NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. (NNE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. If everyone could please take their seats. Thank you all for joining us today for the beginning of AECOM Drilling here at site. My name is Matthew Barry, Director of Investor Relations and Capital Markets here at NANO Nuclear Energy, and I'll be serving as the master of ceremonies today. Appreciate the round of applause. Before we begin, as a reminder, NANO Nuclear is a publicly-traded company, and management will be making forward-looking statements today. So just to understand that these forward-looking statements are covered under U.S. securities law. If you have any questions regarding our forward-looking statement disclaimer, please check out this slide on our website. Today's event, we'll have remarks from various distinguished guests and key stakeholders. These include NANO Nuclear Energy's management team, who will focus on the company's strategy, the widespread support for the project, as well as the value proposition of our technology. We'll also have the University of Illinois leadership here to speak about their strong support for the project. We'll have engineering, procurement and construction management firm Hatch here, as well as construction firm PCL, to highlight their support and strong interest in the project. We'll have an accomplished data center executive here to highlight the complex power needs of data centers and also touch upon why advanced nuclear solutions offer a compelling value proposition to address these power needs. We'll have a potential commercial partner here to highlight their interest in the KRONOS MMR for their infrastructure and manufacturing power needs. And we'll also have 2 NANO Nuclear Energy Executive Advisory Board members to highlight the applicability of the KRONOS MMR for various military applications. Following the prepared remarks, we'll host a Q&A session with management. And then that will be followed by lunch. We expect at the end of today's event, everyone will leave here understanding why we internally at NANO Nuclear Energy are so confident that we can deliver upon our ambitious vision. With that, I'll hand it over to Susan Martinis, Vice Chancellor of Research and innovation here at the university.

Good morning, and welcome. It's such a privilege to be here. Such a beautiful day, a day we've waited for a long time. I think I've been in my position for about 8 years, and I can remember being briefed early on by Caleb about the opportunities here. So it's really exciting. It's a wonderful day to celebrate the next phase in the university's plans to site a micronuclear reactor here at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I have to tell you again, those are not words that I've ever thought that would leave my mouth. But again, once you've heard Caleb brief you on the plans, it's so hard not to be excited about it. Projects like this are just beautifully aligned with our university's land-grant mission to serve society. And of course, the State of Illinois is the nation's most nuclear state, so it's only fitting that this project should come to our campus. Some of you may know, we hosted a reaction reactor on campus before, not far from this site. But that's history. That's history, and we're just very, very excited about being part of the future. This project will help us power our campus and meet our clean energy goals. And it's never been a greater time where this shouldn't be an absolute priority. It will open new research directions for our faculty, and that's going to set new frontiers that will benefit far beyond our community, our state and the nation. It's going to benefit the globe. It will create incredible opportunities for our students. It will give them a leg up to go out into this industry. But also, it gives us an opportunity to invest in that new workforce that's going to be so dearly needed. I'd like to thank NANO, the NANO team for their confidence in our partnership and for their commitment to advancing this just super exciting technology. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is very, very proud to take this next step and partner toward a micronuclear future. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Susan. I'm now very excited to bring on the stage, NANO Nuclear Energy's Founder, Executive Chairman and President, Jay Yu.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming here. It's an exciting time for nuclear energy, new nuclear technologies, in the U.S. I just want to start off by telling you guys a funny story. So when I met James Walker, our CEO, and also recruiting him, he said to me, "You must be crazy." Your trying to start a nuclear technology company. I mean, I left nuclear. I started a new career. I left a new continent for it. And now you bring me back in? And I said that's right, James. And ever since then, let's fast forward. He also said there's no money in nuclear. And I said, okay, so let's -- now we're here after raising $600 million, getting over -- reaching $3 billion market cap. Now, James, I think you're wrong about that. So -- so we captured the enthusiasm of Wall Street. We opted to go public early on. And we were faced with a lot of struggles and obstacles. But one thing people they didn't know about us is we're born from grit, from grind. We're built as warriors and soldiers. So that's what we did. We sucked it up through a little bit of luck and especially the acquisition of KRONOS MMR, now partnered with the University of Illinois, that has leapfrogged NANO now as a leading microreactor, not just in the U.S., but in the world. So I'm very proud of what's happening. Obviously, as you can see on this slide, we've partnered with AECOM to drill the first site characterization here that we're going to use that for a construction permit in Q1 to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Also, NANO, obviously, we acquired a high TRL technology that had over $120 million spent over an 8-year period. So once again, NANO's leapfrogged ahead in terms of the microreactor technology. It's a well-known high gas temperature reactor. It came with dozens of patents. We're also advancing not just in the U.S., but in Canada as well. Once again, we raised over $600 million to date. We also have planned in place, an additional almost $1 billion of financing. So when people say this is impossible, we made it possible. Thank you. Yes. On top of that in 2024, we were Wall Street's Cinderella story. We were the #1 IPO performer in America, which once again, shocked the world, I would say. We have a growing base of institutional investors. About 2 weeks ago, we raised $400 million. We publicly disclosed that some of the largest institutions in the world are now backing NANO. So once again, we continue to shock people. It doesn't shock us because, once again, we're built from nothing, from being grinders and being warriors. And this is what the American Dream is about. It's about struggle, it's about being courageous and taking big leaps of faith, I would say. We're also built an Executive Advisory Board filled with former U.S. national leaders. We have some of them here today with us, like General Wesley Clark, a retired; 4-Star General former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. We have Vice Admiral Joe Leidig as well. So the U.S. is very eager to build out these new nuclear technologies in. And there is a nuclear renaissance here, and NANO Nuclear is a part of that renaissance. I just want to close off by thanking everybody for coming here, and I appreciate you, and we're very humbled. And we're going to put our heads down and continue to work. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jay. I'm now excited to welcome NANO Nuclear Energy's CEO, James Walker, who will touch upon our differentiated strategy, key partnerships and strong policy support.

