Must-Watch: Limitless Energy Masterclass from Atom-Splitter Isaiah Taylor

Josh: What's up everyone, Josh here. You are about to listen to an episode featuring Josh: Isaiah Taylor, founder and CEO of Valor Atomics, a company dead set on building Josh: safe and modular nuclear reactors to solve the single most important resource Josh: problem in the world, energy. Josh: Isaiah's nuclear roots run deep with his great-grandfather being in the Manhattan Josh: Project and Isaiah himself attempting to split the atom all on his own all these decades later.

Josh: And get this, they did it all, both at the age of 24. Josh: And speaking of splitting the atom, Since this episode was originally recorded, Josh: Isaiah and the Valor team did just that, achieving a milestone called cold criticality, Josh: which occurs when uranium, the isotope they use as nuclear fuel, Josh: it achieves a self-sustaining reaction. Josh: It's the first venture-backed company ever in the world to split the atom and Josh: do this. It's incredible.

Josh: This was an episode that David and I recorded early on in Limitless' history. Josh: And since then, so many more new people have joined us and we wanted to enjoy Josh: Thanksgiving with our family. So Josh: we figured it would be a perfect time to resurface this gem of an episode. Josh: And when asking Isaiah to come on, we were hoping to create the canonical energy Josh: episode as to why it matters so much for everything we do.

Josh: And after listening back, it's still holding strong. And I hope that it will Josh: also leave you feeling inspired the same way that it did for me. Josh: Isaiah is a total badass. If you're listening to this, I highly advise switching Josh: over to YouTube or Spotify because he is recording literally right in front of his nuclear reactor.

Josh: It is so cool. It's an amazing episode. And if you enjoy it, Josh: or you have a friend that you think would be interested please share it Josh: with them it's the best way that we can grow and we're so appreciative of Josh: everyone who was listening to the first version of this and who Josh: is listening to the new version of it right now because it has been an incredible Josh: journey if you can support us in any way by sharing the episode liking subscribing

Josh: on whatever platform you're listening on leave a nice review if you enjoyed Josh: but without further ado let's get into this amazing amazing category defining Josh: episode with Isaiah Taylor I really hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Josh: Why is energy the most important resource in the world? Isaiah: I would actually argue that over time, energy is the only resource in the world.

Isaiah: If you think about what we're all doing as humans, we are creating entropy as Isaiah: we go throughout the universe. Isaiah: And almost anything else that you could come up with, I would argue anything Isaiah: else you can come up with, essentially consumes energy. Isaiah: Right. So when we talk about resources, natural resources, we're trying to find things in the ground.

Isaiah: But there's a lot of stuff in the ground. And not only is there a lot of stuff Isaiah: in the ground, there's stuff on other planets and in asteroids. Isaiah: And the universe is fundamentally limitless as far as we know. Isaiah: The actual limiting factor in all of these things is how much energy do you Isaiah: have to transform the world around you into what you want?

Isaiah: And, you know, that's the only irreversible thing, right? If you use copper Isaiah: in an electric car, you can always use that copper again, right? Isaiah: But the energy in that electric car will never be used again, Isaiah: right? You've created entropy and that's it's fundamental. Isaiah: So I actually view energy is like the only cost in the universe and it's why I focus on it. Josh: I love that. So we are focused on getting a lot of energy. We are energy constrained.

Josh: I'm curious what you think. What does having an abundance of this energy look Josh: like if we do achieve this goal of getting energy costs to near zero? Josh: What becomes newly possible? What does the world look like when we actually Josh: solve the energy problem? Isaiah: So let me put it in terms of what the world looks like now. And that that might Isaiah: help us extrapolate a little bit.

Isaiah: Right. So the this the sort of like history of what the world looks like in Isaiah: society is essentially three pillars getting better over time. Isaiah: Okay, so the three pillars of any product, any physical good, Isaiah: are essentially energy, intelligence, and dexterity, right? Isaiah: So these three ingredients that you need to make any physical good. Isaiah: Let's take, you know, an iPhone, right? So this iPhone is made of energy, Isaiah: intelligence, and dexterity, right?

Isaiah: So it's the intelligence of the people at Apple who knew how to put it together. Isaiah: It's the dexterity of the machines and the, you know, massive CNC fleets and Isaiah: Foxconn and, you know, the physical manipulation of matter that went into putting it together.

Isaiah: And then finally, it's the energy to run those machines to run the servers that Isaiah: are running CAD, you know, even the energy to fuel the designers brains as they Isaiah: eat food, you know, and they go throughout their days. Isaiah: So every single thing is made of energy intelligence, intelligence and dexterity. And, um.

Isaiah: What's interesting right now is that we're getting a clear Isaiah: abundance in the intelligence and dexterity part Isaiah: right so ai you know hitting an inflection really Isaiah: means that intelligence is becoming somewhat default free uh dexterity will Isaiah: also become default free as we get more and more robotics and so what does the Isaiah: world look like when we have abundant energy it's essentially fueling those

Isaiah: things in an inflected manner which means everything is free uh what does it Isaiah: mean when everything's free. Isaiah: Well, it means that like the material world is more subject to your imagination, Isaiah: right? It's more limited by what can you imagine. Isaiah: Now we're talking like, you know, somewhat far in the future here, Isaiah: but it might be closer than people think it might, you know, Isaiah: think it is today because we're so used to a world that's constrained.

Isaiah: You know, heavily constrained on intelligence primarily. Isaiah: You know, the entire physical world around us has been traditionally constrained Isaiah: on the intelligence of smart people trying to figure out how to translate what's Isaiah: in our imaginations into the physical world. Isaiah: You know, we might imagine an airplane, but then the translation of that airplane

Isaiah: into something that can actually fly takes an enormous amount of brainpower Isaiah: of thousands of smart people, and then a lot of dexterity to manipulate the world. Isaiah: And as intelligence becomes free, it actually just becomes a function of energy. Isaiah: So your ability to get an airplane out of your head becomes how much energy do you have, right?

Isaiah: This is a world in which, you know, there are lots and lots of robots, Isaiah: which are robots, which build other robots, which build other robots, Isaiah: robots, which mine materials, which build robots, which mine materials. Isaiah: And at the end of the day, energy is the input. So what does the world look Isaiah: like when we have abundant energy? Isaiah: I mean, I think it looks like a world of imagination, right?

Isaiah: A world of thinking of amazing things in your mind and watching them happen. Isaiah: Now you can imagine that, Isaiah: planet Earth, that might become a little bit crowded, right? Isaiah: We will probably have a lot more things running around and planes flying around Isaiah: if we're, you know, subject to imagination. And this is where I think space Isaiah: exploration becomes very, very interesting.

Isaiah: And, you know, we suddenly reach out and find more places for us to have imagination. Isaiah: But we use the space around us, like the physical space around us as somewhat Isaiah: of a canvas on which our minds are imagining and discovering and, Isaiah: and, you know, putting things on that canvas. I'm very excited about that. Isaiah: I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Josh: I think we definitely share that enthusiasm with you. And I love this term that Josh: I've heard a lot being thrown around, which is just too cheap to meter, Josh: is what happens when that energy becomes too cheap to meter. Josh: I think that's the basis of a lot of this show, is what are the downstream effects? Josh: What are the second order effects of all of these unlocks happening as a result Josh: of energy that's too cheap to meter?

Josh: So I want to take a step back for a second and just kind of introduce who you are. Josh: Isaiah, for the listeners, has a very interesting story. Most people drop out Josh: of college and they're like, oh yeah, I showed them. I'm a college dropout. Josh: Isaiah, if I'm correct, I believe if you actually left high school and then Josh: you taught yourself to code and now you're sitting here.

Josh: And for the listeners at home who aren't listening, Isaiah is sitting in front Josh: of a nuclear reactor, in front of their product, in front of hopefully what is the future of energy. Josh: So there's this quote that I love from Steve Jobs. It's like, Josh: you can't connect the dots looking forward, but you can connect them looking Josh: backwards and you have to trust that they'll work out. Josh: In your case, it is very clear to me that they worked out.

Josh: So can you just kind of explain to me how you wound up sitting here in front Josh: of this reactor that you built? Isaiah: Yeah, it's an interesting story. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Isaiah: I dropped out of high school. I actually did attend three months of college. Isaiah: I think it was around three months. I attended a small liberal arts school for

Isaiah: a couple of months while I was Isaiah: working 80-hour weeks doing software engineering. Didn't last very long. Isaiah: I was curious to read a lot of literature, and I've always been interested in language. Isaiah: And I realized a few months into it, I cared a lot more about the work that Isaiah: I was doing than spending my time in a classroom. Isaiah: A lot of my time in the classroom was spent, like sitting on my laptop coding.

Isaiah: I was like, okay, I can really only do one of these things well. Isaiah: So, you know, education has always been something that's like a fascinating Isaiah: thing to me and that I want to do more of, but I also am on a mission and I Isaiah: have to fulfill the mission. Isaiah: And so that consumes, you know, a lot of my time and energy.

Isaiah: But how did we get here? How did we get to Ward Zero behind me, Isaiah: you know, sitting in front of this amazing machine that the team has built? Isaiah: It's essentially been a journey of self-learning, right? So how does anybody Isaiah: learn? Well, they read, right? They read and they talk to people. Isaiah: If you go to school and you learn nuclear physics, you read, Isaiah: you talk to people, you do math, right? That's essentially what you're doing.

