076 Brennan, Andrew and Ryan on Financing

Andrew Meehan (00:00)

So we, know, to that point earlier, bubbles provide a windfall of capital and allow a lot of ideas to experiment. That's, that's where we are, right? And, you know, bubbles can be small.

If the nuclear bubble collapses, the American economy is not going to get wiped out. We're not going to have massive financial collapse problems. But there's a lot of capital.

Mark Hinaman (00:24)

And if it doesn't

collapse and we build a bunch of additional power plants and develop a whole new energy sector and expand the nuclear industry, then the dividends are going be huge. It's going to be incredible, right?

Andrew Meehan (00:38)

Yeah. Yeah, Mark, the comment

and the observation there is that it's asymmetric, right? The downside is so much smaller than the upside. And that's why it's investable. That's why it's interesting. That's why it's worth putting capital to work. And that's why a lot of capital is entering the market.

Mark Hinaman (01:55)

Welcome back to another episode of the Fire Division podcast where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they can better human lives. ⁓ My name is Mark Heineman. I'm the principal of Fire Division. Have a little bit of different format today. We normally do one-on-one or two-on-one interview with guests, but we've got...

four of us on the call this morning. So today I'm joined by Brendan Moore, CFO at Westwind Energy Holdings, ⁓ Andrew Meehan, managing partner at Neutron Power Ventures, and my good friend Ryan Pickering, director of development at Oppenheimer Energy. So rock star cast of nuclear bros that we get to talk to this morning. ⁓

Guys, I'm stoked to talk to you. So, Brendan, for those that are just doing audio, let's give guys a little bit of a chance to intro themselves and familiarize each other with their voices. So I'm gonna go around Robin here. Brendan, you wanna give like a minute intro elevator pitch for yourself? And then we'll move on to Andrew and Ryan.

Brennan Moore (02:50)

It's been over a decade in the oil and gas industry and really my goal and vision I've been digging in over a year now in the nuclear space, trying to bridge traditional energy, oil and gas investors and just educate them. There's a big lack of awareness and education as to what's happening in the nuclear space. So I think people are pretty well understood now that there's a looming power crisis in the US and that the mark your work is quite relevant. The two most immediate solutions to baseload power needs being natural gas and nuclear.

And so you and I really enjoyed connecting because we both have those backgrounds of both oil and gas and now nuclear. So I've been spending a lot of time in this space. My partners and I are very interested in helping both invest and also helping on the deployment side. So happy to be here today. Thanks for asking me to join.

Mark Hinaman (03:38)

Awesome. Yeah, stoked to chat more with you. Andrew, let's bounce over to you. 60 seconds. Full time, yeah.

Andrew Meehan (03:42)

Yeah, I'm a I'm a chemical engineer.

I love the people talk a lot about zero to one and one to many. I love the point between point seven five and one point two five. You know where sparks are flying, where stuff's coming to market, where you know the idea has been developed and relate stage development. How do we how do we commercialize it? ⁓ So that's what we're trying to work on it in Trump power ventures. ⁓ Basically doing SPVs right now looking forward to a full fun to invest in nuclear space.

Mark Hinaman (04:10)

What was your background prior to jumping into that Andrew?

Andrew Meehan (04:14)

I spent some time in biotech. So I was bringing drugs to market at that similar space, late phase two, phase three, bringing drugs to market and scaling them in early commercial space. So ⁓ CAR T cell therapy, shout out.

Mark Hinaman (04:27)

Awesome. All right. And then Mr. Pickering, which most people should know you if they've been on LinkedIn and are connected to the nuclear industry at all. But for those that may not have a LinkedIn profile, a little bit of your background.

Ryan Pickering (04:44)

Yeah, my name is Ryan Pickering from Berkeley, California, and, you know, spent 13 years in the solar industry, coming out of college, on the roof, and then into a desk, and kind of following that wave, and became frustrated with what I saw as like a lack of...

salesmanship and nuclear and thought that there is an opportunity for me to make a career shift. And I'm grateful to ⁓ that, that my boss, Charles Oppenheimer saw some potential in me and, and I've been begun working with him to, to finance and develop ⁓ early site development for nuclear plants. So that's what I'm. ⁓

That's what I'm doing now. It's actually today is my first day as an employee of Oppenheimer Energy. I've been working for Charles for a long time as a consultant and ⁓ I'm a part of the first batch of employees coming on. So it's a big day for my career.

Mark Hinaman (05:40)

Nice! That's right, just like that. How exciting. Congratulations, Ryan. ⁓

Brennan Moore (05:45)

He has the best haircut of the four of us. I'm kind of bummed that he has a hat on today. The coolest haircut.

Andrew Meehan (05:50)

Hahaha.

Mark Hinaman (05:50)

You

Ryan Pickering (05:52)

Thanks, I don't know, I just felt like we needed more mullets in nuclear. I just felt like this was the moment.

Mark Hinaman (05:59)

Hahaha

That's, that's, say a lot coming from Brennan, so.

Ryan Pickering (06:07)

Really, really,

Andrew Meehan (06:07)

you

Ryan Pickering (06:08)

he's got a flow going.

Mark Hinaman (06:10)

Cool guys. Yeah, I find it fascinating that kind of the four of us came from non-nuclear and that I think three of us have some background in oil and gas and like want to apply some of those learnings to the nuclear industry. Kind of a broad question but kicking off like what do we think the nuclear industry can learn or take away from oil and gas, solar?

previous learnings from other spaces of energy industry.

Brennan Moore (06:46)

There is an element of risk that has to be taken and also government support both at the local and the federal level to build things and to innovate. mean, the U.S. has become the most innovative country in the world when it comes to extracting oil and gas. And part of that is having support at all levels. A good example is outside of the privatization of mineral rights in the U.S. and the government not claiming them all for themselves.

the pipeline system, the pipeline infrastructure that exists in the US that allows us to move commodities around the country. A lot of people don't realize natural gas can't just be thrown on a truck or a barge and moved across land or the ocean without being frozen and going through a complicated process. So the level of support that exists in Texas and the oil and gas producing states has really made a tremendous impact. And I think on the waste side, specifically, we'll just talk about waste on the nuclear front.

dates need to find a way to welcome it. Because one of the things I believe is that whoever really solved for that waste problem and welcomes the waste is going to be one of the leaders on the deployment side. So there's a lot to unpack just there, but support at all levels of government and also support when it comes to handling of the waste, not just the production of energy are critically important.

Andrew Meehan (08:08)

say a combination of technologies. The frac was realized because we figured out horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. So was the confluence of multiple technologies that brought an energy revolution in the United States in the past 25 years. I think we need the same thing in nuclear. And maybe that looks different ⁓ for how it's implemented, but it's going to be multiple nuclear technologies and also multiple technologies on the deployment front.

to realize an energy revolution.

Mark Hinaman (08:41)

The frack, I love that you characterized it as the frack. It's not hydraulic fracturing, it's the singular technology. Andrew, I mean, right before we started recording, you had held up Daniel Juergens' book, The New Map, and commented about the impact from fracking in the domestic and American energy infrastructure.

Andrew Meehan (09:06)

Yeah, I I think it's under reported. One of my favorite statistics that I learned from this book is that ⁓ between 2009 and 2019, two thirds of total U.S. net industrial investment was represented by the oil and gas sector. Min.

Mark Hinaman (09:19)

net industrial, not even net energy, like two thirds of net in heavy industry. That's crazy.

Andrew Meehan (09:21)

investment.

Yeah, represented more than 40 % of growth in the US economy. Man, energy, powers, prosperity. And that's the message we should be sending with nuclear. Here's the densest form of energy in the universe. Let's build it.

