The Future of Nuclear Energy with Rod Adams, Managing Partner @ Nucleation Capital

Today on the show we have Rod Adams. This was a fascinating conversation. One of the uh probably the most intense uh education I've received about nuclear energy ever. So it was very uh it was very fun for me. Uh Rod is the founder or one of the founders of Nucleation Capital. They're a VC fund that um that

invests in advanced uh nuclear solutions. Uh before starting nuclear capital, Rod spent decades as a naval officer uh advancing nuclear technology uh inside the Navy. He did take uh a few breaks that we speak about um dabbled in the startup industry uh and also in uh academia and teaching. Um, in the conversation, like I mentioned, uh, we

do go over Rod's experience because, uh, I think it's very interesting to learn about, uh, how people gain the expertise that he has and end up in the, uh, place in life that he is. But mostly, we run through, uh, several of the companies in their portfolio, why they invested in them, and what is novel about their

approaches to nuclear technology. So uh if you are uh a novice like me uh in advanced nuclear technology then this is a great conversation for you. It's very educational um and uh Raj is very very kind in his uh explanations uh all things that I go over uh and detail more thoroughly in my newsletter uh that is

available to subscribe to at earthonword.com. Thank you as always to uh Clean Tech Growth Lab. If you're looking to grow in the clean tech space, these are the people to work with. I love working with them. They are wonderful people. And shout out as always to the producer of this uh this podcast, Craze and Friends.

If you're looking to grow in any other industry, they are the people to do it with. And with that, I bring you Rod Adams. Rod, welcome. How you doing, Blake? Good to meet you. I am doing so good. Just like I was telling you uh right before we got into this uh episode,

I think um the things that I've read, things that I've heard, uh things that you've been saying for a long time. Uh very awesome, interesting educational perspectives on what's going on in the world as it relates to energy. Um, but for anyone that doesn't know yet, if you could give a brief introduction of

yourself and what you're building. Sure. My name is Rod Adams. I have an alternative identity on the internet that's been there since 1991. I'm known as atomic rod because uh I'm interested in all things atomic and have been for a very long time. Was a Navy nuclear officer. uh served on submarines for a

number of years and then served at the Navy headquarters uh supporting submarines. Uh was always very interested in in nuclear energy. Even took a small break in my Navy career turned out to be about a six-year break of active duty since uh where I tried to start a small modular reactor company in

1993. companies called Atoms Atomic Engines. And our concept was that reactors didn't have to be big to be powerful. They didn't have to be huge and didn't have to produce enough power for a city of a million when they were places where a thousand or 2,000 or 5,000 people needed power.

So small reactors have always been something of interest to me more to broaden the uh catalog of available options because there are so many energy customers in the world and only a very small portion of those energy customers buy giant power plants of any kind.

So uh so then I guess uh would you know do you go by rod or atomic rod these days? Oh I go by rod. Atomic Rod is just who I am online. You even there I put my my real name. I I I've always been operating on my real name. Never really hiding behind any

aliases. Got it. Got it. Got it. Oh, good. Good. Well, so the the the first thing that comes to my mind before we get into the um um you know, all all the all the work that you've done, I guess, uh inside the Navy, after the Navy since then, is where did this interest in the atomic

universe, the atomic world come from? Well, I first got first learned about uh nuclear energy when my dad uh came home from work one day and said, "Hey, Rod, my company's building this new power plant that doesn't even need smoke stacks." He was only let's run here.

We're flip power company utility company. And I've been to several power plants uh for his company. I've seen the coal piles. I' seen the big smoke stacks. I even played below the smoke stack of a co power plant called the Cutler plant. It's where they held their annual uh company picnic.

But that fascinated me. I was eight at the time. By the way, later on I learned how concentrated nuclear fision is, where a little fuel pellet the size of the tip of my pinky can contain enough energy contain equivalent energy to either a ton of coal, 147 gallons of diesel fuel, or 17,000 uh

cubic feet of natural gas in that tiny little pellet. And then I I experienced it uh personally when I was on board a submarine and a reactor where the fuel source the reactor core itself was only about the size that would fit underneath a decent size office desk and it powered the submarine 9,000 ton submarine for 14

years without refueling and produced everything we needed. It produced propulsion. The ship could go pretty fast in the water. I can't tell you how fast, but it go pretty fast. Uh, it could produce water out of salt water. It could even produce new oxygenated air out of water by splitting the hydrogen and oxygen. We were we had

hydrogen generators on board the boat, although we didn't really want the hydrogen. We threw that away. We kept the oxygen because that's what we really wanted. But that that to me that was just incredible. And I'm a child of the 70s.

