Deep Isolation, Inc.

Back in the US and increasingly focused on climate change, Liz co-founded the nonprofit Berkeley Earth with her dad to bring transparent data to the global warming debate.

Then in 2015, the two of them founded Deep Isolation, borrowing directional drilling technology from the oil and gas industry to tackle a problem the nuclear industry had left untouched for 50 years: what to actually do with spent nuclear waste.

Deep Fission began as a question about what would happen if fresh fuel, not waste, were ever lowered into one of the Deep Isolation boreholes by mistake.

In modeling a response to that question, Liz and her dad discovered that there were actually efficiencies to placing a nuclear reactor a mile underground.

The pressure and containment provided by the Earth itself and the water below could save enormous amounts of money by removing the need to build similar systems above ground.

Yes.

Yeah.

So in 2015, you co-found your first nuclear startup, Deep Isolation, with your dad, who becomes CTO, to solve a problem that the nuclear industry had left unresolved for the last 50 years, which is what to do with spent nuclear fuel.