Mark Hinaman (09:46)

That's crazy.

Ryan Pickering (09:49)

I add that I'd like to see...

Well, I think something that solar does well is no one says like, have an XYZ solar system. They just say, I have solar or, you know, our path and nuclear were so specific and these technology pathways are, you know, of course far more robust. but I think solar white labeled well and standardized well, and that was why we could drop the, drop the bottom off on, on pricing and

You know, we have like a hyper specific supply chain in nuclear and it's weak across the board, especially in the West. And so I'd like to see some standardization while allowing for a few different ways of splitting atoms and things, but ⁓ in order for us to white label and drive economies of scale.

Mark Hinaman (10:42)

See, I think that can be accomplished in a couple different ways, right? Like one thing that I see you mentioned supply chain being limited That's like true of a lot of the industry. Like there's this regulatory capture piece that you can't go out and buy a random widget ⁓ Versus like the oil and gas industry you can change which frac plug you're going to use like mid well like you can decide mid construction project that you're going to make it make a technology change and

like implement it immediately. The companies have different policies about it, but like that would be, I believe, unheard of from lots of the nuclear folks that I've talked to.

Ryan Pickering (11:24)

And I don't know if that's possible, but we can dream and we can certainly like build towards something like that. But I'd be interested to hear what Andrew has to say.

Andrew Meehan (11:24)

Right, I think it's a.

I guess my thought is there's a tale of two markets. There's those who are nuclear naive, who do see nuclear as a white label technology, and those who are ⁓ nuclear informed, who have a much more nuanced perspective of boiling water reactor versus pressurized water reactor versus ⁓ non-water cooled reactors.

Ryan Pickering (11:59)

Yes, you know, same in solar. We would permit solar farms without even specifying what equipment we were using. didn't even matter. It was whatever we were buying by container right before shipment. you know, again, I know nuclear can't do that, but I think with early site development, it is possible to at least develop projects that are not.

nuclear, not technology specific in nuclear. And I think there's some opportunity for innovation there where we can, you know, develop these energy sites. It doesn't even have to be a specific form of energy, right? And I think what we're seeing with Fermi America and these, you know, this like new industrialism is that these sites are going to be more than nuclear plants. They're going to be, ⁓ as Constellation calls them, clean energy centers. And

Andrew Meehan (12:54)

Yeah.

Ryan Pickering (12:55)

How does that reframe change the way we finance, does it change the players that are coming onto the site, change the construction dynamics? And I don't that excites me. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, but I want to co-locate and use waste heat from nuclear and factories. That's what the Chinese do with their plants, with their AP1000s that they recently built. You know, they're doing district heating for housing and

district heating for factories. And to what I understand, they're also using this kind of like medium grade heating for pulp and paper and other light industrial processes. And of course, my favorite example, Switzerland, that the Bezdal nuclear plant heats this amazing community pool and heats 15,000 apartments and it heats a factory that makes toilet paper.

right next door and they're making the cleanest toilet paper on earth and they've been doing it since the 70s using the waste heat from an old pressurized water reactor. And so, you know, this is, I'm obviously getting into my favorite topic right away, but like, how do we, how does it become more than a nuclear plant? And what does that change on the finance stack? How does that change as we bring kind of

a whole industrial microgrid to market.

Mark Hinaman (14:30)

You've got productize it right like just add add the word spa to your product and like aloe did right aloe spas of using this waste heat

Ryan Pickering (14:35)

Thank you.

Is

that what all I was trying to do is gonna use the waste heat for spas?

Mark Hinaman (14:46)

they had a prank announcement like introducing the aloe spa.

Ryan Pickering (14:49)

Okay, so it's already on its way.

Brennan Moore (14:52)

about

the yoga company.

Very interesting.

Mark Hinaman (14:57)

Yeah, not

the nuclear company.

Brennan Moore (15:00)

Yeah.

Ryan Pickering (15:01)

Which

company is worth more at this point, I wonder. It's probably closed.

Brennan Moore (15:05)

Well, yeah, when you hear the aloes fall, that is interesting. How many reactor designs you guys think we ultimately need 15 years from now? Covering the full military use case, the remote location use case, all the way up to the gigawatt, multi-gigawatt size, massive reactors.

Mark Hinaman (15:21)

I think that's like

existing in 1900 and being like, how many different types of automobiles do we think we need right now? And maybe that's not a fair comparison because like utility, total cost of purchase, cost manufacturing, mass manufacturability, these are all different elements and different product classes. ⁓ But yeah, I think there's...

going to be a lot of opportunity in the future for different size, different scale.

I guess like Brendan, you know, think about the natural gas market. Everyone knows, like, there's big three heavy duty turbines like Mitsubishi-G and Siemens, and yet there's a whole cascade of smaller combustion equipment like, you know, Janbacher, Vortisla, Caterpillar, like the solar turbines that all make their own equipment and there's...

even technology and designs that you could like public source, like there's publicly available turbine technology that like NASA generated some of it. ⁓ So in my view, it's kind of like, what does the customer and what does the market need? And if there's going to be somebody that shows up and is willing to pay for it and someone can build a widget and build a mousetrap that makes sense, then it'll be saleable.

Brennan Moore (16:50)

a couple dozen all in when you think about it. Ryan's perspective, which I appreciate, is let's just use what we have off the shelf and let's try to go deploy it as quickly as we can. And similar sentiment from LPO, it's like we're not really in the venture capital business of trying to go fund these next-gen reactor designs. Yet at the same time, there is a strong argument in the use case around if we can get to the point of domestically producing triso fuel, for example.

reactor designs that it makes a lot of sense to use that, especially being able to do so at atmospheric pressure and not having some of the complications that come with pressurized water reactors and pooling water reactors. so, yeah, there is certainly a spectrum of use cases. And I think it's a good example, Mark, actually, automobiles, like that resonates in my mind. There's never, I don't know, a couple thousand or I'm sure at least, companies. And now there's a couple dozen that are relevant.

Mark Hinaman (17:46)

Yeah, just caution for the investor, right? But if someone broke, like...

Brennan Moore (17:51)

Well, that was

really the framing of my question is like, it seems like we're nearing the point of too many dollars chasing the wrong problem. I think there's enough reactor companies that are, again, maybe there's a couple dozen that should exist and there's probably enough capital that supporting those guys. then next step of the problem being how do we go deploy these things? So I see Ryan shaking his head.

Ryan Pickering (18:14)

Yeah, I think that was the big question at the Texas Nuclear Summit, and I'm sure Andrew has a perspective on it.

Andrew Meehan (18:14)

Brunnen I am a-

Well, I just think that a lot of dollars chasing the industry is a good thing. It allows different designs to develop. It's, know, everybody talks about bubbles like a bad thing and yeah, they can be a bad thing if you invest a lot of money and get wiped out. But we want dollars to iterate on designs and to allow cool designs to come to market and give people opportunity to develop. And in the, in the 15 year period, the best designs will see the light of day, right? And they'll make it to market and they'll commercialize.

But we want an opportunity for experimentation here at some level in the design space. And those who are effective at raising capital, not only on the technical side, but on the financial and political side, are going to be the most successful companies.

Ryan Pickering (19:04)

Indeed. And in Texas, I met even more reactor companies that I didn't even know about. You I collect them like Pokemon cards. And I think, you know, I like love knowing what they're about. And I've met 10 more and I couldn't believe how many vendors there are out there. Yeah.

