The Exchanges

Q People know about nuclear broadly, but they might not know about the fuel aspect of this. Could you just explain a little bit further nuclear fuel, or I guess like the nuclear process from, you know, maybe enrichment to actual generation?

A Yeah. So there's really, there's really two, two big parts. One is mine the uranium, get the uranium, and then everything else is processing. So it's like chemical processing, refining. So there's four steps there. One, one is it's typically turned into a gas. It's then enriched. It's then turned back into a solid. And then once in solid form, you can make whatever shape of fuel pellet you want. So those four steps are conversion, enrichment, deconversion, and fuel fabrication. The step we do is enrichment. Which is, you know, the, the first step of conversion is a chemical process going from solid to gas. So that's chemical reactions. The enrichment process is really a separative refining process. No chemical reactions, um, no nuclear reactions. And then you go back into solid and you, then you do mechanical shaping. And so, um, that's it. It's, it's mostly manipulating matter. Into a final form. Uh, no real nuclear processes at that point. It doesn't really go critical until, until you're in a reactor in a specific configuration of fuel. That's when you get radioactivity and energy production.

AI assessment note: “So those four steps are conversion, enrichment, deconversion, and fuel fabrication.”

Q I guess, how did we get here as a country? Like nuclear is definitely stagnated over almost 50 years now. So how did we get to the point where there's, there's actually no enrichment really here?

A At this century, it's been pretty flat. Um, yeah, not much new nuclear production, even since the nineties. And so, you know, you think about that context of 35 years, 3035 years of no real growth in nuclear energy. It's natural to think maybe we don't need a lot of field production and maybe we can trade for what we need. If you rewind to the fifties, sixties, seventies, US was most of the world's enrichment. Uh, we were 65% roughly, and we did that through a first generation technology called gaseous diffusion. So we had these big, big facilities, very energy intensive, um, gen one process, gaseous diffusion. We, that's how we led the world in, in enrichment. Fast forward through the cold war to the fall of the Berlin wall to not much new nuclear build in the U S and, and we said, okay, Cold War's over. Um, we have allies in Europe. We're friends with Russia. We should just freely trade for, for, for uranium and for enrichment services. Then we started the process of decommissioning our gaseous diffusion plants in the U S and said, we will solve this with free trade. Our allies and Russia do this much cheaper than we do it at large scale and free markets are going to be fine. Um, you know, in addition to that, the DOE was working on new technologies. Thinking that that would be what scaled up in the U S and that we would have self-sufficiency and, and we just haven't really s…

AI assessment note: “we started the process of decommissioning our gaseous diffusion plants in the U S”

Q explain it all, but you've been at SpaceX, you're at Founders Fund, you've been helping out some really critical, uh, national interest companies within Founders Fund, and you were talking about the playbook that these companies use to build these generational companies, these, like, really Goliaths. So I'm really curious from your end, like, could you just share more on your background and how that's informing building out the company?

A So I started my career as an aerospace engineer, worked at Boeing during college, then moved over to SpaceX also during college, and then immediately after graduating, that was from 2003 to 2007. And back then we were working on the original engine systems. We were working on the Falcon one vehicle and the NASA commercial orbital transportation services contract, which was structured. It was a milestone based contract to bring back us launch capacity. And cargo capability to the space station. Back when we had, we didn't have that capability once the space shuttle was grounded, and we were completely dependent on Russia for all of our crewed and cargo space launch. And so, um, you know, that experience just showed me how that, how that company was built. It was really a combination of two things. One was people from the industry, aerospace industry, who knew All the tricks, knew the science, knew the engineering, um, but had a way of doing things that was more the incumbent way. And that was combined probably in a one third to two thirds ratio with Silicon Valley talent, people from hardware startups, software startups, just saying, let's treat this problem as if it were a startup problem, almost like it's a software company. And so, you know, there were, there were naming conventions around the rockets that were like more like software releases. Um, that was something from a v…

AI assessment note: “And so that's the same thing we're doing. So people from the nuclear industry”

Q Because of that, are you working closely with the new administration? What's your experience been?

A We're, we're working very closely with the DOE. So even, even before starting the company, We had conversations with the DOE about what we thought needed to happen, and, and there was a lot of support for, for this, given the goals, uh, you know, of the country around nuclear. And so we've been, we've been working closely with them since day one, since before day one. Um, and, you know, throughout the last year, we were selected for a couple large programs, really historic programs that the DOE has led around Um, enrichment capacity, both on the low enriched side and on the HALU side. So the high assay, low enriched uranium, that's just under 20% that most of these new reactors use. And just, just as background, they choose to enrich to a slightly higher level, um, still below 20%, but that is so that you can get more energy density into a smaller core. And so you can then build your core in a factory, ship it, avoid a lot of the build costs. That historically have plagued nuclear. So the DOE created that program to help the advanced reactors and make sure that there was a supply chain for them, and then following the Russia import span created a second program called the Low Enriched Uranium Acquisition Program to help encourage U.S. production to offset Russian imports and just in general set up U.S. capability in the area. So through those two programs, we've been working re…

AI assessment note: “We're, we're working very closely with the DOE.”

Q I'm curious how you think about this in the grand scheme of geopolitical tensions. You did mention that energy is directly linked to conflict and GDP. So what are your thoughts on that?

A Yeah, I think, I think that's really two, I would think of it as two different topics. I think You know, this is, and, and in terms of other groups that, um, we've, we've worked with or spoken with in the administration, the, uh, energy dominance council has been awesome for, for trying to push for more us energy production. And that's because they know energy production and consumption is directly linked to GDP. It's one of the most correlated things with GDP. So on the, on the GDP side, yes, energy production, specifically baseload energy production is, is completely linked. And drives things like manufacturing and AI. Um, so, on the GDP side, you know, that's how we think about that. On the conflict side, I think the point I've made there before is, A lot of people worry about conflict with other peers or near peers, and people have different thoughts on how that's going to manifest, whether it's an AI war, if it's kinetic war, or if it's just economic tensions. And, you know, I think what we've seen for the last decade or more is just economic competition, and that goes back to energy production as the foundation for all economic activity. Um, and so the way, the way I think about that is whether you're worried about None of the above. If you're just worried about growth, great energy production. If you're worried about economic battles with other countries, you need energy…

AI assessment note: “on the GDP side, yes... On the conflict side, I think the point I've made”

Q It's huge. As we, uh, get into the last parts of the segment, one of our partners is Brex. They're all about performance, spending smarter, moving faster. I'm really curious from your perspective, what was the biggest performance trade-off that you've been told to accept in energy and in nuclear that is not true and you've rejected it?

A Yeah. Let's see if this, if this answers that question. I think a misconception of nuclear that the regulations, the hard part, a lot of people have that view and they blame a lot on the regulator and they say the NRC is just, you know, The, the standard, the standard blame game is NRC is really slow. Um, you know, it just takes too long. We've actually seen that, you know, almost the opposite. So all the people we've interacted with on the NRC on various topics want more nuclear. They're extremely responsive, smart, fast, motivated. And so I think we're going to see these regulations actually change the way those people in the NRC are able to operate. Um, setting hard deadlines on things, giving them the freedom to factor in benefits of nuclear. So maybe it's not like the exact trade you're talking about of, of what thing do you have to accept that is, you know, we've rejected. It's more like what thing did everybody tell us was true? And then it hasn't even been true. Um, and I think again, that those sort of narratives, uh, are often in the startup space, but we've, we've seen the opposite.

AI assessment note: “a misconception of nuclear that the regulations, the hard part”