That's when I grew up. That's when I came of age. Energy was an incredibly important topic for the whole country, maybe even the whole world. But we had two major oil crisis, two times when our way of life was being directed by uh the need for energy and access to energy. So that was

what initially got me interested in studying nuclear energy because it seemed to me to be a real way to get away from being completely dependent on the suppliers of oil. Now I like oil. I like gasoline. I I love to drive cars. I drive boats. All kinds of reasons why I think you know oil and gas has been a

great boon to mankind. But being dependent on them as our only source of motive energy or as our only source of electricity that was not a good thing. The nuclear was hot when I was going to school and this was hot even though by the time I finished my obligated service to the

Navy most building had kind of stopped because I would have been leaving the Navy initially if I left right away would have been 1986 by that time. There hadn't been new orders in a half a dozen years and you know there was no real growth being forecast for the commercial nuclear industry but that didn't stop I

mean I still was fascinated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So then so then how how is it that the uh I mean you just you just alluded to it just a little bit more context to to your personal journey. So you you said there was a there was a period of of obligated service. How was it that the the NA your

experience in the Navy supported or expanded you know built on top of this interest um uh uh in in uh in in that sector because you said that uh it was formed during these uh you know the coming of age. So I assume like by the by the time you went into the Navy you

had already decided a direction. So how did they support you in that? Yeah. Well, I went to I went to the Naval Academy um for many reasons, but one of the re main reasons was I wanted to study nuclear engineering. And I told my high school guidance counselor that.

Okay. He said, "Well, if you want to study nuclear, the people who do it best in the world are the US Navy." Got it. And he said, "And they they operate a school that you can go to for free." Okay, that sounded good to me. So, I went to a naval academy.

and a good education, good science and technical education. Uh at the at the time of my progress to the Naval Academy, I went to visit with Admiral Rick over to convince him that I could be on his team. Uh he accepted me and so then I went into the to the Navy nuclear

program. That's what I was talking about, the obligated service. When you graduate from the academy, you have a five-year obligation to pay back the education that the taxpayers have generously provided to you. I didn't I never I always thought of it as as a guaranteed job. Um so during that first five years is when I I went

to see on submarines a number of times. I think I did five well I did about six deployments on subs during the first five years and then did another five deployments after that. Got it. So, but going to see on submarines is one of the things that reinforces the magic. I mean, if you know about energy

and about what it takes to drive a diesel engine or those kinds of things and you realize how polluting they are and how much fuel they burn and how much logistics is involved in bringing that fuel to a ship or whatever, and then you compare that to what you have on a on a

nuclear ship with everything self-contained with the ability to to take hot showers whenever you want to with the ability to and of course we did limit that but it was that was only mainly to keep the sailors thinking that they were really on a ship we could have made we had plenty of fresh water um and

certainly plenty of heat rejected heat we could use it just reminded me the magic was and when I finished my submarining days I'd gone to shore duty I this this now was about the nine or 10 year point in my career. I went to shore duty at the naval academy about the same

time as the US was fighting yet another war over oil in the Persian Gulf War number one. you know, a lot of my friends who I'd gone to school with or served with were in the the Arabian Gulf and were, you know, fighting uh going into Iraq, you know, in part of the 100

hour war that we had where we pushed Saddam Hussein out, that kind of stuff. But during that period, you know, we it the importance of oil again was brought to everybody's attention. Sure. and the uh idea that and all of that caused a pretty significant jump in the price of oil and natural gas.