Okay. Hello, everyone. Thanks very much for coming out to our big event today. It's a great turnout. And well, even the weather is on our side today. It pays to name your reactors after gods when you got the gods on your side. So -- and also, Jay mentioned that I did call him crazy. I would like to point out that I said, look, I'll build you a wonderful reactor company. I'll build you a great nuclear company if you can raise the money. And he was like, no problem. And at the time, I did think that was a big statement. And obviously, he exceeded expectations on that front. And like together, I think we've built a wonderful company, and it's got a great future. It's not hyperbolic or anything like that to say, like, I think we're going to be one of the world leaders in this sector. So I won't go on too much about that because I've got a few other things to talk about, but I think it's a very important time in nuclear. It's -- I've been part of a nuclear renaissance before, and it sort of tapered off, but it's a very different time. And it's a very different time because of the interest that's coming into nuclear from the different areas. It doesn't matter if it's tech sector or data centers or industry in general. At the same time, the U.S. is looking to build back its infrastructure. But it's -- but there's a reason why it's a very different prospect. The big light water reactors everyone is very familiar with, what we're building is very different. They're much more modular systems. We can now manufacture our reactors on a longer production line and mass produce them so we can get economies of scale through numbers of reactors rather than economies of scale through the size of the reactor. But that eliminates all sorts of other risks, too. Construction times, overruns, all of those kind of factors factor into it. It's almost like industry's solution to get around some of the hurdles that has affected nuclear in the past. And even things down to the fuel is different. The worst disaster, I think, in U.S. history was Three Mile Island. Again, nobody died then, but that kind of disaster is just not possible with this next generation of reactors. The fuel is different. Not to mention, just the higher melting temperatures of the fuel, but it's all contained too. It's a very different prospect. And it gives us an ability to deploy nuclear in a way that's never been done before. We can modular produce it. We can move all the components by road. We can assemble this as a matter if it's oil and gas sites, mining sites, remote habitation, island communities, data centers. We can deploy it in military bases. It's going to be over the next few years once they start rolling out the door, and we'll roll out as many as we possibly can. It's going to be a very exciting time in nuclear. I think it would be a very exciting time for industry in general because this is high baseload power. It can be deployed anywhere. It is going to be a very exciting time and a very -- I would say, as innovative as like the 50's and 60's were in nuclear. And so there's a lot of work to be done. I mean, the nice part is we're coming into the industry at a time when all this opportunity is available to us. It's not just reactor systems. The whole nuclear fuel supply chain needs to be built back, and we're very happy to be part of that, too. NANO has related transactions in the enrichment space. We're looking at things as far as conversion and transportation here. The nice part is that being a dynamic company that's nimble, we can move into these areas. And we can establish ourselves as a cornerstone of the industry, even ahead of when the reactors are ready to go out to market and be mass deployed. So all of these different sectors, we're looking at mining, we're looking at conversion. We're looking at enrichment and deconversion and transportation. This will establish us as a business even before the reactors come online, but it will also give us a more competitive product. By inserting ourselves now to derisk our own reactors rolling out the door, we'll have a business, an established business, a successful business even before the reactors. But obviously, it's all in the aim of producing these reactor systems and get them out the door. And obviously, that's why we're here. We'll demonstrate this system. We'll prove that it's effective and it's efficient, and it will serve the purposes of the next generation of nuclear power requirements. And so as part of what we've been doing, it's been -- Jay spoke to it already, putting together the right partnerships in place. I mean I'm very grateful to the University of Illinois for all of their support on this. Obviously, this project would not be possible if they weren't completely behind it. And they've helped push it for us. And there's -- I can see a number of them here today that has pushed this along to enable this to go ahead. And this will hopefully be one of the first, if not the first microreactor to be built in the U.S. at full scale to be licensed. And then at that point, we'll be ready to roll reactors out of the door and all the subsequent reactors will be licensed by the fact that this is being built. And it's not just the University of Illinois. The state has also been enormously supportive. There's been incentives as well. And it's no accident we're here. This state has the most nuclear power -- powering of any percentage-wise of any state in the country. It's got that pedigree to it. It's a great place to build out the new -- the U.S.'s first microreactor system. We can demonstrate it here, and we can just carry on that Illinois legacy. And there's other partners, too, that are here as well today. Hatch and PCL, we can't build these things on masse unless we've got experts in the field that know how to build these kind of vessels, these kind of components. Because obviously, if you're trying to do things like reactor vessels or things like that, you're going to be spending 10 years getting yourself up to a point where you are competent enough to roll these out the door. We don't need to do that. There are companies that already can get certified in the time that it takes to get this reactor licensed. And then when we're ready to -- we have a licensed reactor to roll out the door, they can roll the components out of the door, and we can mass produce these systems. So the partnerships have been very important here. And it's -- it goes beyond that, too. At the federal level, there's never been this much support for nuclear, I think in decades. I think even last year, there was something like $8 billion or $9 billion of grants put out there for infrastructure support to build back the national infrastructure. So we have the capability as a country, again, to be able to mass manufacture the fuel to go into the mass manufactured reactors. But it all ties together, our timing is great. Like when Jay approached me a few years ago, this was before this nuclear renaissance, which is why I said it was crazy. But like, the timing was perfect. And we were able to take this on to the market at a time when enabled us to be the best-performing IPO of 2024. It's a very unique position to be in. Typically, something like nuclear, which does not have that kind of market pull, but it does now because the demand is there. The investment is going into it, and it's something we need. So yes, it's an incredibly exciting time to be in nuclear, but it's also just wonderful to be part of like an organization like this that is this dynamic, and this is pushing things along like this. And we'll be a country leader, we'll be a world leader. I think it's already written, by the way. So hopefully, that's a good summary of it. And I'll pass it over to Florent now, but -- he's our Chief Technical Officer. But again, thank you very much all for being here today. So thank you.

Thank you, James. Now extremely excited to welcome Florent Heidet, our CTO and Head of Reactor Development, who's going to highlight and provide us a deep dive into the KRONOS MMR technology as well as highlight its compelling value proposition.

