065 Liz Muller, CEO of Deep Fission

Liz Muller (00:00)

Deep Fission comes about because we made the important realization that when you’re down a borehole, which we were looking at for deep isolation, you already have excellent containment and you also have 160 atmospheres of pressure from the water that’s above you in the borehole itself. So quite remarkably, you have the exact conditions that you need with cement and you use cement and steel and above ground.

and 70 to 80 % of the cost of above ground pressurized water reactors is in creating that pressure and then the containment of it. So basically we’re taking 70 to 80 % of the cost out of pressurized water reactors by putting the nuclear reactor a mile underground.

Mark Hinaman (01:49)

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Fire to Fission podcast, where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can better human lives. Today I’m joined by repeat guest, Liz Muller, CEO and co-founder of Deep Fission. Liz, last time we chatted, were CEO and co-founder of Deep Isolation and now Deep Fission. You just changed one of the words in the company name, but I’m really excited to chat about it and hear how you’ve been.

Liz Muller (02:12)

Yes.

Mark Hinaman (02:19)

you

Liz Muller (02:19)

Thank you, Mark. I’m happy to be here. Happy to talk to you about one or both companies still involved in both of them.

Mark Hinaman (02:24)

Yeah, before we dive into, I guess, of transition and thoughts about both, for the audience’s perspective, why don’t you give us a quick background on Deep Fission or 30 second intro pitch. What are you guys trying to do?

Liz Muller (02:45)

Deep Fission comes about because we made the important realization that when you’re down a borehole, which we were looking at for deep isolation, you already have excellent containment and you also have 160 atmospheres of pressure from the water that’s above you in the borehole itself. So quite remarkably, you have the exact conditions that you need with cement and you use cement and steel and above ground.

and 70 to 80 % of the cost of above ground pressurized water reactors is in creating that pressure and then the containment of it. So basically we’re taking 70 to 80 % of the cost out of pressurized water reactors by putting the nuclear reactor a mile underground.

Mark Hinaman (03:30)

Cool, novel concept. I’m stoked to dive into that and chat more. before we do, yeah, when we left off last time, you were working on deep isolation. Talk to us a little bit about kind of the progress that deep isolation had made and then this transition to deep vision.

Liz Muller (03:32)

Yeah.

Yeah. Deep isolation is doing really well. So deep isolation is still engaging with customers around the world, around deep borehole disposal for nuclear waste, how this can be done, where this can be done, how much it’s going to cost, what are the regulatory hurdles that need to be overcome. So deep isolation is now a, I mean, still in some ways a startup company. We haven’t actually disposed of any waste yet.

but is eight years old and has revenue, is able to sustain itself, is doing really well. And so I was able to hand Deep Isolation off to the Chief Operating Officer, the former Chief Operating Officer, who is now the new CEO. This is Rod Balzer, who has been in the nuclear industry for 30 plus years, very experienced, had been a previous CEO before, and so he’s got it.

And it’s both exciting and humbling to feel like I’m no longer needed in the company. I am still involved. I’m still on the board and taking on the role of exec chair. But my full time these days is with the new company, Deep Fission.

Mark Hinaman (05:01)

That was going to be my question. Are you still involved? And it’s like every leader’s dream to work themselves out of a job, like train the people behind you or under you to do your job. And then you can move on and do something else. So kudos there.

Liz Muller (05:17)

It is and it isn’t because we had such a strong team and the team of people at Deep Isolation I genuinely love and care about and they’re so much fun to work with. So as much as it is a dream to work yourself out of a job, it’s also still hard to give up when you care about something. And I also think I had visions of myself still being the CEO and the company actually did.

first disposal and became a billion dollar company and all of these things. But I still get to be involved. I’m just going to be involved as exec chair rather than as CEO.

Mark Hinaman (05:51)

Yeah, well, that’s exciting. I can’t wait to see the day that that happens, right? mean, it’s from an engineering perspective as an engineer. I’m like, there is absolutely no reason that we can’t physically and mechanically do this. Yeah, so I commend you and the current team to keep going and they’ll get there, right? So, yeah.

