NANO Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ:NNE)'s CEO Featured on Bloomberg's 'Businessweek Daily'

It's a good question because I think there's probably a great big filter process between companies that love the idea of one day doing it and actually going forward with it. What I can say about us is that we're about to finish our construction permit application to the NRC. And I think that will make us only one of five commercial companies that have put in for a construction permit to actually build one of these things. So it's almost like a handful of companies that are really taking this forward with the NRC to really build one of these systems. This is how we want to do it. We want to build it full scale, demonstrate it works, work out the kinks of how this thing gets constructed, and then that system that'll be fully completed, constructed, power outputting, licensed in 2030. After that, we want to mass manufacture those systems and then just start deploying them as far away across the country as we can and internationally, too.

Yeah, you're right. I should be careful with my language because we know it works. The thing is we're using a high temperature gas reactor. High temperature gas reactors have been used for decades across many different countries. I think the only real novel thing that is happening now is that it's old tech and it's being paired with new fuel like TRISO fuel. And the reason why that's happening and most of the leaders in the industry are utilizing that advanced new fuel type is because it essentially gives the fuel its own containment system. So it eliminates the worst accident scenarios that might be possible with like a big conventional reactor like meltdown, that kind of thing. So it is working tech. We know it works. It's just being paired with new fuel.

Well, the thing is, I mean, I'm always reluctant to say 100%. But the truth is that if you take our reactor as an example, the operating temperature of this thing is sort of 600, 650°C, but the melting temperature of the fuel is almost 2,000° or 1,800°. There's no way for the fuel to really even get that high. And this is the reason why this fuel is being utilized. Like Three Mile Island, when people think of that, you got a fuel melt, or Fukushima, you get a core melting because of depressurized system, coolant loss. But if the fuel is contained, then the biggest accident scenario does get eliminated. And you'd have to really break the laws of physics in our reactor to get to that kind of scenario.

So I got my start in submarine reactors and believe me, if that was possible, I know enough about them where I could kind of design them myself at this point having worked on them for so many years, but it's very different. They use a type of fuel that civilian companies are not allowed to use, highly enriched uranium, like it's enriched over that sort of 90% barrier. And really as a commercial company you're capped at about 20 or just below, like 19.75% enrichment. And so the type of reactor that goes into a submarine, you can't directly take that outside of the military without a complete redesign. And so it wouldn't

Yeah. So there's a lot of laws governing the handling of nuclear fuel, particularly around something like proliferation, because it's okay for the military to have highly enriched uranium, but for civilian companies to be handling that kind of enrichment, it's never been done before. So there are limits on what you can enrich up to as a civilian company. And if you suddenly have that enrichment barrier, then you need to make a more optimized design around that level of enrichment. And then that's where you get Nano's reactor.

Yeah. So it's really just that limit on what you're permitted to as a civilian. Other than that though, well, if you gave me permission, I think if you gave any civilian company permission, then they would probably take the HEU because it would mean all sorts of things.