There’s an industry where America broke ground, led the world in discovery, innovated for three decades — and then squandered that lead over the next three decades. Accidents took lives and hurt public perception while costs soared, progress stalled, and the number of deployments fell off a cliff. The 1980’s through the early 2000’s were a complete quiet period where the industry hung on by a thread.

Sound familiar? You’d be forgiven for thinking I was talking about the nuclear industry. But, in fact, I am talking about the space launch industry. The parallels between the two are shockingly similar — except for one key difference: the space launch industry has turned around and grown massively over the last 20 years, while nuclear has not.

Space launch is the only industry where we’ve squandered our lead and recovered.
Nuclear has the opportunity to be the next.

In order to maximize the chances that the nuclear industry experiences a similar renaissance, it’s useful to understand what changed space launch (spoiler: it’s the Falcon 9) and apply those lessons. It just so happens that much of the Applied Atomics team spent the last 15 years working on just that.

Going From Rockets to Reactors

Well over a decade ago, Chris, Paul, and Ben met while working on SpaceX’s Vandenberg Launch Site where they helped take it from conception through design, build, commission, and the inaugural launch. They did everything from system design, to running crane operations in the field, to writing the procedures that operated the pad, to controlling the pad and vehicle on launch day. We were expected to wear many hats (but always steel toed boots).

When we joined, we heard all the same things we now hear about the nuclear industry:

• Engineers don’t know how to design “these things” anymore.

• There’s no technical labor pool to do the construction.

• There is no supply chain to build with.

• The regulatory environment makes the job impossible.

On the surface, the people saying these things weren’t wrong. Space had stagnated. Yet, it didn’t matter. Either way, it was our job to deliver a brand-new launch pad – the first on the west coast in decades.

Let’s look closer at each complaint to see how it might inform the Applied Atomics approach now in the nuclear industry.

“Engineers don’t know how to design these things anymore”

When we joined SpaceX, there weren’t many engineers left in the aerospace industry who possessed both the required expertise and the right mindset to succeed at a rocket startup. The latter was particularly challenging because only NASA and Boeing-Lockheed’s ULA were employing these engineers in any real number and those were definitely not hotbeds of startup thinking. Therefore, new engineers had to be produced rather than simply hired. This meant to build its workforce, SpaceX had to lean hard on young new grads.

Of course, to prevent reinventing the wheel it was important to temper that youth with the bits of crucial experience available that did meet muster. The company hired a handful of “graybeards” to corral us new grads in the right direction and save us from our worst instincts. These graybeards were central to the success of the company because they put firm boundaries on our work which prevented us chasing our tails or traversing false passes for months (or years) at a time. Constraint is healthy, and we flourished in the massive free space within those hard set boundaries. It would have been impossible to succeed with only graybeards or new grads; it was the blending of the two that drove our success.

We’re in the exact same situation today in the nuclear industry. We believe the answer now is also the same: we are bringing in critical expertise early to define the constraints of systems, build foundational processes, and prevent reliving history in the wrong ways. We’re also planning on bringing in fresh talent of all backgrounds to fill out the team, tap new energy, and break problems down to first principles. The reason this works is because no matter the industry, the physics, many of the standards, and the methodologies are the same. People have the know-how, what they’re missing is the experience that saves time and money. We can provide both.

“There’s no technical labor pool”

While the amount of massive infrastructure projects has dwindled in America, it is untrue that we do not have the labor pool required to deploy nuclear power. We dealt with the same situation in the aerospace sector – after all, few of us had experience building launch sites – but for the teams of electricians, welders, pipe fitters, and concrete workers direct past experience is not actually required.

That’s because, at their most basic, both a launch site and a nuclear power plant are nothing more than concrete, rebar, pipe, and wire. Of course, it is up to the engineers to produce designs that arrange those elements properly. And it’s up to the same team to transmute that knowledge into a set of drawings and work orders for the tech teams to follow. The technicians then need only ply their trade following the approved work packets.

