The Private Company Bringing Nuclear Enrichment Back to America (Scott Nolan, CEO of General Matter)

Speaker A: If you think about all economic activity, any major strategic thing the US is trying to do or any country is trying to do, it ultimately gets back to energy. And we think that the way that energy is going to grow in the decades ahead is nuclear. It is the cleanest, safest form of baseload. It just hasn't been the cheapest. And so we want to make it the cheapest. The US is the first to develop enrichment during World War II, obviously. And during the Cold War, we were doing a tremendous amount of enrichment.

We were something like 86% of worldwide enrichment capacity. Now we're really in last place. And so we're trying to restore that on US soil this decade. The Biden administration set a goal of tripling nuclear by 2050. They made international commitments for that. And then Trump administration increased that to quadruple to 4x by 2050. And so this is a completely bipartisan thing that nuclear is going to grow 3 to 4x in the coming decades. So that now puts it at a $10 billion market in the US alone. China and Russia are now really the providers of something like 70% of new reactors built internationally, and that the US has lost a lot of influence over this area despite having great reactor designs.

We haven't been deploying them, we haven't been able to fuel them. And so Russia and China contracts often come in very long fuel relationships that we've been unable to compete with. So it was really this wake-up call for the industry of, hey, we need to move faster, we need to do things differently. Speaker B: Scott Nolan spent a year looking for an American nuclear enrichment company to invest in at Founders Fund. He could not find a single one. Concerned by America's dependence on adversaries like Russia, And certain that enrichment would only become more essential as demand for energy rises, Scott decided to found a company of his own, General Matter.

Now, less than a year after its unveiling, and General Matter has already closed on a facility in Paducah, Kentucky, and was recently awarded a $900 million contract from the Department of Energy. Speaker B: Scott Nolan spent a year looking for an American nuclear enrichment company to invest in at Founders Fund. He could not find a single one. Concerned by America's dependence on adversaries like Russia, And certain that enrichment would only become more essential as demand for energy rises, Scott decided to found a company of his own, General Matter. Now, less than a year after its unveiling, and General Matter has already closed on a facility in Paducah, Kentucky, and was recently awarded a $900 million contract from the Department of Energy.

Speaker C: These are just the first steps. Speaker B: Of what Scott hopes will become the dominant American enrichment company built to power the next century. In today's conversation, we discuss how nuclear enrichment works and why it matters. The parallels between General Matter and Scott's former employer, SpaceX. Lessons learned from Peter Thiel and the future of energy in the age of AI. I'm Mario and this is The Generalist. Well, Scott, uh, I have been super looking forward to this for a long time. One, because I really enjoyed getting to know you through the Founders Fund series and, and thought you'd had such an interesting history.

And then when you took the wraps off of General Matter, it was clear that you were going to build one of the most ambitious, uh, companies of hopefully the next, you know, 50 years or, or beyond. So I'm, I'm super excited to talk nuclear enrichment. And, uh, you know, all things related to Energy Today. Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for having me on. Excited to be here. And as you said, last time we talked, I think we were deep in stealth building, building the company. Didn't mention anything about it, but, um, we've been at this for over 2 years at this point and just came out of stealth in April of last year.

So excited to share a lot more. Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited to maybe set some of the big picture for people up front so that you know, we can sort of understand why this is, is so important. To start with, I think it's worth sort of noting that I think what you're doing is, is maybe a, a first ever to build a venture-backed American nuclear enrichment facility. Is that, is that fair to say? Speaker A: That's right. So, so big picture on what we're doing, we are, uh, the American enrichment company enriching using American technology here in the

S. and specifically a focus on uranium for nuclear energy. And so like you said, we're, we will be the first, uh, private company to develop technology to enrich uranium in the US and to bring a commercial facility online. Um, we can talk more about that facility later, but we do think this is one of the most important things we could possibly be working on. If you think about all economic activity, any major strategic thing the US is trying to do or any country is trying to do, it ultimately gets back to energy.

Energy is upstream of all economic activity. And we think that the way that energy is going to grow in the decades ahead is nuclear. It's— it is the cleanest, safest form of baseload. It just hasn't been the cheapest. And so we want to make it the cheapest. And so if nuclear is the way that things grow, that that energy grows in the US and abroad, fuel is a necessary input for that. So if fuel is upstream of energy and the one missing step in the fuel supply chain for nuclear, is enrichment.

And so we are bringing enrichment capability back to the US where the US used to be the leader. Now we're really in last place. And so we're trying to, you know, restore that on US soil this decade. So that's the big picture of what we're working on. And we always just say, you know, enrichment's upstream of fuel, fuel's upstream of energy, energy's upstream of everything else. So we think this is one of the most fundamental capabilities we need to bring back to the US. Speaker B: You know, in researching this episode, the history piece that you alluded to there was so interesting to me that America really was the, you know, obviously the leader in sort of nuclear technology in general, but then also in enrichment for a really long period of time until it did sort of slip back into the last place.

And so you're sort of revitalizing something that was once a core competency that has really degraded massively over the past couple of decades. Speaker A: That's right. That's right. The S. is the first to develop enrichment during World War II, obviously, and then quickly used that for nuclear energy. And during the Cold War, we were doing a tremendous amount of enrichment. We were something like 86% of worldwide enrichment capacity. That was through a combination of different sites in the, you know, Paducah, Kentucky, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Portsmouth, Ohio. And the

S. was by far the leader. And then with the fall of the, you know, Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, we started offshoring that and shutting down our own capability to let foreign allies and now foreign adversaries do that for us. It seemed to make economic sense, but I think strategically it was a mistake. And now we're seeing that with the growth of nuclear, we really need it back. And so that's, that's what we're trying to do. Speaker B: We'll get more into the weeds on this, I'm sure.

And and also into this next question. But for folks just to sort of give themselves a rough sense in their heads, I'm sure many people will know about it, but what is the right way to think about like what enrichment fundamentally is doing and why that's so important? Speaker B: We'll get more into the weeds on this, I'm sure. And and also into this next question. But for folks just to sort of give themselves a rough sense in their heads, I'm sure many people will know about it, but what is the right way to think about like what enrichment fundamentally is doing and why that's so important?

Speaker A: To make nuclear fuel, there's really 5 steps. The first one is that you need to get uranium out of the ground. So that's mining. Mining and milling is what that's referred to as. You then take that mined product and you convert it into a gas. That's a conversion step, step 2. Step 3 is enrichment, where you're really just separating that gas. And then you turn it back into a solid in a deconversion step. And then finally, you do fuel fabrication to get your fuel pellet type. And there's a range of different pellet types.

The enrichment step is really, you know, it's, it's really a refining step. It's a separation step. There are no chemical reactions involved. There's even no nuclear reactions involved. So it's really, it's really refining, the refining process, separation process, uh, completely inert process working with chemicals to, to separate different isotopes of uranium. And so the isotope that, that we want, that reactors need to, to conduct fission is U-235. And so we want to separate out the others, primarily U-238, which does not aid in the fission reaction. And so, uh, you know, if you're talking about reactors that most people are familiar with, the classic light water reactor with the cooling towers, those run on, on, on uranium that's enriched to about 3 to 5% U-235.

Out of the ground, it's only at 0.7%. So we need to get that, that level of U-235 up, which is where the refining comes in. And then if we're talking about modern reactors, SMRs, small modular reactors, typically they're going to want to use something called HALEU, which is enriched to just under 20%. And we can talk about why that is, but what we're trying to fundamentally do is take something that comes out of the ground at 0.7% U-235 and refine it or enrich it up to either 3 to 5% or 19.75%.

