Underground Nuclear Reactors? Inside Deep Fission’s Energy Solution
Liz Muller is the CEO and Co-founder of Deep Fission, a company pioneering a new approach to the traditional light-water nuclear reactor. Rather than using concrete and constructed containment, Deep Fission places the reactor one mile underground, fundamentally changing the design paradigm.
Liz was on the show over five years ago when she was building a company focused on storing nuclear waste deep underground—a related concept. Now, she’s back with a fresh vision and a new venture. Deep Fission recently raised a pre-seed round led by Eight VC, and we wanted to catch up with her to hear how the idea came together and how she’s approaching the challenge this time around.
Episode recorded on March 27, 2025 (Published on April 10, 2025)
In this episode, we cover:
[1:37] Liz’s previous venture: Deep Isolation and lessons learned
[4:19] The origin story of Deep Fission and the core insight that sparked it
[9:37] Cost comparison between underground and traditional above-ground nuclear reactors
[12:17] Deep Fission’s modular, scalable reactor design
[19:10] Plans for maintenance, refueling, and long-term waste disposal
[22:25] Regulatory engagement with the NRC and path to licensing
[23:24] Initial commercial partnership with Endeavor Data Centers
[25:07] Advantages of Deep Fission’s approach vs. traditional nuclear plants
[28:23] Funding milestones and capital raised to date
[29:10] Liz’s vision for the future of nuclear energy
[35:03] Who Deep Fission wants to hear from—and how you can help
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Cody Simms (00:00):
Today on Inevitable. Our guest is Liz Muller, CEO, and co-founder at Deep Fission. Deep Fission is pioneering a new approach to the traditional lightwater nuclear reactor, obviating, the need for concrete and constructed containment by putting the reactor one mile underground. Liz was on the show over five years ago when she was building a business with a related concept to store nuclear waste deep underground. She recently raised a pre-seed round for Deep Fission led by eight vc, and I wanted to catch up with her and hear how the new company came to be and how she's approaching the problem. Fmrom MCJ. I'm Cody Sims, and this is inevitable. Climate change is inevitable. It's already here, but so are the solutions shaping our future. Join us every week to learn from experts and entrepreneurs about the transition of energy and industry. Liz, welcome to the show.
Liz Muller (01:09):
Thank you so much, Cody. Happy to be here.
Cody Simms (01:11):
A repeat visit for you, you were on the show many years ago when Jason was hosting and you were on an earlier company that is a sort of sister company, I guess, to what you're building now with Deep Fission, that being deep isolation. So give us a little bit of an update there on reminding listeners who maybe weren't listening to the show six years ago, what Deep Isolation is, and then we can start to talk about how you took your learnings from that into your new endeavor.
Liz Muller (01:37):
So Deep Isolation is focused on solving the nuclear waste disposal problem. If anyone here is interested in nuclear power, they probably know that dinner conversations tend to go well, what about the nuclear waste problem? Why hasn't that been solved? And Deep Isolation's approach was, well, you don't have to do it the way that everyone has historically thought about disposing of nuclear waste. There are innovations you can take advantage of, particularly out of the oil and gas industry in terms of putting something into very deep isolation. We're talking about a mile underground. You don't need humans underground. And when you don't need humans underground, you don't need air, you don't need vast tunnels. And so you can do it both faster and more flexibly, but also significantly cheaper. And so that's what Deep Isolation is doing. Deep Isolation is a company is still going really, really well today. So the CEO Rod Balzer is working with customers around the world, still hasn't gotten to the actual disposal yet, so that is still a couple of years out, but we have been doing real work with real customers on how are we going to dispose of a particular type of waste in a particular type of geology. So it's been great.
Cody Simms (02:53):
And you say taking inspiration from oil and gas, I suppose one of the things that people may not think about with oil and gas is if you're doing fracking or whatever, water comes back up from the well and ultimately likely gets injected into a permanent storage. Well, would that be sort of the idea here is you're taking the waste byproduct of the process and then finding a place to put it underground for permanent storage?