Therefore, sourcing construction talent is all about tapping into the industry-wide collective expertise of our technicians. In aerospace, we pulled predominantly from oil & gas for weld teams and we will employ that same strategy here. For civil steel and concrete, we have worked with construction firms that built shipping ports, football stadiums, and shopping malls. Electricians came from large facilities such as hospitals, chemical processing plants, and other power stations. Our operators will come from other nuclear plants, US Navy Nukes, and be trained in collaboration with INL.

These are complex projects, but they aren’t inscrutable mysteries. They are elements that must be arranged according to well established industry standards, codes, and practices. America’s tradespeople know how to build.1

Crucially, Applied Atomics is building an internal Deployment team to serve as our EPC. This means we can leverage the power of a strong, lean internal team that also has aligned incentives with the rest of the company. If there’s a change, we can work it out as a team, rather than on a conference call with 50 people across five companies. This is how the SpaceX launch and landing pads we were a part of were built and we experienced first hand the ways in which this streamlines communications, compresses schedules, and lowers costs.

“There is no supply chain to build with”

It’s true that the nuclear-specific supply chain is in tough shape due to the contraction of the industry over the last three decades. However, it’s important not to artificially constrain ourselves further and to apply alternatives where we can. First and foremost, is fuel. Many companies are choosing fuels such as TRISO and HALEU that are another 5 – 7 years away from availability at scale. We use standard LEU fuel which is in use in all 94 operating reactors in the United States today, and which enjoys a robust supply chain from allied countries. Yet, even then competitors are choosing to customize that fuel to fit their application, rather than work with configurations that have already been approved. There can be benefits, however there is a penalty on cost and schedule. Striking a healthy balance is necessary.

On the components side, many components can be sourced from neighboring industries. Outside of the nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) represents the “balance of plant.” This actually makes up around 80% of the infrastructure and can enjoy high commonality with every other large-scale power plant on earth, if designed properly. By taking that approach, we ensure our plant uses the same valves, same instrumentation, same piping, same everything as every other heat-engine power plant. This is a major benefit to our program in cost savings, schedule, and supply chain resiliency.

When it comes to the reactor (and all components located on the nuclear island) the standards call for the use of “N-Stamped” components. We have some methods for addressing these issues, but we aren’t sharing them publicly yet. If you want to know more, shoot us an email and we can talk. If you want a hint, go study what SpaceX did to get NASA’s approval with the cargo straps on Dragon.

While supply chain is a challenge, and one we must keep an eye on, it is not impossible – these strategies are the same ones we used on the launch pad and in the rocket factory as well.

“The regulatory environment makes it impossible”

The regulatory environment is challenging, but our stance is that it is also helping safeguard the citizens of the US and the environment from the impacts of poor planning and careless work. It should take some work to gain permission to wield this much power among the citizenry of the United States.

In our past lives on the launch pad, we not only had multiple regulators, one of them was also often our customer. That made conditions extremely challenging, since the regulating bodies didn’t always agree with one another and sometimes didn’t agree with themselves on the customer side! The way through is with strong planning, an understanding of the rules, and a program that can tailor while working to match equivalent safety. It’s not good enough to ask for relief from a rule — we must show how we are meeting the spirit in another manner, or how that rule doesn’t apply without compromising safety. The work is on us, but it is achievable. The answer definitely is not myopic lawsuits against the regulator.2

Aligning Incentives & Minimizing Miracles

The key lesson from our collective half-century leading New Space launch and landing efforts is that cost and availability matter most. The best new technology in the world is no good if we cannot afford to deploy and use it. Applied Atomics is vertically integrating the full-stack of nuclear development and deployment because it aligns incentives and drives down cost, the same way SpaceX did with the Falcon 9. Outside engineering firms and construction management teams have different goals than the primary company. Giving those company ownership of critical systems is how you get overbudget and behind schedules like the Space Launch System in the aerospace field and Vogtle in the nuclear industry.

Space launch is the only industry where we squandered our lead and got it back. That war wasn’t won with fancy new physics, exotic fuels, or novel designs. It was won by taking existing technologies (e.g. a liquid fueled rocket with a capsule on top) and doing the hard work of making them affordable and available by vertically integrating. We believe turning around the nuclear industry will require the same approach.