Speaker B: For someone who wasn't familiar with your background and maybe wasn't familiar with Founders Fund, it would sound extremely strange that a venture investor after, you know, 13 years of investing in great companies would say, you know, I'm the right person to bring nuclear enrichment back to America. But if people do know the story of your firm and your background, it really starts to make a lot of sense in many ways. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about that and hear from you where the parallels are in your own story and maybe even just beginning at the beginning, uh, which is, you know, as I recall you telling me, uh, in, in interviewing you for the Founders Fund series, you really were the sort of kid who was just constantly tinkering with things and building rockets and, uh, deeply interested in sort of engineering to the extent that kids, you know, can, can show that proclivity.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that, that was always an interest of mine and it first showed up in, in rockets, as you mentioned, and You know, did rockets all throughout high school and, and, and college and designed them and built them, which led to me working at SpaceX right outta school. And, you know, if you think back to 2002, working on a private space company was not something a lot of people were thinking about. It was, it was kind of a weird, unusual thing. And I think I joined in 2003, and I think Elon was thinking about the company in 2001, 2002, and a lot of people told him, don't do it.

That's a, a really weird thing to be excited about. In the midst of this, you know, internet era, even com. And so SpaceX was, was maybe something that was off people's radar at that point, but there was a lot of thematic overlap where the, the goal of that company was to bring back, you know, US capability and space launch to make it competitive. And by reducing the cost and increasing reliability, you know, make there be a lot more activity in space. And so, um, I was extremely aligned with that coming outta college.

Had worked on rockets for years. It was, it was the thing that I really wanted to do, even though a lot of people questioned it. And then obviously we see the benefits of now of having the US in the lead on space launch where the US is doing something like 90% of mass to orbit. Um, and with China as, as number 2. And if, if we had never done that, we'd be looking to China for all our, our space launch capability. That would be a bad situation. So, so I, yeah, started my career in space.

You know, then went to Founders Fund. I think that might've looked also like a non sequitur in a lot of ways, but I think the piece that was, that was the same for, for both of those was, was this framework of what you, what should you work on? And the framework I, I kind of found that I think Peter at Founders Fund did a great job of articulating a few years back was this, these three criteria. Where the criteria are basically, you know, what is something important that is otherwise not going to happen that you are uniquely capable of working on?

You know, early in my career, that was, that was space. I had, you know, master's in aerospace engineering, very obvious to go work in space. I thought space was important. I thought it was something that really no one else was working on besides SpaceX, not in, not in the proper way, and that I could contribute to uniquely. And then after SpaceX, you know, went to, went to Founders Fund and at Founders Fund, we have to remember, like, go back to 2010, there wasn't a ton of interest in engineering-driven companies at that point.

You know, with my background in engineering, plus some business experience that I'd gotten in, in a couple of years prior, it seemed like that combination would satisfy the formula too, where it would be, okay, what's something important funding engineering-driven companies that's maybe otherwise not going to happen the right way. And I think at that point, if you were an engineering-driven company, most VCs would want to go find a business person to be the founder, to be the CEO. So a lot of replacement of CEOs in those days. And then we're, you know, where the skills could uniquely line up and the combination of engineering and business background felt like that was right.

And Founders Fund was doing something that no one else was doing at that point. And so, so yeah, 12 years of trying to back the right companies, uh, full-time at Founders Fund. And then now, um, General Matter where same exact formula, you know, spent, spent over a year looking at the space, realized that nobody else was really doing a commercially driven US enrichment capability. Nobody was trying to bring the cost down dramatically to get more nuclear. It felt like if we didn't do it, nobody would. And that this was extremely important for the reasons we mentioned earlier, you know, being upstream of nuclear, being upstream of all energy growth.

And then finally, you know, oddly, I felt like my background was really pretty ideal for this, where while I was looking around for, you know, a team that we could maybe assemble to go do this and then realized that I should, I should be the one to lead it. And that was just given a lot, you know, long background in engineering. A lot of which would be relevant to the, you know, the, the business and the technology that we would develop. Um, some business background and ability to get US clearance, which I'd had before prior to SpaceX and the ability to raise capital for what would be a pretty capital-intensive, uh, project.

So, you know, very different area than aerospace, very different area than venture capital, but felt like it satisfied the 3 criteria. Speaker B: Going back to, to SpaceX in, in 2002, 2003, I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I think you maybe have mentioned before that it was somewhere around 30 people at the time. Is that, is that right? Speaker A: When I was an intern, it was 30-something, and then I, you know, wrapped up school for 6 months and came back and it was maybe 50-something. So still early days.

I think, I think a lot of people think 50 people is a big company, and I probably thought that at some point in my career, but I now realize how, how early that was. Speaker B: You know, I think we've. Probably many, many people who are obsessed with technology and, and company building know sort of some of the, the pieces of the SpaceX story, or at least what's, you know, the, the public version of it. But even thinking about the intangibles, I imagine there was a really clear energy to that group of people and a really clear sense of mission that, you know, couldn't have been stronger in many ways at that early stage, pre any proof when you're in the midst of failed launches.

Are there certain things that you've taken from those days in particular and tried to sort of breed into the General Matter culture or certain, you know, almost granular or really tactical practices that, you know, you took from those days picking a really ambitious project and saying, you know, this is how we sort of march towards it bit by bit at the cadence that we need to, uh, knowing that, you know, this is maybe a far, far off goal, but we need to make progress towards it? Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think we could go into a lot of different lessons learned from SpaceX and a lot of heuristics, rules of thumb, you know, the algorithm, all those things that a lot of people have talked about.

And we can talk about those. I, I think the most important thing was that at SpaceX, we were just trying to solve a very specific mission, reduce the cost of launch. And yes, this would have all these huge downstream implications, like the ability to you know, develop Mars at some point, the ability to get something like Starlink, um, just much more activity in space, commercializing space. On a day-to-day basis, most people didn't really think about that. We didn't really focus on that. The real focus day-to-day was just what, whatever was immediately in front of us, what technical challenge did we have to overcome to achieve the mission of reducing the cost of launch?

And so everything was hyper-focused on that. We had one metric, it was dollars per, per kilo into low Earth orbit. How do we solve that? And so I think the big thing was that we had a very clear mission and everyone believed that the mission was really important. And then the reality is that on a day-to-day basis, you just focus on the details and execution. And so I think that's, you know, that's something that we have at General Matter also. So everyone knows why we're doing this. We know that there's this complete lack of US enrichment, which means that the US can't produce its own fuel for its own reactors, which are about 20% of the grid, and can't produce any of the fuel for advanced reactors, which is the future of nuclear.

And so we know that this is really important. We do have a very clear metric. The clear metric is the price of enrichment. Let's just focus on dropping the price of enrichment. There's a lot of ways to do that. While maintaining safety and reliability or increasing them. And we can talk about why those things are not at odds. And then on a day-to-day basis, we're focusing on, on the details of execution. And so, you know, I, I think both have this parallel of pick a really important mission, align the team around how to solve that mission, and then everybody just kind of gets to work.

And, and then there's a lot of ways in the day-to-day that, that we try to do that effectively. Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think we could go into a lot of different lessons learned from SpaceX and a lot of heuristics, rules of thumb, you know, the algorithm, all those things that a lot of people have talked about. And we can talk about those. I, I think the most important thing was that at SpaceX, we were just trying to solve a very specific mission, reduce the cost of launch. And yes, this would have all these huge downstream implications, like the ability to you know, develop Mars at some point, the ability to get something like Starlink, um, just much more activity in space, commercializing space.

On a day-to-day basis, most people didn't really think about that. We didn't really focus on that. The real focus day-to-day was just what, whatever was immediately in front of us, what technical challenge did we have to overcome to achieve the mission of reducing the cost of launch? And so everything was hyper-focused on that. We had one metric, it was dollars per, per kilo into low Earth orbit. How do we solve that? And so I think the big thing was that we had a very clear mission and everyone believed that the mission was really important.

