Ep. 181 - A Nuclear Reactor… One Mile Underground? Deep Fission’s Bet on Cheaper Clean Power
Show Notes
The Deepest Power Plant on Earth: Liz Muller’s Deep Dive into Underground Nuclear
Five years ago on this show, I talked with Liz Muller about her first company, Deep Isolation, which seeks to bury nuclear waste safely deep underground. Deep Isolation is still going strong, and Liz is still chair of the board.
But now she’s back on the show—same Liz, still going deep—but this time she’s not storing nuclear energy deep underground… she’s planning to make it there.
Liz is the CEO of Deep Fission, a startup that’s so far raised more than $40 million to build pressurized-water reactors a mile underground. The idea is simple but radical: by using the Earth itself for containment, pressure, and cooling, you can make nuclear power safer and cheaper—in fact, she says it could cut 80 percent of the cost of traditional nuclear plants.
It’s the kind of idea that sounds half science-fiction, half obvious-in-hindsight—and it might arrive just in time for our power-hungry AI age.
In this conversation, Liz and I talk about how drilling technology, geothermal systems, and conventional nuclear know-how all come together in Deep Fission’s design; why environmentalists like her are embracing nuclear power; what it’ll take to get the first reactor running within 2026; and how this could help power data centers and maybe even save the planet.
Let’s dive deep—literally—with Liz Muller of Deep Fission.
Discussed in this episode
Our 2020 episode with Liz on Deep Isolation, and our 2025 episode about the book Rad Future.
Deep Fission’s 2025 $30M alternative public offering.
What’s an Alternative Public Offering? Read all about it.
Bloomberg and The Economist on Deep Fission’s work.
The 1975 Chinese dam collapse killed exponentially more people than all nuclear energy accidents combined.
Liz recommends Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid.
She also recommends podcasts like Fire to Fission and World Nuclear News.
Get to Know Elizabeth Muller
A serial entrepreneur at the forefront of nuclear energy and environmental innovation, Liz is the co-founder and CEO of Deep Fission. Previously, she co-founded and served as CEO of Deep Isolation, a pioneering nuclear waste disposal company, where she is now Board Chair. Liz also co-founded Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit providing critical data science on climate change.
A named inventor on multiple patents, Liz was recognized as a Clean Energy Rising Star by Business Insider in 2020. Beyond her professional achievements, she is a published author, backpacker, dance instructor, and proud mother of two, based in the Bay Area.
Liz holds a Bachelor of Mathematics from UC San Diego and an MBA from ESCP Business School in Paris.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, friend. Welcome to episode 181 of the Business for Good Podcast. What if the future of Queen Energy is not on rooftops or wind farms, but rather is a mile underground? In our recent episode, 1 77 to be exact, we talked about the book Rad Future and its claim that nuclear electricity is the cleanest and greenest major energy source available to humanity.
And in this episode. We're talking with one of the entrepreneurs seeking to make nuclear energy production far easier to get started. This episode's guest is Liz Muller, CEO of Deep Fission, an innovative nuclear energy startup seeking to dramatically slash the cost and hassle of creating electricity from atomic fission.
Wanna preview of my three main takeaways from the conversation? In short, first Liz's company plans to put conventional nuclear reactors a mile beneath the earth using rock gravity and groundwater to do what massive concrete domes do today, only much cheaper and safer. Second, this is not experimental nuclear, no new fuel, no sci-fi physics, just proven reactor technology combined in a radically new way that could cut nuclear costs by as much as 80%.
And finally, my third main takeaway, if Liz is right. Underground Nuclear could deliver the Queen always on power. Our AI driven world desperately needs while sidestepping many of the fears that have stalled nuclear for decades. This is one of those episodes that makes you rethink really what is possible.
So let's go deep with Liz of Deep Fusion and she can tell you all about it.
00:01.68
Paul Shapiro
Liz, welcome back to the Business for Good podcast.
00:05.71
Liz Muller
Thanks so much, Paul. Happy to be here.
00:08.00
Paul Shapiro
You know, there are very few people who are in the venerable, the esteemed, the prestigious position that you are to be on this show, not just once, but two separate times. Admittedly, sadly separated by five years and with a new company this time.
00:20.08
Paul Shapiro
But congratulations on making it. I'm sure this is one of the apex moments of your life.
00:24.26
Liz Muller
Absolutely. Very excited.
