Antares Nuclear achieves first US reactor criticality in decades — a month ahead of the July 4 presidential deadline

Speaker 2: Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. You use your favorite agents to deploy web app servers, databases, more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. And our next guest is here with us live in the TBPN UltraDome. How are you doing?

Speaker 3: Doing well.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: And the UltraDome. Introducers.

Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. Jordan Bramble, CEO and founder of Antares.

Speaker 2: Welcome back.

Speaker 3: Got some gifts for you guys.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Oh, hats. Fantastic. I went golfing yesterday.

Speaker 1: These are good looking hats. I like any you take any hat and you put this flag on it.

Speaker 2: I like it.

Speaker 1: It gets better automatically.

Speaker 2: This is good. What's the occasion for the hat?

Speaker 3: Well, season's got a 53 on the side of your hat. That's National Labs fifty third reactor. Yes. We just built it, turned it on last week. Fantastic. How'd go? Incredible. Okay. Did everything we set out to do. So about a year ago, you guys probably remember this, the president signed a series of executive orders

Speaker 2: Trying to speed up nuclear.

Speaker 3: Trying to speed up nuclear. Yep. One of the provisions in those orders called for three reactors to be turned on on American soil Mhmm. By America's 200 birthday, July 4. Mhmm. We just turned on the first, a month ahead of schedule.

Speaker 2: First. Okay. Yeah. Crazy. So you so you took your reactor to INL and you turn it on. What is that process? Like how long did you turn it on for? What were you monitoring for? Were there any, oh, we're going super critical. It's melting down. Were there any, oh, SHIT moments?

Speaker 1: Did any you had some I think one of your investors or at least multiple were out there? Yes. Like Jamie was Jamie Flint was over there.

Speaker 3: Close friend.

Speaker 1: Did he fall asleep? No. Because there's a lot of debate on VCs falling asleep. But I feel like turning on a nuclear reactor having a nuclear reactor go critical sounds really sounds really exciting, but I feel like in practice you might be sitting there for like, you know, and hours and hours.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Sounds really thrilling, I mean, it's like inside of a box and you can't really see anything.

Speaker 6: You're just

Speaker 1: like It's not a rock wall. Right?

Speaker 2: It's not

Speaker 3: a exactly. Yeah. You're streaming, you know, with the same thing the control room operators are Yeah. So you you watch your approach to critical every step of the way. It's intentionally kind of a slow, dull moment to

Speaker 2: get It's a number on a screen.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But the exciting thing is, I mean, this is something that, you know, we as a country have not done with a with a with a new design with a non light water cooled reactor in I think like forty years. Mhmm. Right? This is this is the What first privately

Speaker 2: you do have against light water?

Speaker 3: Have nothing against them. I think we should build a lot more light water reactors

Speaker 2: But what

Speaker 3: can you do it? So we're focused on micro reactors.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: Right? So very, very small scale systems, kind of one megawatt and below. And the idea is you put multiple of

Speaker 2: these What about systems micro together water?

Speaker 3: Well, what about what about if you want to put a reactor places where you don't have access to water? Right? Like you're not Water?

Speaker 2: Bring some water with you. Wait. Yeah. Do they really go through a lot of water? Yeah. Light water reactors go through a lot of water. Interesting.

Speaker 9: If you look

Speaker 3: at where light water reactor typically are, they're

Speaker 1: They're the ocean.

Speaker 3: The example the notable exception to this is I think it's Palo Verde in Arizona. Mhmm. So they actually use the waste water stream from from the city of Phoenix Oh, interesting. As a cooling source for

Speaker 2: the Wow. Okay. Cool. So, obviously, there's lots of applications where you're in the desert, you're in space, you're somewhere on the moon or something, and a bunch of other places where you don't have access to water. That's an advantage.

Speaker 1: What Yeah. You gotta need save the water for the almonds.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: Like, if we if using a bunch of water to make energy, what are the almonds gonna drink?