And then the reality is that on a day-to-day basis, you just focus on the details and execution. And so I think that's, you know, that's something that we have at General Matter also. So everyone knows why we're doing this. We know that there's this complete lack of US enrichment, which means that the US can't produce its own fuel for its own reactors, which are about 20% of the grid, and can't produce any of the fuel for advanced reactors, which is the future of nuclear. And so we know that this is really important.

We do have a very clear metric. The clear metric is the price of enrichment. Let's just focus on dropping the price of enrichment. There's a lot of ways to do that. While maintaining safety and reliability or increasing them. And we can talk about why those things are not at odds. And then on a day-to-day basis, we're focusing on, on the details of execution. And so, you know, I, I think both have this parallel of pick a really important mission, align the team around how to solve that mission, and then everybody just kind of gets to work.

And, and then there's a lot of ways in the day-to-day that, that we try to do that effectively. Speaker B: During the, you know, decade plus you spent at Founders Fund, you've obviously worked with some other amazing company builders, you know, someone who was on the podcast before, Trey Stevens, you know, has built an amazing business with Andriel, obviously Peter Thiel, uh, and, and many others that you've invested in. When you sort of reflect back on the person you were when you joined the fund and the person who started General Matter, what did you notice were sort of maybe the biggest shifts in your own thinking, your own sort of model for how to address these kinds of problems?

Like, I imagine you were, you must have been already a highly ambitious person to work at SpaceX, but perhaps there were even some augmentations to that or shifts to it. Speaker A: Yeah, when I started Founders Fund in 2011, I did have that SpaceX experience behind me. I had, you know, I'd been, been part of what would become one of the most important companies and got to see how that was built from the very beginning. I think when I began at Founders Fund, a natural focus was to focus on early stage, probably the first few years I was there.

You know, it seemed as though the right answer was to just work with a lot of companies to let them get off the ground, to fund their initial development, and to have a reasonable number of shots on goal in the VC. Framing. And the idea was that if maybe if you got involved early and had insight about the technology and realized that there was a real opportunity, you could, you know, you could do better as an investor by being in earlier and getting rewarded for that early insight. You know, towards the end of the 2010s, at, by that point, I think I'd realized that it's better to concentrate.

So it's instead of having a lot of bets, with early stage companies where there's so much execution, there's so, there's so much that still has to happen beyond the initial insight. It can be better to just work very closely with the team that you really believe in and just fully concentrate all of your time and energy into a tiny handful of efforts. And so really by the end of the 2010s, early 2020s, I had pivoted that strategy of working with a lot of different companies that were all working on really interesting, important things, but being spread kind of thin across them and not concentrating capital into any of them to the extent that we might want to, to taking an approach of working really deeply with companies that I thought were underappreciated and doing something huge.

So it went from this idea of early concepts, early technologies being the interesting thing. To these really, really huge missions being the much more important thing. And so some of the, you know, some of the really larger investments post-2020 were The Boring Company, Neuralink, a handful of others. Prior to that, really, I think around 2018, a company called Nubank down in Brazil that was doing something really important around fintech. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: So it was, I think that was the primary evolution over over about a decade was, you know, interesting ideas, interesting technologies, compelling, compelling technologists to then really just focusing on companies that were executing against a really huge mission and try to put all the energy there.

Speaker B: You mentioned that, you know, you spent a year looking for, you know, the, the nuclear enrichment company that you then went on to build. To take it even a step, you know, back in, in this sort of process that brings us to General Matter. When did this sort of even appear on your radar as something worth thinking about, a problem that needed to be solved, you know, in some dynamic that at least even opened your aperture for it? Speaker A: Founders Fund had always been, you know, interested in nuclear.

We'd done a few nuclear investments over the decade prior. And I think it's one of these, one of these retro technologies. You know, if you think back to the '50s and Founders Fund's tagline for a while was, uh, we wanted flying cars, we got 140 characters. And yes, you know, the flying car thing was really something from the '50s when people believed that technology would make their lives much better. And if you think back to that era, the two really exciting sectors that people thought about were space and nuclear. Those were really the, the two primary ones.

There may have been things around agriculture and nutrition and longevity. But from a pure hardware technology standpoint, it was, it was energy in space and it was nuclear in space. And SpaceX did the first one and Founders Fund first invested in 2008. And then from about 2011 onward, we'd been looking really closely at nuclear. Uh, we'd invested in a couple companies. Uh, we'd been tracking the space over the time. I probably met almost every nuclear founder that passed through Silicon Valley. And it was an area I always thought was this huge promising area that just had not lived up to its potential.

You know, you, you fast forward over that decade to 2022 and Founders Fund had, had been talking for a couple years with a company called Radiant. And Radiant was making an SMR, small modular reactor, micro reactor that fit in a shipping container and made about a megawatt of electricity. Wow. And what Radiant told us was something we'd heard before, but we went into more depth around it and Founders Fund made a, made an investment in Radiant at their Series A. And what Radiant told us was, you know, we, we prompted the question of what's hardest about the company.

And we thought the answer was going to be getting through NRC approval and getting a license to, to deploy and operate this reactor. And they said, You know, sure, that's, that's something we need to do, but there's a pretty clear path and we're not too worried about it. And the NRC is actually great to work with. And the hard thing is getting fuel. And so, you know, they said we can only get our fuel from Russia or maybe China, and it's difficult to get from Russia and it's extremely expensive and it's really, you know, it's a challenge.

And so I said, okay, that's strange. I know that you need this fuel that's enriched up to almost 20% is enriching to that level much harder. Why don't the US enrichment companies and the nuclear fuel companies make, make the fuel that you need? This halo, Radian said, what do you mean US enrichment companies? There, there really aren't. And that led to a whole series of, of work in 2023, realizing, okay, the advanced reactor sector may not succeed without a source of fuel and they can't wait forever. They're all, they're mostly startups.

And 20% of our grid runs on low-enriched uranium in light water reactors that are already deployed, 94 of them across the country. You know, if, if 20% of our grid is dependent on foreign suppliers, that doesn't seem good. And you, you look into this further and you realize that 25% of that is Russia and the rest is Europe. but the Russian component is now under a ban. And yes, that ban goes into full effect on January 1st, 2028. And so we will have about a 25% shortfall in fuel supply in the US at that point.

And then you think forward to even things like, well, what about, you know, what about our aircraft carriers and our submarines? They're operating on a stockpile that won't last forever. So clearly this, the supply chain in the US has to come back. And we can't do it in a way that's just, you know, it needs to be subsidized forever and doesn't compete internationally. And we can blame other countries for subsidizing their industries, but ultimately we need to compete and we can't make excuses. And so our approach is, you know, if this is going to work, we need to, we need to do this commercially and we need to stand on our own two feet and therefore we've got to bring the cost down.

A lot. And so that's kind of how we arrived at this. That's how we realized the need. And all throughout 2023, I was looking for companies that were, you know, getting started enriching uranium. Is anyone doing this? And by August of 2023, realized that nobody was and that it would require a new company to go do it. Speaker B: Why do you think no one had recognized that as a sufficiently interesting opportunity or decided to go after it? Was you know, the market deemed unattractive in some, in some sense? Was it just deemed, you know, extremely difficult?

Like, it seems so, so obviously important when you tell this story, but these things can often be disguised for, you know, before someone sees it as clearly as, as you did. Clearly. Speaker A: Yeah. I think, you know, if we talk about the 2022, 2023 timeframe, even working on an advanced reactor was deemed, you know, probably a strange thing to do. And this was one level of abstraction from that, maybe two levels. First, you have to care about advanced reactors, then you need to care about fuel, and then you have to realize that enrichment is the missing piece.

So it's not something a lot of people would naturally come across or think about. You know, again, this was pre any Russian uranium ban. It was pre any growth in AI data centers and that boom that's really been a big tailwind for nuclear and made us realize, yes, we need more energy production. And so I think, I think it was just something that people weren't thinking about. They were barely thinking about reactors, certainly not thinking about fuel. And I think it's only in the last couple of years that it's, it's really become obvious to most people how important this is.