All right, good morning, everybody. Very excited to be there. Now maybe it's time to tell you what KRONOS is. You're all there for it, but -- so I'll give you a quick overview of what the reactor is, the plans moving forward and why it makes sense. So first, looking at the picture and related to the work that's taking place today, this is artist rendering picture. It's in the middle of bedrock. We don't want to find bedrock. So far, AECOM, as mentioned, they haven't find any bedrock on the site. So good news. So don't trust the picture. So KRONOS is what we call HTGR, high-temperature gas cooled. This is one of the generation for advanced reactor. This is -- this implementation in particular relies on very simple materials, helium. Why helium make sense? It's already boiled, it's already gas. It does not change phase. We're using for the fuel TRISO. This is one of the most resistant fuel form. This is what was mentioned before. This is really a key enabler to the technology. It's been developed by the U.S. DOE program over the last few decades. So this is not a few fuel form. This is just -- will be the first reactor to use that in a commercial reactor. In terms of the other material, graphite steel, they are traditional material. We are trying not to reinvent the wheel. We're not pushing with new material. We're staying well within the envelope of what was done before and what's understood. So this reactor, it's relatively small, we call it a microreactor because it is less than 1-megawatt thermal, but it's also small in size, which makes it much easier to deploy. And it's also the performance. It is designed currently for 45-megawatt thermal, which means 15, a little bit more than that 15-megawatt electric. The university is interested to use that electricity, but also to use the residual heat. There is a campus, it is using district heating to some extent. So you can use low-temperature steam byproduct of energy conversion and to power and provide energy to the campus. This type of reactor only requires 1 ton of fuel. If you're not familiar with it, 1 ton of fuel could stand on that desk. Nuclear actually is very, very dense. So it's very small volume. So the balance of plant, we're not reinventing the wheel, but the key aspect to understand the nuclear heat goes to salt, solar salt. And the solar salt is used across the world for concentrated solar plant. So there's nothing new in there. But the key advantage of that is you can disconnect the power production for the nuclear reactor from the energy usage. And this is key to NANO to that technology to enabling wide deployment opportunities. Overall, this is a Gen 4 reactor. So you will find the typical attribute, which is passive safety, energy storage. It is road transportable because it is small. And I'll cover a bit more on the passive safety aspects of it. Keep in mind that although we call it an advanced reactor or Gen 4 reactor, this reactor technology was built in the 1950s. So it was already built a long time ago. Not in that format, not in that size, not with that implementation. But there is a story of building it before that we are leveraging to make sure that this is going to be a successful project. So now this reactor we're looking at, we should have a 3D projection of it, but it is a research reactor because this is supported by the university, but you have to understand, although it is a research rector in practice. The engineering realization of it is the same as a commercial unit. There will be no difference between what's built there and the commercial unit. This is just a categorization from the NRC because of the purpose of the university and how they're going to use the reactor. But in terms of construction, instead of everything that's going to be there, this will be the same as the commercial deployment. So like I was saying, KRONOS can come in different implementation. So the reactor unit itself is going to be always the same. But you can have 1 reactor unit, that will be the case for the university. You can get up to 16-megawatt electric out of it. You could have a site where maybe you need a reactor in each corner of your large sites. We can do that because these are small units, so it's easy to deploy, and you could have 1 control room that operates 4 reactors. Or you can go look at large data centers, where we will have a series of those together. So they will all be adjoined, and we can go to the gigawatt level with that technology. So it provides a lot of versatility in how we can implement it. This is why a lot of private partners have been very interested in leveraging it for their particular application. It goes from remote communities where they need 1 reactor, they need 10 megawatts of electricity, all the way through data center looking at gigawatt level plus implementation and everything in between, which is a lot of industrial heat needs, desalination, et cetera. So in terms of what's a key enabler to the technology, this is really this principle of passive safety of TRISO fuel. If you look at reactor operating around us, like it was mentioned, the Illinois is a state with the largest number of nuclear reactor in the United States. So wherever you are in Illinois, there's probably a nuclear reactor operating within 50 miles from you. I don't know what's the nearest one from here. So people from the university after me can point it out, but I live up in Chicago, there are a bunch of reactors within 20 miles. So the difference is on this reactor, you have emergency planning zone that is 10 miles. With this reactor, the emergency planning zone is 0 miles. It is limited to the building itself, which means you can colocate with anything. This is why building this one on-campus presents no issues. We're extended with the reactor operating over there, I would not be in the emergency planning zone. It will be limited to just that plot over there. So that's a huge difference in terms of even public acceptance and integration. So this is -- the picture on the bottom left is a rendering. It was a project we are developing, a proposal. This is with 56 units. This is assuming all 56 units undergo a very severe accident at the same time. And if you're looking at the red contour, which is relocated right above the building, this is what defines your EPC or emergency planning zone by NRC regulation. So even with 56 units going wrong at the same time, you're still limited really just to the site. So the other thing that really makes this a very reliable and simple reactor is the passive nature of it. When something goes wrong, we don't need to take any action. We'll take an action, but we don't have to credit the ability of taking the action. All the physics, all the passive feedback guarantees that it stays safe and nothing wrong is happening with the reactor. And the reason for that is simply because we have materials, which have high thermal capacities. We've got the graphite, we have the fuel that can operate at very, very high temperature, and we are very far away from this temperature. And all the radionucleide, all the activated products stay contained within the fuel. So in terms of why microreactor -- and this is really -- this speaks to future development beyond this one, why microreactors makes very much sense, there are different aspects. So microreactors are probably the best technology, the best option to deploy off the grid. So if you have a site in the middle of Illinois or middle of Kansas or other states far away from grid, your option is to either deploy the grid for other few hundred miles or to be fully independent from the grid. With microreactor you can become fully independent from the grid. And if you look at your cost of electricity that all of you are probably paying every month, look at the breakdown of the cost. Only a fraction of it is the cost of production. Most of it is transportation of electricity and other fees. So while a small factor, shape factor for microreactor if you're looking at the capital cost, pay amount of energy is going to be more expensive. Everybody has an economy of scale. With microreactor, you can have economy of numbers. If you deploy 10 more actors together in the same site, there's going to be the economy of having built 10x the same things. Historically, if you look at all the reactors we have in the U.S., not 2 of them have been the same. And they always were 5 or 10 years apart. If you're building 10 reactors back to back in quick succession, the EV industry has demonstrated that there is learning curve and savings that are occurring. So this is a curve on the top right, while this is a representative curve that compares small modular reactors like our, red or orange curve with a blue curve that yes, maybe the first unit is less expensive for large deployment, but quickly and over time. And those numbers are not just our numbers. The national labs have a number of studies that shows exactly the same trend. Now the other thing is if you are a data center, for instance, you need your AI machines to be running 24/7. You are not going to iterating that 1 month, every 18 months, we need refueling so the reactor will shut down. With microreactor what you do, you'll deploy them in N+1 configuration. You have always 1 reactor being maintained or refueled while you maintain the same baseload power. So when we have this discussion with data centers, I can tell you, they get very excited about it. So this is kind of the illustration of why microreactors make sense. This is one unit single. So that's the top left point on this right curve. And obviously, this is a single unit. So one will be doing refueling, it will go offline, but we'll demonstrate the feasibility of doing all of that. So now just talking about the path forward for NANO, especially in the state. You might have seen in the news over the last few months, we acquired a large facility in Oak Brook, Illinois. It's 30 minutes away from Chicago downtown. It's 20 minutes from O'Hare Airport, and this is 2 hours away from the university. So that's where I came yesterday from, just -- it's up the street, literally. You make 1 turn, you drive for 2 hours, you're at the university. So -- but this is strategically positioned to support this project. Also because it was mentioned, Illinois has a huge history of nuclear energy. So this is why we are strategically positioned there. You have seen also probably in the news a couple of weeks ago, the state has granted us and included us in a tax incentive program for that deployment. We've already hired over the last couple of months, over 20 people. I think we have 25 people hired in the state. We're looking at hiring another 60 people by mid-2026. So we are growing very fast in the state. We're developing that support and that expertise in the state. And just a side note, a lot of the people want to tell you, they actually happen to be graduate from UIUC. So the loop is closed. And we have a great candidate coming from this university. We're definitely looking forward for, more of them being trained by the university. But we're not just focusing on the development of these facilities, obviously, to demonstrate the fabrication of key components for the reactor. So we will be making some of those components that will be loaded up and equipped on this reactor you see there. We are also developing very actively, supply chain, building 1 reactor, it's easy. You can get a one-off component. If you're looking at future deployment, you have -- you need a full supply chain behind it to make sure that you're not being bottlenecked by the supply chain. So that's what I have for you today. Hopefully, that gives you a good overview of what KRONOS technology is and our plans moving forward. And I'm very excited to see so many people today. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Florent. I'm now excited to welcome Rashid Bashir, Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering here at the University of Illinois.