Speaker 3: Yeah. It's good. But there's other benefits too. Right? So so, you know, very very small scale reactors, what you wanna do is you wanna be able to shrink the plant size. For thermal efficiency reasons, you typically want to operate at very high temperatures. Yeah. In order to keep water from boiling at very high temperatures Yep. You have to go to higher and higher pressures Yep. Which that creates materials issues and other challenges. And so, you know, in our specific design, we're relying on liquid metal heat pipes as the primary coolant.

Speaker 2: Liquid metal heat pipes.

Speaker 3: Okay. Small amounts of sodium that vaporize inside of a pipe.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: When they condense on the on the cool end of the pipe, they condense into a metal like a wick structure, think like wire mesh.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: That through surface tension pulls the fluid back. Okay. And so you have this totally passive process of cooling the reactor that just relies on phase change in a a But very small amount of the other advantage of that is we operate at near atmospheric pressure. Right? Okay. These are low pressure systems. From a safety perspective, if something were to happen to the reactor, you don't have a coolant that's going to vaporize and travel over large distances. Yeah. When you have pressurized water, if you lose that coolant, you run the risk of

Speaker 2: traveling Really low large steam everywhere. Exactly.

Speaker 3: Got it. Transporting vision products. Right? Okay. This How do

Speaker 2: you actually generate electricity once you get the heat?

Speaker 3: So it's called a nitrogen closed Brayton cycle. There's a heat exchanger. Think a tube tube and fan on the condenser section of the pipe. And gaseous nitrogen is removing heat. And then it it turns a turbo machine. Turns Like an automotive style turbo charger. Yep. That turns an alternator and that's ultimately how you're making electricity. Interesting. So this test Yeah. Does not produce electricity. Yeah. Our goal is is to be there in 2027, and then on customer sites in 2028. Yeah. So, you know, I I like to say neutron's 26, electron's 27, dollars 28. Love it.

Speaker 1: Jordy. It's great.

Speaker 2: Sorry.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Are you standing on the shoulders of giants? Like, is this more of a Like, how how much how much of this is Obviously, you're innovating in a bunch of different ways along the way. Had somebody said thirty years ago, hey, this is possible, and then just nobody did it? Or like, what what is the what is the kind of the balance between like execution Yeah. I think

Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties was really the last, you know, roughly the nineteen eighties and then maybe the the early nineties when the Cold War ended was kind of the last time we had the capability to to to do this as a country. And, you know, I love this question, you know, do we stand on the the shoulder of giants? Because the the answer to that is absolutely. So the regulatory process that that we used for this was DOE authorization. And, you know, even that was was was informed by a program that was started roughly eight years ago called Project Pele in the Department of Defense. A lot of the lessons learned from that informed this regulatory streamlining. When the president signed these executive orders, I think one of the reasons why ourselves and others were able to jump you kinda jump to action so quickly and and be successful on this was, you know, we as industry were ready to do this. The infrastructure had been built developed really the people had been developed at the national labs and in the DOE to support this over the course of eight years.

Speaker 2: There were

Speaker 3: already And there were people reactors. Exactly.

Speaker 2: Megawatt, right?

Speaker 3: You know, anywhere I mean, tens of kilowatts up to multiple megawatts. Okay. So, you know, I think some of the military solicitations, they just say 20 megawatts and below.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: So all the way down to tens of kilowatts

Speaker 2: kilowatts. Wow.

Speaker 3: But, know, our sweet spot is anywhere a 100 kilowatts to like a megawatt. Sure. Potentially even a little more than that.

