Green Giants – Episode 89

Wes Ashworth (06:01)

Absolutely. That long arc really matters because I think very few people have seen nuclear from policy, security, technology angles all at once. You’ve had just an incredible journey. As you said, sort of navigating that multi-dimensional chessboard, I like the way you frame that. Obviously then you’ve spent all these roles, transitioned over to Curio and just taking a different stance on that, being more a part of the company, really driving that change and making that happen.

What was that moment like when you decided to leave senior government roles and become CEO of Curio? What gap did you believe industry could fill that maybe government simply couldn’t?

Ed McGinnis (06:38)

It was a great refreshing and long awaited moment. I say that because 30 years in government, I’ve always believed in working hard but being humble. If there were ever a place to be humble and to earn your keep and to earn it is as a civilian civil servant because we’re being paid by the taxpayer. Honestly, we’re being paid by taxpayers who don’t have a choice.

Most of them are probably the average taxpayer that doesn’t have a choice is probably making half of what I and other management and the career service civil service arena were making. What that made me feel as though first of all was humbled that I needed to do right by those taxpayers. Even if some of them, whether Ivan or others like me, should be in public service and government service. But nonetheless, whether it’s a senior manager, whether it’s admin folks, whether it’s middle management, young or older, in their career, I’ve always encouraged everybody who takes a taxpayer check to do the very best possible to earn it.

Now, secondly, I always felt a little guilty that I had such a secure job. Over the years, some may question whether it’s that secure anymore, right or wrong, but it has always mostly had a reputation of having a safety net. That was not reflective of day-to-day life in a private sector. Day-to-day life in a private sector, there’s no safety net. If you lose your job, you lose your job. If you have a company and you start it and the customers are not there and you’re not selling, Darwin, as I like to say, will have the last say.

At the same time though, I’ve always felt that that extreme Darwinian environment, survive or die, innovate or lose it, really brings out the very best in innovation, the very best thinking, the very best products because everything is on the line. In the government, frankly, it took different ways to try and motivate folks that work for me or others that did it idealistically. I did it as a patriot. I did it as a humble servant, knowing I’m being paid by individuals with no choice and making probably much less than me with no safety net.

I always thought that to really complete my arc in my career, I wanted to go out in the private sector and do it the way the majority of the people do it and experience that and really try and contribute from that standpoint. That is where I am. It was an incredible unplanned opportunity when I met the rabbi. He’s a remarkable individual and life works in so many different ways. He may be a rabbi with rabbinical training and studies, faith-based, yet he is an uber entrepreneur. He is an amazing entrepreneur coming from three generations of entrepreneurs in his family.

We met at the right time. He had the vision I did that the nuclear sector’s most underperforming and greatest upside opportunity in the sector is so-called backend. What has been treated as nuclear waste, but it is anything but waste. It’s just been designated artificially as waste due to government policies over the years.

Wes Ashworth (10:02)

Absolutely. It’s really cool, the focus on humility and being a servant. I love that maybe you weren’t looking for it, but that opportunity presents itself and having the opportunity to get on the other side of that in the civilian world, to really make a difference. Again, incredible story and you started to touch on it there, but that’s kind of the next piece I want to get into. People have really framed this up in a lot of different ways, of what people hear with nuclear waste. I think there’s some fundamental sort of misunderstandings with that. Then also I’ve heard you say, you’ve described that spent nuclear fuel as slightly used nuclear fuel. This will get into sort of the meat of what we’re gonna chat about today. But tell us a little bit about the misunderstandings today and then why that distinction matters so much when we’re talking about slightly used nuclear fuel.

Ed McGinnis (10:44)

Indeed, Wes, if there were ever a prime example of something, a material, that is considered by some as waste, but one person’s waste is another person’s absolute high value treasure, its nuclear fuel after it’s come out of a nuclear reactor.

Over the years, going all the way back to President Carter, when he decided to put a moratorium on any industry reprocessing, recycling, reusing the used fuel after it is run in a reactor once, which is typically run for about five years in this country, after it’s taken out you’ve only used about four percent of that energy value.