Yeah. And that was when I started my research to say is there a better way is are there sources of ways to produce smaller simpler uh reactors that would find customers rather than having reactors that nobody wanted to buy. I mean we we knew how to build reactors. We built a hundred of

them or more and but nobody was buying them. You know, if you'd have a product that there aren't any customers for, you got the wrong product. Yep. So, that's when I started figuring out trying to decide if there was a better product. There was a better way to package this magical stuff. And of

course, being a submariner, many of the things that people say about nuclear I know are wrong because I've seen it with my own eyes. Now, I can't necessarily tell you exactly how I know, and I can't give you chapter and verse, but I can testify that nuclear fision power plants don't have to be inflexible. They can be

really flexible and really responsive. Trust me, you wouldn't design a ship if the engine had to run the same speed all the time. Yeah. So, so you, so you had just mentioned this, this goes into um the the chapter of your life where you where you uh took a break and then uh built

that company. Can you take us into the the journey that you had with that? Well, I didn't really build it very far. I I I never will try to claim that I built a company. Okay. We had a few people. We, you know, made a few pitches, made a lot of pitches, uh

had some interest, created a website, you know, that kind of stuff. never really got a whole lot of capital other than friends and family and fortunately they still talk to me but it wasn't a very great experience for them.

Okay. Gotcha. Well, so so then so then just to cap this off so from the experience of of leaving that project up until you started Nucleation Capital, what was it that you were involved in? Uh well that that's a long journey because Adam's Atomic Engines actually went through several phases. About 19 95

96 we put it to sleep and and I had to go do something else. And what I chose to do initially was I uh was asked to go manage a small manufacturing company and become the general manager. I I learned of manufacturing from the ground floor.

literally swept the floors, ran a forklift, uh did all the scheduling, man, you know, counted all the materials, uh ordered the new materials, all kinds of stuff, worked with customers when they're designing new products, tried to set up, you know, all that all that kind of stuff on the ground floor. I had it was

a 25 person company. I was the only one in the company with a with a a degree, but it was an awful lot of experience and knowledge and hands-on stuff that I learned a lot from in in the company.

And so that was about three years. That was J&M industries. At that end of that period, I had an opportunity to go back in the Navy, which was kind of unusual to to leave active duty. I went into the reserves, was serving in the reserves, and there was an opportunity for people who had

certain qualifications to come back in the Navy and teach. And that's what I did. I came back in the Navy and taught at the Naval Academy. And then I finished up a Navy career. I actually retired from the Navy in 2010.

Went to work for a small launch reactor company. Uh Babcock and Wilcox was building some was designing the empower reactor. I worked for that for three years and that project was kind of hitting the rocky shores and I left to be a podcast and a blogger and a consultant um for the next five years

and by the way in that period of time I also had a few grandchildren and uh was very busy with as a family guy but you know we I was pretty active went to a lot of conferences kept up with a lot of people talked to a lot of people interested in in advanced nuclear and more and more

people started to get into this idea that nuclear has many aven build products that could find customers. Okay, that infrastructure that this group started the nuclear infrastructure council started sponsoring something called the advanced reactor summit. I think they're on like their 15th anniversary and I went to a number of early ones and I've been to them several

times over the years where a whole bunch of people are coming together and sharing ideas about building reactors with different coolants with different sizes and different uh fuel forms and fuel enrichments and the the variety is is pretty incredible. A lot of people, you know, say there's way too many. But I say, well, are there are there too

many combustion engine companies in the world? You know, fision is an as big a improvement to the human condition as combustion is. Yeah. Sometimes people say fision is the new fire. It really is that kind of basic foundational difference. So, so I think I think this sets us up nicely because with with all that context, which thank

you for for walking through on a a surface level, by the time it came to uh starting Nucleation Capital, why was that the right move in your mind? You were very uh motivated. You know, you're very very knowledgeable. You're involved in this community and you said that this is the thing that I want to devote

myself to to make the most impact in this space. Why is that? Well, I can't do this by myself. Nobody can. But in this particular case, I didn't even think of it. I was writing about nuclear energy and one of the things I wrote about was a following an event at one of these advanced

conferences, advanced reactor development conferences. I wrote about all the new ideas and said, "Hey, there's so many new concepts and people have made it down a certain stretch or certain part of the path to deployment and it's time for people to start putting risk capital behind these companies to choose the ones that they really think have the

chops to go forward with the technology, the team and everything." And I wrote this this blog post. It's March of 2018. And after I wrote that post, I got a phone call. And the phone call was from Valerie Gardner, who is a investor, very successful technology entrepreneur out of Silicon Valley, very steeped into the whole uh ecosystem of

startups and venture capital and that kind of stuff. And so she called and said, "You're talking about the opportunities to invest in nuclear. I've been looking for opportunities to invest in nuclear." They one of the f her first steps in that man in that path was that she and her husband uh her partner ran a

registered investment advisory company. They have several hundred million dollars under management and some of their clients had been asking for portfolios that were cleaner were, you know, doing the kind of work that they wanted their money to do. So, it was trying to get rid of fossil fuels in the portfolio.