Speaker 2: And then you string them together if you need a

Speaker 3: big Yep. And so most of the military's critical infrastructure, you know, those assets are hundreds of kilowatts to low numbers of megawatts. Mhmm. And so you want that flexibility. And ultimately, that's what's gonna get you the highest capacity factor energy anyways is to have some redundancies built But for the yeah. I mean so for example, the fuel that we used, it's called Triso Fuel. The exact specification that we used was the supply chain for it was developed and funded by the Department of Defense under Project Pele. So that that production line already existed. BWST But made the even that was built upon twenty years worth of funded work by the DOE called the AGR program, Advanced Gas Reactor Program. Right. And that's really what developed that fuel. So, you know, what it meant was so much of our safety basis. You know, the reason we know that fission products will be retained even at high high temperatures is because of how much qualification work had been done on this fuel. We could point to that in our regulatory engagement and that really speeds things up a lot. Right? Yeah. You get to delete some of the extra safety systems. It actually saves you a lot of analysis work because you're you're relying on the the the the fuel fundamentals itself. So, you know, that's one thing. Right? If we tried to do this ten years ago, I don't know if it would be possible because, you know, that date data Yeah. Didn't exist to the degree that it does now. You know, the the the regulator in DOE Idaho, you know, a gentleman came out of retirement to do this.

Speaker 1: No way.

Speaker 3: This is something he'd been Patriot. Waiting his entire career to do. And on our joint test group so there's this thing called a joint test group. That's representatives from Antares, Idaho National Lab, Department of Energy, all in one room driving decisions. The the person representing INL's operations in that had known the DOE regulators since 1979. I just found out that last week that they've been and this is the first reactor they've done together since before 1979.

Speaker 1: Wow. So Came out

Speaker 3: of retirement. Absolutely stand on the shoulder of

Speaker 1: last tour.

Speaker 2: The whole narrative around no new nuclear reactor since 1979 Mhmm. Is somewhat of a good rallying cry for the nuclear industry. But I I wonder if there's actually a benefit to sort of reframing messaging around nuclear to acknowledge the fact that I believe The United States generates more nuclear power than any other country including

Speaker 3: China and France. It's about 20% of our base load power.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And so France has a higher percentage of their base load power. Yeah. But they produce way less electricity

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Just generally. Smaller

Speaker 3: country. But

Speaker 2: lower population.

Speaker 3: Less industrial.

Speaker 2: And so there's a different take. Right now, the the whole messaging path for nuclear is like we're so behind. We can't make anything. I feel like there's a more inspirational tone which is like, no, we're literally number one. Let's not lose it. Like we actually make the most nuclear power of anyone. So let's just continue doing what we're great at. Sure. We have some problems with approving new stuff. Yes. We need to modernize. But this we're we're we already have the crown. Let's just defend it.

Speaker 3: Well, that's that's again what I think is the beauty of this program that the DOE developed in response to the president's executive the reactor pilot program. Yeah. Is on a very tight schedule, we just got to show the world like we can continue to do these things. And, you know, I I kind of retroactively look at it. I would say, you know, the design work is difficult. Mhmm. Regulatory work, actually, you know, comparatively easy. You might take on this as if you integrate safety into the design process itself. If you lead with engineering rigor, the regulatory stuff can kind of take care of itself. Mhmm. Especially when you have a bought in regulator like this. Mhmm. The hardest part of all was, you know, when we actually got through operational readiness with the DOE and started operating a nuclear facility. Mhmm. Right? So like really the last two weeks of getting this thing turned on was the hardest part of all. The know, you asked kind of about oh shit moments. Yeah. Definitely no oh shit moments when it comes to safety. You you design up front to ensure that that's not the case. Yeah. But from the build and integration side and actually operating this this facility and this reactor, huge learning opportunities. Right? So one of the first things, this was the first time that we had set up our control system, all of our nuclear instrumentation with neutron detectors with a startup source. Right? Because it's a nuclear facility. You don't just do this in a warehouse in California. Right? Yeah. And so, you know, we started seeing

Speaker 1: I do worry sometimes that there's a warehouse in El Segundo that's, you know, stretching the limits of Yeah. But, yeah, I'm glad.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Well glad

Speaker 1: you're going about it this way.