Liz Muller (03:15):
One of the differences though is there's no pressure involved in Deep Isolation. So when you're doing drilling for oil and gas, or certainly when you're disposing of the waste, you tend to pressurize the rock. You can also crack the rock. That's what the fracking refers to. So we're really just taking the drilling piece of that, which is simpler and doesn't have as nearly as big an impact on the surrounding rock.
Cody Simms (03:38):
One other just quick question on waste before we shift gears into your new endeavor. Doesn't France do a fairly good job of recycling their nuclear waste heavily?
Liz Muller (03:48):
So France does. So there are a number of countries around the world that have taken the decision to reprocess or recycle their waste. They still have additional waste at the end. You reprocess it or recycle it, but then you still have to have a disposal program. And so France is working on a disposal program using the mind repository approach.
Cody Simms (04:07):
Okay. So you had been working on this for quite some time and at some point you had some kind of aha that led to what you're building now with Deep Fission. Describe that and then go into what Deep Fission is.
Liz Muller (04:19):
So one of our customers wanted us to look at a bunch of different possible scenarios of what could go wrong with deep isolation. So you're putting nuclear waste into a borehole for disposal mile underground, but what if, and of course long list of what if, and one of those was what if accidentally, instead of putting spent nuclear fuel a mile underground, you put fresh fuel a mile underground, what would happen? Is there any criticality risk? Meaning could you start a sustained chain reaction? And we did the calculation and the answer was no. It would not be able to start as chain reaction. But it was a really interesting question for a couple of reasons. So first of all, if you've ever visited an existing nuclear power plant, how big they are, you can see them from a long ways away. And it's a lot of concrete, a lot of construction, a lot of steel reinforced concrete.
(05:12):
And that is actually according to the US Department of Energy, about 80% of the cost of nuclear power is in this physical construction. But what is the construction to do? Well, it's really two things. It's to create 160 atmospheres of pressure so that the water doesn't boil at a low temperature. You want high temperature steam, and then it's also for containment in case everything goes wrong. And those are really 80% of the cost of nuclear power right there. So here we were in a borehole a mile underground, and we know we have amazing containment. That's why you want nuclear waste to go into a borehole a mile underground, but also counterintuitively have the of that's above in the borehole have the exact conditions that you would want if you wanted to create a nuclear reaction underground. Now again, one fuel assembly would not go critical, but then the question was, well, can we come up with a design that would have a sustained nuclear chain reaction and could generate steam that would go to the surface and do this without all of the construction costs? That has been historically the reason that nuclear power is so expensive.
Cody Simms (06:25):
You mentioned the, what'd you say? 160,000 pounds of pressure. That's from the water column that's above you. Maybe for people who don't come at this problem from an oil and gas perspective, maybe don't appreciate this. I don't know that I necessarily did before I started understanding more about what you're doing. When you're drilling these boreholes, it's not just like a giant hole in the ground. It's actually filled with water, right?
Liz Muller (06:45):
That's right. Yeah,
Cody Simms (06:46):
Yeah. You've pumped water all the way down and water is what you're usually using alongside a drill bit to actually drill the whole extract dirt out of it as you drill, et cetera. Yes.
Liz Muller (06:56):
Yeah. When you drill a water well, you drill to a certain depth and it'll fill with water. That is the natural state of borehole. Now in our circumstance, we're going to want to control that water, so we're going to have it fully cased. So there's not going to be any interaction between the rock and the borehole itself, but even so we do expect it's going to be full of water, and that's what we use to create the pressure.
Cody Simms (07:16):
So fully cased meaning you have inserted some kind of tubing down the entire shaft of the borehole that you've created?
Liz Muller (07:23):
That's right.
