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25 Nov 2025 Cheeky Pint Julia DeWahl of Antares on building nuclear reactors for the US military

“Or you go and you sell, what we're seeing now I think, which is really interesting with the hyperscalers is they have carbon commitments.”

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Speaker unverified
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Claim type
observation
Recorded
25 Nov 2025
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

Transcript context

…e Depot trips. They didn't know if they had to cut down trees on their property, they couldn't get a pole long enough. And so— A lot of it was simplifying people's understanding of what it would mean. People kind of didn't realize how the setup was so painful and it led to basically this cross-functional SWAT team that was dedicated to mounting options to be sold alongside the dish. And if you hadn't— First-party or third-party? We did it ourselves actually. We said it's important that we have a good experience for that because actually it is a big part of the experience and so we spun up a whole team. A lot of attention was given to mounting, which is like who ever would've thought? And I think, customers, again, they are the reason you start a business. Just bringing this back to Antares, I mean the reason we started Antares was to say the government, particularly the military, needs more energy resilience, especially for critical infrastructure. We just do so much more now in the cloud with satellites. Our missile defense sites are sitting there being powered by diesel generators still. Shouldn't we upgrade that? Okay, so I'll bite. What is Antares? Sure, sure. We're building micro-reactors, so small nuclear reactors and we are building in particular for critical infrastructure, largely for the military. Although we do think that as costs come down, there will be an interesting commercial market too. But basically anywhere where you're off grid for sure, or you just want resilience behind the grid as it exists today. Cyber attacks or whatever the grid goes down, you want backup power. It's a really great option. And if one megawatt is a small neighborhood, if one gigawatt is a big nuclear power plant like in The Simpsons, what are your SMRs? Sure, yeah. There's basically three classes size-wise. You have the really small ones, which are the micro-reactors, and we're actually one of the smallest of those. So we're even sub one megawatt. We're kind of in the hundreds of kilowatt scale. You could think of that as hundreds of houses worth of electricity. Then you have the SMRs, which is kind of this middle ground bucket, which is an interesting kind of neither here nor there, but potentially interesting. I'm sure we'll get into it. Kind of in the hundreds of megawatts or even 50 megawatts. And then you have the gigawatts, a thousand megawatts and that's what the current power plants are today. So you're a sub a megawatt. So we're super small. I see. Okay. So you're kind of similar nuclear reactor size to what would be on a submarine or something like that. Smaller than that even. Those are megawatt scales. So we're like, think about we're the size of a car reactor. Think about replacing a diesel generator that's used to power something that would be on the order of 200 to 300 homes of electricity. So it's quite small. And so a big part of your focus is providing power in places where you really need that reliability. You're talking about replacing diesel generators, is that kind of the design center for you? small. And so a big part of your focus is providing power in places where you really need that reliability. You're talking about replacing diesel generators, is that kind of the design center for you? Yeah. And anywhere where you're going to enable a capability, a mission capability, that wouldn't really be possible otherwise. So there's actually some really interesting space applications, potentially underwater applications as you move to… So you move away from what they call exquisite systems to attributable systems. This is where a really small reactor can come in very handy for the submarines are obviously multi-megawatt-powered systems, but these could be kilowatt-powered, smaller systems underwater. But yes, anywhere where you're off grid where today you're relying on what they call the fuel supply chain of bringing in fuel via helicopter or barge repeatedly and that being a vulnerability, this is a great option. So you're the Starlink of electricity, bringing it to places where— We're actually perfectly paired. And I wish we could offer a consumer product, that's not on our roadmap right now, but maybe one day, like backpack-sized nuclear reactor. I presume it kind of can't be on your roadmap, but why not? Is selling to the government is much easier than selling to something— So many reasons. I think that you always want to try to get your beachhead where it's the easiest to achieve. And so we believe, I believe, that premium power is where you need to go with nuclear. And there there's two places for that. One is what we're doing with Antares, which is to go to the military, help them with mission-critical needs where they're not cost-sensitive, where they already pay more for power, and go there and support them with this next gen better version of resilient power. Or you go and you sell, what we're seeing now I think, which is really interesting with the hyperscalers is they have carbon commitments. They want clean firm, they want 24/7 power. They're actually willing to pay above market rates for that and they will pay above market rates. So this premium power thing is a really interesting dynamic of where nuclear is kind of well positioned. What are the underwater applications? Well, it's really just, think mini-submarines. Oh, okay. Just really small systems. What drones are to maybe larger missiles. That's kind of the equivalent. It's not super far along just yet. Got it. Okay. What does the path look like between now and producing power for the military? I guess, first in a pilot environment and then kind of at scale outside of a pilot environment. g just yet. Got it. Okay. What does the path look like between now and producing power for the military? I guess, first in a pilot environment and then kind of at scale outside of a pilot environment. Yeah. Well, it's always what are the next milestones that you can do to prove your technical ability and raise more capital to keep going with your company. I think the biggest risk often to hardware companies is you don't get far enough along technically to merit additional investment. So we're thinking a lot about our milestones for reactor development. And so, next year a criticality test is kind of the first milestone. By the end of 2027, we want to have our first demonstration unit demonstrated. And what's really exciting is there's just so much good policy happening right now from the DOE and elsewhere that is supporting reactor tests and pilot programs. And so there's just so much happening where they're opening up federal land, they're removing… Starting to remove some of those NEPA type regulations that really just hold everything up. So there is a clearer path now than there really ever has been for reactor builds. Oh, we'll get to the regulatory side. I have a lot of questions, but what is your criticality test in 2026? What does that mean? Yeah, it means that you're testing that you can actually start your reaction. So you've figured out the right amount of moderator to fuel and you start it going critical. You don't have it continue on for a while. You don't typically have a power convergence system that's actually taking the raw energy and turning it into electricity. So it's just one of those initial tests. Can you start to put all your pieces together? And fusion guys are all focused on this, producing more power than you put in. I know that's different. That's a fusion thing, but yeah, when do you actually produce power? Yeah, producing power will be your first reactor test. It's like can you do the whole shebang? You can get this thing up and running. It's producing power, and that's what we're aiming to do by the end of 2027. Wow, that's pretty soon. Yeah. What does the market look like for these small reactors? Who are you going to compete with?…

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