Speaker 3: Yeah. We we don't. You know, we we comply with our regulator. But, you know, we our reactivity control system, we rely on rotating drums with a boron carbide insert layer to absorb neutrons. So we can close those shut or rotate them out to modulate reactivity. And when the actuator motors themselves are operating, we were seeing electromagnetic interference with our neutron detectors. And so we went through this like five six day process to go figure that out and troubleshoot it. And it's really these kind of like integration activities being incremental, being iterative. That's how you ultimately mature the technology technology quickly so that you can get to a true commercial product.

Speaker 1: What what's the next step?

Speaker 2: So Hitting the gong.

Speaker 1: Hitting the gong.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Hitting the gong. Yeah. For it. We're turning the reactor on.

Speaker 3: So, you know, we put a couple million dollars into this facility getting it ready to be a be a be nuclear reactor test bed. We're gonna take the same fuel, same facility, scale up to produce electricity there. Interesting. And what that means for our customers right? So we've announced an agreement with the Air Force to do several megawatts of power for Joint Base San Antonio in Texas. Cool. We expect to announce more military installations by end of this year. Yep. What that means for them is the first reactors that are going to their sites have operational heritage. They're not true for a civic kind systems. Right? Because we spent our own capital in testing these. So that's really next for us is and in the lead up to that, we're actually going to test the power conversion system itself in our own facility. So, you know, generally our our approach to technology development is we start with the subsystems. Yeah. So we rigorously qualify those. We've got 322,000 square feet of manufacturing space in Torrance. Then we do integrated what we call electrically heated tests. So instead of having to go through the regulatory process Mhmm. And do a nuclear test, we replace the nuclear fuel with cartridge heaters and can test the system or some snapshot of the system with electrical heat. Mhmm. Which also that means you can take it take it apart afterwards, see what some of the thermal effects are. So we've already tested our system at at full thermal power for for six months and we're gonna repeat that test again this year with some design iterations. Then we'll test the power conversion system, then we're gonna put it all together and do it in a nuclear reactor.

Speaker 2: So a $140,000,000 raised.

Speaker 3: Thank

Speaker 2: you. I don't know what you spent last year, but I wanna know a little bit about like where the uses of funds goes

Speaker 3: Have gone so far.

Speaker 2: Is it all

Speaker 1: like nuclear took I mean, obviously, there's more cost, but something like $2,000,000 to set up this this Yeah. Test facility and

Speaker 2: But is there is there like an ingredient or or a piece in the supply chain that's really expensive and you need millions of dollars for? Yeah. Or is it like nuclear scientists are really expensive, like AI researchers? Mhmm. Because a lot of these folks, like, there aren't a ton of jobs because the industry is contracted. So I imagine it's not like this crazy bidding war. So it's like, what is what is the binding constraint on the financial side?

Speaker 3: Well, you know, to to me that's another reason why these tests are so important Yeah. Because, you know, not only are we validating some of the reactor physics, but we just exercised our entire supply chain. And so we walked out of this test. Yeah. Knowing, you know, the lead times we were quoted, the cost we were quoted, you know, tolerances, quality expectations. Does that actually match up with what we see in reality? Yep. In some cases, the answer is no. Right? And and, you know, we're gonna iterate and improve on that. That informs some of the things that we're gonna vertically integrate in house versus areas where we're gonna continue to double down with some of the same suppliers. Fuel is by far the most expensive thing in a micro reactor, the total life cycle of the fuel itself. Yeah. But the other thing spending

Speaker 2: like millions of dollars on fuel?

Speaker 6: Yes.

Speaker 2: Really?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. So it is like a significant cost.

Speaker 1: Got it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mean, it's the largest single line item in the bomb That

Speaker 2: makes sense. Of the

Speaker 3: reactor itself. Not a big surprise,

Speaker 2: but Not BOMB. BOM. BOM. Bill of materials. Yeah. Nuclear energy.

