[chuckles]

Uh, not too much.

Uh, you know, I've been doing nuclear-- well, thinking about it since twenty sixteen, but I founded Radiant in twenty nineteen, and then for a year just learned how to do reactor design and then raised money in twenty twenty.

And just I, I never founded a company before, never intended to really do that, and I kinda slow-rolled into it.

I could have tried to go much faster, um, but I've stayed totally committed to just building.

And actually, the, the funny thing is like in twenty twenty, in tw-- I said in twenty twenty-six I will put a full-scale reactor and, and get it critical and get it up to full power.

Um, and we're on schedule to do that, which is kinda wild.

So w- what is the milestone or, or the KPI or what would need to be true for us to say we as a country, you know, the nuclear industry is here and flourishing?

... you know.

I, uh, I mean, possibly.

I, the thing is that I don't, I don't need to sell a huge number of these and make them go everywhere.

It's really for people who, who need it, who wanna have a hospital that when the grid goes out, they don't have a room filled with 12 diesel generators that they're gonna just pump a bunch of exhaust fumes out into the environment with.

This is, this is a way to do power.

And, you know, all of the nuclear material, all the uranium, we didn't make it.

It's all here.

I think people have to understand what's going on.

Are you-- Does that worry you at all, like [laughing]?

Uh, not too much.

Uh, you know, I've been doing nuclear, well, thinking about it since twenty sixteen, but I founded Radiant in twenty nineteen and then for a year just learned how to do reactor design and then raised money in twenty twenty.

And just I, I'd never founded a company before, never intended to really do that, and I kind of slow-rolled into it.

I could have tried to go much faster, um, but I've stayed totally committed to just building.

And actually, the, the funny thing is like in twenty twenty, in tw-- I said in twenty twenty-six I will put a full-scale reactor and, and get it critical and get it up to full power.

Um, and we're on schedule to do that, which is kind of wild.

So what is the milestone or, or the KPI, or what would need to be true for us to say we as a country, you know, the nuclear industry is here and flourishing?

Mm

... because it's just such a different thing to be able to go, "You know, I can have clean power," and you can, and, and we go, "Yeah." And they go, uh, "I can have it next week?" "Yes." Uh, and they go, "And it, it can get sent away anytime?" "Yep, anytime you want."

But now it's higher, higher, higher.

But I would just go and talk to whoever I needed and cr- across every line possible, and there...

I didn't use the right channels of communication.

I just pulled all the assets, and I'm, "I'm building a thing.

I'm building a thing, and I'm ignoring everything else."

Mm-hmm.

Uh, of course, energy is critical, uh, and we're all building off of those marvels of the past and the technology that's developed, even just the ideas, uh, and those people who are willing to, you know, take their, make their life and their life's work about something so important, uh, as, you know, clean, um, safe energy, and access to energy for all of humanity.

Yeah.

Um, which is grid power.

Uh, but it's f- it's so different from what we're doing, uh, and I, I don't know.

Uh, if...

It seems like America might be ahead, might be first in the area we're in, which is these one megawatt, right, systems.

They're real tiny and portable stuff.

So give us a bit of color on how you came to work on this giant idea, your background, your story, and what this giant idea is to you.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

So, yeah, how did I come to be working on nuclear reactors that you can mass produce in a little box? So I was a SpaceX employee for about 12 years, electrical engineer.

I joined when they had two rockets that had failed and they had no successful ones.

And I thought it was just a great opportunity, great company, something very cool to work on just to completely remake rocketry, essentially.

It wasn't working yet, but I didn't need that part.

So I came there to make that happen.

listeners, some context, there has not been a new nuclear reactor design approved for 50 years.

(laughs)

It is sort of lore.

It is sort of lore for the new reactors, but there definitely are staff who are there...

Who, you know, there are f- uh, uh, the advanced test reactor, the ATR reactors where they test all the navy fuel, that's been operational for a very long time.

You can go tour it today, still operating.

So there are definitely, uh, staff there who are very familiar with reactor operations and refueling.

They also have a transient pulse test reactor, uh, which is pretty amazing.

Of course.