Isaiah: And it turns out that, like, if you are wildly curious about something, Isaiah: that you can do that on your own as well. Now, you have to be curious about it. Isaiah: I caution people because, you know, sometimes people want to they see, Isaiah: oh, wow, you dropped out of high school, you dropped out of college. It's super cool.

Isaiah: And I actually recommend that people don't do that unless they are overwhelmingly Isaiah: curious about something to the extent that it's going to drive them to try to Isaiah: understand it every single day. Isaiah: If you don't wake up like burning with curiosity about a certain thing that Isaiah: you're going to spend your life learning about and building, Isaiah: you should probably go to school because the nice thing about school is that

Isaiah: it pushes you to learn things that you otherwise might not have spent the time to do. Right. Isaiah: But for those people that have, you know, an itch in their head that cannot be scratched anyway, Isaiah: except waking up every single day and working on it, you will probably find Isaiah: easier and more efficient ways to access that information and start actually Isaiah: building than going to school. And so that's what I did.

Isaiah: Really thinking about this business for about 10, 11 years since I was around 14 or 15. Isaiah: You know, I have some family history in nuclear energy that motivated me to Isaiah: go and learn about it. And so that's kind of what I did. Josh: And I want people to also note that you did this in the pre-AI age where you Josh: actually had to go and read books and teach yourself things without all of the Josh: additional leverage that we have today.

Isaiah: You know, that's actually such a great point. Man, if I had had access to ChatGPT Isaiah: when I was like 14 or 15, that would have been phenomenal. Isaiah: I'm so excited for the generation of, you know, students that are growing up Isaiah: right now who can, like, sit on Chappachea Petit for hours and hours. Isaiah: And it's like having a professor talking to you, which is amazing.

Isaiah: But, yeah, you know, I did this back when it was mostly actually trying to read Isaiah: PDFs from the Department of Energy and the AEC in the 1960s. Isaiah: So I at least grew up in the digital Isaiah: era where you could find these PDFs online, which I'm grateful for. David: It's pretty clear, Isaiah, that nuclear is your answer, the answer that makes sense to you.

David: Maybe you can walk us through that train of thought as to why you are just pilled David: by nuclear specifically, because there's other ways to produce energy. David: Solar, I still feel like, has a lot of juice left to squeeze in that whole industry. David: You could have gone and solved the solar problem, but you chose nuclear. David: Maybe you can just walk us through that choice. Isaiah: I obviously had a bias toward nuclear.

Isaiah: My great-grandfather was on the Manhattan Project I've grown up thinking about Isaiah: it, but I would like to believe I was very objective. Isaiah: And one of the reasons is that I became anti-nuclear pilled when I was in middle Isaiah: school and early high school, because having studied the physics of it and having Isaiah: studied the engineering of it, I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world.

Isaiah: And then I started looking around at the market and the deployment, Isaiah: and I realized that the nuclear industry in the West is dead, right?

Isaiah: It's completely shuttered. It's gone. It's not doing anything. and um, Isaiah: in the journey of trying to understand why i i actually Isaiah: became anti-nuclear pill and i was like well you know Isaiah: this is an amazing technology but humanity is not ready for it and it's not Isaiah: happening and you know there's these complexities to it which make it impossible Isaiah: um and and so then i backed up and i said well i know that over the next hundred

Isaiah: years a society is going to figure out abundant energy you know and i don't Isaiah: we don't know which one right but one of them is going to Isaiah: And the one that figures out abundant energy is going to have an inflectionary Isaiah: moment that takes them, you know, stratospheric. Isaiah: And I would like that to be us. You know, I would like us to be the ones that figure that out. Isaiah: And so I actually, you know, backed all the way up to the drawing board.

Isaiah: I said, what is the best form of energy we could unlock today? Isaiah: And I believe I actually started with a very blank neutral slate, Isaiah: even a little bit, you know, biased against fission. Isaiah: And maybe for personal reasons that I was maybe even salty about it, Isaiah: I was like, man, it sucks that the nuclear, you know, it's such a cool technology Isaiah: that I have history in, but like it just didn't work. So what is the best form of energy?

Isaiah: And that drove me to every form of energy generation. Isaiah: I really started from first principles and looked at how have humans gotten energy in the past? Isaiah: What are some theoretical ways to get them in the future? Isaiah: I looked at solar. I looked at wind, which is a proxy for solar. Isaiah: I looked at hydrocarbons, geothermal was really interesting. Isaiah: I looked at fission, fusion, all across the board.

Isaiah: And at the end of the day, I came to a couple of fundamental conclusions. Isaiah: If you want to make cheap energy, you're going to have a machine that does it, right? Isaiah: So there's going to be a machine that's a box and you build the box and energy Isaiah: comes out of it, right? So like that's the fundamental thing that we're talking about here. Isaiah: What are the properties of that box? What do you want that box to be like?

Isaiah: Well, ideally, you want the box to be small per power, right? Isaiah: So the box is just not that big versus the power that it makes. Isaiah: Okay, so then and the reason that's important, by the way, is like at scale, Isaiah: things generally cost how big they are. Isaiah: All right, that's a little bit of a confusing sentence. So I'll say it again. Isaiah: At scale, things generally cost their size. Isaiah: Okay, so a big thing costs more than a small thing.

Isaiah: Okay, 747 costs more than an iPhone. And that's a pretty fundamental law. Isaiah: It's hard to break that law. Isaiah: You see deviations in things of similar sizes, for another reason. Isaiah: And that other reason is rate of production. Isaiah: Right? So there's sort of like two fundamental factors in how much things cost, Isaiah: how big they are, how many of them you make. Isaiah: Okay. So back, but the most fundamental one is how big is it?

Isaiah: So an ideal energy machine is quite small and makes a lot of power. Isaiah: So then you back up and you say, well, okay, well, what drives the size of an Isaiah: energy machine across all of these different, uh, you know, types of energy Isaiah: generation, you have geothermal, you have solar, you have wind pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground, Isaiah: nuclear fusion, all these different things.

Isaiah: And what I did is, you know, you might laugh at this a little bit But I looked Isaiah: at all of the different energy generating machines out there and I said, how big are they? Isaiah: And again, it's not total size, but it's how big are they versus the power that they make. Isaiah: All right. So what we're talking about here is power density. Isaiah: So power density is essentially per cubic meter of machine. How much energy does that thing make?

Isaiah: And the answer might surprise you. I'll just I'll turn it to you. Isaiah: What do you think is the most power dense energy producing machine? David: Machine like a physical contraption, a physical gadget that humans make. Isaiah: Yep. Physical gadget that humans make or even that they theoretically could Isaiah: make. Right. But that makes energy. David: I mean, I feel like I'm just not having high context enough to answer this, David: but like, I don't know, a dam comes to mind.

David: It's relatively small in the grand scheme of things versus like a field array of solar panels. David: That's my first intuitive answer. I don't know. Josh, what do you think? Josh: You mentioned the atomic bomb. I'm thinking, well, that seems like it generates Josh: a lot of energy. Maybe not a machine, but probably a pretty high density of energy. David: We can't really use that energy, though. Josh: Does that count?

Isaiah: We're doing some really, really good exploration here. I really like it. Isaiah: So hydro is not power dense, unfortunately. Isaiah: Hydroelectric dams are freaking enormous. They're gigantic. David: They're large, yeah. Isaiah: The Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest concrete structure ever built by Isaiah: humans on Earth. Now, it also makes a lot of energy. Isaiah: But if you actually do the cubic meters to power output, dams are actually pretty bad.

Isaiah: The answer today is actually a jet engine, actually a rocket engine. Isaiah: So a hydrocarbon engine is actually the most power dense thing that we've built yet. Isaiah: Right. So if you actually look at, you know, a Raptor engine, Isaiah: that thing is like it's I haven't done the exact math. Isaiah: It might be in the gigawatts per cubic meter. Isaiah: Right. So just insane, insane energy density. Isaiah: Now, the problem is hydrocarbons themselves are kind of large.

Isaiah: Right. So like the actual mass of the fuel you have to include in that calculation. Isaiah: And then you have to also include in the calculation the machinery that produces Isaiah: the fuel, the machinery that finds the fuel, that drills for it, Isaiah: that refines for it, that transports it, that stores it, puts it in the tank. Isaiah: So once you do all that math, you know, even though a rocket engine or jet engine Isaiah: is the most energy dense thing we built, you know, built yet,

Isaiah: the apparatus to source the hydrocarbons is actually, you know, large. So high baggage. Isaiah: High baggage and just more physical machinery, right? It adds to the total, Isaiah: you know, cubic meters per output power. Isaiah: And again, that adds to cost, right? Cubic meterage of machinery adds to cost. Isaiah: And so now the atomic bomb is actually the right answer, right?

Isaiah: So if you actually think about what produces a ton of energy in a very small Isaiah: box, you know, an atom bomb or a hydrogen bomb is that answer, right? Isaiah: That you have put an enormous amount of energy into a very, very tiny frame. Isaiah: Now, obviously, the second thing you said was, well, you can't use that energy. David: Right? It's not productive energy.

Isaiah: Yeah, it's too much to be productive. But what this tells you is that fission, Isaiah: you know, and fusion, but we'll talk about that in a second.

