Q2 2025 Oklo Inc Earnings Call

Speaker #3: Good day, everyone, and welcome to Oklo's second quarter 2025 financial results and business update call. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Mr. Sam Doane, Director of Investor Relations.

Speaker #3: Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker #4: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome, everyone, to Oklo's second quarter 2025 earnings and company update call. I'm Sam Doane, Oklo's Director of Investor Relations.

Speaker #4: Joining me today are Jacob Dewitte, Oklo's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Belmer, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, following the close of markets, we released our second quarter 2025 financial results.

Speaker #4: Today's accompanying slide presentation is available in the Investor Relations section of our site. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion includes our prepared remarks and the Q&A session that follows.

Speaker #4: We'll include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views regarding trends, assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today.

Speaker #4: We encourage you to review the forward-looking statements disclosure included in our supplemental slides. Additional details on relevant risk factors can also be found in our most recent filings with the SEC.

Speaker #4: Please note that Oklo assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Speaker #4: With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jacob Dewitte, Oklo's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. Jake.

Speaker #5: Thanks, Sam. We're starting today's update by highlighting a wave of federal actions that are accelerating momentum behind advanced nuclear technologies and how Oklo is extremely well positioned to benefit.

Speaker #5: Over the past quarter, I've seen exceptional policy movement from sweeping executive orders to major legislation and national infrastructure strategies. Together, these actions reflect a coordinated federal push to speed up the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, strengthen domestic fuel supply chains, and enhance U.S.

Speaker #5: Energy independence is highly beneficial for Oklo. These aren't just favorable signals; they're concrete steps that support faster licensing, faster deployment, and better project economics for first-of-a-kind deployments.

Speaker #5: In the next few slides, we'll pack the most significant drivers, the executive orders, the one big beautiful bill, and the federal AI action plan, all of which align directly with Oklo's licensing strategy, customer partnerships, and long-term cost advantage.

Speaker #5: The executive orders signed earlier this year mark a historic shift in federal policy toward advanced nuclear. These executive orders build on legislation from the last Congress and administration to clearly recognize civil nuclear energy as a national and economic security priority.

Speaker #5: That designation alone reshapes the policy landscape and unlocks access to key government assets, including alternative fuel materials that do not require further enrichment. When used in advanced reactors like Oklo's, these materials stockpiles could be made into fuel for more than three gigawatt powerhouses.

Speaker #5: Just as importantly, these orders direct the DOE and NRC to move faster, streamlining regulatory reviews, reforming reactor testing, and targeting three operational advanced reactors by July 2026.

Speaker #5: It's rare to see this level of alignment across permitting, fuel access, and deployment. The executive orders go beyond signaling support; they include clear directives that align directly with Oklo's strategy.

Speaker #5: First, they revitalize the domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, with a specific emphasis on recycling. Oklo is one of the few fast reactor companies positioned to use down-limited alternative fuel materials that don't require enrichment.

Speaker #5: This fuel, combined with the industry-leading advances we are making in fuel recycling, can give us a significant structural advantage. Second, the orders prioritize the deployment of reactors at national security locations, including AI data centers and defense sites.

Speaker #5: That aligns with where our customers are heading and where our small, scalable powerhouse designs excel. Third, the orders mandate licensing reform, capping fees, and setting an 18-month review window for new reactors.

Speaker #5: That level of regulatory clarity and speed will accelerate Oklo's path to market and strongly supports our combined license strategy. Finally, these orders direct the DOE to accelerate reactor testing and target three operational advanced reactors by July 2026.

Speaker #5: That's an aggressive timeline, and one Oklo could qualify to help deliver on. The one big, beautiful bill signed into law in July delivers a suite of policy wins that are directly aligned with Oklo's business model.

Speaker #5: First, it preserves robust investment and production tax credits through 2033 that then phase out through 2036. These credits improve our project economics and offer additional certainty for early-stage deployment.

Speaker #5: Second, the bill strengthens the loan programs office, establishing the Energy Dominance Financing Program. This is important because it provides access to long-term capital for projects that can't yet tap traditional debt markets, like first-of-a-kind deployments.

Speaker #5: Third, it accelerates NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, reviews by setting strict deadlines for environmental assessments and impact statements. That helps reduce permitting delays and improves timeline confidence across our project portfolio.

Speaker #5: And finally, the bill allows for 100% bonus depreciation for assets that begin construction by 2029 and are in service by 2033. That gives us the ability to capture meaningful tax benefits as we build out fuel and manufacturing capabilities.

Speaker #5: The federal government's AI action plan, also released in July, adds a major new dimension to the demand landscape for advanced nuclear. The plan calls for a rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, including high-security data centers and resilient domestic energy systems to support them.

Speaker #5: It explicitly recognizes that achieving AI dominance requires building new sources of reliable, dispatchable power, like advanced nuclear reactors. Our powerhouses are uniquely suited for this use case, delivering distributed baseload power that can be co-located with mission-critical AI workloads.

Speaker #5: The policy also calls for streamlining permitting, deregulation, and expanded workforce training to support infrastructure deployment. As AI infrastructure scales, we expect both commercial and policy momentum behind advanced nuclear to continue building.

Speaker #5: And Oklo is focused on delivering power solutions that meet that need. With that context, I'll turn it over to Craig to walk through how our mission, model, and design choices are translating into real execution advantages.

Speaker #6: Thank you, Jake. Our mission at Oklo has always been clear: to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy at a global scale. Our co-founders started this company with the belief that advanced nuclear could play a transformative role in the world's energy future.

Speaker #6: That meant rethinking the entire model, from how we design reactors to how we license, fuel, and operate them. That vision continues to guide us today, and it's now clearly aligned with where policy, technology, and customer demand are headed.

Speaker #6: Moving to the next slide, Oklo's competitive edge comes from the intersection of three key strategies: our business model, our sizing philosophy, and our technology.

Speaker #6: First, we build, own, and operate our powerhouses, selling power under long-term contracts. That creates recurring revenue and enables us to move more efficiently through the regulatory process.

Speaker #6: Second, our small, scalable design allows us to deploy assets quickly, match customer demand in an incremental fashion, and significantly tap into existing supply chains with factory fabrication, which reduces site complexity, cuts costs, and supports faster rollout.

Speaker #6: And third, our technology is based on proven liquid metal fast reactor designs, with over 400 reactor-years of operating history behind it worldwide. That gives us a deep technical foundation with built-in performance and safety benefits.

Speaker #6: Importantly, it enables us to move directly into commercialization. Without the need for a costly and time-consuming demonstration plant, and finally, I really can't emphasize this point enough, it provides flexibility for Oklo to use fresh halo recycled fuel and down-limited alternative fuel for our powerhouses.

Speaker #6: Together, these advantages position us to deploy at speed and scale, with a structure built for long-term growth. This past quarter, we made meaningful headway across all elements of our milestone framework.

Speaker #6: From licensing and project execution to fuel development, customer growth, and strategic partnerships, we advanced our NRC engagement. We completed phase one pre-application readiness and saw our licensed operator topical report formally accepted for review.

Speaker #6: We also took another step toward deployment at scale by selecting Q8 as our lead constructor for the first Aurora powerhouse at INL. On the customer front, we expanded our pipeline of commercial opportunities with both the Department of Defense and Liberty Energy.

Speaker #6: And advanced our corporate development efforts through agreements with Korea, Hydro, Nuclear Power, and Vertiv. We also remained disciplined on spending, keeping our cash burn in line with expectations and ending the quarter with a strong balance sheet.

Speaker #6: I'll now hand it to Jake to walk through the progress we made this quarter across our licensing, project, and commercial fronts. Jake?

Speaker #4: Thanks, Craig. We continue to make meaningful progress this quarter across all regulatory priorities. We completed Phase One of the NRC readiness assessment for the Aurora INL combined license application.

Speaker #4: The RC found no significant gaps that would bar acceptance for review, reinforcing our readiness to submit Phase One of the application, which we expect to file in early Q4 after incorporating NRC feedback.

Speaker #4: We also had our license operator topical report accepted for review. This is an important part of our repeatable deployment strategy. It proposes licensing operators by Aurora technology rather than by site.

Speaker #4: Once approved, this report can be referenced in future applications, streamlining regulatory timelines and supporting scalable deployment. We're also seeing continued tailwinds across the regulatory landscape.

