Nolan: HALEU Fuel Accounts for Over Half of Advanced Reactors' Costs
Scott Nolan · From SpaceX to Founders Fund to Solving America's Nuclear Fuel Problem · Invest Like The Best · Apr 14, 2026 · at 1:05:42
Scott Nolan, founder of General Matter, compares cost structures between traditional light water reactors and advanced reactors requiring high-assay low-enriched uranium.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So some of the, some advanced reactors, the cost of the fuel, the halo fuel that goes into it enriched further to 19.75%, which requires more input material to refine it all the way there. As you filter through more and more and more material, that fuel can be more than half of their energy production cost.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Scott Nolan
Nolan: Steep Venture Up-Rounds Are Often Underpriced Due to Anchoring
“If you've got a company that was like growing steadily, but then there's a big up round, it's probably the case that that up round is not even enough up. That if it's like a two X up round, maybe it should be a four X up.”
Nolan: Advanced Nuclear Startups Cite Russian Fuel as Primary Bottleneck
“And then all of them said the exact same thing. We want, you know, we're going to make nuclear affordable. We're going to make it scalable. We're going to take this from huge construction projects to factory built. And yet the one thing that's the hardest is n…”
Nolan: Co-locating Engineering and Initial Manufacturing Is Mandatory
“I think you need to, at a minimum, put your first of a kind manufacturing co-located with engineering and then better yet small scale manufacturing, mid scale manufacturing, maybe a large scale. You can push it somewhere else and go to a lower cost center as o…”
Nolan: China's Energy Production Will Triple the US's This Year
“China was growing a long time, like. We were equal neck and neck. I think this year they now will be triple us on total energy production.”
Nolan: Data Centers Could Consume the Entire US Electrical Grid by 2030
“And you look at some of these curves and it looks like data centers can consume if they were allowed to the entire grid by 20, 30 at this growth rate.”
Nolan: SMRs will find their niche powering data centers behind the meter
“And so if gigawatt scale is for the grid and megawatt scale is for remote communities or, you know, government installations, then the middle scale, I think is going to find its niche behind the meter with data centers over the next five to 10 years.”