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Speaker 1: Pushkin. When did you get the fusion bug? When'd you

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Speaker 1: fall in love with fusion?

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Speaker 2: It probably goes back to middle school or before, you know,

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Speaker 2: and when a lot of kids would go out and

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Speaker 2: play on the playground, I'd go to the library and

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Speaker 2: read about particle accelerators and fusion reactors, and so, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, I think I think the bug was that pretty early.

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Speaker 1: This is Greg Pifer. He's the co founder and CEO

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Speaker 1: of a company called Shine.

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Speaker 2: And I watched shows like Star Trek and you know,

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Speaker 2: certainly even like Star Trek the Next Generation where my

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Speaker 2: moral compass was set. H.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So like, tell me the fusion dream. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we'll get to like why. It's going to take a

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Speaker 1: while and it's hard, but just like, why is fusion

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Speaker 1: the dream?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: So fusion essentially, it like to me, it represents a

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Speaker 2: level up moment for humanity. When we can commercially unlock it,

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Speaker 2: our species will be changed forever. And it's very similar.

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Speaker 2: It's very akin to when we first started to access

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Speaker 2: chemical energy through fire.

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Speaker 1: So I thought you were going to say fossil fields.

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Speaker 1: We're just saying that's bigger than fossil fuels. It's fire,

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Speaker 1: it's it's biggest fire. Yeah, so it's not going to

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Speaker 1: happen for a long time. But like, what does the

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Speaker 1: world look like when we get to the fusion dream?

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Speaker 2: Yes, so as technology continues to improve, energy becomes cheaper

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Speaker 2: and cheaper.

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Speaker 3: Fuel is no longer an issue.

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Speaker 2: So fundamentally, today fuel is the issue that would prevent

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Speaker 2: us from making energy super cheap. We just have to

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Speaker 2: continue to work to extract fusionis I have that problem?

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Speaker 2: So technology gets higher, the reactors get cheaper, and and

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Speaker 2: fusion becomes super cheap. Now we can solve problems that

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Speaker 2: we couldn't solve before. You know, we can we can

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Speaker 2: desalinate water on a massive scale, like we can. You know,

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Speaker 2: we can pull out minerals from the Earth very very carefully.

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Speaker 2: We can go into space and colonize other planets. We

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Speaker 2: can make anti matter, right and perhaps have an energy

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Speaker 2: source that allows us to go to other stars like

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Speaker 2: Star Trek.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right.

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Speaker 2: So that's that's that's always the secret little motivation behind

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Speaker 2: the scenes.

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Speaker 3: I mean, also, I have a three year old daughter,

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Speaker 3: right like, and I want to give her a world

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Speaker 3: that's okay to live in.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is What's Your Problem? The

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Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to

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Speaker 1: make technological progress. People who are into technological progress and

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Speaker 1: who dream big tend to be into fusion, a kind

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Speaker 1: of nuclear power that could be safer and cheaper than fission,

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Speaker 1: which is the way we get nuclear power now. By

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Speaker 1: the way, as you probably know, fusion is fusing atomic

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Speaker 1: nuclei together and fission is splitting them apart. People have

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Speaker 1: been working on fusion power for decades, and reliable economic

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Speaker 1: fusion power is still probably decades away, But in the

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Speaker 1: past several years, billions of dollars have flowed into a

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Speaker 1: handful of fusion startups that are using different technologies to

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Speaker 1: try to make fusion power work. My guest today, Greg Pifer,

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Speaker 1: is definitely on team fusion. He's been working on it

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Speaker 1: for decades. But with his company Shine, he's taking a

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Speaker 1: different approach. Rather than going straight to the dream of

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Speaker 1: using fusion to create energy, Jine's taking baby steps, or

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Speaker 1: at least mid sized steps. The company is using fusion

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Speaker 1: to enter markets that are easier to compete in than

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Speaker 1: the market for energy. As you'll hear, Shine has already

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Speaker 1: used fusion to get into the business of scanning jet

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Speaker 1: engine blades, and the company will soon be in the

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Speaker 1: healthcare business as well. Later in the interview we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about all of that and about how Greg hopes those

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Speaker 1: businesses will eventually lead to that big fusion dream of cheap,

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Speaker 1: abundant power. But to start, we talked about how Greg

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Speaker 1: went from being a kid thinking about star Trek to

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Speaker 1: a grown man starting a fusion company, and in particular

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Speaker 1: about how that path led Greg to take really a

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Speaker 1: very different approach than that taken by other people building

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Speaker 1: fusion companies.

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Speaker 2: I took a class actually in college that was taught

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Speaker 2: by two very inspiring people, one of whom ran something

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Speaker 2: called the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin,

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Speaker 2: and another one named Harrison Schmidt, who walked on the Moon.

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Speaker 2: And they were teaching a class about going into space

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Speaker 2: and recovering resources, and recovering fusion fuel was one of

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Speaker 2: the key resources they thought we could extract from from space,

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Speaker 2: in particular the Moon. And so I got super excited

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Speaker 2: about fusion because those fuels are if you burn them,

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Speaker 2: you don't get nuclear waste.

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Speaker 3: So the promise of nuclear energy without nuclear waste.

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Speaker 2: And these people were doing it like on the front

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Speaker 2: edge of it got me really excited.

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Speaker 1: I actually went to the Moon to bring it back.

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Speaker 2: Right, right, Like, these people have done hard things, so

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Speaker 2: I'm going to go learn with them. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 2: that got me into fusion. But you know, for me,

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Speaker 2: it was a different experience. And if I had done

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Speaker 2: a physics space program in fusion.

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Speaker 1: Like more practical, more hands on, is that that?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this was an engineering program.

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Speaker 2: And the Fusion Technology Institute, which I joined, its mission

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Speaker 2: was to design viable fusion reactors. It was to say,

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Speaker 2: let's assume the physics challenges are overcome, how would you

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Speaker 2: build a real system?

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Speaker 3: And that's where over the next few years, I just.

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Speaker 2: Became a bit depressed, frankly, because even if you master

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Speaker 2: the physics, it became really clear that the challenge of

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Speaker 2: commercializing and making heat for five cents per kilo whatot hour,

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Speaker 2: which is sort of the going rate for it, I

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Speaker 2: couldn't see.

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Speaker 3: A way to do that.

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Speaker 2: And it was because you're taking some of the most

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Speaker 2: exotic materials ever developed by humans and putting them in

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Speaker 2: the harshest environments ever created by humans, and they don't

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Speaker 2: live very long, and they're super expensive to make, and

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Speaker 2: so the idea that we could go straight to five

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Speaker 2: cents per kilo whatt hour, at least when I was

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Speaker 2: in school, seemed far fetched.

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Speaker 1: So that it's sort of a technoeconomic problem you're thinking of,

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Speaker 1: not just the technical side, but if people are actually

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Speaker 1: going to use it, it has to be price competitive.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you get sad. You get sad because as

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Speaker 1: your Star Trek dream doesn't seem like it's going to

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Speaker 1: come true. And then, as I understand it, you go

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Speaker 1: to a party and you have your big idea. Is

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Speaker 1: that true?

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Speaker 3: That is the history.

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Speaker 2: It was a party at my house and we were

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Speaker 2: thinking about well, I mean, most people weren't thinking about this,

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Speaker 2: but I had been working on this problem earlier in

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Speaker 2: the day, so it was already kind of in my head.

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Speaker 3: And it came down to our research. You know.

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Speaker 2: I had done work on a specific technology at the

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Speaker 2: UW where we were trying to make small fusion devices,

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Speaker 2: and the idea is that there were a number of

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Speaker 2: applications you could use them for and they didn't work

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Speaker 2: very well.

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Speaker 3: And one of the reasons we discovered they didn't work very.

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Speaker 2: Well was we were trying to collide these nuclei in

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Speaker 2: the same space that we were trying to speed them up.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you just shoot them really fast into each

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Speaker 1: other as the.

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Speaker 2: Basic Yeah, but the problem is, like, if you're trying

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Speaker 2: to make something go fast in a highly collisional space

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Speaker 2: where it's running into stuff a lot, it can't really

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Speaker 2: speed up. It's banging into stuff and losing energy all

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Speaker 2: the time. And if you take away that the target

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Speaker 2: material so that you can accelerate them, then it's not

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Speaker 2: colliding very much and you don't get a lot of

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Speaker 2: fusion reactions. So you kind of had to operate in

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Speaker 2: this worst of both worlds space, and you know, it

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Speaker 2: was like the revelation was just like, well, why don't

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Speaker 2: we accelerate in one place and collide in another place?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I was.

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Speaker 3: I was at one point.

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Speaker 2: There were all kinds of people standing around with drinks,

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Speaker 2: and I was sitting in one of our recliners my laptop,

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Speaker 2: punching numbers into it, and I just actually built a

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Speaker 2: really quick model to just see what the fusion rate

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Speaker 2: would do if we did that in theory, and the

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Speaker 2: numbers came out amazing, like actually it was like, you know,

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Speaker 2: a thousand times higher than the output we were getting

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Speaker 2: from our university experiment, and so, you know, like I

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Speaker 2: quickly disengaged from the party. I called my former advisor

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Speaker 2: and I'm like, hey, you know if we did this

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Speaker 2: like the math, and he was like, oh, okay, that's

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Speaker 2: really cool, Like what do you want me to do?