Thank you. Good morning. All right. I didn't know I could bring slides. I would have brought slides and done a thing, too. So I didn't get that memo, but I really appreciate everyone being here. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This is really exciting. I'd like to extend my appreciation to everyone here, including NANO Nuclear, AECOM, the State of Illinois as well as my university colleagues in attendance. And thank you for everyone's support and partnership. Thank you, Jay, James, Florent, General Clark. It's an honor to meet you. Thank you for Senator, Paul Faraci. I know he's here. I want to recognize him. Thank you for being here. He's right over back there. Malory Wentworth from the Congressional Office from Congressman -- Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski. Malory is here. Also Christopher Walton, who's the Deputy Manager for the City of Champaign. Thank you for being here. And also Senator, Chapin-Rose also was here earlier. So thank you all for being here. Today is really a milestone in the development of a micro modular micronuclear reactor on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And I'm just so excited to see this collaboration between NANO Nuclear and University of Illinois and the Grainger College of Engineering. Our goal always has been, we live with this model of having a bold vision and then turn that into transformational impact. And we do that in partnership with the right people. So in the nuclear area and the NANO Nuclear area, this is just a wonderful partnership. We're just so excited. For those of you who might not know, our college and our campus has been home to some of the most groundbreaking technologies that were developed here or that we partnered with key companies or individuals and brought them here. So we're home to the ILIAC, to the Mosaic. The first web browser was written here on our campus. The co-founders of YouTube, PayPal. The inventor of the transistor was here, John Bardeen, the only 2x Nobel Prize winner in Physics, inventor of the LED. Blue Waters was an amazing partnership with the National Science Foundation to build the first supercomputer on a university campus was here. So we're used to these big ideas and turning them into a transformational impact. We're now actively driving the future of quantum with the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronic Park that Susan is overseeing in Chicago, driving the future of AI, the data centers of the future. So this nuclear energy and the future of nuclear just fits right in the middle of all of these things, and we're just so excited. The work that has gone into this project up to this point has been very significant, and I really want to again recognize and appreciate all of the efforts by Professor, Caleb Brooks, of our Nuclear Engineering Department and the department itself, many of the department faculty are here. So thank you for your leadership, Caleb, and look forward to continuing to advance that. As Director of the Illinois Microreactor Research, Development and Demonstration Center, Professor Brooks has brought together the right people to provide the expertise needed in reactor physics, nuclear security and energy economics that's supporting the growth of sustainable nuclear generation for years to come. I know Katy Huff is here. She provided tremendous leadership at the DOE at the national level over the last few years as well. So thank you, Katy, for your leadership. So we meet here today at a pivot point, the need for carbon-free, resilient, deployable, highly efficient clean energy systems requires focus, grit, hard work, dedication and innovation. Our college is ready. We provide the place and the people to conduct rigorous research in these very important areas for national security and for the world at large. Through collaborative work, we can also demonstrate that micro modular reactors, these micronuclear reactors play a very important role in energy generation and energy independence. Though the ground is being tested physically today, everybody here will agree that we stand on a metaphysically shifting ground. Technologies that require massive levels of electrical energy are growing by leaps and bound. And that is just not sustainable. We have to turn to nuclear. The future requires the development of safe, on-demand, capable and advanced commercial nuclear micro reactors. So at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Grainger College of Engineering, we are ready. Our sleeves are rolled up, and we're ready to begin building that future with our partners at NANO Nuclear. So thank you all for attending and for helping us take these very exciting next steps. Now that all of you are here, I have to do this. So ILL and then I&I. So I'm going to say ILL. That's what we do here at the end of every event. So thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you for the remarks, Rashid. I'm now happy to welcome Caleb Brooks, Professor, and Donald Biggar Willet Faculty Scholar here at the University.

Thank you, Rashid. Thank you, Susan. Thank you to the Illinois leadership that's here. Thank you to the NANO team and AECOM for doing the drilling and our -- and the collaboration that we've had together. Thank you to the local community leaders and community members that have come. It's really great to be able to welcome you here. I don't care if it's a little cold. It's great that we're all here together. I'm Caleb Brooks. I'm a professor, and I'm the Director of the Illinois Microreactor Project -- Microreactor Demonstration Project. So some of you might be surprised that this event is happening on a university campus, but the taming of nuclear energy happened first at a university. Nuclear power technology was replicated; refined, scaled and made accessible by universities. After the first demonstration of its peaceful use, it was universities where the technology was widely and rapidly deployed as research reactors that drove groundbreaking research in fundamental nuclear science and deployment of engineering practices that led to commercial power systems. In fact, the University of Illinois had a research reactor that operated safely for nearly 40 years in the heart of our campus. 25 university research reactors remain in operation in the U.S., continuing to fulfill the mission of supporting nuclear science and education. But today, the nuclear industry is evolving. New technologies are opening new opportunities. The Illinois Microreactor Demonstration Project is designed to ensure that opportunity is met with preparation, resolve and capability. The project had humble beginnings, myself, Professor Huff, Professor Kozlowski, we asked a simple question. How do universities accelerate and expand safe, clean, reliable nuclear energy? This question leads to one place, an unshakable realization that the University of Illinois is the perfect location to again drive nuclear demonstration into a new age for nuclear power. There are many, but I'll give you 4 reasons for nuclear microreactors to find an early home. And where else? The University of Illinois. First, small nuclear power technologies like the KRONOS MMR enable a complete reimagining of nuclear power. The 45-megawatt capacity packs a punch. And its small footprint and unmatched safety characteristics allow for microreactors to be deployed alongside existing power generation infrastructure. Nuclear power no longer has to be held hostage by the economics of grid scale power. Universities like the University of Illinois are major energy users. We own and operate our own power generation infrastructure and transmission infrastructure. And therefore, we can leverage our existing precedent for campus deployment to demonstrate new nuclear technologies like the KRONOS MMR in actual prototypic scenarios. Second, from this research setting, technology can be optimized for key markets like data centers, combined heat and power for process heat users and end users who prioritize resilience like military installations and medical campuses. With these markets and new technologies, safety profile, new approaches to instrumentation, operations, maintenance, plant monitoring can drive the nuclear industry to new heights. We can rethink the way we do all aspects of nuclear power. Industry-wide challenges like cybersecurity, energy storage, materials qualification, better computational modeling can be directly addressed for all stakeholders to bear witness. Third, there is a revamped workforce that's needed for the nuclear industry. A workforce unlike anything the industry has seen, not just in those who will install, operate and maintain these devices, but in those that are required to interface with the technology and the new markets that they enable. The process heat engineers and technicians that feed high-temperature process heat to their chemical plant, the data center system engineers that rely on these new systems for clean, reliable power and cooling for their data centers, the soldier who will keep a microreactor operating, because resiliency means operational readiness. The University of Illinois will be ready to train them all. Lastly, and I say this all the time, all roads for nuclear power go through public perception. Until we redeem the public perception of nuclear, all the science and engineering, all the innovation, all the potential is merely an exercise. This project is not about proof of concept. We have demonstrated and deployed gas cooled reactors. We understand the physics. We understand the materials. We understand the safety. This project is a proof of packaging. Can we take this inherently safe reactor technology and package it in such a way that it can be widely deployable and revolutionize a world that is starved for clean, reliable power? It is time for universities to once again step up and demonstrate clean nuclear power for the world to come, see, witness and embrace clean, reliable power for all. Thank you all for joining us in this hard and very necessary work to revolutionize the industry. Thanks to the project team, [ Tim, Les, William, Ron, Dennis, Tomas, Angela, Jim, Rizwan ] and the countless students who have been a part along the way and will continue to be an integral part of the project. We have a lot of work ahead. There'll be more engineering, there will be more planning, a lot more paperwork, more obstacles, but also engagement and education and more progress. This is work that's worth doing. Let's do it. Thank you.