Isaiah: Fission is actually as close as we've figured Isaiah: out how to get so far to this like almost Isaiah: infinite power source in a box of a of Isaiah: an abstract size right and it turns out for for Isaiah: fission that the size of the box is not super Isaiah: correlated with the power output right so like Isaiah: the reason that we make you know you know fusion machines Isaiah: or fission machine machines of a certain size honestly has

Isaiah: more to do with safety than it has to do with like total power that Isaiah: you can get out of the box right you know the reason that we Isaiah: make things bigger or smaller in the fission world has to Isaiah: do with how safe we want to make them right because you you take Isaiah: this to the fundamental limit and uh you know you have Isaiah: a bomb right which is an enormous amount of energy in a very small box but it's

Isaiah: unsafe and then you go the exact opposite direction which would be something Isaiah: like the machine behind me which is very very safe and it's much lower power Isaiah: density so this is actually the key to why I believe that fission is the answer for the future. Isaiah: And it's that the constraints around how big that box is really has to do with Isaiah: our ability to engineer it to be safe, right?

Isaiah: It's actually not constrained by physics you can make a a nearly infinite energy producing, Isaiah: uh box of almost any any size with uh Isaiah: with nuclear fission beyond a certain minimum there's a there's sort Isaiah: of a minimum size but around that minimum size like you Isaiah: can make a box and makes the power of the you know the entire world um and then Isaiah: everything from that point to practicality is a matter of essentially safety

Isaiah: engineering um okay so what this means and by the way like the fundamental reasons Isaiah: for this is that uranium itself is just unbelievably energy dense, right? Isaiah: So the kilowatt hours per kilogram Isaiah: on uranium is about 23 million kilowatt hours per kilogram versus, Isaiah: I'm going to get this number wrong, but I think it's somewhere around 40 or Isaiah: 50 kilowatt hours per kilogram in oil and gas, right, in a hydrocarbon fuel.

Isaiah: And so you have literally millions of times more energy density in uh in fission Isaiah: now take this to like something like solar right what's the what's the power Isaiah: density of solar another way you can think about this is uh here's here's a Isaiah: trick question what's bigger a nuclear reactor or a solar panel i. Josh: Would guess solar by a couple orders of magnitude yeah Isaiah: Yeah so it's a trick question because you're like well a solar panel is this

Isaiah: big you know and the nuclear reactor is that big so clearly the nuclear reactor Isaiah: is bigger, but it's actually not true. Isaiah: The solar panel is much bigger, right, per power output. Isaiah: And the answer is a couple orders of magnitude, maybe three orders of magnitude. Isaiah: It's hard to predict in the limit. Isaiah: But today, at least, you know, solar is about three orders of magnitude bigger Isaiah: in terms of physical mass than nuclear.

Isaiah: So if our North Star is that a, you know, an energy machine ought to be small, Isaiah: because small things are cheap. Isaiah: Um, nuclear is, is the solution, right? So this was, this was sort of my conclusion Isaiah: on, on all of this, uh, like first principles thinking and research is, Isaiah: is essentially that fission will create the cheapest energy on earth.

Isaiah: If we can figure out how to do it safely and we can figure out how to do it Isaiah: legally and in a way that the public, you know, will be happy with, Isaiah: because even if you have a safe machine and the public thinks it's not a safe machine, Isaiah: you know, you still haven't really solved the, like the fundamental problem, Isaiah: at least in a, in a short timeframe.

Isaiah: Um, so the second conclusion that I had, and this is really what led to, Isaiah: to starting Valor is that if you really want to make the cheapest energy on Isaiah: earth, you're going to do nuclear fission, but you're going to do it pretty Isaiah: differently than how it's been done before.

Isaiah: Um, and specifically you want to do it kind of in the middle of nowhere where Isaiah: you have sort of a safe operating place for fission, you know, out in the desert, Isaiah: out in the middle of nowhere with as many safety constraints as you want to Isaiah: put around that as much security as you want to put around that. Isaiah: And you can simply build many, many nuclear reactors. Because again, Isaiah: there's two governing principles in how much a thing costs.

Isaiah: How big is it and how many you make so we Isaiah: know that fission wins the the smallness thing right very Isaiah: small machine makes a ton of power the second is how many Isaiah: you make and so these are the two fundamental you know decisions Isaiah: that went into starting this company is that we're going to make fission reactors Isaiah: because they're small and we're going to make a lot of them because making many

Isaiah: of a thing makes it very cheap and so that's essentially what we're doing here Isaiah: we're making many many nuclear reactors out in the middle of nowhere uh they're Isaiah: fission reactors so they're very Isaiah: power dense, and we're going to make the cheapest energy in the world. David: Inside of your answer, I feel like there's just a lot of work being done with David: the idea that there's just not a lot of extra baggage going around the production of energy.

David: So we could go and we could talk about building a dam or setting up arrays of David: solar panels or wind farms. David: And I think you would just dismantle each one of those things, David: talking about the supply chains that are required to produce those things, David: the third-party vendors that are required, the assembly that's required. David: And I'm getting the intuition here that building a nuclear reactor, David: what you're doing, there's just a lot fewer moving parts.

David: And it's just a more just like simple environment to produce energy. David: And so you have less dependencies on third-party manufacturers. David: You have just overall less dependencies, generally speaking. David: And that allows you to, in theory, kind of scale out that operation and scale David: out energy production, generally speaking. Isaiah: Yeah, that's absolutely true for a lot of industries.

Isaiah: Like it's absolutely true for oil and gas, right? So it's almost impossible Isaiah: today to completely verticalize an oil and gas company, right? Isaiah: Because the source of your oil continues to shift.

Isaiah: And so unless you're in like the continuous real estate business where you are Isaiah: constantly buying new patches of land, exploring them, drilling, pumping oil, Isaiah: you know, moving it to refinery, which you own, refining it, Isaiah: moving it through logistics that you own to the end user site. Isaiah: That's an enormously complicated supply chain to own yourself. Isaiah: Now, what is verticalizing nuclear look like?

Isaiah: Well, it looks like having a patch of land where steel comes in and graphite Isaiah: comes in and energy comes out and a bit of uranium, right? Isaiah: But the uranium part of that is actually shockingly small in terms of mass. David: A little uranium goes a long way. Isaiah: A little bit of uranium goes a hell of a long way. So now solar, Isaiah: you can make an argument about this as well. Isaiah: You could say that you have this solar plant, which is similarly structured,

Isaiah: which has silicon coming in and aluminum coming in, and you have power coming out. Isaiah: Now, the problem with that is just the mass constraint, right? Isaiah: You're going to need a couple orders of magnitude, more silicon, Isaiah: more aluminum, then I need steel and graphite and uranium, right? Isaiah: So at the limit, I say I win that fight just in the fact that I need literally Isaiah: a thousand times less physical material per output power.

Isaiah: And in the limit, things cost how big they are. So, you know, Isaiah: this is sort of the math for solar. Isaiah: Now, fusion is an interesting part of this as well. Isaiah: People will say, well, okay, fusion is even more power dense, right? Isaiah: Because, you know, deuterium versus uranium or tritium are even more power density per kilogram. Isaiah: The problem with that is that, again, it's more about the properties of the Isaiah: box than it is the properties of the fuel, right?

Isaiah: What is like, let's characterize a fusion box. How good is that thing on the Isaiah: metrics that we talked about, right? Isaiah: An energy box should be small. That's the first most important thing. Isaiah: I would say there's two other sub attributes as well as that. Isaiah: They should be simple and made of common materials, right? Small, Isaiah: simple, common materials. Isaiah: Interestingly, fusion is worse on all three of those than fission, right?

Isaiah: So a fusion machine is actually larger per power, because it's harder to capture the energy out of it. Isaiah: It's harder to create the conditions for fusion. It's hard to capture the output energy. Isaiah: So the machine itself is actually larger per power than a fission machine. Isaiah: It's lower power density. Isaiah: It's also much more complex, right? And complexity is a factor to cost.

Isaiah: And the materials are much less common, right? So you can't make a fusion machine Isaiah: out of steel and carbon, right? Isaiah: Which is essentially what this machine behind us is made out of. Isaiah: And so, you know, like I said, I would like to believe I was objective in this. Isaiah: I did not know what the answer was going to be. I thought it might have been solar. Isaiah: I thought it was, you know, I actually thought geothermal for a while might have been the answer.

Isaiah: But when you actually go to how does humanity have civilizational, Isaiah: you know, energy that is 10 times cheaper than it is today? Isaiah: The only answer that I see to that is nuclear fission. David: Why do you think that this is ready for society right now? David: Nuclear as a conversation goes back before I was born, before all of us were David: born. It's been around for a while.

David: Why now? What's changed with technology? What's changed with politics or just the world around? David: How has the environment changed to make the question of right now be relevant? Isaiah: So I think that we made a trade-off in the 70s and 80s that made us think that Isaiah: energy wasn't that important for a while. Isaiah: And that's one of the fundamental reasons. There's a couple of fundamental reasons.

Isaiah: So in the 70s and 80s in the West, we essentially became a society that imagined Isaiah: it could be somewhat decoupled from the price of energy. Isaiah: And the essential way that we did that is we exported physical industry to other Isaiah: places, right? So energy really, really matters for physical industry before AI. Isaiah: Now energy matters even for bits. Isaiah: But before AI, energy was really, really important to physical industry.

Isaiah: And we went through this motion of essentially moving all physical industry to other places. Isaiah: And so it didn't matter to us. It didn't impact us as directly to have more expensive energy. Isaiah: And so I would say there's a period of irrationality in how we thought about Isaiah: energy because we thought it didn't matter. Now, it turns out that you actually Isaiah: really need physical industry as a country, right? A nation needs to be able to build things.