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Speaker 2: And I was like, I don't know yet. I got

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Speaker 2: to figure this out, but I think I'm going to

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Speaker 2: start a company to.

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Speaker 3: Go do this.

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Speaker 1: Were you sober, I probably had had.

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Speaker 3: A couple drinks by then.

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Speaker 2: Actually, so it's amazing that I got the math right,

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Speaker 2: but I did, or maybe it helped.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there's like a curve right, maybe there's an optimal

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Speaker 1: number of efficts.

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Speaker 2: There certainly is when it comes to bowling. So why

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Speaker 2: not nuclear physics as well?

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Speaker 1: Yes, so you have this idea. When you have this idea,

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Speaker 1: do you think, oh, I've solved fusion energy.

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Speaker 3: This physics revelation.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't overcome the technoeconomic challenge of fusion energy that

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Speaker 2: I already had. And so that was already like I

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Speaker 2: had already moved past that, and I was trying to

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Speaker 2: see if there were ways, like what I had put

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Speaker 2: in the back of my head, where are there ways

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Speaker 2: you can make use of fusion, you know that where

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Speaker 2: you might get paid more for the reaction then you

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Speaker 2: get paid for energy.

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Speaker 1: So tell me about having this idea of like, oh,

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Speaker 1: maybe there's a way to commercialize fusion to do something

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Speaker 1: other than generate energy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So two formative experiences.

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Speaker 2: One, my advisor at the Fusion Technology Institute had identified

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Speaker 2: a family, like, you know, a couple dozen probably applications

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Speaker 2: where you could use fusion for non electric applications, and

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Speaker 2: they hadn't really done the economic analysis on any of them,

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Speaker 2: but they just said, here are some things you can

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Speaker 2: do with fusion reactions, and those included things like making

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Speaker 2: medical isotopes or detecting hidden material or you know, contraband material,

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Speaker 2: detecting nuclear weapons, stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: So, to be clear, those are things that people are

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Speaker 1: already doing out in the world, right There is a

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Speaker 1: market for those things. These are existing products. They're just

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Speaker 1: not using fusion too exactly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, super definable markets, you know, and there are supply

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Speaker 2: chain issues, and it's a good market to get into

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Speaker 2: if you had an alternative way to make things.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So that was interesting.

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Speaker 2: And then the other formative experience for me, it was

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Speaker 2: Actually we had started another company when I was in

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Speaker 2: grad school that had nothing to do with any of this,

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Speaker 2: but we were just recovering data from crashed hard drives.

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Speaker 2: One of my roommates had a hard drive crash. We

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Speaker 2: looked online. All the options sucked. It was like, pay

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Speaker 2: us two thousand dollars and we'll try, but maybe we

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Speaker 2: won't get your stuff back, and it's upfront payment. And

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Speaker 2: so we decided that was a bad business till we

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Speaker 2: started a business, and we said we told people, we said, look,

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Speaker 2: we're just starting this company. We're new at it, but

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Speaker 2: we'll charge you one hundred bucks if we get your

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Speaker 2: data and nothing if we don't, and you know, we

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Speaker 2: might break your stuff. So you'd be surprised how many

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Speaker 2: people like that better than and then being able to

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Speaker 2: pay two grand. And so what happened was we got

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Speaker 2: really really good at it. As we practiced, the volume

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Speaker 2: we could handle and the throughput we could handle, all

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Speaker 2: of this scaled really really nicely. And so this was

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Speaker 2: like just a formative idea for me that like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: if we can get into a niche with fusion, and

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Speaker 2: we can find an economic proposition that works, we can

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Speaker 2: practice and if we practice, we'll get better at it.

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Speaker 2: And if we get better at it, like our suppliers

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Speaker 2: and our customers and everyone.

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Speaker 3: Will grow with us.

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Speaker 2: So we'll move this ecosystem forward. And I really like

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Speaker 2: that because if you look at some of the most

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Speaker 2: high tech deep tech industries around, they followed the same roadmap,

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Speaker 2: you know, if you look at semiconductors and More's law.

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Speaker 2: It was fueled by having products all along the way. Right,

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Speaker 2: Like the first computers may have only had a few customers,

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Speaker 2: they would pay a ton for them, yes, And by

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Speaker 2: doing that, they got better and they brought the price down,

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Speaker 2: and then there were new a new set of customers,

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Speaker 2: right that could afford those computers.

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Speaker 1: Now more recently, Tesla is the classic model of that.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: They started with the Roadster, this super expensive, exactly electric

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Speaker 1: car that was not for everybody, but enough people bought

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Speaker 1: it that they could go from the whatever that was

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars car to the seventy

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars car to the fifty thousand dollars car. Right, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 2: And I'd argue that the underlying technology for Tesla started

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Speaker 2: even in other industries. So the ability to scale batteries

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Speaker 2: even more cheaply, right, Like it's rechargeable batteries. So you

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Speaker 2: started with toys and special services, and you move to laptops,

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Speaker 2: and then you move to EV's and even once you

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Speaker 2: get into evs, you do this where you build an

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Speaker 2: expensive thing that few people buy.

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Speaker 1: So you have the idea of applying this framework to fusion,

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Speaker 1: which is quite different. Right, there are all these other people,

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Speaker 1: people who are raising lots of money to go straight

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Speaker 1: at making electricity basically right, make the energy. Yeah, Like

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Speaker 1: why I don't know, Like why is anybody else doing

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Speaker 1: it the way you're doing it?

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Speaker 2: I think there's a there's it's a very exciting proposition

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Speaker 2: to be able to go straight to energy. It's it's

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Speaker 2: very inviting and it sounds very appealing and even if

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Speaker 2: the odds are long, But I don't know how many

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Speaker 2: of them have really spent time critically thinking about the

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Speaker 2: engineering challenges. And that's where my education was just different,

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Speaker 2: Like that's all we thought about. Like all we thought

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Speaker 2: about were the engineering.

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Speaker 3: Challenges and how to overcome them.

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Speaker 2: Like these were university people that are super optimistic, right,

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Speaker 2: like yeah, and we worked like we developed materials for

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Speaker 2: first walls and things like that. But like everything we

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Speaker 2: did till broke really fast and it was really expensive stuff.

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Speaker 2: So you know, it's just that was different for a

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Speaker 2: different experience for me, different formative experience for me than

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Speaker 2: for a lot of people who are trying to go

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Speaker 2: straight to the end.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 2: I do think there are some innovative concepts out there,

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Speaker 2: you know that if they work, and I say if

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Speaker 2: because the physics is far from proven, but if they work,

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Speaker 2: they could simplify a lot of the engineering challenges. But

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Speaker 2: the main concepts we know that are likely to work

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Speaker 2: will run into these challenges. They're very, very significant.

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Speaker 1: Meaning that even if the physics work, actually building a

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Speaker 1: thing at a reasonable cost is going to be super hard.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's that's my view.

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Speaker 1: So you actually did start a business and are selling things, right, yes,

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Speaker 1: using fusions to do stuff that people will pay for.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. Let's talk about where the

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Speaker 1: company is today, and then we can talk about where

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Speaker 1: you're about to be, and then we can talk about

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Speaker 1: where hopefully you'll be in some number of decades. What

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Speaker 1: are you sell them today?

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Speaker 3: We sell neutrons, and neutrons took.

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Speaker 1: Me a little while when I started, and then I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I buy electrons. I buy electrons every time

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Speaker 1: I turn on a left switch. Right, I'm just to

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Speaker 1: buying electrons. Tell me about the new neutron business, like,

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Speaker 1: what does that mean?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll translate it. So we sell fusion.

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Speaker 2: We just sell fusion to the highest bidders, and the

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Speaker 2: highest bidders are not people who buy energy. And so

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Speaker 2: it turns out the easiest fusion reaction to do is

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Speaker 2: DT fusion, and DT fusion produces energy on the one hand,

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Speaker 2: but it produces neutrons on the other, and when sold

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Speaker 2: to certain customers, the neutrons are far more valuable than

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Speaker 2: the energy.

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Speaker 1: So, just to be clear, DT fusion is just two

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Speaker 1: different isotopes of hydrogen, right, And they may tum helium

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Speaker 1: and then they throw off some number of neutrons, which

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Speaker 1: is just the neutral nuclear particle. And you're saying, there's

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Speaker 1: people who actually have a use for neutrons, yes, okay.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns out and they'll pay a ton for

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Speaker 2: it and so uh. And generally the historical neutron sources

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Speaker 2: for these are very specialized fission reactors, so research reactors.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so more traditional nuclear reactor.

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Speaker 2: Because fission reactors throw off neutrons too, and as we've

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Speaker 2: talked about already, fissions much easier than fusion from a

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Speaker 2: science perspective. And so there's these old reactors that serve

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Speaker 2: these industries. But the research reactor fleet that we built

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Speaker 2: in the past is old.

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Speaker 3: It's like sixty plus.

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Speaker 2: Years old and essentially dying in general. So markets that

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Speaker 2: have been served by these reactors are losing that capacity.

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Speaker 2: On top of that, fusion based approaches are much cheaper

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Speaker 2: than building new reactors, So as you look to replace

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Speaker 2: the infrastructure, there's a massive edge for fusion there. And

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Speaker 2: when we looked at the markets, you know, we did

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Speaker 2: very quick. Like well, everyone else in fusion you probably

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Speaker 2: talk to is chasing something called Q greater than one,

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Speaker 2: and that's the ratio of energy out over energy in.

