Latest / WTR Small-Cap Spotlight / Deep Isolation Nuclear, Inc.: Isolated from Competition, Enriched with Opportunity

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Deep Isolation Nuclear, Inc.: Isolated from Competition, Enriched with Opportunity · WTR Small-Cap Spotlight

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the WTR Small Cap Spotlight Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Tim Gerdeman, Vice Chair and Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Water Tower Research.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In today's podcast episode, I have the pleasure of being joined by Rod Balter, CEO of Deep Isolation.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The company operates as a public reporting company, but their stock is not listed on an exchange at this moment.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Also joining is my WTR equity research colleague, Eric Goldstein.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Deep isolation is an innovative nuclear waste disposal technology provider dedicated to protecting human health and the environment.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The company has pioneered a patented, directionally drilled deep borehole disposal system to safely secure spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste deep into the Earth's crust.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Its technology, highlighted by the Universal Canister System, offers governments, regulators, and commercial organizations a flexible, cost-effective solution to the global nuclear waste crisis.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Deep isolation combines deep technical engineering with robust community engagement to ensure that its repositories align with both safety standards and local values.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, welcome to today's podcast, Rod and Eric.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Rod, let me start by asking you to tell our listeners about deep isolation.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: More specifically, perhaps you can give us a high-level overview of what the company does, the core business, the problem you're solving for with customers, and why the disposal of spent nuclear waste has never been permanently resolved previously.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Tim.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so deep isolation has leveraged directional drilling to take commercial spent nuclear fuel out of reactors, put it into our universal canister system, and deploy it about a mile deep underground.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: It can be located with reactors or other waste storage sites.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: It can be regional repositories or utilized and tailored to whatever the customer's needs are.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So deep isolation got founded 10 years ago.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've got over a hundred patents across our technology lifecycle.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: How do you characterize a site?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: How do you design the well?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: How do you design the canisters, monitor that during and after operations, and finally how you close that well for long-term safety?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's been fascinating is that the world has never disposed of any spent nuclear fuel anywhere in the globe.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so Finland will be the first.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: They've constructed their mined repository.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It took them over 20 years and 10 years just for construction.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: But deep isolation can now drill these in two months.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a much faster process.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can do this modular.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do it all at one time.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're bringing a lot of innovation that nuclear waste hasn't seen in a while.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for that overview.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly a very important problem you're trying to solve for.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, I'll turn it over to Eric to ask a few questions.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Tim.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh thank you, Rod, for joining us today.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate your time.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So if we just take a step back for a second um just to your original involvement with the company, you came in as uh the chief operating officer and and after that became the CEO as the company uh was ready to start scaling up uh operations.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, what drew you to this mission and how has that vision evolved um since your early days with the company?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got kind of lucky.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I uh I I grew up on a dairy farm.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I went to school, became an accountant, and uh decided that public accounting maybe wasn't for me uh and was looking for that next job.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was at Waste Control Specialists, which did low-level radioactive waste.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I had come up through the finance side of the organization.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this uh company called Deep Isolation walked into my office and asked how we had gotten our licenses and integrated into the community and how we had kind of achieved uh, you know, an operating low-level waste facility.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um when we sold waste control to private equity, uh Elizabeth Muller, one of the co-founders, reached out and said, Hey, do you remember us?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Of course.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, would you like to do in high-level waste exactly what you did in low-level waste?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, that sounds great.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's go tackle this problem.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that's how it kind of got started.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started as this uh young company with a concept and an idea uh to somebody who's now uh demonstrated this in physical demonstrations, uh, gotten a lot of, you know, over six million dollars of uh RPE grants and and other financing uh to uh kind of make this technology more commercially available.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's great.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, as you alluded to uh previously, you're you're dealing with a problem that uh nobody has solved yet.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: So there are over 90,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting at reactor sites across the US alone.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the world collectively has never permanently disposed of a single gram of uh any of this waste.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Yuca Mountain site that was selected in 1987 uh has effectively been abandoned.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Finland, as you mentioned just before, the Ankalo site took 20 years and 5 billion euro to build.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, why has this problem so been so difficult to solve for so long?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And why is now the moment?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's been several things that have kind of impacted this.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Part of it is, you know, not in my backyard.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So Yucca Mountain, Nevada, it's about 60 miles from Las Vegas.