Liz Muller (05:57)

Yeah. Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Mark Hinaman (06:19)

Okay, so deep fission. How, I mean, obviously you guys have been thinking about like boreholes, thinking about the subsurface, right? From oil and gas, we do this all the time. There’s a whole catalog of tools that you can use to do stuff in the subsurface. But how did you guys get the idea or thought, thought process to be like, you know what?

Liz Muller (06:32)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (06:44)

We could like do a reactor in the subsurface too. Why not that? walk me through kind of the process that got you there.

Liz Muller (06:52)

Yeah, so we co-founded Deep Isolation because nuclear waste disposal was a significant barrier to the future of nuclear power, particularly eight years ago. think these days it’s perhaps less of a barrier, but eight years ago when we founded the company, everyone was saying no new nuclear power until the nuclear waste problem was solved. so solving the nuclear waste problem just felt like a really big, important

breakthrough where if we can succeed with that, it would unlock the entire industry. Now over the past eight years, a lot of that is still true, but there’s also the cost issue, which I think has been encroaching on my mind as even if we solve the nuclear waste disposal problem, it’s not clear that we’re going to solve the cost issue for nuclear power. And so that’s been creeping up on me for a long time. And you’ve probably seen the reports around why nuclear is so expensive and yeah.

As I mentioned, it’s largely the construction, it’s the concrete and the steel, and the timeframe also to build the nuclear power plant takes a long time. So I’ve been aware of nuclear waste as an issue, now also aware of the cost of nuclear power as an issue. And then we were asked specifically, among all of the things that could possibly go wrong when you’re putting nuclear waste for disposal inside a borehole,

One of the scenarios that we needed to look at was what if accidentally, instead of putting spent fuel in the borehole, you put fresh fuel in the borehole? Is there any chance that this would start a chain reaction? And we did the calculation and the answer was no. But along the way, there were a couple of really interesting things that bubbled to the surface. So we’re very familiar with the containment that you have deep underground. That’s why.

Deep isolation, nuclear waste disposal and deep boreholes is such a great solution. But you also have 160 atmospheres of pressure just by virtue of being a mile underground with the water on top of you in the borehole. And that started getting the gears turning because that meant that we now have the exact same situation that you’re trying to create.

And the reason that you have so much construction for a pressurized water reactor is in order to create those two things above ground. And so the calculation came out, no, one single spent fuel assembly or fresh fuel assembly in a borehole a mile underground cannot go critical. But then the next question became, well, can we make it go critical? Can we come up with a design for a nuclear reactor a mile underground that would

be sustainable and that could take advantage of the fact that we don’t now have these massive construction costs. And that’s what led directly to deep vision.

Mark Hinaman (09:45)

Awesome. How far along are you guys in this process?

Liz Muller (09:51)

Deep Fission is still relatively new. We’re a bit over a year old, but we only came out of stealth mode a couple of months ago. And this is because we really wanted to do our own internal due diligence. It seems crazy when you think about putting a nuclear reactor a mile underground and that that would decrease costs. If anything, it seems like you put it underground, you’re going to increase the costs. And so we wanted to do our own level of due diligence to satisfy ourselves that this idea is real and that it will work and to do a certain level of cost calculations before we came out into the public realm. So where we are now, we do have a conceptual design which has been written up and submitted to the regulator. We had a public hearing on that document.

And we are now moving into preliminary design and then hopefully into final designs. We have a lot of engineering work that is happening now. Going from basically convincing ourselves that this is gonna work to actually designing something that is going to work is still a very significant effort. And we’re also signing up customers and continuing the engagement with the regulator.

Mark Hinaman (11:08)

Awesome. Talk to us a little bit about that preliminary designer. I just pulled it up. You’ve got this deep fission conceptual design review of deep borehole pressurized water reactor that had been submitted to the NRC. Walk us through a little bit of this.