Isaiah: And in fact, I would say the fundamental thing that an economy does is building things. Isaiah: But there's a the flaw in our thinking came from. Isaiah: The fact that there are actually like two things involved in making things. Isaiah: There's the knowing how to make them, and then there's the making them.

Isaiah: And we imagined for a period of 30 years or so that we could be the country Isaiah: that knows how to make things, and that other countries could be the ones that do the making. Isaiah: And in the short term, that looks really attractive, because you get a ton of Isaiah: alpha on the knowing how to make things. Isaiah: You have rapid growth of valuable intellectual property. It's really easy to Isaiah: capitalize. It's really easy to get started.

Isaiah: And you know we're like let's just export the annoying part which is like the Isaiah: real making you know to other places and that's uh highly flawed in the long Isaiah: term it maybe is a good idea for about 10 or 15 years in the long term it turns Isaiah: out that your ability to know how to make things, Isaiah: has to be coupled with the making of them right because what happens is you Isaiah: forget you forget how to make things and if you're not actively making things

Isaiah: you're not learning how to make them better Isaiah: So the practical output of this is like, we forgot how to make cars, right? Isaiah: Like we started exporting car production to other places and Japan got really Isaiah: good at it. China got really good at it. Isaiah: And really only one company in the United States sort of like was like, Isaiah: huh, maybe we should remember how to make cars and make those again. Isaiah: And, you know, that'd be Tesla.

Isaiah: And this happened across, you know, so many different industries, Isaiah: right? The reason that Silicon Valley is called Silicon Valley is that we used to make silicon there. Isaiah: We used to make chips and then we exported them, you know, somewhere else for

Isaiah: the actual production because we didn't want the effluent and the waste from that. Isaiah: And now guess what? We don't know how to make chips anymore, Isaiah: right? So this is very short term thinking. You actually have to be involved Isaiah: in the making in order to be educated on how to do the making. David: I'm reading a book about this same effect with Apple's iPhones, David: where they exported all the manufacturing to China.

David: And that ended up actually just being an incubator for Chinese phone production. David: And so Huawei and all of these other Apple competitors all came out of China. David: And now actually only China knows how to make phones, including Apple iPhones. David: Correct. And so Apple is now realizing that they incubated the whole entire David: Chinese manufacturing thing, which is now the centerpiece of a lot of geopolitical debate right now.

Isaiah: Exactly. Exactly. It's a short-term trade. It's something that finance people Isaiah: do because they want to make a little bit of a better return in a 10 to 15-year period. Isaiah: And then after that, you realize that you exported the ability to actually know Isaiah: how to make things because the physical world is a real place, right? Isaiah: You can't actually model everything perfectly. You have to actually see how

Isaiah: the steel behaves in practice. You have to see how the machine behaves in practice. Isaiah: And so, yeah, I think it's it's I actually don't even remember this question Isaiah: started. Now you've gotten me on a separate soapbox that I care a lot about. Isaiah: But but you can't couple do a couple of those things for too long. Isaiah: Oh, we were asking why fission now?

Isaiah: You're right. This is one of those reasons. Right. So we've had a. Isaiah: A return of rationality about making things in the physical world is one thing, right? Isaiah: So we suddenly realized like, it's actually probably important that we know Isaiah: how to make steel, right? It's actually important that we know how to manufacture things. Isaiah: And when you do that, you realize that energy price is really, Isaiah: really important, right?

Isaiah: The reason that China dominates global aluminum is because they have three to Isaiah: four cents a kilowatt hour coal energy, right? Isaiah: They can make electricity at three to four cents a kilowatt hour and electrolyze bauxite. Isaiah: And that means they dominate aluminum. That also means they dominate gallium Isaiah: and germanium as well, which are really, really important to producing chips Isaiah: because that's the downstream of bauxite electrolysis, right?

Isaiah: And so this return to rationality drives us back to understanding that energy Isaiah: price in a society is really, really important. Isaiah: It's a strategic thing that a country has to have. Isaiah: The second thing that's happening is AI, right? So all the bits people suddenly Isaiah: woke up and realized like, okay, we actually need energy to even do our bits now.

Isaiah: You know, because it used to be that a data center, the electricity price in Isaiah: a data center just didn't matter that much because you weren't using that much Isaiah: compute to send emails around. Isaiah: Now we're using an enormous amount of compute every day just to do our basic Isaiah: stuff because we want to use ChatGPT for everything. Isaiah: So that's the other thing. And so both of these things are just, Isaiah: you know, this return of rationality to the West to say.

Isaiah: We need cheap energy and you look around and you do the same logic that i did Isaiah: and you realize nuclear is cheap Isaiah: energy and by the way you don't have to believe anything that i've said.

Isaiah: You know in theory about why nuclear will be cheap you can actually just look Isaiah: at the past right so in the early 1970s before three mile island in the united Isaiah: states uh nuclear fission, Isaiah: not only was the cheapest energy source it remains the cheapest energy that Isaiah: humanity has ever experienced.

Isaiah: Right. So I'm going to say that again. In the early 1970s, the energy that we Isaiah: were getting out of nuclear reactors at that time remains the cheapest energy Isaiah: that humanity has ever experienced. Isaiah: And this is this is adjusting for inflation. Right. I'm not talking about nominal Isaiah: 1970 dollars. I'm talking about 2025 dollars. Isaiah: We were getting around three to three and a half cent per kilowatt hour energy Isaiah: out of nuclear reactors.

Isaiah: Right now, we've the cheapest energy you can get in the United States today Isaiah: is somewhere around five to six cents per kilowatt hour. Isaiah: It's a little bit difficult to calculate because of subsidies, Isaiah: but that's about as good as you can get. Isaiah: So we're about double, right, the energy that we were getting in the early 70s, Isaiah: even when, you know, adjusting for inflation.

Isaiah: 50 years ago. 50 years ago. Yeah. And energy should always move the opposite direction, right? Isaiah: 50 years later, you should have 10 times cheaper energy than you did before. Isaiah: That was the trend up until the 1970s, and it was reversed. Isaiah: So I think there's this massive return to rationality on energy price, Isaiah: which naturally leads you to the conclusion of fission.

Isaiah: The other interesting thing is that, you know, I think that nuclear has had Isaiah: really bad marketing, right? Isaiah: It's had this, you know, intense scariness attached to it, which I think is Isaiah: very unjustified, because nuclear is the safest source of energy on Earth. Isaiah: If you look at power generated versus human death toll, Nuclear is the safest form of energy on Earth. Isaiah: It's even safer than solar, by the way. And we can talk about why that is in a second.

Isaiah: But one of the interesting things Isaiah: that happened was we had these nuclear incidents in the 70s and 80s. Isaiah: You had Fukushima, you had Chernobyl, and, Isaiah: Those were wildly misunderstood by the public. They, you know, Isaiah: if you ask people on the street today, like how many people died in Three Mile Island? Isaiah: People will say numbers in the Isaiah: hundreds. They'll say numbers in the thousands. Some people say 10,000.

Isaiah: Zero people is the answer, by the way. Zero people died in Three Mile Island. Isaiah: Nobody died. If you ask people about. David: What about second order consequences of like polluted soil, polluted land, David: downstream effects, anything like that?

Isaiah: 13 independent studies after Three Mile Island that were largely funded by people Isaiah: who wanted to show that the nuclear industry was bad, failed to find any environmental Isaiah: or health effects beyond the fence of the Three Mile Island facility. Isaiah: Not a single study, even funded by, you know, enemies of nuclear, Isaiah: failed to find a single negative health effect or environmental effect beyond Isaiah: the fence of Three Mile Island, right?

Isaiah: So now this didn't matter in the 70s and 80s. And the reason was because information Isaiah: flow was pretty centralized in the 70s and 80s, right? Isaiah: So if you had the media on board with the narrative and you had Hollywood on Isaiah: board with the narrative, you Isaiah: generally, you know, had a good grip on what people thought about a thing. Isaiah: Now, we've had another nuclear incident since then, and that was Fukushima, right?

Isaiah: And Fukushima, most people think was, you know, another death toll of nuclear. Isaiah: I actually take the opposite view. I think that Fukushima was, Isaiah: uh, on net will prove to be a very positive thing. Isaiah: And the reason is, is because it was very similar to Three Mile Island, Isaiah: right? It was zero people died. Isaiah: There's maybe, maybe an argument that you can make that one person died, maybe, um.

Isaiah: But it had a very similar impact, right, in terms of public sentiment. Isaiah: People immediately reacted the same way that they did for Through a Mile Island. Isaiah: There was this huge thing. They evacuated tens of thousands of people from the area. Isaiah: They shut down the nuclear industry in Japan for a couple of years. Isaiah: The reason this was different is that this is the information age, Isaiah: right? It happened in 2011. It happened in the age of the Internet.

Isaiah: And very quickly after this, people started to actually read the data. Isaiah: And they realized, wait a minute, nobody died. And, you know, Isaiah: the social impact of actually evacuating tens of thousands of people was orders Isaiah: of magnitude worse than the event itself. Isaiah: And the economic impact and even the death toll impact of shutting down all Isaiah: the nuclear reactors in Japan was, again, orders of magnitude more damaging

Isaiah: to the Japanese than the actual event itself. And the fact that this happened Isaiah: in the Internet age began to wake people up. Isaiah: And you had a second backlash to that where the Japanese went back and they Isaiah: said, we made a huge mistake. Isaiah: Right. We made a really big mistake by evacuating tens of thousands of people Isaiah: and by shutting down our nuclear industry. And they're beginning to turn all those plants back on.