Cody Simms (07:24):
Okay. And so that led to this aha that what if you used the pressure to be a containment system around a reactor? I think of a reactor as being a fairly large thing, but I think you're talking about a 30 inch borehole. So are you rethinking the design and layout of what this reactor would look like underground as well?
Liz Muller (07:44):
So we're looking at four standard fuel assemblies, like you said, a 30 inch borehole, but then you can have an array of these, so you can have multiple holes at a single site. So each hole will generate about 15 megawatts of electricity. And so if you're micro community just need one reactor, maybe that's great. Maybe that's all you need. But what we're seeing is that right now, the sweet spot and people who really need electricity right now are data centers. And data centers are probably going to want hundreds of megawatts or even gigawatts of electricity. And so what makes the most sense there is to look at, well, maybe we do somewhere between 10 and a hundred of these reactors in an array, and so generating between 150 megawatts and 1.5 gigawatts of electricity.
Cody Simms (08:32):
So this would be essentially underground rows of your reactors. And back to my question about size, I assume when I think of a nuclear reactor, I mean 15 megawatt reactor is substantially smaller than like an AP 1000, which is one gigawatt. But I think of size, a lot of the size I guess I'm thinking of is the actual containment, right? It's the cement, it's the cooling tower, it's all of the stuff you have to build around the reactor core itself. Are these reactor cores actually, I mean obviously I've never seen one with my own eyes. Are they relatively small in general?
Liz Muller (09:03):
So the fuel is remarkably dense. So what you may have heard is that if you use nothing but nuclear power to power everything that you did over your entire lifetime, the fuel that you would use, which is also the same as the waste that you would generate would fit inside one soda can.
Cody Simms (09:19):
Wow.
Liz Muller (09:20):
So it's really, really dense.
Cody Simms (09:23):
That is such an incredible visual. Again, when I think of what I think of as a nuclear reactor and this incredibly large civic engineering project, but to your point, that is where the bulk of the cost of the reactor comes from.
Liz Muller (09:37):
That's right.
Cody Simms (09:37):
So talk to me then about burying these underground. You said a 30 inch borehole. How much does it cost to drill one of these boreholes?
Liz Muller (09:45):
Not that much. We do have lots of drilling companies. It's highly competitive, and in the oil and gas industry, the cost matters a lot. So you're trying to get margin on these holes where you're extracting natural gas, and so the cost has come down pretty dramatically. Now the size of the hole that we are drilling is much bigger, so our holes are going to be more expensive. The 30 inch four hole is not standard for oil and gas. Typically, you're looking at between four and six inches for an oil and gas hole. So 30 inches can be done with standard equipment. We have spoken to multiple drilling companies who are comfortable with this, and if you're just doing one, you're probably looking at the six to 8 million range for a single one of these holes that includes mobilization of the rig, which is probably the biggest, most expensive part. And so if you're drilling more than one, the cost will actually come down quite a bit.
Cody Simms (10:38):
What type of fuel are you planning to use? I think we've all heard about some of the challenges with fuel supply chains and Russia and HALEU and all of that. How does that factor into both current geopolitical situations as well as what's actually been approved for use by the nrc, for example?
Liz Muller (10:55):
So Deep Fission has taken the approach that we want to get to market as quickly as we possibly can, which means we want to use as standard a design to what is already operational today as possible. So we could also eventually use other types of fuel, but for now we're looking at your typical pressurized water reactor fuel. So 5% enriched uranium because we already have a mature supply chain for that that exists today. So really not trying to do anything new at this stage.
Cody Simms (11:27):
So I'm hearing you say taking the advantages of sort of a small modular reactor type of unit, reducing the cost by getting rid of a lot of the containment cost, but then also not taking on a lot of the technology risks that maybe a lot of advanced reactors are taking on in that they're trying to use new fuels that haven't necessarily been deployed in USA before and instead taking the fuel source that the NRC and others are used to working with and understanding how to regulate.
Liz Muller (11:58):
That's right.