Speaker #4: The NRC recently accelerated TerraPower's review timeline by six months and introduced new fee reforms, reducing licensing costs through waivers and lower hourly rates.

Speaker #4: These changes further reinforce the momentum we're seeing and could benefit Oklo's licensing path going forward. Finally, recognizing that there's a lot to track on the regulatory front, we launched a public regulatory dashboard on our website that provides a transparent view of our progress across powerhouses, fuel, and radioisotope licensing, helping keep all stakeholders informed as we move forward.

Speaker #4: Fuel is one of the most important inputs for advanced nuclear, and it's one of the areas where Oklo has built a significant strategic advantage.

Speaker #4: Our design enables a differentiated fuel strategy built around three complementary sources: access to government stockpiles, commercial supply partnerships, and long-term recycling capabilities. This approach provides greater flexibility, cost control, and resilience than traditional fuel models.

Speaker #4: First, we were awarded five metric tons of high assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALO, from the Department of Energy in 2019 for our first powerhouse at INL. We were uniquely positioned to utilize additional government fuel stockpiles made available under recent executive orders, including enriched uranium and plutonium-based materials, that don't require further enrichment.

Speaker #4: These stockpiles, effectively waste materials that would otherwise be destined for costly disposal programs, can instead be turned into a productive asset for clean energy by Oklo.

Speaker #4: Second, we're working with enrichers such as Centris and Hexium to meet both near-term and long-term commercial halo needs. Centris supports early deployment with available domestic supply, while Hexium's next-generation atomic vapor laser isotope separation, or AVLIS, enrichment technology could enable lower-cost, scalable production over time.

Speaker #4: And third, our fast reactors can use recovered nuclear material from both today’s nuclear fleet and future advanced reactors, positioning us to recycle fuel over time and build a vertically integrated long-term supply model.

Speaker #4: Together, these efforts form a comprehensive and resilient fuel strategy—one that supports near-term deployment while building long-term supply independence. As mentioned, fuel is a critical enabler for advanced nuclear deployment.

Speaker #4: That's especially true for halo, which comes with its own cost dynamics. Enrichment is measured in SWU, or separative work unit, and so are its costs.

Speaker #4: Costs of enrichment are actually driven by both ore and enrichment process efficiency. Producing one kilogram of halo requires roughly 35 to 60 SWOOs, plus 30 to 50 kilograms of natural uranium, depending on market conditions.

Speaker #4: That can create a wide range of cost outcomes. That said, Oklo's design and business model position us well for this market. We benefit from needing consistent, high-volume fuel across many small units.

Speaker #4: That matches well with enrichment module capacities and allows us to scale demand over time. Smaller cores also mean more units in the field, creating steady annual uptake that supports long-term supply agreements.

Speaker #4: We're also watching next-generation enrichment closely. Laser-based approaches like AVLIS could unlock more cost-effective, batch-friendly production over time. Our engagement with Hexium positions us to benefit as that innovation matures.

Speaker #4: In short, we're managing halo costs in the near term while building a supply model that reduces volatility and lowers long-term fuel exposure. Oklo's fuel strategy isn't just well designed; it's being executed today to support rapid deployment and long-term resilience.

Speaker #4: We've secured HALO from the DOE for our first commercial unit, and our fast reactors are uniquely capable of using down-limited uranium and plutonium-based fuel stockpiles that would otherwise be slated for disposal.

Speaker #4: With recent policy changes unlocking access, we can fuel dozens of early units from existing government material. We're executing on commercial partnerships: Centris for long-term Halo and Hexium for long-term innovation.

Speaker #4: Their AVLIS technology could materially improve enrichment economics over time. Our fuel strategy doesn't stop at procurement; we're building toward recycling. Oklo's reactors are designed to run on recovered fuel, supporting a closed fuel cycle and long-term resilience.

Speaker #4: This isn't a vision for the future. We're operationalizing this strategy now with a model designed to scale. There's a growing consensus that nuclear power is fundamental to the country's energy future, but historically, costs and time delays have held it back.

Speaker #4: Nuclear power is already the most land- and material-efficient energy source, but decades of legacy design, complex safety systems, and custom-built construction have driven up both costs and timelines.

Speaker #4: At Oklo, one of the reasons we're in a strong position today is the disciplined approach we've taken to design and cost engineering from the outset.

Speaker #4: Our liquid metal sodium-cooled design enables inherent and passive safety, reducing the number of safety-grade systems we need. That simplifies our architecture, streamlines regulatory reviews, and lowers both capital and operating costs.

Speaker #4: We've also minimized the physical footprint of each powerhouse and designed around supply chain scalability, leveraging conventional components and proven industrial partners. In the next few slides, I'll talk through how these choices translate to faster, more cost-effective deployment, starting with our supply chain and system architecture.

Speaker #4: This is where our design and supply chain strategy come together to deliver real execution benefits. Roughly 70% of our powerhouse components are sourced from non-nuclear supply chains.

Speaker #4: Industrials, energy, and chemicals, for example. These sectors offer mature, scalable manufacturing capabilities that we can tap into today at lower cost and with shorter lead times than traditional nuclear fabrication.

Speaker #4: This isn't just about lowering costs; it's about reducing schedule risk as well. By designing around standardized, shippable components like the reactor module, steam generators, and power conversion system, we simplify installation, support parallel builds, and minimize on-site construction complexity.

Speaker #4: We've also reduced the number of safety-grade systems by designing for inherent and passive safety. That helps streamline procurement and reduces the regulatory burden on our supply chain.

Speaker #4: Our preferred supply agreement with Siemens Energy is a great example of this strategy in action, and we continue to build out that ecosystem with more partnerships to come as those deals reach commercial readiness.

Speaker #4: These decisions help us scale faster, deliver sooner, and meet the needs of customers who value both certainty and speed. We're also pleased to announce that we've selected Q8 as the lead constructor for the Aurora INL powerhouse.

Speaker #4: Q8 is one of the most experienced engineering and construction firms in the country, with deep expertise in complex energy infrastructure, including nuclear projects. Their capabilities go beyond construction.

Speaker #4: They also bring integrated procurement, as well as asset and component fabrication capabilities that align well with our modular, repeatable design approach. We've entered into a master services agreement with Q8, intended to support the full scope of design, procurement, and construction for the Aurora INL project.

Speaker #4: Pre-construction activities are scheduled to begin this quarter, including site mobilization, early procurement, and groundwork. We're getting a pre-construction groundbreaking in late Q3. This partnership and these efforts help ensure we're positioned to deliver our first powerhouse on a realistic, executable schedule, with commercial operations targeted between late 2027 and early 2028.

Speaker #4: In parallel, Atomic Alchemy, our radioisotope business, has also begun site characterization work on its commercial isotope production facility at INL and submitted its materials license application to the NRC for its demonstration facility.

Speaker #4: Continuing momentum on facility development for domestic radioisotope production. The demonstration facility will also produce revenue-generating isotopes, marking an early step toward commercial operations. We also signed a memorandum of understanding with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, one of the largest and most experienced nuclear operators and builders in the world.

Speaker #4: The agreement is focused on exploring opportunities to collaborate across a range of areas, including project development, licensing, manufacturing, and supply chain coordination. This partnership reflects a shared interest in deploying advanced reactors globally and in continuing to drive innovation across the nuclear value chain.

Speaker #4: It also aligns with our Ader strategy of forming international partnerships that can support commercialization and accelerate deployment. As part of our work with data center customers, we also announced a joint development agreement with Vertiv, a leader in data center infrastructure.

Speaker #4: The partnership focuses on co-developing integrated power and cooling solutions that take advantage of our ability to co-locate power generation and compute infrastructure. With Vertiv, we're building smarter nuclear power systems for compute-intensive infrastructure that could be a huge win for our customers.

Speaker #4: Vertiv will use steam from our powerhouses to drive chillers, improving the overall energy efficiency of the data center. This helps reduce total energy costs and allows customers to streamline infrastructure with a single integrated solution.

Speaker #4: It's a strong example of how we're working directly with customers and infrastructure partners to deliver tailored solutions at the core of their operations—not just selling power, but operating integrated value where it matters most.

Speaker #4: We continue to have active discussions with other commercial partners and suppliers to round out our deployment ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver scalable energy infrastructure with speed, reliability, and efficiency.

Speaker #4: With that, I'll hand it over to Craig to expand on our commercial momentum and walk through the financial and customer updates from the quarter.