Isaiah: And so I think that these are the two kind of factors that are bringing nuclear Isaiah: fission back today is that it's the information age. Right. Isaiah: Anybody can go and read about Fukushima. Anyone can read about,

Isaiah: you know, the Japanese decision to reverse, you know, the impacts of that and to turn plants back on. Isaiah: And then again, just a massive return of rationality to the importance of energy in the Western world. Josh: Yeah, 50 years is such a long time. And you mentioned the world of bits that we largely live in. Josh: And for the people that are not familiar, the world of bits is basically the Josh: computers, the ones and zeros that kind of run the world.

Josh: But what we're talking about now is the acceleration of the world of atoms, Josh: which is the physical space, the meat space that we occupy right now. Josh: And there's definitely this trend that I'm starting to see, and you mentioned, Josh: in that people are starting to learn and get excited about this world of atoms. Josh: How do we create these physical objects that can break these barriers that have Josh: been left behind like energy 50 years ago?

Josh: So I'm curious about your take on all of this. Josh: You co-founded a company called Valor. I'm curious... Josh: So how you think Valor can solve the nuclear energy problem? What are you building? Josh: For the people that are listening, you are sitting in front of what I believe Josh: is called Ward Zero. It's your first prototype reactor. Josh: So can you just explain to me kind of what you're, how you're tackling this Josh: problem in the world of atoms, giving us energy through Valor?

Isaiah: Absolutely. So I'll tell you Isaiah: about what we built here and then what we're going to build in the future. Isaiah: So Ward Zero is the object standing behind me. This is what's called a non-nuclear prototype. Isaiah: So essentially what we did is we built a nuclear reactor, but we didn't put uranium in it.

Isaiah: Right so that's kind of how you can understand what's behind this built a full nuclear reactor Isaiah: you could put uranium in this thing with a couple of minor modifications and Isaiah: it would actually turn on and it would split atoms now we don't do that Isaiah: because essentially the paperwork to actually do that in the united states would Isaiah: take four to five years and we don't have four to five years we have to do this

Isaiah: immediately right so build a full reactor and then what we put in it instead Isaiah: is a silicon carbide silicon carbide is a is a great material it's an extremely Isaiah: high temperature ceramic that's also a great electrical resistor.

Isaiah: And so what that means is that we can basically dump about 12 city blocks of Isaiah: Los Angeles power into the core of this reactor, and we can simulate what a Isaiah: nuclear fission reaction would be doing inside that core, which is essentially Isaiah: generating a ton of heat, right? Isaiah: And then what we do is we process that heat in the same way that we would if Isaiah: this were uranium making the heat.

Isaiah: So this gives us a very, very high fidelity, real world simulation of what a Isaiah: nuclear reactor would actually do. Isaiah: And the next step is to essentially go rebuild this reactor one to one with Isaiah: a couple of lessons that we've learned on how to weld this thing, Isaiah: how to structure that thing, how to seal this thing, but actually put uranium Isaiah: in it and turn it on and split atoms for the first time. So that's the next step for the company.

Isaiah: The vision of Valor is to. Isaiah: Rather than building these, you know, massive, massive nuclear plants that we Isaiah: did over the last 50 years, you had these like gigawatt scale reactors. Isaiah: We believe that small reactors are better in a bunch of ways, Isaiah: that this architecture is also better. This is a fundamentally safer nuclear reactor. Isaiah: It uses graphite instead of water as a moderator, and we can talk about why that's safer.

Isaiah: But the plan is to, instead of building, you know, let's say a couple dozen Isaiah: very large reactors, we want to build thousands and thousands of these smaller reactors. Isaiah: Because, again, one of the drivers to cost is, you know, there's two drivers Isaiah: of any physical good in terms of cost. Isaiah: How big is it? How many you make, right? So we want to make small things that Isaiah: you make a ton of, and that's going to make them really cheap.

David: Is the idea here that I'll be able to go down to my local Valor store and pick David: up a nuclear reactor and plug it into my home? Or how does that actually like David: plug into the grid and to start giving me energy? Isaiah: Yeah, so I would say probably not for a while. Nuclear reactors... I'm surprised.

David: That the answer is reasonably yes at all to be honest Isaiah: So i think over time humanity Isaiah: continues to use nuclear fission more Isaiah: and more and more it becomes the dominant source of energy in Isaiah: the world but there's there's two questions at play there's like where does Isaiah: the energy come from and then how does it get to you right and those are two Isaiah: different things one of the nice things about nuclear fission is that you make

Isaiah: a ton of cheap energy in a location and then you can you can sort of firewall Isaiah: the the nuclear-ness of that from the end user, right? Isaiah: And the firewall there is that you transport the energy through a medium and Isaiah: that medium is either electricity or it's also chemical energy, Isaiah: right? And the chemical energy part of that is really interesting. Isaiah: So our nuclear reactors, we'll make both. We'll make electricity.

Isaiah: You can get our electricity from a grid and it should be much cheaper. Isaiah: We'll make electricity for AI data centers and those data centers will be getting Isaiah: the best power rates in the world. Isaiah: But also we'll make chemical fuels, right? Isaiah: So we'll actually make hydrogen, we'll bond that hydrogen with CO2, Isaiah: and we can actually make a synthetic fuel, we can make diesel, gasoline, jet fuel.

Isaiah: And you might get that in any of the places that you get those those chemicals today. Isaiah: And those chemicals should be much cheaper. And so essentially, Isaiah: if you think about what we're doing there, we're sort of, we're arbing the physical Isaiah: infrastructure of hydrocarbons as a logistics platform. Isaiah: And we're plugging nuclear into it, right? And why would you do that, Isaiah: by the way? Right. Like what's the point of that?

Isaiah: Well, the point of that is that the hydrocarbon, think about hydrocarbons for a second as a grid. Isaiah: All right. So we're familiar with like an electrical grid, right? Isaiah: You have a bunch of wires connected and you push electrons through and people Isaiah: get to consume that energy. Isaiah: Hydrocarbons are also a grid. They're a liquid grid, right? They're a network Isaiah: of pipelines and trucks and tanks that move them around.

Isaiah: So let me ask you, which one is bigger, right? Which one's moving more energy, Isaiah: the electrical grid or the hydrocarbon grid. David: I would imagine the hydrocarbon grid because that's the whole combustion engine David: thing. Like how big is the combustion engine as a concept? I would imagine it's massive. Isaiah: Here's a crazy stat for you. On the ocean today, there's a bunch of ships, right? Isaiah: And those ships are burning hydrocarbons to propel themselves across the water.

Isaiah: The energy being consumed by ships on the ocean today is greater than the entire Isaiah: electrical grid of the world. Isaiah: Just just the ships. Correct. Just ships burning hydrocarbons are consuming Isaiah: more energy than the entire global electrical grid. Right. Josh: So that is a fun fact. David: That is hydrocarbons. Isaiah: Hydrocarbons are actually a much larger grid that's more distributed, Isaiah: that's more flexible than electrical, the electrical grid today.

Isaiah: Right now, there are some downsides to hydrocarbons. Right. One of the big downsides Isaiah: is that you're continuously adding CO2 to the atmosphere. you know, Isaiah: every year that you use them. Isaiah: Eventually, we want to stop doing that for a bunch of reasons. Isaiah: It's not just climate change.

Isaiah: It's also the fact that, you know, eventually the CO2 level in the atmosphere Isaiah: becomes, you know, too high for, you know, after about 600 ppm, Isaiah: your brain function, you know, starts to go down those sorts of things. Isaiah: So there are lots of reasons why over time, that's not sustainable.

Isaiah: But if you just think about it as a grid, right, think about it as just moving Isaiah: energy around, the hydrocarbon grid, I would say is far better, Isaiah: far better than the electrical grid and it's far larger and it has potential Isaiah: to move terawatt hours of energy around.

Isaiah: Now, if you could fix the CO2 problem part of that and only get the logistics Isaiah: part, you know, you would have essentially given yourself the ability to distribute Isaiah: all of the world's energy from only a couple of points, which is great for verticalization.

Isaiah: And it's actually quite solvable. The way that you do that is you take the CO2 Isaiah: out of the atmosphere and you build it into a hydrocarbon, allow people to burn Isaiah: it, which puts it back into the atmosphere. Isaiah: And you take it back out, send it out, allow people to burn it, Isaiah: puts it back in. you take it back out, and you've created a closed loop of CO2, right? Isaiah: So you're not adding net new CO2 to the atmosphere.

Isaiah: Every year, you have a fixed rate of people, you know, CO2 ppm. Isaiah: And you're essentially just using the atmosphere as a transport mechanism to Isaiah: get your ingredients back to you again. Isaiah: Because remember, CO2, you know, these, it's not carbon, that's energetic,

Isaiah: it's the structure of the molecule that's, you know, that's energetic. Isaiah: And the nuclear fission is essentially infusing co2 and water uh into an energetic Isaiah: form which is a hydrocarbon right you're ejecting the oxygen out of that now Isaiah: you have an unoxidized chemical uh and i'm sorry i know i'm getting a little Isaiah: bit uh chemistry you know bored here but uh that is essentially what we're what we're planning to do.

