Isaiah Taylor

How far off are you from splitting an atom?

So the goal today, you know, I set by the president is July 4th, 2026.

So we're going to try to hit that date.

I'm confident that we're going to hit it.

How do you split an atom?

So nuclear fission is not as complicated as it sounds.

Like I said, it's significantly simpler than a diesel engine.

So here's how it works.

You have nuclear material, which in most cases is uranium 235.

So the 235 isotope of uranium has fewer neutrons than the normal naturally occurring isotope, which means it's unstable.

And that instability means that when you hit it with a neutron, it will split into fragments.

And that explosion into fragments at the atomic level produces an enormous amount of heat.

The energy of those fragments is heat, essentially.

Now, how do you do this?

How do you make sure that those neutrons hit those atoms?

Essentially, what you do is that you assemble uranium into a certain pattern with what's called a moderator.

So a moderator scatters neutrons geometrically.

So there's sort of a configuration of moderator, which in our case is graphite.

We use pure graphite.

It's essentially crystalline carbon.