And then there's probably a few other ways to get at this, I think. You know, we will be the first private company to go do this, and there may be an element of, you know, wondering if this is even the territory for a private company. And, and only through long conversations with the DOE where, you know, did we realize that, that this was a need and that this would be supported. And so I think it's just the type of space that's, that's a little bit off the, off the map. And seemingly, you know, something that the private companies hadn't done before.

And I think it was also viewed as something that couldn't be very profitable. That was just the domain of, you know, nation states subsidizing the activity for strategic purposes and not something that you could bring down the costs and compete with adversaries who were maybe subsidizing their production. Maybe it took being very close to the SpaceX story to really realize that even when the costs look like they're not coming down in a sector, if that is, you know, if that is a sector that's been dominated by government efforts that have a different goal than reducing costs or being purely commercial, or if it's dominated by cost-plus players, there's not a big incentive to bring costs down and you probably can if you focus on that.

And so that was, that was really our path to realizing that not only was this needed, but that it was something we should go do. Speaker B: You know, maybe this is my, my storytelling, my narrative brain, you know, looking for, for more drama than the reality of it. But was there like a particular moment for you where you thought, I just simply have to build this myself? You know, I, after maybe a slew of these meetings in a, in a given week or, or some amount of banging your head against something.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was really realizing, you know, in early '23 that the US didn't have this capability and then doing that search for companies and having some hope that we would, we would find one or two. And then, yeah, by August realizing that, that even the ones that we hoped would do it were not likely to be in a position to really do this in a, a commercially competitive way that we wanted to do it that could bring the prices down dramatically. And that, that was really the key thing.

It was, you know, there's certainly an onshoring component to this and bringing back domestic capability that we care about that, you know, our team would do this for alone. But the thing that really is the North Star is let's make nuclear energy expand. Let's make it grow into what it always should have been. And to do that, you know, there's 3 things you have to do. It's, I think people will go for an energy source. That is clean, safe, baseload, and then also lowest cost. And so that was the missing piece that we wanted to solve through Enrichment.

Speaker B: You founded the company with Lee Robinson. How did that sort of initial team come together? And, you know, as you thought about your strengths and knowledge, like what were the pieces you were trying to sort of fill? Speaker B: You founded the company with Lee Robinson. How did that sort of initial team come together? And, you know, as you thought about your strengths and knowledge, like what were the pieces you were trying to sort of fill? Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a larger founding team than that, which has been talked about before, but Lee was one of the early team members and, and one of the really faces of the company given his experience.

And so, yeah, Lee and I met through a couple different intros at the exact same time. He was running, you know, within the DOD, there's a program called DIU, Defense Innovation Unit, and they do funding of early-stage companies. And he was, he was really doing the reactor program. And so a couple people put us in touch and said, hey, you know, I know that you're looking around for fuel. You're trying to figure out what's happening in that area with this program in the Army. Maybe they have a source of fuel.

Maybe they have other things that you should learn about. Go talk to Lee. And so I got put in touch with Lee. We started talking. I asked him, hey, you know, we're investing in SMRs at Founders Fund. And they don't seem to have a source of fuel. Does the, does the Army have a source of fuel? I sure hope the Army has a source of fuel because obviously you're doing this program. And then he looked into it and realized, no, no, we don't. And, um, everybody is looking for the same HALEU that, that is not currently made.

And the only way to get it is from the DOE doing downblending operations or finding other supply that's, that's in relatively short supply. And I think that turned him onto this problem and he spent a couple months looking into it and became as concerned as I was about it and said, okay, this is what I need to work on next as well. I then recruited a few other people onto the team. We got started in late 2023 and yeah, have been growing ever since. Speaker B: This may be a bit of a diversion, but you said downblending and I have no idea what that process is and it sounded quite interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, you know, you enrich up to a certain level. So if you think of concentrating U-235, you can also dilute it. And so the US does have stockpiles of uranium that's enriched to above 20%. Speaker B: Oh, interesting. And they can just blend in for weapons, presumably, right? Speaker A: Or fuel for the Navy. And so in terms of weapons, there's way more than enough warheads. And I think Modern weapons, I don't believe even use uranium. Um, it's, it's not really, um, the, the current generation technology. So really when we talk about stockpile, it's really for the Navy.

It's really to run the reactors that are in subs and aircraft carriers. And so, you know, that stockpile is, is, is very precious. And so we don't want to reduce that at all, but one way to make HALEU is to take that and and dilute it down, which is really doing negative work, taking a really valuable asset and making it less valuable. But that is, you know, potentially necessary for doing some initial testing on, on these reactors. So that was really the only other option apart from a small amount of HALEU that's, that's available and has been identified and mostly allocated to reactors.

That's sparse. And so there's, there's a desperate need for new supply. Speaker B: Maybe we could talk a moment about how this came to pass? Because, you know, we maybe started this conversation a little bit talking about how the US had led in this, and then, you know, to get to the point that you identify in 2023 where you realize 25% is coming from Russia, the rest is coming from Europe, 0% is coming from America itself. I think you alluded to the falling of the Berlin Wall, but what were the specific pressures that allowed that to happen?

Speaker B: Maybe we could talk a moment about how this came to pass? Because, you know, we maybe started this conversation a little bit talking about how the US had led in this, and then, you know, to get to the point that you identify in 2023 where you realize 25% is coming from Russia, the rest is coming from Europe, 0% is coming from America itself. I think you alluded to the falling of the Berlin Wall, but what were the specific pressures that allowed that to happen? Speaker A: Yeah, so if we recap it again, The US was the first to do enrichment.

It did it using, um, something called a gaseous diffusion approach. That was the first generation technology. It's what allowed the, the US to win World War II. And we did that at a couple sites in the US. And at those sites, the US did a ton of production and became the world leader. Like I said, over 80, over 80% of global supply all the way up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. And at that point, the Cold War ended and there was this question of what should we do about enrichment at this point?

One of the most important policy, you know, international, uh, efforts was around disarmament. We had the S. and Russia had built up so many weapons and there was a desire to reduce that number steadily. And so there was a program called Megatons. To megawatts that was set up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the end of the Cold War. And we partnered with Russia and we said, you know, we will take your warheads and we'll blend them down. That downblending that I talked about. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Ah.

And we will blend them all the way down to a point where we can use them in our reactors. And we were going to take these megatons of weapons and turn them into megawatts of energy. So we did that for a long time. Um, that turned into, you know, at, at some point that program then ended post-2000 in the, in the 2010s. And, uh, that transitioned into, you know, brokerage trading with Russia to bring in their enrichment services instead of their weapons. In parallel, the US started doing a lot of international trade with Europe who had their own production of enrichment, um, of, of enriched uranium.

Speaker B: Product. Speaker A: And so, uh, we imported from Europe as well, and that was about 75% of supply. And, you know, Europe had, had developed a next generation technology that was more economical. And, you know, in the 2000s and by 2013, the US had made this transition of saying, hey, instead of using our first generation technology, which is very expensive, these are our allies. We're in a world of international and global trade. We don't need to do this anymore. We can rely on them. We should rely on them.

It's more economical. And so let's import, uh, our, our enriched uranium and we can shut down our, our plants in the US. And by 2013, we shut down the last plant, which was in Paducah, Kentucky. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: So that's, that's when the US really ceased doing enrichment and instead relied fully on, on allies and then adversaries. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: So that's, that's when the US really ceased doing enrichment and instead relied fully on, on allies and then adversaries. Speaker B: You know, just to sort of flesh out a little bit of the understanding of this market, uh, the, the sort of large companies that I came across, and perhaps you can, you know, give a better sense, are sort of Rosatom in Russia and maybe Orano in, in Europe.

