Latest / Cheeky Pint / Julia DeWahl of Antares on building nuclear reactors for the US military

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Julia DeWahl of Antares on building nuclear reactors for the US military · Cheeky Pint

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The US did have this long-running anti-nuclear bent.
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I can't even tell you how much has changed
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in the last few years.
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They changed the mandate of the NRC
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and they said you are no longer focused just on safety.
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Department of Energy pathways have been also unopened
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and unblocked for test reactors.
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The last 10 years or so,
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it's been like 1% of nuclear fuel used in the US
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was actually domestically mined.
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We're still buying like almost 50% of our uranium
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from Russia and kind of ex-Soviet states.
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How capital intensive is it going to be
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to get your product to market?
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Oh, in the hundreds of millions.
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The biggest organization that showed up
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against Diablo Canyon was called "Mothers for Peace."
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This organization was that old
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that it was related to the Nuclear Cold War, right?
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I'm part of this "Mothers for Nuclear" organization.
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Mothers against their mothers?
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Yeah.
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And then I brought some graphite.
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Do you want to take that out
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and I'll show it? Sure, yeah.
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This is what we are using for our moderator
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in our reactor.
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It has been designated a critical mineral.
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It's an important one.
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But this is just graphite.
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Like this is not, you know,
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uranium-235 or something.
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No, I wouldn't have brought you that.
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That would've been a little bit dangerous to be holding.
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Julia DeWahl is the co-founder of Antares,
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which is designing nuclear micro-reactors
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for the military and other off-grid use cases.
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Cheers. Cheers.
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Thanks for coming by. It's great to be here.
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So you started out first at Opendoor and then SpaceX.
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What did you learn in each one of those
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that you took to Antares?
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Yeah, sure.
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I think one of the big things is always about customers,
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right?
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I mean, at the end of the day,
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this is why you build a business.
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At Opendoor, a lot of us were pretty young
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starting the business.
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I was one of the early employees there
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and none of us had ever bought,
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let alone sold a house.
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So a lot of it was like learning what that was all about.
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And I remember in the early days,
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we just were working on writing the copy for the website
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and we're like—
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You have no idea what a homeowner—
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"We don't really know much about this whole thing.
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So what can we do about that?"
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We just went and sat outside a bagel shop
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for a Saturday and a Sunday morning
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and just bought people bagels
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and just asked them about their processes
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buying and selling a home and learned a ton.
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And just really
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thought about what language they were using,
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what were the pain points,
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and that was really important
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to just like really get to know
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what we were trying to deliver on as a business.
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And then, you know,
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fast forward to joining SpaceX after Opendoor.
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I joined as Starlink was coming out of R&D
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and into go-to-market.
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That's why I was joining. To lead that team
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and the business operations there.
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And we launch and we get our first customers.
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And so I invited our first customers
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to come join us via Zoom for an all-hands.
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And it was honestly the first time
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that many of the engineers had actually heard
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from the words of a customer themselves
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about the experience.
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And, of course, everyone loved the internet, right?
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The fast internet, it was amazing.
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Rural Idaho, right? This is like a dream.
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But when we got to talking about the setup process,
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everyone kind of was like, "Oh, that sounds rough."
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They're talking about multiple Home Depot trips.
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They didn't know if they had to cut down trees
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on their property.
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Like they couldn't get a pole long enough.
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Ah, so a lot of it was simplifying people's understanding
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of what would it mean?
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Well, people kind of didn't realize
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how much the setup was so painful.
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And it led to basically this cross-functional SWAT team
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that was dedicated to mounting options
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to be sold alongside the dish.
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First-party or third-party?
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We did it ourselves actually.
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We said it's important that we have a good experience
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for that because actually it is a big part
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of the experience.
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And so, spun up a whole team.
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A lot of attention was given to mounting,
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which is like, who ever would've thought?
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And I think, you know, customers again,
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they're just like,
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they are the reason you start a business.
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And just bringing this back to Antares,
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I mean, the reason we started Antares
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was to say like the government, particularly the military,
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needs more energy resilience,
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especially for critical infrastructure.
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We just do so much more now in the cloud with satellites.
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Our missile defense sites are sitting there
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like being powered by diesel generators still.
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Like, shouldn't we upgrade that?
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Okay, so I'll buy it.
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What is Antares?
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Sure, sure.
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We're building micro-reactors, so small nuclear reactors,
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and we are building, in particular,
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for critical infrastructure, largely for the military.
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Although we do think that as costs come down,
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there will be an interesting commercial market too.
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But basically anywhere where you're off-grid for sure,
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or you just want resilience behind the grid
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as it exists today.
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Cyber attacks or whatever, the grid goes down,
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you want backup power.
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It's a really great option.
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Okay.
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And if one megawatt is a small neighborhood,
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if one gigawatt is like a big nuclear power plant
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like in The Simpsons, you know?
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What are your SMRs?
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Sure, yeah.
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There's basically three classes size-wise.
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You have the really small ones are the micro-reactors,
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and we're actually one of the smallest of those.
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So we're even sub-one-megawatt,
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we're kind of in the hundreds of kilowatt scale.
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You could think of that
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as like hundreds of houses worth of electricity.
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Then you have the SMRs,
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which is kind of this middle-ground bucket,
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which is an interesting kind of neither here nor there.
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But potentially interesting.
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I'm sure we'll get into,
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in the hundreds of megawatts
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or even 50 megawatts.
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And then you have the gigawatt scale.
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So a thousand megawatts,
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and that's what the current power plants are today.
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Okay, so you're sub a megawatt.
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So we're super small. I see. Okay.
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So you're kind of similar nuclear size
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to what will be on a submarine or something like that.
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Smaller than that even.
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Those are like megawatt scale.
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So we're like,
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think about like we're the size of a car reactor.
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Think about replacing a diesel generator
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that's used to power, again,
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something that would be on the order
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of 200 to 300 homes of electricity.
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So it's quite small. Yes.
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And so a big part of your focus is providing power
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in places where you really need that reliability.
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Like you're talking about replacing diesel generators.
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Is that kind of the design center for you?
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Yeah.
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Anywhere where you're going to enable a capability,
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a mission capability,
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that wouldn't really be possible otherwise.
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So there's actually some really interesting
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space applications,
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potentially underwater applications as you move to...
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So you move away from like few,
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what they call exquisite to attritable systems.
