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…ear weapons testing folks are kind of dying out. What is wild though is I did little activism related to Diablo Canyon Power Plant here in California, which was slated to be shut down this year. Sure. And just a few years ago, Newsom had to kind of begrudgingly say like, “Oh, you know what? We probably should keep this thing on. We can't afford to have the power going out.” But I listened in on some hearings. I actually gave some testimony there, and it was so funny to me. The biggest organization that showed up against Diablo Canyon was called Mothers for Peace, and it's like, do you understand the irony of your name? This organization was that old that it was related to the nuclear Cold War, right? Totally. And it's like, gosh, we've moved on. We were joking. I sort of am part of this Mothers for Nuclear organization that's just like tongue and cheek— Our mother against their mothers. Our mothers against their mothers. And it's just funny how old school a lot of that opposition is. Yeah. So I guess there’s a “science advances one death at a time” dynamic going on here, where the memory of the 1960s and peak nuclear confrontation and Three Mile Island and all these things. As all that fades, maybe it creates an environment where people can be more supportive of nuclear. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What was your activism around Diablo Canyon? It was just exactly that. It was like, let's make sure that this actually passes and we don't shut it down. There was a lot of people just calling and saying, “Hey, listen, nuclear is super safe. It's carbon free. Sensibly in California, we care about these things. Like, let's support this. Let's overturn whatever legislation was done 10 years ago that said we should shut this thing down.” And it did pass. So now we do still have it open. Everyone on Progress Twitter likes to complain about the NRC. But for the NRC, we would be living in that Jetsons vision of the future and everyone would have their nuclear-powered car that they used to drive to their nuclear-powered office and everything. Is that true? How good or bad is the current regulatory environment? How much is that changing? d have their nuclear-powered car that they used to drive to their nuclear-powered office and everything. Is that true? How good or bad is the current regulatory environment? How much is that changing? Yeah, yeah. I think it's an overestimated headwind, certainly today. I think if you go back five years ago, 10 years ago for sure, I mean they hadn't licensed anything in decades. There had been nothing new, but I can't even tell you how much has changed in the last few years. It's kind of remarkable. And it's been across both the Biden and the Trump administration, which is amazing to see. I mean the legislation around nuclear passes 95 to 5 type of thing. It's really, really strong bipartisan. What was interesting to see is it started with Biden, a bunch of legislation related to modernizing and reforming the NRC. The biggest thing they did was they changed the mandate of the NRC and they said, “You are no longer focused just on safety.” Because what's the safest number of nuclear reactors to license? Zero. So they expanded that, “You must consider the full environment, the full civilization…” that's great. And then just change things around like the advanced reactor pathway, removing some of the barriers. And then it's continued on with Trump and in fact, he's sort of added even some more teeth and specificity. So right now they've changed it to, you have 18 months to get your answer from the NRC. License or no license. Do you pass or not? And what happens if they exceed the 18-month window? Probably it's in the details somewhere. But the point is that these have been declared that timeliness is important. There's also been some leadership change, which is just more reform-oriented, which is great, and there's just a huge microscope on it. Everyone's watching. Everyone knows now who's submitting their paperwork and what's going to come out the other side. Another thing that happened with some of these Trump executive orders is the Department of Energy pathways have been also unopened and unblocked for test reactors. And so actually Antares is part of this new test reactor program, which allows the DOE, alongside usually Idaho National Lab, to be sort of your regulator as you’re testing your first reactors so that you don't have to spend all this time upfront with the NRC for something that you're just still innovating on and iterating on. That's a really nice, I think, first step before you go through the NRC. Wait, so let me make sure I'm getting this right. There is now a Trump-era change where we essentially, for the first time ever, have a second nuclear regulator where you can go the NRC path, but also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start by working with the DOE and get up and running. Yeah, that's essentially right. How big is the sandbox? gulator where you can go the NRC path, but also there's a regulatory sandbox where you can start by working with the DOE and get up and running. Yeah, that's essentially right. How big is the sandbox? I mean, the DOE has always been a path. There actually technically has always been a path within the military. They license their own reactors with submarines, so it's always kind of been there, but hard to navigate, not well staffed, not well known about. And now it's kind of like everyone's watching, let's go DOE, let's go INL, Idaho National Lab, and let's make these things happen. So there's just been a lot of stated like, “You must enable this thing” and now here's some… It's actually a $0 program, but it gives you unlimited access to staff and all these other things. And the point is everyone's watching to see how fast you can get one of these reactors through safely. So are you guys going the DOE route first? Yep, we are. And the DOD route. I mean to say the Army is now also able to license its own reactors alongside the Navy, which already does. So that will absolutely be our first step. The NRC really only regulates civilian electricity. So civilian power, so we actually don't need to even go there yet. I see. So you could be selling a lot of reactors and never go through the NRC. We'll basically do our test reactors with the DOE, alongside the DOD who has the jurisdiction to regulate, which is great. I didn't know that. So this is the rare bipartisan issue. It's a true… Kind of a gem. I can paint three clean energy futures. One is the solar and regular renewables view. Casey Handmer, who was just on this podcast. And solar will get very cheap. Batteries will get cheap enough such that you can go all in on solar and batteries, maybe some other renewables in the mix, but there you go. That's it. Nothing will be able to cost-compete with that. That's one vision. Another is that we will rediscover nuclear fission and we will figure out the spent fuel and everything like that, and we'll just do what we used to do, which is build nuclear power plants at larger scale and that delivers us enough clean energy. A third view is that fusion will work and we'll actually have nuclear fusion at a useful meaningful scale of the grid. Between those scenarios, how would you handicap them? I think it's… I'm going to leave fusion out because I’m not enough of an expert to know when and how that will happen. I would love for that to happen. How exciting, right? Okay. Between the first two, we do a lot of market manipulation of our energy markets and there's a little bit of flavor of the administration that does happen, especially between renewables and oil and gas. Nuclear has been a little bit actually immune to that. But isn’t diversity of energy sources valuable because the solar maximalist would say, “No, it's fine. Solar will just take everything.” And wouldn't the nuclear maximalist say “We figure out how to at scale produce nuclear power plants and why do you need that gas? Why do you need anything else?”…

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