Full Transcript for The Lithium Isotope Bottleneck Between Nuclear Breakthroughs and Power Plants

it at low risk? 00:04:58.413 --> 00:05:16.423 Then we started the company in order to create that industrial capability because really the bottleneck in these new approaches to nuclear and fusion one of the major material bottlenecks is that they just need hundreds of tonnes of this and people aren't producing it or they're producing it by the gramme. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:19.600 Why do they need it? 00:05:21.423 --> 00:05:22.502 That's an interesting question. 00:05:22.502 --> 00:05:27.632 So when you put elements into neutrons, they become other things. 00:05:27.702 --> 00:05:28.872 It's transmutation. 00:05:28.923 --> 00:05:35.442 It's very annoying if you're a chemist because you're here, you are, you're making one thing and then you put it into a reactor and it becomes something else. 00:05:35.783 --> 00:05:43.072 So when we started looking at these problems, we looked at the elements that were gonna become something problematic. 00:05:43.173 --> 00:05:56.423 In fact, we started looking at chlorine because the depleted uranium chloride fast reactors, the molten salt reactor technology that is being developed in that area doesn't want the isotope chlorine 35. 00:05:56.492 --> 00:05:58.083 They want all chlorine 37. 00:05:58.202 --> 00:06:02.372 And the reason is that 35 captures a neutron and becomes chlorine 36. 00:06:02.372 --> 00:06:07.892 And chlorine 36 is a nasty, long lived beta emitting radioactive waste. 00:06:08.492 --> 00:06:11.072 So you just don't wanna make that in your reactor. 00:06:11.153 --> 00:06:17.583 We looked at that problem and then we looked at lithium, which is a much broader applicability in both molten salt reactors. 00:06:17.583 --> 00:06:27.182 They used a new generation of small modular reactors and then in fusion after that there's only two isotopes of lithium, lithium six and lithium seven. 00:06:27.663 --> 00:06:43.192 And amusingly, the two markets, the molten salt reactors all want lithium seven in their salts because lithium six captures a neutron and turns into tritium, and tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. 00:06:43.432 --> 00:06:53.153 So now you're saying, okay, well they wanna avoid generating a nasty form of hot radioactive hydrogen in their new generation of nuclear reactors. 00:06:53.423 --> 00:06:54.435 Makes perfect sense. 00:06:54.802 --> 00:07:03.682 In fact, they have to do that now, but they use a little bits of lithium now to prevent the cooling water and the current generation of how pressurised water reactors from becoming corrosive. 00:07:04.283 --> 00:07:05.362 Again, it's a problem. 00:07:05.362 --> 00:07:11.723 They want to remove all the lithium six so that they don't generate tritium as a byproduct while they're running their reactors. 00:07:12.593 --> 00:07:21.112 So they need hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of lithium in their salts that is as pure lithium seven as they can possibly get. 00:07:21.892 --> 00:07:32.310 Now what's really funny, but what's great for our company is fusion is the next generation of nuclear power after this new generation of fission reactors. 00:07:33.331 --> 00:07:39.271 They want lithium six for the same reason, because it captures a neutron and generates tritium. 00:07:39.692 --> 00:07:45.572 And most of the concepts for fusion is the compression of deuterium and tritium atoms. 00:07:45.601 --> 00:07:46.896 That's their fuel, right? 00:07:46.918 --> 00:07:50.041 Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that's readily available. 00:07:50.041 --> 00:07:57.632 You can extract it easily from seawater, but tritium they have to make while they run their fusion machines. 00:07:58.021 --> 00:08:04.262 And they make it by using the fusion neutrons to collide with lithium to produce tritium. 00:08:04.711 --> 00:08:14.762 So one of our customer markets wants to avoid lithium six because they don't wanna make tritium, and the other market desperately wants to get lithium six because they do need tritium. 00:08:15.221 --> 00:08:21.822 From our standpoint, that's nirvana because there's only two lithium isotopes, six and seven. 00:08:21.882 --> 00:08:27.201 And our machines, our, technology, separate them so we can sell one to the molten salt reactor crowd. 00:08:27.232 --> 00:08:30.331 And one the other end of the process to the fusion crowd. 00:08:31.050 --> 00:08:41.337 Just to kind of set expectations here, the molten salt route is the small modular reactors that everyone is talking about. 00:08:42.057 --> 00:08:49.498 And small modular reactors have been five to 10 years away for as long as I can remember. 00:08:49.977 --> 00:08:55.761 And fusion has been 20, 30 years away for as long as I can remember. 00:08:57.471 --> 00:09:02.152 Is your market gonna be 10 to 20 to 30 years away for as 00:09:02.793 --> 00:09:03.453 For forever. 00:09:03.453 --> 00:09:03.903 Yes. 00:09:03.964 --> 00:09:04.293 Yes. 00:09:04.714 --> 00:09:09.244 Well, that's, that is, that's an interesting technical and an interesting commercial question. 00:09:09.244 --> 00:09:11.224 So I'll start with the technology. 00:09:11.563 --> 00:09:13.033 Small modular reactors. 00:09:13.083 --> 00:09:21.333 The generation four of nuclear power is fundamentally different from the current generation of nuclear power, because it's called walkaway safe. 00:09:21.339 --> 00:09:35.433 What that means is if a tidal wave hits your reactor, or if everybody at the plant suddenly dies simultaneously from a heart attack and you stop managing the fusion reaction, it turns itself off. 00:09:35.583 --> 00:09:35.793 Alright? 00:09:35.793 --> 00:09:42.813 So the physics and the design of the plant is that if you're not actively managing it, it turns itself off. 00:09:42.964 --> 00:09:45.364 Intrinsically safe by design. 00:09:45.693 --> 00:09:57.033 And some of the molten salt technologies are incredibly clever at how they use just the raw physics of neutron moderation, neutron amplification to control the fission. 00:09:57.124 --> 00:10:00.063