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they were, you know, they did not want transportation near Las Vegas for tourism and other aspects.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nevada didn't have nuclear reactors, and so all the commercial spent fuel from around the nation was heading there.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the local county was very supportive jobs and economic growth, but uh Las Vegas and the broader state of Nevada were not.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and and the administrations change and priorities change and budgets change, and that's just not helpful for a long-term project.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but none of that's unsolvable.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is something we can fix.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've seen recently is the Department of Energy uh issued nuclear lifecycle innovation campus requests.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And 26 states said we'd be interested, at least in talking about a disposition path in our state.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of them were, you know, we don't want to be the nation's waste, but we're interested in what we can do in our state.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I know I understand DOE's trying to narrow that down to three to five, but it's interesting, some of these states already have waste in their backyard.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of, you know, what are you gonna, you know, it instead of not in my backyard, the waste is already in your backyard.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do about it?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that really changes that conversation, I think.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's dig into um the technology a little bit.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: So can you walk us through um the borehole concept, um, the canisters, the directional drilling, uh, the depth, the geology?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: What makes this fundamentally safer and more practical than a mind repository?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: And why didn't anyone think to apply directional drilling technology to this problem before?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Eric, that's probably the number one question we get.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: How come nobody thought of this before?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and it it does, you know, make you kind of think about it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the main reason is that nuclear, the nuclear industry didn't really top to the oil and gas industry.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so nuclear had looked at boreholes, but yeah, this was back in the early 80s, and they thought you had to be straight vertical into crystalline granite, five miles, five kilometers deep.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and oil and gas subsequently was perfecting directional drilling following formations, uh, and had learned a lot, uh, but nuclear never looked back.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so when deep isolation came along, we looked at directional drilling, and and that's what kind of helped.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about this, really we're talking about a roughly mile deep borehole.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we think we could be into a clay formation, salt, could be in a grant.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be horizontal, it can be directional or slanted, deviated other well types.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we're about 22 inches diameter at depth, so that's larger than your typical oil and gas well, uh, but it's within the technical bounds.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we collaborate with Halliburton as our uh drilling expertise, uh, and we're uh testing our equipment and tools and things at their facilities.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so we're we're excited about that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the other thing you mentioned was our universal canister system.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is a canister that's about 16 feet long and it's got a kind of skinny neck at one end.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you might liken that to kind of a Coke bottle, uh, but we call that the lift adapter.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and that uh lift adapter was designed to work with both nuclear equipment and oil and gas.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure you don't drop it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you're gonna move that from uh a you know truck or something onto your facility to the wellhead and then in place it, uh, that all links.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it's designed for storage, transportation.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can dispose of it in a mined repository or a deep boral, never have to repackage it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: If we had to repackage the waste and dry casts already in the US, that's$30 billion plus the radiation dose.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so this kind of future-proofs it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's also compatible with both the legacy fleet, uh, light water reactor fuel and the new advanced uh fuels like triso, molten salt, even reprocessed waste streams, recycled waste streams.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So can we actually just dig into the uh the canister, the canister system uh a little bit more, which you you were just talking about?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that seems like it's one of your uh more important innovations.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um it has a triple purpose, as you said: storage, transportation, um, disposal without repackaging.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, how significant a breakthrough was that?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: And what what exactly did it take to get you there?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've collaborated very closely with NAC International.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for those who are not familiar, they're one of the three major dry cask uh manufacturers in the US.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: They also do a lot of transportation and storage for the Department of Energy with defense waste streams.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we collaborated with them, we wanted to make sure that we would meet all the nuclear safety standards.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we had to, you know, look at pressures and stresses on the canister for moving and in placement, uh, transportation and storage, the criticality of it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what's unique about this canister is that it's pretty thin-walled.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't provide the shielding with the canister, but with the equipment that handles that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that's what shields and protects the workers and public and whatnot as we move it around.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that was designed so that it would be skinny enough to fit in a borehole without having to make that borehole extremely large, uh robust enough to handle that waste.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then it's made of a duplex stainless steel.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So nothing too elaborate, uh, but it does uh uh provide erosion resistance and a good engineered barrier to hold that waste form in.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you've gotten um some validation from the Department of Energy.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you've secured over six million dollars in DOE and in ARPA E grants.