Josh: Yeah i'm gonna try to ask you this question in a way Josh: that that you can explain to normal people where we don't go too deep in Josh: chemistry but i'm curious about what makes these reactors different Josh: than um i i know people there people Josh: the pebble bed reactors are very popular the gen 4 reactors that are coming Josh: they're much larger you mentioned modularity is one part of it but what are

Josh: the benefits aside from the small size aside from the modularity that you are Josh: kind of taking advantage of relative to the size is it just size or is there Josh: something else that's also going on behind the seeds or within the reactor that Josh: that makes it more like it's more powerful and more efficient Isaiah: So I would actually say that these reactors will be less powerful per size than Isaiah: some of the reactors that have been built before.

Isaiah: The reason that we do that is that it makes it safer, right? Isaiah: So one of our beliefs here is like safety is probably the most important driver of cost in nuclear. Isaiah: If you can make a reactor that's 10 times safer, you can actually make it 10 Isaiah: times cheaper because it allows you to do it more often, more quickly deployed at scale. Isaiah: So these will actually be a little bit less power dense than traditional light water reactors.

Isaiah: But we actually get to manufacture them we get to make Isaiah: a ton of them and that makes them cheaper the really unique thing Isaiah: here is that these reactors are just a lot hotter right so Isaiah: the outlet temperature on these reactors will be around Isaiah: 800 850 degrees celsius that's compared Isaiah: to 300 sometimes 350 degrees celsius Isaiah: in a light water reactor that unlocks Isaiah: two really important things so the way that you make energy

Isaiah: in a nuclear reactor traditionally is that you have Isaiah: a very hot outlet temperature and then you Isaiah: have ambient uh air at a Isaiah: certain temperature as well and you can extract energy from the Isaiah: difference between those two temperatures right and this is called carno Isaiah: efficiency right so you have a hot a t hot and a Isaiah: t cold and the difference between those temperatures governs the

Isaiah: maximum amount of energy they can get out of that for most plants around the Isaiah: world this is 20 to 30 percent right of the of the total energy that you can Isaiah: get out of that in a hydrocarbon engine which works a similar way you can push Isaiah: you know into the mid 30s in you know very efficient. Isaiah: Nat gas, combined cycle generators, you can push 50% total efficiency.

Isaiah: But this is all limited by the basic physics of the difference between your Isaiah: hot side and your cold side. Isaiah: The way to increase that diff and the way to increase the efficiency is essentially Isaiah: just to make the difference larger. Isaiah: The larger the difference between the cold side and the hot side, Isaiah: the greater efficiency you can get out of that. Isaiah: And it turns out that at 850C, you can actually get really efficient at producing electricity, right?

Isaiah: So we'll be significantly more Isaiah: efficient at producing electricity than a traditional nuclear reactor. Isaiah: Now, the other really interesting thing that gets unlocked here by doing high Isaiah: temperatures is actually direct production of hydrogen, right? Isaiah: So ideally, right, hydrogen is a chemical energy, right? Isaiah: Pure hydrogen, because it's deoxidized, and the fact of oxygen in the atmosphere Isaiah: means that it's chemical potential energy.

Isaiah: If you take that hydrogen and you combine it with the atmosphere, Isaiah: you get water and you get a ton of energy, right? Isaiah: So in theory, a really good thing to do with a nuclear reactor is to seed that process, right? Isaiah: You get some water, you combine it with reactor energy, and you get free hydrogen. Isaiah: And now that's a very valuable thing that you can go and sell. Isaiah: You can combine it with CO2 to make a hydrocarbon. You can do a bunch of things with it.

Isaiah: Now, the way in the past that people have thought about nuclear to hydrogen Isaiah: is to start with electricity, right? Isaiah: So have a nuclear reactor that spins a turbine, makes electricity, Isaiah: run the electricity through an electrolyzer, right, that electrolyzes water, Isaiah: and then you get hydrogen out of it.

Isaiah: The problem with this is that you get two efficiency hits right Isaiah: so you get the efficiency hit of making uh electricity right Isaiah: which as we know could be a you know a 60 70 Isaiah: hit to your efficiency you lose a ton of that energy just making the electricity Isaiah: then you have the efficiency hit of running it through an electrolyzer right Isaiah: and that electrolyzer also has an efficiency you know related to it as well

Isaiah: and you're losing a lot of that energy so by the time you've gone from uranium Isaiah: fission in a core to chemical potential hydrogen you've lost a ton of energy in that process. Isaiah: The other thing is you've added a lot of physical machinery, Isaiah: right? So you've added a turbine and a generator and an electrolyzer. Isaiah: And again, you want to make machines as small as possible and as simple as possible.

Isaiah: An interesting alternate to this is that you just use heat to split water, right? Isaiah: So any chemical will actually decompose. Isaiah: It'll break down at a certain temperature, right? So at a certain temperature, Isaiah: every chemical compound will decompose. Isaiah: And so in theory, you can essentially just get water hot enough from a nuclear Isaiah: reactor to get free hydrogen out of it.

Isaiah: Now, in practicality, if you catalyze it properly, that temperature is somewhere Isaiah: around 1600 to 1800 degrees Celsius. Isaiah: That's too hot for us today. Someday we'll have reactors that run that hot, too hot for us today. Isaiah: But what you can do is you can run that water through a couple of chemical cycles Isaiah: and transform them into another chemical that has a much lower decomposition temperature.

Isaiah: So what I'm talking about here is something called the sulfur iodine cycle. Isaiah: The sulfur iodine cycle is a chemical cycle that takes water, Isaiah: makes two other acids out of that water, and then you use heat to decompose Isaiah: those acids, and you get hydrogen out of that, and then you recycle the ingredients.

Isaiah: So sulfur and iodine, if you combine water, Isaiah: with sulfur dioxide and iodine you get Isaiah: two acids out of that you get a hydriotic acid and sulfuric Isaiah: acid and you can actually decompose those two Isaiah: acids uh just below the output temperature of Isaiah: this reactor right so you can do it around 750 to 800 degrees celsius and they Isaiah: will just thermally break down and you get the free hydrogen out of that um

Isaiah: so what are we left with well you don't need a turbine right because we're not Isaiah: making electricity you don't need a generator and you just need a couple of Isaiah: tanks of chemicals, right? Isaiah: And need a good heat exchanger to do that thermal decomposition.

Isaiah: So we see this as an incredible way to add a much higher efficiency where you're Isaiah: not limited by the Carnot cycle and you're not limited by the efficiency of Isaiah: an electrolyzer to essentially just take reactor heat with very minimal moving Isaiah: parts and just a couple of tanks of chemicals and make hydrogen. Isaiah: And we think it'll be the cheapest hydrogen in the world. Sorry,

Isaiah: you told me to say that without chemistry and then there's a tonic chemistry. I'm sorry.

David: There was a lot of, yeah, chemistry and like matter. that David: was a in the contrast of bits versus atoms David: that was heavy on the atoms side of things yep and David: uh maybe you could just like extrapolate like when we're David: talking about atoms and moving atoms and manipulating atoms to produce the things David: that we want the conversation starts with a lot of the stuff that you just said David: first it starts with the getting the energy producing the energy in order to

David: manipulate atoms uh josh brought up this contrast of like for the last you know David: 30 years since the rise of the internet, the rise of Silicon Valley,

David: the world, humanity, has really been heavily invested into bits. David: Like, how do we make the bits in the right order, the ones and zeros in the David: right order to produce value? David: And like, atoms has lagged in contrast to bits over the rise of the internet. David: But you are getting really excited about atoms. Maybe you can, David: can you give, get me and Josh and also our listeners, get them excited about atoms.

David: Like once we unlock having the right atoms in the right order to unlock energy, David: how does the world of atoms get easier to change, easier to flip, flip a bit? David: Like how do we get flipping atoms easy as flipping bits downstream of all of David: this? Just get us excited about Matt Adams.

Isaiah: So I'm actually going to flip it around for you a little bit and say, Isaiah: everyone has always been excited about atoms Isaiah: like atoms is actually what we we have all cared Isaiah: about for the last 50 years but we also care about money Isaiah: right and it what's been true over the last like 30 to 40 years is like well Isaiah: first of all the reason we care about money is generally because of atoms like

Isaiah: what do people do once they get money from let's say starting a sass company Isaiah: and becoming a billionaire well they spend that money on atoms right they they Isaiah: start to have a private chef, which makes them delicious food. Isaiah: They get a private jet, which like flies them around wherever they want to go.

Isaiah: They get a beautiful house, they get a boat, right? So I would actually argue Isaiah: like the world of atoms has always been the thing that is very interesting to people. Isaiah: Now, the second thing is that there's this intellectual side that's also very Isaiah: interesting to people, which is like the right way to order bits, right?

Isaiah: And that is like a captivating question in the mind that has, Isaiah: you know, driven a generation of entrepreneurs and a generation of innovators and engineers. Isaiah: But I think that's mostly just been driven by the fact that the world of bits Isaiah: was really the only place you could be intellectually curious, right? Isaiah: If you're a intellectually curious person, and you're an engineer, Isaiah: and you have the option before you as a.

Isaiah: Look, life starts when you're in high school, right? So like, Isaiah: when you're in high school, and the options in front of you are opening a laptop, Isaiah: and creating something, right, by the end of the day, right, by the end of the day, Isaiah: as a 17 year old with a laptop, you can have created something that's functional, Isaiah: and maybe even makes you some money. Isaiah: And a couple years later, you could be making a lot of money.