To put it in context, there is enough energy value left and this so-called nuclear waste, which, as you said, is actually more accurately described as slightly used nuclear fuel. I’m sorry, if you’ve only used 4 % of that fuel, it’s slightly used. It’s like taking a Cadillac Escalade, filling it up for one tank or maybe a month and then throwing it away. Only the United States could get away with a policy change that would sideline trillion dollar’s worth of resources that are badly needed, but we did it. President Carter did it, and he did it primarily because he was convinced by nuclear non-proliferation community policy makers that because of international nuclear proliferation concerns with the countries like North Korea, Iran, even other countries, Pakistan, and others, that if we self-restrain and not recycle because this technology does have a dual use purpose, meaning it can be used for peaceful purposes. But with a determined actor, it could be used for military or defense purposes. He was convinced to lead by example that we have the best chance of convincing North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and others from reprocessing if we self-restrain we have a moral high ground.

How’s that worked out? I don’t think it has worked out very well. There are some successes certainly in the US nonproliferation efforts. A lot. But I would argue that no, that only kneecapped us. The UN has had a devastating effect on our nuclear fuel cycle capabilities, our nuclear sector, and our energy security, which we’re now fixing.

The point is, nuclear fuel in this country, it starts traditionally by uranium mining. You dig up the uranium and then you process it and then you enrich it.

Then you put it in these gas centrifuges in a gas form. You’re converting it into a gas. Then you’re enriching it to a level that you need. For example, 4.5 % enrichment of uranium-235 for your typical large reactors in United States. Some of the large reactors, some of the next generation reactors coming in actually require higher levels of enrichment, up to almost 20%, which they call HALU fuel.

That fuel, when it’s running a reactor in the US, is run typically for about five years. Any reactor in the US, across the country. We have reactors in almost 40 states around the country. When that fuel is taken out, after five years or so running, they put it in a pool, cool off, and then eventually take it out and put it in dry cast stores on the pad, sitting there with nowhere else to go because the federal government was, by law, supposed to have started picking up that material back in 1998, but failed to do so.

We have all this material stranded. Remember, President Carter decided to put a moratorium on reprocessing. Companies lost billions as a result of that and lost any appetite to get back in. Even though President Reagan reversed that policy and reversed the moratorium on reprocessing, the damage was done. Incentives were already built in, including the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that started taxing rate payers to pay for a non-recycled once through nuclear fuel disposal site. That Nuclear Waste Policy Act was the nail in the coffin to any company at that time having any interest in trying to do a reasonable thing and that’s full resource utilization of the nuclear fuel after it comes out of a reactor after five years.

Here’s one of the amazing things that really just puts an exclamation point on the fact that this is not waste, this is treasure.

When it comes out of that reactor, not only, Wes, have you only used about 4 % of that value, meaning, according to leading scientists from Idaho National Lab, there’s still enough energy value in those, in that 100,000 metric tons around the country stranded next to reactors to meet all of the US electricity needs for the next 150 years. But that’s only part of the value.

When uranium, when the fuel is fissioning during the five years in one of our reactors, typical reactor, it actually as a part of that magic of fission.

Other highly valuable radio isotopes and even non-radioactive precious metals are produced during that five-year process. For example, you have two of the most expensive metals in the world produced at large volumes during this fissioning process. One is rhodium, the most expensive metal in the world today. In our facility, once we have it built in about 2032, if not earlier, we will be able to have full capacity, provide up to 10 % of the entire world’s rhodium. Now we’ve identified 10 different radio isotopes and precious metals, all as a result of the magic of fissioning for the five years, medical, industrial, space-based isotopes, and two different forms of fuel. That’s my point.

We’re sitting on a highly, valuable national asset to help fight cancer, explore space, to power clean non-carbon emitting fuel, energy security, you name it. There’s a plethora of value propositions all sitting there waiting to be tapped. When I was at the White House and I met Rabbi Moskowitz and he saw the same thing I saw, it was too good of a thing for me to pass up.

That’s when I jumped out to lead this and once and for all, fix our nuclear sector. Set it up for growth. Set it up where it can triple and quadruple to reduce carbon emissions, whether that’s your priority or the reinforced energy security or to be a key aspect of our national security and global competitiveness. We’re in this key moment where we can fix it.