00:27.52
Paul Shapiro
Okay. For those who don't remember, five years ago, long ago on episode 40, you were on the show representing your company, Deep Isolation, where you were talking not about producing nuclear electricity, but rather you were talking about storing nuclear waste.
00:36.72
Liz Muller
Mm-hmm.
00:42.15
Paul Shapiro
Deep, deep, deep into the earth where it could be safe for millions and millions of years, but yet still be retrievable. ah Now, ah before we get into your new company, you're still going deep. You're no longer at Deep Isolation. Now you're in deep vision. I'm noticing the trend here.
00:56.81
Liz Muller
should
00:56.84
Paul Shapiro
um But before we get into that, how is Deep Isolation doing? You're still the chair of the board. So what's going on there?
01:03.44
Liz Muller
Yeah, Deep Isolation is doing amazing work. So it's finally working on the end-to-end demonstration that I think we might have mentioned even five years ago um back when I was on the podcast before.
01:16.27
Liz Muller
this is something that our customers have been saying they really want to see. So not not just paperwork so showing that we can do this, but let's actually do a demonstration of how precisely we would dispose of of nuclear waste.
01:29.59
Liz Muller
And Deep Isolation is doing that now. So it's it's really a very exciting moment.
01:33.73
Paul Shapiro
Wow, amazing. I remember we were talking about ah your desire to change federal law relating to what private corporations can do with nuclear waste. Has anything changed in the last five years on that? Or are we still where we were back then where ah no private corporation is allowed to permanently dispose of nuclear waste?
01:50.49
Liz Muller
That is still the case in the United States. So deep isolation is also doing lots of work in Europe and internationally where there aren't the same barriers that we have here. But no, in the United States, we still need that law to change.
02:02.06
Liz Muller
So hopefully that'll come soon.
02:03.33
Paul Shapiro
but but if the way yes hopefully um But if the waste is retrievable, it permanently disposed of?
02:10.79
Liz Muller
That's right. So you don't have to call it disposal. You could put it in temporary storage and temporary storage is allowed under existing regulation, under existing law. um So that is a a possible workaround.
02:22.64
Paul Shapiro
Okay, interesting. All right. Well, for those who maybe don't remember the episode from five years ago, surely go back and listen to episode 40. It's a good one. But let's move on to chat, not about deep isolation, but about deep vision, because you're not just storing nuclear waste now, although I presume if deep vision starts producing, that's who you will store with.
02:42.44
Paul Shapiro
um But ah you are now looking to actually produce nuclear energy, but you don't want to do it in the surface of the earth where everybody else does it you want to do it deep deep down and the earth why what's the benefit
02:58.32
Liz Muller
Yeah, this was a surprise. um And it came about through some work we were doing with deep isolation. But the discovery that we made is that if instead of putting a reactor above ground, you put it in a borehole a mile underground,
03:13.23
Liz Muller
you can actually increase not only increase the safety of the nuclear reactor, but you can save about 80% of the cost. And the reason for this is that a core, a nuclear reactor core is actually not that difficult to build. It's not that expensive.
03:30.37
Liz Muller
The reason that nuclear power is so expensive is it's all the systems around that core. So it's the containment systems, the containment dome, the cement, the steel, It's the pressurizer, it's the ah reactor vessel that has to be really big and expensive in order to withstand that pressure.
03:48.93
Liz Muller
And then it's all the cooling systems to to make sure that it doesn't overheat. And those all together are about 80 to 92% of the cost of nuclear power. And those are things that you get for free if you're in a borehole a mile underground.
04:03.85
Liz Muller
so You have the containment, you're surrounded by billions of tons of rock, you don't need to build containment, it's built in as as part of being in a borehole. um You also don't have to build the pressure, you don't need a pressurizer because if you're in a borehole a mile underground surrounded by water above you,
04:19.14
Liz Muller
and That gives you 160 atmospheres of pressure, which is just what you would want for a conventional pressurized water reactor. And of course, that same water is also a cooling system, emergency core cooling system if you need it. So um really, the bulk of the construction of nuclear power is taken away if you do it in a borehole a mile underground.
04:40.17
Paul Shapiro
The way that you describe it sounds very lucrative, very attractive. Why had nobody thought of this? Are you the first person to think about putting pressurized water reactors in my own underground, are you just the first person to be trying to do it?