Liz Muller (11:25)

Yeah, I mean the core concept is that we want to use what’s readily available without creating a brand new supply chain. So we are looking at relatively standardized pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies. So four of them, which would go into a matrix or a two by two array. Into a borehole. So put it into a reactor vessel, which could be thin walled because the pressure inside the reactor is the same as the pressure outside of the reactor or is similar to the pressure outside of the reactor because again of the water in the borehole. That would generate heat that would then go into a steam generator, so a secondary loop of water that would generate the steam.

The steam would flash to the surface or would shoot to the surface where you have a turbine and you would generate electricity.

Mark Hinaman (12:21)

Okay, I’ve got a lot of questions and if it gets too technical then like, stop me, we can move on. So this steam, and all of this is happening subsurface, right? Like this.

Liz Muller (12:26)

Sure. Yeah.

Yes, well the steam generation would happen subsurface, but then it would shoot to the surface for the steam generator. Sorry, for the turbines.

Mark Hinaman (12:42)

Okay. Right. And the steam generation, is it the same borehole then, or same well bore, that your steam fluid flow is going through? Right?

Liz Muller (12:51)

Yes.

Yes, so we’re looking at a single 30 inch diameter borehole for one reactor.

Mark Hinaman (12:59)

Okay, that’s going to be my other question. the diameter of a hole, how much space do you guys actually have to work with here? So 30 inches is big, right? That’s a big diameter hole.

Liz Muller (13:15)

Well, let me elaborate on that a little bit because 30 inches is a large diameter hole and it is also within the realm of what existing drilling companies are, I’ll say mostly comfortable with, right? So not everybody has drilled a hole to that depth of that size, but some people have and we expect to be able to do it with available equipment today. So nothing brand new is going to be required.

We may have to move some rigs around, go for a big rig, obviously, but we think that’s doable. We are also thinking about a 40-inch hole. So a 40-inch hole is harder. potentially moves into the realm of needing to design some new equipment. We haven’t fully established that yet. But 40 inches would allow us to have a three by three array of fuel, which would be for much more efficient use of the

the nuclear fuel. So there’s some significant advantages to that and we are considering both options.

Mark Hinaman (14:20)

Would there be any possibility that you guys would go smaller or is kind of the Neutronix just not feasible? mean, you said 2×2 array for the 30 inch.

Liz Muller (14:28)

yeah, we could potentially go smaller, particularly if we wanted to use a more highly enriched uranium. But again, we’re trying to start with off the shelf what is available today. And, I know you’ve probably been following, some of the concerns around the HALU supply chain. and so we prefer to start with, low enriched uranium just at 5%.

Mark Hinaman (14:57)

Got it. And what kind of, I guess, issues or problems are you guys protecting against? I know you’d mentioned it a couple times, like having extra atmospheres and having a containment vessel, but what’s the hazard? Walk us through that again.

Liz Muller (15:13)

Yeah. I mean, there are absolutely safety advantages of going deep underground. It’s, hard to imagine a scenario where this would impact, the surface life, life at the surface. we can, we can talk that through that, but I think the biggest advantage nuclear reactor today, nuclear reactors today are extremely safe. And so touting the safety advantages feels

less important to me. mean, yes, you can argue that it’s much safer when it’s a mile underground, but I think the biggest difference and what makes this so exciting isn’t the safety advantages, it’s the cost advantages. And it’s the fact that we can be profitable from the first implementation of this reactor design.

And I think that, you know, personal concern of mine is, well, what does an nth of a kind mean? How long is it going to take you to get to nth of a kind and how much money are you going to lose until you can get there? And so having a reactor design that is profitable on the first of the kind implementation just feels like a massive win. And I think is one of the reasons that our customers are so excited about what we’re doing.

Mark Hinaman (16:26)

Awesome. Okay, so the cost should be less. What are you guys estimating for capex for one of these systems? And you can give it an any metric or even say, well, we don’t know, we haven’t built one yet.

Liz Muller (16:36)

And so was it.

I will start by, we don’t know, we haven’t built one, but I will add that you can do some back of the envelope estimates, and I would invite you or any of our listeners to do those same back of the envelope estimates, and it will probably get numbers that are not that far from our own numbers. So the biggest CapEx cost is drilling the hole.