It's, it's really tremendously cool stuff. 00:10:00.453 --> 00:10:03.783 And then of course, you're talking about small modular reactors. 00:10:03.783 --> 00:10:05.043 It's right in there in the name. 00:10:05.094 --> 00:10:13.844 So making them in a shipyard rather than in these big bespoke projects is a much better commercial model to producing cheaper power as is built. 00:10:14.313 --> 00:10:20.943 And then you have the opportunity of providing these since they're small, again at a distributed sites. 00:10:20.943 --> 00:10:27.844 So, you can power a small community rather than an entire state or, or multiple state complex or even a data centre. 00:10:27.964 --> 00:10:38.379 So I think the business model for small modular reactors and this next generation of nuclear power is finally to the point where it is going to see commercial penetration. 00:10:38.693 --> 00:10:43.024 The technology is moving along very, very rapidly. 00:10:43.073 --> 00:10:51.423 The Department of Energy in the United States has really sped up the process of permitting these first of a kind small modular reactors. 00:10:51.783 --> 00:10:56.104 They've sped it up primarily by getting out of the way, but either way it works. 00:10:56.344 --> 00:11:04.866 There's 10 to 12 companies in the United States that are all in on developing their approach to this and, are now on the fast track. 00:11:04.866 --> 00:11:10.206 So I think this is the last time it's five to 10 years away. 00:11:10.716 --> 00:11:12.110 You see the commercial pull. 00:11:12.206 --> 00:11:14.397 Kairos has sold six reactors to Google. 00:11:14.647 --> 00:11:17.527 You see the, the prototypes standing up and operating. 00:11:17.557 --> 00:11:19.267 The technology is very mature. 00:11:19.657 --> 00:11:21.787 You see this echoed in other countries. 00:11:21.836 --> 00:11:28.047 The Chinese have declared that their next generation of nuclear power is going to be molten salt thorium reactors. 00:11:28.106 --> 00:11:31.106 So fundamentally, new physics fail safe. 00:11:31.527 --> 00:11:33.297 Now, fusion is a different topic. 00:11:33.297 --> 00:11:35.606 Fusion, they're not done inventing fusion yet. 00:11:35.826 --> 00:11:39.216 When I started Molten Salt Solutions, there was 13 companies in fusion. 00:11:39.216 --> 00:11:41.047 Now there's well over 60. 00:11:41.767 --> 00:11:53.616 And each one is pursuing a different technology for achieving the fundamentals of fusion, which is taking this deuterium atom and this tritium atom and squeezing it hard enough that you get them to fuse. 00:11:53.677 --> 00:11:54.726 Thus fusion. 00:11:55.326 --> 00:11:58.956 So you can argue that that part of my market is still science fiction. 00:11:59.811 --> 00:12:07.760 But in 2022, Livermore showed that they could actually achieve the pressures necessary to get more energy out than they put in. 00:12:08.211 --> 00:12:16.490 And that sparked this huge new investment interest and popular interest in moving fusion forward. 00:12:16.541 --> 00:12:22.110 Since then, as I said, the companies went from 13 to well over 50 closer to 60. 00:12:22.421 --> 00:12:26.480 There's seven government funded efforts around the world to achieve fusion. 00:12:27.831 --> 00:12:33.850 And the attitude has changed from, this is an interesting physics experiment to the engineering. 00:12:34.010 --> 00:12:39.201 Now there's this feeling like we know we can get fusion to produce energy. 00:12:39.471 --> 00:12:43.250 Now how do we put it in a device that can be used to put electrons on the grid? 00:12:43.250 --> 00:12:44.721 How can we generate power with it? 00:12:44.721 --> 00:12:49.571 So it's really a sea change in the attitude of the physicists. 00:12:49.571 --> 00:12:54.730 Now the physicists are taking a backseat to the engineers, and the engineers are saying, great. 00:12:55.030 --> 00:12:56.410 Now how do we make it work? 00:12:56.410 --> 00:13:00.791 How do we build a machine, produce power, make money. 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:03.370 And the investors are of course, all over making money. 00:13:05.061 --> 00:13:19.625 So the, the, The economics is for my company is yes, I am starting a company to sell to science fiction markets, but it is a chicken and an egg problem right now. 00:13:19.725 --> 00:13:26.178 If they don't know that they can get lithium six, literally they cannot proceed with fusion. 00:13:26.265 --> 00:13:32.625 Some of the designs require tonnes, tens, hundreds of tonnes of lithium six even in the research. 00:13:33.135 --> 00:13:42.375 And so, yeah, as an entrepreneur, I, I coach entrepreneurs and I always tell them, start companies for markets that exist. 00:13:42.826 --> 00:13:45.446 And here I am doing something completely the opposite. 00:13:45.446 --> 00:13:47.515 So yeah, do, do as I say, not as I do. 00:13:48.056 --> 00:14:02.605 But it is a, it's a profound chicken and an egg question because if I can't assure the markets that there will be lithium six, then some of them can't design their fusion machines and the others can't design efficient fusion machines. 00:14:02.755 --> 00:14:07.735 I had a conversation that illustrates this with Thea Energy in New Jersey. 00:14:07.932 --> 00:14:09.763 They're pursuing a stellarator technology. 00:14:10.244 --> 00:14:15.836 And I talked to them about the availability of lithium six and did they wanna schedule to buy some in the future? 00:14:16.346 --> 00:14:26.605 And the chief science officer said, oh, we don't need enriched lithium six, meaning they have designed their fusion machine to use natural abundance isotopes of lithium. 00:14:27.505 --> 00:14:33.206 And in the same sentence, he said, but if we could get some, we could save on our magnets, right? 00:14:33.206 --> 00:14:36.678 So what that means is it is now an engineering problem. 00:14:36.678 --> 00:14:39.198 What is the techno economic optimum? 00:14:39.259 --> 00:14:41.448 I have to tell them how much it's gonna cost. 00:14:41.778 --> 00:14:43.668 You