Please join me in welcoming Paolo Mesiti, Director of Nuclear Projects from Hatch.

Good morning, everyone. I'm here today to discuss how Hatch can support the successful deployment of NANO's KRONOS MMR here at UIUC. Hatch is one of the largest privately held engineering procurement and construction management firms in North America, with 10,000 employees managing over $75 billion in capital projects around the globe. We've been active in the nuclear sector since the early 1970s. But what matters here for this project is that for the last decade, Hatch has been focused on the emerging SMR market. 10 years ago, we were engaged to perform Canada's first major SMR feasibility study at a time when most people thought nuclear meant gigawatt scale plants, decades-long construction schedules and meaningless budgets. At Hatch, we started beating the SMR drum before SMRs were cool. That early engagement gave us experience that nobody else has. We work with X-energy, Terrestrial, ARC Clean Tech, GE Hitachi, UltraSafe, Kairos, Oklo and of course, NANO. We've seen what works. But more importantly, we understand what doesn't. Hatch has been closely tracking NANO's progress on the KRONOS since its inception, and we understand what it takes to deliver a first-of-a-kind project. First-of-a-kind nuclear projects don't fail because of insufficient enthusiasm. I can see in this room, there's plenty of enthusiasm. They fail because predictable technical challenges end up getting in the way. These challenges include systems that don't integrate properly, regulatory pathways that aren't clearly defined or understood, construction planning that doesn't account for site constraints and quality programs that create bureaucracy without delivering any value. At Hatch, we've done this before. We specialize in exactly these problems. Our culture is built around one core principle. We live to solve the most difficult challenges our clients face. We design novel equipment for extreme environments for clients all over the world, high-temperature, high-pressure, corrosive, radioactive, you name it. Not just because it's interesting, but often because nobody else will do it. We engineer systems or standard design practices fall short and novel custom solutions are required. Our team has done work that others often walk away from. This isn't a sales pitch. We've supported X-Energy's ARDP program. We're currently supporting the ongoing work at the Darlington New Nuclear, which is going to be the G7's first SMR. And we're supporting Canada's Deep Geological Repository. All of these are first-of-a-kind projects in North America requiring solutions that didn't exist when we first set out to work on them. All of us sitting here understand that nuclear energy is the future. Renewables, while critical to provide clean power, face inherent limitations unlike nuclear energy, which can provide 24/7 carbon-free power. Microreactors can help address critical infrastructure needs, not just as some distant future technology, but addressing infrastructure that's needed right now. The need is urgent, and to us, and we see the applications is clear. Data centers, remote mines and off-grid communities all need nuclear power sooner rather than later. Microreactors form an integral part of the energy mix needed to ensure security and decarbonize hard-to-reach sectors where conventional solutions tend to fall short. At Hatch, we serve heavy industry. Our clients such as U.S. Steel, ExxonMobil, BHP, Rio Tinto and Vale all want to decarbonize their operations in remote locations while driving down the cost of energy. They need reliable, firming and scalable energy solutions. Today, we find ourselves with a book of clients eagerly awaiting the first successful deployment of a microreactor, which will enable them to pursue the deployment of their own. All eyes are on UIUC. So what do we bring to this endeavor? We bring proven first-of-a-kind execution capability. We manage integrated project delivery teams for $1 billion underground repositories and other critical infrastructure projects around the world. We've developed construction execution strategies for nuclear waste facilities, where every decision has regulatory consequences. And our clients keep Hatch on speed dial for when they need to fix problems that others couldn't solve the first time. We specialize in technical execution that separates success from failure on first-of-a-kind projects. Again, site integration, engineering, helping our clients navigate complicated regulatory and licensing frameworks and supporting construction partners such as PCL to execute builds on highly constrained sites. Hatch has the technical depth to solve the difficult problems, the first of a kind experience to navigate uncertainty and the execution discipline to help NANO deliver on schedule and on budget. When novel reactor designs need to integrate with existing infrastructure and regulatory pathways are untested and when construction must happen on a constrained site, we don't hesitate. We rise to the challenge. We're here, and we're ready to support UIUC and NANO. Thank you.

Please join me in welcoming Peter Tawfik, Director of Nuclear Operations from PCL.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Peter Tawfik, Director, Nuclear Operations with PCL Construction. Firstly, I'm relieved to hear that there's no bedrock underneath here. That's perfect for me. One of the big exciting questions here today is what is the plan for delivery. And as a construction partner, I'm going to talk about 3 things. One, who is PCL? Two, how are we going to construct not just this project, but the mass scale deployment of this exciting KRONOS technology and why we are believers in NANO's mission. So PCL is one of the largest general constructors in North America. We do over $12 billion annually in civil infrastructure, heavy industrial work all across North America. We are 100% employee-owned, which is a very unique culture. We deliver large-scale numerous -- large-scale projects for numerous clients in the oil and gas, petrochemical, mining and power generation sectors. We are fully qualified to deliver nuclear construction projects and have delivered over 60 gigawatts of both conventional power and solar power all across this continent and Australia. We deliver up to $4.5 billion worth of large-scale EPC projects. As a Tier 1 constructor who is financially strong, we are highly bondable, have an excellent reputation with the financing community and are capable of delivering this project. PCL supported NANO's predecessor USMC with preconstruction activities, constructability of the design, and we have a familiarity of the technology as well as competitors in the advanced reactor space, all key factors for success on this project. PCL is committed to supporting NANO and continuing with pre-construction, which means supporting NANO's selected engineering partner, Hatch, to ensure that design is construction friendly, modular and incorporates industry learnings not just from the nuclear space, but more importantly, from other industrial sectors that have experienced large-scale builds in the past. PCL owns and operates fabrication and module facilities. And all of this means that PCL is ready now to deliver the best-in-class scaled and rapid deployment of the NANO KRONOS reactors across North America by doing the reactor fabrication, the module fabrication and delivering the on-site construction. Large-scale SMRs and grid-sized reactors are highly valuable. However, it's presently not possible in those applications to achieve rapid deployment or provide energy to locations with infrastructure or market limitations. KRONOS, however, provides a meaningful opportunity to host sites and off-takers that are not connected to electrical infrastructure or cannot accommodate large amounts of energy. KRONOS presents a unique opportunity to accelerate accessibility of nuclear power. This is due to its unique design that is highly modular relative to competitors. From a constructor's perspective, the KRONOS design can utilize the benefits of modularization to a high degree relative to large nuclear projects. And more modularization means more standardization, which means quicker deployment and reduce cost per plant. Simply the KRONOS microreactor can accelerate the goals of this nuclear renaissance by deploying a clean energy option to further reaching applications while creating energy sovereignty and reliability. To close, since I'm going to be living here for a little while, I figured out I need to embrace this. ILL. There you go. Thank you very much.