So you can get really good numbers and we’ve gotten these from multiple vendors on what is the cost of drilling a hole to these specifications. We’re looking at about six million for a single hole and the cost will go down if you’re doing a fleet of them. So if you’re doing 10 holes, if you’re doing 100 holes, the cost is gonna go down pretty significantly. The biggest cost in our levelized cost of electricity is the fuel.

So the fuel is, as I mentioned earlier, especially with a smaller design, we’re not as fuel efficient as some of the other larger reactor designs. So we’re trading off between fuel efficiency and not needing construction. And so with only four fuel assemblies, we are going to go through those fuel assemblies about every two and a quarter years for a 15 megawatt reactor. So that’s a lot of refueling.

And we can talk about that as well. We’re hoping to leave the spent fuel underground in the borehole and never bring it up to the surface again, which is pretty cool. But we know the cost of fuel today. We don’t know the cost of fuel in the future, but you can also do your own calculations. What do you think the cost of fuel in the future is going to be? And those are the two biggest components by far of our LCOE as well as our level, our overnight capital costs.

So if we’re wrong and the reactor vessel ends up costing twice as much or even 10 times as much as we expect it to, we’ve done sensitivity analysis. It’s not gonna matter that much. Our biggest costs are really the fuel and the borehole.

Mark Hinaman (18:45)

Okay, so borehole six million bucks fuel, but fuel might be even more expensive and I can go back and make my estimate for what a two by two array assembly might be. But if it’s more than six million bucks, then that’s still say an order of magnitude lower than what other SMR vendors might be at, right? That’s kind of the thought process there.

Liz Muller (19:05)

Yes.

Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Yep.

Mark Hinaman (19:11)

So I mean, say you spend 20 million bucks on your fuel for your 15 megawatts, right? You could still find applications that, okay, 26, $30 million for your total install. Well, and that’s just my back of the envelope calculations of, man, if I could get a 15 megawatt reactor for like $30 million, I guess it depends on how many years you’ve got. So that’s the concept then, like have a…

I guess single fuel assembly and then kind of your whole, call it balance of plant. I mean, you leave your power generation on the surface and a little building that you bring your steam supply into. And then you’ve got equipment that you presumably remove that’s above your fuel assembly and then can drop additional fuel assemblies.

Liz Muller (19:57)

Yeah, that’s right. Yep.

Mark Hinaman (20:01)

What’s your timeline? know it’s again, radically uncertain. You guys submitted your regulatory engagement plan and I think it was March that it showed up and then quote unquote came out of stealth mode recently. But what’s your current guess for when you might have the first one of these tested?

Liz Muller (20:10)

Yeah, that’s right. Yep.

So we are looking to submit our license application. So we’re looking to confirm our first site within, I’m going to call it the next six months or so, and then move forward with our license application with the goal of submitting it in the fall of 2026. We are currently assuming a two-year review process. We would love it if it could happen faster than that, but we’re aware that this is not something that you can really rush. So we’re looking at hopefully getting the license

in the fall of 2028. And then building a reactor is going to be the fastest part of it. So drilling a hole was about three weeks. And then assembling the various different parts of the reactor and lowering it down to the reactor, again, sort of weeks to months. So probably three to six months in order to get everything done. So commercial reactor in 2029 is our current estimate.

Mark Hinaman (21:18)

And you guys are looking for the best first spot to do this.

Liz Muller (21:21)

We are, yeah. And we do expect our first customer to be with multiple reactors, so multiple holes, probably a dozen or maybe even more.

Mark Hinaman (21:33)

How far apart would you space these?

Liz Muller (21:37)

So based on rock analysis that we’ve done with deep isolation, we think 15 feet apart is plenty. You really want to look at your precision for drilling to make sure that you don’t deviate from what you’re expecting to drill. But the precision these days is very good. And so we could have a whole array of 100 boreholes on about an acre.

