company. there's nuclear companies that have an. explicit plan of saying we're going to. build a reactor who is relatively large. and so low cost that we can actually do. the sustainable aviation fuel production. there or other forms of fuel. We'll do. carbon capture which costs energy takes. you know takes energy adds cost but our. nuclear energy is going to be so cheap. we can afford to do the carbon capture. or we'll colllocate with some industrial. process will grab that carbon and we're.

going to turn that into a fuel and that. fuel could be used by cars by airplanes. What do you mean carbon capture? You. mean pulling carbon out of the air? Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple approaches. One is pull it out of the air. People. are working on technologies for that. one is sit right next to an industrial. facility that just would normally spit. out carbon and we're just going to grab. that carbon and use it in our process. So those are the the two general. categories that I've seen of people that. want to do carbon capture for fuel. production and doing that takes energy.

takes electricity but if you have cheap. enough nuclear you could do it. So I. think going back to the will everything. run on nuclear um it's possible it's. possible that that that happens but to. get there we've got to make nuclear much. cheaper. So then to your question of. what about the other forms of energy. I think you know nuclear is 20% today. until it's really taking off we need to. do everything and the data centers are. going to need a lot more power in the. next few years. How are we going to do.

that if the if reactors are three years. away? So, we're going to see expansion. of other things. We're going to see. solar at some of these sites. Solar with. a bunch of grid level storage. Maybe. that grid level storage can run on old. batteries that are recycled or cheap. So, it doesn't need to be really. expensive. Maybe there's a path there. for people that really need power today. and are willing to pay for it. You're. going to see solar. I think rooftop. solar can make sense because you already. have the roof. Put the solar panels on. Um, and then you know I think wind has.

fallen out of favor quite a bit. There's. still places where there's good wind. resource and we can use that and it's. cost effective but it's intermittent. So. you have to plan for that. And so AI AI. data centers hyperscalers they want. really really high uptime. And so I. think that uptime is going to look like. it maybe it could be a combo of wind and. solar in some places which are. supplemented by natural gas which could. kick in when the wind's not blowing or. the sun's not shining and then nuclear.

But nuclear is the ideal answer for them. because it's it's safe. It's potentially. really low cost and it's no carbon. emission. Man, what does this world even look like. in 10 years, man? Yeah. I think. everything's changing so fast. space, the auto industry, energy, AI, Neurolink, what I mean, what is it? What. does it even look like? Yeah, I think. it's it's I think it'll be good. I think.

it's going to be exciting. I think on. the the AI side to me feels the hardest. to predict because it's such such an. exponential curve. But automotive, I think, you know, electric vehicles are getting better and. better. Um, you know, I have a Tesla. I. like it. I have a also a regular internal. combustion car. I like that, too. So, I. think we're going to see more electric. cars. They'll get cheaper. They'll be. more competitive. Uh power. I think. power is going to be the big story. I.

think as we want to grow the economy, as. we want to do AI, as EVs come online and. gain market share, I think it's all. going to be about energy production. And. I think that's ultimately going to come. back to nuclear. It's going to be a big. part of the growth. And then that's. going to come back to the fuel. Do do you think I mean I know you said. we this is kind of where I was going uh. when I was asking if we're mining. uranium right now. Do you think we will. continue to mine our own uranium.

or will we take the oil and gas approach. where we import you know from. cuz we sat on a lot of reserves and now. that everything's it sounds like. everything's starting to move towards. nuclear maybe we shouldn't have sat on. those reserves y because those reserves. are going to become obsolete and we. missed a major opportunity. you know, if. this happens that that we can never. revisit. Yeah. Do you think and I I.

mean, me being a novice, that just. sounds like a mistake to me. Like we we. sat on these reserves. We didn't do. anything with them. Now we're moving. into nuclear. Those become obsolete. We just missed. out on a shitload of money, you know, for the United States by not using those. reserves for ourself or exporting it. And so do you think that will happen. with the with uranium as well? Luckily, it's still it's still there. It's still. under the ground, so we can start going.

after it and companies are. So, there's. new mining projects in at least Texas. and Wyoming that came online starting. last year and are are ramping this year. So, we're going to see more uranium. production in the US. Um, you know, some. some countries do have better or. deposits than the US, really high or. deposits. So, as you go in mine, it can. be really easy to get the uranium that. you need. So, it can still make sense to. trade with other countries. Mhm. Um, if. they can produce much cheaper than we. can, but we have really large deposits.