can put that into the engineering design. 00:14:43.668 --> 00:14:46.668 You can't engineer anything until you know how much it's gonna cost. 00:14:46.859 --> 00:14:49.708 What's the cost benefit of, of a degree of enrichment? 00:14:50.178 --> 00:14:52.038 And so that's what I'm doing to the market now. 00:14:52.379 --> 00:14:55.673 You know, right now it's clearly gonna be a need. 00:14:55.722 --> 00:14:58.379 Just the R&D need in the next five years. 00:14:58.379 --> 00:15:02.668 They need 500 tonnes of enriched lithium six. 00:15:03.328 --> 00:15:05.668 You can't buy a kilogramme of it right now. 00:15:05.729 --> 00:15:08.249 And in the next five years, they need 500 tonnes. 00:15:08.308 --> 00:15:10.298 So the need is acute. 00:15:10.298 --> 00:15:14.469 They can't move forward in their R&D to build prototype reactors without it. 00:15:14.769 --> 00:15:20.438 And they have to know now what the price is gonna be in two or three years, or they can't design it. 00:15:21.066 --> 00:15:22.240 And that's that what we're working on now. 00:15:23.336 --> 00:15:37.946 And the big criticisms of nuclear tend to be a) it takes 10, 20, 30 years to build out a, a nuclear power plant. 00:15:38.426 --> 00:15:46.105 And b), the cost and typically cost overruns of building nuclear are astronomic. 00:15:46.105 --> 00:15:58.436 And when you compare that to the cost to build out, for example, a solar plant backed with batteries, you're looking at a two to three year timeline versus a 20 year timeline. 00:15:59.275 --> 00:16:02.995 In that kind of scenario, does nuclear have a future, do you think? 00:16:31.564 --> 00:16:31.784 Yes. 00:16:31.849 --> 00:16:44.689 I think that that is one of the real transformational parts of this new effort in advanced nuclear, which is the small and small modular reactors. 00:16:44.949 --> 00:16:52.809 Because not only does it change the business model of, of where you can put these things, but it means that you can make them in one spot and move them to where you need them. 00:16:53.089 --> 00:16:56.692 The analogy that people use are shipyards, right? 00:16:56.692 --> 00:17:05.652 You could build a small modular reactor in industrial complex as, much as ships are built in a shipyard, and then move it to where it's needed. 00:17:05.811 --> 00:17:16.011 And this goes even as far as people calling them nuclear batteries, where when the fuels are exhausted, you pick them up and you take 'em back to the shipyard and crack them open and add more fuel. 00:17:16.471 --> 00:17:31.201 And I think this business model is going to get around the problem of these large bespoke plants that are enormously expensive to begin with, and then typically end up three times more expensive by the time they're done with the cost overruns. 00:17:31.511 --> 00:17:40.481 Because if you can consolidate all of the expertise necessary to make a small modular reactor, and these designs are also simpler, right? 00:17:40.481 --> 00:17:48.812 Because if the physics turns them off, or if the physics modulates the, fission reaction, then a lot of the plumbing necessary for these safety systems goes away. 00:17:49.322 --> 00:18:02.032 If you can build them and move them from a central location like a shipyard to where they're needed you're going to reduce the cost of that first water generating capability by a factor of five to 10. 00:18:02.302 --> 00:18:20.612 And in fact, not only is that work out on putting a hundred megawatt example reactors on the grid, but there are companies like Thor Con, for example, who's looking at, okay, we're gonna literally build these in shipyards and make the next generation of cargo vessel vessels nuclear power. 00:18:21.221 --> 00:18:26.912 That is also an enormous benefit to the environment because the cargo vessels burn awfully dirty fuel now. 00:18:27.312 --> 00:18:39.746 You know, It's sort of an example of the extreme reduction in the cost to build these things that you can now, talk about cost effective on big shipping ships. 00:18:40.437 --> 00:18:48.267 Factory building reactors could change the economics, but that's still a proposition to be demonstrated at commercial scale. 00:18:49.076 --> 00:18:52.767 The relevant comparison isn't just with yesterday's nuclear plants. 00:18:53.096 --> 00:18:58.287 It's with the solar storage and other options that investors can build now. 00:18:59.278 --> 00:19:05.813 And going back to the lithium, what makes lithium isotope enrichment so hard to scale? 00:19:06.958 --> 00:19:12.807 Lithium is one of the easiest isotopes to enrich, but it's still very, very hard to enrich any isotope. 00:19:12.928 --> 00:19:18.148 And the problem is isotopes are basically small variations of exactly the same atom. 00:19:18.928 --> 00:19:21.418 So what do you grab a hold of, right? 00:19:21.418 --> 00:19:22.168 I'm a chemist. 00:19:22.408 --> 00:19:25.648 What are you going to grab and pull these things apart? 00:19:25.648 --> 00:19:34.057 There's just so little difference between an atom of lithium six and an atom of lithium seven that it becomes difficult to separate. 00:19:34.158 --> 00:19:36.857 What we do is use the weight of the atom. 00:19:36.908 --> 00:19:38.948 Lithium six is lighter than lithium seven. 00:19:39.317 --> 00:19:46.488 So we just dissolve a bunch of lithium salt in water and you have those atoms in there vibrating in their little salt hydration environment. 00:19:46.847 --> 00:19:52.577 And there's a slight vibrational energy difference between a lithium six salt and a lithium seven salt. 00:19:53.178 --> 00:19:57.648 And so we then contact that with an oil layer, just the same way you'd be making salad dressing, right? 00:19:57.648 --> 00:20:01.654 You put the water or the, vinegar in there and some oil in there and you shake it up. 00:20:02.195 --> 00:20:15.164 And what happens is just based on that vibrational energy difference there is a small change in the lithium isotopes of the lithium salt that goes into the