Mark Hinaman (22:01)

Man, that’s quite precise. Yeah, you’ll need very precise tools. I’ve drilled wells in the past and I would give a little bit more safety tolerance than that. But you could do 15 feet on the surface and then spaced further apart in the subsurface, just having your array of uncertainty as you drill down. Okay, that’s interesting. guess, so 2029, but the first customer might be more than one.

Liz Muller (22:06)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sure.

Also true. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (22:31)

than one bar hole.

Fascinating. Circling back, so like this idea of the heat exchanger in the subsurface. I mean, do you guys have like a temperature estimate that you’ll be generating steam at and then sending it back to the subsurface or back to the surface?

Liz Muller (22:51)

Yeah, so we’re looking at using similar temperatures to pressurize water reactors above ground. So about 300 C. So it could be a range of 275 to 315 or so. But because of the pressure, 160 atmospheres, that…

be boiling until we reduce the pressure and then allow it to flash to steam.

Mark Hinaman (23:15)

And then like is this, you’ve got one tube coming down that’s pumping fresh water and the other tube that’s sending steam back to surface? Like what’s that flow loop look like?

Liz Muller (23:26)

Yeah, so there will be a couple of different mechanisms. We will have water coming back down a tube and we will have steam going up a tube. We will also have a sampling tube that we can use to test the primary circuit. So we can test, can inject boron, we can test for any changes that are unexpected.

There’s also going to be the mechanisms for lifting things and retrieving anything that we put at depth. I touched on this earlier, but we do expect that the entire reactor vessel will not come back up again with a lifetime of just two and a quarter years. We are less concerned about corrosion than you would typically be. And the plan is after two and a quarter years, we would lower it down deeper into the borehole for storage.

And then of course there’s also the casing water itself, which can be used as part of an emergency core cooling system, just in case you need it.

Mark Hinaman (24:34)

Do you think you would ever need that?

Liz Muller (24:37)

No, no, but you want to have one anyway, right? You may not expect to ever use it, but it’s nice to have something just in case.

Mark Hinaman (24:45)

Yeah, I mean, like, talk about the world’s best natural convection, right? Like, okay, so you’ve got a hot rock in the bottom of a tube. Like, so, okay, the water around it gets hot, and then it flows up, and then you have thousands of feet of additional water that will circulate that, right? That’s kind of the whole concept. Have you guys made estimates for like, the duration or lifetime of these systems?

Liz Muller (24:59)

Yeah, that’s right.

That’s right. That’s right. Yep.

Mark Hinaman (25:12)

I mean, two and a quarter years for one fuel bundle, but fuel bundles are about 16, 17 feet long. And you’re a mile deep, so maybe you’ve got a thousand feet to work with. So that’s a hundred or whatever, or 1500 feet to work with. So you’ve got a hundred refueling cycles. Am I thinking about that correctly? And not specifics, but like, hey, we’ll use a part of the wellbore.

Liz Muller (25:32)

So if we’re at fueling.

Yeah, we could actually drill the hole deeper than a full mile. So we could drill, let’s call it one and a quarter miles and then have the fuel assemblies at the very bottom. And so that you’re able to easily maintain the pressure at a mile depth. We are thinking about what that means in terms of ability to bring it back up to the surface. So we can bring it back up to the surface if we need to.

but as you mentioned, two and a quarter years, less concerned about corrosion. It’s really the casing of the borehole itself. That is the limiting factor in terms of the lifetime of the hole. we’re currently estimating 30 to 40 years. again, it’s full of fresh water. We can put material in there if we need to. doesn’t have a lot of the same materials that you would have in an oil and gas well that are potentially corrosive. but, you know, worst case scenario.

Mark Hinaman (26:34)

I mean, on the exterior of the casing, yes, on the interior and because you don’t have flow through the case and your corrosion issues will be reduced.

Liz Muller (26:39)

That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And because the capex is relatively low, if we wanted to say we’re going to close it up after 30 or 40 years, even though we think we probably could go longer and just drill a new well, it’s not going to change the cost very significantly.