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Speaker 2: And they want to show that they can make more

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Speaker 2: energy than they can put into it. That's the fundamental

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Speaker 2: fusion dream, right sure, but they don't even think, you know,

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Speaker 2: most of them aren't really even seriously thinking about the economics.

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Speaker 2: They're saying, first we need to get to net energy

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Speaker 2: and then we'll worry about net economics. For me, you

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Speaker 2: know that I couldn't see a way to scale fusion

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Speaker 2: unless we were worried about net economics right away, and

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Speaker 2: if we wanted to practice, we needed to have positive

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Speaker 2: net economics right away. So we are our core metric

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Speaker 2: was q economic. And so how do we get more

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Speaker 2: dollars out than dollars in?

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Speaker 1: Which is the classic business question? Yes, every business needs

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Speaker 1: to answer to survive. How could our revenues be greater

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Speaker 1: than our costs?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's how we have seen deep tech scale,

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Speaker 2: right Like that is the playbook by which it's scale.

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Speaker 2: So we pursued that, and you know, we found actually customers.

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Speaker 2: So you know, if you do a kill, what our effusion?

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Speaker 2: If you produce a kill, what our fusion heat? And

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Speaker 2: you can sell that for five cents. Let's say if

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Speaker 2: you if you took the same neutrons generated by that

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Speaker 2: killow what hour of fusion reactions? There are customers who

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Speaker 2: would pay two hundred thousand dollars for it.

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Speaker 3: Huh. And so that's a massive difference.

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Speaker 1: And so are you in fact selling those neutrons for

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Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Now is that your business?

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Speaker 3: We are?

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Speaker 1: And who is buying them? And what are they doing

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Speaker 1: with them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're making airplanes safer. You know, they're making

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Speaker 2: rockets more reliable.

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Speaker 1: What is the link between buying neutrons from you and

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Speaker 1: making airplanes safer?

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Speaker 3: All right?

378
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Speaker 2: So modern engines and jet aircraft operate to get very

379
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Speaker 2: high efficiency and very high power.

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Speaker 3: They operate in a really high temperature.

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Speaker 2: In fact, they operate like twenty percent above the melting

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Speaker 2: point of the blades in the engine.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't know that.

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Speaker 3: And now I'm going to tell you something that gets

385
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Speaker 3: even more scary.

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Speaker 2: So the way they manage that is they suck cold

387
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Speaker 2: air in from the front of the engine and they

388
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Speaker 2: pipe it through a series of cooling tubes in each fin,

389
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Speaker 2: like embedded in each fin. And the manufacturing process is

390
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Speaker 2: such that it's fairly common that one of these cooling

391
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Speaker 2: tubes is blocked, okay, And if it's blocked, it will melt,

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Speaker 2: it will imbalance the engine and possibly destroy it. And

393
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Speaker 2: so we don't want that to happen truly, but with

394
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Speaker 2: modern materials, and those are materials that X ray or ultrasound.

395
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Speaker 3: Do not interact with heavily. So if you try to

396
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Speaker 3: see inside these things with conventional techniques, you cannot see

397
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Speaker 3: the defect.

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Speaker 1: So just to be clear, you make this engine and

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Speaker 1: then you want to look inside to make sure that

400
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Speaker 1: these cooling tubes are not blocked so that it doesn't

401
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Speaker 1: melt and the plane crashes. And so you think, well,

402
00:18:23,276 --> 00:18:26,436
Speaker 1: we could use extra A or ultra sound too common technologies,

403
00:18:26,436 --> 00:18:28,716
Speaker 1: but you're saying those don't work. But there's some way

404
00:18:28,756 --> 00:18:31,996
Speaker 1: you can shoot neutrons at it and see inside of it.

405
00:18:32,076 --> 00:18:33,836
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is so.

406
00:18:34,356 --> 00:18:38,356
Speaker 2: So neutrons have you know, they have a characteristic of

407
00:18:38,396 --> 00:18:42,996
Speaker 2: There are certain isotopes, so certain materials in nature that

408
00:18:43,116 --> 00:18:47,196
Speaker 2: absorb neutrons like crazy, like okay, and you can put

409
00:18:47,236 --> 00:18:49,036
Speaker 2: them where you want them to be. So, for example,

410
00:18:49,036 --> 00:18:52,956
Speaker 2: with jet engine blades, we just push a liquid solution

411
00:18:53,116 --> 00:18:57,156
Speaker 2: containing a material known as gadolinium into the blade and

412
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Speaker 2: then we blow it out where there and if the

413
00:18:59,516 --> 00:19:02,516
Speaker 2: channel's blocked, it doesn't blow out, so the gatoleinium sits

414
00:19:02,516 --> 00:19:04,836
Speaker 2: in there and then we hit it with neutrons and

415
00:19:05,676 --> 00:19:08,556
Speaker 2: any neutron that comes close to that gatoleinium gets absorbed,

416
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Speaker 2: and then behind the blade you put a piece of

417
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Speaker 2: film that's sensitive to neutrons. It's a little more complex

418
00:19:14,196 --> 00:19:16,636
Speaker 2: than that and you can see it and you can

419
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Speaker 2: see it.

420
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Speaker 1: It's like an X ray, it's like a neutron. X

421
00:19:18,996 --> 00:19:20,076
Speaker 1: rays you see.

422
00:19:19,876 --> 00:19:22,556
Speaker 2: The inside of stuff, but neutrons can see things X

423
00:19:22,636 --> 00:19:26,396
Speaker 2: ray can't, and it's actually very complementary. X ray is

424
00:19:26,436 --> 00:19:29,756
Speaker 2: good at generally heavy materials. Neutrons are generally good at

425
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Speaker 2: seeing light materials.

426
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Speaker 1: And so are you in that business now?

427
00:19:34,236 --> 00:19:35,356
Speaker 3: We are. Yeah.

428
00:19:35,436 --> 00:19:38,316
Speaker 2: Yeah, We'll do tens of thousands of parts, you know,

429
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Speaker 2: in a year, and we're replacing essentially age capacity. So

430
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Speaker 2: the biggest imaging reactor in the United States shut down

431
00:19:47,916 --> 00:19:51,076
Speaker 2: about two years ago, was run by GE And so

432
00:19:51,116 --> 00:19:53,516
Speaker 2: there's this nice tailwin for share acquisition here. It's not

433
00:19:53,556 --> 00:19:55,236
Speaker 2: just a way for us to make money in fusion,

434
00:19:55,276 --> 00:19:57,716
Speaker 2: but a lot of the customers sort of just come

435
00:19:57,756 --> 00:20:00,356
Speaker 2: to us proactively because they're very worried about the future

436
00:20:00,396 --> 00:20:01,236
Speaker 2: of the supply chain.

437
00:20:01,916 --> 00:20:04,676
Speaker 1: Uh huh. So they send you the blades. You have

438
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Speaker 1: a facility, they send you the blades.

439
00:20:06,396 --> 00:20:10,676
Speaker 3: They do, and we give them back pictures with the blades.

440
00:20:10,836 --> 00:20:14,916
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so that's the business you're in. It seems

441
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Speaker 1: like the next big step is getting into the medical

442
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Speaker 1: isotope business.

443
00:20:18,356 --> 00:20:21,716
Speaker 2: Right, You're building a yeah, yeah, okay, and just on

444
00:20:21,756 --> 00:20:23,396
Speaker 2: the other thing, there are many others.

445
00:20:23,396 --> 00:20:24,996
Speaker 3: So turbine blades are just one application.

446
00:20:25,076 --> 00:20:27,596
Speaker 2: There's a lot of other parts and components that we validate,

447
00:20:27,676 --> 00:20:31,836
Speaker 2: including radiation hardness testing and electronics, et cetera. But yeah,

448
00:20:31,876 --> 00:20:34,236
Speaker 2: the next step, and it required a huge reduction in

449
00:20:34,276 --> 00:20:36,236
Speaker 2: the cost per neutron. We had to get the cost

450
00:20:36,276 --> 00:20:39,756
Speaker 2: per neutron down one thousandfold to make the next step work.

451
00:20:40,036 --> 00:20:42,836
Speaker 1: So this is important right now. The whole arc you're

452
00:20:42,876 --> 00:20:46,916
Speaker 1: trying to follow is like, let's do one thing where

453
00:20:46,916 --> 00:20:48,476
Speaker 1: we can make a lot of money, and then let's

454
00:20:48,476 --> 00:20:51,156
Speaker 1: do the next thing where they'll actually pay us less.

455
00:20:52,036 --> 00:20:53,756
Speaker 1: So we have to figure out how to do it

456
00:20:53,796 --> 00:20:55,916
Speaker 1: a thousand times cheaper for it to be profitable.

457
00:20:55,956 --> 00:20:58,796
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they'll buy a lot more neutrons, and so

458
00:20:59,476 --> 00:21:02,156
Speaker 2: the market opportunity is actually, you know, let's call it

459
00:21:02,156 --> 00:21:05,276
Speaker 2: ten to twenty times larger than the test opportunity in total.

460
00:21:06,396 --> 00:21:08,556
Speaker 3: And so even though they're paying you less, they're buying

461
00:21:08,556 --> 00:21:11,516
Speaker 3: so many more utrons that you know, you make more money.