oil out of your salt water. 00:20:15.404 --> 00:20:29.357 Very small and, and it's just that because the lithium six has a slightly smaller vibrational energy than a lithium seven that it hates being in the oil, oil layer less than the lithium seven hates to be in the oil layer. 00:20:29.597 --> 00:20:30.738 They both hate being in there. 00:20:30.857 --> 00:20:32.868 It's just lithium six hates it a little less. 00:20:33.587 --> 00:20:43.378 And we're talking about maybe a 3% difference in their reluctance to go into the oil layer, which means that, the easy thing for us is to make salt water. 00:20:43.438 --> 00:20:45.658 You just buy some salt, put it in the water, you're done. 00:20:46.087 --> 00:20:58.577 The hard thing is that we have to then do 3% changes in the isotope ratio a thousand times to go from 7.5% lithium six, which is the natural abundance of lithium, six to 90%. 00:20:59.128 --> 00:21:09.748 So it's extremely expensive in buying a thousand machines to do a thousand stages of separation between a fresh oil layer and your salt water. 00:21:09.958 --> 00:21:13.587 And that's why it's very difficult for us to do this. 00:21:13.587 --> 00:21:21.357 Now we have a magic machine that we spun out of Los Alamo's technology that is extremely efficient at doing that multi-stage separation. 00:21:21.868 --> 00:21:30.668 So a lot of other companies are actually using the same principle partitioning between salt and oil salt water and oil that we are. 00:21:30.728 --> 00:21:37.038 And they have one piece of equipment per stage, so it's very expensive for them to buy it to fill it up, to operate it. 00:21:37.428 --> 00:21:41.988 Our machine will do 400 to a thousand stages of separation in one device. 00:21:41.988 --> 00:21:43.938 So that's where we get our cost advantage. 00:21:43.938 --> 00:21:46.368 But it's plain vanilla engineering. 00:21:46.587 --> 00:21:51.357 It's, it's called an exchange is a chemical engineering purification process. 00:21:51.357 --> 00:21:52.827 It's been around for 200 years. 00:21:52.898 --> 00:21:57.488 So we took a low risk approach because we said, look, there's lots of ways of doing this. 00:21:57.488 --> 00:21:59.347 We just wanna make sure we can get it done. 00:21:59.768 --> 00:22:06.097 And we also had this magic technology from Los Alamos that made it a hundred times more efficient using this approach. 00:22:06.668 --> 00:22:12.668 There are companies that are pursuing every other conceivable approach to separating lithium ions. 00:22:12.668 --> 00:22:18.577 They, turn the lithium into a low temperature atomic gas, right? 00:22:18.577 --> 00:22:24.368 So you vaporise it in a vacuum and then you hit it with lasers to turn them into ions. 00:22:24.391 --> 00:22:27.780 Once you've got an ion in a vacuum, that's easy, right? 00:22:27.831 --> 00:22:29.361 You can just pull that apart with a magnet. 00:22:29.901 --> 00:22:31.730 So you've got companies that are doing that. 00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:38.061 You know, you could do centrifuges, you could do plasmas, you can do ions, you could do anything you want. 00:22:38.091 --> 00:22:45.611 We looked around and said of all of these different ways of enriching lithium, and again, Los Alamo's job is to know how to enrich isotopes. 00:22:45.671 --> 00:22:49.661 We said that chemical engineering solvent exchange been around for 200 years. 00:22:49.691 --> 00:22:51.191 We have a way of making it more efficient. 00:22:51.221 --> 00:22:52.361 That's what we'll choose. 00:22:52.683 --> 00:22:55.234 And what about then the idea of supply agreements? 00:22:55.234 --> 00:22:57.754 I mean, you're, you're talking to these startups. 00:22:58.094 --> 00:22:59.504 Have you got agreements in place? 00:22:59.504 --> 00:23:00.824 Are you putting agreements in place? 00:23:00.824 --> 00:23:02.144 Where are you on that kind of spectrum? 00:23:02.606 --> 00:23:06.447 We've announced two offtake agreements with Gauss Fusion and Type One Energy. 00:23:06.547 --> 00:23:11.777 And there's a third with another big fusion company in the works, and then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth after that. 00:23:12.237 --> 00:23:17.727 And these are agreements where yeah, they're, they're at, the end of the day, they're non-binding. 00:23:17.787 --> 00:23:22.817 I mean, if they don't get their fusion magic to work then they don't have to buy my lithium, of course. 00:23:22.892 --> 00:23:25.307 And, and even if they had to, they wouldn't be around. 00:23:25.307 --> 00:23:27.047 So who would I enforce it against? 00:23:27.047 --> 00:23:29.567 So these are letters of intent. 00:23:29.596 --> 00:23:34.457 What they're allowing me to do is schedule the production and just these three letters of intent. 00:23:34.917 --> 00:23:36.991 I've already exceeded my scaling capability. 00:23:37.376 --> 00:23:45.559 So, from a business problem, three of the 56 companies in Fusion has already exceeded my plans to, scale up production. 00:23:45.990 --> 00:23:48.870 That really speaks to the demand in this marketplace. 00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:56.687 But what it does for the fusion companies with whom I'm signing these agreements, it gives them a fixed price point. 00:23:56.687 --> 00:24:07.096 I'm telling them, look, you can buy enriched lithium six at 90% lithium carbonate for this amount per kilogramme by the hundreds of kilogrammes on this date. 00:24:07.497 --> 00:24:18.356 So that's giving their engineers something that they can go to and say, all right, if this is the going to be the price of one of the materials in my fusion breeder blanket, then this is how I'm gonna design my fusion breeder blanket. 00:24:19.106 --> 00:24:21.086 I did a great project with X Fusion. 00:24:21.477 --> 00:24:24.897 It was really funny because they really wanted to design their breeder blanket. 00:24:24.947 --> 00:24:26.836 They never published this, which was unfortunate. 00:24:26.836 --> 00:24:27.527 I wish they had. 00:24:27.836 --> 00:24:49.136 I gave them the price