Please join me in welcoming Matt O'Hare, Certified Data Center Specialist and Managing Director at Power Construction as well as VP of AFCOM Chicago.

Good morning. Should be able to keep it short. I think we only have 12 pages here or so, bear with me. My name is Matthew O'Hare. I'm the Managing Director of Power Construction's Data Structures group. Power Construction is a Chicago-based general contractor. Next year, we're celebrating our 100th year anniversary. And just for reference, we are the builder who are constructing the hyperscale data center at the former Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. I'm also the Vice President of AFCOM Chicago Chapter. And I'm really here as a representative of AFCOM because we're an organization that furthers the education and advancement of the data center industry. It's a privilege to be here today at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign among such a distinguished group of people for the groundbreaking of the NANO Nuclear KRONOS micromodular reactor. Today, I'm not here as a nuclear specialist, but as someone who spent years building data centers and advising owners, operators, investors and policymakers on how to navigate the rapidly evolving demands of our digital economy. A little appendix here for reference because we're going to be talking about sizes of infrastructure and power. If you think about the Willis Tower or any Gen Xers and older, the Sears Tower, it has a power load of about 10 megawatts of power, okay? So if you think about a 100-megawatt site for a data center, 10 Sears Towers. A gigawatt site? There you go, the math was out there. A simple truth. If the United States wants to keep pace with the exponential growth of AI development around the world, we need to rethink our electrical infrastructure. That is why the KRONOS project and the advanced nuclear industry, in general, matters so much to our industry. We're entering a new era of compute density, the rise of the large language model. Generative AI has fundamentally shifted the energy profile of the data center. But the real transformation is just beginning. As inference workloads scale, we're seeing persistent real-time demand across billions of interactions, which requires a reliable baseload source of energy. The current digital evolution of AI is not a bubble. It's a structural shift in computational workloads. According to the International Energy Agency, global electricity demand from AI data centers, AI compute and crypto could double by 2026, reaching over 1,000 terawatt hours annually for our industry alone. In the U.S., data center power demand is expected to grow by 20% to 40% in 2025 alone. And Deloitte projects that AI data center power needs are estimated to grow from about 41 gigawatts in 2025 to about 176 gigawatts by 2035. On a related note, we're already seeing hyperscale compute campuses come online, being built with multi-gigawatt footprints. Texas, Wyoming, even in our own Illinois backyard up in Grayslake. Many single-site developments are now measured in gigawatts of IT load, backed by a multibillion dollar investments and capital plans. These aren't just data centers. They are industrial scale compute labs engineered to power our enhanced digital economy. Boy, are they coming fast. The AI data center market is growing at 28.3% annually, far outpacing historical growth in our sector. It is estimated by the end of 2025, 1/3 of global data center capacity and development will be dedicated to AI compute workloads. Let's get a little technical for a moment. Data centers traditionally operate at five 9s. That's 99.999% reliability, meaning they have less than 6 minutes of unscheduled downtime per year. To meet that standard, data centers need energy that's not just abundant, but is unshakably reliable. Intermittent renewables and batteries, they are part of the solution, but they're not the foundation. What we need is clean, resilient, always-on baseload power, and we need it close to the load. Advanced nuclear, particularly microreactors, offers a compelling answer for our industry. Though my conversations with NANO and what we're hearing here today, I come to understand that these systems are modular, safe, designed for distributed deployment. It can provide behind-the-meter power directly to the data centers, bypassing grid congestion and reducing reliance on costly transmission infrastructure. They scale incrementally, allowing energy infrastructure to grow as our capacity grows, in sync with demand. And they offer a level of energy independence that's increasingly critical in today's volatile grid and cybersecurity environments. From a data center perspective, the advantages are clear once we begin to deploy advanced nuclear. We have reduced grid dependency, no multiyear waits for interconnections, lower transmission costs, no need for massive infrastructure upgrades that become a cost burden to the general public. Scalable deployment, as mentioned. We add capacity as our workloads grow. And resilience, maintain uptime even during public grid instability. This isn't just about energy. It's about business continuity, cost control and a competitive advantage. But the benefits of the advanced nuclear industry isn't just a benefit for our industry. Advanced reactors like KRONOS can be designed to serve more than just our compute workloads on our hyperscale campuses. For example, why can't we put light manufacturing co-located on our hyperscale campuses to create mixed-use environments, creating skilled jobs, which benefits the local communities. And these technology campuses can now become economic anchors. And why can't excess power from these reactors be routed to the nearby communities, thereby helping stabilize the local grid, reducing community energy costs and supporting electrification goals? Communities where energy affordability is a growing concern, which we all know it is, this kind of distributed baseload capacity can be transformative. Studies show that nuclear facilities often become pillars of local economies as well, driving job creation, infrastructure investment and long-term stability. With thoughtful planning, we can ensure that advanced nuclear doesn't just power AI and data center, but it powers opportunity. Today's groundbreaking is more than a milestone, it is a signal. A signal that advanced nuclear is stepping up to meet the energy demands of the enhanced digital economy. As someone who works closely with the data center developers across the country, I can tell you, we need more projects like this and not just in Illinois, but nationwide. Because if we want to support the future economy, we need to build the future of energy, and advanced nuclear must be part of that solution. Finally, I stand before you as someone who has witnessed the changes in our industry and its impacts over the past 30-plus years. I can tell you right now, we are truly witnessing a new evolution in the human interaction to our digital world. And if I could just end on a little clip, something funny I heard yesterday, our industry is full of acronyms, UPSs, PDUs, now we've got MMRs and SMRs. And then we've got NIMBY, not in my backyard. And then there's another one that's called NOTE. Anybody know what NOTE means? It means not over there either. Now we finally heard another one. It's called BYONCE, okay? Bring Your Own Nuclear Clean Energy. Thank you.