Cody Simms (11:58):
With an SMR with a small modular reactor, my understanding was the whole by definition the name small modular reactor is that they are supposed to be easier to construct, cheaper to build, require less material. Are they still requiring significant amounts of concrete and construction cost?
Liz Muller (12:17):
It depends on the type of small modular reactor that you're looking at. So if you're looking at above ground pressurized water reactors, small modular reactors, there's still a fair amount of construction. So they still require cement and steel in order to create the pressure and contain everything. They're just trying to do it on a smaller scale, and what they're finding is that you need to have multiple modules in order for this to be cost effective. So it's a new approach. I think it's exciting. I think it's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't really remove the cost that I think we're going to need if we're going to have significantly more widespread adoption of nuclear power. Now, the advanced reactor companies, the ones that are using different materials, so different moderators talking about molten salt reactors or high temperature gas reactors or any of these other designs that are out there, they've taken a different approach. So what they're trying to do is use materials that don't require eye pressure. They will have less construction, but the trade-off, as you mentioned, is that they're using things materials that may not be licensed yet. Many of them require highly enriched uranium, which has supply chain challenges, and they're still doing something that has never really been proven, certainly not on a commercial scale before.
Cody Simms (13:35):
And so the 5% U rich uranium that you're using that is used in standard lightwater reactors across the USA has a fairly mature US supply chain for it. Yes.
Liz Muller (13:46):
Yeah, and that's absolutely right. And I think additionally it means that the models that are out there are really good. We understand these reactors extremely well because there are hundreds of them around the world.
Cody Simms (13:57):
It strikes me that with every nuclear reactor, really you're creating a fancy way to boil water and generate steam. Your solution not withstanding, and what you're doing is underground drilling, horizontal drilling and finding a way to pull steam out the other side of the borehole. Right. Similar to the value proposition of enhanced geothermal, what would be the benefits of going with your approach versus going all in on enhanced geothermal and sort of using underground as a power source that way?
Liz Muller (14:25):
So Deep Fission is actually looking at just at vertical holes. So we're not expecting to go horizontally with Deep Fission. Deep Isolation does go horizontally.
Cody Simms (14:32):
Got it.
Liz Muller (14:33):
But sometimes I refer to Deep Fission as enhanced geothermal.
(14:37):
So the challenge with geothermal is you go down deep in the rock and you have to go pretty deep to get to very hot rock, but then the rate which you can extract somewhat limited replenishment of that heat is even more limited. You're actually waiting for that heat to come in from other parts of rock, and that just takes a while. And so the amount of energy that you can get out per borehole is not nearly as high. Now what we're doing, let's call it for a minute, assisted geothermal. So we're putting a small nuclear reactor at the bottom of the borehole that will create a much greater source of new heat that will keep the reaction going, and we're able to borrow a lot of the technology from geothermal. So in terms of how do we bring the steam to the surface, great that we know how to do. In many ways it's been done before. So we're able to borrow different types of technologies, but combining them in a way that's novel.
Cody Simms (15:31):
The other thing that strikes me benefits that you get, one is resilience from surface issues. We're seeing so much focus on needing to create resilience around our critical infrastructure because of climate change induced wildfires, extreme weather and whatnot. And I assume being deep underground, you're largely isolated from that, at least from a nuclear safety perspective. As you said, your turbine still sits on surface. So from a power generation perspective, you're maybe still at risk there, but from a nuclear safety perspective, presumably I would guess you would be more secure than an on ground facility would be just from surface level disaster scenarios.
Liz Muller (16:14):
Yeah, I think it's a huge advantage, and one of the scenarios that you have to consider in the nuclear industry is what happens if an airplane crashes into your facility when you're a mile underground? Yes, that may take your turbine offline, but it's not going to have any sort of impact on the actual nuclear technology, which is a mile underground under billions of tons of rock.