The last thing I would say, Wes, is that I had great remorse thinking that I retire from government and leave such a terrible legacy for future generations by not solving the nuclear waste problem that is imminently solvable. Because one other thing I was going to say is, if you don’t recycle this material, this material, believe it or not, is required by law in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be securely disposed of deeply geologically for 100,000 years and even meet certain standards for a million years.

That’s almost impossible and mind-boggling that our recycling with our company Curio. with our advanced nuclear recycling, not only do we reduce that amount of waste down to three to four percent. We’re really making that last amount of high-level material that is subject to law for deep geologic disposal Much more manageable. For example, we can put all of our remaining three to four percent in four to six boreholes 15,000 feet in the ground if that’s an option but the other beauty of this is we will have separated out the long-lived radioisotopes and therefore the material that we are going to have that three to four percent will only need to be sequestered deeply geologically disposed of for 300 years about. Now it sounds like a lot, but not compared to a million.

Wes Ashworth (19:17)

Correct, big distinction there. Just overall around what you all have, what you just shared there, just wow, just thinking about a misunderstood topic. I would say this is probably like one of the biggest ones there is as we’re talking through this and then thinking it’s been framed up as waste and all that that went into that 96 %, that that’s still there and viable and the energy potentially come of that and even the other when you’re talking about the precious metals and the highly valuable metals and things like that is absolutely incredible. I would say it’s waste because we are truly wasting it.

There’s a great resource available in there and so that’s what we’re going to get into. Once you really understand that this material still holds enormous value, and truly enormous, the scale of what we’re talking about becomes much clearer. As you’re starting to talk through that and going through numbers, like, my gosh, wow, the potential of what is possible if we get this right. Companies like Curio that are doing this. As you shared there, the US has roughly a hundred thousand metric tons of spent nuclear fuel just sitting in dry casks across the country and energy terms for you. What does that actually represent? I think you shared a little bit but anything you want to expand on there.

Ed McGinnis (20:28)

Today our nuclear fleet is still the largest in the world, 94 operating nuclear reactors, China’s hot on our heels, but we still have a good moat in front of them, generates about 19% or so, 18 something percent of all of the US electricity.

Now it’s a question of being able to build more reactors before our reactors start retiring and we start going into a decline, which is where we were. The question is whether that trajectory downward can be arrested and turned in the upward position. President Trump issued four very important, I would say, landmark executive orders on nuclear and one aspect of one of those executive orders calls for a quadrupling of our nuclear generation capacity. Remember we’re generating 18-19 percent electricity right now from that fleet in 94 reactors. If we want to really keep up with the consumption growth, a significant portion of that is driven by AI, but also just society using electricity and virtually all aspects of our lives, EVs and everything else. The demand for electricity is dramatically growing and we need to keep up. We need to expand our nuclear electricity generation from nuclear. It’s the only power source of all the power sources that can generate power nonstop 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year without stopping for 18 to 24 months.

That is utterly unique and without any carbon emissions. It is a unique source. It’s not just the percentage. It’s the nature and the capability of that resilient power source which is key. Now, if we’re going to triple or quadruple, it is absolutely necessary, in my view, that we…

First of all, fix our nuclear fuel cycle, which has deteriorated. We have lost most of our capability to produce fuel in this country. In fact, we’re still almost 100 % dependent on foreign suppliers of fuel, even to this day, 20% plus from Russia. We’re trying to wean ourselves off, but it shows you how difficult it is to do that in the nuclear sector, because these are long lead fuel production items and very technical.

It’s not that easy just to switch from one fuel supplier to another. We are at this point where we absolutely need to solve the so-called nuclear waste problem. Solve it by no longer treating it as waste, recycling it, reducing that amount, making it sustainable, environmentally responsible, publicly acceptable, a driver to the economy. Our recycling facility alone, ours, will drive and create about 3,000 full-time jobs just from one of our facilities and this is a 60-year facility and most of the employees, which I think is fantastic. are going to be trades based high school diploma two-year associates but highly trained making about a hundred and twenty five thousand on average a year in today’s dollar figures.

What you’re looking at there are some of the highest paid trades based jobs in the country generated by nuclear. We have a multiple win-win-win effect, but we’ve got to solve the nuclear waste problem. AI, for example, Wes, I don’t know if a lot of people realize how daunting it is to really secure the type of power they need. The AI data centers are huge, huge electricity consumers.