Andrew Meehan (19:12)

you

Mark Hinaman (19:15)

you

Ten more? Ten?

my god. ⁓

Ryan Pickering (19:27)

I was like, who are you? And they're like, we got the smallest reactor you've ever heard of. I was like, try me. And it was cool. And I think we are in this mode where ⁓ the river's getting quite wide and shallow. ⁓ And that's OK. It's reality. And we were laughing at the Texas Nuclear Summit because some people were predicting a lot of blood on the ground.

Mark Hinaman (19:33)

Hahaha

Andrew Meehan (19:35)

you

Ryan Pickering (19:57)

River would get more narrow and deeper in the years in the future, but it was all good times. But, you know, I think quietly the critique was Texas is saying yes to all nuclear right now, and therefore they're getting no nuclear. And ⁓ then, of course, on the last day, there's this announcement that Fermi America is breaking ground in 2026 on four AP-1000s, which, you know, as Brennan mentioned, is kind of the only...

The only thing, the only pack of cigarettes we have so we might as well smoke them. so that was good to see and those guys are on a tear. They're intimidating me for sure. ⁓ And I let them know that when I met them and they said, don't be intimidated. We're all collaborating. We can't be against each other. We're working together. And I said, of course, of course. I'm sorry that I brought a competitive dynamic spirit to any of it.

And so I'm happy to see those folks leaning in and Texas will be building ⁓ NRC license reactors as well as all the other things that they're doing.

Mark Hinaman (21:08)

Well, this is, I think, a good point. I mean, we talk about the reactor vendor and the reactor technology as being like, when people think of nuclear energy as an industry, the reactor comes to mind. But I find that a bit puzzling. And Brendan, this might be what you're trying to get at. There are so many other parts of the pie that...

people could be chasing, right? Like in the supply chain piece. So what are you guys' thoughts on like offshoot, tangential support industry, service industry, other components? And we could certainly talk about fuel.

It's the obvious one in my mind, and specifically conversion. Like it needs to be said out loud, the shortages that are going to exist in the conversion space that every reactor vendor to my knowledge still doesn't know about. They're like, ⁓ will, Framatome will just solve that. That's like Framatome's problem. Like, it's like, no guys, conversion is the industry's problem. But what do you guys think?

Brennan Moore (22:12)

It's there's smart investors seem to ask the question. What is the pick picks and shovels thing? What is the thing and mark to your point? There's an argument that it's conversion and enrichment. Really just covering the whole fuel cycle. I'll take and that one is very real and arguably the most critical. I'll take the waste piece. I think I think someone could just focus exclusively on the waste piece solving for that and there's

a ton of work to be done there and a ton of innovation too. I to think about hauling waste across state lines around the country for the amount of nuclear that we plan on deploying is just ludicrous. And so, you know, there's there there are technologies that exist and in the works around burying the waste and around storing it on the surface. I think there just needs to be an all the above approach on the way side and to the extent that that can be done outside of government hands, whether now or in the near future.

will be advantageous. Mark, you've seen the... I don't know that oil and gas has the best reputation as an industry on the wayside because with oil comes a lot of water, depending on the basin. It's a problem and it's an area where there's been lot of innovation. I mean, with oil comes a lot of water and most of that water is toxic water that is best placed.

Mark Hinaman (23:23)

⁓ it's totally invisible. Nobody knows about it. We just posted an article about this and yeah, you can go look at it. It's like...

Ryan Pickering (23:29)

Thanks ⁓

Brennan Moore (23:40)

back below the surface of the earth. And with that has come increased seismic activity in Oklahoma and parts of Texas. And it's hard to argue that there's not a parallel between those two. So I think luckily nuclear waste in a lot of ways, and I'll say this, maybe it will draw some debate, is much simpler. Like the sheer, the sheer, the mass and size and the downstream.

Mark Hinaman (23:58)

No, no debate. No debate from me. I don't think any debate from any of us.

Brennan Moore (24:06)

potential implications and like it's just much simpler from a storage standpoint. So it's something that we we can and should find a good solution to that's also commercial.

Andrew Meehan (24:17)

Should we even be calling it waste?

Brennan Moore (24:19)

Yeah, exactly. Can we rebrand it?

Andrew Meehan (24:22)

And spent fuel is what I hear from several founders. What's, what's re-branded as spent fuel and you know, that gets into spent fuel reprocessing, which marked your question about picks and shovels is another piece of the pie here.

Mark Hinaman (24:35)

Well, so I'm just calling them out, right? We've got deep isolation, burying the waste. There's several, like, Ultec has their New Mexico asset and like Andrew's, there's Andrew's waste interim storage, ⁓ Andrew's Texas. And then what, like Nano, didn't Nano have a product line that they wanted to announce and be like, we're going to move fuel around with this. Like, am I misremembering that?

Ryan Pickering (25:01)

They do have a fuel movement business and then of course the Department of Energy is weighing in pretty heavily here as we shelved Yucca Mountain which still kind of gets revived every year conceptually but the

The Department of Energy wants to do a collaboration based siting program, which is in full swing. And yeah, by the time this podcast comes out, the expression of interest will be open. So you can reach out to the federal government of these United States and request to.

build a consolidated storage facility on your private land, especially if you're close to a railway. And we'd love to help you with that. It's a specialty of mine. just wrapped up starting a new job, of course. And then last week I wrapped up a two-year project with the Department of Energy and Native Nuclear, ⁓ working with this collaboration-based siting concept. So we traveled the country and talked about it.

Many call it spent nuclear fuel, including the Department of Energy. In our group, we ended up calling it used nuclear fuel because there is so much potential energy. Some call it slightly used nuclear fuel or slightly spent nuclear fuel. ⁓ I think there's a large rebrand opportunity here. My boss, Scott Lathrop from Tilheni Tribe ⁓ calls it

a trophy.

Mark Hinaman (26:33)

Trophy. We did it! We turned it on. It went critical.

Ryan Pickering (26:36)

Yeah, well because

Andrew Meehan (26:37)

Yeah.

Ryan Pickering (26:38)

he's like each canister represents energy for three million people for like I don't know 18 months or something and And that's it that's the whole thing right there You know like almost every bit of emissions is right there And so and you know as a Native American person and this nuclear fuel is on his ancestral homeland. It's like

a stone's throw through one of their ancestral village sites, he's like, give me more. It's great. You'll love it. Make me an offer. And ⁓ so I think he's playing a really important role reframing it because people are like, not on my property.

Mark Hinaman (27:10)

Hahaha

Ryan Pickering (27:17)

And now you've got someone who's, you know, has a 10,000 year claim to this property saying like, bring it up. I want more. Let me help you build yours. I think every state should have their own to your point, Brennan. Like he's like, and, he believes in recycling on site. And so he's kind of been conditioning a bunch of different vendors in this space that are doing on site recycling because it's, it is so hard to move it around. It's very heavy. And you know,

I think, politically it's difficult to move it around. some of these ideas are like just build a reprocessing facility on site and then just pop it back. ⁓

Mark Hinaman (27:53)

Yeah, that's like Elysium's

ploy, right?

Ryan Pickering (27:56)

Yeah, and

so I do think that is an interesting place to start, Brennan, to your point, because people really do object to nuclear waste. That is an issue for our industry. think once you're inside, you see it's kind of a mountain out of a molehill, and it's like a, you know, kind of a boring non-issue, and that, you know, storing nuclear fuel on site is kind of okay. I mean, it's...

Mark Hinaman (28:20)

⁓

I bet more money has been made advocating against, or well, just debating the topic than any money that's been spent on actually storing or moving waste.

