Julia DeWahl of Antares on building nuclear reactors for the US military

0:00Julia De Waal is the co-founder of Antares, which is designing nuclear micro-reactors for the military and other off-grid use cases. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for coming by. It's great to be here. So you started out as first Opendoor and then SpaceX. What did you learn at each one of those that you took to Antares? Yeah, sure. I think one of the big things is always about customers, right? I mean, at the end of the day, this is why you build a business. At Opendoor, a lot of us were pretty young starting the business. I was one of the early employees there, and none of us had ever bought, let alone sold a house.

0:34So a lot of it was like learning what that was all about. And I remember in the early days, we just were working on writing the copy for the website. And we're like, we don't really know much about this whole thing. So what can we do about that? We just went and sat outside a bagel shop for a Saturday and a Sunday morning and just bought people bagels and just asked them about their processes buying and selling a home. And learned a ton and just really thought about what language they were using, what were the pain points. And that was really important to just like really get to know what we were trying to deliver on.

1:04as a business. And then, you know, fast forward to joining SpaceX after Opendoor. I joined as Starlink was coming out of R &D and into go to market. That's why I was joining, to lead that team and the business operations there. And we launch and we get our first customers. And so I invited our first customers to come join us via Zoom for an all hands. And it was honestly the first time that many of the engineers had actually heard from the words of a customer for themselves about the experience. Of course, everyone loved the internet, the fast internet was amazing. Rural Idaho, this is like a dream.

1:38But when we got to talking about the setup process, everyone was like, oh, that sounds rough. They're talking about multiple Home Depot trips. They didn't know if they had to cut down trees on their property, like they couldn't get a pole long enough. So a lot of it was simplifying people's understanding of what it would mean. People didn't realize how much the setup was so painful. Yes. And it led to basically this cross-functional SWAT team that was dedicated to mounting options to be sold alongside the dish. And like, if you hadn't - First party or third party? We did it ourselves, actually.

2:10Oh, okay. We said it's important that we have a good experience for that. Because actually, it is a big part of the experience. And so, spun up a whole team, like a lot of attention was given to mounting, which is like whoever would have thought. And I think, you know, customers, again, they're just like, they are the reason you start a business and just bringing this back to Antares. I mean, the reason we started Antares was to say like the government, particularly the military, needs more energy resilience, especially for critical infrastructure. We just do so much more now in the cloud with satellites.

2:40Our missile defense sites are sitting there like being powered by diesel generators still. Like, shouldn't we upgrade that? Okay, so I'll buy it. What is Antares? Sure, sure. We're building micro reactors, so small nuclear reactors. and we are building in particular for critical infrastructure, largely for the military, although we do think that as costs come down, there will be an interesting commercial market too. But basically anywhere where you're off-grid for sure or you just want resilience behind the grid as it exists today, cyber attacks or whatever, the grid goes down, you want backup power.

3:13It's a really great option. Okay, and if one megawatt is a small neighborhood, if one gigawatt is like a big nuclear power plant like in The Simpsons, you know. What are your SMRs? Sure, yeah. There's basically three classes size-wise. You have the really small ones are the micro-reactors, and we're actually one of the smallest of those. So we're even sub-one megawatt. We're kind of in the hundreds of kilowatt scale. You can think of that as like hundreds of houses worth of electricity. Then you have the SMRs, which is kind of this middle ground bucket, which is an interesting kind of neither here nor there, but potentially interesting, I'm sure we'll get into, kind of in the hundreds of megawatts or even 50 megawatts.

3:51and then you have the gigawatt scale, so 1 ,000 megawatts. And that's what the current power plants are today. Okay, so you're a sub of megawatts. So we're super small. I see. Okay, so you're kind of similar nuclear reactor size to, we'll be on a submarine or something like that. Smaller than that even. Those are like megawatt scales. So we're like, think about, like, we're the size of a car reactor. Yep. Think about replacing a diesel generator that's used to power, again, something that would be on the order of 200 to 300 homes of electricity. So it's quite small. Yes, yes. And so a big part of your focus is providing power in places where you really need that reliability?