That’s why our mantra is “minimize miracles,” that’s what we work on every day, and man, do we have some cool things to share soon.

Stay tuned.

First Hardware Online!

Last week, we brought our Simbox online. This box consists of four computers which work together to replicate our Powerplant control computer setup. Crucially, it also serves as the home for our Fast Sim which will provide real-time simulation of our entire coupled Powerplant. As we develop the plant, we will use a technique known as “Hardware in the Loop” or HITL to pull elements out of simulation and into real hardware (valves, pumps, regulators, fuel rods) to derisk our approach.

What does all that mean? Read on to learn more!

The Philosophy of Controls, or Controls as a Philosophy

Build the Foundation

It’s natural to wonder why this is the first thing we built. The answer is simple:

This is the work that ties all the other work together.

Our entire design philosophy is based on using modular design patterns and generating a wholistic understanding of the entire power plant in simulation as soon as possible. This unites the team across disciplines and helps them understand the impact of their work at every interface.

We applied many of the same modular design patterns we’ve used in previous hardware deployments to this plant’s control systems, and the Simbox is the test bed for those choices. It also allows us to begin employing HITL as we progress. A HITL system is not the power plant per se, but it is the connective tissue that enables the power plant to be defined, built, and operated.

By starting with the fundamental control system, we can ask ourselves “Where are the errors? Where are the unknowns?” and track and mitigate each of those via tweaking the controls responses of the power plant. We can then define the characteristic time response of systems individually and as a whole in the design by exploring these edges. Then that information is fed into our system design process iteratively, run through, and the real-world solution is put back into the sim to check its behavior and the impact on other systems.

In essence, this is a digital twin but one that we can actually manipulate, calculation within, and observe actual physics based on our real-world components. We will spend the next year validating our designs while also starting to pull them out of the digital world into the physical world via HITL.1

Where the System Isn’t

When designing a system we need to understand:

1. What does it need to do? (i.e.: what’s the mission?)

2. Can we define an approach to accomplish that? (i.e.: requirements & constraints)

3. Quantify how much margin is needed (i.e.: controls, or how wrong can I be?)

What we don’t need to know is where the system is aka the exact operating point. We only need to know that it is safely within design bounds. The load demanded by the off taker is what defines where the system is any given moment, because they are our customer. Our job is to design a power plant which is both responsive to those demands and also stays well within safety boundaries. Or put another way, the system knows where it is at all times because it knows where it isn't, which might sound like something from the Tao but is actually a hallmark of active system control.

The next step was applying these principles, so built our Simbox with four off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi’s.

The Result

We know what you’re thinking — you can’t use four Raspberry Pi’s to control a nuclear power plant.2 While we are not suggesting that our final hardware will be R-Pi’s, we have also shown over the last week that you absolutely could do it if so inclined, and we did so on purpose.

We chose the R-Pi for the Simbox because it helps us quickly, cheaply, and effectively bound our control system:

• Allows us to test the full stack of ethernet, serial connections, and input sensors.

• R-Pi’s are slow, but industrial hardware is also relatively low processor speed, so we are forced to make disciplined choices around data throughput and control rate that’s relevant to the final design.

• The R-Pi + Python’s nature makes error stack-up more obvious. We can learn how to characterize all the jitter and latency throughout the system, and design around it. The errors are larger, and if we’re able to find reliable, consistent solutions here in theory then it should be even better on the actual hardware.3

The standard approach in nuclear power has been using a expensive, long-lead, special purpose computer, or manual controls backed by analogue systems which creates as a single failure point.

We are instead using a quad-computer architecture which lets us address the Byzantine General’s Problem, exchanging information between computers reliably while complementing the plant hardware design to make the right decision without degrading performance even if one computer goes down. Much more on this soon but suffice to say it increases our reliability significantly while also dropping cost, complexity, and lead-time (i.e.: our mission in a nutshell).

Here’s how they’re running after a few days:

Four computers moving data in sync with a jitter around 30 microseconds is pretty solid for R-Pi’s and Python.