of the lithium material they wanted in their breeder blanket, and they went back and decided that the optimum enrichment for lithium six in their breeder blanket was 29.13%, which shows you that, yeah, obviously when you know how much it's gonna cost and you can design what the optimum is for the physics and the engineering around that. 00:24:49.497 --> 00:24:53.517 The reason it was funny is that my prices were good to be like, plus or minus 20%. 00:24:53.547 --> 00:25:00.153 So I, I thought maybe they had a little too many decimal points in that, but it sort of shows where the industry is now. 00:25:00.153 --> 00:25:01.804 As they need to know what's coming. 00:25:01.804 --> 00:25:05.864 They need to know roughly what the price is gonna be and then they can design for it. 00:25:05.894 --> 00:25:09.074 You, you don't design for unobtainium, right? 00:25:09.074 --> 00:25:12.804 If you, if you can't find it if you can't buy it, you, you can't design for it. 00:25:13.104 --> 00:25:18.294 Those disagreements are a useful signal, but there's a distinction worth keeping in view. 00:25:18.953 --> 00:25:23.544 A non-binding letter of intent gives an engineer a price assumption. 00:25:23.994 --> 00:25:28.374 It's not the same as a bankable order or an operating supply chain. 00:25:29.189 --> 00:25:29.519 Sure. 00:25:29.548 --> 00:25:29.879 Sure. 00:25:29.939 --> 00:25:31.139 And what about the DOE? 00:25:31.439 --> 00:25:33.449 What are they working on at the moment in this space? 00:25:33.459 --> 00:25:37.534 Have they created specs around this and does that tell us anything about the maturity of the market? 00:25:38.226 --> 00:25:40.625 Well, the DOE is a different beast entirely. 00:25:40.676 --> 00:25:51.586 The DOE is really the only western world effort that ever enriched lithium, and they did it back in the 1950s and 1960s. 00:25:51.586 --> 00:25:58.155 They enriched 400 tonnes of lithium six which was an important component of the nuclear weapons programme. 00:25:58.885 --> 00:25:59.966 And they shut it all down. 00:26:00.066 --> 00:26:02.375 They used actually liquid, liquid extraction. 00:26:02.405 --> 00:26:05.316 Same underlying technology that we're using. 00:26:05.526 --> 00:26:09.186 One of their liquids was mercury, which did not work out well for the environment. 00:26:09.706 --> 00:26:12.152 But they shut that whole project down. 00:26:12.241 --> 00:26:19.412 They converted a fair amount of their lithium six that they enriched to tritium, which was what they needed to put into the, the weapons. 00:26:19.652 --> 00:26:22.622 And Tritium has a 12.8 year half-life. 00:26:23.011 --> 00:26:34.132 So as we've done this wonderful nuclear arms reduction with Salt One and Salt Two, they just took the tritium and they put it somewhere and they reused it on the remaining warheads when they needed to refresh it. 00:26:34.522 --> 00:26:35.751 They've run out of tritium. 00:26:35.812 --> 00:26:37.042 It's been quite a while. 00:26:37.092 --> 00:26:40.451 It started to decay to the point where they need to generate more tritium. 00:26:40.451 --> 00:26:51.322 So the US nuclear weapons complex is steadying up their own effort to start doing lithium six enrichment as well to replenish the nuclear stockpile. 00:26:51.902 --> 00:27:04.352 We very much would like to interest them in becoming a customer for the fusion folks who are producing enriched lithium in the civilian needs because that kind of a dual use makes perfect sense, right? 00:27:04.352 --> 00:27:06.588 Why, why not buy it rather than make it? 00:27:07.072 --> 00:27:11.572 The annual reports, I mean, we get to, we, we, of course, all of this is secret. 00:27:11.672 --> 00:27:16.322 My scientists and I come out of Los Alamos and we all have security clearances and that kind of a thing. 00:27:16.632 --> 00:27:22.582 But what we do is we follow this particular part of the nuclear weapons programme in their annual report to Congress. 00:27:22.672 --> 00:27:26.951 And like anything in the government they're enormously behind schedule and over budget. 00:27:27.491 --> 00:27:43.632 So, we're, we're very much hoping that, as they become aware that there is going to be a civilian market in enriching lithium six for fusion R&D, and eventually fusion commercialisation that we can get them to buy on the open market. 00:27:43.872 --> 00:27:46.152 And for me, then that becomes a third customer. 00:27:46.152 --> 00:27:50.172 Now I have the Department of Energy, the US government. 00:27:50.532 --> 00:27:54.672 I have fusion on lithium six side, and then I have fission for lithium seven. 00:27:54.981 --> 00:27:59.997 That could really be the foundation of a lithium enrichment market. 00:28:00.237 --> 00:28:04.977 They could basically make the market by being a government sector of a dual use technology. 00:28:05.366 --> 00:28:09.447 So we're, we're optimistic that we can make that case. 00:28:09.477 --> 00:28:11.667 It makes great sense at a high level. 00:28:12.217 --> 00:28:19.929 We just have to convince the people that would lose their money that, they, they should do it for the greater good. 00:28:21.068 --> 00:28:22.659 And you, I mean, you know the government, right? 00:28:22.659 --> 00:28:27.599 I mean, it's, hard to change a an activity that's moving at that speed at, at that level. 00:28:27.769 --> 00:28:34.729 So as much as it might make sense economically, there's always some government operation that's gonna lose the money that you want to take from them. 00:28:34.969 --> 00:28:37.676 So we have to address the sensitivities. 00:28:38.553 --> 00:28:38.763 Okay. 00:28:38.763 --> 00:28:43.682 And if, if governments want advanced nuclear as a future option, what should they fund now? 00:28:43.712 --> 00:28:47.313 Should they fund reactors, materials, standards, manufacturing capacity? 00:28:47.763 --> 00:28:48.692 All of the above? 00:28:49.083 --> 00:28:50.073 Something else entirely? 00:28:50.373 --> 00:28:51.451 Yeah, all of the