And in general, it seems like, as you alluded to, these are all almost always sort of government-subsidized entities in, in some capacity. Is there sort of like a pure play, like really private enrichment company globally at scale? Speaker A: No, there isn't. So Orano is mostly owned by the French government. There is one other European player named Urenco, and this is a consortium between the UK, the Netherlands, and two German utilities co-own Urenco. And that's another, that's another enrichment company, but there is not really a global international private enrichment company.

They're, they're generally, uh, state-owned. Speaker C: This episode is brought to you by Persona, the B2B identity platform helping businesses verify users, fight fraud, and build trust. Fraudsters are already using AI to spoof faces, voices, and documents, so your defenses need to adapt just as fast. Persona helps secure some of the internet's largest and most trusted platforms with identity verification. If you're If you're building a product where trust matters, identity should be a priority. You've probably already experienced Persona without realizing it— verifying your LinkedIn profile, signing up for Etsy, or renting a scooter with Lime.

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Was that something that you were perhaps imagining might happen at the time that you were sort of thinking about this company or wasn't even on the radar as a possibility that that might happen? Speaker A: Not on the radar. You know, the, the Ukraine conflict had already started, but Russian uranium was already coming into the US and it still is. So that program does have a waiver process and utilities who don't have any other source of uranium can still import Russian uranium. And so they are. And so we're trying to bring online as quickly as possible US enrichment so that they don't need to rely on Russian uranium.

But that ban was not something we anticipated or that a lot of people anticipated. Prior to that ban, there was already a cap on Russian imports of uranium, which put it at roughly 25% of US imports. Speaker B: I see. Speaker A: So, and so we knew that that would always be capped. Despite people's criticisms of Russia's pricing on uranium, it would only be 25% of the market. And then utilities would still need to go seek a second source, and that would be European supply. And so from a business dynamic standpoint, in order to operate, we really would just, you know, we would need to be able to beat European cost structure.

Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Not necessarily Russia's cost structure. That said, our long-term goal is still to bring down the cost of enrichment. For utilities and for reactors and for every application of nuclear energy. And so, you know, Russia or not, we want to be the world's lowest, lowest cost provider. And if we're, if we're lower cost than Europe, if we're lower cost than Russia, that's not a stopping point. That's, that's something we'll continue to push on because the mission is not to beat them or to be, you know, commercially competitive on, on some measure.

but to just accelerate the growth of nuclear energy. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Not necessarily Russia's cost structure. That said, our long-term goal is still to bring down the cost of enrichment. For utilities and for reactors and for every application of nuclear energy. And so, you know, Russia or not, we want to be the world's lowest, lowest cost provider. And if we're, if we're lower cost than Europe, if we're lower cost than Russia, that's not a stopping point. That's, that's something we'll continue to push on because the mission is not to beat them or to be, you know, commercially competitive on, on some measure.

but to just accelerate the growth of nuclear energy. Speaker B: And I imagine, you know, I'm sure there are parts of this that you can't talk about, so I'm not trying to delve too deeply into sensitive information, but it feels like the only way you could realistically do that is by having like a really differential technology that allows you to sort of compete with a very heavily subsidized alternative. Is that at least at a high level the rough, uh, way that you think of your comparative advantage? Speaker A: I think there's a few areas of, of advantage that, that we should cover, but technology is certainly part of it.

And our approach has been to take a clean sheet redesign of enrichment, um, agnostic to everything and just start over and think, what is our goal? Our goal is, uh, safety, reliability, and then reducing the cost of enrichment. And so that led us down our tech path. Um, I'd say the most important thing about developing the technology is really the team. Our approach has been to assemble a team that has experts from the industry, um, who have been at US National Labs, who have developed technologies, and then those who have actually been on the ground breaking into new industries in the hardware space where there's hugely capital-intensive barriers to entry and where companies have done clean sheet redesigns to make something affordable that was not viewed as affordable before.

So this, this points us towards, you know, hiring people who are ex-Tesla, ex-Anduril, ex-SpaceX, which is why we're based in Los Angeles. A lot of that talent is there. And so it's been this unique merger between, yeah, people who have brought down the cost of things by 10x or more, made them competitive, did clean sheet redesigns, and took a really commercial approach. That's really the mindset that we have. And I think in an industry where a lot of efforts had other goals, scientific goals, non-commercial goals, or where people, you know, were inside of organizations that primarily operated cost plus, I think breaking that mindset and just really focusing on cost structure and speed of execution has been a big thing.

So on the cost side, there's certainly a technology piece, but I think there's also a team piece. And then a business structure, like long-term mission piece. Speaker B: Yes, that makes total sense. It also makes total sense to me that, you know, you're so advantaged on the team piece in some sense because of your connections, but also because some of the great companies that America has built over, you know, the past decade plus, like a SpaceX and a Tesla. The part that I was curious about hearing you talk through that is, because of the way that America has sort of lost its position in enrichment, is there like an expertise gap that's difficult to fill at a certain level?

I mean, maybe there are, you know, still great people at these national labs, but are you finding that that's, I don't know, in some sense lacking? Speaker A: The S. still has great science. There's people at the labs who are incredibly smart and experienced in working on these technologies. So the, the skills are there. I'd say in the industry, there's also this interesting dynamic where a lot of people went into the industry in the early days when it was this brand new, brand new opportunity, extremely exciting, growing really quickly. A lot of those people have this, the right mindset.

They're very late in their career. They might be 70, 80, but they, they bring with them that experience of thinking about things from first principles. And then you have a lot of people who are really enthusiastic about nuclear, really cared about nuclear despite it not being exciting. Industry from the '70s, you know, to almost today. And you can handpick those people who really have the right mindset and did it out of passion despite it maybe not being the fastest moving sector. And then now you have a new generation of people that are really excited, so, and, and really talented and coming out of college and all, you know, all fresh skills.

And so it really looks like it, if you, if you imagine like, okay, where's the, where is the skill that we need? What, what does that skill look like? It's almost like a bathtub curve. There are a lot of people who enter the industry early on, and then there's fewer people who are really the right fit who are in the industry for a very long time. They're out there. We have to, we have to find them. And then there's a huge wave of, of new grads who's excited about nuclear. Because they, you know, they care about the climate or they care about having more power and being a, you know, high-energy society.

And so, yeah, we're, we're, there is the talent out there. Uh, that's not really the bottleneck. When we think about nuclear talent, we are combining it with other forms of, of engineering talent. Everything from, you know, computer science to, to applied and engineering physics to aerospace, like every discipline, mechanical. We use all of them and then we'll pair them up with, with the nuclear experience on the team and really get a multiplier there. So the, the talent is out there. It spans multiple decades of people entering the industry. We leverage it with generalist sort of engineering talent.

And then in terms of where it's located, it's all over. So with my nuclear talent, it's, it's completely scattered across the country. The one thing that's not scattered is, is the rest of the engineering talent, which is primarily California. Hence why headquarters is, is in really the hardware ecosystem of LA. Speaker B: You know, just to, to circle back to the, you know, sort of 2028 deadline on the, on the Russian enriched uranium, I think you've said that, you know, the goal is to get up and running and, you know, producing by 2030 for General Matter.

Is your sense that the shortfall during that period of time will sort of have to be filled by by European players, or, or how does that end up working out in your view? Speaker A: I think it'll be two things. It'll be inventory that utilities have built up and are, or, or contracts that they've already lined up so that they know that they're covered. And a lot of the extra supply will be Europe. So I think it'll be inventory and increased European supply. Speaker B: To sort of take a look at how you see the industry growing and playing out over the next 10, 20, you know, plus years, you know, I should have this number to hand.

But when I was looking up the sort of total addressable market, you know, whatever one might think for enriched uranium, it's not like a market size that a venture investor typically would say like, you know, this is spectacular. This is such a large TAM. Now, of course, you know, Zero to One, Peter Thiel would say you want to, you know, start in a sufficiently small market. So, you know, maybe that's part of the thinking here. Um, but I imagine the dynamics are such that you can see it becoming extremely large in the fullness of time.