Right now what AI as a total percentage of electricity consumption is almost 5%. That is expected to double as early as 2029 or 2030 and increase. Where’s that electricity gonna come from? We heard President Trump calling on the AI data centers to build power behind the meter, so to speak, dedicated for their own power so that they don’t have an indirect unintended effect of consuming a large percentage of the electricity from which the average resident in this country buys power and therefore risking a significant increase in the cost of electricity to average people living around the country. We do not want that. You can see how so many roads lead back to fixing our nuclear sector, rebuilding it and once and for all, having a fully functioning, what we call back into the fuel cycle. Not only us producing fuel and a lot of this fuel can come from our recycling, not just traditional uranium mining in production, but also then have that multiple positive effect of being environmentally responsible, reducing that waste down to 96 % or less, producing the fuel that we need vitally and not depend on foreign suppliers.

A lot of these radioisotopes, those are also dominated oftentimes or monopolized by other suppliers. Krypton-85, for example, Wes, is important for medical purposes such as medical imaging. It’s also very important and used for detection of reactor pressure vessels in our Nuke Navy.

Who’s the supplier? There’s one main supplier. It’s Russia. That’s not acceptable. It’s a remarkable thing that by solving the so-called nuclear waste problem, you’re having so many other incredibly valuable contributions made through. This is a no-brainer. It’s time for us to do it. The road has been cleared for us to largely do it. Policies have changed.

Ed McGinnis (26:17)

The President has now called on his Cabinet Heads, namely Secretary Wright and Secretary Hegseth to come up with a plan once and for all to recycle not only our country’s commercial used nuclear fuel, but also the government’s large stockpile of used nuclear fuel. Our company is positioned to do both, be a part of that answer and recycle at national scale both.

Wes Ashworth (26:42)

Absolutely remarkable. I think now that we’ve gone through a bit of your journey, we’ve really spelled out the problem and I think made it crystal clear and then the solutions and the potential. That’s what I want get into where Curio comes into this and how the technology works. If we really extract that value safely and economically, that’s where your technology comes in.

Nuclear reprocessing, I want to understand this better. Then just what is fundamentally different about Curio’s NuCycle process and just how does it work in a nutshell?

Ed McGinnis (27:10)

Everyone in the world who’s recycling or reprocessing, which is a handful of countries, Russia, Japan, France, China, and a few others, they are using an extremely arcane process to recycle. In fact, this process is called Purex and it is derived literally from the Manhattan Project from World War II, the race to build the bomb.

That process, Purex process, involves a process that is very environmental problematic, economically problematic, and security-wise problematic. We have plugged all three of those holes and now have an entirely new process. Number one, the environmental problem with Purex is that they use nitric acid to dissolve the fuel assemblies, which is, when people say waste, what we’re really talking about is these good 17, 18 foot long, or so, depending on the reactor, length fuel assemblies. That has pulled out of the reactor and that is what has been treated as waste and what we’re going to recycle.

The way they do in the Purex process is they literally submerge the fuel assemblies in a huge vat of nitric acid to dissolve it and then in order to extract the valuable plutonium and uranium. But when you do that, ironically, when you’re adding all this nitric acid, mixing and commingling with already high-level waste, you’ve just created a huge, a much larger amount of witch’s brew of additional waste, high level waste.

We’ve eliminated the use of the nitric acid. We use a largely dry process. It’s a pyro process that includes an electrolysis process. When we take those fuel assemblies and we put them in our process, we increase the heat in a significant way and inject certain gases and we’re able to get a full decladding of the zirconium cladding that contains the fuel pellets.

Then we’re able to get the fuel go pellets, pulverized, turn it into a gas form, pull out products like a mining operation, a commodity extraction. All the while, while we’re pulling out all of these commodities, making it economically much more robust than the Purex process, where they’re only pulling out two or three processes. By the way, I didn’t mention all of these reprocessing facilities around the world, they’re government owned. Remember what I talked about lack of innovation when you have no safety net.