and her partner said, "Hey, that's easy to to divest from fossil fuels, which was the big movement going on at the time. But in order to have the balanced uh quantitatively uh successful portfolios that we offer our customers, we have to find something else in energy because energy itself is about 6% of the economy.

So, you got to tell me what to put into rather than just take out. that if I'm going to sell fossil fuels, I could put something in. And her research showed her that nuclear was the thing that could actually replace fossil fuels from many different uh perspectives, could do many of the same jobs, could become as

big an environment, could provide the reliable power. So anyway, so she started getting interested in nuclear, investing in nuclear, and that's where we got together. Gotcha. We had a meeting of the minds. I brought my technical expertise in my networks and all stuff. He has a lot more networks, has legal background, has

company leadership background and you know we came together. So we said what we want to do is we would like to invest our resources into advanced nuclear and since we're going to be doing a lot of research to do that, right? We're gonna raise a fund and provide that uh capability to other people and make it a

little bit worth our while and to enable others and also we're both driven by not only believing that nuclear is a good thing but by working to make it right a successful product. It it is going to take effort. There's nothing automatic about it. The capabilities are there and they've been there for a long time, but

we have really not successfully built a sustainable or sustaining new entry uh new product line coming into nuclear. We built a bunch of very big plants and we stopped. Well, see that and and that's that's part of what I think is um very interesting about the trajectory that you've that you've laid out because a number of your experiences

in this space from a commercial perspective uh have you you invested a few years into it and then they did not pan out and so now you guys are in a position where I uh you know you have a portfolio of companies um that I checked out and the I mean the idea is for them

to you know to have lasting impact and you guys are invested in them because of that. And so, uh, if you could, I I I want to get into, um, you know, any one any 16 or something of the companies that you have, uh, you know, I'd talk about all of them, but overarching, if

you could give an introduction to this nuclear space. When you say advanced nuclear, uh, I I I I know that there are three areas that that your website says that you invest in. So, if not all of the portfolio companies are nuclear, that's fine. But uh because the particular interest is nuclear, if you

could give a high level of what what is happening in the space like who and and what amount of your investments represents the directionality of uh of the space. Well, the space is broad. Uh it's not easy to cover in a few minutes, but I'll I'll use our investments to kind of illustrate some of the advances that are

happening. Well done. Let's do it. All right. So, one of our uh investments is in a company called Core Power. Matter of fact, that was our very first investment. Core Power is a company made up mostly of maritime industry professionals, shipping industry who recognize that if you want to decarbonize shipping, we have a very

proven way, well tested, wellroven way to produce ships that don't produce any CO2 or other pollution. nuclear, of course, obviously we've been running nuclearpowered ships and submarines since 1950s. Haven't been commercialized. So, what they've been doing is figuring out what it takes to get the commercial infrastructure in place for nuclearpowered shipping. And that in

it's a very complicated task because it involves a lot of different com countries. It involves international organizations like the International Maritime Organization, the IAEA. It involves port cities in different places because there's no there's no real site involved. You have to move a ship from port to port. So, you got to get

acceptance in those ports. You got to get insurance. You got to get classification societies. That's what they've been working on. Now they also have invested in a project called the molten chloride fast reactor the MCFR which is being developed by a consortium in the US partly with help from the DOE to develop a reactor

that runs with the fuel in the form of a dissolved dissolved in salt. a liquid form. It runs at very high temperatures and in the case of the molten chloride fast reactor, there is no moderator. It runs on a fast neutron spectrum which allows it to consume a wider variety of of actonides. Uh that's

anything from from thorium on up into the plutonium and transuranics and that kind of stuff. the heavy uh stuff that is the long lived part of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel or used nuclear fuel, whatever you want to call it, stuff that comes out of a reactor. Some people call it nuclear waste, but it's

really high value material because it only has given up about 5% of its initial potential energy. Okay. So this molten chloride fast reactor plus the building of the infrastructure for nuclear shipping that's represented by our investment in core power.