Join me in welcoming Derek Matthews, Chief Strategy Officer and Electrical Architect from BaRupOn.

Good morning. It's an honor to be here. I'm humbled to support NANO on this exciting day. Do you know every second, humanity uses enough electricity to power 10 million homes? It's shocking, it's scary, but that demand is not decreasing. It is increasing every second. And I know that because right now, I'm building one of the world's largest sites. It's a 700-acre facility 40 minutes Northeast of Houston, and it encompasses advanced manufacturing in AI data centers. The site in its entirety is about 1.2 gigawatts. So everyone here is talking about those gigawatt sites, and I'm currently building it. And I will tell you that it is a monumental challenge. From the very beginning, the power was the challenge. We got the land, the rail, the port, the airport, the water. But the power -- the cornerstone of our project is a government site. It is a contract to manufacture a critically strategic material called MAA. Our delivery time line for the government is next summer. The grid could not support that in any way. We're 3 years out and hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades. So instead of decelerating, we accelerated. We are running a 12-inch pipeline to provide 250 megawatts of gas turbines this year and another 250 megawatts through 2026. 500 megawatts is a ton of power, but that is not even half of what our site requires. So our company started to get really serious about power last year. And we approached NANO 6 months ago to understand how we can incorporate these KRONOS reactors across our site. Our site is incredibly demanding. It will test these reactors to their limits, and we are incredibly excited. We're entering into a feasibility study right now to understand how we can incorporate approximately 15 of these reactors into a highly demanding technology campus. And so our purpose of this is to create a blueprint of how these giga sites can be created harmoniously and environmentally friendly. And my friend, Matt, here really went into some great detail about the benefits of colocation and the environment and the community. When you build a site this large, the community is incredibly impacted. And if we increase their power prices by 30% or we take their water, we're suddenly not as welcomed in the community. And so our goal is to create an entire power island and not use any of the community's power, and in fact, give back power to the community to bring down their cost. This is the model of the future. And so I think that NANO and BaRupOn are here today to show that nuclear isn't some distant dream. It is the reality today. And if you have not gotten involved to understand how nuclear is incorporated on your facility, you're probably already behind. And a lot of us are soldiers and patriots out here. This is our duty to America to make sure that we stay at the forefront of power, and it starts with nuclear. And I'm excited, and thank you very much.

I'm now excited to welcome Vice Admiral Joe Leidig, Jr., U.S. Navy retired, part of NANO Nuclear Energy's Executive Advisory Board.

Good morning, everyone. As Matt said, Joe Leidig, I'm excited to be here. I represent an investment from your country. I served 35 years in our Navy's nuclear program. And so I have a passion for nuclear power. I believed forever, beginning with my interview with Admiral, Rickover. I'm old enough that in 1977, I had to go visit this elderly gentleman who ran the Navy's nuclear power program. I was 22 years old, full -- kind of full of myself, I would say. And my interview to join the program was over in 30 seconds. It ended with 5 words that have rung in my ears for the last 50 years, get him out of here. It was over. I was 22 years old. I didn't know what I was going to do. Like many of Admiral Rickover stories, I was placed in a cubicle for 5 hours by myself. Not a single human being came and talked to me why I pondered what I was going to do the rest of my life. I had already proposed to my wife. I thought I had a job coming up. Anyway, he led me back in after 5 hours. He yelled at me for approximately 60 seconds this time and then accepted me into the program. So ever since that time, I've had a passion for nuclear power. I -- what I love about what I've heard today, to be honest, is this partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I come from a little bit of an academic background. I taught at the Naval Academy on a couple of occasions and actually helped them start their nuclear engineering major in 2014. And when I heard the Chancellor speak and Rashid speak and others, I love the fact that I'm jealous that you'll have an operational reactor on your campus to teach students to do research. At the Naval Academy, we have a subcritical reactor, which is fine, but not like this. So I love this partnership, and I'm thrilled immensely what it's going to do for your university. What I'd like to do is take my 35 years of experience in the military then and translate it into what I see for the future. And Jay and James and Florent, thanks for bringing me on to the team because I think we're going to do great things for our country. As you can see from my slide, what I think about the role that nuclear power will play on our military installations in the future, you've heard many of the bits and pieces. But from a military perspective, what is extremely important is safety, security and resilience. And you've heard those words and you've heard them explain, but the Navy has a very safety culture conscience when it comes to nuclear power. Our record of the nuclear Navy is unmatchable. We have operated reactors since the mid-1950s, 70 years, and have never had a major incident or accident. I know what it takes to do that, and I see that in the passion of this team here. We're going to be able to do this and make this culture safe. But it's going to be required for us to message that to the U.S. military, the Department of Defense or Department of War, I think, is what they call themselves now. We got to message that to them and explain to them why it's so safe. Our fuel selection makes it extremely safe. Our cooling selection of helium makes it safe. And it makes it safe for this campus at the same time. From a security perspective, you've heard described how these will be built and how they'll be deployed, right to this site here. They can be very secure with a minimum of additional security required by our U.S. military. No additional burden, I think, will be necessary. And finally, like we've talked about a nuclear renaissance, the military has bought into this concept of wanting to power our installations off the grid. In any future war fighting scenario, cyber will be part of the beginning of the battle, and we need our military infrastructure to be independent and safe from an attack like that. One of the very best ways to do that is with an independent power source like the KRONOS MMR. So I think we're in a great position. And we've already done some work. You probably know we have a contract with the Air Force to do a study, a joint base, Anacostia holding in Washington, D.C. We're in talks with other bases around the country about what we could do and what their specific needs are. This is a scalable power source. It's impressive, and it's extremely safe from all the analysis I've done. I'm proud to be on the team. We're going to make this work for DOE. Thank you.

And there's probably no better person to end our prepared remarks than General Wesley K. Clark, U.S. Army retired, another member of NANO Nuclear Energy's Executive Advisory Board.