462
00:21:14,836 --> 00:21:29,436
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. The next step

463
00:21:29,476 --> 00:21:33,316
Speaker 1: for Shine for Gregg's company is to start using neutrons

464
00:21:33,356 --> 00:21:37,716
Speaker 1: to create medical isotopes. Medical isotopes, as it turns out,

465
00:21:37,716 --> 00:21:42,276
Speaker 1: are widely used in medical imaging. To get into that business,

466
00:21:42,436 --> 00:21:45,956
Speaker 1: Shine is building what's basically a factory that's going to

467
00:21:46,116 --> 00:21:50,996
Speaker 1: use fusion to create medical isotopes. They call the factory Chrysalis.

468
00:21:51,596 --> 00:21:54,036
Speaker 1: And Greg and I were talking on video and at

469
00:21:54,036 --> 00:21:56,476
Speaker 1: this point in the conversation he mentioned that you could

470
00:21:56,516 --> 00:22:00,116
Speaker 1: actually see Chrysalis out the window behind him.

471
00:21:59,956 --> 00:22:01,796
Speaker 3: And this is Chrysalis behind me, by the way.

472
00:22:01,876 --> 00:22:04,836
Speaker 1: Okay, so, and it's not a picture for people who

473
00:22:04,836 --> 00:22:07,196
Speaker 1: are listening. It's like out there, there's a bunch of

474
00:22:07,196 --> 00:22:10,116
Speaker 1: grass and there's a bill thing. Just it looks like

475
00:22:10,156 --> 00:22:13,196
Speaker 1: a rectangle, a cement rectangle over your shoulder.

476
00:22:13,276 --> 00:22:15,716
Speaker 2: That's over half a billion dollars of invested capital, is

477
00:22:15,716 --> 00:22:15,916
Speaker 2: what it.

478
00:22:15,996 --> 00:22:21,316
Speaker 1: Over cement rectangle. So tell me about what's going on

479
00:22:21,396 --> 00:22:22,196
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah.

480
00:22:22,236 --> 00:22:25,316
Speaker 3: So, essentially, we needed to get the cost per neutron down.

481
00:22:25,436 --> 00:22:28,396
Speaker 3: We did. We demonstrated that back in twenty nineteen.

482
00:22:28,516 --> 00:22:30,356
Speaker 2: And what we knew we could do then is if

483
00:22:30,356 --> 00:22:32,876
Speaker 2: we got it that cheap, instead of using neutrons just

484
00:22:32,916 --> 00:22:34,236
Speaker 2: to examine material.

485
00:22:33,916 --> 00:22:35,356
Speaker 3: We can use it to change material.

486
00:22:35,596 --> 00:22:38,316
Speaker 2: Okay, in a sense that nuclear engineers call it transmutation,

487
00:22:38,436 --> 00:22:41,076
Speaker 2: but like the common population would think of it as alchemy,

488
00:22:41,836 --> 00:22:44,996
Speaker 2: you can use neutrons to turn low value materials into

489
00:22:45,396 --> 00:22:47,356
Speaker 2: I'm going to call them hyper valuable materials and I'll

490
00:22:47,356 --> 00:22:50,836
Speaker 2: tell you why in just a second. So at small scale,

491
00:22:51,036 --> 00:22:54,276
Speaker 2: the most interesting markets for these are in medicine, producing

492
00:22:54,316 --> 00:22:56,476
Speaker 2: isotopes used for medicine.

493
00:22:56,356 --> 00:23:00,756
Speaker 1: Which turns out to be wildly common, right, like medical

494
00:23:00,796 --> 00:23:05,156
Speaker 1: isotopes I learned, you know researching for this show are

495
00:23:05,236 --> 00:23:08,356
Speaker 1: like what tens of thousands of people a day in

496
00:23:08,396 --> 00:23:11,156
Speaker 1: the US are tested with medical.

497
00:23:11,556 --> 00:23:14,916
Speaker 2: Fifty million per year around the world. Yeah, yeah, so

498
00:23:14,956 --> 00:23:17,396
Speaker 2: they're super common. And again, just like in the testing

499
00:23:17,436 --> 00:23:22,196
Speaker 2: business where we're replacing fission reactors, that's how isotopes have

500
00:23:22,236 --> 00:23:23,116
Speaker 2: been made in the past.

501
00:23:23,156 --> 00:23:25,876
Speaker 3: So old research.

502
00:23:25,556 --> 00:23:28,916
Speaker 2: Reactors around sixty years old, and you know they're dying, right,

503
00:23:29,036 --> 00:23:31,716
Speaker 2: like the infrastructure is going away, and so it's the

504
00:23:31,716 --> 00:23:33,316
Speaker 2: same tail when we just needed to get fusion a

505
00:23:33,356 --> 00:23:34,196
Speaker 2: lot cheaper to do it.

506
00:23:34,636 --> 00:23:37,676
Speaker 1: And is it right that in a kind of crude way,

507
00:23:37,756 --> 00:23:40,756
Speaker 1: the use is analogous in many cases that that medical

508
00:23:40,796 --> 00:23:44,236
Speaker 1: isotopes are used for scanning, but you're scanning people instead

509
00:23:44,276 --> 00:23:45,796
Speaker 1: of jet airplane blades.

510
00:23:45,916 --> 00:23:48,276
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mechanism is a little bit different, so, but

511
00:23:48,356 --> 00:23:51,196
Speaker 2: it's the same idea, right, like so, and it fits

512
00:23:51,236 --> 00:23:53,716
Speaker 2: our whole theme of illumination around the company, right In

513
00:23:53,756 --> 00:23:56,556
Speaker 2: one case, we're illuminating defects here, we're illuminating disease.

514
00:23:56,876 --> 00:23:59,716
Speaker 3: Eventually will be illuminating the planet, right with good.

515
00:23:59,636 --> 00:24:00,836
Speaker 1: That's good metaphor.

516
00:24:00,996 --> 00:24:04,076
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but you know, so what you do is

517
00:24:04,116 --> 00:24:06,396
Speaker 2: you've got enough neutrends now that you can turn. You

518
00:24:06,396 --> 00:24:08,836
Speaker 2: can change materials, so you can take things that are

519
00:24:08,836 --> 00:24:11,516
Speaker 2: really stable, like uranium. You buy it for six dollars

520
00:24:11,596 --> 00:24:14,636
Speaker 2: a gram, turn it into an imaging isotope molybdenum ninety nine,

521
00:24:14,636 --> 00:24:16,636
Speaker 2: which is worth like one hundred and fifty million dollars

522
00:24:16,676 --> 00:24:17,476
Speaker 2: a gram presuly.

523
00:24:17,516 --> 00:24:20,276
Speaker 1: People buy it in very very very small pounce.

524
00:24:20,636 --> 00:24:23,196
Speaker 2: Yeah they do, but you know it's a dose for

525
00:24:23,236 --> 00:24:25,876
Speaker 2: a patient is like one tenth of one microgram, right, Yeah.

526
00:24:25,916 --> 00:24:27,356
Speaker 1: I mean if it's one hundred and fifty million a

527
00:24:27,396 --> 00:24:29,716
Speaker 1: gram and you're making it in a five hundred million

528
00:24:29,756 --> 00:24:31,676
Speaker 1: dollar building, you don't have to make much of it

529
00:24:31,876 --> 00:24:33,996
Speaker 1: exactly to deeve your cost of capital.

530
00:24:34,116 --> 00:24:36,556
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Krystalist will produce a few grams per year

531
00:24:36,636 --> 00:24:36,916
Speaker 2: that's it.

532
00:24:37,116 --> 00:24:40,396
Speaker 1: Wow, that's extraordinary. So it's like like a few grams

533
00:24:40,476 --> 00:24:43,076
Speaker 1: is like a little cup, not even just like a

534
00:24:43,116 --> 00:24:45,076
Speaker 1: sugar spoonful sugar package.

535
00:24:44,796 --> 00:24:45,676
Speaker 3: You dump in your coffee.

536
00:24:45,676 --> 00:24:48,316
Speaker 1: That's a few grams, but that's millions of doses.

537
00:24:48,556 --> 00:24:51,116
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so one gram is ten million doses is

538
00:24:51,156 --> 00:24:52,316
Speaker 2: essentially that I think about it.

539
00:24:52,676 --> 00:24:54,996
Speaker 1: That is wild. Can we just just have that be

540
00:24:55,076 --> 00:24:56,476
Speaker 1: wild for one moment? Okay?

541
00:24:56,516 --> 00:24:56,756
Speaker 3: Go on?

542
00:24:57,076 --> 00:24:59,076
Speaker 2: So you know, for in the US, for example, most

543
00:24:59,076 --> 00:25:01,036
Speaker 2: of the testing is to look at blood flow in

544
00:25:01,076 --> 00:25:03,716
Speaker 2: the heart. If you're having chest pain, doctors will give

545
00:25:03,716 --> 00:25:06,396
Speaker 2: you this test to see if your arteries are blocked

546
00:25:06,476 --> 00:25:08,756
Speaker 2: or where the muscle is receiving blood and where it's not,

547
00:25:10,036 --> 00:25:12,876
Speaker 2: and but also for staging cancer. And there's probably another

548
00:25:12,916 --> 00:25:14,956
Speaker 2: two dozen tests all that use this on a skin.