04:51.30
Liz Muller
Yeah, I think we're the first to really have conceived of the way that you could use geology and the features of gravity to to do this a mile underground.
05:02.12
Liz Muller
So there had been concepts of doing slightly underground nuclear reactors, particularly using advantage of the Earth. for containment. But using that depth for pressure as well as for emergency core cooling system is really completely new. And not only were we the first to have thought about it, um we now have pending patents on it as well. So we feel really excited about the scientific breakthrough.
05:29.73
Paul Shapiro
Very cool. So are those patents relating to something to the reactor or is it to the drilling technique to create a borehole that goes down a mile? It sounds like a long way. I don't know how long people generally drove into the ground, but ah nor do I know how wide this borehole is, but sounds like a tough thing to do.
05:46.01
Liz Muller
Yeah, the patents are really related to the combination of technologies. So one of the things that's so great about this is we can leverage existing nuclear technology, pressurized water reactor technology. So we're not inventing a new type of reactor. We can use it existing fuel that's readily available today.
06:03.38
Liz Muller
um together with drilling technology that is also readily available today. So we know how to drill down a mile. Our holes are larger than than many conventional oil and gas wells, but we expect to be able to use conventional technology.
06:16.54
Liz Muller
And then also leveraging geothermal technology in terms of how do you get the heat that we generate at the bottom of the borehole to the surface. So even though it's brand new and we've got the patents on how do we combine these three technologies, we're able to leverage three different but mature technologies, which is one of the reasons we think our time to market is going to be so fast.
06:39.19
Paul Shapiro
Okay, so you mentioned these are wider holes. You know, I'm trying to think about putting a nuclear power plant on my underground. I would imagine in my in my mind, that's a very wide hole needed, but I'm imagining that it's far less wide than I would conceive of. So how wide is this hole that you're drilling down?
06:55.29
Liz Muller
Yeah, so it'll be between 30 and 50 inches in diameter, depending on how much fuel we put at the bottom. So we're thinking of four fuel assemblies would be our initial pilot reactor.
07:08.88
Liz Muller
That's in about a 30 inch borehole. But we would really like to move to nine fuel assemblies, which would be in a borehole that's probably going to be closer to 45 to 50 inches in diameter.
07:21.09
Paul Shapiro
How do you do anything? If something goes wrong, you need to refuel, like you're a mile underground, what happens? i mean, 30 inches doesn't sound that wide, but I would imagine it's not so easy to make modifications once you have an actual nuclear reactor down there.
07:34.98
Paul Shapiro
ah do you Are you bringing it back up to the surface for ah maintenance and repairs? Like what what actually is happening?
07:41.09
Liz Muller
Yeah. so one of the beautiful things is that if anything happens to the reactor when it's in a borehole a mile underground, it's going to have very limited ability to impact humans or the environment.
07:52.43
Liz Muller
So you're looking at an economic loss, not a safety impact, not an environmental impact. And so our expectation is if something were to go wrong, um we would replace the reactor.
08:04.26
Liz Muller
We wouldn't try and pull it back up again because then you'd have to deal with risk of exposure, nuclear waste, et cetera, um but rather lower a new one in on top and and keep producing electricity.
08:16.14
Liz Muller
Our reactors will typically only last between two and seven years, depending again on the size of the reactor. um And so we are expecting to replace it every two to seven years anyway.
08:27.50
Paul Shapiro
Huh.
08:27.71
Liz Muller
And so this would just be an acceleration of the replacement rate if anything were to go wrong.
08:34.46
Paul Shapiro
OK, so when you say put another reactor on top of it, I presume you're going to put cement on top of the old one first? Or like are they literally touching the the deficient one, and the old one or the one, and they're just literally sitting on top of each other?
08:46.76
Liz Muller
yeah We'll seal it off. So you you you keep the first one at the bottom of the borehole, seal it off, put another one on top, then add a seal.
08:48.79
Paul Shapiro
Mm-hmm.
08:54.32
Liz Muller
And you can keep doing this. If you're replacing it every seven years, you can have 50 to 100 years worth of reactors and in a borehole and just keep going until the end of the life of the borehole.
09:03.11
Paul Shapiro
and Yeah. So for people who have never seen a a nuclear reactor, how big is this? Are we talking the size of a football, a basketball, a desk? Like, how how big is this?