This is a classic case. They have failed to innovate. They’re using the same process after 70 plus years. We’re bringing in a process where first we’re making it environmentally responsible, get that waste down to three to four percent because it’s a dry process. Number two, make it economic. It has not been economic, arguably. It’s been subsidized by government. We do that by pulling out as many items, commodities as possible.

Like I said at least 10 thus far, not including the value of reducing that waste. Third is security, which is the reason why President Carter put a moratorium on reprocessing and banned it. The reason why is because Purex pulls out a pure stream of plutonium and making it much more accessible and potentially divertable by bad actors to use for a weapons program, hence the name Purex. That was the whole point going back to World War II. They wanted a process to pull out a pure stream of plutonium among other things. Well, we have now eliminated that as well. We never pull out a pure stream of plutonium through our entire chemistry process. We never separate out a pure stream of plutonium.

Let me say one other thing, and that is over the years, even today when you read some articles about recycling, you’ll hear pundits say, it’s not economic. Well, yeah, if you look at it based on these large state-owned companies that have been reprocessing with no incentive to really innovate and be more efficient, absolutely, those large state-owned organizations are not, in France and others, really economically viable on their own. That’s why we have this multi-commodity extraction approach.

Secondly, they say, well, it’s not secure. Right. They’re all continuing to pull out a pure stream of plutonium. Even a plant like in the hog, they have to maintain at least 100 plus metric tons of plutonium weapons usable just for the operational balance of the plant. We never will have any pure stream. It will be self-protecting with other self-protecting radioisodubs and fission products.

Lastly, economics, with a private led, we will be the first company at national scale to deliver and be able to process at high throughput. We have concluded not only that it is economically viable when we pull out so many products and we can do it in a policy consistent way with the United States history and sensitivity from a security perspective, building in safeguard and security by design, no pure plutonium, and also making it environmentally responsible, reducing that waste. But also, since we are a new company, we don’t have $20 billion in sunk costs like in a large, almost like a small city size footprint like La Hague or Rokasho in Japan. We’re able to bring in the latest compactness, autonomy, and modularity.

Our facility, when we have our first full commercial, we’re targeting about 2032, in the United States, it’ll be up to 4,000 metric tons a year processing capable. Context for that is all of the world’s reprocessing throughput combined. Russia, Mayak, Lahog, France. All of it is less than 4,000. We will have one facility that can recycle more than all of the world’s input combined.

Why? One is we have the largest fleet in the world still. That means we have the largest amount of sideline so-called nuclear waste that is slightly used highly valuable material. That’s where we come in. I would just say that what you’re seeing sometimes when pundits come out, they’re literally not making the effort or not acknowledging companies like ours and what we’re doing.

They look in the rear view mirror and then they judge the current situation in the opportunity to really bring in the next generation recycling. They do it by looking in a rear view mirror and saying, well, you can’t do it because the other state owned non-economic, large, inflexible arcane process couldn’t do it. It’s like comparing SpaceX reusable rockets in the 2000s saying, Elon Musk will never pull out reusable rockets because no one’s ever done it before.

That’s the whole point of innovation. Don’t judge me through the rearview mirror.

Wes Ashworth (34:13)

That’s so good. Thank you so much for, one, painting the picture of how it works today, because I think not the average person probably doesn’t know about reprocessing and the technologies and why it’s been the way it is and then Curio is doing differently. The impact of this, again, as I’ve shared, just absolutely remarkable. What this could be is this takes off and gets to scale huge, huge impacts all around.

Ed McGinnis (34:39)

If I could just add one addendum to that. We have been partnering with the US Department of Energy for well over three years.

We identified four leading nuclear national labs within their complex of 17 national labs that partnered with us, which they agreed because they saw the promise of our technology. We have secured nine plus various grants and other cooperative mechanisms with the Department of Energy.

I would say that’s a testament to how much promise they see our technology. Just last year, we completed the key milestones of our lab scale demonstration in order to show that this process works on commercial use of nuclear fuel. To show that we can reduce it down to three to four percent, which we did. Can pull of forms of isotopes and other fuel feedstock.

For example, we demonstrated that we can pull off UF6, which is the feedstock for gaseous centrifuges to further enrich the uranium. We’ve demonstrated we can pull it off at ASTM standards, industry standards, so it’s going to be enrichment ready. We’ve already demonstrated that and now we’ve pivoted to going into a commercial scale up.