Isaiah: And in five years, you could be a millionaire, right? Like, the world of bits Isaiah: was the place that that happened. Isaiah: So I think that our obsession with bits is actually more an obsession with innovation. Isaiah: It's an obsession with discovery and with engineering. Isaiah: And the world of bits was the only place you could really do that. Isaiah: So then we have to back up and say, like, why was bits the only place you could do that?

Isaiah: Well, there's two reasons. Like, one is the simple, like, political answer, right? Isaiah: Which is like, it became very hard to do things in the world of atoms in the West. Isaiah: We added an enormous amount of federal regulation over everything that moves. Isaiah: And we didn't do that in bits, right? And so a 17-year-old could open a laptop Isaiah: and create something with almost no interaction with regulation.

Isaiah: Whereas, you know, just trying to, you know, make a sample rocket, Isaiah: you're wondering like, oh, am I, you know, south of some sort of like regulation Isaiah: here that says that I can't have, you know, this chemical in this room and that sort of thing. Isaiah: And so there's just a very quick, easy path to being an engineer, Isaiah: to being an innovator, to being somebody who's intellectually curious with bits.

Isaiah: The other thing, though, is that it's the second thing we talked about where Isaiah: there is a fundamental limitation in the world of atoms that hasn't existed Isaiah: in bits in terms of like cycle time, right? Isaiah: Like, so the fact that if you're sitting in front of a laptop, Isaiah: you can have a piece of software at the end of the day that's doing something cool.

Isaiah: Whereas, you know, if you have a physical thing in your mind, Isaiah: it maybe takes a couple of weeks, right? Isaiah: I think that's also changing. And that's what I'm really, really excited about, right? Isaiah: The things that we talked about before, you have energy, intelligence, and dexterity. Isaiah: As intelligence and dexterity get cheaper, and energy gets cheaper, Isaiah: I believe that we will start to play with matter in the same way that we play with bits, right?

Isaiah: Life starts in high school, okay? It starts where you play. Isaiah: The reason that we have so many incredible software engineers and so much software Isaiah: is that people play with computers when they are in high school, right? Isaiah: And literally play, We're playing video games. Isaiah: A lot of software engineers that I know got into software because they were Isaiah: playing video games and it gave them this love of computers.

Isaiah: And then they started modding the software and they wanted it to do cooler things. Isaiah: And that taught them software engineering because they want to make an extension Isaiah: to Minecraft, something like that. Isaiah: And I think that we're going to start playing with atoms. What would playing with atoms look like? Isaiah: Well, it would look like talking to an AI that runs a CNC machine or runs a 3D printer.

Isaiah: And you actually can start to get these cycle times again. You can maybe by Isaiah: the end of the day, be holding the thing that you thought about. Isaiah: And then the next day you tweak it, you make it better. You could be holding Isaiah: the physical object that you were thinking about. Isaiah: I don't think I need to convince people that that's more exciting than software, right?

Isaiah: Like you imagine a drone Isaiah: that can fly you around right and within a Isaiah: couple days you you're sitting on it and it's in the air right like that's that's Isaiah: the future that we that you know i would like to see and that i think i think Isaiah: happens in the next you know 10 to 20 years as dexterity gets cheaper as intelligence Isaiah: gets cheaper i don't think i will have to convince many people to be to be tinkering

Isaiah: with you know the real world once it becomes possible to do that again. Josh: Yeah, that sounds right. And it feels like the world of atoms as that accelerates Josh: will be even more accessible and more, I guess, quality of life improving for Josh: the average person than the world of bits. Josh: I feel like with the world of bits and correct me where I'm wrong, Josh: but a lot of times you are extracting value from software or maybe you're injecting Josh: yourself into social media.

Josh: You're just kind of reading and writing with this thing, but it doesn't extrapolate Josh: out too much into the real world. So when we do have this accessibility, Josh: I think about myself and where I could use an abundance of energy. Josh: My car, for example, it costs 20 something cents per kilowatt. Josh: If we get that down to free, it becomes much easier to get around.

Josh: But even things where we're building Josh: humanoid robots and these things can probably be more cost effective. Josh: I'm curious kind of if you can if you have any fun or interesting examples to Josh: get people excited about what what it actually looks like for the average person. Josh: Like how is how's my day actually improved as we get this abundance of energy that's much cheaper? Isaiah: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, here's just a really like everyday person example.

Isaiah: The reason that your dishwasher sucks is because of energy regulation, right? Isaiah: The reason that you can't just like throw an entire plate of food into the dishwasher Isaiah: without having to do any wiping, like, all right, when you're done eating food, Isaiah: you should basically just pick up the plate in front of you and like throw it.

Isaiah: To a machine and the machine does the rest right and Isaiah: like the next time you're ready to eat food you like pick up a plate you put Isaiah: food on it and you like throw it back to the machine that's how this should Isaiah: work and the only reason that it doesn't work that way is actually energy regulation Isaiah: it's called energy star there's a there's a fleet of regulations that we've Isaiah: put around how our appliances use energy that has essentially forced the industry to,

Isaiah: create these machines around a function of regulation why Isaiah: do like dishwashers and washing machines like Isaiah: seem like they don't really get that much better and the user interface Isaiah: doesn't change that much it's essentially because we're solving for energy regulations Isaiah: right so in an energy abundant future like the Isaiah: machines should just do the annoying stuff for you you know we're 50 years from

Isaiah: the invention of i mean probably more than that of the dishwasher and it's like Isaiah: not that different of an experience um so i i would i would say like let's get Isaiah: way more creative like what is what does living in a house look like well it Isaiah: looks like just doing what you enjoy, Isaiah: and you know when you're like literally throw it i think that'd be pretty sick Isaiah: like i want i want to see i want to come up with like a dishwasher of the future

Isaiah: where you literally throw it that would be sick um oh. Josh: That makes me Isaiah: Real happy and like all of your your clothes Isaiah: like your dishwasher your washing machine should not just Isaiah: first of all you shouldn't load it like what is loading it that's nonsense like Isaiah: i want to throw my clothes at the at the basket and it just comes Isaiah: back folded right my my washing machine should fold Isaiah: my clothes too and should put them back in the drawer and um

Isaiah: and you know like that that sort of thing is like very very obvious Isaiah: to me maybe that's through humanoids maybe that's through you know just better Isaiah: dishwashers and the concept of a dishwasher becomes uh becomes very different Isaiah: but all of these things are are unlocked by by energy now something that's very Isaiah: motivating to me i talked about the dishwashers and the washing machines because

Isaiah: that's like an everyman thing but like i'm also extremely motivated by by outer space Isaiah: Right. And there's no formulation where we are man among the stars, Isaiah: man on the moon, man in Mars without abundant energy. And that's what's really, really exciting to me. Isaiah: Energy is essentially the biggest tool that you need to go and make the solar Isaiah: system a fun place to be for humans.

Isaiah: You know, it's how you can terraform a planet. It's how you can create habitations. Isaiah: You know, it's how you can create, you know, big floating cities above Venus.

Isaiah: And it's that's you know there's lots of mechanical problems to solve in there Isaiah: but again there's an extent to which mechanical problems will be solved by intelligence Isaiah: right intelligence and dexterity and essentially you just need a lot of energy Isaiah: to do it that's what i'm really excited about.

Josh: So i feel like there's probably these these two core pillars that people can Josh: get really excited it's about how this energy affects their everyday life and Josh: we could probably have a full podcast conversation about the interesting new Josh: ways that you could design things that we use every day to be improved.

Josh: But it's also the dreamer vision, where now because we have this new abundant Josh: energy unlocked, we can dream about going to the stars and the downstream effects of that. Josh: We had Sean McGuire on the show fairly recently, and he was talking about how Josh: focusing on something like Mars has downstream effects for people back at home, Josh: where in order to get to Mars, we need that nuclear react that fits in a suitcase, Josh: and we need all these new technologies.

Josh: So I think, and I'm hopeful based on what you're saying, is that we will get Josh: all these downstream effects hopefully fairly soon, or at least directionally Josh: we're headed towards that now in the way that we weren't in the past. Josh: I'm curious what you think about timelines. Josh: When will people start to notice the effects of this cheaper energy?

Josh: When will we start to have dishwashers that can catch the dishes or robots that Josh: can fold our clothes in a way that's kind of accessible for the average person to use? Isaiah: I think that is entirely limited by entrepreneurs, right?

Isaiah: So when we think of like tech today and we think of like startups today, Isaiah: we're all we're really talking about is like young, crazy people who have some Isaiah: like wild vision of how a dishwasher should actually catch your plate and then Isaiah: decide to go make that thing a reality. Isaiah: And the fundamental motivation for that is twofold.

Isaiah: Like one, they want to imprint their will on the universe and they want, Isaiah: you know, every single home to have a dishwasher that catches your dishes.

Isaiah: Two they want to become a billionaire or a centimillionaire or Isaiah: whatever um the uh becoming Isaiah: a centimillionaire and the possibility of imprinting your your will Isaiah: on reality has been mostly impossible in the physical world in the west right Isaiah: different in in you know other countries in the world specifically china but Isaiah: in the west this has not been a path because of not enough energy and also because

Isaiah: of very stringent regulation that makes it just difficult for innovation to Isaiah: happen and difficult for companies to scale. Isaiah: I think both of those things are heading in the right direction right now, Isaiah: which is that you see tons of entrepreneurs suddenly realizing that you can Isaiah: become a billionaire by making something cool. Isaiah: Impulse Labs is a great example of this, right? Sam is a buddy.