Okay. Another investment that we have is another European uh and core power by the way is a UK company. Another European company is called Copenhagen Atomics. Copenhagen Atomics is another molten salt reactor, but they are designing their reactor to operate in a thermal spectrum where they slow down the neutrons. They use heavy water to

slow down the neutrons. They uh surround the active core with a uh layer of dissolved thorium salts. And as the neutrons are uh leak out of this central core is just a natural part of fision. Some of those neutrons go into the the blanket and turn the thorium into through several steps turn it into a fisionable

material. Thorium is not fisionable by itself but if you hit it with a neutron it turns into uranium 233 and can fision. So their reactor is a thermal breeder reactor eventually and it is going their concept is to have their reactors the heat source just the reactor part packaged into a box the size of a 40ft

shipping container and transportable by truck. Now that isn't a complete unit. You'd bring it to a site, you have to put it into a cocoon, they call it, where the shielding would be and where the it gets connections to go to the steam plant. So, it's not a full power system. It's just a heat source.

Okay? And those heat sources are 100 megawws thermal each, which is roughly enough heat to contribute to producing 40 megawatts of electricity. Okay. So they're a Danish company. Denmark is a place where there aren't any nuclear power plants or isn't even allowed to be any nuclear power plants.

So Copenhagen Atomics is going to do their first test unit in Switzerland. Okay. So that's that's another one. Now another two reactors so far. Yeah. Two new novel reactor technology. Yeah. another one in uh Sweden which is a very interesting market because it's a very strong nuclear history but they also went through a phase where they

thought they were going to get rid of all their nuclear plants they stopped now they're they have set themselves up to be the strongest uh nuclear uh country in Europe at least in terms of growth per capita they've got a lot of new support programs they've got a big uh lending capability ility from the government to

produce provide low interest loans. So as one as part of all that stuff was going on, we found a company that we really liked called Blecala. Some of you some listeners and people in the US may recognize or think of Blecala in its old name in the US which was lead cold. Now bleala is is a Swedish term

that means lead cold. That's a blee is is lead and kala is cold. So the bleala is got a lead cooled fast reactor. So it can also burn actonidines. It can use used fuel. It and they're working together with some of the other liquid metal cooled reactor companies like Nucleio and Oaklo. And so that's just kind of an

interesting area. So it's a it's about a 55 megawatt reactor and they've got some really good prospects for uh meeting needs in Sweden. Now Sweden's got interest in large reactors and 300 megawatt reactors but also a keen interest in this smaller unit that's domestically grown. They don't have any other SMR companies in Sweden.

Okay. Okay. So now we go to the into the US. We have uh an investment in a company called Radiant. And Radiant is a fastmoving company. They've got a a high temperature gas cooled reactor that's packaged in a uh shipping container for as in this case the shipping container is contains the entire power system. Got

the heat source, it's got the turbines, it's got the cooling, it's got shielding. All of that's in in a shipping container size box. and it's 1.2 megawws. So you can see if you package just the heat source, you can put 100 megawatts in. If you package everything else in there, it's maybe, you know, down one to five megawatts is

the most you can ever put inside a container like that. Interesting. But Radiant is uh run by a group of people who's cut their teeth in nuclear working on SpaceX projects to power uh the lunar surface or Mars with figuring out how they could power that.

They landed on nuclear being really the only way you could do that. Uh so that's where the SpaceX folks come from. Gotcha. I mean that's where the radiance folks come from is SpaceX. Okay. So, they've got their reactor is being assembled right now and is scheduled to be tested at the Idaho National Laboratory in the first half of

2026. They're the company that first selected to go into what's called the Dome facility, which is a former uh containment vessel that used to h house the experimental breeder reactor number two. So, that's radiant. They're moving pretty fast.

Another one is uh a company called Alo and Alo is also moving very fast. Actually from many measures Alo was probably the fastest moving uh nuclear company by some measures. They were formed just two years ago and since their formation they've already built a factory or starting to produce modules and they plan to have

their first reactor going critical uh this summer the summer of 2026. uh their their reactor is a liquid sodium thermal reactor. So they there is some moderator inside the reactor that called graphite that slows down the neutrons and gives them a better neutron economy.