We’re in the process now of looking at locations around the country that would be optimal for us to build one or more of our recycling facilities. We expect to have our first module ready for recycling and producing, by the way, HALU within the next three years. We will have our first commercial targeted by 2032 for a full commercial.

It’s an exciting time and don’t believe a lot of the pundits that many, not many, fewer and fewer, that tend to want to say why something is not going to happen. We’re going to prove, just like SpaceX and reusable rockets, a company, a startup company, can make a major and historic difference. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. We’ve gotten through many of the gates now. We have a very, very good probability of success.

Wes Ashworth (36:50)

Absolutely incredible, incredible work that you’re doing. I’m really excited to just continue to follow this and stay in tune with the progress and how that happens. One thing I did want to highlight as well too, so Curio, not just a recycling company, you’re also building vertically integrated stack that includes some advanced reactors. Tell us a bit about that, why was that important?

Ed McGinnis (37:09)

Absolutely, I’m glad you mentioned that. It’s important for a number of reasons. One is we believe an optimal business model is to be a company that’s vertically integrated and in nuclear space where we can meet the demand where the industry is not met the demand. For example, if you’re a CEO of a utility right now in the United States, and you want to buy a nuclear reactor, you want to get the fuel and you want someone to take care of the back end, use fuel management and waste this position, you will not find that company except for ours. What you’re going to find is a very segregated sector. You’re going to find there’s a sector for reactor designers. If you’re a CEO and you want to buy a reactor, fine, you can purchase a reactor or at least the design. They’ll bring in a builder.

Then what if you say, what about the fuel? They’ll say, well, we don’t produce the fuel. We don’t provide the fuel. You have to get the fuel from the nuclear fuel market. And you might wonder, well, is that the market where it’s still dominated by Russia? Is that the nuclear fuel market where we have no American producers at this time? That doesn’t, that sounds risky.

Then you may say, by the way, my residents and I, we both are very environmentally conscious. We want to be responsible, not pass waste down to future generations. Can you help me with the nuclear waste? Those companies are going to say, no, I don’t do that either. Well, we want to upend that and offer the full suite of nuclear reactors. We have a small modular reactor that’s optimized with our fuel, around our fuel, which is not the way most companies have done it in the past here. We will be a fuel supplier.

We are going to provide the used nuclear fuel management and we will provide the disposition pathway. We’re going to provide the whole ball of wax and remove those Faustien bargains that currently you have to deal with. We’re going to respond to the market the way we believe the market wants and that is a full integrated choice by many of the companies.

They don’t want or I would say a lot of these companies are still not ordering large numbers of reactors, relatively speaking, because of a deficiency in the market from a used nuclear fuel services disposition and even fuel supply. We aim to crack into the market and offer all of that. In the early 2030s, when we have our small modular reactor, which is we call HOPE, appropriately named Homogeneous Plutonium Eliminating reactor. We are going to have that combined with our recycling and fuel supply. We also have a sub micro reactor and that is under development now and we’re looking to bring that into the civilian market as well.

The last thing I would say is the reason why we are doing it this way where we want to be a recycler first and then a fuel supplier, and then reactors. While we will provide fuel to all types of reactors and recycle services for almost all types of used nuclear fuel from those reactors, we also want to have our own suite of tech and our reactors that we have with the fuel too.

The reason why, one reason, is I like to say the fuel drives the reactor. The reactor hardware does not drive the fuel. It’s similar to IBM and Microsoft when Bill Gates and team went into IBM, the dominant tech computer company on the planet, but couldn’t see the opportunity if it hit IBM in between the eyes. The future is not hardware.

The majority of the business and value is not going to be selling the monitor on your desk and the keyboard. It’s the software, but they couldn’t see that. They couldn’t see the forest through the trees. But Bill Gates and team did. When they said, OK, then I guess we can do this deal and we’ll have exclusive rights on software, IBM made a fatal error in saying, OK.

It’s the software that’s important and that drives hardware. Same thing for nuclear fuel. It’s the neutronics. It’s the nuclear fuel that drives a reactor. If you build a reactor and not having the fuel as the first principal driver of that design, you’re in a sense suboptimally shoehorning in fuel into your reactor.