Yin Lu (16:34):
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Cody Simms (17:36):
The other one that jumps to my mind would just be land use. And I don't know how much with an SMR, a small modular reactor, I don't know how much, if you're building a data center campus, what percentage of the land use would need to be for the reactor itself and the reactor facility itself relative to the data center itself? I dunno if you have any math there. You can compare just in terms of what the physical footprint might look like doing that methodology as opposed to a Deep Fission type of setup.
Liz Muller (18:04):
We've done some preliminary analysis of how closely we expect to be able to place our reactors, and we're looking at one acre for half dozen reactors or a dozen reactors, and if you want to have a hundred reactors, then we're looking at about three acres. So it's really a remarkably small footprint on the surface, certainly compared to other types of electricity generation
Cody Simms (18:28):
That surface land is primarily the turbine sort of facility. And
Liz Muller (18:32):
Then that's exactly it.
Cody Simms (18:33):
Do you have to have some kind of safety and security around what you've done as well? Is there a physical presence for security that has to be around the borehole,
Liz Muller (18:42):
So there will be some sort of control center that could be physically present. It doesn't necessarily need to be physically present. It could also be remote, but it's hard to come up with a scenario in which even if the worst case scenario were to happen, that it would have an impact on humans or the environment. Again, because you're so deep underground, I expect we'll still want to have some sort of physical presence, but that's something we'll have to work through in detail with the regulator.
Cody Simms (19:10):
Be super curious to hear ultimately what the security requirement ends up being. I mean, one thing with nuclear is you're always in a world of guards and guns for the most part, and so knowing if you can avoid having to have that type of onsite security presence will be fascinating to hear as you all continue to learn what the requirements are to actually get these deployed. What is the maintenance requirement here? If you're a mile underground, how often are you having to replace the reactor core? How are you dealing with problems? Should they arise even if it's not specifically fuel related, if it's a part that is having a problem, for example, how do you deal with this?
Liz Muller (19:52):
Yeah, it's a great question. So we are looking at a relatively short fuel cycle. So under our current design, each reactor will only last about two years. So two years is not a timeframe in which you typically expect maintenance to be required. And so we are looking at a two year fuel cycle. At the end of life, what we would like to do is lower the reactor deeper into the borehole. So you could of course pull it up and put it into storage for eventual disposal, but we think it makes the most sense to keep it within the borehole itself, just lower down, and then you put another reactor on top of it and you can store multiple reactors that way if you're replacing it about every two years, and that might 30 of them over a 60 year lifetime, and then you store eventually, if we could dispose of it right there within the borehole without ever having to pull it up now, we could also pull it up. That is something that we know how to do. The oil and gas industry has tools and expertise and how to pull things out of boreholes, so we could pull it back up and put it into storage for eventual disposal at a different location. But the concept is not much maintenance because you just replace it every two years.
Cody Simms (21:10):
I know with deep isolation you're taking the spent fuel and putting it in casks. Are you saying here you would even obviate the cask storage step potentially?
Liz Muller (21:21):
Yeah. So deep isolation has, we call 'em canisters, so they're relatively small. The purpose of the canister is just to hold the fuel really, we haven't taken any safety credit for the canister. All of our calculations show that you don't need the canister.
Cody Simms (21:36):
The borehole is the safety device,
Liz Muller (21:38):
The borehole and the rock really is the safety. In the Deep Fission analogy, we're looking at using the reactor container. So it's in a thin walled container, and that would be what you use to hold the fuel until such time as either you want to bring it up or you say it's now in disposal.
Cody Simms (21:58):
How do you technically push it deeper? Just if you're sitting at the bottom of a borehole, what's the mechanism to drill deeper once the reactor core is already in the ground?
Liz Muller (22:08):
Yeah, another great question. So you'd actually drill the hole deeper to begin with. So you drill the hole, let's call it 1.2 miles instead of one mile, and then the space is there. So you're holding up the reactor at one mile depth, but when you're done with it, you then just lower it into the space that's already been created.
