The Iranian Scientist Leading America’s Nuclear Rebirth - EP 26 Kurt Terrani

**Kurt Terrani** (0:00)
I transitioned to this company called Ultra Safe Nuclear in 2021

**Ashlee Vance** (0:05)
Which is the best name. I covered Ilya's startup, Super Safe Intelligence. It's just, don't worry, guys, this is really safe. Yes. So it was Ultra Safe Nuclear.

**Kurt Terrani** (0:20)
Yeah, and it was a company that was there. I thought at the time it had the, I wanted the right level of control for doing what I wanted to do, and they had the right level of capital. It was primarily backed by one major investor. His name was Richard Hollis Helms. He was a patriot, ex-CIA.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:40)
Ex-CIA? I mean, this whole story is bananas. We got an ex-CIA, an Iranian nuclear scientist, a green beret. All right, well, our guests today are Kurt Terrani and Thomas Hendrix. Do you prefer Tommy or Thomas? Tommy. Tommy Hendrix. Okay, so Kurt is the CEO of Standard Nuclear. You're a nuclear scientist by trade from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tommy, you are the chairman of Standard Nuclear, one of its main investors, and you're at Decisive Capital?

**Tommy Hendrix** (1:28)
Decisive Point.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:29)
Decisive Point, and you're a venture capitalist. And a green beret.

**Kurt Terrani** (1:34)
In a former life.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:35)
In a former life, okay. And so, a couple of weeks ago, I went out to Tennessee and went to visit Standard Nuclear, which is near Oak Ridge. Is it technically in Oak Ridge?

**Kurt Terrani** (1:48)
It's in the city of Oak Ridge, and it's in the big Oak Ridge reservation.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:51)
Okay. I just want to set a little context for people of what you guys are doing. First of all, the company has an incredible story. You both have incredible personal stories. There's been quite a journey. The Wall Street Journal did this very interesting article, and then what the company is doing is fascinating, making a very safe type of fuel for nuclear reactors. In particular, there's a focus on these small modular nuclear reactors that I think people are going to start hearing a lot about. It's in this era of AI data centers and just needing more energy in general. This idea that you can do nuclear safely and a bit more portably, I guess, than we have done in the past. And so we're going to get into all of that. This podcast, as ever, is sponsored by E1 Ventures. Thank you for your support.
And all right, we'll dig in. Did I do a fair description of standard?

**Kurt Terrani** (2:49)
On point.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:49)
Yeah, on point. All right. Kurt, I mean, I thought, let's go back to maybe like...

**Kurt Terrani** (2:55)
How was your visit? What did you think of it? You walked into a nuclear fuel fabrication building.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:59)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it was cool. So we're going to have an episode about all this where people will get to see it. I've never been to anything quite like that. I've been to Los Alamos labs and things like that, but to see supercomputers and I never got to do the nuclear stuff. So yeah, I was taken away. Yeah, I'm going to describe to people what I saw. I'm sure I'm going to mess up some technical things, so you can help me. But you guys have at the front, it's like kind of a standard office building, an office, open office plan, and then you go in and then there's just manufacturing craziness on the inside. So we got to see this fuel is called Triso, which is an acronym that you're going to help me with later. But it makes these, they're not pellets, they're like little-

**Kurt Terrani** (3:46)
Yeah, they call them the coated-fueled particles. They're some of the poppy seed-sized particles.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:50)
Yeah, they're small. And then what I learned while I was there is that they have this coating of these different layers around them, which is what helps make them safer. And I'm sure we'll unpack that. But yeah, so I saw you guys manufacturing these tiny particles of what will be nuclear fuel.
And so then, yeah, it was really fascinating. We got to create some pretty big fires in a furnace. And I saw all the crazy additive manufacturing and deposition stuff. Actually, you guys brought a little Core Memory logo that we made while I was there.

**Kurt Terrani** (4:28)
So the one thing with that is that never let that touch your phone or your iPad. Gorilla Glass ain't got nothing. It'll scratch it.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:36)
Yeah. What was this made out of?

**Kurt Terrani** (4:37)
This is super pure Silicon Carbide.