Speaker #7: Thanks, Jake. One of the partnerships we're very excited to highlight this quarter is our work with Liberty Energy. Liberty was an early investor in Oklo while we were still a private company.

Speaker #7: And former CEO Chris Wright served on our board prior to his appointment as the United States Secretary of Energy. We are excited that there are continuing opportunities to collaborate with Liberty in a meaningful way.

Speaker #7: This partnership is designed to solve a very real customer challenge: how to access reliable power now with a clear path to zero-carbon baseload power over time.

Speaker #7: Together, we have the potential to offer a fully integrated solution that starts with Liberty's gas generation and load management platform, which can transition to Oklo's nuclear powerhouses as they come online, providing a faster path to clean energy.

Speaker #7: This is a strong validation of Oklo's business model. It demonstrates how our powerhouses can integrate with existing infrastructure to deliver a phased approach that is flexible, financeable, and customer-aligned.

Speaker #7: Customers get uninterrupted energy today and a long-term certainty around clean baseload power. And together, we're building a joint commercial platform designed to scale.

Speaker #7: We are finalizing the commercial structure of the partnership and believe this is a scalable blueprint for high-power demand sectors that prioritize reliability and long-term energy certainty.

Speaker #7: We were also selected by the U.S. Air Force as the intended awardee for what would be the first advanced vision deployment at a U.S.

Speaker #7: military installation. Under the terms of the Notice of Intent to Award (NOIDA), Oklo was identified as the successful awardee to design, construct, own, and operate a powerhouse that would deliver both electricity and heat under a long-term purchase agreement.

Speaker #7: This represents a major milestone both for Oklo and for the broader advanced nuclear sector. It reflects growing recognition of the role nuclear power can play in national security and energy resilience.

Speaker #7: Particularly at distributed and remote sites, where reliable power is mission-critical, Oklo is actively working with the U.S. Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) on next steps. We look forward to providing further updates as the process advances.

Speaker #7: I will now provide a summary our financials. Oklo's second quarter operating loss was $28 million. Inclusive of non-cash stock-based compensation expense, of $11.4 million.

Speaker #7: Oklo's loss before income taxes in the second quarter was $24.3 million, which reflects our operating loss adjusted for net interest income of $3.8 million. On a year-to-date basis, when adjusting for non-cash stock-based compensation charges, changes to working capital, and deferred income tax benefits, the cash used in operating activities equates to $30.7 million.

Speaker #7: We still expect, on a full year basis, cash used in operating activities to be within the guided range of $65 million to $80 million that we disclosed at the start of this year.

Speaker #7: In addition, based on our earlier discussion points in this company update, we now see an opportunity to potentially accelerate the modest CapEx investments from 2026 into 2025.

Speaker #7: This could include advancing deployment activities at INL before year-end, progressing fuel supply and fabrication activities in response to the executive orders, and other activities to deploy powerhouses beyond INL.

Speaker #7: We also completed a successful marketed first follow-on equity transaction on June 12th, generating $460 million in gross proceeds, providing the company with additional cash on hand to deliver our enhanced growth agenda.

Speaker #7: And as a result of the capital raise, we ended the second quarter with approximately $683,000,000 in cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet. To wrap up, I want to briefly highlight why we believe Oklo is one of the most compelling opportunities in the advanced nuclear industry.

Speaker #7: We're deploying proven, fast reactor technology in a compact, scalable format designed to reduce cost, complexity, and deployment timelines. We are vertically integrated across power generation, fuel recycling, and radioisotopes, unlocking multiple high-value revenue streams.

Speaker #7: Our business model is built around long-term power cells, delivering recurring revenue, margin visibility, and customer stickiness. We are pursuing superior economics through standardized design, repeatable deployment, and recycled fuel that drives long-term capital efficiency and competitive levelized cost of energy.

Speaker #7: Our 14-gigawatt pipeline spans data centers, defense, utility, and industrial customers, reflecting strong and growing demand. We have developed a streamlined licensing strategy aligned with our business model, backed by regulatory expertise, a repeatable COLA path, and accelerating federal tailwinds.

Speaker #7: At its core, Oklo is more than a technology company. We're building an energy platform to serve the world's next era of growth. Thank you for your time.

Speaker #7: Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Speaker #2: Thank you, sir. And everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. We ask that you limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up.

Speaker #2: The first question today comes from Jeffrey Campbell from Seaport Research Partners.

Speaker #8: Yeah, good evening and congratulations on all the multifaceted progress. Regarding pressurized water reactor fuel, current law appears to dictate that the DOE cannot take title to utility spent fuel until a permanent disposal site.

Speaker #8: Is designated. What's your take on how this might be amended to support Oklo's future recycling effort? And I ask this question in the atmosphere of the significant nuclear power push that's been coming from the executive orders and the big vehicle bill.

Speaker #4: Yeah, thanks, Jeff. It's a good question. So, as the law stands and policy stands, you know there's nothing that gets in the way of us being able to work with utilities and the government to take the material and actually recycle it.

Speaker #4: The main challenges are, generally speaking, having the infrastructure and facility to do it. There are some logistical dynamics about what’s the best and most efficient path.

Speaker #4: Given the nature of the situation, which is that by definition, the Department of Energy is supposed to be disposing of this material in a repository, which is not happening.

Speaker #4: So the Department of Energy is reimbursing, effectively, the utilities for holding the material on-site because they failed to meet their duties under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Speaker #4: That said, you know, we have a great opportunity to help address a lot of that. And it kind of hits on two fronts, right? Like the biggest thing for us is it allows us to deal with fuel supplies.

Speaker #4: I mean, used fuel is effectively 90-plus percent unused fuel. And with recycling, you can actually tap into and harness that material and use it.

Speaker #4: That's a massive reserve of material. And very importantly, advanced recycling techniques like what we're using, coupled with a fast reactor like what we're referring to, enable us to do that in a very cost-transformative way.

Speaker #4: The paradigm that has largely existed in the academic sphere has suggested nuclear recycling is economically challenging. That's maybe arguably has some legs to stand on in the era of much lower fuel costs and when you're trying to produce a fuel that today's light reactors can use, which requires a much higher purity fuel form.

Speaker #4: That's not the case with a fast reactor. You can tolerate a much lower sort of purity fuel form. In other words, you can have all the transuranics mixed up together and commingled.

Speaker #4: The implication then is therefore a lower cost facility which then you're amortizing a lower cost over more fuel throughput, which means the actual fuel produced from recycling will be a much lower cost, even we think, than fresh fuel like considerably less.

Speaker #4: So, that's a pretty attractive paradigm for that alone. Especially given that when we look at how to meet the order book and how to scale into the opportunity, tapping into recycling is a massive upside.

Speaker #4: But it also helps change the paradigm around waste management considerably. Right? So, you're taking the material, you're reducing volume substantially. You still produce, no matter what you do, some high-level radioactive waste that will need some form of disposition.

Speaker #4: But you change the characteristics of it radically in recycling. Generally, you shorten the half-life to be something that decays away in several hundred years, not hundreds of thousands of years. You change the nature of the form factor because you reduce the volume, but you also then co-alloy these fission products—the things that you need to dispose of—with things like glass or metals or things like that.

Speaker #4: All of which open up much more different, well, you have just a much larger diverse set of opportunities and options for disposal and disposition.

Speaker #4: Which is great because you can create a much more community-oriented kind of consent-based siting approach for how you dispose of this. Not to mention, interim storage becomes a lot more palatable because of the nature of the material and having less volume.

Speaker #4: That said, some utilities have a different push and pull to get this done sooner rather than later. Others are sort of taking a little bit of a more, you know, I would say a conservative approach, waiting for some of these infrastructure plays to come to bear.

Speaker #4: In other words, let us build, you know, waiting for us to build and start operating before they're going to want to jump into something.

Speaker #4: But we're finding some constructive engagement with folks to figure out how to actually find the optimal path to move this material over to us to then be able to fuel it and find the right sort of pathway that manages the different stakeholders right from a risk and sort of title perspective in the best way.

Speaker #4: There is a reality that what we're doing is also a pretty considerable service to managing used fuel. To the government, who has the title to dispose of it for the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Speaker #4: And therefore, it has some benefits that are pretty helpful there. Not to mention, there are some other things we can do, right? We can take some of those fission products that would be disposed of.

Speaker #4: There are some industrial medical applications for some of those. And I think, you know, another kind of key part of this is the fact that really reducing the volume really changes how we think about this stuff.

