Isaiah Taylor

It's the fastest that a thermal prototype has ever been developed.

It's also the most sophisticated thermal prototype ever developed.

It genuinely is a nuclear reactor.

We built a nuclear reactor in one year.

without putting uranium in it and now the next step for the company is to go do it again but actually put uranium in it and actually turn it on and this is going to give us a lot of experience right we're actually going to have split the atom which is something that not many people can claim and then we'll do it again and we'll do it again and that's how this is going to progress it's going to progress through real hardware through real prototypes through actually splitting atoms

And you can always get more sophisticated later, but you start very simple, very, very safe, and you get real experience as fast as you can.

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?