uh that can take care of what we need. for a while. And so, I think we're going. to see that production come online. How. big are our deposits compared to Russia. or China? Uh, let's see. compared to places like uh Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, like Russia gets. most of its uranium out of Kazakhstan, our deposits are not as good as theirs. on uranium, but still years and years of.

production capacity. And so if we're. even producing a fraction, you know, mining a fraction of what we. need, we're talking decades of of. potential production in the US. And I. think it's similar to oil where people. thought that we were at peak oil at one. point and then you discover new ways to. to find more. So discovery technologies. get better, extraction technologies get. better. Even even these new technologies. in mining are an example of that where.

some of the deposits people are going. after now are not really orrich deposits. but through new techniques like um. insitue recovery where you do the. pumping and then extraction out of the. ground with no no standard mining. equipment, no digging, no open pits, much more self-contained and you know no. uranium released in the process. you can do that much cheaper. And so. it's going to be one of these classic. things where people predict that our. reserves are at the limit and we're out.

and then technology actually is the. answer of how you get much more out of. the system than you ever thought you. could. So, same thing happened in. fracking where, you know, we we thought. that the US did not have as much. accessible fossil fuel as it did and. then fracking came around and figured. out, wait, there's ways to extract this. natural gas. And not only is that good. for energy cost or energy independence, but this natural gas has half the carbon. emissions per unit of electricity than.

coal. And so, we should be doing this. And so that was, you know, that's been. the story the last decade or two. Did. you just say Kazakhstan has some of the. richest uranium? So do so let me ask you. this. Do you see does the world move. towards nuclear, which it sounds like it. is. Do you see a do you see a power. shift happening? Do you see a country. like Kazakhstan rising up in the in the. food chain and in big oil and gas. countries.

coming down? oil and gas. I think fossil fuels is. still something like 80% of US power. production. Mhm. So in terms of. geopolitical power shifts, I think. fossil fuels will still be really. important for a long time, for decades. Okay. So it's not going to be sudden, but I think on the margins, you're going. to see countries like like Kazakhstan. potentially become more important as. people think more and more about where. are we getting our uranium. Um countries. like Australia, Canada, Canada already.

mines a lot. So does Australia as they. step up and decide how aggressive do we. want to be on on uranium production on. mining. I think it's it is up to many of. the countries what their future is. Do. you you know will they be pro- nuclear? Do they want to do not just mining but. other things in nuclear? Do they want to. have reactors? Um it's it's a. complicated playing field that's going. to depend on production, how fast new. reactors are built, which countries do. that, what trade agreements are set up. Um, but it's it's absolutely like it.

over the next decade it could be. tectonic shifts in in policy and in. which countries are important and which. ones become really the focal points for. international negotiations. How focused. is Canada on that? They've got uh they. have a great industry and they have. great ore deposits. And so there's a. company in Canada called Kamico that. does mining at a couple of these sites. that are known to be really good and. does a lot of production. And then they do uh conversion to the.

gas as well. Canada runs on um a. different reactor type that doesn't. actually require enrichment of uranium. They just use plain uranium and use. heavy water to actually make the. reaction happen. Those are called can do. reactors. And so they classically. haven't had uh an enrichment technology. because they've chosen to do this other. reactor type. So, um, Canada's is, uh, pretty active. in nuclear and in uranium mining.

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can help shape the show. Join us on. Patreon now. Support the mission and. become part of the Sha Ryan Show's. story. Where are we going to get the water in. all these western states to cool these. reactors? Luckily, the water Yeah, good. question. Um, same question applies to. data centers. So, historically, a lot of. data centers used evaporative cooling. and so you ran through a lot of water. The newer data centers are doing closed. loop cooling. So no water evaporation.

You do have big heat exchangers sitting. outside, but you're not evaporating. water to cool. And some of the very. similar to data centers, some of the. modern nuclear reactors, what people call these generation 4. reactors, just the latest in, you know, in technology, in safety, in cost, they. also use closed loop cooling. So, one of. them, the ones we talked about, the. shipping container size reactor, no. water use. The fluids flowing around are.

other fluids like helium and CO2. And. so, to cool off, you just run it through. a big fan and heat exchanger system just. like a radiator on a car. And so, you. don't need any water for cooling. So, no. water consumption. In fact, like if you can get if you can. get nuclear cheap enough and now we're. now we're actually producing the. electricity and using that for some. purpose and we we have a bunch of. thermal left over. Could we use that. thermal energy to do things like. desalination? And so do you actually go. from a something where you might think,

okay, nuclear reactors were going to use. up a lot of water and maybe the old old. designs did use water but the new ones. don't. Could you actually go from, you. know, water consumptive to actually. water creating? Wow. Yeah, I think we're going to see a. lot of a lot of cool things. I think a. lot of it's going to be driven by. energy. I think the next decade's going. to be all about energy. Even um even Sam. Alman from OpenAI had some recent recent.