Speaker #4: And then I think from the utility side, the most interesting fuel for us to start with is actually the freshest fuel out of the reactor.

Speaker #4: In other words, the stuff that's in the pools today, not the stuff in casks. That stuff's also interesting, but if we had to pick and choose, we'd pick the pool's stuff first.

Speaker #4: Which is great because that's where the most constrained pressure is in storage. So, all in all, I actually think that on the heels of the executive order, which makes it clear that this is going to be a direction that we move into.

Speaker #4: It builds on work that came from the Biden administration. And before that, from Trump 1, we find that we're in a spot, you ow, to actually, you know, to be executing fully and to actually developing out the right sort of plan to site, locate, you know, build this facility and start receiving and actually recycling material and producing fuel.

Speaker #4: All that does take time. We've been at the, you know, pre-application and site selection work for a long time here. But it's all lining up for us to be kind of accelerating to move a little bit faster.

Speaker #4: Especially given how much it unburdens us on the fuel side.

Speaker #8: No, that's a great color. We could also add that the taxpayers are currently paying for the storage of the spent fuel. So they might have an argument there if there's any resistance to moving that waste towards Oklo.

Speaker #8: I just wanted to ask you, sticking with fuels, can you provide some color on the recently announced AVLIS effort? It appears Hexium is most focused on AVLIS for lithium to produce tritium at this time.

Speaker #8: So I was interested to hear how the shift to uranium might be accomplished. I mean, I'm aware of the history of AVLIS. I mean, what is specific to Hexium?

Speaker #8: Are we moving them to uranium?

Speaker #4: Yeah. I'll just give you a little more color for everyone's benefit. When Jeff's talking AVLIS, it's Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation. It's one of the more promising techniques for isotope separation.

Speaker #4: Using some pretty cool technology. I mean, look, you can find lasers, you know, isotope separation. It's pretty cool stuff. But it has significant improvements in efficiency, cost, and operational characteristics.

Speaker #4: That generally speaking suggests a lower levelized cost of separative work unit or levelized cost of enrichment unit than centrifuges do in the current paradigm.

Speaker #4: Which has significant upside for reducing the overall cost of fuel delivered to our systems. The techniques used for AVLIS can be tuned for a number of different isotopes.

Speaker #4: And Hexium, you know, initially was starting to focus on looking at some of the work with lithium, just given some of the dynamics that they saw with opportunities that.

Speaker #4: But they also saw the opportunities in the uranium part of the reason that bringing them into market and help them sort of, you know, move that technology forward.

Speaker #4: They come out of the same in many ways. The origination of a lot of this technology was focused on enrichment capabilities for things like uranium.

Speaker #4: So, the ability to use it for that, as well as some other, by the way, stable isotopes that are relevant to the medical isotopes.

Speaker #4: You know, part of the business that we have, they all kind of are complementary. So that's part of how we're looking at these partnerships: the ability to produce isotopes in high-purity forms for different use cases.

Speaker #4: Obviously, the big attractive one is enriched uranium for fuel. But there's also important aspects about producing higher-quality targets with enriched isotopes for radiation and atomic alchemy facilities, or even just selling the products themselves.

Speaker #4: So that's an area where we continue to be engaged and focused on, and finding the right ways to partner, accelerate, and kind of deepen the partnerships we have in those spaces.

Speaker #4: Again, at a high level, enrichment is, I think, at this place where we are for the first time being a pretty significant... Let me rephrase this.

Speaker #4: For the first time in a little while, probably in the last 20 years, we're seeing significant pressure from new technology coming forward because of technology R&D, coupled with an opportunity in the market with this massive demand for new enrichment capacity that's bringing forward new and more innovative approaches.

Speaker #4: That has the potential to significantly change cost curves. AVLIS has a long history behind it. And I would argue that largely the reasons it didn't get commercialized on the first go were that the market was pretty soft, the uranium demand back in the '90s.

Speaker #4: It wasn't clear if those investments were going to be worthwhile. And then the other factor is we've gotten a lot better at laser techniques.

Speaker #4: Like a lot better technologically. And in the last 30, you know, 40 to 30 to 40 years. So it's really changed the paradigm to make it an interesting time now for this.

Speaker #4: Which is why we're at opportunity, while also continuing to engage with folks who are, you know, working with more established centrifuge technologies like Centris.

Speaker #8: Great. Thank ou.

Speaker #2: The next question comes from Sharif Elma Grabie from BTIG.

Speaker #9: Hey, thanks for taking my questions. On the deal with Liberty, I imagine some of those customers are members of that 14-gigawatt pipeline you've got.

Speaker #9: But you know, it's interesting. On the revenue side, could Oklo start recognizing revenues sooner, say, when those projects are seeing gas? Generating power from gas?

Speaker #8: So, if I can take that. It's still early days for how we turn that agreement into an actual set of commercial terms and conditions.

Speaker #8: With our customers, and I'm not really at liberty to—no pun intended—say who we're progressing those discussions with. But yeah, you're correct.

Speaker #8: If there was a mechanism whereby we participated in early power cells, that could potentially lead to revenue recognition for the company.

Speaker #9: Okay. Interesting. Thank you for that. And Jake, one more. You know, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that you guys have one of the only reactor designs that can run on down-blended fuel.

Speaker #9: Can you just speak to why that is? I thought that was pretty interesting.

Speaker #4: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it kind of has a bunch of details in it that, obviously, I can kind of like to get into.

Speaker #4: But for time's sake, I'll be a little brief. There are kind of a couple of ways to look at it, right? So, down-blended high enriched uranium that's fresh, low enriched uranium.

Speaker #4: By and large, it's probably going to be useful for most everyone. That said, there's not a lot of material that's coming available. The material we're seeing is typically stuff that's either going to have been rejected for prior use because of some level of impurity contamination, or because it was already irradiated in reactors.

Speaker #4: In both cases, especially in the latter, you build up isotopes and the nuclear space. We call those the isotopic vectors. But isotopes of uranium that are not conducive to use in reactors that use moderators instead of the neutrons down.

Speaker #4: I think pretty much any reactor that uses triso fuel or graphite moderators, or water as a coolant, they can't really use those very well without significant neutron penalties because of the nature of some of those isotopes.

Speaker #4: Whereas in a fast spectrum reactor, it's really not that significant, if even a penalty at all. So you can handle those materials. Furthermore, the other aspect that's interesting here is another source of this material is the excess plutonium inventories that, per the President's executive orders, are being made available to industry.

Speaker #4: That's a sizable opportunity. That's honestly, I think, kind of hard to overstate because of the potential implications it has. We're talking about, you know, that material could be made into hundreds of thousands of kilograms of halo-equivalent material.

Speaker #4: But the nature of that material is heavily biased towards, I would call it, a more streamlined usage and design to accommodate fast neutron reactors.

Speaker #4: And the industry gets into a lot of details, but plutonium-based fuels have a long history of their usage in fast reactors. They also have a usage in water-cooled reactors and can be used, but there doesn't exist the fuel fabrication infrastructure to support that.

Speaker #4: And also, it's a lot more complicated from a reactor design perspective. Let me rephrase that. It can be a lot more complicating to the core design and reactor design compared to what we do today.

Speaker #4: The French obviously do this. The Japanese have done it. It's viable. But it introduces a change that isn't exactly the most, and I wouldn't say today's operating plants are rushing into necessarily.

Speaker #4: Given that fresh like LEU is a superior fuel form, and part of the reason is just because plutonium has a different property; it's much more absorbing of neutrons.

Speaker #4: Both to fission and to just capture, uranium-235 is at the slow energy spectrums. It's also in the higher energy spectrums, but that delta causes a localized kind of dynamics that you really have to account for and manage against in a light water reactor.

Speaker #4: Gain, doable. But in a reactor, it's just frankly easier to achieve and accommodate. And also, the fuel fabrication for plutonium-bearing materials using the talent fuel, which is like what we use, can just be done in a way that, from a facility design and management perspective, generally speaking, has just simpler considerations than around, for example, fabricating into oxide fuel for light water reactors.

Speaker #4: So there's a lot of nuance around it, but it's one of the key things. That's pretty attractive and differentiating for us. We see those materials as being pretty valuable, and the opportunity to sort of bridge us.

Speaker #4: You know, you use those materials in the near term. That then helps us alleviate the demand needs for Halo in the very near term, which then gives us a lot more grace as those supply chains build up.