4:22Like you're talking about replacing diesel generators. Is that kind of the design center for you? Yeah, and anywhere where you're going to enable a capability, a mission capability that wouldn't really be possible otherwise. So there's actually some really interesting space applications, potentially underwater applications. As you move away from a few, what they call exquisite systems, to attritable systems, this is where a really small reactor can come in very handy. for, you know, the submarines are obviously, you know, multi-megawatt powered systems, but these could be kilowatt powered, smaller systems underwater.

4:55But yes, anywhere where you're off grid, where today you're relying on what they call like the fuel supply chain of like bringing in fuel via helicopter or barge repeatedly. And that being a vulnerability, like this is a great option. So you're the Starlink of electricity. Kind of, we're actually like perfectly paired. And I wish we could offer a consumer product that's not on our roadmap right now, but maybe one day, like, you know, backpack-sized nuclear reactor. Why, like, I presume it kind of can't be on your roadmap, but why not? Is it that selling to the government is much easier than selling to something?

5:28There's so many reasons. I think that you always want to try to get your beachhead where it's, like, the easiest to achieve, right? And so we believe, I believe, that, you know, premium power is where you need to go with nuclear. And there's sort of, like, there's two places for that. One is what we're doing with Nteres, which is go to the military, help them with mission-critical need where they're not cost-sensitive, where they already pay more for power, and go there and support them with this next-gen, better version of resilient power. Or you go and you sell what we're seeing now, I think, which is really interesting with the hyperscalers, is they have carbon commitments.

6:02They want clean, firm. They want 24-7 power. They're actually willing to pay above market rates for that, and they will pay above market rates. So this premium power thing is a really interesting dynamic where nuclear is kind of well-positioned. What are the underwater applications? Well, it's really just, think, mini submarines. Oh, okay. Yeah, just really small systems, like what drones are to maybe larger missiles. That's kind of the equivalent. It's not super far along just yet. Got it. Okay. What does the path look like between now and producing power for the military, I guess, It's first in a pilot environment and then at scale outside of a pilot environment.

6:42Yeah. Well, it's always one of the next milestones that you can do to prove your technical ability and again, raise more capital to keep going with your company. I think the biggest risk often to hardware companies is you don't get far enough along technically to merit additional investment. So we're thinking a lot about our milestones for reactor development. And so next year, our criticality test is kind of the first milestone. By end of 2027, we want to have our first demonstration unit demonstrated. And what's really exciting is there's just so much good policy happening right now from the DOE and elsewhere that is supporting reactor tests and pilot programs.

7:22And so there's just like so much happening where they're opening up federal land. They're removing, starting to remove some of those like NEPA type regulations that really just hold everything up. So there is a clearer path now than there really ever has been for reactor builds. Oh, we'll get to the regulatory side. I have a lot of questions, Bush. What is your criticality test in 2026? What does that mean? Yeah, it means that you're testing that you can actually start your reaction. So, like, you've figured out the right amount of kind of, like, moderator to fuel, and you start it going critical.

7:57You don't have it, like, continue on for a while. You don't typically have a power convergence system that's actually taking the raw energy and turning it into electricity. So it's just one of those initial tests, like, can you start to put all your pieces together? And when do you, you know, the fusion guys are all focused on this, you know, producing more power than you put in. I know that's different. That's a fusion thing. But, yeah, when do you actually produce power in that? Yeah, producing power will be like your first reactor test. It's like, can you do the whole shebang? You can get this thing up and running, it's producing power.

8:32And that's what we're aiming to do by the end of 2027. Oh, wow. That's pretty soon. Yeah. What does the market look like for these small reactors? Who are you going to compete with? Well, the market for micro-reactors is one of these ones where it's like, well, there are no micro-reactors today on the market to just buy and use. So what do you think they're going to be, right? And so I think the first and foremost, it's going to be the most critical assets where you just cannot have them go down, which is why the defense is the perfect first market for it. And so it's going to be all of your critical infrastructure on every single base that there is.