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This is where a really small reactor can come in very handy
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for, you know,
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the submarines are obviously multi-megawatt-powered systems,
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but these could be kilowatts-powered,
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smaller systems underwater.
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But yes, anywhere where you're off-grid,
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where today you're relying on what they call
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like the fuel supply chain
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of like bringing in fuel via helicopter
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or barge repeatedly.
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And that being a vulnerability,
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like this is a great option.
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So you're the Starlink of electricity.
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Kind of.
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We're actually like perfectly paired.
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And I wish we could offer a consumer product.
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That's not on our roadmap right now,
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but maybe one day, like,
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backpack-sized nuclear reactor.
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I presume it can't be on your roadmap,
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but why not?
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Is it that selling to the government is much easier
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than selling to something that—
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There's so many reasons.
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I think that you always want to try to get your beachhead
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where it's the easiest to achieve, right?
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And so we believe, I believe that
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premium power is where you need to go with nuclear.
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And there's sort of two places for that.
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One is what we're doing with Antares,
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which is go to the military,
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help them with mission-critical need
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where they're not cost-sensitive,
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where they already pay more for power.
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And go there and support them
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with this next-gen, better version of resilient power.
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Or you go and you sell what we're seeing now, I think,
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which is really interesting with the hyperscalers,
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is they have carbon commitments.
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They want clean, firm, they want 24/7 power.
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They're actually willing to pay above market rates for that
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and they will pay above market rates.
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So this premium power thing
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is a really interesting dynamic
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like where nuclear is kind of well-positioned.
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What are the underwater applications?
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Well, it's really just think mini submarines.
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Oh, okay, yeah.
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Just really small systems like, you know,
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what drones are to maybe like larger missiles.
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That's kind of the equivalent.
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It's not super far along just yet.
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Got it. Okay.
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What does the path look like between now
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and producing power for the military?
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I guess, first in a pilot environment
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and then at scale
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outside of a pilot environment.
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Yeah, well, you know,
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it's always what are the next milestones that you can do
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to prove your technical ability and again,
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raise more capital to keep going with your company?
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I think the biggest risk often to hardware companies
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is you don't get far enough along technically
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to merit additional investment.
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So we are thinking a lot about our milestones
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for reactor development.
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And so next year our criticality test
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is kind of the first milestone.
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By end of 2027, we want to have
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our first demonstration unit demonstrated.
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And what's really exciting is
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there's just so much good policy happening right now
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from the DOE and elsewhere
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that is supporting reactor tests and pilot programs.
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And so there's just like so much happening
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where they're opening up federal land.
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They're removing—
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starting to remove some of those like NEPA-type regulations
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that really just hold everything up.
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So there is a clearer path now
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than there really ever has been for reactor builds.
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Oh, we'll get to the regulatory side.
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I have a lot of questions,
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but what is your criticality test in 2026?
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What does that mean?
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Yeah, it means that you're testing
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that you can actually start your reaction.
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So like you've figured out
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the right amount of moderator-to-fuel.
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And you start it going critical.
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You don't have it continue on for a while.
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You don't typically have a power conversion system
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that's actually taking the raw energy
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and turning it into electricity.
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So it's just one of those initial tests,
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like can you start to put all your pieces together?
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And when do you, you know,
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the fusion guys are all focused on this.
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Producing more power than you put in.
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I know that's different.
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That's a fusion thing,
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but when do you actually produce power?
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Producing power will be like your first reactor test.
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It's like, can you do the whole shebang?
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Like you can get this thing up and running.
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It's producing power.
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And that's what we're aiming to do by the end of 2027.
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Oh wow, that's like pretty soon.
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Yeah.
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What does the market look like for these small reactors?
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Who are you going to compete with?
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Well, the market for micro-reactors
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is one of these ones where it's like, well,
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there are no micro-reactors today on the market
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to just like buy and use.
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So what do you think they're going to be, right?
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And so I think, first and foremost,
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it's going to be the most critical assets
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where you just cannot have them go down.
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Which is why defense is the perfect first market for it.
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And so it's going to be all of your critical infrastructure
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on every single base that there is.
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Obviously, you'll start with the most critical
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of critical missile defense sites and off-grid locations,
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things like that.
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And that's kind of defense.
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Then you think about commercial,
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basically you have to see where the cost curves gets you to.
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Like how cheap can it get?
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This is just like space, right?
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It's like those first expensive launches into space
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like that better have been a really important thing
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you're putting up there, right?
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But now that launch cost has come down,
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you can start to be like, "Oh, what else?
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What else could we do that we can do some more stuff
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that's like maybe not so mission-critical?"
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I think we'll see the same thing
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in the commercial industries.
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Oil and gas has a lot of areas
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where they, again, use diesel generators
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to do things like compressed natural gas
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along their pipelines
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and they actually have carbon commitments,
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which are really interesting
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that they're sort of thinking about.
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Ironically, right?
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Can they move towards some more renewable
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or nuclear type resources?
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So I think there's going to be
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some commercial applications there too.
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Mining, for example, too.
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Like anything that's just like off-grid,
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hard to power today,
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really hard to get fuel into.
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It's perfect market. Yes.
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You're probably following the US military,
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there's all these controversies right now
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with people talking about fuel quality
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and fuel contamination issues in Asia,
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I think it is. But yeah.
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Presumably places where you're worried
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about fuel availability at all times
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and ensuring that you constantly have access to fuel.
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That is the place where there will be the most pull
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for these solutions.
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Like that's where generators work worst.
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Yes, and you know, there's a famous defense quote,
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I think it's "unleash us from the tether of fuel,"
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which means just like,
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gosh, the logistics supply chain has been such a challenge.
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I mean it was 50% of the—
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I think the Afghanistan casualties were from just logistics.
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And so, you know, having situations
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where you can kind of reduce that risk
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helps and it's a great market fit.
12:02
Yes.
12:03
You were saying there's no market
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for these small reactors today.
12:07
Why not?
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Like—
12:09
We've had nuclear fission technology
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for a long time.
12:12
Yeah.
12:13
Why hasn't it been done?
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Gosh, there's so many reasons.
12:15
I think we ended up...
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I think there was just a macro really negative climate
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around nuclear in general.
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So it impacted anything small as well,
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coming out of the seventies,
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and so you had macro forces related to just like inflation,
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kind of just cost of capital.
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People stopped building,
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which coincided with the environmental movement,
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which was extremely anti-nuclear.