So, uh, a convoluted question there, but I guess I, I, I'm interested in how you think about the, the potential opportunity here beyond just the, the real strategic importance. Right. Speaker A: And to put numbers to that, and, you know, the numbers you probably looked at inside the, demand for enrichment's a couple billion dollar market. Call it $2.5 billion roughly in recent years. That's not, as you said, like the sort of trillion-dollar market that a lot of investors get excited about. We do think that market's going to grow a lot.

So if you, if you look at what both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have said and committed to on the growth of nuclear, the Biden administration set a goal of tripling nuclear. By 2050. They made international commitments for that. And then, uh, the Trump administration increased that to quadruple, to 4x by 2050. And so this is a completely bipartisan thing that nuclear is going to grow, you know, 3 to 4x in the coming decades. So that now puts it at, let's say, a $10 billion market in the US alone.

And then there's US allies, um, in Europe they have production, but there's still allies that would love to have US supply. And so that market maybe is a little bit bigger than $10 billion. But like you said, I think, I think the formula is, you know, don't worry so much about market size, uh, worry about solving a really important problem that no one's solving. And, and what motivated me to, to work on this is that really without a new source of domestic enrichment, that's a much lower cost. It's going to be very difficult for advanced reactors to succeed.

And that's what the whole industry wants. We want to see the growth of nuclear, and if that's going to happen, it's likely going to be through advanced reactors, at least ART. And so anything we can do to help them succeed is really our goal. And so not too concerned about market size. It's certainly enough to build a worthwhile business, a valuable business. And we think it's a really important strategic part of the supply chain for the US to to have capability in. Speaker B: Maybe it's, uh, premature and, you know, clearly you are laser focused on your sort of algorithm for this company, but as you think about where this company might go or where there's other opportunities, are there sort of natural adjacencies either in the sort of refinement process that you imagine being strategic to, to own at some point or other sort of, you know, similar processes that, that might make sense?

Speaker A: Let's see. Well, enrichment's the real bottleneck at this point. I think, you know, if we get a quadrupling of nuclear energy over the next couple of decades, we will, we will need expansion of everything. And there's people working on that. We'll need more mining and there's US miners who are bringing production online. It will need new conversion supply for more feedstock. There's people at the early stages are working on that, which is really exciting, you know, and then, and then downstream there's deconversion, fuel fabrication. A lot of new fuel technologies that, that people are putting into new reactors that are much safer.

And we can talk about those. But in short, I think as the market grows, as nuclear grows, there will be new bottlenecks that emerge. And I think there's people who are solving them. We think that enrichment is the place for us to, to be and to just stay laser focused on that. And we know people who are working on the other steps and we're, we're we're pretty confident that they're going to, they're going to be there in time to supply everything that's needed for all the reactors. Speaker B: On the, the mining piece, is there sufficient uranium within the US to sort of support, uh, the amount of enrichment demand that, that you expect?

Because I, I don't know, I was— you will know this, uh, much better than I do, but I imagine you could have a similar bottleneck just earlier in the process and when I was looking at very rough numbers, it seemed like a lot of the uranium was primarily coming from Kazakhstan and I don't know, I think Canada, that would maybe be an easier partner to work with. But yeah, how do you think about those other possible squeezes if they exist? Speaker B: On the, the mining piece, is there sufficient uranium within the US to sort of support, uh, the amount of enrichment demand that, that you expect?

Because I, I don't know, I was— you will know this, uh, much better than I do, but I imagine you could have a similar bottleneck just earlier in the process and when I was looking at very rough numbers, it seemed like a lot of the uranium was primarily coming from Kazakhstan and I don't know, I think Canada, that would maybe be an easier partner to work with. But yeah, how do you think about those other possible squeezes if they exist? Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great, a great observation. To answer your question, is there enough uranium in the US?

And there's enough uranium. There's not enough uranium production. So if you look at how much is produced in the US, really, uh, if we go back to last year and then ask ourselves, okay, to supply the advanced reactor market in the next few years, if it grows like we think it's going to grow, what does that need? And it looks like if we're just pulling from US supply, we need US mining operations, US, uh, uranium production to roughly 10x. And so we need that to grow a lot. You know, fortunately, like you said, while we're, while that is growing to meet demand, you know, there's Canadian supply, there's great Canadian production, there's actually Australian supply as well.

So very close allies have great, great reserves of uranium and, and, you know, high percent deposits that can be mined really economically. And then Kazakhstan, as you said, is, is a major supplier to the world at this point as well. but really there's enough, there's enough uranium in the ground in Canada, Australia, US to have everything we need for a very long time. Speaker B: Is it fair to think that you really need an abundant supply of that since it's such an important part, I imagine, of your cost structure in order for General Matter to ultimately get really price competitive with Europe, but you know, in the longer term with Russia, given I imagine Russia sort of controls the, Kazakh stores?

Speaker A: You know, I think for the industry we want that to be economical. The price of uranium is a major input into the price of nuclear energy, certainly from the advanced reactors. If you look at the large light water reactors, it is the single largest source of cost in the fuel. Those reactors require less enrichment, so the enrichment component's smaller as a percentage of total fuel cost, and so it's mostly uranium, the mined product. But for those very large reactors, it's actually not a huge cost driver. What large existing reactors in the grid today worry about is reliability of supply and just having no outages.

And so it's really certainty of supply from the US or US allies. That's really the main goal. Cost is, is not as large a factor. For advanced reactors, the fuel cost is a huge component of overall energy cost, and enrichment is the biggest segment of that. So yeah, to, I guess, to your question, does the cost of uranium production matter a lot? For advanced reactors, it does. Existing reactors, not quite as much, but having a consistent supply is extremely important. Speaker B: If I'm remembering correctly, General Matter wants to do LOO, LOO+, and HALOO.

And those are all acronyms for folks that, you know, aren't familiar. We've sort of touched on pieces of this, but, you know, I think it would be useful to understand for folks, you know, what those are and how they're being used because it sort of interfaces quite a bit with some of the different types of reactors we're talking about. Speaker A: Right. So, so as a quick overview again, to make fuel, there's the 5 steps. Mining, conversion into gas, enrichment, deconversion back into solid, and then fuel fabrication, making your pellet.

The enrichment step is just a refining step. It's really helping isolate one of the isotopes in uranium that is the one that has the nuclear reaction and getting that concentration higher. LEU, uh, is low enriched uranium, and that is what most of the reactors on the grid today run on. That's 3 to 5%. You can think of it as, as anywhere in that range depending on the reactor. And then HALEU, High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium, still called low-enriched uranium because it's below 20%, but it's a higher end of that range. HALEU is typically at 19.75%, so about as high as you can get without going to 20%.

Once you're above 20, it's, it's, you know, internationally regulated in a much different way. Because you're getting closer to things that could be used for weapons. So all the advanced reactors stay under 20%, and they usually want to go to 19.75% because then you get more efficiency out of your reactor. You get more of the fuel fully burning up before you start losing power in the reactor. Um, and you get to pack more energy density into your reactor. You get to make a smaller core. Everything gets smaller, more factory buildable.

you know, more scalable, lower cost. And so there's really these two, two natural points, um, for enrichment. One is 3 to 5%, uh, one is the 19.75%. Uh, we, you know, we are planning production for both of those. So for the existing grid and for the most advanced reactors, there will be near-term production of LEU Plus, we believe, um, by incumbents in the industry and an LEU+ is a way to either upgrade existing reactors and get them to operate at a higher power level or for a little bit longer between refuelings, or for some of the advanced reactors to operate at a lower power level out of the gates.