549
00:25:15,476 --> 00:25:18,156
Speaker 1: So that's what you're going to be making. Like, tell

550
00:25:18,196 --> 00:25:22,276
Speaker 1: me about the tell me about the business end of chrysalis,

551
00:25:22,276 --> 00:25:24,516
Speaker 1: of that facility over your should, Like what's it look

552
00:25:24,676 --> 00:25:27,116
Speaker 1: like in there where you're actually doing the fusion.

553
00:25:27,516 --> 00:25:30,116
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of machines. So there'll be six

554
00:25:30,196 --> 00:25:33,436
Speaker 2: fusion machines in Chrysalis. They're built and they're you know,

555
00:25:33,436 --> 00:25:38,116
Speaker 2: they're being installed and they are surrounded. So there's a

556
00:25:38,236 --> 00:25:40,476
Speaker 2: there's a tube in which the particle beam comes down

557
00:25:40,516 --> 00:25:43,956
Speaker 2: and it strikes tritium and makes fusion reactions, and the

558
00:25:43,996 --> 00:25:47,236
Speaker 2: neutrons come out in all directions, and we've surrounded that

559
00:25:47,396 --> 00:25:50,636
Speaker 2: to with The uranium target is uranium dissolved in water,

560
00:25:51,636 --> 00:25:53,436
Speaker 2: and as the neutrons hit it, they cause it to

561
00:25:53,596 --> 00:25:57,476
Speaker 2: split and we get isotopes that are useful for medicine,

562
00:25:57,476 --> 00:26:01,276
Speaker 2: things like molibdidum ninety nine, iodine one thirty one, which

563
00:26:01,316 --> 00:26:03,716
Speaker 2: is used to treat cancer, xenon one thirty three, which

564
00:26:03,756 --> 00:26:05,276
Speaker 2: is used to image brain and heart.

565
00:26:05,436 --> 00:26:08,716
Speaker 1: So you're actually using fusion to drive a fission reaction

566
00:26:08,796 --> 00:26:11,076
Speaker 1: that make the thing that you want precisely. Yeah, it's

567
00:26:11,116 --> 00:26:13,556
Speaker 1: like a nuclear turned ducan, yeah, versus.

568
00:26:13,436 --> 00:26:16,916
Speaker 2: Using fission to drive a fission reaction. And the difference

569
00:26:16,956 --> 00:26:19,516
Speaker 2: is cost. If you were to look at building a

570
00:26:19,516 --> 00:26:22,876
Speaker 2: new research reactor to do what Chrysalis does, you're probably

571
00:26:22,916 --> 00:26:26,156
Speaker 2: at something like five to ten times the cost when

572
00:26:26,196 --> 00:26:28,556
Speaker 2: it's all said and done. So fusion turns out to

573
00:26:28,556 --> 00:26:31,116
Speaker 2: be much cheaper and much safer, and it produces about,

574
00:26:31,796 --> 00:26:34,476
Speaker 2: you know, somewhere between one and five percent the radioactive

575
00:26:34,516 --> 00:26:37,596
Speaker 2: waste of a reactor, so much much cleaner.

576
00:26:38,516 --> 00:26:41,036
Speaker 1: And is it right that there have actually been shortages

577
00:26:41,196 --> 00:26:43,316
Speaker 1: of the isotope that you're going.

578
00:26:43,236 --> 00:26:45,636
Speaker 3: To be making all the time. Yeah, it goes, and

579
00:26:45,676 --> 00:26:47,596
Speaker 3: it's been going on for fifteen years.

580
00:26:47,956 --> 00:26:51,236
Speaker 1: And so how close are you to opening what has

581
00:26:51,276 --> 00:26:53,556
Speaker 1: to happen? There's a building behind you, but it's not

582
00:26:53,716 --> 00:26:54,316
Speaker 1: on yet.

583
00:26:54,596 --> 00:26:57,836
Speaker 2: Right, the equipment is almost all entirely here in Jamesville.

584
00:26:57,876 --> 00:26:59,676
Speaker 2: We need to install it, we need to commission it,

585
00:26:59,716 --> 00:27:01,716
Speaker 2: and then we need to start pushing product out of it.

586
00:27:01,796 --> 00:27:04,796
Speaker 1: When are you going to get the first neutron? I

587
00:27:04,836 --> 00:27:06,236
Speaker 1: won't say out the door, but you know when you're

588
00:27:06,276 --> 00:27:07,876
Speaker 1: gonna get the When you're going to make the first neutron?

589
00:27:07,956 --> 00:27:10,236
Speaker 2: Well, the first neutrons are actually like being made in

590
00:27:10,276 --> 00:27:12,716
Speaker 2: a smaller building to the side that we used to practice.

591
00:27:12,716 --> 00:27:16,116
Speaker 2: But the first isotopes should be made in about eighteen months.

592
00:27:15,996 --> 00:27:19,156
Speaker 1: Okay, so like end of next year, yeah, I think.

593
00:27:19,276 --> 00:27:21,956
Speaker 3: And there's a big difference between first isotope produced and

594
00:27:21,996 --> 00:27:23,356
Speaker 3: actually commercial readiness.

595
00:27:23,516 --> 00:27:25,716
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and your whole thing is techno economics, right,

596
00:27:25,876 --> 00:27:28,996
Speaker 1: the first isotope produced where the unit economics are profitable

597
00:27:28,996 --> 00:27:29,196
Speaker 1: for you?

598
00:27:29,356 --> 00:27:31,076
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, and I would say that's probably more

599
00:27:31,156 --> 00:27:33,076
Speaker 2: likely two years. But this is a plant that no

600
00:27:33,116 --> 00:27:36,116
Speaker 2: one's ever built before with technology that we have tested

601
00:27:36,156 --> 00:27:37,756
Speaker 2: in the lab. But you know when you build a

602
00:27:37,796 --> 00:27:41,356
Speaker 2: working machine that has thousands of moving parts and we've

603
00:27:41,396 --> 00:27:42,076
Speaker 2: derisked all the.

604
00:27:42,036 --> 00:27:44,836
Speaker 1: Home Yeah, I'm totally willing to believe that it won't work.

605
00:27:45,156 --> 00:27:46,636
Speaker 2: Oh, it will work, But the things that are going

606
00:27:46,676 --> 00:27:49,076
Speaker 2: to break and burn us are like you know well.

607
00:27:48,996 --> 00:27:51,796
Speaker 1: Or that it won't be economical, right, like, nobody has

608
00:27:51,836 --> 00:27:53,996
Speaker 1: ever done anything like what you are doing before.

609
00:27:54,156 --> 00:27:55,676
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be economical.

610
00:27:55,916 --> 00:27:58,036
Speaker 2: I think the question is for me is like I'm

611
00:27:58,076 --> 00:28:00,956
Speaker 2: worried about things like valves. We have hundreds of valves

612
00:28:00,956 --> 00:28:03,116
Speaker 2: in this plant, and they might have a very low

613
00:28:03,156 --> 00:28:05,196
Speaker 2: failure rate, right Like, but if the failure rates one

614
00:28:05,236 --> 00:28:07,356
Speaker 2: percent on hundreds of valves, you're going to have a

615
00:28:07,396 --> 00:28:08,196
Speaker 2: lot of problems.

616
00:28:08,476 --> 00:28:10,356
Speaker 1: You got always is going to have broken falst This

617
00:28:10,396 --> 00:28:11,876
Speaker 1: is your engineering training.

618
00:28:12,116 --> 00:28:15,516
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's exactly right. Like I've got an earlier models.

619
00:28:15,316 --> 00:28:17,356
Speaker 1: And a Tesla, an old Tesla.

620
00:28:17,436 --> 00:28:20,356
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, the motor runs fantastically. The car is still

621
00:28:20,356 --> 00:28:22,476
Speaker 2: super fun to drive. It's got one hundred and seventy

622
00:28:22,516 --> 00:28:25,236
Speaker 2: thousand miles on it. But I've replaced the door handles

623
00:28:25,236 --> 00:28:27,716
Speaker 2: like it feels like a dozen times, and it's not

624
00:28:27,716 --> 00:28:28,876
Speaker 2: fun when you suddenly can't.

625
00:28:28,716 --> 00:28:29,996
Speaker 3: Get in your car and you've got to like use

626
00:28:30,036 --> 00:28:31,996
Speaker 3: a credit card to which oh.

627
00:28:31,876 --> 00:28:34,676
Speaker 1: Look, how fancy the door handles are. Just make regular

628
00:28:34,716 --> 00:28:35,996
Speaker 1: door handles, man.

629
00:28:35,956 --> 00:28:37,916
Speaker 3: And they went back to that. Actually they learned a

630
00:28:37,996 --> 00:28:40,436
Speaker 3: lesson there. But that's what's going to hit us.

631
00:28:40,436 --> 00:28:42,636
Speaker 2: So I think as we think about that thing, like

632
00:28:42,716 --> 00:28:45,716
Speaker 2: really producing reliably, I tell people probably two years as

633
00:28:45,756 --> 00:28:48,476
Speaker 2: sort of the soonest, and it could be three right

634
00:28:48,516 --> 00:28:50,996
Speaker 2: like it, it could be somewhere in that range.

635
00:28:51,196 --> 00:28:53,196
Speaker 1: That's the current staff. Yeah, I want to get to

636
00:28:53,276 --> 00:28:57,396
Speaker 1: the big dream. How many steps between making medical isotopes

637
00:28:57,476 --> 00:29:00,876
Speaker 1: and creating a cheap and abundant power for all of humanity?

