LIghtbridge (LTBR) CEO on Expanding Nuclear Output, Speaking on Capitol Hill

Well, we're meeting with senators today about Lightbridge's nuclear fuel technology. There's a lot of interest in Washington on nuclear power, particularly for AI data centers and also for other uses of our fuel, potentially including for nuclear-powered icebreaker ships, but mostly it's about the idea of using the Lightbridge fuel to produce even more power from the existing reactors. And the data centers in particular need constant reliable power that nuclear can provide.

Well, they're going very well. We have a lot of support. We are working mostly at Idaho National Laboratory where we've produced samples of these fuels, of the fuel. They're going through qualification now. We expect in the next few months they'll be in the test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory. And there's a lot of support on Capitol Hill both for nuclear in general in a bipartisan way, House, Senate, as well as the administration, and specifically for the Lightbridge fuel. It was a very heartening meeting with the members of the Senate and the House and both parties on what we're doing.

Russia has seven nuclear-powered icebreaker ships. The US has zero. And Russia is building some new giant, more powerful ships. And China has defined itself as a near-Arctic country that is actually nowhere near the Arctic and is also going to be deploying nuclear-powered icebreaker ships. And unless the US does this, we'll largely cede a lot of the Arctic to Russia and China. And we are an Arctic nation, particularly with the state of Alaska. And we have many, many allies ringing the Arctic. And in terms of mineral mining, traversing Navy ships, northern routes for shipping, we will cede this to Russia and China if we really can't keep up. And what's happened with Lightbridge at Idaho National Lab is we've received what's called highly-enriched uranium and have produced nuclear fuel samples out of it that'll go in the reactor for much faster testing, with this higher enrichment of uranium, higher than would be used in commercial reactors, just to get the testing done fast. But it turns out that this is about the enrichment of uranium that would be good for icebreaker ships. That the fuel we've already produced at Idaho National Laboratory and we're going to test, we think would be really good for icebreaker ships and probably by far the fastest way for the US to catch up with and surpass Russia and China.

Well, part of it in that our fuel can use such high enrichments. Now for commercial fuel we'll stay under 20% enriched, which is an international standard for everything below that is low-enriched, but with that enrichment the Lightbridge fuel will provide much more power and last longer than other fuels in reactors. But it's the ability of a variant of this fuel, like what we just produced with Idaho National Laboratory, to go to significantly higher enrichment levels than that. That's one of several technical reasons why we think it's so incredibly well suited for icebreaker ships. So the ships don't have to refuel, that they could go years and years and years under tremendous power availability with the higher enrichment in the fuel.