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They actually sort of conflated nuclear weapons testing
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even with—it was just like "no nukes" with energy.
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It's like, "Oh that's actually pretty different."
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So a lot of things converged in the seventies
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and then by the eighties we stopped building in nuclear.
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Okay.
12:49
So you just view it as a part of the general
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anti-nuclear swing and thus also led to
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the cessation of construction
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of new nuclear plants in the US and everything like this.
13:00
Your corner of the market also got caught up in that.
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And that's why we haven't ended up with them.
13:06
Were there ever products available at this size range?
13:09
There were but they were pretty few and far between.
13:12
Mostly test reactors, small things built.
13:15
We actually put one reactor into space in the 1960s
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to test that out.
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Did it work?
13:20
Yeah, for a bit.
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I mean, a few months and was like,
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let's try to do some
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systems in space with power.
13:25
It's important to have power in space
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and I think that's a whole other frontier.
13:30
Obviously the US did have this long-running,
13:33
anti-nuclear bent where I grew up in Ireland similarly.
13:38
Yeah, there was the exact same thing
13:39
and Ireland was very paranoid
13:40
about a particular British nuclear power plant, Sellafield,
13:44
that was just across the channel from Ireland.
13:47
Does Ireland have nuclear?
13:49
Ireland has no nuclear power.
13:50
The UK does. France does.
13:51
Ireland does not.
13:52
And I believe it's banned
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and so you can't, per the current rules.
13:57
There's actually many states in the US
13:59
that have bans as well,
14:00
but they've just been falling left and right.
14:02
It's so cool to see.
14:03
Well I was going to ask this.
14:04
The vibe has really shifted over the past 10 to 15 years.
14:09
Yep.
14:10
Why?
14:11
Honestly, it reminds me of gay marriage.
14:13
I mean, and if you look at the polling.
14:15
It came from the youth, right?
14:17
It definitely comes from youth for sure.
14:18
But it's like, it just... Enough things add up
14:21
and it just swings and no one ever looks back type of thing.
14:24
That's how it feels.
14:25
The percentage point change we've seen
14:27
in the last five to 10 years is almost 20 points.
14:29
It's like 17 points or something.
14:31
So it's 60-plus percent of people support nuclear.
14:34
It's actually almost surprising it's that low in some ways.
14:36
But yeah, it's just huge public sentiment shift.
14:40
And I think the old hippie nuclear testing
14:44
or nuclear weapons testing folks are kind of dying out.
14:47
What is wild though is I did a little kind of activism
14:51
related to Diablo Canyon Power Plant here in California,
14:53
which was slated to be shut down this year.
14:55
Sure, yeah.
14:56
And just a few years ago,
14:58
Newsom had to kind of begrudgingly say like,
15:00
"Oh, you know what,
15:01
we probably should keep this thing on.
15:02
We can't afford to have the power going out."
15:04
But I listened in on some hearings
15:06
and actually gave some testimony there.
15:08
And it was so funny to me
15:09
that the biggest organization that showed up
15:11
against Diablo Canyon was called "Mothers for Peace."
15:14
And it's like, do you understand the irony of your name?
15:17
This organization was that old
15:18
that it was related to like the nuclear Cold War.
15:21
Right? Totally.
15:22
And it's like, gosh, we've moved on.
15:24
We were joking because I, sort of, am part
15:25
of this "Mothers for Nuclear" organization
15:28
that's like tongue in cheek a bit on that.
15:30
Our mothers against their mothers.
15:31
Yeah, our mothers against their mothers.
15:34
And it's just funny how old school
15:36
a lot of that opposition is.
15:37
So I guess as a "science advances one death at a time"
15:40
dynamic going on here, whereas the memory of the 1960s
15:45
and peak nuclear confrontation
15:49
and, you know, Three Mile Island and all these things.
15:52
As all that fades,
15:54
maybe it creates an environment
15:56
where people could be more supportive of nuclear.
15:57
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
15:58
What was your activism around Diablo Canyon?
16:00
It was just exactly that.
16:01
It was like, let's make sure that this actually passes
16:03
and we don't shut it down.
16:05
But it's safe.
16:05
But there was a lot of people just calling and saying,
16:06
"Hey listen, nuclear's super safe, it's carbon-free.
16:09
Ostensibly, in California, we care about these things.
16:12
Let's support this.
16:13
Let's overturn whatever legislation was done
16:16
10 years ago that said we should shut this thing down."
16:18
And it did pass.
16:19
So now we do still have it open.
16:21
Everyone on "Progress Twitter" likes to complain
16:24
about the NRC,
16:25
but for the NRC we would be living in
16:28
that Jetsons vision of the future
16:31
and everyone would have their
16:33
nuclear-powered car that they used to drive
16:34
to their nuclear-powered office and everything.
16:36
Is that true?
16:39
How good or bad is the current regulatory environment?
16:41
How much is that changing?
16:42
Yeah, yeah.
16:43
I think it's an overestimated headwind. Certainly today.
16:47
I think if you go back five years ago,
16:49
10 years ago for sure,
16:50
I mean they hadn't licensed anything in decades.
16:53
There had been nothing new.
16:55
But I can't even tell you how much has changed
16:58
in the last few years.
16:59
It's kind of remarkable.
17:00
And it's been across both the Biden
17:02
and the Trump administration,
17:03
which is amazing to see.
17:04
The legislation around nuclear passes like
17:07
95 to 5 type of thing, right?
17:10
It's like really, really strong bipartisan...
17:13
What was interesting to see is it started with Biden,
17:16
a bunch of legislation related to modernizing
17:19
and reforming the NRC.
17:20
The biggest thing they did was they changed the mandate
17:23
of the NRC and they said,
17:24
"You are no longer focused just on safety,"
17:27
because what's the safest number
17:28
of nuclear reactors to license?
17:30
Zero, so they expanded that,
17:32
"You must consider the full environment,
17:34
the full civilization."
17:36
That's great.
17:36
And then just change things around
17:38
like the advanced reactor pathway,
17:41
removing some of the barriers.
17:42
And then it's continued on with Trump
17:44
and in fact he's sort of added
17:45
even some more teeth and specificity.
17:48
So right now, they've changed it to,
17:50
"You have 18 months to get your answer from the NRC.
17:53
License or no license."
17:54
Like do you pass or not?
17:57
And what happens if they exceed the 18-month window?