638
00:29:01,076 --> 00:29:03,236
Speaker 3: Yeah, and by the way, our steps are like pragmatic,

639
00:29:03,316 --> 00:29:03,996
Speaker 3: not dogmatic.

640
00:29:04,116 --> 00:29:05,196
Speaker 1: So it's nice.

641
00:29:05,196 --> 00:29:07,516
Speaker 2: But they've held so like if there are new market

642
00:29:07,556 --> 00:29:10,196
Speaker 2: applications that come up, definitely we'll look too.

643
00:29:10,196 --> 00:29:11,116
Speaker 3: Include we won't.

644
00:29:10,916 --> 00:29:12,636
Speaker 1: Hold you to it. I promise I won't hold you

645
00:29:12,676 --> 00:29:14,956
Speaker 1: to your forward looking sayments. Yeah, but they have.

646
00:29:15,476 --> 00:29:16,916
Speaker 3: Held for the last fifteen years.

647
00:29:16,996 --> 00:29:19,396
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess is something I can say with confidence.

648
00:29:19,436 --> 00:29:22,996
Speaker 2: So the next step is to do this transmutation, right,

649
00:29:23,116 --> 00:29:26,716
Speaker 2: changing one material into another at a larger scale, and

650
00:29:26,756 --> 00:29:28,556
Speaker 2: we can use that to solve one of the biggest

651
00:29:28,556 --> 00:29:31,716
Speaker 2: problems with fission energy. So again you can see us

652
00:29:31,716 --> 00:29:34,156
Speaker 2: starting to come into the fission world a little bit here.

653
00:29:34,956 --> 00:29:37,076
Speaker 2: And one of the things that we should be doing

654
00:29:37,116 --> 00:29:39,356
Speaker 2: as a nation is we should be recycling all of

655
00:29:39,356 --> 00:29:40,396
Speaker 2: our nuclear waste.

656
00:29:40,556 --> 00:29:42,236
Speaker 1: We have a lot of nuclear waste. For a while,

657
00:29:42,276 --> 00:29:43,756
Speaker 1: we were going to bury it all in a mountain

658
00:29:43,796 --> 00:29:46,156
Speaker 1: in Nevada, but people in Nevada didn't like that idea.

659
00:29:46,716 --> 00:29:49,356
Speaker 1: So it's still just sort of sitting around everywhere, and

660
00:29:49,436 --> 00:29:51,996
Speaker 1: it'll be sitting around for millions of years the right

661
00:29:52,076 --> 00:29:53,956
Speaker 1: order of magnitude if we don't do something minute.

662
00:29:54,036 --> 00:29:56,156
Speaker 3: I think that's right. And the problem with that is

663
00:29:56,156 --> 00:29:58,036
Speaker 3: it's just loaded with value.

664
00:29:58,316 --> 00:30:00,916
Speaker 1: Right, people worry about it. But also look look at

665
00:30:00,956 --> 00:30:03,796
Speaker 1: all this energy that's just sitting there ready to be harvested.

666
00:30:03,916 --> 00:30:06,876
Speaker 3: Yeah, so why not solve two problems at once. Right,

667
00:30:06,956 --> 00:30:08,316
Speaker 3: it's not super safe wor it.

668
00:30:08,316 --> 00:30:09,956
Speaker 2: I mean it's pretty safe for it is, but if

669
00:30:09,996 --> 00:30:11,956
Speaker 2: somebody wanted to do something to it, they might be

670
00:30:11,996 --> 00:30:14,476
Speaker 2: able to. Yeah, a lot of it's plutonium, which is

671
00:30:14,476 --> 00:30:16,636
Speaker 2: stuff that if you worked and you processed it enough,

672
00:30:16,676 --> 00:30:18,876
Speaker 2: you could turn into nuclear weapons. So we should be

673
00:30:19,156 --> 00:30:21,756
Speaker 2: eliminating that hazard and at the same time we can

674
00:30:21,836 --> 00:30:24,116
Speaker 2: solve a strategic fuel supply.

675
00:30:23,876 --> 00:30:24,636
Speaker 3: Issue for us.

676
00:30:24,876 --> 00:30:26,996
Speaker 2: Now that our relationship with rushes and not so good.

677
00:30:27,316 --> 00:30:28,676
Speaker 2: You know, they were the source of a lot of

678
00:30:28,676 --> 00:30:31,396
Speaker 2: the uranium that we put into our fission reactors. But

679
00:30:31,436 --> 00:30:33,796
Speaker 2: if we recycle all of our spent fuel, essentially we

680
00:30:33,836 --> 00:30:36,756
Speaker 2: can become totally independent of any other nation for our

681
00:30:36,796 --> 00:30:39,236
Speaker 2: own fission energy needs. And the great part is the

682
00:30:39,236 --> 00:30:43,436
Speaker 2: more fission reactors we burn, the more recycled fuel we have.

683
00:30:43,516 --> 00:30:45,956
Speaker 3: So it just scales with the number of plants.

684
00:30:46,716 --> 00:30:50,996
Speaker 1: And so you have a sort of clear technological line

685
00:30:51,196 --> 00:30:56,596
Speaker 1: to using your fusion reactors to do what to get

686
00:30:56,716 --> 00:30:59,236
Speaker 1: energy out of spent fuel from fission plants? Like, what

687
00:30:59,236 --> 00:31:00,156
Speaker 1: do you actually do there?

688
00:31:00,236 --> 00:31:04,196
Speaker 2: We'll take spent fuel, will dissolve it into a liquid form,

689
00:31:04,436 --> 00:31:08,156
Speaker 2: will separate out valuable materials that includes uranium and plutonium,

690
00:31:08,156 --> 00:31:10,476
Speaker 2: which should go back into the reactor. So close loop

691
00:31:10,516 --> 00:31:14,236
Speaker 2: close the fuel cycle with fission, will separate out other

692
00:31:14,276 --> 00:31:17,516
Speaker 2: things precious metals, rare earth elements that have decayed enough

693
00:31:17,556 --> 00:31:20,316
Speaker 2: to sell, and then you're left with this very small

694
00:31:20,356 --> 00:31:21,956
Speaker 2: waste stream, like it's less than.

695
00:31:21,796 --> 00:31:23,276
Speaker 3: Five percent of the original.

696
00:31:23,676 --> 00:31:27,036
Speaker 2: Almost all of that has relatively short half lives decades

697
00:31:27,116 --> 00:31:31,636
Speaker 2: or less, and a little bit of it has these

698
00:31:31,676 --> 00:31:36,596
Speaker 2: really long problematic half lives million year plus isotopes. That's

699
00:31:36,636 --> 00:31:39,356
Speaker 2: the only place fusion comes in. It solves that problem.

700
00:31:39,876 --> 00:31:42,876
Speaker 2: So fusion neutrons can transmute. Just like we use them

701
00:31:42,916 --> 00:31:44,796
Speaker 2: to turn low value into high value, we can use

702
00:31:44,796 --> 00:31:47,596
Speaker 2: them to turn long half life into short half life.

703
00:31:48,156 --> 00:31:51,236
Speaker 2: And one great example I like to use is id

704
00:31:51,276 --> 00:31:54,676
Speaker 2: ON one twenty nine. Waste product from fission lives over

705
00:31:54,716 --> 00:31:57,516
Speaker 2: ten million years, over ten million year half life.

706
00:31:57,356 --> 00:31:59,836
Speaker 1: Which is bad. It's going to be radioactive forever forever.

707
00:32:00,036 --> 00:32:02,356
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you hit it with a fusion neutron though

708
00:32:02,596 --> 00:32:04,996
Speaker 2: it becomes id ON one twenty eight. Id ON one

709
00:32:04,996 --> 00:32:07,196
Speaker 2: twenty eight has a twenty five minute half life, after

710
00:32:07,236 --> 00:32:10,476
Speaker 2: which it becomes stable. You put it in salt, yeah,

711
00:32:10,516 --> 00:32:11,956
Speaker 2: you could right, like you could eat it.

712
00:32:12,316 --> 00:32:12,836
Speaker 1: Yeah.

713
00:32:13,156 --> 00:32:16,396
Speaker 2: So you do this process with fusion and you solve

714
00:32:16,636 --> 00:32:20,156
Speaker 2: the problem with the long lived waste. So we want

715
00:32:20,156 --> 00:32:22,276
Speaker 2: to do that two steps, and we know how because

716
00:32:22,276 --> 00:32:25,436
Speaker 2: we're already doing both of those processes and chrysalis. So

717
00:32:25,716 --> 00:32:28,756
Speaker 2: as we look to scaling to a waste recycling plant,

718
00:32:28,916 --> 00:32:33,036
Speaker 2: we've already got essentially a prototype for it here, and

719
00:32:33,116 --> 00:32:34,396
Speaker 2: you know we're going to build on that. It's the

720
00:32:34,436 --> 00:32:36,996
Speaker 2: same part of the regulatory code that would license a

721
00:32:36,996 --> 00:32:39,156
Speaker 2: recycling plant, same type of construction, everything.

722
00:32:39,356 --> 00:32:44,276
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that one is obviously complicated on multiple dimensions, right,

723
00:32:44,396 --> 00:32:46,876
Speaker 1: I mean you have to whatever the technical side is.

724
00:32:46,876 --> 00:32:49,436
Speaker 1: It's the technical side, but presumably you're dealing with nuclear waste,

725
00:32:49,476 --> 00:32:52,276
Speaker 1: there's going to be a whole like political regulatory side.