hearing or talk where he talked about um. just the evolution of AI. And so you've. got algorithms. Algorithms run on chips, but ultimately the chips need. electricity. And what he said if uh. thinking back to this interview, the. algorithms are going to get better and. better and better and cheaper and the. chips will get cheaper and cheaper, but. at the end of the day, you have to get. the electrons and the electrons have a. fundamental price and ultimately it's. going to come down to that. So I think. even the AI the AI competition between.

different companies in the US between. different countries it's ultimately. going to come back to the electricity. production. So I think yeah next decade. it's going to be all about all about. power production AI military if if you. think you need kinetics and military. that comes back to manufacturing. If you. think economics okay we have to have the. biggest economy so that we can just have. the most productive capacity energy. So. I think next decade is going to be all. about energy and we've stayed flat for a.

decade for 15 years we haven't done. anything more like 20 years our grid's. been pretty stagnant and if we want US. leadership it's going to have to grow. So I think that's that's going to be the. story we see and it's going to be about. solving. different supply chain needs whether. it's it's fuel maybe it's transformers. maybe it's transmission all these things. are going to come up it's going to be. chips are we actually you know when you. talk about China has doubled their power. or or doubled doubled what we have.

correct are they I mean they also have a. lot more people yeah so are they are. they seeing the benefits of having that. much more power production than we do or. is it equivalent because they have so. many more consumers of energy. I think a. lot of that um we'd have to go back to. that that chart and see exactly where is. China today, where were they before in. terms of per capita, but I think a lot. of that production, the doubling of. their grid relative to our grid, a lot. of that's gone into manufacturing.

And so, you know, we've shifted. manufacturing from the US to overseas. A. lot of that's in China now. we've let. them do it. You know, a big part of that. people thought was, well, Chinese labor. is much cheaper, but a lot of these. processes can be automated. And so once. you automate it, it just comes back to. energy cost. And so China said, let's. let's double our grid. Let's let's keep. going. Let's work on tripling our grid. and we'll do it in the cheapest way. possible because we want to win on. manufacturing and get all this economic. activity over here. Meanwhile, the US.

has said. um you know we have a bunch of. regulations which are good and probably. some that are unnecessary and have. slowed us down and so we haven't done. the growth and you know we've been very. thoughtful about um emissions. environmental impact carbon. Meanwhile, China's doubling tripling their grid and. has done a lot of that with coal. And so. we've shifted manufacturing here that. would have been cleaner. uh over there and just probably ended up.

net producing more carbon than um than. we would have, more pollutants than we. would have and just kind of outsource. that. But as we know, carbon flows. everywhere. So if you're really worried. about carbon emissions, letting China. double their grid with coal and move. manufacturing, energy intensive. manufacturing there is not actually the. answer. The answer is the US has to. unblock building here, doing industrial. activity, do it cleanly, do it with. nuclear or other sources, even natural. gas, half the carbon emissions of coal,

and the world would be way better off. And so, I think their grid doubling. hasn't just meant that everyone there. has a better quality of life. I think it. just means that we've taken a lot of. manufacturing from here and done it over. there. Gotcha. Gotcha. Do you have any. insight on from a consumer standpoint. just a household how. what kind of energy prices can we expect. you know when this by 2030. it's going to depend a lot on what we. how we implement all this so you have.

huge variation between states so I think. a lot of it comes down to regulation. okay so you know some states. you know you've got retail electricity. costs in in a single digit sense. California, I think you can get into the. 30s. So between states, you can be. triple. So clearly that's not technology. driven, that's regul regulatory driven. And so I think a a lot of how this plays. out is going to be what do we do on the. regulatory side? We have cheap sources.

of energy. People could have them. You. know, the grid is currently capable of. shipping electricity to people's homes. at the level that we consume them. consume electricity. So, with net new sources coming on the. grid, it should get cheaper, but that's going to depend on. a lot of different factors. Um, it's. going to depend on. who sets the rates. Um, how electricity is priced? Do you have. some infrastructure costs and then some.

generation costs? So, se will there be. separation of transmission and. generation costs everywhere? Um, what is. the balance between those two? How much. were we paying for the transmission? How. much were we paying for the generation? Um, there were some shifts in that in. California where it was more bundled and. as people did more and more rooftop. solar, I think it was separated because. the utilities were having a harder time. paying for their existing. infrastructure. And so how that all goes. in each state is going to be the real. driver. I think I think we have the. ability to produce as much electricity.