Um, and so that's the rough landscape. You can think of it as 3 to 5% LEU, low enriched uranium, you know, 8 to 10% LEU+ for, for a bump up in power. Uh, and then really for the advanced reactors, typically 19.75% HALU, high assay, low enriched uranium. Speaker B: And is it fair to say that the LEU, the demand for that from the sort of more traditional, you know, reactors, that's sort of probably the much larger market, so to speak, so far, but that the HALU, the H-A-L-E-U, is the higher value on sort of a, you know, unit basis.

Is that like roughly the right way to think about that? Speaker A: That's a good way to think about it. Yeah. Yeah. The, the vast majority of the demand in the market today is LEU enrichment demand. And then this, this piece for HALU, you know, it's, it's really at this point test and demonstration scale. And then the bet is that this is going to increase rapidly, uh, to really define the market in the coming decades. Speaker B: You know, that 20% threshold, that was something that was interesting to me to learn about.

Clearly there's good reasons, you know, because of the, the sort of, uh, different regulation and, um, controls around that. But from a scientific perspective, like, does that threshold make sense? Is there sort of a world in which it, you know, could be worthwhile for General Matter to enrich beyond that point because there might emerge, you know, types of reactors that can process that effectively for energy? Speaker A: I think there's pretty strong consensus in the international and even international community and domestically that 20% is the right threshold to keep things at.

It's plenty high to have a high performance reactor. There's even talk about, you know, in other countries about running, you know, having submarines that operate on LEU or HALEU. So you certainly don't need to go any higher to have a, you know, a performant reactor. I think I think the really important thing for, for nuclear is just that it gets the cost down. And so by, you know, at the point that you're running Hailu, it looks like the fuel cost really will be a huge driver, which implies that your reactor cost has come down a lot.

Yes. So by fact, once you've unlocked factory, factory building of reactors, whether it's containerized reactors or SMRs that are then installed on site, I think you've basically achieved the goal of getting away from huge construction projects. That are prone to going over, over schedule, over budget, and you've gotten to something much more deployable. And so Halo lets you get there as people are demonstrating with, you know, dozens of, of interesting, compelling reactor designs. And, and I don't think it needs to really be any higher than that. Speaker A: I think there's pretty strong consensus in the international and even international community and domestically that 20% is the right threshold to keep things at.

It's plenty high to have a high performance reactor. There's even talk about, you know, in other countries about running, you know, having submarines that operate on LEU or HALEU. So you certainly don't need to go any higher to have a, you know, a performant reactor. I think I think the really important thing for, for nuclear is just that it gets the cost down. And so by, you know, at the point that you're running Hailu, it looks like the fuel cost really will be a huge driver, which implies that your reactor cost has come down a lot.

Yes. So by fact, once you've unlocked factory, factory building of reactors, whether it's containerized reactors or SMRs that are then installed on site, I think you've basically achieved the goal of getting away from huge construction projects. That are prone to going over, over schedule, over budget, and you've gotten to something much more deployable. And so Halo lets you get there as people are demonstrating with, you know, dozens of, of interesting, compelling reactor designs. And, and I don't think it needs to really be any higher than that. Speaker B: There have been sort of, I imagine many others, but externally, really these two big moments I think of with, with General Matter in a very short amount of time.

Uh, one is sort of, you know, the, the site you guys have landed on in Paducah, Kentucky, where you've sort of, you're resurrecting this, this, uh, facility that was the last one to close in, in 2013 that you mentioned. And then this, you know, $900 million Department of Energy contract that, that very recently got awarded. Uh, I'd love to sort of talk through both of those a little bit. Maybe we could talk about Paducah, Kentucky and, um, how you landed on, on that as the right place for this. Clearly there was a, a beautiful symmetry to it, but I imagine there was also a much more pragmatic set of filters that you have to go through to, to find the right spot.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, I'd say there was even a third event, which is some of the executive orders that came out last year. So we should talk about all three, but yes, but really on, really, yeah. On, on Paducah, we, we really, when starting the company, realized that there were a couple things that would be really important to get right. Given we're, you know, a nuclear company, nuclear industry company. Yes, there's no nuclear reactions in our facility. There's no chemical reactions in our facility, but we're still nuclear. And nuclear in some areas is still not, you know, it still has its opponents despite being statistically the cleanest and safest source of energy.

People still oppose it on those grounds, not even on the of cost. And so we knew that one of the most important things for the company would be finding the right community that really supported nuclear, that believed in it, that was familiar with it, that understood it can be safe and is safe and was very pro-nuclear. And so we spent about a year looking around, visiting, I think, 11 different states, looking at over 1,000 specific plots of land that we could potentially put a facility at. Did a very exhaustive search.

And ended up realizing that, that there was land inside the DOE site in Kentucky that had never been developed, and that was pretty ideally positioned and, and sized and laid out for a facility like ours, and that we could build there. And so for part of 2024, we, we, sorry, 2025, um, you know, we were working with DOE to, to discuss that land and to work on a lease. And then in August of last year, we had our groundbreaking in Paducah, Kentucky for that site. And so the real, the real backstory on Paducah, you know, despite our exhaustive search, was really an obvious one, which is that this was the community that had most recently performed enrichment with the, with the, with the site really, you know, plant shutting down in 2013.

Thousands of people in the community working there. in a town of tens of thousands, the last place to perform enrichment, the place to perform enrichment at the greatest scale, the place to put the US in the lead, um, during the Cold War on global enrichment and did really the enrichment for commercial nuclear energy. And so it was really this, this perfect community that, that understood things, um, that loved nuclear and that in their redevelopment charter actually had a specific mandate for trying to do more things in nuclear. And so in hindsight, it was extremely obvious, you know, we should go, go to the place with the community that's, that understands nuclear, um, that believes in it.

And that's really been a huge part of it over the past few decades. And yeah, we, we arrived at that after, after a long search, but in, you know, in hindsight, it was very obvious that, that this was the right place to be. Speaker B: Were there, uh, specific reasons why Paducah was such an important place for enrichment previously, like why it was chosen as sort of a key site in, in the prior era? Speaker A: Yeah, it was, you know, if you think all the way back to, you know, the Cold War and, and gaseous diffusion, which is the technology that we had, you know, gaseous diffusion was a very energy-intensive process.

And, uh, it also used a fair amount of water, uh, for cooling. And, and so Paducah was a great site because, uh, you had a lot of, you know, a few local power plants that could produce electricity for the site. You had a natural position right against the Ohio River, not far from the Mississippi. So you had power and water there. If we think back to Cold War, you also wanted to put this somewhere that was not easily accessible to US enemies. So you would go somewhere that was more isolated.

And so Paducah is almost equidistant between Nashville, St. Louis, Louisville, and Memphis. So really at the center of that, that hub. And so you could get supplies, you could get workers, you could get construction from all those locations coming in on that one spot to develop it right up against the river. And so even to this day, Paducah has a huge amount of power, you know, power production capacity and is even looking at deploying some of that into AI data centers. But But yeah, we did a very long search and, and the announcement of that site late last year as our very first site on DOE land was a huge milestone.

Speaker B: Fascinating. You mentioned, of course, the executive orders as another sort of like landmark moment in, among several in a very short time for this company. What was so significant about that for the business and how has it maybe impacted how you think about the next chapter for this company? Speaker A: I mean, this administration's been a huge advocate of nuclear. So was the last administration, and so is Congress. So I don't want to overshadow those things, but this administration's been hugely supportive of nuclear. And those executive orders really, you know, there were 4 of them and they each did 4 different things.

I would say at a really high level, they further pushed work that had been done under the Senate Advance Act. Bipartisan act of Congress that got, you know, very— yeah, the closest you see Congress getting to unanimous support that act had. And that act was really aimed at updating the mandate of the NRC and encouraging the NRC to focus on the benefits of nuclear and not just, not just the risks. Because if we don't do nuclear, we're doing some other energy source that is less clean and less safe. Yes, that's simply a fact.