above. 00:28:51.451 --> 00:29:05.342 I mean, I, you, you look back at, the current generation of nuclear and putting reactors on naval ships in submarines and in aircraft carriers created the civilian nuclear reactor industry. 00:29:05.832 --> 00:29:12.403 Because they needed to enrich uranium which they did with the same technology, pushed it out into the civilian sector. 00:29:12.788 --> 00:29:15.403 They needed the materials, they needed the designs. 00:29:15.459 --> 00:29:26.528 So that's a really great example of the fact that the entire current nuclear industry and design is rooted in the fact that they wanted to put these things on, on naval vessels. 00:29:26.929 --> 00:29:29.209 The same thing is really going on now. 00:29:29.328 --> 00:29:31.068 Especially in advanced nuclear. 00:29:31.068 --> 00:29:33.499 And especially in advanced nuclear for ships. 00:29:33.499 --> 00:29:39.929 I think that there is a big need for fundamental advances in molten salts. 00:29:40.239 --> 00:29:44.499 As I said, the permitting environment has changed dramatically in this administration. 00:29:44.838 --> 00:29:49.519 It used to be that nobody thought you were gonna permit a first of a kind new reactor design. 00:29:50.119 --> 00:29:59.929 And now if you go to Tennessee, every single building site in Oak Ridge is occupied by a small modular reactor company building their first of a kind reactor. 00:29:59.929 --> 00:30:00.364 I mean, it's, it's. 00:30:01.558 --> 00:30:07.028 It's wonderful to see what can happen when, when the government aligns with the commercial drivers. 00:30:07.129 --> 00:30:10.999 So I would say that to answer your question, all of the above. 00:30:10.999 --> 00:30:25.379 I think that the, the government has a bunch of technology that they can release and they can fund a bunch of technology, especially in fusion that is going to en enable the engineering around the fusion science that's being done. 00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:32.288 For example, you have to have some knowledge of the material that you're going to build your fusion machine from. 00:30:32.558 --> 00:30:41.828 And that material has to hold up to fusion energy neutrons, which are very, very energetic neutrons compared to fission energy neutrons. 00:30:41.828 --> 00:30:46.629 Fusion energy neutrons are 14.1 million electron volts. 00:30:47.278 --> 00:30:53.338 So they fly around like bullets compared to marbles rolling across the floor, which is the, fission neutron energy. 00:30:53.769 --> 00:30:58.659 Where are you going to test your material in 14.1 MEV neutrons? 00:30:58.659 --> 00:31:00.249 There just isn't a way of doing that. 00:31:00.729 --> 00:31:04.369 So, the federal government has a really great role. 00:31:04.369 --> 00:31:08.028 Federal government loves to build big science projects like neutron generators. 00:31:08.028 --> 00:31:18.778 There's a really great role in creating the infrastructure that says, here is a flux of 14.1 MEV neutrons in some sort of neutron

accelerator. 00:31:19.169 --> 00:31:35.975 Now, the industry can use that to test their materials, which helps the government as well, because how is the government going to permit a particular material in a fusion machine if we don't know how it behaves, if we don't see how it behaves in a high flux of those neutrons. 00:31:36.302 --> 00:31:44.342 Again, this is another chicken and egg problem, is you have to have the infrastructure that can be used to develop and test materials at that level. 00:31:44.552 --> 00:31:47.852 I would love the government to fund lots and lots of work on lithium enrichment. 00:31:48.842 --> 00:31:51.961 Trust me, I'm more than happy to be self-serving about this. 00:31:52.182 --> 00:31:55.892 There's all sorts of other areas where they need to chip in. 00:31:55.892 --> 00:32:07.006 And especially with fusion there's a lot of infrastructure that can be enabled by government investing in R&D infrastructure and government participating in the R&D. 00:32:07.899 --> 00:32:09.939 There's a wider policy point here. 00:32:10.719 --> 00:32:16.239 Governments don't have to predict the winning fusion design to make useful investments. 00:32:16.808 --> 00:32:26.422 Shared testing facilities and materials capacity could advance several competing approaches before the market decides which ones scale. 00:32:27.240 --> 00:32:31.904 And where does all this go over the next five to 10 years if things work out? 00:32:33.575 --> 00:32:42.855 In five to 10 years, most of the major fusion development efforts will have achieved generating neutrons. 00:32:42.914 --> 00:32:46.545 So everybody now is building. 00:32:46.798 --> 00:32:49.587 The ones that are building are building their first of a kind. 00:32:49.587 --> 00:32:57.555 So Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building arc in Massachusetts and, and Type One Energy is in Virginia building their first prototypes. 00:32:57.555 --> 00:32:59.445 And these are, these are the first prototypes. 00:32:59.445 --> 00:33:07.495 It's, it's how can they get their physics of squeezing these atoms together demonstrated, learn how to use them, that kind of a thing. 