9:04Obviously, you'll start with the most critical of critical missile defense sites and off-grid locations, things like that. And that's kind of defense. Then as you think about commercial, basically you have to see where the cost curves gets you to. Like how cheap can it get? This is just like space, right? It's like those first expensive launches into space, like that better have been a really important thing you're putting up there, right? But now that launch costs have come down, you can start to be like, oh, what else could we do? We can do some more stuff that's like maybe not so emission critical.

9:32I think we'll see the same thing in the commercial industries. Oil and gas has a lot of areas where they, again, use diesel generators to do things like compress natural gas along their pipelines. And they actually have carbon commitments, which are really interesting that they're like sort of thinking about, ironically, right? Can they move towards some more renewable or nuclear-type resources? So I think there's going to be some commercial applications there, too. Mining, for example, too. Anything that's just off-grid, hard to power today, really hard to get fuel into, it's a perfect market.

10:05Yes. You're probably following in the U.S. military. There's all these controversies right now with people talking about fuel quality and fuel contamination issues in Asia, I think it is. But yeah, presumably places where you are worried about fuel availability at all times and ensuring that you constantly have access to fuel. That is the place where there will be the most pull for these solutions. That's where generators work worst. Yes, yes. And, you know, there's a famous defense quote. I think it's unleash us from the tether of fuel, which means just like, gosh, the logistics supply chain has been such just a challenge.

10:39I mean, it was 50 % of the, I think, the Afghanistan casualties were from just logistics. And so, you know, having situations where you can kind of reduce that risk helps. And it's a great kind of market fit. Yes. Well, you're seeing this new market for these small reactors today. Why not? Like, why? Because we've had nuclear efficient technology for a long time. Yeah. Why hasn't it been done? Gosh, there's so many reasons. I think we ended up, I think there was just a macro, really negative climate around nuclear in general. So it impacted anything small as well coming out of the 70s. And so you had macro forces related to just like inflation, kind of just cost of capital.

11:20People stopped building, which coincided with the environmental movement, which is extremely anti-nuclear. They actually sort of conflated nuclear weapons testing even with, it was just like no nukes with energy. It's like, oh, that's actually pretty different. So a lot of things converged in the 70s. And then by the 80s, we stopped building a nuclear. OK, so you just view it as a part of the general anti-nuclear swing. And that also led to the cessation of construction of new nuclear plants in the U.S. and everything like this. Just your corner of the market also got caught up in that. And that's why we haven't ended up with them.

11:55Were there ever products available at this size range? There were, but they were pretty few and far between. mostly test reactors, small things built. We actually put one reactor into space in the 1960s to test that out. Did it work? Yeah, for a bit. I mean, a few months. It was like, let's try to do some systems in space with power. It's important to have power in space, and I think that's a whole other frontier. Obviously, the U.S. did have this long-running anti-nuclear bent. Roy grew up in Ireland. Similarly, there's the exact same thing, and Ireland was very paranoid about a particular British nuclear power plant, Sellafield, that was just across the channel from our...

12:37Does Ireland have... I don't actually know. Does Ireland have nuclear? Ireland has no nuclear power, no. The UK does, France does, Ireland does not. And I believe it's banned. And so it can't, per the current rules. There's actually many states in the US that have bans as well, but they've just been falling left and right. It's so cool to see. Well, I was going to ask this. The vibe has really shifted over the past 10 to 15 years. Yep. Why? Honestly, it reminds me of gay marriage. I mean, and if you look at the polling. It came from the youth, right? It definitely comes from youth, for sure. But it's like, it just kind of, you know, enough things add up and it just swings and no one ever looks back type of thing.

13:14That's how it feels. The, like, percentage point change we've seen in the last five to ten years is almost 20 points. I mean, it's like 17 points or something. So it's 60 plus percent of people support nuclear. It's actually almost surprising it's that low in some ways. But yeah, I mean, it's just huge public sentiment shift. And I think the kind of the old hippie nuclear testing or nuclear weapons testing folks are kind of dying out. What is wild, though, is I did a little activism related to Diablo Canyon power plant here in California, which was slated to be shut down this year. Sure. Yeah.