Speaker #4: So that we can start shipping fuel and reactors more quickly as a result of that. So that's one of the things we're working towards and are excited about on the heels of those executive orders.

Speaker #9: And nuance is helpful. Thanks, Jake.

Speaker #4: Thanks.

Speaker #2: Good door timer from William Blair has the next question.

Speaker #10: Hey, thanks for all the details, and thanks for letting me ask a question. Jake, my first question for you is just, you know, as you look at your pipeline and the opportunities and conversations, I'm curious how you're thinking about the opportunities behind the meter versus in front of the meter.

Speaker #10: Is, there seems actually to be almost more excitement behind the meter around data center buildouts. And so I'm curious how you're how you would think of the, the power generation, domestically.

Speaker #10: split between those two. And I have a follow-up.

Speaker #4: It's a great question. And what we see is it's evolving pretty considerably and kind of just goes at the pace of different opportunities and different announcements of kind of, you know, everything from policy to buildouts to actual projects.

Speaker #4: So I think what we're finding is that, on paper, I say the bias is, you know, majority focused on behind-the-meter applications and opportunities.

Speaker #4: But the practical reality of getting to that seems to focus probably more near term on some front-of-the-meter deployments before that happens.

Speaker #4: And what I mean by that is, I think it depends, right? Because we are in conversations and we're talking about literally having the nature of both of those happening.

Speaker #4: It's just that delivering kind of the right suite, which is part of why the partnership with Liberty is so important. Delivering the right suite of options to deliver power at that reliability and availability rate, I'm confident that in time, you know, nuclear can demonstrate and validate and do that.

Speaker #4: But to start with, it's just a little bit more economically challenging to do it on a pure nuclear solution versus having a diversified fuel source.

Speaker #4: So, long story short, you know, I think we're finding that in many ways the behind-the-meter strategy is more elegant on paper and makes more sense.

Speaker #4: But in some of the near-term actual deployment realities and implications, being grid-tied and, you know, connected to it is helpful. Now, I'm sorry, Jed, I'm ably overinterpreting towards more when I say behind the meter; I'm saying truly behind the meter with, you know, like minimal expectation of the grid.

Speaker #4: I think where you're behind the meter and you're connected to the grid, that is kind of probably that near-term sweet spot while all these things evolve.

Speaker #4: But I do think there’s generally speaking some degree of preference there. However, we also see in some cases the front of the meter has some high value in certain markets.

Speaker #4: But I feel like I'm just kind of giving you a long, rambling answer to say we're seeing it's a mix, and it varies heavily by state, by location, by customer.

Speaker #4: But it does feel like probably the weight of it prefers a behind-the-meter offering in time. Yeah.

Speaker #7: You hit on it. I mean, I think the hybrid was really what I was getting after. It seems to be where most of the demand is developing.

Speaker #7: Yep, right now around SMR. So that's why I was asking. My follow-up is just, you know, shifting gears on the radio pharma market. It's about a $30 billion opportunity.

Speaker #7: I'm just curious. Is there a, and growing, I should say— you know, as you look at the isolation of particular isotopes, obviously small quantities can sell for a tremendous amount of money.

Speaker #7: Are there specific isotopes that you have an inherent advantage or moat around, given your processing capability? Are there ones that you're going to be focused on? I'm just curious if those might, you know, be specific to certain drugs or applications. Is there any more detail around that? It would be helpful.

Speaker #7: Thanks.

Speaker #4: Yeah, I love it. It's awesome. And we have, there's so much more that will be unfolding going forward on this because you are nailing exactly it, which is how do we prioritize, select, and where are the ones we have sort of unique advantages into?

Speaker #4: So starting at a high level, like what we see is there are some near-term opportunities on, a couple sort of isotopes we're going through looking at what ose markets and like and kind of the supply chain pieces are to to prioritize.

Speaker #4: As part of some of our pilot efforts that are happening out in Idaho right . But then from there we see a pretty significant scaling advantage and we're looking at ways to, you know, get engaged in and possibly even opportunities to maybe invest into the supply chain or at least partner in the supply chain.

Speaker #4: To sort of enhance what we see as some of the most that we can build and have in terms of some of the production of either sourcing of stable isotopes or just raw feed gets.

Speaker #4: But I think at scale, so I'm kind of giving you a little bit of an answer to come back again because we're going to have a lot more as it comes.

Speaker #4: But I think, at scale, the other thing we see is that, you know, part of the angle of why we're attracted to atomic alchemy is kind of twofold integration.

Speaker #4: One of the benefits of being able to pull stuff out from recycling is that we do have some isotopes that are going to be made in bulk quantities, things like strontium-90 in particular, but there's a bunch of others.

Speaker #4: That has interesting potential industrial applications that could be unlocked at scale in a voluminous way based on what recycling can tap into. Which is a pretty cool space to be in.

Speaker #4: So, there's that kind of piece. And a lot of those isotopes are generally going to longer-lived isotopes that are held up in the waste, because most of this waste has been decaying some time.

Speaker #4: So there's that part, and unlocking some of the things you can do with those that right now, frankly, don't really exist. And that's one of the hard things, but cool things about this is some of the stuff we're going to pull out—I'm going to be able to pull.

Speaker #4: People haven't even bothered to look into the use of it because it's just not available to even research with or study very much. So they don't prioritize it.

Speaker #4: But we expect this first to nucleate an entirely different ecosystem and philosophy around research and development around different isotopic uses because of all of a sudden it becoming available.

Speaker #4: And then additionally, there's the direct production kind on a specific basis of irradiating targets and producing that material, which is part of what we were attracted to Atomic Chemy's Viper reactor design to do.

Speaker #4: Given that we see it as one of the most cost-attractive options we've ever seen, where it's kind of a, I'm going to use a very blunt analogy.

Speaker #4: It's not maybe the best, but instead of building, designing, and building a custom Formula 1 race car to produce some of these isotopes, that's extremely expensive but can produce some of these isotopes, and the cost of those isotopes actually can justify doing so.

Speaker #4: So it's fun from a technical perspective, for sure. It makes the deployment, development—everything—really, really hard on those, which is why a lot of these reactors haven't been built.

Speaker #4: Instead, Atomic Alchemy took an approach saying, "Hey, let's just build like a Ford F-150 version of a reactor that does the job. Maybe it's not as fast as some of these other things, but it's totally buildable, supplyable today, and you can build a lot more of them and just make neutrons more cheaply than maybe anything else."

Speaker #4: To irradiate these materials and produce them. That then allows us to tap into those known isotope fields with a potential vector and be more cost competitive than what exists, or just lower the cost of production, frankly, than what exists.

Speaker #4: That said, I think those markets seem to be, in many ways today, in an inelastic state of demand. So it just keeps lying, and they're going to take as much as you get. But there's also the case where having that capacity and that flexibility and that versatility of different isotopes can actually open the door to do more things.

Speaker #4: So, I'm kind of giving you a non-answer, Jed, but it's largely because we'll have more to talk about there soon. But also, part of this is actually looking at what this opens the door to incentivize and curate an ecosystem that seems more broadly out of a mindset of abundance of different isotopes that right now people can't even think of using.

Speaker #4: So, there's the usual players. But I think there's a lot more that could be coming on the horizon because now we can focus on how we can actually produce those and not be as scarcity limited as we have been.

Speaker #4: So, yeah, I think, like you said in your comments, it's that size market, and I think it's growing. I think that's one of the things we see as a way to unlock even more growth is by sort of bolstering production and availability of a much more diverse set of radioisotopes.

Speaker #4: But then I'll be getting more use cases of them because people will bother to actually invest and use them, which you can think about creates a really cool ecosystem to be a pretty significant part of.

Speaker #4: So that's part of how we see that playing out.

Speaker #9: Sounds good. I'll jump back in the queue. Thank you.

Speaker #4: Thanks.

Speaker #2: The next question is from Ryan Finkst from B. Riley Securities.

Speaker #11: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, could you give us a sense of potential timing around IELTS and project milestones? Or maybe just how talent licensing and development might differ for projects located on military or defense installations like that one?

Speaker #4: Yeah, it's a fascinating question because the reality is all shifted a lot on the heels of the executive orders being signed. Obviously, a strong focus on those was leveraging defense use cases and accelerating defense use cases.

Speaker #4: This is a great one of those. But it does set the stage for some interesting things to be supportive of either, you know, more streamlined or potentially, you know, I would more like focused and therefore potentially faster reviews on the environmental and fighting aspects of this.

