The race to fuel the nuclear future | The Next Big Thing

Mobeen Tahir (0:02)

Isotope enrichment sits at the heart of some of the most important challenges of our time, from cancer treatment to next generation semiconductors to nuclear fuels that advanced reactors will need. And right now, the Western world is dangerously short of the infrastructure to produce them at scale. Two companies are working to change that, ASP Isotopes and its nuclear fuel subsidiary, Quantum Leap Energy.

They are building proprietary enrichment technology to fill that gap. I'm Mobeen Tahir, Director of Macroeconomics and Thematic Research at WisdomTree. And with me is my co-host, Chris Gannatti, WisdomTree's Global Head of Research. We are delighted to be joined by two guests today. Paul Mann is the founder and CEO of ASP Isotopes and Dr. Ryno Pretorius is the CEO of Quantum Leap Energy, ASP Isotopes nuclear fuel subsidiary, which is focused on developing and commercializing HALU and other advanced nuclear fuels. Paul, Ryno, welcome to the show. How are you both?

Paul Mann (1:04)

Thank you for your interest. Doing great. Thank you.

Mobeen Tahir (1:06)

All right.

Ryno Pretorius (1:07)

Thanks for having us. Doing great. Thank you.

Mobeen Tahir (1:11)

It's a pleasure to have you both and let's take the opportunity to just introduce both of you to our audience. Starting with you, Paul, you have a fascinating background yourself, Cambridge-trained chemical engineer, two decades on the Wall Street, and now you've founded this company in this space. Just tell us a little bit about your own journey and what brings you here today.

Paul Mann (1:34)

Yeah. I managed money on Wall Street for quite a long time.

Some of my best short positions were companies that needed isotopes because the supply chain is so challenging, they couldn't get them. Companies like Malincroc, Cardinal Health, this is 10 years ago plus. And I started getting interested actually in critical materials starting in 2017 where you start to see very obvious cracks emerging in supply chains that had been fairly standard for decades. And obviously, things have got a lot worse since then, but isotopes is just one part of critical materials that the world needs for things, things like nuclear medicine and we'll need for next generation semiconductors, nuclear fuel, that kind of stuff. So we got the opportunity to acquire some technology in South Africa about five years ago now. And that was my initial step into this business. So we bought the assets out of business rescue, it's a criminality of bankruptcy.

And then we've raised about $400 million since then. And we built manufacturing plants in South Africa. And we diversified into nuclear fuels, as well as many other isotopes as well. And so it's been a fascinating five-year journey. And right now, we're at a turning point for the company where the company is about to start making some serious revenues and profits.

Mobeen Tahir (3:04)

Very good. And what a fascinating story about shorting stocks and now solving the problem yourself. Ryno, we'd love to hear your introduction as well. You come from the nuclear fuel engineering side, including time at South Africa's Nuclear Energy Corporation, NEXA, before joining ASP Isotopes and then taking the role at Quantum Leap Energy. Tell us a little bit about your own journey.

Ryno Pretorius (3:29)

It's a funny story and shows you how small the world is really. I studied chemical engineering because I wanted to be a nuclear engineer. When I was at university, there was a company called PBMR, Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Company in South Africa, which was an helium-cooled high-temperature gas reactor, now famous for the trisofuel, that is now considered some of the best fuel in the world. It was the best way for me to get into that company. Unfortunately, due to being almost 20 years too early to the market for a commercial SMR company, they closed down just a year into my employment there. But I then got moved to the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. So much so that while I was working for my engineering and training work there, I did a master's and a PhD specifically focusing on the nuclear fuel cycle. So production of fluorine and production and use of nuclear fuel cycle chemicals like hydrogen fluoride and fluorine. My PhD was actually in rare earth fluorination, which touches again on the critical material space. It's maybe a topic for a different discussion, but how closely related rare earths and the nuclear space really is, it's fascinating. After that, I worked for a nuclear focused engineering company, doing a lot of first of a kind projects, high hazard chemicals, developing new processes. About five years in after that, I started my own company where I grew that into an engineering consulting company with about 30 people focusing on much the same, doing first of a kind projects. That's actually where I met Paul and company. When they acquired the assets out of bankruptcy, they had a bunch of scientists and one engineer, and I had a whole handful of engineers. We were in the same building. So that's where our paths crossed. We worked together for a couple of years on and off. I've been doing consulting for ASPI, I think since almost day one.