13:46And just just a few years ago, Newsom had to kind of begrudgingly say, like, oh, you know what? We probably should keep this thing on. We can't afford to have the power going out. but I listened in on some hearings I actually gave some testimony there and it was so funny to me the biggest organization that showed up against Diablo Canyon was called Mothers for Peace and it's like do you understand the irony of your name this organization was that old that it was related to the nuclear cold war and it's like gosh we've moved on we were joking because I'm part of this Mothers for Nuclear organization that's just like tongue in cheek our mothers against their mothers Yeah, our mothers against their mothers.

14:23And it's just funny how old school a lot of that opposition is. Yeah, so I guess there's a science advances one death at a time dynamic going on here, whereas the memory of the 1960s and peak nuclear confrontation and Three Mile Island, all these things, as all that fades, maybe it creates an environment where people can be more supportive of nuclear. Yeah, absolutely. What was your activism around Diablo Canyon? That was just exactly that. It was like, let's make sure that this actually passes and we don't shut it down. But there was a lot of people just calling and saying, hey, listen, nuclear is super safe.

14:58It's carbon free. Like, ostensibly in California, we care about these things. Like, let's support this. Let's not let's let's overturn whatever legislation was done 10 years ago that said we should shut this thing down. And it did pass. So now we do still have it open. Everyone on Progress Twitter likes to complain about the NRC. and but for the NRC, we would be living in, you know, that Jetsons vision of the future and everyone would have their, you know, nuclear-powered car that they used to drive to their nuclear-powered office. Right, right, right. Is that true? How good or bad is the current regulatory environment?

15:31How much is that changing? Yeah, yeah. I think it's an overestimated headwind, certainly today. I think if you go back five years ago, ten years ago, for sure, I mean, they hadn't licensed anything in decades. Yes. There had been nothing new. And but I can't even tell you how much has changed in the last few years. It's kind of remarkable. And it's been across both the Biden and the Trump administration, which is amazing to see. I mean, the legislation around nuclear passes like, you know, 95 to 5 type of thing. Right. It's like really, really strong bipartisan. What was what was interesting to see is it started with Biden, a bunch of legislation related to modernizing and reforming the NRC.

16:10the biggest thing they did was they changed the band-aid of the NRC. And they said, you are no longer focused just on safety because what's the safest number of nuclear reactors? To license zero. So they expanded that. You know, you must consider the full environment, the full civilization. That's great. And then just changed things around the advanced reactor pathway, removing some of the barriers. And then it's continued on with Trump. And in fact, he's sort of added even some more teeth and specificity. So right now, they've changed it to, you have 18 months to get your answer from the NRC, license or no license.

16:44Do you pass or not? And so there is - And what happens if they exceed the 18-month window? Probably it's in the details somewhere, but the point is that A, that these have been declared, that timeliness is important. There's also been some leadership change, which is just more reform-oriented, which is great. And there's just a huge microscope on it, right? Like everyone's watching. Everyone knows who's submitting their paperwork and what's going to come out the other side. Another thing that happened with some of these Trump executive orders is the DOE pathways, Department of Energy pathways, have been also opened and unblocked for test reactors.

17:19And so actually, Antares is part of this new test reactor program, which allows the DOE alongside usually like Idaho National Lab to be sort of your regulator as you're testing your first reactors so that you don't have to spend all this time up front with the NRC for something that you're just still innovating on, right, and iterating on. And so that's a really nice, I think, like first step before you go through the NRC. Wait, so let me make sure I'm giving this right. There is now a Trump era change where we essentially, for the first time ever, have a second nuclear regulator where you can go the NRC path.

17:52But also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start by working with the DOE and get up and running there. Yeah, that's essentially right. How big is the sandbox? I mean, you know, the DOE has always been a path. There actually technically has always been a path within the military because they license their own reactors with submarines. So it's always kind of been there, but, you know, hard to navigate, not well staffed, not well known about. And now it's kind of like everyone's watching. Let's go. Let's go DOE. Let's go, you know, INL, Idaho National Lab, and let's make these things happen.