Ryan Pickering (28:33)

I mean, it's the sense it's the

it's it's the cash cow for the anti nuclear movement in California, you know, because they're getting they're getting paid as ⁓ shoot, what's the word? But they get paid to testify so all these anti nuclear groups are getting paid by the state government to make comments about what a Issue this is in California because we have you know, a bunch of old nuclear plants that

are no longer operating, but the nuclear fuel is spread out across California. ⁓ you know, it is, I think by industry stepping up and having it be more in the zeitgeist, maybe we can solve it. ⁓ you know, our group just released a four minute video about like how to apply for the expression of interest and what it is. And I think like if...

When this EOI goes live in January and like a thousand applications come in from Americans, they were like, put the fuel in my backyard. I think it could kind of like tee off like a cultural moment for fuel. And I know all the waste reprocessing and handling companies are earnestly looking to that expression of interest to see how that.

resets the playing field.

Mark Hinaman (29:56)

There we go. We talked about what other opportunities exist. And here we have a recommendation by Brennan that spend nuclear fuel, use nuclear fuel as an opportunity. then consultant Ryan offering us services with a strategy of how to get an entryway, entry point in. Andrew will go throw some money behind it.

Ryan Pickering (30:14)

I mean, once you get this stuff on your land, you're

in, you're kind in the catbird seat, you know, you land some of these. And I will say too, just to shout out to this program, cause I'm sure the DOE would appreciate it and Lord knows they're not working right now. ⁓ they, they have expanded. I think this is a program that really improved under the current administration. I think the, was formerly called consent based siting, which is just kind of a weird.

Andrew Meehan (30:29)

.

Ryan Pickering (30:44)

word and it changed to collaboration based siting and it went from just a parking lot and it was consolidated interim storage storage under the it so they were saying it's not gonna be forever it's just gonna be like a hundred plus years and they were like well it's not interim in my mind but so they expanded it from just a parking lot for spent fuel to these industrial centers so that you can have like a waste burning reactor or a ⁓

a reprocessing facility on site, so now you need a lot more land. And they removed interim. So now it's just a consolidated storage facility. So it's always going to be an industrial site at some point. You can move the waste in, you can move the waste out. You know, it's more of like a logistics point for our nuclear fleet. So I think that's great. And then they changed the name to collaboration-based siting, which I think is more true to the spirit because you have to have this community collaboration and industrial collaboration. It's not this one-time consent.

thing and consent is not a word that's popular with native people so native groups that we were working with were like yeah we've tried consent before it didn't work out so well for us so the collaboration is a little more true to what we're looking for so you know once again that in January that ⁓ expression of interest will go live and I think we should flood it I think we should do 10,000 applications and let them sort through it because

I'm a little scared that only like 30 people are going to apply and again, we're going to have this kind of scarcity bottleneck. Okay, there's only 30 applications, you know, who's, you know, who's going to get it. And, know, I personally think it's such a low cost solution to nuclear this, the nuclear fuel issue, you know, like build a parking lot next to a railway. Like that sounds very

Great. And learning that these parking lots can then be generators and industrial centers as well, which is also great. We need tons of that. So I'd love to see lots of people get in line for the expression of interest. You can always drop out. I think it's like a year long. put the initial implicate. Do some research immediately. Find if you have some railway and a couple thousand acres that you can dedicate to something like this. And then put an application in.

That just jumpstarts the whole thing. This is like, this is a foothold into the nuclear industry that any American can achieve. And I'm kind of surprised that there's not more of a frenzy around it, but I'm hoping in two months once it opens up, we'll see more of that.

Mark Hinaman (33:26)

Andrew, what do you think about other tangential tech?

Andrew Meehan (33:34)

Amir Adnani spoke at the very end of the nuclear conference in Texas and mentioned, asked the crowd actually to shout out numbers. What percentage of uranium is produced domestically? He asked it the other way, how much uranium supplies imported? My guess was 80%. I was completely wrong. 99 % of uranium is imported.

And so I think there's massive opportunity to Ryan's point about government programs and looking at military-based nuclear installations. There's a whole supply chain that's going to need to be built up of domestic supply of uranium. So I think there's a huge opportunity for investment there. Mark, to your point, there's going to be conversion opportunity. There's going to be continued enrichment opportunity. ⁓ At some point, this leads into a conversation about permitting.

of how do you allow new businesses to get permits to do enrichment, to do conversion, to handle these materials? How are we going to ease permitting along the line for all of this?

Mark Hinaman (34:50)

Cool. I love it. Before I say the words out loud, meme stocks. Do you guys have other topics that you want to cover? We can have Cameron edit this out. Sorry, I should have asked this ahead of time.

Ryan Pickering (35:04)

Everyone always wants to talk about meme stocks. That's why everyone calls me up. They don't want actual nuclear advice. They just want to know what meme stocks are like. I don't know. Let's think before we go there. What other opportunities are there? ⁓

Mark Hinaman (35:12)

They just want to know which memes talked about.

Ryan Pickering (35:25)

As a nuclear developer, think there's huge amounts of development opportunities and I hope if you aspire to get into that space, you should come work at Oppenheimer Energy. I'm putting together our internship program and I just want to hire all the smartest kids and hopefully give you your first job in nuclear and get you going because we need a little more entrepreneurial mindset in this space, not just in the tech stack or whatever, but also you got to...

get out there. Like we need nuclear land people who are looking at a site and saying, what can this be? You know? And so I'm trying to build a class of people around that. And I think that will help. And I think, I think solar has done that really well. You know, we got like a whole army of door knockers now that we're just locusting different neighborhoods with incentives and getting solar on their roof. And so I'm not sure if there will be door to door nuclear salespeople. I fantasize about that.

Um, but we can, you know, once nuclear, I think, you know, my, my grand ambition is to have so much nuclear that we do a lot of retail energy with it. And so you have a bunch of people coming to your house, like, who's your nuclear provider? You know, like, I can get you a half a kilowatt, half a cent a kilowatt off if you sign up today. Um, I don't know if retail energy and competitive energy markets will make it that long. And I need 25 years to have that level of.

Mark Hinaman (36:27)

Do you want some uranium? Do you want some uranium?

Ryan Pickering (36:54)

ubiquitous nuclear on the market. ⁓ So we'll see what happens.

Mark Hinaman (36:58)

Well, luckily we're all in our mid-30s, so hopefully

Ryan, you got some time left.

Ryan Pickering (37:03)

Yeah, mean, we're gonna be peaking then.

That's exactly when I'm gonna be wanting to get back to door knocking 25 years from now. ⁓ But yeah, I guess I'm just rambling about, I'm talking my own book, but I do wanna see, I think like...

What really makes a difference in nuclear in my world is like these former coal communities or formerly industrialized communities or ones who have considered nuclear who start asking their city council people, hey, what do you think about us building a nuclear reactor? And like, it kind of starts at that really, really grassroots level and it starts engaging with people and now that products are coming to market and this is actually something that's not crazy to propose to your city council person. You know, I think...

Like that, that's the kind of upward pressure we want to see. And then the developers get involved and then they start stacking. Okay. Well, there's a, you know, 1 % probability that this will happen here. So when that goes in some spreadsheet and it starts informing some supply chain, you know, workshops in the future so that we can right size to the fuel and the, you know, reactor pressure vessels and these long lead time items that we need of these, you know,

few different reactor designs that are coming to market. And so I don't know, I just like to see that because that's what's happening. That's what happens in all mature energy industries and like nuclear is just we put so much on these announcements and we haven't had a final investment decision in like 20 years. And it's like, we just got to start the engine, you know, and like, it's going to be a little bit clunky in the beginning. But I think, you know, we got to get our reps in and and that would be that would be good for everyone.