17:59
You know, probably it's in the details somewhere.
18:02
But the point is that these have been declared
18:05
that timeliness is important.
18:07
There's also been some leadership change,
18:08
which is just more reform-oriented, which is great,
18:11
and there's just a huge microscope on it.
18:12
Everyone's watching.
18:13
Everyone knows who's submitting their paperwork
18:17
and what's going to come out the other side.
18:20
Another thing that happened with some of these Trump
18:21
executive orders is the DOE pathways,
18:24
Department of Energy pathways,
18:25
have been also unopened and unblocked for test reactors.
18:29
And so actually Antares is part
18:30
of this new test reactor program which allows the DOE
18:34
alongside usually like Idaho National Lab
18:37
to be sort of your regulator
18:39
as you're testing your first reactors
18:41
so that you don't have to spend all this time upfront
18:43
with the NRC for something
18:45
that you're just still innovating on and iterating on.
18:48
And so that's a really nice, I think,
18:50
first step before you go through the NRC.
18:53
Wait, so let me make sure I'm giving this right.
18:55
There is now a Trump-era change
18:56
where we essentially for the first time ever
18:58
have a second nuclear regulator
19:00
where you can go the NRC path
19:02
but also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start
19:06
by working with the DOE and get up and running there.
19:09
Yeah, that's essentially right.
19:11
How big is the sandbox?
19:12
I mean, the DOE has always been a path.
19:15
There actually technically has always been a path
19:16
within the military
19:17
because they license their own reactors with submarines.
19:19
So it's always kind of been there but
19:21
hard to navigate, not well-staffed, not well-known about.
19:24
And now it's like everyone's watching.
19:27
Let's go DOE, let's go INL,
19:30
Idaho National Lab, and let's make these things happen.
19:33
So there's just been a lot of stated like,
19:35
"You must enable this thing."
19:37
And like, now here's some...
19:39
It's actually a $0 program,
19:41
but it gives you unlimited access to staff
19:43
and all these other things.
19:45
And the point is like everyone's watching
19:47
to see how fast you can get
19:48
one of these reactors through safely.
19:50
So are you guys going the DOE routes first?
19:51
Yep, we are.
19:52
And the DOD route, I mean to say like,
19:55
the Army is now also able to license its own reactors,
20:00
alongside the Navy which already does.
20:03
So that will absolutely be our first stop.
20:05
The NRC really only regulates civilian electricity.
20:10
So civilian power.
20:11
So we actually don't need to even go there yet.
20:13
I see.
20:13
So you could be selling a lot of reactors
20:15
and never go through the NRC.
20:16
We'll basically do our test reactors with the DOE.
20:20
Alongside the DOD who can now—
20:23
who has the jurisdiction to regulate.
20:25
Which is great. I didn't know that.
20:27
So this is the rare bipartisan issue.
20:29
It's a true... Kind of a gem.
20:32
I can paint three clean energy futures.
20:37
One is the solar and regular renewables view.
20:42
You know, Casey Handmer was just on this podcast.
20:44
And solar will get very cheap.
20:46
Batteries will get cheap enough
20:48
such that you can go all in on solar and batteries.
20:52
Maybe some other renewables in the mix.
20:53
But there you go. That's it.
20:54
Nothing will be able to cost-compete with that.
20:56
That's one vision.
20:57
Another is that we will rediscover nuclear fission
21:00
and we'll figure out the spent fuel
21:03
and everything like that.
21:04
And we'll just do what we used to do,
21:07
which is build nuclear power plants at larger scale.
21:10
And that delivers us enough clean energy.
21:12
A third view is that fusion will work
21:15
and we'll actually have nuclear fusion at
21:19
useful, meaningful scale of the grid.
21:21
Between those scenarios,
21:23
how would you handicap them?
21:24
I think it's... You know, I'm going to leave fusion out
21:26
because I'm not enough of an expert
21:27
to know when and how that will happen.
21:30
I would love for that to happen.
21:31
How exciting, right?
21:32
Between the first two,
21:34
we do a lot of market manipulation of our energy markets
21:38
and there's a little bit of like,
21:40
flavor of the administration that does happen,
21:42
especially between renewables and oil and gas, right?
21:45
Nuclear's been a little bit actually
21:48
immune to that.
21:49
But there hasn't really been almost a true market
21:52
for this stuff.
21:52
Like the renewables have been heavily subsidized
21:54
for a while and nuclear has not been.
21:57
That did change in 2022 with the IRA.
21:59
There's now production tax credits for nuclear,
22:01
which has a lot of ripple effects.
22:03
But I think we're going to see a lot more progress
22:06
with solar and batteries in particular.
22:07
There is a reason, however, that the hyperscalers
22:10
who are committed to their climate targets
22:13
are not just going for, you know, solar farms.
22:15
Like why are even thinking about nuclear
22:17
if solar is so cheap?
22:18
And it's because actually
22:20
to get true hundred percent, 24/7 coverage,
22:23
the battery or the excess build-out is massive.
22:26
It is really expensive.
22:27
It's basically on par with nuclear costs.
22:30
So we're not there yet.
22:31
It's one thing to say.
22:33
The other is that the cost of solar
22:36
at the panel level is dirt cheap, right?
22:39
And installing it dirt cheap,
22:41
but to actually integrate it, build the transmission,
22:44
and then the added grid complexity
22:47
where you need now these peaker gas plants to run
22:49
when the the clouds come
22:51
and that kind of thing.
22:52
That actually has a ton of costs
22:54
and it's sort of hidden costs.
22:55
I think it's underappreciated certainly
22:57
by the solar maxis out there.
22:59
It's real, you know,
23:01
and so I think we're always going to want to have
23:03
multiple sources of energy, right?
23:06
It's like diversity is good.
23:08
It's like if one thing—
23:09
if natural gas prices are through the roof, hey,
23:11
we have these other things.
23:12
We have this base load nuclear,
23:14
which has been just like so stable for us.
23:17
And I think we're going to want to have everything.
23:18
I actually don't think there's going to be a world
23:20
that's going to be like a hundred percent nuclear.
23:23
But is diversity of energy sources valuable because
23:27
the solar maximalist would say, "No, it's fine.
23:29
Solar will just take everything."
23:31
And wouldn't the nuclear maximalist say
23:33
just we can have a lot of, you know,
23:35
we figure out how to at scale produce nuclear power plants
23:37
and why do you need nat gas?