09:16.50
Liz Muller
Yeah, so it's about um two feet in diameter, approximately, and about 20 feet long. So it's a very ah long but fairly skinny ah nuclear reactor, sized exactly what you would expect and what you would want to go down a very long and and narrow borehole.
09:27.65
Paul Shapiro
Yeah.
09:37.16
Paul Shapiro
Okay. Interesting. So tall and thin it's going down in this borehole. Are you able to find existing boreholes or do you have to drill a borehole yourself?
09:46.39
Liz Muller
So we think we would prefer to drill our own boreholes. and We're going to want to have a level of understanding of the borehole that you may not have for an oil and gas borehole. And we don't want it to be a borehole that might potentially produce oil or gas.
10:01.56
Liz Muller
So we expect to be drilling these holes near our customers.
10:02.89
Paul Shapiro
yeah
10:05.24
Liz Muller
So there's a good degree of flexibility in terms of geography and where we want to put them. So rather than looking for specific rock types, we will say, okay, well, who needs a nuclear reactor? We can drill this right right near your your existing site and supply power 24-7.
10:22.49
Paul Shapiro
and your customers there being like data centers or like a power generation plant where you're just going to drill next to them and and produce the heat for them that way?
10:32.26
Liz Muller
Yeah, so it could be both. Certainly our initial customers, the ones that are the the most eager to move forward and to move forward quickly, um are likely to be data centers, but also industrial parks and and other industrial uses.
10:43.16
Paul Shapiro
Mm-hmm. OK, so liz let's talk about you now for a second. We've talked about this technology. it certainly seems very intriguing, very encouraging. I'm into this.
10:54.21
Paul Shapiro
But what about you? You know, you did not yeah you're not a nuclear physicist. You didn't start out life ah probably thinking that you were going to be ah building nuclear reactors, let alone toward you know near Hades, down in the bottom of the Earth.
11:07.79
Paul Shapiro
ah You're an environmentalist, right? Like, I mean, you started your life really as somebody who wanted to make a difference for the environment, who got religion on nuclear energy.
11:09.97
Liz Muller
Yeah.
11:16.87
Paul Shapiro
And let me be clear. You know, we recently had the nuclear influencer and author Isabel Bomecki on the show and and she believes that we should not call it nuclear energy.
11:23.96
Liz Muller
yeah
11:26.68
Paul Shapiro
She thinks we should call it nuclear electricity ah because she thinks that is more comprehensible to people about what it's actually providing. um But either way, like you were an environmentalist and there are lot of environmentalists who hate nuclear, who lobby against nuclear from Sierra Club to Greenpeace.
11:44.04
Paul Shapiro
Yet as an environmentalist, you said, actually, no, nuclear is what we need if we want to solve so many of the environmental problems that we're facing. Why? What happened?
11:54.85
Liz Muller
Yeah, I mean, nuclear is really the only hope that I see of doing something big and significant when it comes to climate change. um There's many other reasons, too. I mean, we we talk about energy security. We talk about energy density. We talk about ah something that's reliable and secure and always on and always available.
12:14.92
Liz Muller
You can talk talk about energy poverty and wanting to create increase increase access to electricity. And nuclear is unique and remarkable in that it does all of those things.
12:26.93
Liz Muller
So I came at it initially from the environmental perspective and just a personal frustration that we're not doing more big things when it comes to stopping climate change. And nuclear is one of the biggest, if not the biggest single thing we could do if we really wanted to address climate change.
12:44.38
Liz Muller
And the reasons that we're not doing it are the reasons that people give. Vary little bit, depending on who you ask, but it's either the unsolved nuclear waste problem, which led directly to deep isolation, or it's just that nuclear is still too expensive, which is the problem that deep vision is addressing.
13:00.94
Paul Shapiro
But I think if you were to talk to these environmental groups that campaign against nuclear, they're not going to say they don't like it because it's too expensive. They're going to say they don't like it because of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or Fukushima, right?
13:12.87
Paul Shapiro
ah their Their argument is that they believe that this is environmentally dangerous to do. You're saying you think it's literally the only thing that we can do in order to address climate change. So what's your argument?
13:24.19
Paul Shapiro
What is your actual argument as to why this is a better bet than, let's say, doing solar or wind or geothermal or hydro or any other type of non-fossil energy.