Speaker 1: You you gotta figure out the new new term for that Yeah.

Speaker 3: I'll just say no acronyms. I just say bill of materials. Yeah. Well, but

Speaker 1: I was like, the what now?

Speaker 2: The what now? What do you you have a secret project going on?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So but what I think you'd you'd be surprised by that's also really expensive is all the nuclear instrumentation. So

Speaker 2: Okay. So

Speaker 3: Yeah. Need if you really break them down into their are probably like $50,000 worth

Speaker 2: of made by one company, very expensive

Speaker 3: a lot of reactors, you do it so infrequently, it ends up being being just, you know Yeah. To keep the lights on you have to charge a really high price.

Speaker 2: That makes a ton of sense.

Speaker 3: You know, those are things that you learn from these tests. What is this stuff really mean, a lot of times in these industries pricing is proprietary. Right? So you you learn that from doing these things. And that informs what you're

Speaker 2: the first time that I'm gonna have to spend a million dollars on this thing. Yeah. Because you can't yeah. It's gotta be hard when you're pitching too to sort of forecast out like, okay, what's everything gonna cost? But if you hire the right people, I'm sure they have like

Speaker 3: We've been able to refine a lot of that at this point just from from And now you know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we know exactly what our fuel is gonna cost. We know how long it takes to transport it. Yep. You know, we know what our all of our nuclear instrumentation costs. Sure. And that's what really drives most of the cost of these systems Yeah. At the end the day.

Speaker 2: And also, I mean, like, there's there's like I don't know. Like, I can probably name like four or five promising nuclear projects at the early stage. Obviously, there is some competition, but it feels like such a such a like everyone can win market

Speaker 1: Competing competing for infinite demand.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Infinite demand and then and then also that that that has the benefit of like deeper in the supply chain. That you can justify a company like General Matter because there's three Right. Startups that are growing and five scale ups and 10 public companies or governments that might buy. And so all of a sudden, get another company deeper in the supply chain creating more competition, creating more supply

Speaker 3: Yep.

Speaker 2: And so more problems are getting solved.

Speaker 1: It's exciting. Why military bases? I'm gonna guess that secure setting, strong willingness to pay for like a Yeah. Secondary source

Speaker 2: You don't need work in all the diesel fuel?

Speaker 3: So, I mean, we believe and this was this is I think obvious at this point, but this was really foundational to us back in 2023. The military is the best first customer for advanced nuclear. And so, you know, I think first piece of evidence for that is the army alone has a $2,000,000,000 budget for its Janus program to buy micro reactors for military installations. That's money that's gonna be committed to buy and deliver reactors between now and twenty nine, twenty thirty. Mhmm. So huge market for data centers and hyperscalers. But what they're signaling is, you know, they're willing to make small equity investments, MOUs, LOIs. But until this technology is mature and proven, you know, they're not really spending the big dollars yet. Yep. Whereas the military is saying, we need this technology. We're going to invest them alongside of venture backed companies Yeah. Through programs like JANIS and ANPI. Sorry for the acronyms. But that's the approach that they're taking. The other thing is regulatory expertise. So between the Navy and the Army, you have regulatory licensing authorities that already exist and they're leveraging the DOE license licensing path, you know, alongside of the DOE in an interagency process. So this reactor that we just built, we had army reactors, regulators in the room for that every step of the way getting to, you know, in partnership with the army getting familiarity with with our design. They're gonna take all of that back into their next licensing activities for their programs as they try to put this technology on their basis. Right? We had naval reactors in the room. We had the NRC in the room.

Speaker 2: So Yeah. The Navy is really the best place for a long time for decades if you wanna be in Yeah. Nuclear engineering. Like some of the best Totally.

Speaker 1: Come out of there.