Mark Hinaman (38:43)

Yeah.

Brennan, what do you think?

Brennan Moore (38:53)

a little bit about the deployment side. Ryan, I don't want to put you on the spot too much. realize there's some things you can and cannot say, but it would be interesting to talk briefly about the whole Sandy Cooper decision and Brookfield being selected. That model itself, also, mean, in Texas, from someone who's fairly new to the space admittedly, what I took away was there were three players that were remaining in that selection process. Oppenheimer, Ryan's firm, the nuclear company, and Elemental.

So it was this like.

Mark Hinaman (39:24)

Well, so Brandon, do

you want to give a highlight of what that, for those that are unfamiliar, what that was?

Brennan Moore (39:29)

Yeah, the facility

in South Carolina where the project was shut down and years, what was it 2017, 2019, the project was shut down due to cost overruns and even I heard it coined nuke gate and by some people around, some, yeah, some scandals that existed. what, there was is a lot of existing permitting and infrastructure and work that was done that allowed

Mark Hinaman (39:46)

People just went to jail. In China, they would have been put to death, but yeah, just...

Brennan Moore (39:57)

for this site to be used for the build out of new nuclear facilities, the deployment of AP 1000s. so ultimately there was a bidding process and there was, again, what seemed like three candidates, Oppenheimer, the nuclear company, Elemental. And ultimately the project was awarded to, Ryan again, won't put you on the spot because I heard there were some very last minute controversial things that happened here, but awarded to Brookfield.

who is one of the owners of Westinghouse alongside Cameco. to me, zooming back out to the point is that on the deployment side, there's this massive need and also this big question now around like, okay, is every AP1000 just going to be deployed by Brookfield and Westinghouse? If so, should the nuclear company and Oppenheimer and Elemental and these other guys only go focus on all these Gen 4 reactors? So it's an interesting topic that I think we should talk a little bit about.

Because the deployment side has a huge need. And also, you would like to see more of a fair market process occur in the coming years on that side.

Ryan Pickering (41:05)

Yeah, I think I think books will be written about how this all went down I'm not sure anyone will read those books, but there is certainly some

Mark Hinaman (41:13)

Maybe just podcasts recorded. Yeah, we don't need to write books anymore. It's all, it writes themselves after we stop recording, like the AI transcript. ⁓

Ryan Pickering (41:15)

Yeah.

Yeah, well, while some people feel like they've been released from NBA, you know, I certainly don't feel like the process is over. Maybe I'm holding on. But from my standpoint, you know, this was some most tumultuous week in my career for sure with all these announcements. And I guess I just got to say I am thrilled with how it's coming together. This is this could not be better for the nuclear industry. And, you know, yeah, we

We may or may not have been involved in this project for the last six months and we may or may not have learned so much and I just have, it has restored my confidence in our ability to do this, to see these big construction companies, governors and all these stakeholders coming together around these big ideas and I do want to reflect for a moment the hilarity.

of this whole situation because, you know, this VC Summer project bankrupted Westinghouse and then they had to sell their assets to Brookfield and Cameco who have now closed a deal with the federal government of the United States for $80 billion and now they are buying the VC Summer site. Brookfield is buying the VC Summer site. So it's like, wow.

these, the reverberations of these construction projects are decades long. And, you know, while I think it was out of the ordinary, there's that a different bidder came in at the last moment and plunked down a huge amount of money on the table. ⁓ I think that, you know, at least from the, my standpoint, the terms of the

the RFP were open to anyone. had a structure to it, if someone, know, Santy Cooper was very clear that they wanted an incredibly qualified buyer to come forward and deliver for the people of South Carolina. Santy Cooper was completely, is almost like a public utility. I think they are. And they're beholden to the people of South Carolina who have been really jerked around by this project.

And so, you know, I think they were hoping someone would come like Brookfield would come along and plunk down the cash. I don't think Brookfield was ready to make that determination. And so people were out there studying the site and seeing how viable it was. So we increased the value of the site. And I think because of this, and you know, Oppenheimer's whole thing is like increasing value to site, increasing visibility, increasing inertia around these sites so that these bigger players can.

can get off the pot and do something. And I think that's exactly what happened here. So we're thrilled and we want to work with Brookfield and Brookfield is not a project developer. So I assume that they'll need some help. And I think we've raised our hands both quietly and publicly to help on that project. it's so easy for me because my boss is just the best, Charles Oppenheimer. just wants to...

He just wants nuclear to go huge and he's technology agnostic. He's a party boy who just wants to bring everyone together and have a really good time and like understand. And this is all in the spirit of his grandfather saying, you know, it's, funny at Los Alamos, they were partying when they were building those things, you know, it was like work really hard during the day and then come together at night, play music, dancing, drinking, talking, you know, and

because that was the only way you could iterate and kind of understand this like really, really complex. And maybe there was like that stress component too. And like you kind of had like, you know, work hard, play hard, all that. And so I think what happened in South Carolina is a huge indicator that you start getting smart people around the water cooler and you start talking about it you start ideating around it about these financial structures. You know, I've and

Mark Hinaman (45:09)

This is the only way you can deal with the stress. ⁓

Ryan Pickering (45:36)

The good ideas flow to the top. I really like the way that Brookfield is buying that site. I think they're far more qualified than the three companies that you mentioned to be doing such a major, major transaction. And my understanding of it is they're plunking down some cash now to get to final investment decision. And so you got to do a lot to resuscitate the NRC license and all things that we were prepared to do.

And we were going to really have to shoestring it, you know, to get it there. But we had a plan. There's just saying, here's an enormous pot of money to get to final investment decision. And then by final investment decision, the value of the site will be so much higher that Brookfield can pay a premium for it in, you know, however many months that is. And then that makes whole everyone in South Carolina.

because there's still some debt owed. And so they were able to offer a deal that was so much better than all the other bidders. But I can understand that there's some sour grapes. We all really worked hard for six months and then we just got shellacked, you know? But I see it as like we're still figuring out the structure. And Brendan, to your point, should, could, is Brookfield going to develop all these projects? I hope so. I think it would be smart. I think.

Westinghouse is a banner that think they got a killer deal on Westinghouse. And, you know, we'd love to build more of these projects with them. And, uh, but if, you know, if we're following the previous administration's 200 gigawatts by 2050, or this current administration, you know, 300 plus gigawatts by 2030, 2050, um, well, we're going to need

to build a lot. So I can't imagine Brookfield bankrolling all of those. But we would love to see a player like them in the space. Empowers me to do early site development, because if I can get the value over a certain bar, which has now been defined, then you know that some big people are going to come in and, you know.

Andrew Meehan (47:54)

You've got to mark it.

Mark Hinaman (47:56)

Yeah.

Ryan Pickering (47:56)

So I

just got to take these Brownfield sites and I got a, I got a, that are really devalued right now and get them up to that bar and provide that catalytic development and that we can do at a very efficient cost. know, like it's nuclear is famous for taking, costing about, I don't know, 120 to $300 million to get a site to final investment decision. Come on guys. It's insane.

Mark Hinaman (48:23)

Yeah, which is

way too much, right? That's two orders of magnitude too high, right? ⁓

Ryan Pickering (48:26)

That's like binary capital that like

Right? So I think

this brings like a new layer in and thanks for letting me share that.