13:34.47
Liz Muller
Yeah, i'm I'm a fan of all we can get. Right. So I have nothing against solar and geothermal and and wind. I think they all are are necessary and important technologies. But we fundamentally need something that is secure and reliable and available 24 seven. and Particularly if we're looking at data centers and AI and the amount of growth that I think we are going to see over the next 10 to 20 years is going to be exceptional. i mean, truly never before seen this demand for for electricity.
14:10.58
Liz Muller
And if we can do it in such a way that not only is it reliable, because that is a must, um but it's also clean, then I think it can really be win-win for for the planet and for economic development.
14:23.68
Paul Shapiro
You know, one of the things that i learned from reading Rad Future, Isavobo Mekke's book that i referenced earlier, is the land use issue, which I really did not comprehend before, or at least I didn't have an appreciation for it.
14:38.41
Paul Shapiro
And in agriculture, which is the space where I spend my professional life, it's very well known that raising animals for food uses up a lot of land and eating plants uses much less land. It wasn't so clear to me, though, until reading that book just how much land solar panels take up compared to nuclear.
14:57.22
Paul Shapiro
right So if you want to preserve land for, let's say, wild spaces, for wildlife to exist, solar panels need over 25 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as nuclear does.
14:57.89
Liz Muller
yeah.
15:09.33
Paul Shapiro
ah That in and of itself is a very, very compelling statistic. And then I was really blown away by looking at the issue of safety.
15:21.62
Paul Shapiro
And i have now done a pop quiz for several people in my life where I've asked them the following question. What do you think by human death toll is the worst energy production related accident ever?
15:34.87
Liz Muller
yeah yeah
15:35.78
Paul Shapiro
And every single one of them either said Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. And i said to them, well, OK, Three Mile Island killed zero people, literally zero.
15:48.80
Paul Shapiro
Chernobyl it probably killed about 100
15:52.64
Paul Shapiro
And even in Fukushima, while it was in the low thousands, those were not really from the accident, more from the evacuation going wrong.
16:00.94
Liz Muller
yeah
16:01.42
Paul Shapiro
And then if you look at what happened in Banqiao in China in the 1970s, which was a hydro power accident that killed nearly a quarter million people. So it's like you have this one hydro accident that kills almost a quarter million people, which is, of course, orders of magnitude greater than all nuclear accidents in all human history combined.
16:22.10
Paul Shapiro
And yet you don't see environmental groups campaigning to ban hydro, right? ah You see them banning nuclear.
16:27.68
Liz Muller
know
16:27.87
Paul Shapiro
What do you think is the reason? But knowing those facts, what do you think is the actual motivation for the environmental groups who are crusading against nuclear and trying to make it harder to build new nuclear plants?
16:39.84
Liz Muller
Yeah, I mean, great question. Nuclear power is the safest source of electricity we have today, period, right? No contest. um But that's not the perception that it has. And so there's still this perception, which of course, dates from the real fear of nuclear weapons.
16:56.85
Liz Muller
And the way that nuclear power developed, um yeah initially, nuclear was being used for for weapons development. And so there's this real emotional fear fear that many people have.
17:10.16
Liz Muller
It's not a logical argument. it's It's a visceral, emotional reaction when people think about nuclear power. which I think is generational. I think it's certainly in older generations who had more to experience with bomb drills and yeah the fear of nuclear weapons was ah tremendous for a certain generation.
17:32.99
Liz Muller
Whereas I think younger generations are more fearful around climate change and environmental risks than they are around nuclear weapons. So we are seeing a shift. Nuclear is the source and the the safest source of electricity we have, but that doesn't matter when your response is emotional rather than logical.
17:53.00
Paul Shapiro
Yeah. OK, so let's say you have some of those skeptics, Liz, who and you know they're thinking, OK, what's the worst case scenario? You're going to put this pressurized water reactor mile underground. um What is the worst case scenario? Like, how do you prove containment, groundwater protection to regulators and the host communities?
18:10.63
Paul Shapiro
They're saying, oh, we don't want our groundwater to be contaminated by some accident from this startup that didn't know what it was doing. what What do you say to them?
18:19.42
Liz Muller
Yeah, I mean, the beauty of it is that they're not going to have to, nobody's going to have to believe us, right? We're going to have to make the case to the Department of Energy and then to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that this is safe. um We feel really good about our ability to make that argument because, as I mentioned earlier, it's hard to come up with any scenario in which there's going to be an impact on people or the environment.