We’re flipping the script. Our reactor is optimized for the fuel. By the way, our reactors are not uranium fuel. Uranium is a heavier and less dense energy source than plutonium. The key reason why we haven’t seen plutonium in the civilian market is the proliferation concerns over the years. We believe we’ve solved that and checked that box by only have using the plutonium when it’s  intertwined or intermeshed with other radioisotopes, transuranics, and fission products that give a nice robust security layer around that fuel, but not to the point where it impairs the neutronic performance of that fuel.

Our small modular reactor, because the magic of lower weight ratio, plutonium, higher density of power, we expect will be about a third the size of any of the uranium-based advanced reactors coming into this market. Full stop. That gives tremendous advantage for our systems.

Wes Ashworth (42:40)

I mean, I’m just completely blown away just hearing all this, learning more about it, learning about what you’re doing, just how innovative it is. The technology, the approach, the vertical integration. I love some of those comparisons, with Microsoft as well, really paints a picture. Just remarkable stuff. I will link as much as I can in the show notes as well if people wanna learn more and find out more about what you’re doing and all that’s going into here. I’ll end with maybe a question or two more. If you look ahead, if you look six to 10 years, even beyond that. What does success really look like for Curio and what does it unlock for the broader energy system?

Ed McGinnis (43:14)

In the next seven years, if we achieve our objectives, we are going to be the leading nuclear company in the US and very well likely in the world from the standpoint of being able to offer the entire loaf of bread to customers. It’s going to make it much more palatable. That’s when we get large numbers, when we are able to present access to nuclear, without also these customers having to deal with and taking on that liability of so-called waste and an insecure fuel supply sector.

I believe we will be in a dominant position. We look forward to it’s always good to have competition and there’s plenty to go around for everybody. But we’re looking to be the next SpaceX of nuclear and we’re in eyesight of that. Seven years is not long and we’ll be getting our products in within three years. So game on.

Again, that’s the beauty of the no safety net. That’s the beauty of Darwin, always on your heels. That is you’re either going to survive and innovate or you’re not going to make it. It brings out the best in really the US. I think that’s one reason why we’re such world leaders in tech space. That is you’ve got to survive or you’ll die.

You have to innovate or you’ll not make it. It’s our friend, but it’s our enemy in a way chasing us, but it brings out the best in us. That’s where Curio is, we’re bringing out the best. We’re proud to be a part of really an amazing renaissance for nuclear, true renaissance this time. Both parties see the incredible importance of nuclear now, both sides of the aisle. It’s a unique moment, but those windows never stay open forever. We have to fully maximize this amazing historic moment where nuclear is seen as so vital to deal with so many existential threats by both sides of the aisle and most importantly, the American people.

Wes Ashworth (45:12)

Incredible vision and realistic one as well too. I like a couple things you said there, the SpaceX of nuclear. I once heard somebody say as well too, you must seize the opportunity.

during the lifetime of the opportunity to your point, those windows closed, but the windows open, the opportunity’s here, you must seize it and you are. It’s incredible. Again, excited to stay tuned and just watch that development and watch it happen as well too and be a part of that. Final question, if you could leave policymakers, investors, public with one reframed way of thinking about nuclear energy in a nutshell, what would that be?

Ed McGinnis (45:44)

Nuclear energy is a key ingredient to our future success in so many aspects of our lives and nuclear has never been a better position to be one of those key ingredients.

Wes Ashworth (45:57)

It’s an extremely powerful note to leave listeners on and this has been just a remarkable journey kind of walking through this hearing you talk through it. I’m smiling kind of ear to ear as I think about the opportunity and the potential and what you’re doing is incredible. But Ed truly this has been one of the most illuminating conversations we’ve had on the show. Thank you for bringing clarity, realism and optimism to a topic that is often very misunderstood.

To our listeners out there, if this episode changed how you think about nuclear energy, please subscribe, rate the show, share it with someone else who thinks nuclear waste is unsolvable. Share it with anybody that’s interested as well. These conversations are shaping the future of energy and we’re really just getting started. With that, thank you again and we’ll see you next week.