So they're not quite as efficient at burning some of the actides, but they have other advantages. And like any engineering thing, these choices are all tradeoffs. If you want to do a better job of converting a used material, you're going to go tend towards a fast spectrum reactor. If you want to do it with a a a design that

doesn't use uh recycled material but is better at efficiently using uh existing fuel sources, you're going to go with a thermal source. But you know, so you can see that our interests go from fast fast spectrum thermal spectrums from liquid metal uh liquid sodium liquid lead.

We've got uh molten salts. So there's there's a lot of stuff going on. You also will notice that in our portfolio because of the way we're we're formed, we're a venture capital company. Yeah, we don't have any companies like General Electric or Westinghouse because they're they're not ventures. They're old established companies that are traded on

the stock market. They're not private companies that use venture capital. So, Aloe, the last company that you mentioned, how big are they looking to make the reactor? Their reactor is they've got a concept called the Alo Pod. And the Alo pod is a set of five reactors that are 10 megawws each.

And those reactors provide the heat for a single steam turbine system. So the steam turbine is uh 50 megawatt steam turbine with five little pods or five reactors, right? Supplying the one turbine. Awesome. The their test unit will be just one reactor. So it'll be a 10 megawatt reactor.

Okay, cool. Well, I the the reason I asked is because first, thank you for running through all of that just off the top of your head. That was incredible. I tried to write down as many of the terms as I could to be able to see, in this case, it's recorded, right?

So, people can play it back slowly. That's right. You're right. Right. Which is which is something I will do. I I'll write it out by hand again. But, um but so the the reason I asked that question is because uh what I'm curious about is and you're right. This does give uh a

really awesome starting point for understanding the landscape of uh nuclear at well you said it was very broad at least from what exists in your portfolio and a a theme that I'm gathering uh so far is that they are very small that that relatively speaking to what nuclear traditionally tries to achieve. Um, so is is that a particular

uh is is that so my my question about that is is that the direction that nuclear is going as a whole or is it just a focus of your particular fund like a corner of nuclear? Yeah. And it's not necessarily the only focus that I have or that Valerie has.

Sure. It's the focus that nucleation capital has because we chose to be a venture capital fund. Venture capital needs to have certain criteria and of course one of them is they're not public companies. They are emerging companies that have opportunity for for big markets and big growth. Uh it was be very difficult for me to imagine a

venture capitalbacked company designing and building a large reactor plant. Okay. Just just very large capital raise for I mean even those companies that are building them today have to go through a very complicated assembly of financial sources. banks and and private equity funds and utility companies and consortium and also to fund one reactor. So that's why as I

went through our choices they do represent a a portion of the reactor system is fairly low. Although you know 50 megawatts is sounds really small big enough for 50,000 people. Yeah. Okay. Great. Which is 50 megawatt is pretty big. And I can tell you I can't tell you how big my reactor was,

but not that big. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so so so then so then um is it the particular uh technology, the novel technology, the innovative technology that's being uh um that's being produced by these companies that led you to invest? Was it their uh their application uh that they're that they're looking to do or a combination

of the two? What is uh when when you were going about making the investment, what was uh most important to you? How did you go about that? It's not driven by the technology per se. It is driven by the team and the vision and they're working to make the product match the customers that they've

identified. Now, each one of the co companies that we've worked with have found or that we've supported have found particular parts of the energy market and said, "These look like they could really use what we could provide. let's go talk to them and find out what they really need and want. And so there are

different business models involved. There are some companies and I I won't say in particular, but there are some different ways to own and operate the plants. There are okay different ways to sell PPAs and those kinds of stuff. So that whole I mean we spend a lot of time doing due diligence.