Speaker #4: You know, the Air Force has pursued, through the IELTS project, and you know they want us to get an NRC license for this plant.

Speaker #4: So that's the general plan. Of course, they also have the capability at the Defense Department to authorize on their own. So should that be something they want to do for other deployments, or in different cases, or even do different things?

They see a huge opportunity for what nuclear can do to bolster their mission capabilities. And I think what they want to see is how we can um or what they want to do is be able to work with industry, to find ways to deliver that, in different models of what that needs to look like, you know, 1 of the things you're constrained by anytime you're working with the government is they're Contracting structures and mechanisms. Um and so you know also in addition it's working with those and finding the right Pathways for that to do the things that they want to see happen. You know a heavy amount of focus from defense energy in the past has been using Defence land to build renewable projects that are effectively shipping off to grid. Maybe the defense Department's benefiting some from that but um this is different, right? This is internal facing, uh, and priority. So prioritize, I mean so it's cool like it's it's a little different but pretty cool. But also opens the door for just the, the combination of different approaches of how we how we, uh, how we optimize that. And additionally, it's not just electricity. They're buying there's a lot of steam that they're buying from our plants too. So what that means is, if you think about what a nuclear system is, is primarily producing

Heat typically, you produce that you turn that heat into electricity, but in this case you you you siphon off some of that heat before it gets turned into electricity and actually use it to heat infrastructure, um, and that has obviously a lot of value for a lot of reasons, so, especially up in Alaska. So it's it's a little bit of a. It's it's, it's developing and we're working through all those pieces, um, and we'll continue to keep sort of invest, you know, the market updated as that progresses. Um, but that's, that's how it's setting, basically, how it's progressing and how it's setting up now.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Jake, and then for my second question, shifting away from the several sides to commercial customers, how should we think about...

Loi, to order conversion at this stage, does the Liberty collaboration and some of the other partnership announcements you've made recently accelerate when we might see a firm order with one of the data center customers that's in your pipeline today?

Yeah, I'll um, I'll start with a little bit and then, uh, ask Greg to jump in as well, but, um, I think in general it's it's it's it's it's supportive and opening up different apertures of the conversations. Um, but as we've said, generally in the past, you know what we find is, is is the demand isn't going anywhere, the opportunity in the market is pretty significant. The the details are then figuring out the right ways to constructively build long, and deep Partnerships that really manage

kind of the very aspects of these projects in the deployment realities in a much more sustainable and scalable way than just.

Of our success and also honestly candidly the success of the nuclear industry as a whole. Um and we're you know, we're we're excited about the positioning, we have to kind of help lean into that. Um but yeah, I mean on the Liberty side it does help set the stage for doing some things a little more, uh,

I would say.

Um, well, it's a little different cadence in tempo. In some cases where you have that gas infrastructure, and what we continue to see is that the focus tends towards.

You know, nuclear is a long-term solution, while gas has a lot of opportunities in the near term.

And really, a cool thing for us is we've been kind of pioneers in that.

Bridging gas and nuclear on a new on a new capacity and you deploy um perspective. And uh, I think we're, you know, seeing how that kind of unlocks thinking about different sites and different cadences and different ways. Um, but yeah, so I would say, you know, it does help it kind of changes. Some of the how we kind of cadence and Tempo, some of these customer discussions but at the same time we're still kind of focused on the macro trying to make the most of the opportunity if that makes sense through through kind of the right Partnerships. I talked for a long time though Craig can add some more detail on Co. Yeah. I would just say you know, Partnerships take time and because we're trying to do things Beyond just, you know, optimizing on a PPA price. You know, is I think it'll take us a little bit longer to get things in place. But for all the right reasons um our business development team, um stays quite busy and is traveling quite a bit and they're keeping the legal and finance team quite busy as well. So I think we're we're moving things and it also

A little bit goes back to Jed's earlier question around. I think it's safe to say that, um, the interest, um,

In front of the meter. Feels like it's grown a lot in the last 12 months and I think, you know, that's also where we're trying to be customer responsive as we progress those customer discussions and as I think I've said Ryan probably on an earlier calls, you know, were, you know, were entertaining, you know, prepayments, like what we did with equinix, um, things we might do at the asset level investment and so there's a whole host of avenues of things that we're exploring with our customer base at the moment.

Great. Appreciate all that detail. I'll turn it back.

The next question comes from Derek Soderbergh from Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yeah. Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions and my congrats as well on the capital raise. Um, I'll just keep it at 1 question here. Jake. Um, in the prepared remarks, you mentioned Tara power's regulatory timeline, I think you said It sped up by 6 months. I was wondering what the reason for that was. What did that entail? And you know, are you already seeing some tangible benefits from the executive orders on regulatory timelines? You know, could Oklahoma see uh, sizable timeline shifts uh, forward as well. Thanks.

Yeah, appreciate the question. Uh, I think that's 1 of the exciting things is we've seen the NRC be quite responsive. Um, and and taken approach timelines. That reflects, clearly what the, uh, policy objectives. And goals of this Administration, are to move those things more quickly, um, based on what they did with their power, and we're similar seeing benefits, you know, it's interesting when when we went public, when you kind of had a review path of 24 to 36 months. So then the advanced that capping things, you know. And and different contingencies around the 25th month, period to now saying it's 18 months like, uh, it's uh, it's pretty great. Um, that's helpful uh, that said, you know, there's still I think various things and and and what we're seeing in the pre-application space, I think is constructive to those things. I think it's been interesting because we went through Phase 1 Readiness that helped the NRC map out especially in the wake of kind of, where things are now, how they would plan to do the review and make sure they had all the information, they need to do it which kind of amplifies in some ways, the importance of those. Um we were pretty encouraged as well.

That we had, no, you know, sort of significant gaps that were needed there. Uh, that's a big win for for us. And for the inner city I think. So at the end of the day, um, we feel pretty good about where that positions us on that part, still a lot more work to do but that's good. And then looking at, you know, the next phase on Phase 2 and that progressing, I mean, I think it'll be very clearly aligned to say, okay, let's make sure we have a very strong like angle on how we get through the actual life.

Steps and process, and that 18-month window, um, which is just great for everybody, right? Because it accelerates things for us. There are other aspects that play that we have to be mindful of, just the realities, um, that can perhaps raise the bar a little bit on the front end. That's, you know, on the acceptance side and how the NRC plans. Um, we want to be mindful of that obviously. And part of why we're doing readiness assessments is to manage that, but that can be something that affects those timelines and how we think about making sure we're submitting something that's, you know, in the best sort of position for everybody. Um, and then.

Um, which is pretty powerful given that there's still a lot of moving parts at the NRC front. But opening the door for, I think it might be doable under Department of Energy authorization, that could accelerate timelines considerably for a number of things. That's pretty dang exciting, too. So we're engaging in those to look at ways that might accelerate our ability to bring something online. Um, there is a...

Potentially having a regulatory review done under the Department of Energy.

Build the plan, turn it on. And then, after you kind of do that initial work, you can transition it to the facility. Yeah, these are things that...

You know, it hasn't really been done before, but that's kind of the beautiful thing about today. We're actually reinvigorating the whole ecosystem to think outside the boxes and the shelves that we, as an industry, have thought in for the last, candidly, 50 plus years. So now, there's like so much more potential on the table about, hey, what could we do? What could this look like? Like, there's a reason it can't necessarily be done. Maybe that's the faster way to get some first plants built. Maybe that's a faster way to get through some of these, like, first-time licensing challenges and hurdles. So, you know, there's not a clear answer yet because we're still, you know, not even three months out from those, but we're working through both—those sort of all parallel paths that we can, uh, to sort of optimize against what makes the most sense. Um, not just from a time perspective, but from a time and from a scalable and deployable perspective to kind of enable us to try to get more plants built sooner and faster. And so, when I think about things simplistically,

The executive orders really Drive.

You know, a more aggressive timeline schedule, which is great. That means you kind of take some of that permitting challenge and risk of timing risk to a different level, right? So, it's a different kind of... you’ve got a lot of risk reduced just by that. But then, additionally,

You have a totally different change of kind of the fuel side.

Because of what's happening in the Eos, we are making more fuel available from different sources, this excess plutonium material that could, you know, support.