as we want um through all these. different methods, but how that actually. makes its way to people's homes depends. on state level and federal level policy. as well as as well as things like uh. NEPA, which is the environmental regime. for. um standardizing a lot of these federal. approvals on large scale infrastructure. projects um which which has slowed down. things like new transmission lines. And. so the degree to which that gets.

reformed or looked at or how can we. still have all the safety that we that. we always had that we want the envir. environmental protections, but how can. we streamline this to help things go. faster? I think you're going to, you. know, big big picture. You've got two. curves. You've got the demand curve and. you've got the supply curve. And if the. demand curve for electricity, whether. it's AI data centers or people's homes, starts really outpacing supply, that's. when prices go up. If you can outrun.

demand with supply, prices go down. And. so it's, you know, demand is going to be. what it is. People are going to get EVs. People are going to um want to use AI. tools. Those tools require data centers. That's going to happen. That demand is. going to be there. It's up to us how how. quickly do we bring on supply. So, I. think that's it's that balance between. supply and demand that's going to really. drive where prices go and where what. people experience. Have you have you. ever heard of um Steve Quast and his.

company Space Build? I know you had him. on recently. I listened to part of the. podcast. It was Yeah. Really. interesting. Yeah. He he was me he had. mentioned that China is has is putting. or has put a nuclear power plant in. space. and that. we could have the capability of doing. that nuclear or solar and beaming. beaming energy into. something like an antenna. Mhm. What are.

your what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, there's a few startups working on. this right now actually. So, there's a. few startups that are saying um you. know, space launch is going to get. extremely cheap with with Starship. And. so, we're planning on launch costs. getting so cheap that you could deploy a. huge solar array in space and beam it. down, whether it's laser or microwave or. even trying to just put mirrors up there. and reflect sunlight. So, there's a few. companies doing that. I think there's,

you know, we need to see the launch. costs come down by a lot with Starship. succeeding and really scaling and early. years of Starship are going to be. dedicated to Starlink launches, I would. imagine, just to get the rest of that. consolation up. So, you know, we need a. few years for for Starship to really. start doing high volume commercial. launches and then we need a few. components in in that overall. architecture to probably come down in. cost um to let those use cases make. sense. But it could be anything from.

beaming power to like a forward deployed. unit that needs to be somewhere really. remote and still have uh the ability to. power things, beaming light onto an. area, similar applications. Um or doing. things like, hey, how can we redirect. energy for industrial use uh affordably. where maybe it makes the difference. between that industrial process working. or not working based on the energy cost. there. So, I think we're seeing it on. the solar side. On the nuclear side, I.

actually don't know what the US is. working on there or what's planned. And, you know, I would think that that would. probably be under a DoD program that. would be compartmentalized if if that. was the case. But, um, yeah, it sounds. like China's doing things. And, you. know, that has a lot of implications. So, you were at SpaceX when there was. only 30 employees. Yeah. 35. Somewhere. around 35. Wow. Yeah, it was cool. How. was that? It was fun. Um, you know, I.

think when you're in when you're in the. middle of these things, you don't really understand the the. gravity of it or the implications of it. Um, you know, back to 2002, the US had. something like 20% of global launch. capacity. today based on everything SpaceX has. done over 23 years. People forget that. it's been 23 years. That's not some. fiveyear overnight success, it's two. over two decades of building.

Took a long time. We went from 20% of. launch capacity to now believe it's it's. like 90% of total 80% total mass to. orbit in the world. 80 90%. No kidding. Yeah. So the US went from, you know, third place, second, third place to now. wildly first place. And if we hadn't. done that, China would be the leader in. launch capacity. And so yeah, 20 23. years of hard work, have lots of friends. who are still there, have been there the. whole time, you know, working on the.

mission. So it's been it's been. incredible to watch. Back then it was. early days. We were 30ome people, you. know, we were designing test stands. were designing the first engines that. powered the Falcon family of launch. vehicles. First the Falcon 1, then the. Falcon 9, and just working through the. inevitable challenges of engineering. You know, we were doing a clean sheet. redesign of a rocket engine, saying, "Okay, Northstar mission, we want to.

make humanity multilanetary. We want to. before that's going to happen, we're. going to have to commercialize space. If. space is going to become commercialized, launch has to get way cheaper. a tenth. the cost, ideally less. You know, you. can't you can't spend all this money to. put something small with only limited. utility into space. And at the old. launch cost, there were only a few. applications that made sense. So, let's. bring launch cost down. And that means. we can't use the same technology we've. been using. We can't we can't do that.

with the space shuttle. The space. shuttle has been running. This was the. mindset at the time. Space shuttle has. been running for over a decade and we. see what those costs are. it averages. out to like a billion dollars per. launch. That's not going to work. We. have to start over and we're just going. to question everything. So, some of the. principles that we had there were, you. know, it all started with a mission, a. very, very clear mission. We're going to. optimize on dollars to get a kilo or a. pound of of payload into an orbit.