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you have some impressive partnerships with the Argonne National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley, uh OCLO, and NAC International.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And most recently you demonstrated the boreholde disposal works for recycled advanced reactor fuel.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, how does the government validation change uh the conversations you're having uh commercially?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of the things deep isolation wanted to do is make sure that we had uh technology that was, I'll say, vetted by others.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it wasn't just deep isolation saying our technology works, you ought to you ought to check it out.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we've been able to apply to RPA grants uh for the ones you've mentioned.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: We work with Oaklo and and also Oregon National Lab with some of that technology for Oaklo's reprocessing facilities, recycling facilities.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh our canister, we we looked at, okay, if you put their fuel in our canister, can you dispose of it safely?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how does that work?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: What are the economics in that?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And over our shoulder, RPAE was looking, and they've got a lot of technical experts that are really sharp.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh that we've got a lot of milestones and reports, and that was able to really kind of sharpen our edge as we design this to make sure we had a really nice finished product at the end of that project.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's turn to um your demonstration facility in in Cameron, Texas.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: So in January of this year, um, you broke ground on a full-scale demonstration program uh at the Deep Borehole Demonstration Facility uh near Cameron in Texas, uh, with local government and industry uh in attendance, I believe.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So there was no radioactive material being used, but it seems like a critical step towards building uh regulatory confidence.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, what does that program prove and what does success look like for you?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this this groundbreaking was something that we've known for years we needed to do.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we we asked our customers, you know, what's the number one thing we could do?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they said a full-scale end-to-end demonstration.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they like the technology on paper, but they need to bring communities and regulators and others out and really kick the tires, see it in action and see it actually operating.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've been uh trying to raise money uh and and uh and and I think we'll talk about that, but you know, we we decided to kick that off on our own.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh subsequently, we were selected by RPE Scale Up Ready for a$20 million award that we're in the process of negotiating contracts on uh to expand that.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we can do the both not only the subsurface, which we kicked off in January with long lead items, but also the surface handling.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that also allows us to collaborate with Westinghouse and their Vinci reactor, which is triso-based.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so we can use that fuel specifically uh to get NRC certificate of compliance for that fuel in the NRC NAC Magnastura Magnetran for storage above ground and transportation, and then demonstrate how that would be disposed of in a borehole.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: It'll all be non-radioactive, but we use surrogate materials to per center gravity and weight and things like that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's great.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about the size of the market and the opportunity you guys are looking at.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I believe you've described the market as potentially uh$155 billion globally.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that could double by 2050.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, between the legacy waste backlog and then new nuclear builds, you know, for data centers and just for cleaner sources of energy in general, uh, and international demand, where are you focusing first?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And how does the 70% cost advantage over mined repositories uh change the conversation you're having with your potential counterparties?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: When we look at uh kind of globally what happens in nuclear, uh generally uh the nuclear utilities are charged a small fee and they pay it into a nuclear waste fee.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a radioactive waste management organization in that country that's responsible for disposal, perpetual care, and ownership of that waste over the long term.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: In the US, that entity is the Department of Energy.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's about 40 countries that have uh nuclear power and are looking or are looking at it uh pretty seriously.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're engaged with all of them to make sure they know about deep isolation, that we're out here, we're we're ready to help.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of those we've integrated a lot more with, and we've done studies specifically for them.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, that uh that pipeline is pretty manageable since we think we've got about 40 customers around the globe.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you're right, it's still a really big market.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as that waste continues to be generated, and then we start adding to that fleet, uh, you know, that market doubles by 2050 to almost$300 billion.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's at a borehole market.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if that was a mine repository, it'd be a trillion dollars.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So by not having people underground, not having to worry about ventilation and a lot of engineered barriers, we're able to do this a lot cheaper and faster, but we're still twice the depth of a mine repository.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we're also safer.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we we hit a lot of boxes.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the only box we don't tick is not everything will fit in a mine repository, or not everything will fit in a borehole.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of the Navy reactor waste and some of those are just too big physically to fit in a borehole.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so we'll still need a mine repository, uh, but it can be a much smaller one than what we might have planned otherwise.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's talk about um your ecosystem, your partner ecosystem.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: So you've built a pretty impressive list of companies that you've been working with.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned Halliburton, uh Amentum, Navarro, uh, NAC International.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: So these span drilling, execution, federal contracting, and then of course the uh canister manufacturing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you've licensed technology to Navarro for Tennessee and Idaho, and you're working across a dozen countries on three continents.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is the core business model to uh license your IP, um, direct project execution or both?