Isaiah: He was like, Stowe's should be 100 times better than they are right now, Isaiah: right? And that's what he's doing. Isaiah: So I think there will be a ton more people who go out and do things like that. Isaiah: The second side is the regulation side. I think we're seeing a lot a fundamental Isaiah: change in how we think about regulation, especially at the federal level, Isaiah: that will affect that, you know, significantly.

Isaiah: But it's it's gated on people listening to this podcast like it's gated to to Isaiah: young people in high school who are like, I have a different vision for what your couch should be. Isaiah: I think the couch should be way sicker than it is right now. Isaiah: And I'm going to become a billionaire doing that. Josh: That's a future that seems really excited that I can get very pumped about. Josh: It feels like the future ahead is actually going to look like the future.

Josh: When I look out over New York City, it will probably look materially different

Josh: than over the next decade than it did in the past decade. Josh: So that's a future I think a lot of people can get super excited about. Isaiah: This is a great point, by the way. And in the future, looking like the future Isaiah: is like also why we did this. Isaiah: You know, we have a bunch of people on Twitter. I collect Twitter haters. It's very fun. Isaiah: And we're like, why does your nuclear reactor look like a video game or like,

Isaiah: you know, what's going on here? And like the answer is. Josh: It reminded me almost like an NVIDIA GPU type thing. It looks very cool. Isaiah: You know, I tried to make it not look like a GPU. It's very, Isaiah: very hard to make a vertical box not look like a GPU. Isaiah: It's just kind of what they look like. But, you know, it is very futuristic. Isaiah: It's Tron. It's Star Trek. Isaiah: And, yeah, the reason is absolutely the future should look like the future.

Isaiah: And, you know, when you're walking into a nuclear reactor that was built in Isaiah: the year 2025, it should not feel like you're at like a hospital switchboard in the 1970s. Isaiah: And that's definitely what we're going for here. David: For the podcast listeners that are not watching the video, Isaiah's background David: is the most sci-fi industrial looking thing. It looks like you just opened the David: first level in Doom and you're on Mars.

David: While he was talking, a man in a Segway just zipped on by, going like 20 miles an hour. David: And it was extremely distracting because it was a little bit surreal just watching David: this man zipping around this factory floor with a nuclear power reactor. Isaiah: I didn't realize that. That's great. Sometimes when I'm on calls, Isaiah: people think that this is a fake background until I see a forklift go by,

Isaiah: you know, carrying a pallet. And they're like, oh, that's real. That's happening. Josh: It's very real. Well, there's one more topic that I want to touch on that's Josh: very front of mind for us particularly here. Josh: Limitless is how we're powering kind of this AI and the intelligence revolution Josh: and how we're doing these data centers and kind of how we power the rest of Josh: everything. So these are modular reactors. Josh: I understand that you can use them in clusters.

Josh: You could kind of stack them on top of each other to create data. Josh: What I understand also is companies Josh: like XAI and companies like OpenAI are kind of energy constrained. Josh: And what I'm curious to ask you about is, will this technology be capable of Josh: powering these data centers, one? Josh: And then is it actually powerful enough or is it modular enough that we could Josh: scale that across the country to the average person? So, like,

Josh: will we be able to power data centers? Will we be able to power my neighborhood? Josh: How does that kind of distribution of these reactors work as you start to roll them out? Isaiah: Yeah. So this is, you know, just good business sense at this point. Isaiah: You know, what, how do you actually go and scale a business? Isaiah: I would love if our reactors in the next five years could power every American home. Isaiah: There are business constraints to that, regulatory constraints to that.

Isaiah: I think the easiest thing for Valor Isaiah: Atomics to do today is to go help AI achieve all of its goals, right? Isaiah: Help all of the hyperscalers get all the power that they need to win the AI Isaiah: race to make sure that the United States of America is the most dominant AI country in the world. Isaiah: That's a massive, massive problem that we're going to solve in the next five years. Isaiah: Now, beyond that, yes, I'm very excited about that energy getting into your

Isaiah: hands. And I think there are two ways that that can happen. Isaiah: The one way is, you know, we go and build, you know, small reactors around the country, right? Isaiah: So we have four of these units next to your neighborhood, that sort of thing. Isaiah: Another really interesting way, though, is that we just make the hydrocarbons

Isaiah: that the world consumes, right? So if you're going to get on a jet aircraft Isaiah: in about five years, I hope that that fuel is made by Valor Atomics Reactors. Isaiah: And I hope that that fuel is about a third the cost that it is today. Isaiah: And because fuel is the largest operating cost of an airline, Isaiah: I hope that your plane ticket is much cheaper.

Isaiah: And if you're going to be driving on a bus or you're going to be driving on Isaiah: a truck or you're getting goods delivered to your house from a semi truck, Isaiah: I hope that all of those things are much, much cheaper because they're buying Isaiah: Valor Atomics fuel, which is a whole lot cheaper than refining oil. Isaiah: And then in the long term, I think absolutely our reactors are powering the Isaiah: grid all around the world.

Josh: I'm curious about the global energy mix, kind of how nuclear, Josh: how prescient nuclear is relative to others. Josh: So we're burning lots of fossil fuels. We have a lot of solar energy. Josh: Does the equilibrium eventually balance out to a mix of those three? Josh: Or do you see a future in which it's actually all just nuclear? Isaiah: I believe that the power mix in the next, let's say, 50 years is going to become 99.1.

Isaiah: 99 nuclear fission, 1%, you know, other things. I think that solar will always have... Isaiah: Some applicability in remote places, right? There's always going to be that Isaiah: one place that you want to be where there's no infrastructure and you just need Isaiah: a bit of power to run some compute, you know, to keep yourself warm. Isaiah: And it's hard to beat a solar panel for that.

Isaiah: But in terms of the massive, massive volumes that humanity needs going forward Isaiah: to power AI, to power robotics, it's going to be nuclear. Isaiah: And it's in even hydrocarbons, right? Most of the world's energy today is hydrocarbons. Isaiah: And if those hydrocarbons become just a transport mechanism for nuclear power, Isaiah: I think you're going to see a world of 99.1.

Isaiah: And I think that's going to be a much cheaper way. And we're going to it's going Isaiah: to be much more abundant. David: Isaiah, as we wrap up this podcast, and you get back to work working on a literal David: nuclear reactor that's in your background, what, what are you going to do first? David: Like, seriously, what's next for you? David: What are your priorities for this week for this month? David: Where are you in the arc of what you're trying to build?

Isaiah: Absolutely. The next goal for Valor Atomics is essentially to go rebuild this Isaiah: thing one to one, put uranium in it and split atoms for the first time. Isaiah: That's all we think about every day. Isaiah: You know, nothing gets built in the world without it actually getting built, Isaiah: right? One of our big convictions at Valor is that you can only design so much on paper, right?

Isaiah: Designing something for five years on a piece of paper is going to teach you Isaiah: less than building it in the first year, testing it, building another one, Isaiah: testing it, building another one, testing it. Isaiah: That's what we're doing for the next few years. We're building reactors. Isaiah: We're making them bigger, more powerful, more sophisticated. Isaiah: And we're getting into the practice of building reactors and splitting atoms. Isaiah: That's our entire focus right now.

Isaiah: So look out for Ward 1, which will be our first critical nuclear reactor. David: And if you had a message for our listeners, our listeners are pretty intellectually David: curious, high agency people who just always like getting their fingers in the dirt. David: Any advice for them? How can they support you if they are just like peaked and David: pilled by your mission or just any general advice for what they should do if David: they are just interested in learning more?

Isaiah: Yeah, absolutely. You can follow me on Twitter, Isaiah underscore P underscore Isaiah: Taylor. Post some awesome stuff in there all the time. We keep it spicy. Isaiah: You can find Valor Atomics, ValorAtomics.com. That's V-A-L-A-R Atomics.com. Isaiah: And come visit us. Come check out the reactor. David: Where is it? Where is the actual reactor? Where is the facility? Isaiah: We're here in Los Angeles. We're in Hawthorne, about a mile from SpaceX.

Isaiah: We've got great beaches, great surfing, and some of the best engineers in the Isaiah: world creating the future. Josh: I just wanted to let people know to absolutely follow you guys, Josh: because that's actually how I found you. Josh: I love the theatrics you do around the company, where you guys had this big unveiling event. Josh: And I was like, who are these people that are turning a nuclear reactor event

Josh: into this big thing? And it was you. And it makes the future more exciting. Josh: And just wanted to thank you, because we need more founders like you trying Josh: these hard things, improving our world in this life of Adam so that the everyday Josh: life becomes a lot more exciting. So we're just super, super grateful. Josh: Really glad that you joined us today and excited for other people to hear your mission.

Isaiah: Well, thank you. And I'm glad that you fell for my psyop of the party, Isaiah: which was essentially an exercise to see how many tech bros we could get to Isaiah: show up into a building wearing a suit and tie. Isaiah: And I think that we did quite well. We saw a lot of suits and ties that night Isaiah: on Tech Bro. So it was very successful. Josh: Certainly nerd sniped me. Yeah. David: Isaiah, thanks for joining us on Limitless. Isaiah: Awesome. Thank you so much, guys.