That's it. Don't care how we do it. That's what we're doing. Bringing the. cost down. And so that meant we have one. goal and we're just going to rethink. everything to get there. We're going to. rethink what our engine technology is. We're going to just go with the. simplest, lowest cost, reliable engine we possibly. can. And so instead of going with a more. exotic engine type that some people. talked about at the time, we said we're. going to go with a really proven one. This thing is not even going to be that. efficient, but it's going to be so low. cost that instead of one exquisite.

engine on the bottom of this rocket, we're going to have nine. We're going to. have nine really low cost ones. Together, they'll equal the output of. the big one. Won't be as efficient. We're going to need a little bit more. fuel to get there. Maybe our payload. that we can bring up slightly smaller. relative to the total fuel, but our. vehicle is so low cost that we're going. to win just on dollars. back to that. northstar goal of dollars per kilo to. orbit and so yeah 2003 when I joined as.

an intern that was the mindset um there. was an employee handbook I opened on the. first day and I think the first line was. something like this is not a science. experiment we are not here to do new. science we're here to do engineering. really lowcost engineering and so the. team that was assembled to do that was. some people from aerospace so that we. knew what the range of technology ies. was we knew how things had to be done, what are the real requirements. and then people from the automotive.

world who knew how to build, you know, machines really cheap. I think half the. guys on the team on the weekends did hot. rods and they did drag racing. No. Yeah. So, a lot of the people came out. of the drag racing community. Just how. can I have the highest performance. machine for low cost? I don't care how. pretty it is. It's just going to it's. going to perform. And so. um yeah, it's SpaceX culture back then. was really almost equal parts aerospace. automotive and then kids straight out of.

school who wanted to work hard on. something um you know had the had the. latest training. So we knew all the. analytical techniques but didn't know. much about the industry and these people. from the industry from automotive or. from aerospace or from wherever would. just be the you know the gray-haired. people who just taught us what we had to. do and work together to go as fast as we. could to get capability back. And so. when I got there 2003 we were designing. test stands that our engines were going.

to go into. And then by 2004 we were. testing engines. By 2005 they were. really working well. 2006. Um I then got to go work on the Dragon. program. and worked on a couple subsystems there. for controlling the temperature, controlling the pressure inside the. capsule. And that capsule was, you know, going up to the space station. That was. the plan. So by this time, the space. shuttle had been grounded. So we'd had. the accident with the space shuttle and. we'd put that fleet on pause. And there.

was a big need by NASA. NASA said, "We. need capability to go back to the space. station, and we need to be able to take. cargo up there. We need to be able to. return cargo from the space station for. experiments that we're doing for. astronauts that are up there." At the. time, we, you know, we were totally. relying on Russia to get cargo and uh. astronauts up and down. And so NASA. wanted to create a new domestic. capability for that, both a capsule and. a new launch vehicle since the space. shuttle was grounded. And so SpaceX.

competed with a bunch of other. providers, was selected to have a chance. to to actually deliver and NASA set up. this contract. that was milestone based and fixed. price. So it was not a cost plus. contract. SpaceX had to perform. It was. if you hit this threshold and you do. this thing, you will get paid. If you. fall short or run out of time, you fail. Sorry, you're out. And so there were a. couple companies selected. Only SpaceX. completed it. the milestones were set to.

be difficult on purpose. We worked. really hard to make those those happen. Uh we worked with NASA on that. NASA was. a great partner throughout. We made sure. every safety scenario was planned for. Thought about every way that things. could go wrong and just eliminated those. possibilities. And then ultimately, yeah, Dragon completed that program. Uh. docked with the space station, proved. the ability to bring cargo back and. forth and I think did the last missions. in 2013. So yeah, those early days. starting in 2002 went all the way from.

core concepts, architecture, proving. things out on a small Falcon 1 vehicle. with one engine to then uh getting that. vehicle working and going all the way. through Falcon Falcon 9. Wow. And then. yeah, the last five five plus years has. been people now working on the next. generation vehicle of of Starship, which. whole new effort, whole new engines, whole new architecture, but that's. what's going to get Space Launch down. another 10X, which then unlocks all.