Cody Simms (22:25):
And so you're just sort of planning for, call it 20 or 30 year life of the borehole to begin with, and you drill enough disposal space underneath it. And what is the process for NRC? Where are you? I know you filed something. I was googling Deep Fission before the conversation and came across your NRC filing. So you're in mid process on, I assume your initial design.
Liz Muller (22:46):
So we're in pre-application engagement with the NRC. We submitted our regulatory engagement plan over a year ago, so we've been in process with them for a while now. Submitted our conceptual design overview white paper last summer, and we're now working on the preliminary design in parallel with confirming our first location. So we do need that first location in order to submit our license. We're getting pretty close to having that identified. So the plan is to submit our full license application in the fall of next year.
Cody Simms (23:17):
And you have an initial potential customer I've seen as well. Maybe share a little bit about the commercial progress.
Liz Muller (23:24):
So we're working with Endeavor, Endeavor Data Centers. They're fantastic groups. So they've got data centers all over the world. They develop, they also do a lot of their own engineering, so they have expertise on turbines, on cooling systems. And so we're able to work with them for their customers on the first initial. So they have confirmed two gigawatts as sort of our first order with them. But I think even more excitingly is this opportunity to do our first site together.
Cody Simms (23:55):
I mean, two gigawatts is a sizable order that would be sort of at scale. You would start with, you said your reactors are roughly 15 megawatts each. So that would be starting with essentially an array of them, I would assume, trying to hit maybe a hundred megawatts or something like that and then growing the footprint from there. Is that the idea?
Liz Muller (24:12):
Yeah, that's what we're thinking about. So in terms of the particular size for the first one and the first license application, we're still thinking about that. We're working on that. But one of the things that we like is having a module of five together. So five is about 75 megawatts. It's a good standard size. It works well also with the design that we've been thinking about so far as maybe five reactors for three turbines. So again, still all this is to be confirmed, but it's a nice module which we might look at licensing first.
Cody Simms (24:41):
We started the conversation by talking about the cost savings on essentially construction. Can you articulate that a little bit more like what you expect sort of the cost savings to be on a similarly sized, call it 15 megawatt reactor, or if you wanted to scale up and say a pod of reactors equivalent to 75 megawatts, how you're comparing your cost sort of all into building something on the surface.
Liz Muller (25:07):
I mentioned earlier sort of the 80% of the cost is in the construction that has borne out. And so if you look at the cost savings, we are looking at being about 20% of the cost of existing large scale nuclear. Now, in terms of more detail, all of this of course is subject to confirmation. And one of the things that we're thinking about particularly is to the extent that we're going to even need nuclear quality assurance and manufacturing, because typically if something goes wrong, it could have an impact on humans and the environment. In our scenario, that may not be true. And so we may not require the same degree of nuclear quality assurance, which could have a big impact on the cost of our reactors. So we're expecting to be about 20% of the cost. We're talking publicly about five to 7 cents per kilowatt hour for the first of a kind. So there are mechanisms that eventually we think we can get significantly lower than that, particularly by using larger boreholes, but five to 7 cents per kilowatt hour and a cost of approximately 25 million per reactor of 15 megawatts. So that's a remarkably good price.
Cody Simms (26:21):
And the pressure in terms of its impact on steam generation and the power side of what you're doing is sort of obvious on the containment side. There still presumably would be have a significant amount to prove there that the underground pressure provides the same containment that a steel and cement facility. Is that an accurate question?
Liz Muller (26:44):
So it's really the rock that provides the containment more than the borehole itself. So the rock is something that we actually do understand fairly well because we've looked at it for the containment of nuclear waste. And so in scenarios from Yucca Mountain, and then also of course piggybacking on all the work that Deep Isolation has done, we understand the containment very well.
Cody Simms (27:05):
Wouldn't those be sealed holes? Whereas with your borehole, you've got the water sitting above it.