18:41.81
Liz Muller
So the water table issue is is a fairly straightforward one. um The oil and gas industry knows how to protect the water table and they have really nasty stuff coming out of their borehole. borehole So ours in contrast is going to clean water that is coming out of our borehole. So there's there's really significantly less risk to impact anything, um be it on the surface or in the water table, than compared to other technologies which are already very safely used today.
19:13.57
Liz Muller
and we We tried to come up with a scenario in which, you know, what is the worst case scenario and is there a scenario in which this could impact the surface? And it's very hard to to come up with one. It it requires um losing all of the water in the entire borehole, you know, miles worth of water.
19:30.39
Liz Muller
um in a very, very short amount of time. Hard to imagine that that could possibly happen. And even if that does happen, it's hard to, the impact on on humans and the environment is going to be very, very low.
19:43.71
Liz Muller
So it feels, um you know, there are subset of people who ah may know logically that nuclear technology is the safest technology we have today, But there's also a subset of people who feel that getting it off the surface and putting it a mile underground where it can't potentially dribble down into the water table, where it's nowhere nowhere near humans or the environment, is even safer than this already fantastically safe solution that that we have today.
20:14.02
Paul Shapiro
Okay. So let's talk Liz about the future, right? I read that you intend to be producing power into a grid or for your customers by 2029. that accurate? Okay.
20:26.02
Liz Muller
So that is accurate um and it may be accelerated. so we're really excited that we are now participating in the Department of Energy pilot program to build our first reactor in 2026.
20:31.08
Paul Shapiro
okay
20:38.88
Liz Muller
So prior to participation in that program, we didn't really see a path to commercially producing electricity until 2029. But now, depending on how we transition from this pilot program to commercial development, um it could be that we could be commercially operational as early as 2027 or 2028. Yeah. Yes. 12 and half gigawatts, yes.
21:00.33
Paul Shapiro
Exciting. Oh, really exciting. We're essentially in 2026 already.
21:02.56
Liz Muller
yeah
21:04.14
Paul Shapiro
So maybe we're only a year or two out.
21:04.80
Liz Muller
yes
21:06.10
Paul Shapiro
That would be amazing. You've announced Liz about 12 and a half gigawatt hours, right? is Of LOIs that you've signed of letters of intent that you've already signed with data centers. Is that accurate?
21:15.31
Liz Muller
twelve and half gigawats yes
21:17.31
Paul Shapiro
yeah Excuse me, i excuse me, gigawatts, I'm sorry.
21:19.42
Liz Muller
Yeah.
21:19.83
Paul Shapiro
ah Yes, thank you for the question. Yeah, so you've announced 12 and a half gigawatts. For those who are maybe energy illiterate, how much is that to power? How many homes or what is 12.5 gigawatts?
21:31.91
Liz Muller
So one gigawatt is about what a small city would use. So a city about the size of San Francisco, for example. So 12 gigawatts.
21:40.20
Paul Shapiro
and like I like that San Francisco is a small city for you. Okay, got it, all right.
21:43.89
Liz Muller
Small city. Well, compared to it's a large city, but smaller than New York, smaller than Chicago, smaller than some others. But yeah, it's, um you know, it's ah it's a remarkable amount of power.
21:49.24
Paul Shapiro
Yeah. Incredible.
21:53.52
Liz Muller
And yet we're talking about data centers. um Already we're seeing data centers that are using half a gigawatt to a gigawatt of of power.
22:04.53
Liz Muller
And as we start looking to the future, people are talking about data centers, AI data centers in particular, that would be multiple gigawatts of electricity.
22:05.10
Paul Shapiro
kind
22:13.40
Liz Muller
So we're moving into a new realm of never seen before in terms of the demand that we're seeing for for reliable electricity.
22:22.11
Paul Shapiro
Incredible. All right. So what is needed to go from the letter of intent that you already have to actually committing to offtakes? And what are the milestones that you need in order to convert that? Like if there's somebody out there thinking, oh, you know, is this a good investment or not?
22:37.09
Paul Shapiro
Where are you? You have letters of intent. That's great. But how does that get converted into actual contractual offtake agreements?