those different applications like, you. know, solar energy production in space. for some some things and space. constellations and maybe a bunch of. other things, too. Wow. You think we're going to Mars? Yeah, I. think we're going. Do you really? Yeah, I think it'll all I mean what next year. is the next window and I think internal. internal goal at SpaceX is let's let's. ship something in 2026. Damn. Yeah. If.

you don't go 2026, you have to wait, I. think, a couple more years before a good. window opens again. So, there's urgency. What's the window that I should know? I. think it's it's um you can always go but. when the planets are very close the. energy that's required is much lower. So. if you want to get there quickly. something like a six-month journey. you've got to go in one of these periods. and these periods I think are every.

could be wrong I think they're every. three or four years. Yeah they're not every decade they're. not every year it's it's in the middle. So you miss this next window, you're. waiting a little bit. And so I think, you know, NASA has sent stuff to Mars. We've obviously have the rover, but. sending more to Mars. First missions. will not be people for probably a while. I think we'll we'll prove we can send. something, prove we can land something, then we'll ship actual large amounts of. cargo and mass to prepare for humans to.

go there. And then maybe the next window. you're doing people. That would be my. guess of what what evolution could look. like on that. Wow. Let's talk about the. founders fund. When did that start? Founders Fund. started 2005. Um this was Yeah. Founders Fund was. originally, you know, if you think back. to venture capital in the '90s, it was very much this idea that, hey, we should invest in, you know, same. old stuff, software companies. um by the by the late '9s um.

well let's let's talk about the '90s. first. So I think the 90s were obviously. do that was the big story of the '9s. where you had all the internet companies. and ultimately only a few of them. survived but there was this what. seemingly golden era in. uh in startups in internet and mostly in. consumer internet in search and the. bubble popped early 2000s and by by. early 2000s most of the VCs were you.

know it's extremely discouraging people. felt like Hey, this was a one-time. thing. Did we all go crazy? Were we too. did we have a rational exuberance? Were. we too excited about the future? And by. early 2000s, venture capital had become, I think, much more conservative to where it. wasn't investing at the time in. ambitious projects. People just had a lot of battle scars. over the late '9s. Felt like maybe they had they had been.

too excited. Um so by early 2000s a lot. of conservatism a lot of looking for. more classic easy to predict and. understand businesses like enterprise. software and viewing businesses as a. horse and a jockey. So the jockey might. be the founder or the CEO and the horse. is the business and the technology and. hey you know maybe the horse is great. but the jockey is not so good. Let's. swap out the jockey a couple years in. And so that was the mentality of venture.

capital which was look for good. businesses. Look for businesses that are. pretty easy to understand. Let's not. take a ton of risk. We did that in the. late '9s. That didn't turn out well. We. overestimated how big these companies. can become. And let's view our role as. venture capitalists and this is all. before founders fund started. industry. mentality was let's let's view the role. of venture capitalists as helping build. these companies and replace management. and bring in new management as we need. to. And so when Founders Fund started in.

2005, it was actually coming from those. experiences of some of the team at. Founders Fund um you know really the. founders of Founders Fund, Peter, Luke, Ken lived out that PayPal experience. where they had investors that were much. more that conservative attitude and. didn't trust the founders of the company. to run the company. And so Founders Fund. came about in 2005. with the purpose of empowering founders. to run their companies forever. And so. the thinking was hey all the best.

companies that exist are going to be. founderled. That's you know companies. that started in the '90s. um or even even earlier. So if we think. about Amazon still founder le. um Apple founder led for a very long. time and so there is this belief that. the founders should run their companies. because they have the moral authority. and the vision to do that and if the. founder is not so good maybe the company. will fail. But to achieve like really industry.

changing companies, you need that. founder mentality behind here's what. we're doing, here's why we're doing it, and every decision is going to be. aligned with doing that, even if it. doesn't optimize for the quarterly. number. And so Founders Fund started '05. initially backed a lot of different. founders out of the PayPal network. So a. lot of consumer internet things early. on. One of the first big bets was um. actually Facebook. Um but a bunch of. other ones as well, Spotify was an early.

investment. Um you know, then I think. the first incubation happened mid mid to. late 2000s originally within Peter's. office. um Palanteer and Palunteer was. really a response to the terrorist. attacks on 911 where the conversation. after that between policy makers was. really are we going to have safety or. are we going to have security. and I think you had Sham on recently on. a podcast I think he talked about this.