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your your listeners should probably think of us as an IP company.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've got the technology, uh, but we've really offered customers a choice.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've got a supply chain partnership, and we can come in and do a turnkey job.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, most customers seem to like that idea.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you've got a national oil company and you want them to drill for you instead of our supply chain partner, that's perfectly fine.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we can still provide the technology and know-how and expertise to make sure that's done right.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but uh that's just the IP license that would come out.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but this allows us to be asset-light uh and leverage, you know, those who have the expertise instead of trying to duplicate that expertise in-house.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like uh, you know, everybody's looking at AI and other things, and how do you integrate this into the future?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to make sure we've got uh, you know, those traditional industries like oil and gas drilling uh that also have a nuclear future as we continue to expand that as well.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, makes sense.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so let's take a look at the uh SMR opportunity.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the advanced reactor and SMR wave has certainly been accelerating uh recently, but it's not clear that they've um dealt with the back end of the fuel cycle also.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: So does the industry risk uh repeating mistakes uh that were made 50 years ago?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how are you positioning deep isolation as the go-to waste solution for SMR developers who are raising billions of dollars today, but also will have a waste problem in the future?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, new nuclear doesn't work without solving the waste problem.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we think we've can solve the waste problem.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we are working with a lot of the new SMR companies.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, this contradicts, you know, I just told you a couple of questions ago that our customer is a government entity.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So why are we working with them?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we want to make sure that as they're thinking about their product, how are they gonna store that waste?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we want to make sure they're gonna store it in that universal canister so nobody has to repackage that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So thinking about that waste up front may save them a lot of money.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for the new SMRs, uh, they'll have to sign an amended standard contract here in the US to operate.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that contract now is gonna make them pay for storage during the entire life of operations plus 10 years.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that can be up to 70 years of storage cost.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so being able to make sure you've got it in the right canister, in a right storage configuration, so that it's ready for disposal as soon as possible and open up those disposal possibilities is key to keeping your cost of energy down and making sure your product's one that can get marketed the best uh in the very competitive field of SMRs out there.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I'll just add on to that.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what what's interesting is there's a lot of SMR companies.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think last count there was like 70 some odd different designs.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but there's only one waste borehole company, uh, and that's deep isolation, and that's globally.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: We just really don't have competition in this space.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you look at nuclear, we want to be technology agnostic where our technology fits with everybody and provide that solution, make sure we can provide the right, you know, environmental support that's going to be needed at the end of this.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's great.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: So uh the last question then.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: So let's think about the road ahead.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you went public in uh July of last year when you raised$33 million in an oversubscribed private placement.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: So you now have capital to fund your uh full-scale demonstration.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: What are the key milestones over the next two to three years?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, NRC engagement, first commercial site, potentially international deployment.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And what does deep isolation look like when this technology reaches scale?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we've started those NRC discussions.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in the U.S.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: says only DOE can get a license and it can only be at Yucca Mountain.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we understand there's discussions in the industry and on Capitol Hill about the the potential to change that with these new nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses and the state interest, uh, it's time.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're we're encouraged by that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: We see that as uh good possibilities.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as we look out to the future, one of the reasons we're a public company and raising this money is the need to scale.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if we've got that many states interested and we need to go and and start discussions with them, uh, then we need to grow the company.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we think we've got the a good baseline for that and our poised for that growth in the future.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Rod.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for walking us through the deep isolation story.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like you have a very, very bright future and you're working uh, you know, obviously on a very good cause.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so um just want to wish you the best of luck and thank you for joining us.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now uh Tim, back to you.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Eric and Rod.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us today and explaining a deep isolation's business model.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what a huge, huge um total addressable market in such a niche area.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't see that combination very often.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So really interesting, and really appreciate your thoughts today.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, as well as visiting www watertowerresearch.com to stay up to speed on the company's small cap written research reports, podcasts, fireside chats, industry specific symposiums, and conference schedules.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: We will see you next time for another edition of the WTR Small Cap Spotlight Podcast.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, a special thanks to the producer and editor of the podcast, Christoph Fitzpatrick.