22:44.12
Liz Muller
Yeah, I think the biggest step is going to be building our first reactor. So we are participating in the reactor pilot program. We are going to be building our first reactor in 2026. I expect that many ah customers out there, customers and potential customers, are waiting to see that pilot project completed um before they're ready to sign power purchase agreements.
23:04.75
Liz Muller
um At that location, we expect to then develop our first commercial project. So it will be the pilot program, but it's also going to be a commercial development opportunity. We would need to get regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at that stage. um and we expect to build it out within about a year of the pilot program.
23:24.09
Liz Muller
Year to two, I'll say, depending on the authorization or the the regulatory pathway there.
23:24.72
Paul Shapiro
Except...
23:29.29
Liz Muller
um So and that's another big milestone. So the first one is we'll have a pilot, but the pilot is not going to be producing commercial electricity. It's just going to be going critical, showing that this reactor does in fact work.
23:41.33
Liz Muller
Then we need to transition it to commercial generation of electricity. And i will include in that one showing that we can produce it at the price point that we expect we can.
23:52.52
Liz Muller
So Deep Vision expects to be profitable from the first of a kind. So we expect to be able to generate electricity that is no more expensive than what you everyone else would pay for reliable, secure electricity.
24:05.04
Liz Muller
And I think once we've proven that out, then we're going to see a tremendous amount of demand um for many, many different types of customers in in the U.S. s and around the world.
24:15.13
Paul Shapiro
Yeah, that's exciting. That's exciting to think about. I certainly hope that it comes to fruition. How much capital do you actually need? What I read online is that you all have raised about $34 million from inception to present. Is that an accurate assessment of the capital raised so far for Deep Vision?
24:31.84
Liz Muller
Yeah, I think it's a little bit more than that, but but you're about right ballpark.
24:34.24
Paul Shapiro
Okay. Okay, 34 million so far, what is needed to get to your first of a kind completion and setting the company off on the profitable pathway that you just referenced?
24:46.76
Liz Muller
So we are going to need to raise more in order to complete our first reactor. um I'm thinking, um you know, let's talk about between 100 and 200 million total.
25:00.68
Liz Muller
um then ah from there, we are going to be, we'll have proven that our reactor works and we are going to be looking at commercially developing our reactor. and Those reactors will have a strong return on investment. So we expect at that point to be able to potentially move into not just equity financing, but also project financing for for our projects.
25:22.82
Liz Muller
So we don't expect that as a company, we're going to need to raise a lot more money. We're going to need to raise, you know, 100 million, 200 million, something on that order, but certainly not to compare with certain other nuclear companies that need to raise billions of dollars.
25:37.50
Liz Muller
We're were solidly in the hundreds of millions, which is still a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but not compared to other nuclear.
25:40.62
Paul Shapiro
a yeah you've you've got you got You have to anchor you have to anchor and let them know that the fusion the fusion the fusion folks need billions.
25:46.79
Liz Muller
That's right, yes.
25:49.80
Paul Shapiro
You need mere hundreds of millions. That's it.
25:52.00
Liz Muller
yeah Well, even the other fission people need billions.
25:52.50
Paul Shapiro
Yeah.
25:54.68
Liz Muller
And so I think we're we're we're quite remarkable in that we are a relatively relatively um low um low capital cost development in the nuclear fission space.
25:55.40
Paul Shapiro
Yeah.
26:05.18
Paul Shapiro
who Yeah. I hope that that turns out to to be true. Speaking of the funding, Liz, in September of 2025, you all completed a $30 million dollars financing via private placement in connection with a reverse merger to become public.
26:22.35
Paul Shapiro
What happened and how's it going so far? You've gone ah down a route that you know most startups remain private. They take venture capital equity investment. Maybe they get grants from the government like you're talking about. But what did you guys do in September and why?
26:35.11
Liz Muller
Yeah. So this was, as you said, it was a reverse merger, alternative public offering, which is part of a go public transaction. So we did this um in large part because of the excitement and the momentum that we are feeling in the nuclear space right now.
26:52.73
Liz Muller
and We want to be able to build our reactor in 2026 and we want to be able to build our commercial reactor very soon after that. That means moving off of the typical um raise a round a venture capital, wait a year, 18 months, then raise another round that is marginally larger.
27:13.16
Liz Muller
um this is This is a different era of funding. It's a different scale of funding that we need and are going to continue to need. And and um I was familiar with this go public process, which is different from a SPAC in a couple of important ways. um Most interestingly, it reduces some of the significant risk that you have um on yeah people transaction not going through, you're not knowing exactly how much money you're going to get.