but this this concept of trade-offs by. policy makers you know Palanteer was. there to solve where it said well we. have this trade-off sphere or this. efficient frontier that we can trade. between do we want safety or we want uh. privacy. and Palanteer said no we don't we don't. need to make that choice we can do. technology that does both and so that. was really the first incubation by the. founders fund team to say um let's. actually solve a national security. problem through technology and let's. work with the government really closely.

to build out the tools that are going to. help us um trade information between. different departments in a really secure. way with privacy controls and make sure. that something like 9/11 never happens. again. So yeah, we founders fund started. transitioning from maybe more of the. consumer internet sort of world coming. out of the PayPal experience in 2005 to. then by you know helping incubate pull.

together the the Palunteer team. 2008. comes around and SpaceX is now going. through its launches. Had a couple. launches that didn't work, but was on a. great trajectory to actually get the. next ones to work. And Founders Fund. stepped up to lead one of the critical. rounds in SpaceX to help it have the. money to do those those additional final. launches and keep momentum through that. And then by 2011 really starting to. think a lot about, you know, not only is there this core.

element of backing founders and running. their companies, but how do we invest in. things that aren't, you know, there's. going to be a bunch of important. companies that are building consumer. internet and in enterprise software, but. how do we back things that otherwise. won't happen? these core technologies, whether they might be biotechnology, they might be energy, they might be. space, um things that are maybe even. controversial at times, uh defense. technology like with Andreal. At the.

time, nobody wanted to invest in defense. in Silicon Valley and even Google was. cancelling their program to work with. the government on defense software. And. so by early 2020 2010s you saw this. evolution or expansion from just let's. back founders unilaterally whether we. succeed or fail we are there for the. founder and we're going to let them run. their company the way they see fit to. now let's do that while also backing. important things that otherwise are not. going to happen. And so that that was.

really the evolution from 2005 to 2011. when I joined. Got to you know be a part. of a bunch of important investments. across a bunch of different. technologies. Um and yeah now it just continues today. What are some of the ones that stick out. to you the most to me? Like oddly a lot. of people asked for a long time what's. your favorite company in the portfolio? And I was biased, but I thought. objectively SpaceX, you know, working on this thing that. wasn't going to happen without SpaceX.

bringing down the launch cost. dramatically, leveraging that into um. enabling a bunch of other. constellations, including their own. constellation of Starlink. And so, so. much exciting stuff to do there. That. was a really important one. Um, a friend. at a business school. So I did business. school between SpaceX and and Founders. Fund and a friend out of there was um. you know he was thinking about going. into the investing world and during. business school he did a little bit of. investing but he quickly you know he was.

focused on Latin America and he saw that. in Brazil consumers were paying like. 100% interest rate for their credit. cards and getting completely ripped off. by the existing banking system and he. said hey I'm going to someone should. start a bank and make this more like the. US and make sure that consumers actually. get a fair deal. And so he started a. company called New Bank down there. um that started with a a credit card for. people and it's expanded a lot. Turned. out to be a really important company for. consumers in Brazil. Um today worth tens.

of billions. So big impact. Um let's. see. Neuralink were investors in. So, that. one's been pretty cool to watch where it. went from a concept to demonstrating it, you know, in monkeys playing Mind Pong. I don't know if you ever saw that video. If not, it's worth watching. You can. search Neuralink Monkey Mind Pong, and. you'll see a monkey that's playing Pong. with a joystick. Uh, it has a Neuralink.

in. It's It's happily enjoying some uh. banana smoothie every time it wins the. game. And then you see halfway through. the video, they remove the cord that's. actually connecting the joystick to the. computer, and the monkey keeps playing, thinking it's playing, but all it's. really doing is reading off the. neuralink thing. Um, wow. And it's still. winning at Pong, and it's still getting. the banana smoothie treats. And when I. saw that, that's when we knew this is. going to work. And so fast forward to.

today now I think you've got you've got. some very uh famous people who have used. it like Nolan. um people who had accidents quadriplegic. couldn't move at all and now actually. have jobs that are just internet based. jobs. Um so just completely changing. these people's lives. That's been a. really cool one to see. Do you have any. fear of Neuralink? No I don't. No. I think what we're going. to see the, you know, next decade of. Neurolink is going to be people with.

quadriplegia, ALS, um, them getting cured. I think the. company's talked about other. applications too, like blindness and. deafness. Um, could you actually use it. to not just read what the person's. thinking and express that onto the. world, but could you actually take. inputs like from a camera and help them. see again? People even who are born with. blindness. So yeah, that doesn't make me scared at. all. That makes me really excited. Now. people will think about merger with AI.