We don't just look and say, "Oh, that guy's got a cool reaction." Right. Right. So, it's a and it it has to do a lot with the the team, what their background is, what their skill sets are, how well they come together and work and work together, you know, are they the kind of group that's actually

going to put something out or are they going to, you know, waste their time in bureaucratic nonsense? Yeah. Okay. So, so and and that alludes to another question I had about this which is um in your experience in uh you know with these companies and also other companies that you've followed and or

been a part of um you know we we discussed how these types of companies differ from uh other nuclear um projects which take uh decades or massive finan like massive investments complex financial structures these types of things. Uh what have you seen to be one of the or a number of the things that get in the way of uh uh of

these types of nuclear companies being successful? I you I think you said what gets in the way of old style nuclear companies being Oh, I was asking about the new style. Well, the new style haven't found what there's what's going to get in their way because most of them their philosophy is this is the direction we want to go.

What how do we clear the path to go that way? How do we we understand we need to produce safe reactors and operate them safely and protect the public? We understand that. How do we convince the regulations and and the the industry and the financers and everybody else that we are doing that? Maybe we don't want to

try to do it the way it's been done before because that hasn't worked. You know, maybe we don't want to spend a half a billion dollars and create a a license application that's 15,000 pages long to address, you know, and try to figure out what kind of exemptions we need to ask for all that stuff. Is there

a better way? And there's been a lot of effort made to try to create a better path and it's been helped. I mean the the the US government has done a really fine job compared for government of establishing the the environment for nuclear to succeed. Over the last six years, there have been half a dozen

bills and and that got not only introduced, they were passed into law and signed, often with overwhelming bipartisan support that were aimed at streamlining some requirements, streamlining the processes, making sure that that everybody in the approval path recognizes that we want safe nuclear energy to succeed. It's a important part of our national strength and protecting

the environment. Now, what do we need to do to help make it succeed without adding undue risk, you know, while we still protect the public and that effort has been going on. So, I think that that those are are going forward. Now, obviously, every emerging company has a lot of obstacles to overcome. They got

to get hiring. They've got to get the right structures in place. They've got to find financing. They've got to make payroll. They've got to do the engineering work to make sure that the products function as designed. They've got to do testing and make sure the corrosion is correct. And they got to make sure that they understand how

things respond under stress and in transients. There's all kinds of things that happen. They've got to build test units and those all those things are going on to various various extents within the companies that we've invested. We we've seen a lot of what they're doing. Unfortunately, we haven't traveled as much as I'd like to, but

we're going to we're going to keep going. That'll change. That'll change. Well, I think so. this this uh before we get into two of my last uh questions, two of my favorite questions, I honestly I just want to open it up to to you to see if there's anything that you feel like is necessary in adding because

again from my perspective being very um not as knowledgeable in this area. I feel like I've learned a ton about uh at least at a high level about what's going on in the space. So, is there anything uh else that you'd like to add relative to what we've uh discussed that you think would be important? One of my

biggest fears about the well I'll call it the nuclear renaissance and I think I call it phase two of the nuclear renaissance or the the current phase. It's it is happening. There's lots of reasons why we need another viable source of power and heat to provide for the flourishing of mankind. But I am worried

that there there is a a risk that there's too much emphasis being placed on data center power demands as the only reason to that people are now interested in nuclear energy. Yes, it has excited people to hear that Microsoft or Google or or Alphabet I mean Microsoft, Google, Meta uh are all interested in in nucon

interested in in nuclear and it's exciting to have customers who are very deeppocketed and and very technically competent and can recognize and do math and say yeah nuclear is a good thing But focusing on them as the only new source is wrong. I mean, I didn't know anything about data centers when I got excited

about nuclear. There's an awful lot of energy out there that needs to be done better. Needs to be, you know, there's a lot of power systems that are either old and tired or just plain dirty that need to be replaced. And there's a lot of customers out there from metals to mining to um shipping, all kinds of

things. all kinds of reasons why we need nuclear energy. And it's not just about data centers. And there's other customers out there that, you know, given the the choices, they'd much prefer to buy power that is reliable, dependable, uh, predictable, clean, abundant, affordable, all that stuff.