00:33:07.495 --> 00:33:17.065 And the next five to 10 years, we're going to see half a dozen to a dozen of those efforts actually generate neutrons. 00:33:17.305 --> 00:33:25.105 And that's gonna be where the rubber meets the road in down selecting which technology is going to be the winner in fusion. 00:33:25.654 --> 00:33:35.045 Because you're going to have to not only achieve the pressures necessary, but you're gonna have to do it in a way that's a device that could be produced commercially and scaled up. 00:33:35.384 --> 00:33:40.705 And in five to 10 years they're going to be building, their second of a kind. 00:33:40.955 --> 00:33:42.575 They're full scale prototypes. 00:33:43.558 --> 00:33:47.818 So I would say that we're gonna go from 60 fusion efforts down to 12. 00:33:48.308 --> 00:33:52.578 And it will be a technical sort whose squeezy technology works. 00:33:52.989 --> 00:33:55.239 And some of the ideas are fantastic. 00:33:55.308 --> 00:33:56.479 I'd love to see them work. 00:33:56.689 --> 00:33:58.338 I, again, back to my roots as a scientist. 00:33:58.338 --> 00:33:59.629 Bright, shiny, new physics. 00:33:59.629 --> 00:34:00.469 It's really cool. 00:34:00.798 --> 00:34:07.278 And some of the down select is gonna be economic who can raise the money to build a prototype fusion reactor. 00:34:07.278 --> 00:34:08.328 Those things aren't cheap. 00:34:08.328 --> 00:34:19.759 I mean, I, I just got back from touring the Commonwealth site and I'm a businessman and I've been doing startups for 30 years, and it's jaw dropping how much money they've invested in stainless steel. 00:34:20.028 --> 00:34:26.898 I mean, the fusion, the Commonwealth alone has raised $3 billion and you can see it, right? 00:34:27.114 --> 00:34:30.259 It's, it's bright, shiny, stainless steel all over that place. 00:34:30.308 --> 00:34:37.759 There's just not enough money in the world for 60 companies to raise $3 billion each to build their prototype reactors. 00:34:37.759 --> 00:34:42.688 So there's going to be a down select economically who can raise the money to move their physics forward. 00:34:42.809 --> 00:34:45.749 And there'll be a physics down select whose physics works. 00:34:45.849 --> 00:34:49.719 In the meantime, everybody has a role to play, right? 00:34:49.719 --> 00:34:58.009 You have to have high temperature superconducting tape to make the magnets that are gonna be used at any, well, in most physics situations. 00:34:58.438 --> 00:35:00.719 They all have to have lithium, right? 00:35:00.719 --> 00:35:06.378 Unless you're planning to mine helium three on the moon, which is some physics is actually deuterium helium three. 00:35:06.378 --> 00:35:07.068 And that's great. 00:35:07.128 --> 00:35:09.650 I mean, they wouldn't need lithium, which would be tragic for me. 00:35:10.019 --> 00:35:13.259 They're gonna go get their fuel by, mining helium three off the moon. 00:35:13.358 --> 00:35:16.869 I'd be happy to have that business model too, as long as I get to come back from the moon. 00:35:17.438 --> 00:35:19.239 But they'll, there'll be a down select. 00:35:19.289 --> 00:35:27.128 And all of the technology that's now being diffused into 60 efforts will be consolidated as well because it's, it's all enabling. 00:35:27.338 --> 00:35:28.688 So they're not wasting their money. 00:35:29.106 --> 00:35:31.773 There'll be mergers and technology acquisitions along the way. 00:35:32.717 --> 00:35:41.568 And after listening to this conversation, what should people hear differently when a company says, advanced nuclear is nearly ready? 00:35:43.499 --> 00:35:46.378 Well, advanced nuclear fission is nearly ready. 00:35:46.539 --> 00:35:55.148 You've got companies, in fact, there's two companies, Kairos Atomics down in Albuquerque, just south of me, and Copenhagen Atomics naturally in Denmark.

00:35:55.449 --> 00:36:05.679 They're moving so fast that they decided they needed to enrich their own lithium seven because they're in a hurry to generate neutrons and they are generating neutrons this year, both of them. 00:36:06.188 --> 00:36:13.882 So if somebody hears that, what they should be really hearing is really, it's happening this time, right? 00:36:13.882 --> 00:36:17.422 I mean, this is, this is, for the last time it's five years away. 00:36:17.642 --> 00:36:22.291 You have companies who are standing up prototypes who are generating neutrons. 00:36:22.402 --> 00:36:29.392 A lot of it is technology that was developed in the sixties by the federal government that's being taken, that had a mothball is dusted up, modernised. 00:36:29.811 --> 00:36:32.782 It's going to happen, and the business model supports it. 00:36:33.262 --> 00:36:35.121 The public perception supports it. 00:36:35.452 --> 00:36:39.682 The drive for economic security and energy security supports it. 00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:43.175 Everything is now aligning on advanced nuclear. 00:36:43.686 --> 00:36:46.086 And fusion is real, right? 00:36:46.090 --> 00:36:51.005 We, we've now seen unambiguously that you can get more energy out than you put in. 00:36:51.365 --> 00:36:59.775 And now it's a question of, not will it work, but how can you make it work to, at the end of the day, as an entrepreneur, how can you make it, make money? 00:37:00.434 --> 00:37:02.684 There's a distinction I think matters here. 00:37:03.405 --> 00:37:12.615 A fusion experiment producing a promising energy result is not the same as a power plant delivering dependable electricity at a competitive cost. 00:37:13.335 --> 00:37:17.445 That's still a significant engineering and commercial hurdle. 00:37:18.181 --> 00:37:20.130 Mm. Okay. 00:37:20.820 --> 00:37:22.681 And a left field. 00:37:22.681 --> 00:37:23.521 Question for you, John. 00:37:24.510 --> 00:37:40.255 If you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for the hidden supply chains behind advanced nuclear, who would it be and why? 00:37:41.134 --> 00:37:43.333 So I love the question. 00:37:43.394 --> 00:37:49.094 I'm a private pilot for fun, and Kelly Johnson is a hero in aviation. 00:37:49.153 --> 00:37:59.153 He's the fellow that ran the Lockheed Skunk works that designed the SR 71 Blackbird, the ultra secret spy plane that we, we needed back in the Cold War. 00:37:59.604 --> 00:38:01.764 And your question was secret supply chain. 00:38:01.864 --> 00:38:12.996 And there's a great story about the Blackbird is, when they designed it they knew it was gonna be moving so fast that even at the cruise altitudes, the skin of that aeroplane was gonna be 900 degrees Celsius. 00:38:12.996 --> 00:38:16.367 And there's just, how do you build an aeroplane that doesn't melt? 00:38:16.416 --> 00:38:19.807 So the, the answer was you make the skin of the aeroplane out of titanium. 00:38:20.849 --> 00:38:29.818 Alright,