down the road or like how do you have. human AI symbiosis? I think that's far. enough away. Um and. it's going to be anything like that is. going to be completely voluntary for. people that hey if you know that's that. does not even enter my area of concern. at this point. It doesn't. No, because. first I think it's so far away that. we're going to figure out a lot of. things before then. And second, um, you know, will I ever get a. Neuralink? I don't know. Like maybe if.

it doesn't look like a good idea, I. wouldn't do it. But I think for many of. these patients today that are paralyzed. or ALS or blind or deaf or, you know, missing limbs, how can we actually like. use the Neuralink type device to let. them get full capability back? That's. that's what excites me about Neurolink. So yeah, we've had had a chance to be a. bunch of to be a part of many cool. companies, even some that are more. conventional like a friend of ours um at.

Founders Fund started a company for. cancer therapeutics. So specifically dealing with types of. cancer and really looking for the target. on the cancer that they they could go. after. and they ended up selling that. company and now the same target that. they were working on is now showing up. in a bunch of drugs um from that company. that they sold to and then other. companies. So, it's yeah, a lot of this. stuff is really futuristic and feels. more distant, but then also getting to. back unconventional approaches in things. like cancer therapeutics and watching.

patients eventually get cured from that. Wow. Has been really cool. I'll bet. I'll bet. What are you guys focusing on. now? I'd say the the founders fund thing is. it's always it's always seemingly a. black box from the outside. It's it's. seemingly random. And so, you know, one. saying is that once there's a theme of. what we're doing or like there's a. category that you can be a part of, it's. already it's already something Founders. probably won't invest in. It's probably. already too late. So people talk about.

commercial space now and all the things. happening in space, but the Founders. Fund first investment in SpaceX was. 2008. And so. in terms of what categories are we. investing in now, it's really the it's. really the anti-category that it always. has been. It's always been what's the. thing that's that's coming but isn't. isn't yet obvious. And that's not. something that the Founders Fund team is. so smart that they can figure out. It's. that the founders bring those ideas to.

founders fund. The founders of these. companies say, "Hey, this is this is the. important problem no one is solving or. everyone thinks about this problem this. way and the reality is that you should. think about it this way. This very. different way, this orthogonal way, and. it might not make sense to a lot of. people, but here's the reasons why they. make sense and you know, here's all the. questions you might ask and here's all. let's go down the rabbit hole together. and figure out what the answer is." It's. those types of companies that Founders. Fund backs and so um it's it's.

completely without a theme. I think the. biggest theme is it should be something. that can change an industry and is like. N of one just like a totally unique. company that is unlike anything else. Well, Scott, we're wrapping up the. interview, but I mean, what are some. problems in the country or maybe in the. world that you think that founders and. innovators should be looking to solve? I. think a lot of it's going to come back. to the to the energy stuff that we.

talked about. I think it's going to be. energy growth. I think everything comes. back to energy. So, if it's. manufacturing, if it's AI, it's going to come back to energy. production. If it's economic growth, it. comes back to energy production. So, I. think we're in this period of immense. need for more energy and there's a lot. of companies that could get started. There's people starting reactor. companies. We're working on the fuel for. the reactors. There's going to be things. like transformers. And so, I think it's a huge range of.

things people should do. But it's not. going to just be energy. I think what. should people do? It's you know I think. the guideline that um Peter at found. respond has given to people which I find. really uh inspiring and like it's a good. it's a good rule of thumb is do. something that matters. that otherwise won't get done and that. only you can do and I think if you can. find that thing to work on. that's more important than anything. else. So I think that's that's a sweet.

spot. So, I'd say search for those. things and until you find them, just try. and be part of teams doing things that. you think are important that you can. contribute to and don't worry about the. role. Just figure out a way to add. value. Great advice. Great advice. Thank. you. Last question. If you had three people. to recommend for the show, who would it. be? We've talked about a few people today. Um, it's like the toughest question I.

asked, huh? Well, there's so many people. that you should talk to, but I mean, yeah, I you haven't had I've mentioned a. few people today. Um, mentioned Peter. Peter's great. Uh, you. could go on for. 10 hours with Peter. You get into a lot of different things. Um, talked about Sam Alman and what he. thinks about where AI is going. I think. that that one could be good. I think.

Elon at some point would be really. interesting. Perfect. Perfect. Well, Scott, thank you again for being here. and uh that was fascinating interview. I. hope to see you again and uh I just want. to wish you the best of luck. Cool. [Music]. No matter where you're watching Shawn. Ryan show from, if you get anything out.

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