Dozens of reactors are being built without needing any HALU. Like, that's huge because that helps set the market for us to then build more plants, have stronger partnerships with HALU providers, to then get to those HALU production goals at the right pace and scale. So, like, it's a very, very supportive ecosystem right now that's really changed the equation from where we were.

Just 3 months ago, frankly.

God, that's helpful. I'll pass it on. Thanks, guys.

The next question is from Craig Sheer to the Brothers.

Hi. Uh, thanks for, uh, the call and taking my questions. Um, hopefully some quicker ones for me. Um, so do you have a timeline or, uh, roadmap for announcing?

Ppas on your planned. Uh, do you have line of sight on sufficient fuel for full 75 megawatts there at this point? Uh, and given government support, uh, with rejected plutonium fuel that you say can support, you know, a lot, uh, at this point, once you get past initial regulatory hurdles, could we see multiple powerhouses all announced at once?

Yes, good question. Um yeah. We continue to to move through, we're finding that there is more interest in power from the Idaho plant, from different folks. And in different ways, not to mention the other benefits, we get from it. You know, part of what's beautiful about. That plan is the benefit to provide fast Neutron radiation capabilities. Um, Works continuing to explore different ways that we can, you know, partner with government and other things, that the groups can focus on industry and Academia leverage, some of the positions. We have their utilize. Some of that, additionally, um, you know, part of the, you know, what we're doing with vertiv is setting the stage to build a pilot, uh, thermal based cooling system, uh, at that plant demonstrate that, which is great. That's getting some interest from a different folks that come in and be part of that. So we're finding it's probably going to be a mix of of off-take and use case and that's what's been important about how we structure for that is to be flexible. I guess I would say I've long bet that there would be a lot of demand for that power and

And, uh, and we're seeing that that's definitely the case. So how we structured, again, gets back to the prior conversation of what Craig was saying, you know, looking at the right ways, and making sure we're doing all the things that get the most for sort of where everyone wants to be, and how to structure it in the right ways. Um, but you know,

We would like to have some more to run that plant in a normal way, all the way up to 75 megawatts. Um, and, uh, it's pretty clear that there's a number of sources. It hasn't been finalized what we're going to do with that, but there is way, way more than material. Uh, so we're working through the different logistics about.

How and what the right sources engaging is going to be for those with in mind. Well, let me rephrase. While maintaining in mind the other part of what you said, which is setting the stage for multiple announcements kind of at once. Um, you know, I think one of the things that we see that's so exciting about fast reactors and recycling is the ability to effectively tap into known reserves of heavy metals and power the entire planet's energy needs.

For basically the durable lifetime of the planet, um, you know, it's a bold, aggressive thing to do, but physics in many ways is aside for that. So building out the right pieces and infrastructure to actually realize that is something that we've long been, um, motivated, driven by, and dream of. So, uh, part of that includes getting the right pieces in place to build a lot more plants a lot faster, right? And that's what we can do on the heels of the EO announcements. So I think what we see is, you know,

generally speaking working towards

You know what the next plants are going to be and figuring out the right partners that we can have at the table to make those.

Back ones to next.

And then most of our conversations after the sort of Idaho and Air Force pieces.

Uh, those become larger campuses with more plants out then. Um, so that's kind of how we explore that.

Uh, so yeah, I mean all that is at the stage very favorably for that. But, uh, you know, again we could run to now something more quickly but leave some significant things off the table, which we think is the less optimal thing to do than, um, build the right partnerships that help us really be successful in delivering all these things we want to do.

which, by the way, is what's so exciting about nuclear today, like,

of a building, the right kind of dynamics and partnerships to do this and one of the nice things about our model of, you know, designing, owning, and operating.

We have a very clear sense of the internal factors we need to drive in an Optum-managed environment. When we find partners who can lean in to help us with those, they can do so in the most creative ways. It's a lot simpler.

This is a crude analogy, but to kind of have a two-body problem like that in that sense, then it is to have a multi-body problem where you might have a utility in between your developer or even both, or all those in between, and trying to figure out and solve for the different pain points. Even having just kind of complicates the fields and the space of operation. So it's helpful for us that we kind of have this approach that I will.

We'll say another thing we're seeing, though, and it's a possibility that has always been the case from the onset for the business.

I think we've long been convinced that utilities aren't really going to be interested, or are they really the right ones to move forward on first-of-a-kind deployments for these kinds of technologies. But they can be very useful partners in some cases where maybe after you build and develop projects and turn it on, like we're doing, we make this easier. You could turn the asset over to them, or you could sell the assets to them, right? That is a possible thing that can be done, and something that was kind of baked into some of the.

Stories are not just stories but conversations that Caroline and I had before we founded the company way back when. So, you know, I think it's all set the stage for some pretty creative dynamics for how it's all come together to, I would say, make nuclear pretty clearly inevitable. That's how I would characterize it, in my opinion.

Great. Thank you.

Eric Stein from Craig. Hallam is next.

Hi, JK. Craig just wants to sneak in a few here at the end.

Mhm. So, um, the topical report accepted by, uh, NRC. I mean, is there a way to think about the timing of that process? I know that, you know, you're kind of taking a different path. So maybe that's a bit of an unknown. But, you know, maybe initial thoughts on how that speeds up the timeline, and then, you know, once you get through that, kind of what percentage of the process would that take care of that you then don't have to replicate, um, you know, for each.

Um, successive deployment.

Yeah, I think there's some, there's an interesting cadence of tactics and strategy about, you know, pre-application and topical reports.

More strategic way in terms of targeting and issue Beyond just the first plants. So instead of kind of taking some like what is topical report? It is is an ability for like you to take it to an issue, a regulatory issue to the NRC and being obviously a bit simplistic and colloquial but to the NRC and have them do a review and issue some kind of safety evaluation report typically out of it, which provides a good precedent to be able to reference going forward in future applications, in some ways you're able to do some that's like preseason licensing. But where the score actually counts, so maybe better analogies early season games? I don't know. Anyway, the, the score does count, but you don't get the whole thing at once, it's a great way to compartment like compartmentalize or incremental things you need to do. It's also a really good way to deal with generic broad cross, cutting issues that might affect fleetwide considerations like in our case.

Um,

How we look at licensing operators, where instead of licensing a single operator to run each individual reactor, which is the typical model, or maybe a site, which is a typical model.

It's actually a trained operator who can run any of the plants of that class anywhere, wherever they are. It looks a lot more like how aviation does type ratings, right? So instead of having a pilot who can fly one.

Or maybe two tail numbers of a specific plane, like an Airbus or Boeing 737 or A320. Like now you instead have that. Would be insane and really inefficient, um, is why they, you know, probably don't do it. Um, but you know, when you think about smaller reactors and more of them going to a model where, hey, no, I can actually fly all A320s or 737s or whatever.

You know.

I think you're playing, um, that kind of type of similarity is at play here, where you can then do that for the whole fleet of reactors. So, there's a lot of scalability benefits to that. Um, you know, I think the general timeline has been about, you know, 12 or so months. Um, from that, that does take some of the operational considerations into that. We will be able to reference some of those with our application. But what it's really mostly helpful for is actually for the plant's second, third, fourth, and beyond. That's where it's a lot more helpful.

Always have been building this kind of thing. It's kind of like, when I think about licensing, I think about going back when I was younger playing sports, you know, whether it be soccer or golf or baseball, whatever, you don't swing at the ball or hit at the ball or just kick at the ball. You got to kick through. You got to swing through, right? You got to follow through. And that's the same thing here. We're not optimizing. For just, the first is about how we set the stage to hit the things after that. So, through the first and Beyond and so that, for example, is a very clear 1 to do, there's additional things we're working on, um, with the NRC from the pre-application perspective that helps set the stage for that. So, we expect, I would say it's, it's pretty hard to point to a specific.

Point of singular acceleration for the first plan, but it's going to provide significant acceleration for the plants thereafter, which is part of what's so important about this kind of model and how we've kind of taken that approach. And then accordingly, on the tactical aspect, those are all strategic implications and how I think about it. There are some tactical aspects too, which are maintaining the right momentum with the right review teams and the right reviewers at the NRC on different items of interest. So, making sure you kind of have the right content in the right way and the right order to sort of...

Dealing with setting the stage for a successful review is pretty important to focus on getting a great deal, and that's how we've tried to approach it. So, that's kind of how we set the stage for executing into that.

