The Reactor Renaissance, with Jordan Bramble (CEO of Antares)

**Jordan Bramble** (0:00)
To achieve criticality, essentially one year's time, by July 4th, 2026 We were the first on June 4th, so 30 days ahead of the deadline, but when the executive orders first came out, people kind of scoffed at it. They said that it couldn't be done. Advanced nuclear and nuclear generally stagnated in the US in the 1970s. And in the Clinton administration, we actually decommissioned many nuclear facilities, wound down a lot of the workforce. We've atrophied. It's been exceptionally hard even to get to criticality for decades. But commercially viable power conversion system is in many ways more complicated than the reactor itself. This is an incredibly hard task and insanely impactful achievement that deserves celebration in the Oval Office, especially given how long it's been since we've done it. We still have plenty of hard work ahead of us too.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
When you're 80 and you're sitting with your grandkids, telling them the story of Antares, what are you going to be most proud of? Jordan, great to be here.

**Jordan Bramble** (0:58)
Pleasure to be here with you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
So you were in the Oval Office just a few days ago with President Trump.

**Jordan Bramble** (1:04)
That's right.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
And a few of your colleagues in the nuclear startup scene. Tell me about that. What happened? Why were you guys there? And what was the significance of that day?

**Jordan Bramble** (1:13)
So the event was really held to commemorate sort of the culmination of the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program. So there were four companies, us included, that turned on reactors by July 4th, America's 50th birthday. And the impetus of this program that the Department of Energy held was in response to an executive order signed by the president in May of last year. And so it called for at least three reactors to achieve criticality, which was essentially one year's time, right, by July 4th, 2026
It was, you know, I think it's, there were four companies, right? Not just three. I think it's viewed as a major win for the country, for this administration, because when the executive orders first came out, this was actually one of the things people most latched onto. And I think in many ways were the most skeptical or most negative about. People kind of stopped at it. They said that it couldn't be done. You know, we were the first on June 4th, so 30 days ahead of the deadline. But, you know, you kind of had a cadence of other companies that followed after that. And that kind of shows that it's not a fluke, right? We can do these things in this country. So, you know, there's really an opportunity to commemorate that. And, you know, if I think back when the program first came out, I always sort of viewed the culmination of this as we would be in the Oval Office. And I joked about it a few times. And I think the DOE was very into this idea, especially it's a huge win for them, right? I mean, they've put a lot of their staffing and resourcing and prioritization into this, and they did it.
So, it's really an opportunity to celebrate. It's like when you win the Super Bowl, you go to the White House and meet the president.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:54)
Or you win the NBA Championships.

**Jordan Bramble** (2:55)
Exactly.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:56)
Go next. So, I do have to ask, just take a step back, criticality, what does that mean?

**Jordan Bramble** (3:02)
Yeah. So, the moment of criticality is, the reactor has achieved a self-sustaining fission reaction, meaning the number of neutrons being generated by fission events is equal to the neutrons like leaving the reactor, right? So, you have a stable neutron population, and the ability to do that in a nuclear reactor is dependent on your control scheme, right? And our control system was developed entirely in-house, and this is really the first opportunity to test it in a nuclear setting.
So, it's almost like, maybe to describe it in a non-technical way, it's like the birth of the reactor, right? And from there, you scale power up, that produces heat, or a rising neutron population results in heat inside of the core.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:54)
Right.

**Jordan Bramble** (3:54)
You transport that heat out of the core and then turn it into electricity, right? And so, that's really what comes next for us post-criticality, is we'll be producing electricity, full-scale commercial product at Idaho National Lab, same facility with the same lot of fuel. We'll be doing that in 2027
And what that means for our customers, right? Our customers will receive their first units in 2028 Those will be on military installations. There's going to be operational heritage behind this technology, right? They're not receiving first-of-a-kind or developmental systems because we're using the venture capital that we raised to go test that hardware.