726
00:32:52,436 --> 00:32:54,956
Speaker 1: That's what is that a decade? When you think about that,

727
00:32:55,076 --> 00:32:57,996
Speaker 1: ten years, twenty, like, that's a long game already, right,

728
00:32:58,396 --> 00:32:59,476
Speaker 1: But the political.

729
00:32:59,076 --> 00:33:01,156
Speaker 2: Winds are changing, and I'm not talking about because of

730
00:33:01,196 --> 00:33:02,116
Speaker 2: the current administration.

731
00:33:02,356 --> 00:33:04,796
Speaker 1: No, the world is becoming more pro nuclear you know,

732
00:33:05,316 --> 00:33:06,516
Speaker 1: basically non partisan way.

733
00:33:06,676 --> 00:33:08,556
Speaker 2: But people are starting to learn that you shouldn't think

734
00:33:08,556 --> 00:33:11,036
Speaker 2: an absolutely right like, are you more afraid of climate

735
00:33:11,116 --> 00:33:13,516
Speaker 2: change or are you more afraid of the very very

736
00:33:13,516 --> 00:33:16,476
Speaker 2: small risk posed by nuclear energy? Yes, And anyone who

737
00:33:16,516 --> 00:33:19,236
Speaker 2: thinks about it from a mathematical perspective very quickly comes

738
00:33:19,236 --> 00:33:20,796
Speaker 2: to Wow, climate change is going to hurt way more

739
00:33:20,836 --> 00:33:22,476
Speaker 2: people than nuclear energy ever, will.

740
00:33:22,676 --> 00:33:26,716
Speaker 1: Even particulate emissions from you know, certainly coal plants are

741
00:33:27,156 --> 00:33:28,316
Speaker 1: wildly more dangerous than a.

742
00:33:28,276 --> 00:33:31,796
Speaker 2: Physicially yeah, absolutely, And if you look at like coastal

743
00:33:31,796 --> 00:33:34,476
Speaker 2: flooding and stuff like that, multiply that by like tens

744
00:33:34,556 --> 00:33:36,836
Speaker 2: or hundreds of times in terms of impacted people.

745
00:33:36,996 --> 00:33:39,956
Speaker 1: So okay, so you're saying the political still, it's going

746
00:33:40,036 --> 00:33:41,836
Speaker 1: to be it's going to take a while, and it's

747
00:33:41,876 --> 00:33:44,276
Speaker 1: going to be hard despite the political shifts you're talking about.

748
00:33:44,436 --> 00:33:46,476
Speaker 2: Yeah, well see, you know, the US has had a

749
00:33:46,476 --> 00:33:50,036
Speaker 2: long term policy band on recycling spent fuel, you know,

750
00:33:50,476 --> 00:33:53,236
Speaker 2: but new executive orders that just came out are challenging that.

751
00:33:53,436 --> 00:33:56,636
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to reinvigorate the nuclear industry. I mean,

752
00:33:56,676 --> 00:34:00,076
Speaker 2: when you think you're going to do it twenty thirty two, okay,

753
00:34:00,316 --> 00:34:02,236
Speaker 2: not ten years, but not too far off of ten

754
00:34:02,356 --> 00:34:04,956
Speaker 2: years in a pilot plant, okay, because we want to

755
00:34:04,956 --> 00:34:06,356
Speaker 2: prove the economics first.

756
00:34:06,116 --> 00:34:08,156
Speaker 1: And then can we get to the big dream after

757
00:34:08,156 --> 00:34:10,236
Speaker 1: that part? When do we get to free energy for

758
00:34:10,276 --> 00:34:11,116
Speaker 1: all of humanity?

759
00:34:11,356 --> 00:34:11,636
Speaker 3: Now?

760
00:34:11,716 --> 00:34:12,396
Speaker 1: Are we ready?

761
00:34:12,516 --> 00:34:12,596
Speaker 3: So?

762
00:34:12,636 --> 00:34:14,836
Speaker 2: The cool thing is as you look at like these

763
00:34:15,156 --> 00:34:17,636
Speaker 2: fusion systems that you use for recycling, to spend fuel.

764
00:34:17,836 --> 00:34:21,676
Speaker 2: They look technologically very much like fusion power plants, but

765
00:34:21,716 --> 00:34:24,116
Speaker 2: you're still getting paid at least twenty times as much

766
00:34:24,156 --> 00:34:26,956
Speaker 2: per reaction and they don't need to operate ninety nine

767
00:34:26,956 --> 00:34:28,916
Speaker 2: point nine nine percent of the time because you know,

768
00:34:29,036 --> 00:34:31,636
Speaker 2: people freak out if a city loses power for good reason.

769
00:34:31,876 --> 00:34:33,316
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you slow down.

770
00:34:33,356 --> 00:34:36,236
Speaker 2: Recycling a material that has a ten million year half life,

771
00:34:36,516 --> 00:34:38,436
Speaker 2: no big deal, right, Like you fix the machine, you

772
00:34:38,476 --> 00:34:40,076
Speaker 2: get to learn, and you get to move forward.

773
00:34:40,116 --> 00:34:41,316
Speaker 3: So, and we're going to have.

774
00:34:41,316 --> 00:34:44,036
Speaker 2: To build dozens, if not hundreds of these fusion systems

775
00:34:44,076 --> 00:34:47,116
Speaker 2: to solve the global problem with nuclear waste. So through

776
00:34:47,196 --> 00:34:50,116
Speaker 2: economy of scale and through practice on a much more

777
00:34:50,116 --> 00:34:52,996
Speaker 2: forgiving environment where you're getting paid more per neutron, we

778
00:34:53,036 --> 00:34:55,116
Speaker 2: think we can get that next you know, that next

779
00:34:55,116 --> 00:34:57,316
Speaker 2: factor of ten or so that you need to be

780
00:34:57,396 --> 00:35:00,476
Speaker 2: cost competitive and drive and the fusion engine.

781
00:35:00,596 --> 00:35:05,676
Speaker 1: So really, in your mind, the recycling nuclear waste is

782
00:35:05,756 --> 00:35:08,276
Speaker 1: like a sort of a straight line. It just ramps

783
00:35:08,356 --> 00:35:10,716
Speaker 1: right up to just generating energy.

784
00:35:10,796 --> 00:35:12,836
Speaker 2: Yes, in my mind, and this is very hard for

785
00:35:12,836 --> 00:35:14,396
Speaker 2: a lot of people to gress, but it really is

786
00:35:14,556 --> 00:35:16,916
Speaker 2: exactly that. So I'm glad that you I'm glad that

787
00:35:16,956 --> 00:35:18,876
Speaker 2: you put that together right away, because it is.

788
00:35:18,836 --> 00:35:22,316
Speaker 1: That so the sort of fusion reaction you would be

789
00:35:22,436 --> 00:35:26,596
Speaker 1: running in that context, it's the kind of thing that well,

790
00:35:26,676 --> 00:35:28,516
Speaker 1: let's let's go back to Q. Let's go back to

791
00:35:28,556 --> 00:35:30,836
Speaker 1: this idea of getting more energy out than you put in,

792
00:35:31,236 --> 00:35:34,396
Speaker 1: right like in that setting, how does that happen that

793
00:35:34,476 --> 00:35:36,916
Speaker 1: at some point in the future somebody has to do that?

794
00:35:37,076 --> 00:35:37,276
Speaker 3: Yeah?

795
00:35:37,356 --> 00:35:40,236
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I know that's not your primary goal,

796
00:35:40,276 --> 00:35:42,076
Speaker 1: and it's a compelling case for why that's not your

797
00:35:42,076 --> 00:35:44,716
Speaker 1: primary goal. But like, do you get to that just

798
00:35:44,836 --> 00:35:48,276
Speaker 1: by incremental engineering tweaks? Are you ever gonna have to

799
00:35:48,396 --> 00:35:52,556
Speaker 1: like have some you know, physics level technological insight or

800
00:35:52,556 --> 00:35:54,716
Speaker 1: do you just think you can keep optimizing and optimizing

801
00:35:54,716 --> 00:35:56,956
Speaker 1: what you're doing and you'll sort of eventually get to

802
00:35:57,476 --> 00:35:58,716
Speaker 1: more energy out than you put in.

803
00:35:58,876 --> 00:36:01,636
Speaker 2: Now we'll need we'll need we'll need physics optimization too.