23:38
Why do you need anything else?
23:40
It's a good push if you are able to own,
23:43
through and through, your whole supply chain.
23:45
You make the panels.
23:46
You mine and process the minerals,
23:49
which we have like zero interest in doing as Americans.
23:51
All that dirty work is done in China and elsewhere.
23:54
If you really did all that yourself,
23:55
then I could say, okay, you own it. You can do it.
23:58
Right now at least you have,
23:59
"Hey, if your natural gas pipelines get shut down,
24:01
actually it's not a problem for us.
24:02
We're not even an importer anymore.
24:05
We're actually good."
24:07
This is actually the reason that...
24:08
Do you know what percentage of France's electricity
24:11
is from nuclear?
24:13
It's declining, right?
24:14
But historically it's been around 70%.
24:17
Yep. Yeah.
24:18
Do you know the US?
24:19
The US for nuclear?
24:20
Oh, it's small. It's 5-10%.
24:23
It's actually more.
24:24
Really? 18.
24:25
Oh, okay.
24:26
And everyone thinks it's below 5-10%.
24:28
It's like, when I got into this,
24:29
I thought it was like 2%.
24:30
But anyway, my point is that France made a very,
24:33
very deliberate decision to actually go to 70%,
24:35
if not more at the time in the seventies
24:37
because they had no carbon resources.
24:39
So they didn't have the ability to say,
24:41
"Oh, we'll just dig in our backyard and we'll be fine."
24:43
And actually uranium, while it does require
24:47
digging out of ground or whatever,
24:48
is so much easier to store.
24:49
It's a million times as dense as coal.
24:52
So it's a lot easier to work with than...
24:55
The reason people get uptight about oil and gas supply
24:58
is that it's like not easy to store.
25:00
And if it's not easier for you to come by,
25:01
you better well have good geopolitical relationships.
25:04
Yes, yes. So anyway,
25:05
this world and where it's headed,
25:07
I think it's still going to involve multiple sources.
25:17
Julia's work involves managing a lot of risk:
25:20
unsolved physics, complex engineering,
25:21
and a lot of regulatory scrutiny.
25:23
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26:11
Tell me about the supply chain for nuclear fuels.
26:13
Yeah, I mean,
26:15
you dig uranium out of the ground
26:16
and then you need to convert it to a gaseous state
26:19
so that you can enrich it and have the...
26:21
you kind of put in a centrifuge.
26:22
It goes like this and the heavier isotopes go out
26:25
and the lighter ones stay in
26:27
and you can pick those out and make those into your fuel.
26:29
The mining part has been something
26:31
that we've hardly kept alive.
26:33
I mean there was, at one point,
26:33
a couple of mining operations going in the US.
26:37
The last 10 years or so,
26:38
it's been like 1% of nuclear fuel used in the US
26:42
was actually domestically mined.
26:44
Where are the last uranium mines in the US?
26:46
They're places where you would think:
26:48
Texas, Wyoming, those sorts of places.
26:51
In the western states.
26:53
But we now again, like everything else have said,
26:55
"Okay, wake up, let's actually reshore some of this stuff."
26:57
So we're starting to see more uranium mining.
27:00
Conversion and enrichment is still largely done overseas.
27:03
And yeah, we're still buying like almost 50% of our uranium
27:07
from Russia and kind of ex-Soviet states.
27:10
So I think it is important that we're thinking about like,
27:13
how do we have far more of a domestic supply chain?
27:16
We have the ability to do it.
27:17
We have the uranium and actually
27:19
there's a little bit of Silicon Valley DNA
27:21
entering the space with General Matter,
27:23
which is Scott Nolan's company out of Founders Fund.
27:26
So he's getting into the enrichment space.
27:28
They're a uranium enrichment company.
27:30
They're a uranium enrichment company,
27:32
which is like real picks and shovels for a real hard
27:36
atoms business to do that.
27:38
But I think it's really meaningful work.
27:41
I think it's really important.
27:42
Do you care more about the mining,
27:44
the enrichment happening in the US,
27:45
or just there has to be
27:47
an independent supply chain for the whole thing?
27:48
I think you just want diversity.
27:51
You know, you don't want everything from one place.
27:53
And I think we do want to have capability.
27:55
So I think all of it should be at least partially done here
27:58
and with our allies.
27:59
How did you end up starting Antares?
28:00
Gosh, I mean...
28:01
Like most people do not happen on this kind of idea.
28:02
No, you kind of don't really happen upon it.
28:04
I was working at SpaceX at the time
28:06
when I first started reading about nuclear.
28:09
And it was when I was actually working
28:11
on getting Starlinks into Ukraine.
28:13
So after Russia invaded Ukraine.
28:15
And I just started like reading more
28:17
about the conflict there,
28:18
probably more than I normally would have,
28:20
because I was actually speaking with Ukrainians
28:22
and like thinking about what was going on there.
28:24
I was a history major.
28:25
So I think there was just a little bit of like,
28:27
"Oh, geopolitics. Resources are important."
28:29
Russia has a lot of resources.
28:31
You know, randomly, my cousin is the CEO of a glass factory,
28:35
making literally glasses like this.
28:37
And he is like,
28:38
"We're going bankrupt because of energy prices."
28:40
And you're like, "Golly, what is going on?"
28:42
And then I read about Germany
28:44
and the nuclear power plants they were shutting off
28:45
to turn on coal in a place that is like—
28:47
It was so insane. Green Party.
28:49
Crazy, right? Lost their minds.
28:50
So I was like, "What could be so compelling
28:53
that someone would do something
28:55
so counter to their own good," right?
28:57
As a country, as a nation.
28:59
And I, at the time, again, I knew nothing about nuclear.
29:03
I didn't know the difference between fission and fusion,
29:04
honestly, at the time.
29:05
I certainly didn't know
29:06
that it was a pretty big part of our grid and other things.
29:09
But it just was one of those
29:10
like completely under-celebrated,
29:12
under-championed by anyone.
29:14
The climate tech...
29:16
Climate people really weren't into it either.
29:18
And so it just kind of got me curious about it
29:20
and then just started reading more.
29:21
Wrote a piece that I posted on Twitter
29:24
and it's actually how I met Jordan, who's my co-founder,
29:28
and he's the one who actually had the vision
29:29
for micro-reactors for the military.
29:32
And I just said, "What a great beachhead". Like again,
29:34
premium power, great thesis to go to market with,
29:37
and just really got into the topic.