Mark Hinaman (48:39)

Awesome. I think that's a good transition. Let's you mentioned enormous pot of money, but there's a ton of capital flowing into the space right now, both in public equities and kind of on the private fundraise side. I'd be hopeful to get Andrew's ⁓ perspective on kind of private markets if you can, Andrew. And then Brennan, I know that you guys have been evaluating a bunch of deals, but what has been your pulse on...

capitals, capital markets appetite for entering the space. Like that just frankly did not exist like two years ago, four years ago, certainly not 10 years ago. This is really transformed.

Andrew Meehan (49:20)

Yeah, I mean, I think the comment is that nuclear is investable, that there are opportunities to get venture style returns in the nuclear landscape these days, where 10 years ago, you know, immediately post Fukushima, people were shutting down plants, right? ⁓ So we, know, to that point earlier, bubbles provide a windfall of capital and allow a lot of ideas to experiment. That's, that's where we are, right? And, you know, bubbles can be small.

If the nuclear bubble collapses, the American economy is not going to get wiped out. We're not going to have massive financial collapse problems. But ⁓ there's a lot of capital.

Mark Hinaman (50:01)

And if it doesn't

collapse and we build a bunch of additional power plants and develop a whole new energy sector and expand the nuclear industry, then the dividends are going be huge. It's going to be incredible, right?

Andrew Meehan (50:16)

Yeah. Yeah, Mark, the comment

and the observation there is that it's asymmetric, right? The downside is so much smaller than the upside. And that's why it's investable. That's why it's interesting. That's why it's worth putting capital to work. And that's why a lot of capital is entering the market. ⁓ One observation to your point about private versus public markets is private markets ⁓ have a lot more friction, I guess, in valuations, right? If you start a Series B and you price the round, that price holds throughout

close until you raise your next round. Public markets are fluid. We've talked about Oklo here. ⁓ Pierce $25 billion in market cap? No, I was going to bring it up when we talking about fuel recycling. That was kind of burying the lead. That's one of their key value props. The comps look great from a private market perspective if you're looking at a $25 billion company that doesn't have a reactor operational.

Mark Hinaman (50:53)

Have we talked about Oklo yet? I don't think we've talked about Oklo yet.

Brennan Moore (51:17)

And Andrew and I have been playing a lot in the same space and really respect the framework that he's developed from a really from an engineer standpoint and mine's more from a finance background. Yeah, in a way, Oklo is making things challenging, I would say, because what's hard is mostly investors that we're talking to are seasoned investors that want some line of sight to cashflow. And, you know, it's

We have this whole chicken or the egg issue, whether it's the deployers saying like, hey, get me a project and then I can go raise the capital around that project, which is what Ryan and his team have been up to, or the utilities saying, get me proven technology and then I'll give you a PPA or the tech companies, I'll give you a PPA to buy the power. And then the reactors company is saying, well, I need the PPA to go raise the money to develop the technology to generate. So right now all we have is comps.

Like the way I'm framing it to people is we're right now we're investing in technology to then get to early deployment, first of a kind, early into the kind, which is going to be a disaster, by the way, like I'm just going to raise my hand and say it like it's going to be, and it has to be, it's going to be tough. And then we're going to get to develop deployment. Okay. And like, that's going to be the next decade. Okay, great. Where do you want to be in that? Well, some people want to be throughout the whole spectrum. I don't think Blackstone and the big infrastructure guys and PE guys show up until phase three. And.

Mark Hinaman (52:24)

It's gonna be tough. ⁓

Brennan Moore (52:41)

most sophisticated guys are having a hard time with phase one, because phase one is venture investing, which is what Andrew and I are spending a lot of time on. And there's no line of sight to cashflow. Okay, like on the reactor side, it's like, okay, we know rough timelines. And there's LCOE estimates and all that, but like they're all just assumptions. What's challenging right now is it's all comps. So what is the comp? Well, everyone's pointing to Oklo. So all the valuations have been pulled up, which is good for the companies, but it's not so great for

capital that needs to come into the space and be able to underwrite something. know, terrestrial despec last week, and that was one where there's a few deals in market right now that we're saying like, hey, well, we're gonna, we're not gonna price till terrestrial prices and terrestrial is saying, well, we're gonna price where Oklo prices because like we're not that different from a development standpoint. And so terrestrial actually, it hasn't taken off like you might've thought. And I think it's a good thing because it's tempered expectations a little bit.

on the valuation front. I mean, we're looking at a deal right now that they did a price round recently as a series round, and now they're three X that number. And I asked the question recently why and the answer as well. We'll look at Oklo. And they're in granted every six months is like half a decade in nuclear right now because things are moving. But I think Oklo is made things challenging in a sense because now expectations are we're to do a SPAC. We're going to do as fast as we can. Once we do SPAC, we're going to be worth $20 billion. And then we'll print money.

Andrew Meehan (53:50)

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (53:51)

Yeah.

you

Brennan Moore (54:08)

to go develop the technology and we'll figure it out. ⁓

Mark Hinaman (54:11)

So Brennan,

I want you to expand on this a little bit because like what you talk about, this class, the second phase, this other class of sophisticated investors that are accustomed to like making discount cash flow models and like having forecasted revenues, this feels like...

Brennan Moore (54:14)

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (54:31)

this conversation almost doesn't exist in the nuclear space. They're like, well, it takes 10 years to build a power plant. And you're like, well, I can't underwrite that. Like, can't, that's unfinance, financeable. Like, so can you just talk a little bit about, I guess, other energy projects and how that financing works and why that matters and I mean, cost of capital. it's probably a hyper simplistic conversation for you, but yeah, just expand on it a little bit more.

Brennan Moore (54:58)

I always go back to oil and gas, which is pretty different from the return profile of a shale well, but not drastically different from a risk profile. The reality is that these projects have uncertain variables. Those uncertain variables are mostly time and capex. So why did time and capex matter?

CapEx is all spent at time zero. So in any DCF model, the capital that goes out the door at time zero is meaningful and matters. And then time, when you're using a high discount rate, which you have to do to make it commensurate with the return profile of these or with the risk profile of these, a high discount rate really eats away at your returns as you move through longer and longer periods of time. So if you say, I'm going to spend $2 billion building out this nuclear facility,

By the way, it's not very bankable yet because the technology is not proven. So it's going to need to be 50 plus percent equity. So we're going to have to use a billion dollars of equity to develop this first, second, third of a kind facility. But that billion might actually be 1.5 because we haven't proven that we can be within a 50 percent margin of error on CapEx. So might be one and half. might be one and it might take five years and it might take eight. That investor, like just from what I just told you, is going to require 25, 30 percent returns.

to underwrite the risk of that. And they're going to need to go do 10 of those. So they're going to need to do probably 10 different projects because four or five of them are going to take longer and be more expensive than they thought. And by the way, they're all going to take longer and be more expensive, but even worse than their downside case. And so what happens there is it makes the project really sensitive to capex and time. So we need to really hone in on what is this thing going to cost at time zero and how long is it going to take.

Because when you start discounting annual cash flows by a 30 % discount rate, I mean, you have to have a massive margin in a project that's going out five, seven, 10 years to support discount rates of that size. So I'll try not to go too much more into details on that because it might be a bit technical and boring, yeah, that's from my perspective, the phase two projects, it's really critical to find the right Devco models and the right level of government support and insurance and private capital.

to build those out.

Mark Hinaman (57:21)

That just screams to me, build it smaller, test it, iterate, do it faster. Which I think is kind of Andrew's strategy, right? Or I don't know, some of the technology that he's been looking at.

Brennan Moore (57:29)

It's-

SMRs as the bridge for a lot of reasons. That's a great point.

Andrew Meehan (57:41)

I will say though, I have a both and approach. I think we need AP1000s and we need factory production of SMRs. We need as much energy production from atomic energy as we can get. ⁓ I think there's opportunity for financial returns in both spaces.