18:23So there's just been a lot of like stated like you must enable this thing. And like now here's some it's actually it's actually a zero dollar program, but it gives you unlimited access to staff and all these other things. And the point is like everyone's watching to see how fast you can get one of these reactors through. Safely. So are you guys going the DOD route first? Yep, we are. And the DOD route. I mean, to say, like, you know, the Army is now also able to license its own reactors alongside the Navy, which already does. So that will absolutely be our first stop. The NRC really only license, sorry, regulates civilian electricity, so civilian power.

19:01So we actually don't need to even go there yet. I see. So you could be selling a lot of reactors and never go through the NRC. Well, we'll basically do our test reactors with the DOE alongside the DOD who has the jurisdiction to regulate, which is great. I didn't know. So this is the rare bipartisan issue. It's a true kind of a gem. I can paint three clean energy futures. One is the solar and kind of regular renewables view. Casey Hanmer was just on this podcast. And solar will get very cheap. batteries will get cheap enough such that you can go all in on solar and batteries, maybe some other renewables in the mix.

19:43But there you go. That said, nothing will be able to cost compete with that. That's one vision. Another is that we will rediscover nuclear fission and we'll figure out the spend fuel and everything like that. And we'll just do what we used to do, which is build nuclear power plants at larger scale. And that delivers us enough clean energy. A third view is that fusion will work and we'll actually have nuclear fusion at useful, meaningful scale of the grid. Between those scenarios, how would you handicap them? I'm going to leave fusion out because I'm not enough of an expert to know when and how that will happen.

20:19I would love for that to happen. How exciting, right? Between the first two, we do a lot of market manipulation of our energy markets. And there's a little bit of like flavor of the administration that does happen, especially between renewables and oil and gas. Nuclear has been a little bit actually immune to that. But so there hasn't really been almost a true market for this stuff. Like the renewables have been heavily subsidized for a while and nuclear has not been. That did change in 2022 with the IRA. There's now production tax credits for nuclear, which has a lot of ripple effects. But I think we're going to see a lot more progress with solar and batteries in particular.

20:57There is a reason, however, that the hyperscalers who are committed to their climate targets are not just going for solar farms. Why are they even thinking about nuclear if solar is so cheap? And it's because actually to get true 100 % 24-7 coverage, the battery or the excess build-out is massive. It is really expensive. It's basically on par with nuclear costs. So we're not there yet. That's one thing to say. The other is that the cost of solar, you know, at the panel level is dirt cheap, right? And installing it, dirt cheap. But to actually integrate it, build the transmission, and then the added grid complexity where you need now these peak or gas plants to run when the clouds come and that kind of thing, like that actually has a ton of cost.

21:44And it's sort of hidden cost. I think it's underappreciated, certainly by like the solar maxis out there. It's real. you know and so I think we're always gonna we're always gonna want to have multiple sources of energy right it's like diversity is good it's like if one thing if natural gas prices are through the roof like hey we have these other things we have this baseload nuclear which has been just like so stable for us and I think we're gonna want to have everything I actually don't think there's gonna be a world that's gonna be like you know 100 % nuclear but sir is it diversity of energy sources valuable because you know the solar maximalists would say no it's fine solar or we'll just take everything?

22:21And wouldn't the nuclear maximalists say, just we can have a lot of, you know, we figure out how to at scale produce nuclear power plants and why do you need that gas? Why do you need anything else? It's a good push. If you are able to own through and through your whole supply chain, you make the panels, you mine and process the minerals, which we have like zero interest in doing as Americans. Like all that dirty work is done in China and elsewhere. If you really did all that yourself, then I could say, okay, you own it, you can do it. Right now, at least you have, of, hey, if your natural gas pipelines get shut down, actually it's not a problem for us, right?

22:52We're not even an importer anymore. We're actually, we're good. This is actually the reason that, do you know what percentage of France's electricity is from nuclear? It's declining, right? But historically it's been around 70%. Yeah. Do you know the US? US from nuclear, oh, it's small. It's five, 10%. It's actually more. Really? And everyone thinks it's below five, 10%. It's like when I got into this, I thought it was like 2%. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, my point is that France made a very, very deliberate decision to actually go to 70%, if not more at the time in the 70s, because they had no carbon resources, right?