A quick note on Python. We chose it for software on this build for the same reason we chose the R-Pi’s for hardware. Ultimately, we’ll employ a lower-level language like C, an RTOS, and different hardware for guarantees of consistency and longevity but right now, to move quickly we’re isolating the need to run very fast from proving out our theory of operation. Those other options are a lot of work to implement but are known quantities. In this early phase of the design, it’s all about quantifying bounds, reducing risk, and eliminating the unknown as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Expect a similar approach to standard hardware and quick validation all based redundancy over single-point reliability with our other systems as we progress. It’s this thinking which allows us to expand the supply chain, standardize the esoteric, and bring efficiency to the fore.

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Applied Atomics builds small modular reactor (SMR) powerplants for advanced applications like hyperscalers, e-fuels, desalination, liquified natural gas, and hydrogen production. These technologies enable the carbon-free future that Earth requires to thrive. Our team designs, builds, and operates the full stack of reactor + powerplant which are co-located on our customers’ sites for maximum uptime and flexibility. Our powerplants scale from one to ten modules which allows them to deliver 100 MWe up to 1,000 MWe per deployment.

Today, we are coming out of stealth to announce our oversubscribed $2M pre-seed round led by Aubrie Pagano and the team at Alpaca Ventures, with Unruly Capital and some very close old friends like Fred Stutzer, Zach Dunn, Jonathan Lund, SLC-4 Ventures, and MARS Partners also participating. We were fortunate to have had a highly competitive round and are honored by the belief our partners have shown in our approach.

Unlocking Nuclear Power

As you may have noticed, there is a lot of activity in the nuclear space right now. Even putting aside the massive activity in fusion, fission has been enjoying a resurgence. And that’s for a host of great reasons — nuclear power plants have the smallest footprint and lowest mining impact of any energy source. They are also latitude-agnostic, meaning they work anywhere in the universe without regard to on-the-ground conditions. Finally, they have the best capacity factor of any energy source and it’s not even close. This makes them perfect for enabling the next 1,000 years of advanced industry.

Yet we are still seeing timelines exceed a decade for new efforts. Plants take too long to deploy and often cost too much. Development of novel reactor designs and advanced fuels will undoubtedly play a part in the future, but we need to make an impact now. Already hyperscalers are being told to “bring their own power” while new utility hookups are backlogged 40% and stretching over five-year delays. Applied Atomics exists to solve these problems and meet the demand that exists now.

How We're Different

1) We’re Not Re-Inventing the Wheel

To address the power crunch, we need to move quickly. That’s why we started by surveying the existing supply chain for nuclear and power generation. We then allowed those realities to drive many of our technology choices, rather than starting with a blank piece of paper. The best new technology in the world is no good if there isn’t a supply chain to support its deployment. This country has been building powerplants for almost 150 years, so there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel on the power generation front. Make steam, spin turbines, generate power.

Similarly, we have built nuclear reactors for over 60 years. All of the operating nuclear powerplants in the United States today are light water reactors running on LEU and we have chosen to work with the Gen III+ architecture as well. We’ll be sharing more on this decision and design trade in the future but suffice to say for now that this allows us to bring well-understood architectures to the regulator, as well as opens up existing fuel supply catalogs that don’t rely on nascent supply chains or adversarial nations.

Getting early clarity on our supply chain has allowed us to complete a 30% powerplant design already this year, which identifies our major costs. From this, we modeled the first version of our power generation costs. These show us immediately competitive with the DOE’s cost goals for Advanced Nuclear for first-of-a-kind deployment, and clear line of site to competing with natural gas costs for our Nth-of-a-kind deployments.

2) We Sell Power, not Reactors

The vast majority of nuclear SMR companies develop only the reactor and leave the “balance of plant” to someone else. However, this “balance” actually represents around 80% of the infrastructure, and therefore strongly affects the final power cost. Imagine getting a new car but instead of a new vehicle arriving, a crate shows up in your driveway with an engine inside. Attached to the crate is a note that says:

“Congrats on buying your new car! Now, it’s up to you to build the ‘balance of car’ and get it licensed with the DMV and DOT.”