Okay. So, that's that's my big thing. It's not just about data centers. There's lots of other customers out there. And you know, data centers are great, but well, icing on the cake. No, I'm gl I'm glad I'm glad that you highlighted that because a recent conversation um a recent conversation that uh that has been coming up in a lot

of the interviews uh and blog posts has been um uh this this kind of Trojan horse effect that uh data centers have been having on the clean tech industry for exactly the reasons that you're speaking to. um is is that it's one of the only things that have gotten people that may or may not believe in uh you

know the energy transition or anything to invest in it and also be interested in it. So um so I appreciate you highlighting that. So so for my last two questions I know I know we're over time this is you know I've been very selfish my my my questions so thank you for indulging but at the um uh right now

with nucleation capital what is the biggest hurdle and how is it also an opportunity? Our biggest hurdle is we really want to grow the fund and getting people to recognize just what kind of value we can provide has been a little challenging. I didn't talk much about it, but I need to tell you right here when we started

raising money for the fund, the traditional funders of venture capital funds weren't interested in nuclear at all. Almost unanimously, they said we don't invest in nuclear. Some of them because there have been uh poor financial performance from previous nukes have been uh bankruptcies like Westinghouse and and Scana at BC Summer and and of course there's older ones the

Long Island Lighting Company. There's uh the Washington Public Power System. All these these financial disasters. So legitimately good reason to say we didn't want to invest in nuclear because of that. But we weren't going into the big reactor.

So we still didn't convince them that was different. But then there was some in of the VC uh funders, the pension funds, endowments, uh insurance companies that said nuclear is on our list of things that we don't invest in because it's right between uh cannabis and and weapons, uh defense companies, you know, it's

it's maybe just above tobacco. Okay. and it was on that list of things the thin stuff that they wanted to avoid. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, what we did was we built nucleation capital as a rolling fund using the angelist platform and rolling funds allow accredited investors to sign up and and invest a regular amount every so

often, every quarter in our case. Okay. So that the credit investors are people that have some resources, but they're not necessarily wealthy individuals. They're people that have good retirement accounts or whatever. And but they say, "We want a portion of our money to go into nuclear." And so we have investors that invest as low as $5,000 per quarter

and as high as $250,000 per quarter. We would like to find more of those $250,000 per quarter, but let's let's take take the smaller ones, too. We want all of them to come in and say, "Hey, we are interested in in investing in nuclear. We think that nuclear's got a good thing. You guys are demonstrating

you know how to pick the companies. You know how to find them. We don't know who to invest in. So, we would like you to to build a portfolio for us. And we build portfolios." Now, an investor who comes in now doesn't get access to the returns from those other investments I've mentioned

unless we invest in again in the future. They get part of what we invest in as we go forward. But we really believe that we're providing a valuable service to the investors and to the companies that we invest in. Now, one other thing I'll say is that we do offer really generous uh fee and carry discounts for people

that invest for longer terms, right, and larger per quarter terms. So, it it is a an affordable way to enter into the field and that's what we would if we had anything to do, we would be able to write larger checks to some of the same companies that were already doing due diligence for. Well, lots of

opportunity there. And you're right, sounds like a hurdle. Also, lots of opportunity. With all of that considered, last question for you is what inspires you? What inspires me? Uh, inspires me is is doing my little teeny part to enable humans to flourish, to enable us to have access to all the clean air and clean

water and clean power that we need, and to try to spread that as far as we can. And maybe not everybody can have a nuclear plant and maybe not every country, but the more of us that use nuclear, the more fossil fuels are available for others.

Nice. Good. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking this conversation all the way to where we're at now. I feel like I've learned a ton. Like you said, I'm going to need to listen again, have play it on half speed, take notes.

Um, I don't even speak that fast, but I know that what I've talked about is a big fire hose. Yeah. Right. No, seriously. Seriously, very interesting. Uh, if anyone else is inspired to follow along uh with the journey, what's the best way to to do that?

Um, well, the best way we do have a pretty extensive website at Nucleation Capital. We have a news and we do we send out a newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter. There's ways there. I I have a blog still called Atomic Insights and I still do the Atomic Show podcast. We've doing doing those. We

just passed 30 years for the Atomic Insights. It was first published in November of 1995. Congrats. And the Atomic Show is coming up on 20 years. So, yeah, podcasting has been something I've done a long time. It's it's a great uh it's it's an amazing capability that we've given ourselves to be able to

talk to good people and and share that with the world. That's right. Well, Rod, thank you so much for coming on. I'm excited to stay in touch, see where you guys go. Um let me just say one more time.

Nucleation capital.com and atomicinsights.com. There you go. Beautiful. Check it out. Well, thank you so much, Rod. I appreciate it. Take care, Blake.