Liz Muller (27:09):
Exactly. So that's the difference. We have a 30 inch borehole that we now need to think about. The borehole itself is where we need to focus our efforts. We do also have a lot of work that we can piggyback on because the oil and gas industry also worries about contamination. So you don't want the oil and gas and all the nasty stuff that you're bringing up from underground to impact the water table. So we do have systems that exist today to protect the water system from that. One of the advantages of Deep Fission is that we're not constantly bringing nasty stuff up. So if you're looking at an oil and gas well, you're constantly bringing stuff up that could potentially leak and have an impact. Deep Fission, it's only really in an accident scenario where there's any chance of anything getting up above ground and that can be mitigated.
Cody Simms (28:00):
So if I'm understanding you're well below the water table at a mile deep, it's just that because there is nothing technically between your reactor and this column of water up to the surface, that column of water at some point is essentially crossing the water table barrier. And so you would have to make sure there's not leakage that could happen. Should there be an issue with the reactor core at the bottom?
Liz Muller (28:22):
Yes, that's correct.
Cody Simms (28:23):
And talk about how you've kind of capitalized the company to date where you are. You announced your seed round in middle end of last year, 2024, I guess.
Liz Muller (28:31):
So we called it a pre-seed round, and so that was a 4 million pre-seed round led by eight BC that we announced last summer. We're now working on our seed round. That is really to finish the preliminary design that we've already been working on. We're hiring a lot of engineers right now. And then also to confirm this first site and to start beginning to do the site specific work that we're going to need to do for our license application.
Cody Simms (28:57):
Well, congrats on that.
Liz Muller (28:58):
Thank you.
Cody Simms (28:59):
You've been in nuclear now a long time. I don't know that you've set out to necessarily work in the nuclear space based on your background and the work you did with Berkeley Earth, but here you are. Where do you think this industry's going?
Liz Muller (29:10):
I think there's tremendous excitement in the nuclear industry right now. I think it's been a really long time coming. So it started with climate change, and I think that my interest in nuclear grew out of climate change, and it's not enough to do lots of little things. We need really big things that are going to move the needle when it comes to climate change. And I think nuclear is one of the big things that we can do that will actually have a significant impact. That was then accelerated by the in Ukraine, everyone realizing that we need energy security, energy independence. We can't rely on natural gas the way we once thought, well, you could, particularly if you're in Europe. And that led to a tremendous acceleration of the interest in nuclear power. Now, of course, the third thing that is adding to this right now is data centers and AI and expectations around power demand growth and not being able to get natural gas turbines as fast as we want them. So there's suddenly this additional layer on top of those two that were already there that is really just making even more excitement about nuclear power. Now, nuclear power cannot move as quickly as some other technologies. So I think we're really not looking at a dramatic expansion of nuclear power until we can get some of these new technologies up and running. 2029 is our timeframe for commercialization, but by the 2030s, I think we can start to see much more significant implementations on a much larger scale.
Cody Simms (30:43):
A few critiques of the nuclear industry in the US, I mean, one obviously is just that we slowed things to crawl until recently, and now there's the boom of innovation happening. None of it live yet, but a lot in the works and in the US there's what 50 odd reactors across 90 something sites I believe today. And one of the challenges is almost every one of those reactors was a first of a kind. You had to continually go through an approval and learning cycle. The US has been unable to get cost downs by making things replicable,
(31:13):
And now we have this explosion of innovation, and yet all of them are again, first of a kind solutions. How do you see that playing out? I feel like one of the advantages I'm hearing from you of Deep Fission is that you're not necessarily requiring a ton of risk on the fuel source and sort of understanding and approval of that, though it's definitely a new mouse trap that you're building here. Explain how you see that playing out. Is there going to be large shakeout in the industry or are we going to have a thousand flowers that bloom and multiple different kinds of technologies based on use cases?