Mark Hinaman (26:57)

Sorry, I’ll say that back. extending the life of a single wellbore won’t change the caustic. Like the majority of the capex is upfront. Yeah.

Liz Muller (27:08)

I mean, assuming that 30 to 40 years should be pretty straightforward, extending it from.

Mark Hinaman (27:12)

Well, and all financial calculations go to zero after that amount of time anyway, right? and the people with the money that you’re solving problems for, right, are like, we don’t care after that point. I’m retired and, yeah, hanging out. Okay, what, have you guys thought about, and this might be a problem that you solved with deep isolation, but what happens if you drop one of these assemblies?

Liz Muller (27:16)

Right, right, so extending it to 60 years versus.

Yeah, so we have done some of that with deep isolation, but you can imagine you’re dropping it into a water environment, so it’s not gonna go crashing to the bottom. It could potentially be damaged by hitting the bottom, and you may have to, worst case scenario, abandon the well and start over.

Mark Hinaman (28:03)

Easy, right? It’s already in the subsurface.

Liz Muller (28:04)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (28:08)

How big’s the team?

Liz Muller (28:11)

So we’re growing. We were about 15 people a couple of weeks ago, and I think we’ve hired a couple more since then. We’re mainly focused on engineering hires right now. I mentioned we have a lot of engineering work that needs to happen over the next two years, so that is probably our single biggest focus.

Mark Hinaman (28:31)

Gotcha. Do you guys have partners in the oil and gas industry that you’re working with?

Liz Muller (28:36)

We do. We’ve been talking to a number of different people. We’re also able to draw on some of the experience of deep isolation, working with oil and gas industry. There’s also the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center, which has done some of the testing that is helpful to us. But yes, we’re also developing our own relationships with people in the oil and gas sector.

Mark Hinaman (28:57)

You guys expect to be able to control reactivity, I assume, like in the subsurface, right? So like you’ll have a control rod of some sort that is able to, yeah, go in and out of your fuel assembly.

Liz Muller (29:01)

Yes. Yes.

Yep.

and also be able to use boron as well with the tube that goes to the surface.

Mark Hinaman (29:15)

Gotcha. Okay. So how many, so let’s see, two by two array. I think I’ve got that question answered. What are some of the biggest like hurdles or obstacles that you see bringing this to market to commercialize it?

Liz Muller (29:34)

Yeah, I don’t want to underestimate the engineering challenge ahead of us. So, you know, it’s great to have a conceptual design that you feel really good about, but taking a conceptual design to a real final design that you can actually build is a lot of work and a lot of detail. And of course, the nuclear sector, you have to have a very granular level of design before you can submit your license application.

So that is probably our biggest challenge right now. At the same time, we are also continuing to engage with the regulator. So by the time we submit our license application fall of 2026, we want every single big issue that we might have with the regulator to have already been discussed as part of our pre-application process. So going into this with a mindset, no surprises for anybody. We all want to know what we’re doing.

as early as possible so that we can have those conversations and do any additional work that maybe.

Mark Hinaman (30:38)

what, why did you pick a mile? I guess it was that arbitrary or could you, could you go shallower?

Liz Muller (30:45)

So you want to get the 160 atmospheres of pressure from the water that’s above you in the borehole. And so it would be challenging to go shallower. We could certainly go deeper. So deeper is almost easier than shallower because just by virtue of the column of water, that would create 160 atmospheres of pressure at about a

Mark Hinaman (31:08)

and why the 160 atmospheres of pressure.

Liz Muller (31:12)

Again, just to keep it straightforward and the same as what you have for a pressurized water reactor above ground. So in order to generate high quality steam, you want about 160. You could also use more if you want hotter steam, which could be beneficial. So I could imagine in future designs, maybe we want to go deeper and have a hotter steam coming out. But we’re starting with…

wanting to leverage what’s already been done. This is a pressurized water reactor. It’s not new technology. It’s just taking existing technology into a new environment. And we’re hoping that that should simplify things with the regulators.