And so these executive orders focused on really accelerating nuclear even further. And so there were 4 of them. There was one focused on the DOE and creating new licensing paths and using DOE resources to accelerate nuclear when it's, when it's really considered R&D or first of a kind. There was one focused on the NRC about, about really updating that mandate and setting some limits on the timelines to approve new reactors. Not fuel cycle, but reactors themselves. There was a DOD executive order that provided a path for reactors to demonstrate on DOD land for base, you know, Army base resilience and applications like that.

And then there was finally one on the nuclear fuel supply chain to help, you know, increase US capability in that area and support it and accelerate it. And so really what they did was set the stage for a lot of you know, change within these departments to support more nuclear and giving, giving people on the ground really the authority to go, uh, to go do those things. So I would think of it as just a general high-level support and air cover for nuclear that set the stage for a lot of actual implementation.

So there's still work to be done after those executive orders, but probably the most pro-nuclear set of executive orders in, in many decades. Hmm. Speaker B: And then if that sort of supplied the, the air cover, as you mentioned, uh, the Department of Energy's $900 million contract that you were just awarded is very, very on the ground, very tangible. Um, yeah. What, what, what does that mean for the company and, and, uh, what happens next? Speaker A: Yeah. And, and I guess air cover is maybe one way to say it.

It's, I mean, probably more accurately it was a mandate. Um, and so there were people within all these groups that, that maybe wanted air cover, but what the, you know, what the really important piece was, was, was a mandate that, yes, we're going to go do this as a country. We need to go do this. Um, and we have to do it quickly or we're going to be way too reliant on, on foreign suppliers. And, you know, I think one, one final piece of backdrop for that was really this realization, which is in one of the executive orders.

That China and Russia are now, you know, really the providers of something like 70% of new reactors built internationally, and that the US has lost a lot of influence over this area despite having some great reactor designs. We haven't been deploying them, we haven't been able to fuel them. And so Russia and China's contracts often come with very long fuel relationships that we've been unable to compete with. So it was really this wake-up call for the industry of, hey, we need to move faster, we need to do things differently. This is the safest, cleanest form of energy.

We're losing international influence. Um, it's time to, to supercharge this. In 2024, um, under the Biden administration, there were a couple of programs launched, uh, for enrichment services to, to help catalyze new production capacity within the US on US soil. Well, there was one program for low-enriched uranium, and there's one program for HALU. The HALU program was an act, you know, both were funded by Congress, bipartisan acts, each one with a $2.7 billion contract ceiling on the programs. One really aimed at helping the advanced reactors accelerate and get online and have a reliable source of fuel so that they could operate.

Some level of certainty as they, as they first deployed the reactors. And then the second one in response to the ban on Russian uranium coming out of Congress. Both of those programs, like I said, were, they were awarded in late 2024. We then spent most of 2025 working with the DOE to, you know, work through things like, you know, production plans and, and the overall strategy for bringing this capacity online. And then at the start of this year, uh, they officially announced the winners or the awardees in those programs. We were one of three awardees to win a $900 million contract.

This $900 million award, uh, is an award to bring new HALU enrichment online in the S. With the $900 million, we will be building our facility in Paducah, Kentucky at an even greater scale sooner. And so this award allows us to bring, you know, domestic scale, all commercial demand enrichment online years earlier in the 2030s. And, you know, we should say that, that this is really a testament to, to the administration's support of nuclear, even to the, to the last administration for, for creating these programs, to Congress's support, but, um, that this administration has been incredible to work with.

That the DOE under his leadership has really been forward-thinking and forward-leaning from everything from our lease to implementation of the executive orders and now to this award and thinking about how do we, how do we really return commercial competitive enrichment to the US and realizing that we need to, you know, to be willing to do things very differently than we would've in the past. So yeah. We definitely owe a huge debt of gratitude to the DOE for how great they've been to work with and to this administration. Speaker B: Before we sort of do a wrap-up question or two, I'm curious now that it's been a couple years of you running this company in addition to still being at Founders Fund.

I know that you, you know, we didn't talk about this, but you, you know, tried some startups before you did, you know, maybe done, I think a consumer social company at some point, uh, before your MBA. So you'd been a founder before and, and clearly had worked at companies like SpaceX and, and seen some of that. But being a founder is different than being an employee. And, and certainly I imagine being the founder of a nuclear enrichment company is very different than, you know, an early stage consumer social company. So as you sort of reflect on, on that, uh, I wonder what have been the sort of biggest differences you've you felt, uh, or observed from advising and investing in companies, uh, and, and actually being in the weeds sort of driving this one forward, maybe some of the, the observations that weren't clear to you, uh, from the other side of the table, so to speak.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I think all those experiences, you know, really complemented each other. Everything from being an employee at an early-stage company like, like SpaceX, to really, yeah, looking at things from the founder point of view. And then even as a board member on, you know, many different companies, right? Over a dozen companies and a large investor in dozens more. And so I feel like I've seen and learned a lot of different things. The biggest lesson I've drawn out of all of this is that really the important thing is to work on an important mission.

And it doesn't really matter if you're the founder of the company or an employee or a board member or an investor, really just focus all your energy on things that you think are actually important and that otherwise aren't going to get done. And so that's really the mindset I take to this. I think a lot of people start companies with the intent of, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to start a company. There's certainly good reasons for that. Founding a company can be lucrative. If the company does well, it's certainly going to force a lot of growth.

And certainly there's a lot of agency in running something that is your company that you can control. I think a lot of entrepreneurs do it for those reasons. I would actually argue that for any of those reasons, you're probably better off joining just a great company and don't even start a company. So my point of view is, yeah, you should avoid starting companies if you can, But if something compels you where you feel like you really have to, uh, then, then yes, do it. If no one else is going to do it and only you have the right background to do it.

But otherwise, just focus on working at the most important place where you can contribute and go back to that original formula of what thing is really important that won't otherwise happen without your specific, specific set of skills working on it. And so that's, that's the framework I try to take to everything and And yeah, the last, the last couple decades I think have, have come together to, to point to me working on this next. Speaker B: Amazing. Well, I always like to, to end with a sort of final question. If you had the, the power to assign a book to everyone on earth to read and understand, what would you want to assign to folks?

Speaker A: Yeah, so this one is, is maybe a little bit too self-promotional, but you know, I feel like I have to, have to recommend the book. That we talked about earlier, Zero to One, Peter Thiel's book, How to Start a Startup, really all the principles for starting startups, which, you know, people think it's maybe just a playbook for startups, but there's a lot more embedded in there. You know, its core message is that every startup is different. You can't learn from the past. You know, there are principles for building, but to create something new and important, it's just going to be decision-making every day on, on what the right path is.

And that nothing can spell that out for you. And this book was actually based on a class that I helped with at Stanford, which was an incredible experience back in 2011. So I feel a lot of closeness to the book, huge advocate for everything that's in there. And I think it's, it's still even today an underappreciated resource for anyone starting a company or thinking about technology. or even trying to start any new sort of organization, whether it's in a commercial sector or the government or anywhere. It's just a really great book about thinking differently and trying to make impact.

Speaker B: Fully endorsed. Yes. Amazing book. Well, Scott, uh, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Uh, I learned so much about nuclear enrichment and much more, and I'm so excited to see what you build with General Matter. Speaker B: Fully endorsed. Yes. Amazing book. Well, Scott, uh, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Uh, I learned so much about nuclear enrichment and much more, and I'm so excited to see what you build with General Matter. Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Speaker B: That's it.

Speaker C: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Generalist Podcast. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast app. Ratings and reviews help others discover these discussions, so if you enjoyed the conversation, I'd be grateful if you could take a moment to leave one. For all past episodes and more, visit us at com. See you next time as we continue to explore the future.