804
00:36:01,756 --> 00:36:04,076
Speaker 2: Like so, and even going from phase one to Phase two,

805
00:36:04,156 --> 00:36:06,916
Speaker 2: it was it was new technology. Yeah, but the truth

806
00:36:06,996 --> 00:36:09,876
Speaker 2: is through practice and building over time, it's a different

807
00:36:09,876 --> 00:36:12,796
Speaker 2: path and you have a different technology evolution path than

808
00:36:12,796 --> 00:36:15,316
Speaker 2: trying to go straight to the endgame. And so and

809
00:36:15,356 --> 00:36:17,836
Speaker 2: it's pragmatic, right, You're always building systems that are doing

810
00:36:17,916 --> 00:36:21,116
Speaker 2: work for customers, and so it's cost effective built into

811
00:36:21,156 --> 00:36:23,796
Speaker 2: the model, and it's pragmatic built into the model, and

812
00:36:23,836 --> 00:36:26,476
Speaker 2: that's just how you design new technology. But what I'll

813
00:36:26,476 --> 00:36:28,636
Speaker 2: say is, we have our own technology that we like

814
00:36:28,756 --> 00:36:32,356
Speaker 2: for scaling into phase three, recycling and ultimately energy. But

815
00:36:32,836 --> 00:36:35,156
Speaker 2: I'm the only fusion company that will say this, I

816
00:36:35,196 --> 00:36:37,796
Speaker 2: don't think it's more than ten percent likely to be successful,

817
00:36:38,716 --> 00:36:41,916
Speaker 2: and I don't think any given technology probably is. And

818
00:36:42,756 --> 00:36:44,596
Speaker 2: so what I do know, though, is we're going to

819
00:36:44,596 --> 00:36:47,956
Speaker 2: have an amazing delivery engine that can manufacture fusion systems

820
00:36:47,996 --> 00:36:51,196
Speaker 2: at scale, and whatever technology is successful, I know we

821
00:36:51,236 --> 00:36:53,996
Speaker 2: will have a role to play in bringing this economically

822
00:36:54,036 --> 00:36:54,596
Speaker 2: to the world.

823
00:36:54,756 --> 00:36:56,276
Speaker 1: When you say you don't think it's more than ten

824
00:36:56,356 --> 00:36:59,276
Speaker 1: percent likely to be successful, you mean the particular technology

825
00:36:59,356 --> 00:37:02,276
Speaker 1: you are betting on using. Yeah, you think it's very

826
00:37:02,356 --> 00:37:04,556
Speaker 1: unlikely that it will work to put out more energy

827
00:37:04,596 --> 00:37:06,556
Speaker 1: than you put into it. It probably won't. It probably

828
00:37:06,596 --> 00:37:10,196
Speaker 1: won't do that. And to be clear, cost effective effectively right, Yeah,

829
00:37:10,356 --> 00:37:13,516
Speaker 1: for electricity, Yes, But you're saying you're learning all of

830
00:37:13,556 --> 00:37:15,876
Speaker 1: these things about the engineering, about the nuts and bolts

831
00:37:15,916 --> 00:37:19,476
Speaker 1: that will be relevant no matter whose technology works exactly.

832
00:37:19,516 --> 00:37:21,076
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. I feel like, if you

833
00:37:21,076 --> 00:37:24,996
Speaker 1: think your technology probably won't work, you you must hope

834
00:37:24,996 --> 00:37:28,476
Speaker 1: somebody else's will, right, Like, if somebody else does it

835
00:37:28,516 --> 00:37:30,676
Speaker 1: before you do it, will you be happy? Will that

836
00:37:30,716 --> 00:37:31,956
Speaker 1: be good in your mind?

837
00:37:32,356 --> 00:37:33,996
Speaker 3: Yes, it would be fantastic.

838
00:37:34,196 --> 00:37:37,276
Speaker 2: And it's kind of funny because you know it's becoming

839
00:37:37,276 --> 00:37:40,916
Speaker 2: a competitive world in the fusion space, and like, I'm

840
00:37:40,956 --> 00:37:43,636
Speaker 2: cheering for everybody I love. Really, i would love to

841
00:37:43,676 --> 00:37:46,876
Speaker 2: see anyone be successful and moving forward. And look, we're

842
00:37:46,876 --> 00:37:49,676
Speaker 2: going to have an awesome economic and manufacturing engine. We'd

843
00:37:49,676 --> 00:37:52,116
Speaker 2: love to work with whatever technology prevails. At the end

844
00:37:52,156 --> 00:37:54,396
Speaker 2: of the day, We're going to continue to adapt our

845
00:37:54,436 --> 00:37:56,596
Speaker 2: strategy and invest in what looks like it's doing great,

846
00:37:56,676 --> 00:37:58,556
Speaker 2: just so we can move fast. But this is a

847
00:37:58,596 --> 00:38:00,876
Speaker 2: tool that I want to see in my lifetime come

848
00:38:00,916 --> 00:38:04,276
Speaker 2: to humanity. And like that means looking across the page

849
00:38:04,356 --> 00:38:07,236
Speaker 2: at everything, just like we looked at fusion holistically, right,

850
00:38:07,316 --> 00:38:10,316
Speaker 2: not just the energy. We're not dogmatic to a single

851
00:38:10,596 --> 00:38:12,756
Speaker 2: technical approach. We're going to learn a ton in the

852
00:38:12,836 --> 00:38:15,356
Speaker 2: next ten years with all this funding going into all

853
00:38:15,396 --> 00:38:17,996
Speaker 2: these different approaches, and I'm really really excited to see

854
00:38:18,076 --> 00:38:18,836
Speaker 2: what comes out of it.

855
00:38:21,796 --> 00:38:23,916
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.

856
00:38:36,036 --> 00:38:39,516
Speaker 1: Let's finish with the lightning round. What's one thing you

857
00:38:39,556 --> 00:38:41,716
Speaker 1: would do if you had free, unlimited power?

858
00:38:42,156 --> 00:38:44,996
Speaker 2: One thing I would do? Well, you know, all goes

859
00:38:45,036 --> 00:38:48,076
Speaker 2: back to minority childhood and space and star trek, right, Like,

860
00:38:48,356 --> 00:38:51,916
Speaker 2: I'd love to build a series of spacecraft that would

861
00:38:51,956 --> 00:38:54,476
Speaker 2: go back and forth from the Earth to Mars and otherwise.

862
00:38:54,556 --> 00:38:56,396
Speaker 2: I think, you know, if you've got a fusion engine

863
00:38:56,476 --> 00:38:59,636
Speaker 2: that becomes very very fast and very very easy, you know,

864
00:38:59,796 --> 00:39:03,876
Speaker 2: this nine month travel time is actually insanely problematic for humans.

865
00:39:04,916 --> 00:39:06,836
Speaker 2: The radiation you get up in space is going to

866
00:39:06,836 --> 00:39:10,476
Speaker 2: be very damaging over those timeframes. And so you know,

867
00:39:10,516 --> 00:39:12,716
Speaker 2: we're even if we start to build a city on Mars,

868
00:39:12,756 --> 00:39:14,876
Speaker 2: it's going to be very harmful for people just to

869
00:39:14,876 --> 00:39:15,596
Speaker 2: get there and back.

870
00:39:15,836 --> 00:39:18,716
Speaker 1: You think you'll go to space, well, you know, it's funny.

871
00:39:18,756 --> 00:39:20,476
Speaker 2: I used to always want to be an astronaut, but

872
00:39:20,556 --> 00:39:24,196
Speaker 2: the the reality of very tiny, closed in capsules is

873
00:39:24,236 --> 00:39:26,396
Speaker 2: something that I'm not like super big fan of. So

874
00:39:26,796 --> 00:39:29,236
Speaker 2: if we had starships or something a little more spacious,

875
00:39:29,236 --> 00:39:31,396
Speaker 2: I'd love to, but not so much in today's way.

876
00:39:31,436 --> 00:39:34,516
Speaker 1: Mean you need you need fusion power to build your

877
00:39:34,596 --> 00:39:37,036
Speaker 1: Catillac Big cadillact space.

878
00:39:37,636 --> 00:39:38,916
Speaker 3: Exactly right, exactly right.

879
00:39:38,956 --> 00:39:40,796
Speaker 1: If you weren't working on fusion, what would you be

880
00:39:40,836 --> 00:39:41,236
Speaker 1: working on?

881
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Speaker 2: I'd probably also be working on the same thing. I

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00:39:44,436 --> 00:39:47,236
Speaker 2: do think like even with fission, there are ways to

883
00:39:47,316 --> 00:39:50,956
Speaker 2: build uh spacecraft that can go to and from the

884
00:39:50,996 --> 00:39:53,396
Speaker 2: different planets in the Solar System very cost effectively and

885
00:39:53,436 --> 00:39:54,156
Speaker 2: fairly quickly.

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00:39:54,436 --> 00:39:55,116
Speaker 3: Fusion will be.

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00:39:55,076 --> 00:39:56,436
Speaker 1: Fast, but we can we can get that.

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00:39:56,716 --> 00:39:58,316
Speaker 3: We can get the time down to a couple of months,

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00:39:58,356 --> 00:39:59,196
Speaker 3: probably with fission.

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Speaker 1: If you go anywhere in the Solar System, where would

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00:40:01,196 --> 00:40:01,396
Speaker 1: you go?

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00:40:02,196 --> 00:40:03,076
Speaker 3: You're in the Solar System?

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00:40:03,076 --> 00:40:04,836
Speaker 1: You want to do anywhere in the galaxy? I don't care,

894
00:40:04,876 --> 00:40:05,636
Speaker 1: it's just a question.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, if you could go anywhere in

896
00:40:08,036 --> 00:40:09,996
Speaker 2: the galaxy, it'd be great to go to some place

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00:40:09,996 --> 00:40:13,236
Speaker 2: where you could witness like a supernova happening from close

898
00:40:13,356 --> 00:40:16,596
Speaker 2: range without being obliterated. The world's most spectacular fireworks show

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Speaker 2: would be something to see.

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Speaker 1: Greg Pifer is the co founder and CEO of Shine.

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Speaker 1: Please email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. We

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Speaker 1: are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's

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Speaker 1: show was produced by Trinamanino and Gabriel Hunter Chang, who

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Speaker 1: was edited by Alexander Garreton and engineered by Sarah Bruguheer.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll be back next week with

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Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.