27:44.63
Liz Muller
um With the alternative public offering, we knew exactly what we were going to get and how much of the company we were giving up in order to get it. So it was a very transparent, ah straightforward process that ah we know will enable us to to get the work done.
28:02.57
Paul Shapiro
How interesting. Well, we'll link to more in the show notes for this episode of businessforgoodpodcast.com about these types of alternative public offerings. It certainly was new to me, and um'm I'm grateful to get a brief education from you about it, Liz.
28:15.48
Paul Shapiro
Now, you have yeah you've been the CEO of Deep Isolation. Now you're the CEO of Deep Vision. You've done a lot in your life so far. If you, though, look around and you see any white spaces in the area, places where you wish somebody else would start a company, either in nuclear or frankly anywhere else that you think is important, what would you recommend?
28:36.95
Paul Shapiro
If there's somebody listening right now thinking, oh, wow, I really admire Liz and what she's accomplished and I would like to do something cool as well, what do you think they should do?
28:45.54
Liz Muller
Well, if I can give a big, hairy, audacious goal, um I think our grid is really, really messed up. um And it's not one for the faint of faint of heart, right? Tackling a problem like the reliability and the the way our entire grid is is run and managed and operated um is a big, big challenge. But I think it's something that we desperately need.
29:10.09
Liz Muller
um And so that would be an area where i would love to see someone go out and tackle that.
29:16.14
Paul Shapiro
Grid innovation. OK, sounds pretty cool. Anything else? Or is that your your one suggestion for companies that you hope somebody will start?
29:24.11
Liz Muller
ah i'll I'll stop there from now. But yeah, so much innovation is so exciting.
29:26.42
Paul Shapiro
OK, all right.
29:29.36
Paul Shapiro
Okay, very good. Grid innovation is what Liz wants you to do. Finally, Liz, you have ah done a lot. You've seen a lot. Surely there must have been some resources that were helpful for you in your journey with these two companies so far.
29:43.11
Paul Shapiro
Is there anything you'd recommend that's been useful for you that somebody else should check out?
29:47.39
Liz Muller
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of resources. um I'll mention a book because I was just talking about the grid. So um one of my favorites um on that subject is a book called Shorting the Grid um by Meredith Angwin. highly recommend that. It was a real eye opener for me in terms of how our grid functions and and doesn't function.
30:06.90
Liz Muller
um But i also i listen to podcasts a lot. So I listen to yours and I really enjoyed the episode with with Isabel. um And i also like Fire to Fission, which is a podcast focused on ah nuclear, but from an oil and gas drilling perspective. So really interesting work there. i also listen to World Nuclear News podcast and just about any other nuclear podcast that's out there.
30:34.00
Paul Shapiro
ah Very good. Well, I started listening recently to Decouple, the the nuclear podcast. i don't know if you're a fan of Decouple, but um I had not listened to it until recently and and I enjoyed it.
30:40.48
Liz Muller
Yeah, yeah.
30:45.97
Paul Shapiro
But I haven't consumed any of these other ones to which you're referring. And so we'll include those in the show notes for this episode at businessforgoodpodcast.com. as well. But I love that fire to fission. That is really a cool ah description of moving from fossil from you know burning fossil fuels to harnessing the power of the atom in order to fuel our civilization.
30:57.35
Liz Muller
Yeah.
31:06.02
Paul Shapiro
So may we quickly transition from fire to fission. And I will very much look forward to hopefully one day giving an AI prompt and getting a response with the knowledge that it was your electricity from a one mile deep pressurized water reactor fueling that response that I'm getting to my query at that from ChatGPT or whatever else I'm using at that point.
31:31.80
Liz Muller
I look forward to it, Paul. Maybe when that happens, I'll come back for a third time on your podcast.
31:35.60
Paul Shapiro
Wow, a three-peat. You're going become the Tom Brady of business for good here. We'll see. But Liz, it's really wonderful to get to talk with you again.
31:40.08
Liz Muller
so
31:43.68
Paul Shapiro
Thank you for all you're doing. Congratulations on the success that you've had so far, and i will certainly be rooting for more of it.
31:50.42
Liz Muller
Thank you so much, Paul. Appreciate it.