29:40
How did you arrive at that as a beachhead?
29:42
I think, you know, you just say like,
29:43
where can you go that you don't have to compete
29:46
on that LCOE level against the cheap solar panels.
29:49
Where do you go where there's a real need?
29:52
And mission assurance
29:55
for something critical to the military.
29:57
Like, they will pay for that.
29:58
This is also an area where like they
30:00
were obviously behind the Manhattan Project.
30:02
They're here to help develop new technologies.
30:05
And so what a great partner to have
30:07
when trying to do something like this.
30:09
Has DARPA played with this stuff at all?
30:11
Or has it come from... It sounds like you're working
30:13
with the main branches of the military.
30:14
Yeah, you know, we are not working with DARPA
30:17
mostly because it's actually not as technically risky
30:19
as you might even think.
30:21
They prefer things further at the risk curve.
30:23
Exactly.
30:24
We actually... In a funny way,
30:26
it's not even really a tech problem.
30:29
You know, I mean it's hard to build these things,
30:31
but it's not brand new.
30:32
But someone just needs to know how to—
30:33
It's not novel in that way.
30:35
That's interesting.
30:36
What lessons have you brought
30:38
from your prior experience at SpaceX, at Opendoor
30:40
to building Antares?
30:42
You know, one of the things I really took away from SpaceX
30:46
was just like really getting into it.
30:48
It's a very confrontational culture
30:51
and it's not afraid to say like, "Screw your next meeting.
30:55
We need to keep talking about this."
30:57
And I love that.
30:58
Like, I want to bring that energy everywhere I go.
31:00
It's like, if you are unsure about something,
31:04
if you're questioning something,
31:06
you should probably stop and dig into it.
31:09
We had this thing called the "Five Whys,"
31:11
I don't know if you ever use—
31:12
In general, yeah. It's like a...
31:14
one of these Silicon Valley little quips.
31:17
But it's like that on steroids.
31:19
And I think the pausing to probe super deeply,
31:24
question things, like really hash things out
31:28
was a big takeaway I learned.
31:30
Like, wow, that's really effective
31:32
at getting to the right answer,
31:34
at making a decision,
31:35
at changing course when you need to.
31:37
And so I've tried to bring some of that to Antares.
31:40
You know, investors are hot and cold on hard tech
31:43
depending on when you're raising money
31:44
and everything like this.
31:46
Presumably there's a J-curve
31:50
in investing in Antares
31:52
where there's definitely some R&D
31:55
before you eventually start paying it back with revenues.
31:57
How is the experience of raising money for this?
32:00
It's going to get harder.
32:01
I think it hasn't been hard to date
32:03
only because there is interest
32:05
and excitement around nuclear.
32:08
It's also just fewer dollars in the beginning.
32:11
You're kind of like honeymoon phase of all of that.
32:14
I think it will get harder.
32:15
I think now the time is ticking. It's like,
32:19
"Okay, let's see your next technical milestones."
32:21
This criticality test,
32:23
obviously the full reactor end of 2027.
32:26
I think it will be challenging.
32:28
And there are several reactor companies out there,
32:30
so it's a bit of a race.
32:32
I think it's going to be fun.
32:33
I mean, I wonder what Polymarket would have to say.
32:35
Several reactor companies out there,
32:37
even at the end of the market that you guys are going after?
32:39
Yeah, everyone has their different niche, right?
32:42
I think our niche is again, the smallest,
32:44
the most DOD-oriented.
32:46
There's a lot of micro-reactor companies or SMR.
32:50
And I'm doing this because it's like,
32:51
"Are they SMR, micro-reactors?"
32:52
Anyway, that are going after data centers
32:55
and the data center build-out, which is an amazing market.
32:57
I mean, amazing.
32:58
I think people will pay a lot more, again,
33:00
going back to the premium power point,
33:02
they will pay more for power for this.
33:04
Not exactly our target market.
33:07
Right, so your niche in the market,
33:10
it seems like you guys have selected a part of the market
33:13
where maybe there's less competition.
33:15
There's still some people going after
33:16
the military applications.
33:18
There always are.
33:19
I mean, if you have a good idea,
33:19
there's going to be a few people working on it.
33:21
How capital-intensive is it going to be
33:23
to get your product to market?
33:25
In the hundreds of millions.
33:27
Okay. Yep.
33:28
I think what we...
33:30
And it depends on what you mean by "to market," right?
33:32
So I think our big milestones,
33:33
like can you build a reactor, prove it,
33:34
turn it on, it's producing power.
33:36
Then I think you can think about interesting layers
33:39
of capital in terms of pre-orders for your reactor.
33:43
That's going to be my next question.
33:44
When does the money arrive?
33:46
Yeah, exactly. Bigger government grants.
33:48
So we're kind of still in the hundreds of thousands,
33:51
single-digit millions of dollars of grants
33:53
that we are getting right now.
33:55
But you're moving into the tens of millions
33:57
of dollars R&D grants.
33:58
And then you want to eventually move into that
34:00
program-of-record, real dollars.
34:03
There's a really interesting program right now
34:05
that the Army has put out called the Janus program.
34:08
Are you familiar with the COTS program that SpaceX used
34:11
to bring, to develop their first reactor?
34:13
Not by name, but I'm familiar with—
34:14
Commercial Orbital Transport System.
34:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm familiar with the broad—
34:17
So it was the innovation basically
34:19
to say like, let's try something that's not cost-plus
34:21
and let's actually do something that's milestone-based
34:25
and you know, "Well, basically we'll cut you
34:28
if you don't hit the milestone and it's fixed contract.
34:30
We're not going to pay you for whatever."
34:32
So anyway, the Army has taken that model a bit
34:35
and I think used that as inspiration for this Janus program
34:38
where they're saying, "We're going to fund up to
34:40
three to five companies to build their first prototype
34:42
alongside us, kind of at a base.
34:45
And then we will choose a winner
34:48
and we want to build 5 to 10 reactors,
34:50
if not more on bases."
34:52
And so the demand signal now is hot.
34:54
And so this is going to be great for our future fundraising,
34:57
for the industry in general.
34:59
It's like very, very good demand.
35:00
A lot of incumbents build on military,
35:03
US defense contracting.
35:04
What is your experience as someone who's
35:08
attempting to sell to the military?
35:10
I mean, people are actually kind of well aware
35:14
that this cost-plus model is not great.