What a thrill it is to be here. Well, Jay, James, Professor Brooks, Dean Bashir, our French expert who I'm going to have to interrogate and great. Look, first of all, I can't tell you what a thrill it is to see this collection of experts, businessmen, leaders, academic community. This is American power. Now I'm an unapologetic patriot. I went to West Point. I know Joe went to Annapolis. I went to West Point, shortly after Nikita Khrushchev had come to a farm in Iowa and said, "We communists will bury you." I was 14 years old when that happened, and it made a lasting impression. I went to West Point because I believe in this country. And -- it was an engineering school. So I had to take all of the engineering courses. Of course, we did 2 years of calculus and math. I did advance physics, advanced chemistry. Fluid mechanics, regular mechanics, nuclear physics. And then the crowning choice was, were you going to take concrete or something new, nuclear engineering? Of course, I went to nuclear engineering. It was the first bloom of nuclear engineering in colleges. We had a one semester course in it. I was an expert in nuclear flux and how to use those tables. And we studied light water reactors until the sun went down. It was a really exciting time. When we developed nuclear energy in this country, it was a weapon of war. And in the 1950s, President Eisenhower decided he would -- he had to change it. So he created the Atoms for Peace program. And so that's when we really distributed nuclear energy away from a talk about submarines and stuff, but into the world. And we encourage people all over the world to look at nuclear reactors. And of course, I was caught up in all of this. It was a really exciting time. One of my best friends from Oxford went to Westinghouse and decided he would go into nuclear fuels. He was the highest paid young executive in Westinghouse doing nuclear fuels in the late 1970s. And then what happened? Three Mile Island happened. It was -- it wasn't the kiss of death. It was the embrace of death. It really, really hurt us in nuclear energy. Now the French kept going, and then there was Chernobyl in 1986. And all over the world, people realized nuclear energy, it was a great dream. Yes, back -- remember, back in the 50s, everybody talked about it. But when you come down to the cost, the risk, the radiation, what to do with the nuclear fuel, the construction delays, the regulation and who's going to pay for the insurance on it. And so yes, nuclear engineering and nuclear construction continued, but at a much diminished rate. Germany in the middle of all this decided it would get rid of its nuclear reactors and go back to coal, even as they were committed to the environmental movement. It's been crazy. But now I think we're really here. When I see this conjunction of great entrepreneurial spirit, great technology, academic buy-in, a community. I mean, this is what progress is really all about. And Jay, I just want to say thank you. It's such a privilege to be with you and James and so forth, the industry leaders here, this is so impressive. I went 5 times to Indonesia last year. I just got off the phone with Ukrainian parliamentarians yesterday. The world outside the United States is not easy. In Ukraine, we've got a major war, and it's not stopping. Putin wants all of Ukraine, and he wants the United States out of Europe. And this is a 25-year dream, but now he's willing to kill people to do it. And on the other side of the world, there's China. China, the greatest civilization for 4,000 years of human history. And over the last 200 years, humiliated, torn apart. And Xi Jinping wants China's rightful place back in the world. In the meantime, here we are in America, we've got a great democracy. We've got a great economy. We're trying to balance all these things and -- and so you can't appreciate what a powerful symbol you are right here. If I could take this assembly and I could move it to Kyiv or I could put it in Jakarta or take it even into some place like South Korea, which is doing -- they're doing great, but they don't have this. This is America. And as Joe mentioned, we really need you. We really need this. Not just for the military, not just for the data centers. But -- and by the way, Joe, I want to hear more about the submarine service and your nuclear stuff. You guys never talked. And I know when Jay introduced you, he didn't say you were a nuclear submariner. I know you told him not to say that. It's so secret. But -- and I know James was an SAS guy, and he admitted it. Most of them won't admit it because it's so secret. But you know, the model of the SAS is who dares wins. And I think NANO, you've dared, I think you're going to win on this thing. But we need this because the greatest threat to the United States from a strategic point of view is not China taking Taiwan, it's not war in Europe. It's not even drones and missiles. It's the electricity grid. The electricity grid is the most complicated machine ever built. More than 5,000 different organizations, businesses, government, everybody is involved in it. It's brittle. It was never designed to do what it's doing. The Department of Homeland Security -- look, I'm sorry, I'm a general, I got to scare you, okay? Otherwise, I haven't done my job. The Department of Homeland Security did an unclassified study and released it in 2020. In the event of a catastrophic failure of the U.S. electricity grid, 80% of Americans would die within 6 months. 80% fatalities in 6 months. Why? Because we're all totally reliant. We can't talk, we can't drive, we can't communicate, we can't grow our crops. We can't get anything -- it's a vulnerability that has only increased over the last 20 years as we moved into bits and bytes. It makes us even more vulnerable. What would cause such a failure? Well, one thing is an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation. So one nuclear explosion over the United States, and all those bytes and bits that aren't protected would be gone. If it's not sealed -- but if I talk to the electricity industry about this and say, Oh God, please don't mention electromagnetic pulse. it's a $2 trillion, $3 trillion problem, don't mention it. But you can't be in the national security business without knowing about it. The other thing is, of course, we know we've got malware in our electricity grid. Bad software, bad hardware. We're not even producing our own transformers. We buy them from overseas. We put other people's software in it. It's not necessarily checked. So what can we do? This is why Admiral Leidig is saying we've got to have independent power on our bases. Why? Because if something happens, we've got to be able to reconstitute. And those bases, those facilities provide the critical means of reconstituting the American economy, should something happen. So I've come here this morning to celebrate with you. I'm so proud to be part of your team, Jay. But I'm also here to scare you because there are big challenges out there. And every day, you don't wake up to think about those challenges, but somebody is thinking about it. Those men and women in uniform in the Pacific, in Europe on bases and posts here in the United States are trying to do their best to protect us in their daily work, but they can't do it without you. You are the future, and you are the strength of America. So I'm just here to celebrate you. Congratulations to NANO Nuclear Energy, the University of Illinois, the fighting -- are they call a fighting a line or something? Well, I'm a razorback, okay? And you've got our former football coach up here, and you're 5 and 2. And in Arkansas, we're 2 and 5, and we're jealous. But look, you all are going to have a great experience here, and I just love being here and seeing part of this. Congratulations. [ Go ILL ]. Go NANO, let's do it.

I'd now like to welcome NANO Nuclear Energy Management as well as University of Illinois leadership to the stage for a short Q&A session.

Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright. Congratulations on this event and what you have achieved so far. So it was talked about the challenges that you foresee in this, regulatory challenges as well as technological and engineering challenges. Which of these do you think are the bigger ones and difficult to solve?

Yes. Thank you for the question. So it's between regulatory and engineering, neither at this point. From the regulatory standpoint, NRC has invested a lot of resources over the last several decades. The technology we are pushing forward, like I was saying, has been built in the 50s for the first time. It's well understood, and we're not pushing the envelope on any of the limits that are known to today's materials. So NRC is fully ready and capable right now to license this type of technology. On the engineering, same part of the answer, we -- under pressure level, it's been demonstrated, you can go to 12 MPA. We backed out to 6 MPA. The material can go up to 900 degrees or 1,000 degrees. We have 600 degrees. So neither are the bottlenecks. The bottleneck is the work needs to be done. So there's really no huge risk or any breakthrough that's needed. There's nothing that's holding us back, just putting the work in and doing it. It is a major engineering project. It is a nuclear reactor. It's not just designing 1 part or 1 pipe. It is designing everything that goes with it. And so it takes a lot of experts to come together and to do the work. So we have support from the university. We have support from Hatch, from PCL. Everybody needs to come together. So it's really this agglomeration of skill set and knowledge that is taking time. There is no way to fast track it. The work needs to be done.

Caleb do you want to say anything?