Liz Muller (31:46):
Wow, lots of content in that question. Lemme try and break it apart, but you might have to circle back and remind me of the pieces that I forgot. The first thing is small module reactors have a massive advantage because if you want to bring in, let's call it gigawatt, then instead of just building one, or let's call it 1.5 gigawatts to make a round numbers for my scenario is then you're bringing in a hundred reactors. And so of those hundred reactors, you might call it a first of a kind implementation. Maybe it's our first of a kind implementation, but you're doing a hundred of them. And so it's both the first of the kind and the hundredth of a kind and you're learning as you go. And I think that's huge. That's like what we do right now for solar. And so you bring in a solar facility and it may be a first of a kind, but it's also kind because it's modular and grow as you need to.
(32:38):
I think that's going to change the way that we think about first of a kind. The other thing that I'll add to that, which is one of the things that I'm really excited about for Deep Fission is that we're going to be profitable on the first of a kind implementation. So I think the industry has struggled in the past with this concept of, well, we may lose money on the first. We may lose money on the second, but eventually we'll get to the nth, and once we get to the nth, we can be profitable and we're going to have a good margin. I think the question that people have been asking, well, how much money are you going to have to lose? And who's going to foot that bill to get you to the end nth of a kind? And what we're seeing now, particularly with Deep Fission, but I think there are other designs out there that can do this too, is if you can be profitable on your first of a kind implementation, well, there's still going to be a certain amount of risk aversion and not everybody's going to be willing to take that risk.
(33:29):
But if you can get a great return on that, then you'll find more people who are willing to move forward with a First of a Kind technology.
Cody Simms (33:37):
And how many new technologies do you think ultimately will end up live and out there? Is there going to be a narrowing down in the industry of the dozens of solutions that are currently in R&D?
Liz Muller (33:49):
I think so. I mean, I think what we're going to see is who can actually be profitable in various different market segments. So there's definitely a few different market segments. There's going to be portable nuclear, for example, replacing diesel generators.
Cody Simms (34:03):
We had Doug from Radiant on the show recently. There's an example of that one.
Liz Muller (34:06):
That's an example of a segment that Deep Fission is never going to play in. We're never going to be portable, right? You can't move a borehole. I think there is going to be a need for that. I think there's also going to be a need for very low cost, stable, reliable power, which is the niche that Deep Fission is looking to fill. There may be others as well, but I think we are going to see a consolidation. I think not all technologies are going to make it through. I think it's going to come largely down to who can be profitable, which is why there's so much focus on cost.
Cody Simms (34:39):
Well, Liz, this has been a super enlightening conversation for me. It's been awesome to see the evolution of your work in this space. I'm really excited for the future that you're building with Deep Fision. Is there anything else we should have covered?
Liz Muller (34:52):
I think we've covered everything that was on my list, so appreciate it. Cody,
Cody Simms (34:56):
Anything you need help from anybody listening who is interested, excited, wants to learn more from you, who do you want to hear from?
Liz Muller (35:03):
We're already seeing a swell of interest in nuclear power. I think if any of the listeners out there are interested, maybe they're working for a customer who might be interested in nuclear technology, they should absolutely feel free to reach out to us at Deep Fission. I'd also say that if you are just interested in nuclear as an observer, have those conversations. So people are still not talking about nuclear power as much as I think we all should be, and we're seeing a generational shift with younger people more and more open to nuclear power, which has been fantastic, but we still need to get the concept out there more.
Cody Simms (35:40):
Liz, thanks for joining us again on the show, and thanks for the update on everything you're building.
Liz Muller (35:45):
Thank you so much, Cody. Really happy to be here.
Cody Simms (35:48):
Inevitable is an MCJ podcast. At MCJ, we back founders driving the transition of energy and industry and solving the inevitable impacts of climate change. If you'd like to learn more about mcj, visit us at mcj.vc and subscribe to our weekly newsletter at newsletter.mcj.vc. Thanks and see you next episode.