35:16
The question is like, well, what are the alternatives?
35:18
Who's going to go do it?
35:19
Anduril has been an amazing example of that.
35:21
So I think a lot of us in hard tech really look to them as
35:24
what we try to emulate.
35:26
Every branch of the military
35:28
has these innovative arms that tell you like,
35:32
"Hey, we want to hear about your ideas."
35:34
And they do actually, you can go talk to them.
35:36
They're giving out grants for things like...
35:37
I do think everyone wants the innovation.
35:40
They are, you know,
35:42
and in this day and age of information everywhere,
35:44
you can learn a lot quickly.
35:45
They do want to work with startups.
35:47
I think we'll only see more of it,
35:49
but you have things like the government shutdown
35:51
and the pace of government is slow.
35:53
So you've got to just be able
35:57
to keep pushing those timelines, again,
35:59
while not running out of money, to be able
36:01
to make it through that valley of death.
36:03
What's been harder than you expected building Antares?
36:07
Because presumably you expected it broadly to be hard.
36:09
You expected there to be a lot of technical risk.
36:11
Capital intensity. Yeah, harder than expected.
36:14
Oh.
36:16
There's a couple things.
36:17
I mean, I think, gosh...
36:20
Recruiting is always hard.
36:22
You're up against the SpaceXs of the world
36:25
that have just a lot more credibility, right?
36:27
When you're the no-name person at the very beginning,
36:29
it can be hard.
36:31
I think there's a lot of complexity,
36:35
and even though I said
36:36
we're making so much progress in regulation,
36:37
there's still red tape everywhere.
36:39
Things cost more than they probably should.
36:42
You know, we spend a lot of money paying the national labs
36:45
to do things like clear out a pit
36:47
so that we can test our reactor.
36:49
And it's like, we're paying for that.
36:50
And they're like, "You know,
36:51
here's hundreds of thousand dollars. Here's the bill."
36:53
So there's stuff that you're like, "Gosh,
36:55
there's really a lot of expense everywhere
36:58
and it just slows things down."
37:00
And so I guess we were somewhat ready for that.
37:03
But some of this stuff just seems silly
37:06
and when you're building in software,
37:08
you just don't have to worry about it.
37:09
You just sit there, code, and do your thing
37:11
and go right to market.
37:12
When you have to work with the real world, you have to,
37:15
you know, you have to play their games a little bit
37:17
and you have to follow the process in some ways.
37:21
And there's not always a way around it.
37:23
Sometimes it's just through.
37:24
You said there's still a lot of red tape
37:26
despite the fact that
37:28
there's been the first Biden-era
37:29
and then Trump-era improvements.
37:31
If you were in charge, I know energies are...
37:35
Or you know, we'll give you a role
37:36
with no powers across all these departments.
37:40
What would you change?
37:41
What do you think the specific improvements
37:43
we could make are?
37:44
If I were fully in charge of energy,
37:47
I would love to see the US government be a buyer.
37:50
I think that is... Just like actually the NASA was a buyer
37:53
for SpaceX's eventual launch product.
37:58
I think having the US government be a customer
38:01
for nuclear would be great.
38:02
And so we have this a little bit with the DOD.
38:04
It was a very interesting announcement
38:05
that just came out a week or two ago
38:07
that doesn't have a ton of detail,
38:09
but it's starting in this direction.
38:11
I think it's very positive.
38:13
I'm a small government person, so I don't say this lightly,
38:16
but I do think there are certain things
38:17
when it's national security related
38:19
and things like energy resilience.
38:20
There should be public-private partnership.
38:23
But anyway, the announcement is that the US government
38:25
now wants to spend $80 billion
38:28
on nuclear development alongside Westinghouse.
38:31
So they've basically chosen the technology.
38:33
And I think that's actually a good thing
38:35
because you don't want to...
38:37
You want to be able to build one thing
38:39
and then repeatedly build it
38:40
so that you're not reinventing the wheel every time.
38:43
You actually have economies of scale,
38:46
like the learning curve that you go down from doing that.
38:49
So I'm excited about that news.
38:50
I think that's the type of policy I'd want to see more of.
38:53
And, you know, we'll see how it goes.
38:56
I mean, this is the biggest ever commercial nuclear
39:00
public-private partnership we've seen.
39:02
And sorry, specifically they're buying from Westinghouse.
39:05
Just a large amount of nuclear power?
39:06
Well, it's a combination.
39:08
So this is where,
39:09
I mean, the details are a little fuzzy
39:10
but they've announced 80 billion.
39:12
They've announced Westinghouse as the partner of choice.
39:15
Not all those dollars are going
39:16
right to Westinghouse.
39:17
And that's a company that makes just the reactor itself.
39:19
So there's money that you would spend on a plant
39:22
or licensing fees or whatever else that surrounds that.
39:26
But I think it's really positive.
39:28
I think what it does is it's a catalyst
39:30
for the whole industry, right?
39:31
Like supply chain, workforce.
39:33
People are now paying attention like,
39:34
"Oh, there's real dollars to be made here."
39:37
There's a huge trillion-dollar asset under management
39:42
company called Brookfield Asset Management.
39:44
And they've actually just gotten in the game as well
39:47
in the last couple weeks.
39:48
I'm sure there was talk, right?
39:51
To take the V.C. Summer plant
39:53
that never got completed in South Carolina
39:55
and actually finish it.
39:56
And so again, they now have some nice tailwinds
39:58
with those new production subsidies.
40:01
They are partnering with the local utility to...
40:04
And again, a local utility doesn't have the risk appetite
40:08
to do this themselves, right?
40:09
Or the balance sheet to do this themselves.
40:11
And so there's some really nice
40:13
market signal you get
40:14
when the government's saying,
40:15
"We're going to spend $80 billion on this."
40:19
But I think
40:20
it gets the rest of the industry moving.
40:22
As you guys were exploring and developing the early stages
40:27
of your business plan,
40:29
did you consider for a product that is as tightly regulated
40:34
as this, did you consider doing any jurisdiction shopping
40:37
where you develop a product that you sell in Singapore
40:40
or the UAE or Prospera or
40:42
some more favorable jurisdiction?
40:44
You know, we really didn't.
40:46
It felt like there was enough signal
40:49
that we would be able to
40:52
get through regulatory and see some positive change.