You know, and I think, like,

Doing a, you know, doing a custom 52 approach has issued a lot, and yes, they reference the design certification, but there's a lot of one-offs in between them and even differences in how they kind of looked at the actual plant builds on a site-by-site basis to some degree. So that, like, given what we're trying to do here, that full approach.

We don't see any significant departure from risk. It's not like we're taking apart the 53 licensing approach or something like that. This is a Part 52 combined license.

Just kind of putting those together. But what's nice about that is we don't have to deal with the pains of regulatory rulemaking, which is what the design certification is. So from an actual administrative perspective, rulemaking is way harder than licensed issues from an evolution and development perspective because of what you have to do for rulemaking or how it's typically been done. So, like, at the end of the day, that's how we saw some of the advantages on that kind of approach, um, to kind of combine those things.

Plus the scalability. Like, it's really about, again, like the subsequent licensing. The industry's done a lot, but we haven't had a lot of subsequent licenses.

from a subsequent licensed application perspective from the reference license application perspective,

Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks.

Next up is Max Hopkins with CLSA.

Hello, thanks for the time. To be brief, I'd like to mention that.

MOU with KHNP. Um, I'm touching the supply chain. I guess as you guys move forward, you said 70% of...

Materials could be non-nuclear for that. 30% of nuclear. Um, required components.

Are you guys looking to Korea more to maybe boost in the U.S., or is there any focus on kind of those nuclear-specific materials coming down the line?

Yeah, it's a great question, and I'll zoom out a level real quick because I think this is kind of a key narrative piece. There's a whole thing about, you know, nuclear having been expensive and difficult and all these other things for time to build and understand why and where that comes from, like real experience. We've also seen success stories through the things that people like to point to for big plants, but there's another whole vector of attack here, which is what we, I think, as an industry need to think a lot more about, which is how we get back to realizing the true cost potential of nuclear. Look, there's a term—I know it's been used by a number of people before. You know, I think it comes out of SpaceX and from Elon Musk—but was the idea of an idiot index, of what's the, you know, ratio of the actual delivered cost of something.

Divided by its actual cost of raw materials, and a nuclear, a lot of times those are really, really, really high multiples.

And a lot of that points to, for a lot of reasons, just kind of how things have been done in the industry, but it's not how they have to be done. Because again, nuclear has the fewest material needs per megawatt, hour of all energy sources. So there's a lot of room for cost Improvement, frankly, just there and the way I see it and in my experience is and I think we've seen at Oklahoma, what we've tried, you know, design towards is. There's kind of 2 main ways you attack that 1 is the that have like passive and inherent safety features that reduce the number of what are you know, called quote unquote, safety related, or safety, grade, or nuclear grade.

Systems and components.

That's one thing, right? And studying fast reactors based on what EV showed, or having a good kind of trajectory and hitting those inherent and passive safety features. But then I have a lot fewer things that are required for the safety functions in the plant. The other aspect is how you deliver.

How do you actually deliver the parts that need to fall under that kind of oversight, or maybe just are unique enough because they're only supplied in nuclear? How do you modernize some of that? And there's a whole bunch of opportunities there because, in many ways, the nuclear supply chain went out of growth mode by and large in the 70s and 80s, and it has only now started to come back. But when that happened, growing and investing in modernizing the actual processes and procedures and protocols, and even just methods of manufacturing and fabrication, as well as quality assurance, became critical.

Clients.

It wasn't a big impetus to do that.

Um,

Well, because those changes can be expensive, we actually have a really big benefit and opportunity to take that and do it differently and in a more fresh way today because of how you can work.

With doing sort of meeting those requirements in a more modern way, you think about where the world was when those things happened. We were building a lot of, you know, for pintos, to be candid, right? That was what was going on. Then you had a different level of quality assurance.

A different level of expectation at an industrial level. Um, and in fact, I would argue that in many ways, industrial quality assurance is caught up. If not lead, frogged kind of what typical nuclear has been. Um, and but done so at a, much more efficient and effective way. So you can obviously. And, and also the pathways by which you achieve the kind of functional outcomes and outputs can be done the same way. Um,

With like, you know, with these modern with, you know, I I mean it's not exactly the same, but you can do commercial grade dedication for these Pathways to actually get them to meet what's required in the industry, uh, or or from the regulatory basis and from the quality control basis. So there's actually a lot of opportunity just from those 2 to drive a total change in cost, which then opens the door for how you think about the suppliers to meet that 30%, you know, mix of who fits into this and yes, some are going to be some Legacy but

So it's kind of an all-in very comprehensive approach on how you attack this problem and do things a bit differently. It's not the best, it's not always it's not the worst always but it's also not always the best to go to Legacy incumbent suppliers because they're used to doing what they've done trying to get them to modernize. Can sometimes be challenging so you find the right ways to work with them, but sometimes, it's just better to work with some others. So, you know, a big Focus has been, you know, we have opportunities to partner, obviously, with what's been done. You know, we don't need all the full capacity of what the Koreans can do. But obviously, that means they can definitely do what we need them to do. Um, so there's interesting Dynamics there. There's also interesting Dynamics about different Fabricators and factors us and we found that some Legacy providers and suppliers are really excited about modernizing. And they see us as a big Pathway to do that because it can help them, you know, get experience of doing things in a more modern efficient way. So then also apply to the rest of the operations and maybe change their cost curves as well. So like at the end of the day, um, we see it being pretty attractive to do that and kind of push on that angle of attack.

So it's a long-winded answer. That's deeply ingrained in nuclear philosophy. Um,

And another thing is, by building a lot of plants, you can kind of find an approach where maybe you find a couple of different partners for the same system. Maybe not, just depends, but it gives you that ability to then find the best ways and right ways to partner with folks to be able to buy things from and do so at the right cost, or just partner in a way to help them do it with ourselves or us do it, right? So it's a full dynamic about how you attack that problem. But at the end of the day, um,

Yeah, it's quite helpful that we have, as I like to think about it, the physical cost drivers.

We are generally on our side because we have such a material advantage.

As a nuclear technology as a whole.

And I'll just say, changing that paradigm from a light water reactor. If you were a light water reactor, it has different complications and challenges, and then I would say, in many ways, can be harder.

Than it is to do it from like an advanced reactor. Because light water reactors have pretty specific ways of doing things, and if you're going to try to do something differently, given the, you know, that's the bulk of the plants operating today. There's a lot more inertia that's kind of resistant to that change, or modernization, or even just lack of appetite, a better way to do it than it is if you're a technology that doesn't have that same paradigm and can bridge outside of the sort of incumbent nuclear supply chains effectively. And that's a big feature that starting fast reactors have, and in some cases I think have a broader envelope of opportunity than kind of any other type of technology because of the material compatibility and the technology kind of operating temperatures and the history of operations on it.

It's a lot harder to do that. Also, with gas reactors, I would contend, just because again, pressurized larger scale, volumes particular, great graphite. All that doesn't mean it can't be done; it's just a different attack.

Great. Thank you.

Everyone, at this time there are no further questions. I would like to hand

The conference goes back to Mr. Jake Dit. Okay, Chief Financial Officer, do you have any closing or additional remarks?

Yeah, thank you so much. And thank you everyone for calling in today. Um, excited about the last quarter marked for us. Uh, pretty sizable, change in the entire nuclear landscape, including frankly, the art of what's possible, um, in the wake of, you know, sort of the Monumental changes made but president Trump, uh, and his executive orders build on massive changes already in hand that, go back to the President Biden and the advanced act and work done around the, you know, in place reduction act to support nuclear, um, and then go beyond back before that to president Trump's, first term with Na and Nima, and those bills and then additional executive order signing then. And then back before that, even to President Obama, I could actually go on for a bit longer. But the reality is, it's a very exciting time here and that we see a clear set up for a need for what nuclear to offer. Um, policy support that helps solve some of the biggest challenges or risk factors and including permitting, as well as fuel supplies. So we're excited about watching how those fully

Unfold that said there's still obviously a lot of work to do to capitalize on this, but it's uh it's a pretty it's it's frankly. It's a person who grew up in the space and loves this technology and loves this field. It's pretty hard to not find myself, sort of pinching myself um to make sure this is the reality that we live in that. We have such a clear, you know, ecosystem of support, as and, and, and supporting the most meaningful ways possible to actually go execute on realizing the real promise and potential of the atoms. So very excited about that. Um, very excited about what we accomplished in the last quarter and looking forward to what's ahead because there's a lot more to do. So thank you guys. Thank you. All.

Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank you all for your participation today. You may now disconnect.