well now there's a supply chain problem because the only titanium mines in the world were in Russia in the Soviet Union. 00:38:29.969 --> 00:38:35.458 So we needed titanium to build a spy plane from Russia so that we could go spy on Russia. 00:38:36.059 --> 00:38:44.789 So they created this entire mock industry of nuts and bolts and, and titanium parts in the United States. 00:38:45.208 --> 00:39:07.479 And they bought a whole bunch of all, all of these CIA controlled companies, went out and bought all of this titanium from Russia to make these nuts and bolts, even made the nuts and bolts out of titanium, shipped the titanium parts from Russia to the United States where they promptly melted it all down and put it into the skins of the aeroplanes And it was just a, a complete subterfuge. 00:39:07.479 --> 00:39:10.579 There was no titanium civilian industry. 00:39:10.579 --> 00:39:16.519 It was just an artifice to get the titanium out of Russia so that we could build planes that would go back and fly over Russia. 00:39:17.112 --> 00:39:17.382 Wow. 00:39:17.389 --> 00:39:19.039 but it was really an example. 00:39:19.159 --> 00:39:25.499 And, but now of course you can buy titanium nuts and bolts for your parts that are nice, lightweight and high heat resistant. 00:39:25.499 --> 00:39:35.105 So, so they created deliberately a domestic supply chain that they could leverage with this huge subterfuge of, building the SR 71s. 00:39:35.509 --> 00:39:54.311 And that I think is, I, I don't think we should do it with the subterfuge, but that I think is, is really where we need to be in the government right now, is to say, we really need to create a dual use supply chain in fusion so that we can use this high energy physics that the government mastered a long time ago. 00:39:54.769 --> 00:39:58.909 We invented fusion over in, Los Alamos across the, river from me. 00:39:59.309 --> 00:40:07.548 That expertise needs to diffuse out into the commercial sector and the supply chains need to diffuse out into the commercial sector because that's the limitation. 00:40:07.746 --> 00:40:12.905 There weren't very many people in the world that knew how to do fusion and we watched them very carefully. 00:40:13.311 --> 00:40:24.981 What a great legacy for the nuclear weapons complex to take this physics that they figured out as weapons and turn it into, the ultimate final power source for mankind. 00:40:25.512 --> 00:40:27.642 And they don't even have to steal it from the Russians. 00:40:30.478 --> 00:40:32.458 John, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. 00:40:32.458 --> 00:40:40.052 Is there any question that I didn't ask that you wish I did or aspect of this we haven't covered that you think it's important for people to be aware of? 00:40:41.362 --> 00:40:43.382 No, I think you, you very well covered it. 00:40:43.412 --> 00:40:57.422 I think the, the take home point is there's incredibly exciting things going on in the physics of advanced nuclear in the physics of fusion, but none of this will ever get in to the grid. 00:40:57.662 --> 00:41:05.702 None of it will ever do any good unless there's a supply chain so that they can take their really cool new physics tricks and build power plants. 00:41:05.912 --> 00:41:10.742 And the supply chains have to have unique materials that haven't been produced at commercial scale before. 00:41:11.142 --> 00:41:12.342 Lithium is one of them. 00:41:12.392 --> 00:41:13.501 There's plenty of others. 00:41:13.561 --> 00:41:15.811 These are the picks and shovels of the gold rush. 00:41:15.942 --> 00:41:21.882 And not only are they a great business model, but they have to be there. 00:41:22.066 --> 00:41:24.376 You can't do these things. 00:41:24.436 --> 00:41:37.066 You can't reduce these great shiny new science tricks to generating power to run your toaster and turn on your lights unless you have this supply chain in place in time to make this happen. 00:41:38.347 --> 00:41:39.711 Sure, John, that's been fascinating. 00:41:39.722 --> 00:41:46.483 If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? 00:41:47.246 --> 00:41:47.996 Our website. 00:41:48.056 --> 00:41:51.762 Info at Molten Salt Solutions Elling at Molten Salt Solutions. 00:41:52.389 --> 00:41:54.309 It's kind of, kind of hard to ignore me, actually. 00:41:54.309 --> 00:41:56.920 I'm on podcasts, I go to conference talks. 00:41:57.030 --> 00:41:58.590 Better question is, how can they get rid of me? 00:41:59.730 --> 00:42:02.920 But yeah, finding me on social media should be fairly easy. 00:42:03.460 --> 00:42:04.240 And I love to talk. 00:42:04.240 --> 00:42:11.579 I mean, I'm very excited about just the, the whole transition in humankind all the way down to what my company is doing. 00:42:12.585 --> 00:42:13.559 I, I really love it. 00:42:14.349 --> 00:42:14.769 Fantastic. 00:42:14.769 --> 00:42:15.429 John, that's been great. 00:42:15.458 --> 00:42:17.139 Thanks a million for coming in the podcast today. 00:42:17.755 --> 00:42:18.326 Thank you so much.