Mark Hinaman (31:52)

Awesome. So lots of engineering horsepower. You’re leveraging the work with deep isolation. You’ve got a plan for coming to market, like timeline, entertaining prospective customers. You guys are doing it. It’s pretty exciting. But you mentioned that the fuel supply and that the fuel would be one of most expensive things.

Liz Muller (32:10)

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (32:22)

So what are your thoughts on the fuel supply chain?

Liz Muller (32:26)

Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I’m excited about the investments that the US and others are making in an independent uranium supply chain. I think that’s important. I think it’s needed. I also think that there’s going to be a lag, right? you know, I guess fortunate, unfortunate, I don’t know, we’re not going to be able to use fuel until 2029. So that gives us

a number of years to hopefully have this supply chain come online. We were not going to be able to, we’re not going want to use Russian fuel as we have been in the past. And so by, my hope would be by 2029, this is not a significant risk. Now, uranium is not that expensive to mine. So the cost I do think will come down eventually.

The question is really about how quickly can we get the supply online? And we probably are going to see a bit of a price hike over the next couple of years, I would think at least, depending on demand, not just in the U S but also internationally. So I think we are going to see a bit of a hike and then I would expect it to come back down. And I would also expect the long-term forecast to be not that different from what it has been historically just because

Uranium is plentiful and good techniques are coming a long way in terms of getting uranium from seawater. And it shouldn’t be that expensive for the long term.

Mark Hinaman (33:59)

Have you guys engaged with any of the conversion and return or fabrication vendors to understand kind of their timeline for the supply?

Liz Muller (34:08)

We have, we’ve been talking to them, yes.

Mark Hinaman (34:10)

Awesome. No concerns there for bottlenecks.

Liz Muller (34:15)

I would say not yet. I think we’ll have to continue to have those conversations, but I think we feel pretty good about our, again, because we’re using low enriched uranium, I think it’s going to be much easier to get than if we were to need halo.

Mark Hinaman (34:31)

Yeah. Awesome, Liz. I normally ask, how can people help? But I suspect part of our audience is from the oil and gas industry. And so, yeah, if there’s folks that have ideas or are curious or they’re like, hey, we design subsurface tools. Like, should they reach out to you?

Liz Muller (34:45)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. would say particularly if there’s anyone out there who has experience with a 40 inch borehole a mile deep, I would love to hear from them. But even just with ideas of how that would work or anything that people think would be helpful, absolutely, please reach out.

Mark Hinaman (35:06)

What else can people do to help?

Liz Muller (35:10)

so I guess one of, one of the concepts that I’ve been hearing a little bit about recently is this idea that the U S should just pick two technologies and go with those. and I, I think that’s a mistake. I think if we were to pick two technologies or three technologies, or even four technologies, we would probably be picking ones that have been around for awhile. And maybe that aren’t.

taking advantage of some of the recent innovations. Certainly our concept is brand new and yet because of the lower cost, I think we’re going to catch up quickly. So I just say that, you know, let’s not in our minds turn towards the concept of just pick the two biggest companies and expect to go with those. Let’s keep an open mind and

I think the market really deserves to have a significant say.

Mark Hinaman (36:09)

that. Liz, we’re, we might have to cut this episode short because I’ve got to run, but leave us with your most positive vision of the future. What’s it look like?

Liz Muller (36:20)

I think the future of nuclear is going to be very exciting. We are going to have low cost nuclear power, which is going to enable us to finally address climate change while also growing our economies, having AI and data centers. think nuclear really enables us to do it all.

Mark Hinaman (36:40)

I love it. We’ll have to have back on sometime in 2025 to get a progress update and hear how things are going. man, I just, I think it’s a really fun idea. I will say like, a lot of people I’ve heard some pushback in the industry that’s been like, really? Really? They’re going to put in a wellbore? And I’m like, as somebody who has put many things in wellbores, it’s unbelievable the ingenuity and what people can do.

Liz Muller (36:45)

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (37:09)

from an engineering and technology perspective inside of Tube. So I’m excited to see you guys progress.

Liz Muller (37:13)

I that. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that.

Mark Hinaman (37:17)

Thanks.

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