Mark Hinaman (57:58)

Do you guys think there's a risk of, I mean like the the the Oklo skyrocket to the moon euphoria? It has been exciting certainly if you if you bought in I did not ⁓ Which is just tragic, but it's like man when at what point are you gonna buy in like but is there a chance that some of this ⁓ Has a negative impact on kind of the or people

Does it see some downside and get less excited about it? mean, Brendan, I think you said tempering expectations. That was good, but.

Brennan Moore (58:35)

I think the question has to be asked if you enter Oklo. Let's just use Oklo. If you enter Oklo right now, what needs to happen for you to make money on that? Let's call it an investment, not a trade. Let's just wipe out the traders and say we're investing. What needs to happen for Oklo to be worth $60 billion business five years from now? So to get a 3X in five years is a 25 % IRR. What needs to happen for me to make 25 % on investing in Oklo right now in the next five years? A lot.

Like if you were to go underwrite every single reactor, and let's say they don't have a, whatever, let's say they have a fuel business that's after their business someday, but how many reactors need to be deployed? What's the margin on those reactors? If you start doing actual math, a lot needs to happen for Oak Low to become a $60 billion market cap business. So, and then what needs to happen, take the other side, what needs to happen for Oak Low to become a $10 billion business from 20? What happens for me to lose half my money?

There's arguably a stronger case on that side than on the $60 billion side. So then it becomes, well, maybe O'Clo's not the answer. Maybe I should deploy that capital into the private space, which is where, again, Andrew and I are spending our time because I think that there's guys that are closer or even at the same or more advanced levels than them that aren't trading nearly at those valuations.

Mark Hinaman (59:55)

Fantastic answer. Yeah, that's a really simple way to think about it, but like you could find a lower priced equity or technology company that you stand the chance. There's more upside than not, right? Yeah.

Andrew Meehan (1:00:16)

To that point, what's the over-under on pilot reactors to go critical by July 4th next year?

Ryan Pickering (1:00:23)

Hmm. Good question. What's the list? Do we have an official list of who's on that program?

Brennan Moore (1:00:34)

Andrew, my view that I've developed talking to smart people is maximum one, like real criticality. And it would be radiant with their dome project. And I think a lot, I will also say, I think a lot of capital is going to be incinerated moving towards this date on things that might not be moving towards commerciality, but are moving towards technically meeting this hurdle that's been set. I also tip my hat to the government saying like, hey,

Andrew Meehan (1:00:34)

get it.

Brennan Moore (1:01:04)

It's at least getting us moving in the right direction. So I'm going to say one.

Mark Hinaman (1:01:10)

Alright, have we taken bets on this? this public pronouncement or if I'm actually gonna go public?

Andrew Meehan (1:01:16)

I think ones are pretty good, over under, frankly.

Mark Hinaman (1:01:21)

I'm going be optimistic and say, we'll take the high side, five. Five of 10, 50 % go critical. ⁓

Andrew Meehan (1:01:27)

Wow.

I agree with Brennan that the government's positioning on this is a great thing. It's not a situation where industry can point at the government and say, here's what's slowing us down. Government says, hey, look, you've got our full support. We've actually set the mark so hard that nobody's going to make it. realistically, I'm taking the under. I don't think we're going to see a reactor go critical. ⁓ If I had to choose one, I would think potentially the olive reactor, but we'll see.

Mark Hinaman (1:01:58)

you

I, so, more than anything, it is a catalyst that has pushed people to act. Like, that's been my perspective, which has been incredibly helpful. Like, you can't blame regulations anymore for inaction, right? You're like, nope, you've got the government, like, giving you...

the green light effectively, more so than you have almost ever. And it's forcing more advanced conversations. That's been my perspective, which is really, really healthy for the industry. It might be painful and there might be some capital destroyed. This happens, right? Like when we get hyper exuberant and try to move faster, then you can have some waste in the process. I'm... ⁓

encouraged by the fact that things are moving forward.

Ryan Pickering (1:03:02)

So I've got the list here. Aloe, Antares, Atomic Alchemy, Deep Fission, Last Energy, Natura Resources, Radiant, Terrestrial, Valor Atomics, and Oklo has two sites. So it's 10 companies with 11 sites. And yeah, what a party. It does kind of feel like...

Andrew Meehan (1:03:28)

Yeah.

Ryan Pickering (1:03:31)

⁓ the Manhattan Project a little bit, you know, like, rip it up, do a lot of different ideas. I am mindful of Brennan's point of like, are we, what are we incentivizing here? Because it's not, you know, it's not electricity generation, to be clear, you know, it's just going critical for what I understand is like a very short amount of time, it's not even really sustained criticality.

But maybe you guys know more about it than I do. I thought it was just,

Mark Hinaman (1:04:02)

Well, I will actually comment on the program is interesting, but is it the most helpful? Like maybe a different way to structure this. If I go back in chat time and like have influence that would have pushed this in a different direction, it would have been to effectively grant a commercial license. Like if you can demonstrate a prototype.

and it works and it's safe, then you can circumvent the NRC process and you don't have to get a commercial license from the NRC. And then you can just start making money.

Because as it stands, like this is just a prototype and you still have to go get a license from the NRC in order to sell electricity. And to Brendan's point about like getting to cashflow faster, getting to revenue faster, that's not helpful. Like you're not solving the time problem there unless it's accelerating licensing. ⁓ And like the prototype can demonstrate some performance ⁓ that can make licensing or going through the NRC process faster, which I think like.

Andrew Meehan (1:04:57)

Yeah.

Mark Hinaman (1:05:12)

People are thinking about that and thinking about how it can be that part of the licensing process can be reciprocal, right? And the NRC and the DOE are working close together on that, but like it's not immediately solving the problem. So if I could change something, I would change that.

Andrew Meehan (1:05:25)

Marcus.

Let's talk about regulators for a minute. You said something there that if they can prove that the reactor is safe and it works, right? The FDA for drug products to go to the market have a statistical perspective that you have to prove your product is safe and efficacious. If you meet those two criteria through your phase trials, you can take your drug and you can sell it. The NRC has a prescriptive approach of here are all the check boxes you have to meet. Here's containment, even if you're not a pressurized reactor.

Etc. And so one of my hopes actually from this DOE project is to spin out a regulatory body for advanced reactors. ⁓ Maybe that could be a set of prescription, not prescriptions, but a set of ⁓ a framework that's adopted by the NRC and it can go through the NRC process, perhaps the state level regulator. You know, there's some conversation in Texas about ⁓ a Texas regulatory body and ⁓ doing state level licensing. But I do think that this is one of the pieces that needs

regulatory reform and you hit the nail on the head. Is it safe and does it work?

Mark Hinaman (1:06:33)

which like, let's be clear, these things are so safe. This bonkers, like how safe the technology is. It's, I don't know, compared to everything else that I've done in my life and career, I'm like, guys, is a no-brainer.

Andrew Meehan (1:06:51)

Yeah.

Brennan Moore (1:06:51)

And

waste, which I think is a great idea, by the way, Andrew. I actually have told some people that we should just rename nuclear fission. Like we should just announce some new form of energy and remove the word nuclear because people don't understand it at all. Like your layman does not understand that nuclear energy is different from nuclear weapons. And there's a big perception issue, which luckily is getting better, but that's challenging.

Mark Hinaman (1:07:20)

That's why, like, do any of us have the word nuclear in our company names?