Even for the few SMR companies that can claim they are developing their plant, in reality these are often outsourced to large engineering design and construction firms. We believe that this adds too much risk to project timelines, adding unnecessary costs and delays as well as increased regulatory risk.

Customers need power, not components. Applied Atomics sells power through industry standard power purchase agreements, or PPAs. This little to no upfront costs for our customers, and long-term recurring revenue for our company. This also makes each project financeable through traditional means, which streamlines our future capital stack.

Our Team

Our leadership team has over 50 years of combined experience deploying launch and landing infrastructure across the New Space industry, including early on in the Falcon 9 program. We saw that F9 didn’t win the launch industry by reinventing the wheel. It utilized a traditional ground-launched liquid rocket configuration, manufactured it with simple, modern processes, and then put a capsule on top. It also used a known fuel (same as the Saturn V first stage) which relieved regulatory burden.

Crucially, the company owned the full stack of engineering, build, test, and launch which provided control over cost and schedule. Most important, Falcon 9 actually launched. A lot. And that revenue and mission data were used to unlock new efficiencies and value chains down the road.

How do we know? Much of our founding team was there, learning those lessons in real-time as engineers in design, launch, operations, and certification. Now, we see an opportunity to apply this unique perspective to the nuclear industry to address the looming power crunch.

Founders

Applied Atomics was co-founded by three seasoned entrepreneurs and leaders:

Ben Kellie (CEO) joined SpaceX in early 2012 as a Responsible Engineer helping to design, build, test, and operate the Vandenberg SLC-4E west coast launch site. He served as Lead Engineer for the inaugural flight. From there he pivoted over to Recovery and helped lead the development of the landing barges from first steel in the shipyard through multiple missions at sea. He then founded “The Launch Company” which developed launch sites for New Space rocket companies and also bootstrapped hardware to orbit. He successfully exited that company to Voyager Space in 2021.

Paul Keutelian (CTO) is an experienced systems engineer and entrepreneur with over 13 years of hands-on experience in high-stakes production hardware development. He was also an early Responsible Engineer on Vandy with ownership over four high-energy compressible, incompressible, and hazardous fluid systems at the plant scale. He then served as a lead control room operator and trainer as well as a point engineer for certification on a multi-billion-dollar launch program where he honed his ability to navigate highly regulated, precision-driven environments with three government customers. Finally, he was also previously the technical co-founder and first COO of Radiant Industries, where he led the development of the world’s first portable 1.2 MWe microreactor.

Mark Lambert (CFO) is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive who has over 17 years of experience in high-growth startups, financial management, regulatory compliance, and venture capital. He was previously the founder and CEO of a B2B SaaS platform specializing in regulatory compliance and financial accounting for highly regulated industries which processed over a billion dollars annually in financial transactions. He is also Chair of the Tech Investment Committee for NuFund Venture Group and worked closely with national venture capital funds on advanced financial modeling, and strategies for accessing and administering highly regulated government funding programs, including the U.S. Treasury's SSBIC program and the SBA's SBIC program.

Investors

We’re thrilled to have Alpaca on board, leading our pre-seed. General Partner Aubrie Pagano is joining our board and had this to say:

"We are betting that Ben and team will do for advanced industries what SpaceX did for space - be the first to bring online vertically integrated, co-located SMR power solutions. They have done first of a kind in the past, and they are a one-in-a-billion team to pull this off."

Stefano Bernardi of Unruly Capital added:

I fear what an alien species would think of us for not having abundant nuclear energy. We believe your team will remedy that!

We also had a strong coterie of former SpaceX friends who see how our unique approach can change the industry. Special shout out to Zach, Lund, David, Dan, and Christian for backing our vision.

We’re Funded & We’re on a Mission

We’re hitting the ground running. We’re already engaging with potential customers, and we’ve hired our Chief Engineer (another long-time SpaceX collaborator who we will announce soon!).

The team is deep in design to deliver our full Powerplant PDR by the end of this summer, ready to pull the trigger on long-lead hardware items with a fully defined supply chain from fuel, to reactor, to powerplant hardware. Together, these achievements will put us far ahead of the pack in understanding our realistic costs and schedule to deliver co-located power to our customers faster than any other team in history.

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