40:54
There was enough basically demand signal within the US,
40:57
and it's... I don't know,
40:59
we take pride in also building for our country, right?
41:01
And it feels good to be developing something
41:04
for our military and our allies.
41:06
So we didn't really shop it around too much.
41:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:09
And I guess the US military is a large buyer, in this case.
41:11
Very large buyer.
41:12
The largest buyer of non-commodity energy,
41:14
if not all energy.
41:15
How soon afterwards will you go to, like,
41:19
I presume you want to do civilian premium power use cases,
41:25
like you're saying an oil rig
41:27
seems like the one that,
41:29
ironically that... It would be hard to get gas,
41:32
it would be hard to get refined
41:35
diesel or gasoline to an oil rig.
41:37
Does that come right afterwards
41:38
or is that such a different ball of wax
41:40
from a regulatory point of view
41:41
that maybe it's like 10 years later?
41:43
I think it's, you know, you're developing concurrently.
41:46
We are talking with oil and gas already.
41:48
Just understanding them, right?
41:49
"What do you need?
41:50
What do you think you'd pay?" That sort of thing.
41:53
So I would say it fast follows, right?
41:56
A few years later.
41:57
I think it's going to be such a nice proving ground
41:59
if we can make it through and test on a military base,
42:03
for example, and get a first reactor live
42:04
and get some revenue from that,
42:06
then I think it's like open the aperture pretty broadly
42:09
for what else is out there.
42:10
Does this movement towards re-onshoring manufacturing
42:16
in the US and various blockers people talk about to that
42:20
between supply chain is difficult in your...
42:24
You've talked about in the fuel context,
42:25
but also supply chain for manufacturing,
42:27
talent and the roles that people go into
42:30
and finding talent in specific areas.
42:32
I'm just curious. What has your experience been
42:34
of building a hard tech company in the US?
42:37
Supply chain is... Yeah,
42:40
the bottlenecks. Supply chain is challenging
42:42
when you need to work with nuclear-grade material
42:45
and no nuclear plants have really been built.
42:48
It makes for a very limited number of suppliers.
42:51
Which means costs are higher.
42:53
You know, options are just fewer.
42:55
So like, if they're not responding to your email,
42:56
well what are you going to do?
42:57
You know, there's only one other option.
42:58
And like, I don't know, they're busy or whatever.
43:00
So those dynamics are really challenging.
43:03
The graphite that I brought here is actually
43:04
from a Japanese company, right?
43:06
No one's even processing that stuff in the US.
43:08
And so you're kind of,
43:10
you're literally going all over the world
43:11
for these supplies.
43:12
So that's challenging.
43:13
You know, talent is challenging in the sense
43:15
that there are so many options
43:17
for hard tech in the LA region, right?
43:20
So you need to have a compelling mission,
43:23
but nuclear is compelling.
43:24
So it's been challenging, but not in some ways.
43:28
If you want to work at SpaceX and you love space stuff
43:30
and you want to be at that name brand place,
43:33
we've lost you.
43:34
But if you're interested in nuclear
43:36
and being able to build from the very beginning,
43:38
that is a compelling piece.
43:40
Yes. It's the Shackleton pitch, you know of—
43:42
Yeah, totally.
43:43
High risk of failure. Totally.
43:45
And that's the pitch that you're making.
43:46
Yep. Yeah, I like that.
43:49
What trends in nuclear should we be excited about right now?
43:52
So the trend I'm excited about is bringing back online
43:55
these recently shuttered plants
43:57
because they don't take too much money to bring back online.
44:01
And we've seen a couple big power purchase agreements
44:04
where you have Google partnered with NextEra
44:08
or the Iowa-based utility to bring on Dwayne Arnold,
44:11
which was shut down about five years ago.
44:13
And then you have actually Three Mile Island,
44:15
the site of the infamous accident is also—
44:18
Almost accident. Well, it was an accident
44:20
but it was not really a big deal.
44:22
Like this much radiation came out.
44:24
It was like this amount of a chest x-ray.
44:26
Yes, completely overblown "accident".
44:29
That's being brought back online.
44:31
Partnership between Microsoft and Constellation, I believe.
44:36
So that's kind of fun.
44:37
I mean, you're seeing like,
44:38
let's go take these assets that are just sitting there
44:40
that shouldn't have been turned off.
44:42
Bring them back online, bring them back to life.
44:44
Tons of power coming out of them.
44:45
And we need it yesterday, right?
44:47
Yeah, I mean it's so striking
44:48
the big trend in the US right now,
44:50
being that grid demand was flat for the longest time.
44:55
Like we were completely not— Exactly.
44:57
Not adding power generation nor adding power transmission.
45:01
And now because of data centers,
45:04
essentially, we have this enormous boom
45:06
that is just leading to things
45:09
that maybe previously would've been competitive.
45:11
People can't get enough of anything, right?
45:13
You know, people can't get enough of nuclear,
45:15
they can't get enough of solar,
45:16
they can't get enough of natural gas.
45:18
And just everything is backlogged.
45:20
It's really interesting.
45:21
Even the natural gas turbines are backlogged.
45:22
Totally, yeah. I mean, multiple years.
45:25
Across all the manufacturers.
45:26
You know, it is hard when
45:27
something like this
45:28
goes into one of these inflection points,
45:30
and to your point,
45:31
it was less than 1% year-over-year growth
45:33
for 20-plus years.
45:34
And now it's like people are estimating
45:36
5% annual growth next year.
45:38
Like, oh my gosh.
45:39
Last question.
45:40
What kind of culture do you want to build at Antares?
45:42
Hmm.
45:44
Well, I think it's certainly one of excellence,
45:46
and I think that means
45:49
delivering quality product.
45:52
How you get there...
45:53
I mean, there's a lot of ways to get there.
45:54
You can have the combative SpaceX culture.
45:56
You can have a less combative, maybe more,
45:58
I don't know, writing culture.
45:59
They don't write that much stuff down in SpaceX.
46:02
To me that matters less.
46:04
Although I tend to be one for a working environment
46:07
that is energized, positive preferably.
46:13
But I think, ultimately, I would be proud
46:15
to be delivering on an excellent product
46:18
that can be delivered to market soon, right?
46:20
And we can all go use.
46:22
But, okay.
46:22
So you want the kinda results-oriented culture.
46:25
Results speak for themselves in a lot of ways, yeah.
46:28
Julia, thank you.
46:29
Thanks. Thanks for having me.