Speaker 3: So, I mean, the Navy builds multiple reactors a year. They've built four and a half times the number of reactors as the entire civilian sector and

Speaker 2: And they they operate a ton of them in in extreme conditions Yeah. On aircraft carriers.

Speaker 3: Most extreme of all. And and they never stagnated in the seventies the way that the Yeah. Civilian sector did in nuclear. It's crazy. So the last thing I would say is there's a mission capability need here with with the Yeah. Military. Right? So it's about resilient power. You know, over the last decade, more and more of, let's call it, war fighting effects are generated from assets that exist on our installations here inside of The US. So whether that's command and control, sat com, cyber warfare, our strategic deterrence like our nuclear weapons assets, Space superiority, how do you affect other people's assets in space? Much more of that is generated from here inside of the continent Continental US. Yeah. And you contrast that with the old world of war fighting where you just ship troops across the world and and go invade other countries. Yeah. Yeah. And fuel. And at the same time, we've got adversaries that are capable of disrupting the civilian grid. Yeah. And so how do we sustain these assets? How do we continue to operate them without access to a liquid fuel supply chain, without access to a commercial grid? Nuclear fission is is is the, you know, highest capacity factor form of energy we have that's available to us today. Yeah. And that's what drives that willingness to pay. So Yeah. We believe, you know, long term we'll go after data centers, you know, we'll do like remote industrials. We want to do everything in nuclear. But the companies that win those are going to emerge from military work first. Mhmm. Right? Because our work with the military, we're gonna come out of this with more reps for our operators, more reps Sure. Regulatory reps, more operational proof points of the technology at scale.

Speaker 2: More low

Speaker 3: that Yes. Will Yeah. This is a customer that will invest equity and debt Yeah. In your supply chain to lower your input.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And the private market is Yeah. Is or or sorry, like a hyperscaler is gonna be much more commercial, much more short term. What for me tomorrow? Yep. Because otherwise I'm going to allocate these dollars to gas turbines or something.

Speaker 3: Exactly. And and many complex technologies work this way. GPS Yeah. Right? You know, if we didn't have nuclear weapons driving the need for GPS, when would we have gotten DoorDash? Right?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Or yeah, when would we have Internet. Right?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. The Internet. Rocket propulsion. That'd a great example. Born from the military first and then scale commercially.

Speaker 1: Prediction markets. Yeah. Maybe.

Speaker 2: No. Tyler knows the truth about the prediction market in Genesis.

Speaker 3: You know, was a big prediction market around this. Really?

Speaker 1: Really? Around around the the July 4 deadline?

Speaker 3: Which reactors would turn on by August or July 4, yeah. Wow. So Wild.

Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Carron. Thank you very much for

Speaker 3: having me. This was fantastic. Congratulations.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 1: Last question, are you Yeah. Any buzzer beaters? We got less than a month. You think there'll be others that

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Are you are you trying to make it better?

Speaker 1: Actually, don't even comment because I don't want

Speaker 2: People are gonna you're gonna move the market.

Speaker 1: So Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Just say I wish them

Speaker 6: all well.

Speaker 1: Just we'll see.

Speaker 3: I wish all of

Speaker 2: them luck. There we go.

Speaker 3: I I mean, like you said like you said, the country needs a lot more nuclear energy. We're all gonna be

Speaker 2: It's not zero.

Speaker 3: Production. Yeah. We're all gonna be production constrained before it's competitive constrained. For For sure. You know, I think the advice I would offer to anybody working at it is start operating a nuclear facility as quickly as you can because that's when all your challenges start.

Speaker 2: Just do

Speaker 3: it. Yeah. We've got just under a month left on

Speaker 2: the Stop making excuses. Yeah. Start operating a nuclear facility. Yeah. It's good advice.

Speaker 1: Good advice.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming

Speaker 1: to Of the course.

Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you so much for

Speaker 3: having me.

Speaker 2: We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate

Speaker 1: it. Awesome stuff. Well, we'll talk soon.