Ryan Pickering (1:07:27)

Yeah, people

have gone away from that. And I think vision is ripe. ⁓ people still don't know what it is and credit to Mark in the name of this podcast. And, you know, my boss often says like fission for good is our, ⁓ unofficial motto. I think that has to do with his family being lumped into fission for bad. And, ⁓ so we just, they really want to clarify. ⁓ and.

Yeah, I agree. think a new regulator would be very interesting. Andrew, what do think about the DOE being a regulator? You they kind of are and you can license through them, but that's not a muscle that's very strong yet. you think, do you predict to see DOE become that secondary licensing pathway?

Andrew Meehan (1:08:17)

I would welcome a DOE regulatory body because they've been working with these companies since day one. The NRC has already shown that they've rejected an Oklo application. ⁓ The reason I understand is due to not having a containment vessel. And it's like, well, there's a disconnect here. We have prescriptive regulation on the NRC side. That works great for pressurized water reactors. If we add that word to the NRC mandate of you're responsible for regulating water-cooled reactors,

great, they can continue with that regulatory framework and operate as such. The DOE has basically day one experience with many of these advanced vision companies. so spinning out a regulatory body there, I'm also open to state level regulators. I think Texas has shown that they know how to work with businesses to ensure that we can get industry up and operational. And so I would be curious to see

what a framework would look like from a Texas state regulator and bypass federal licensing from that perspective. Kind of give states an opt in, opt out to, they can defer to a federal regulator, but if they're interested in pulling the resources and investing in standing up their own regulatory body, power to them.

Ryan Pickering (1:09:36)

So does that show your hand on how you feel about this Utah and Texas lawsuit with Allo and Last Energy? I haven't heard an update on that in the last few weeks.

Brennan Moore (1:09:37)

Go ahead, Ryan.

Andrew Meehan (1:09:48)

I think at some level, yeah, it does. ⁓ I don't have much of an update either, but I do like the approach.

Brennan Moore (1:10:00)

I've heard some anecdotal stories from companies that it's actually hard to underwrite Texas for one reason being on the commercial deployment side. Texas has all the variables, Call it infinite natural gas. We have so much space and land. We have proximity to a lot of industrial users of heat and power and all the variables, except for we had arguably over-deployment of solar and wind.

And again, access to all the natural gas in the world. so in the power markets in Texas, it's a free market. nuclear currently has a really hard time competing with renewables and battery storage, at least during those hours of the day where power is close to free. And that's not very welcoming from ⁓ the use case of deploying commercial nuclear power. So like the behind the meter case in Texas,

The co-location, there's a strong use case for small portable type reactors. If we ever get to there, there's some really interesting use cases in other oil and gas, specifically in the energy industry. I think Texas is going to struggle in that particular area to solve for because there's been such a deployment of all forms of energy here. But to underwrite commercial power generation that's not going straight into a data center or to another end user is challenging.

Ryan Pickering (1:11:29)

And I attended the Texas Nuclear Summit last year and Pablo Vegas, the CEO of ERCOT spoke. And a lot of people had left and I was like, kid in a candy store. was like front row. And because this is the guy, you know, riding the lightning of ERCOT, deregulated power emporium. And I wanted to hear what he had to say, you know, and he said that

Mark Hinaman (1:11:29)

Interesting point.

Andrew Meehan (1:11:41)

you

Ryan Pickering (1:11:58)

we should change energy markets to value variable energy, firm energy, and clean firm energy. And until we do that, we're not going to get the outcomes we want for nuclear.

Brennan Moore (1:12:11)

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I'm of anyone I want Texas to be the nuclear leader of the world. That is some of the feedback I've heard from people trying to underwrite commercial deployment. It is challenging with the way that our code's structured.

Ryan Pickering (1:12:24)

Yeah.

Andrew Meehan (1:12:26)

Brendan, this

Ryan Pickering (1:12:26)

Yeah.

Andrew Meehan (1:12:28)

brings to mind also a piece of the puzzle that we haven't discussed of the gas price, right? And, know, gas being the transition technology for standing up all of these AI data centers. ⁓ You can't get a gas turbine for three to five years. I've heard stories of people are actually going to lesser developed markets, purchasing gas power plants, and then relocating the turbines, right? Yeah. Anti-Robin Hood approach. ⁓ So, you know,

And yet at the same time, the inability to get a gas turbine, the price of natural gas has flattened down. so that, one, I think that's going to change.

Mark Hinaman (1:12:57)

steal from the poor.

So my

argument on that Andrew, sorry to you off, like the inelasticity of the demand market is much more significant than the elasticity of the supply. It takes three weeks effectively, like drilling for Akashale well-ish, depending on where you are, versus it takes like three years to build a new power plant. And that's like a total mismatch in the supply chain.

supply and demand market.

Andrew Meehan (1:13:40)

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that as these turbines get stood up though, we'll see the price of gas go up. There will be increased demand and the inventories in Texas at least are pretty well understood and characterized. So we have a good idea of supply and as demand rises over the next three to five years, ⁓ we will see the price go up and that makes the case for nuclear much more competitive.

Mark Hinaman (1:14:05)

Alright, I'll take the counter argument from you on that one. can bet on that. Cheap gas forever. Cheap gas forever. ⁓ Guys, we're running out of time. This has been super fun. I can tell we're gonna do this again, like sooner than later. ⁓ Last question I wanna leave you with. How do we keep this momentum going?

Andrew Meehan (1:14:10)

Okay.

Brennan Moore (1:14:32)

Yeah, I mean, can start. think, one of my views is why I'm devoting my life to be an investor and help people invest in this space is you really learn once you start investing. Until you start putting capital to work, you can read all you want. Until you start having to articulate to people why they should put their capital to work into the space, you're just capped on your knowledge. So my view is start investing with public markets, private markets, start investing.

Start talking to people about what you're investing in and why. And start getting people around you, whether it's in a formal way or informal way, investing in the space. Because I think that that's really the best way to learn.

Andrew Meehan (1:15:15)

Build? mean, I think that's what we need to start doing. We need to start breaking ground and building more projects. There's been a lot of talk, a lot of investment. It's time to see some vision electrons hit the grid.

Mark Hinaman (1:15:15)

you

I love it. What do think, Ryan?

Ryan Pickering (1:15:38)

Post on the nuclear subreddit? I don't know, that seems to be the root of everything. Yeah, I just think you just got to get in the game. Like, building, yes. Investing, yes.

Mark Hinaman (1:15:43)

you

Ryan Pickering (1:15:49)

Asking questions. Yes. You know, I'm like a big grassroots guy. So I'm like, where's your, how are you plugging into your community around this? You know, are you like on a statewide group that's sending letters to legislators saying this is what we want because they don't receive those letters unless you write them. Like there's not, there's not some secret nuclear cabal out there. It's really like this very citizen driven thing. And we're so lucky to live in this country and there's all these amazing methods to have your voice heard. And it kind of.

when you go to these meetings and there just aren't young people or any people calling for nuclear. I think it's just, I think that's part of our jobs too. Democracy requires participation. And I think this is a nice place, a nice bipartisan, very outcomes-focused place to spend your civic capital. So I encourage you to get in the game.

Mark Hinaman (1:16:50)

That's awesome. Yeah. I'll echo Ryan's, ⁓ contribute to the conversation. Yeah. But posting on social media, but not just in your echo chamber, find opportunities to go and, ⁓ speak and talk to neighbors and talk to community members and, get involved and then put your money where your mouth is like Brendan and Andrew said. So cool guys. This has been awesome. Thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Meehan (1:17:16)

Thanks for doing this, Mark.

Ryan Pickering (1:17:17)

Thanks Mark.

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