Good morning, everyone. I am George Gianarikas, one of Canaccord Genuity's Sustainability Analysts. Thank you to everyone for coming to our 46th Annual Growth Conference here in Boston. We are very happy to have with us here the team from Terra Innovatum, an emerging, super interesting nuclear microreactor company. With us from Terra is Massimo Morichi, Chief Strategy Officer, who has a presentation. Please, go ahead, Massimo.
Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for being here and discover really Terra Innovatum and SOLO technology. Our mission is to create, with the safety by design, a power unit. I like to call it power unit, something which is available all the time for long term to provide power and, really a project which has been conceived to accelerate and speed to market, in a way that could be easy to scale, and to really evolve, to create a large- potential power supply units. The design of our project has been complete. We start already, in January 2025, the licensing with U.S. NRC. We fully follow the normal regulator process, which is well in progress. We are fully funded because the company, at the SPAC, received $130 million, and this has been fully funded to execute up to the first-of-a-kind reactor, which is expected to be in 2028.
We are building this reactor as we speak because we already have secured the supply chain. The supply chain is based on supplying components which are already qualified. Our design has been start with the concept to be extremely safe by design, by physics, and with the components which are available and commercially available and qualified. That is why we are very much aware about the cost, that is why we are very much aware about the real possibility to execute the project in time. That is why we are able to secure our supply chain. SOLO is a micromodular reactor designed to deliver 1 MW electric and 4 MW thermal in a compact 10 cu m , and with an estimated levelized cost of energy of $0.07 over 45 years of operation within 97% uptime.
This is a very interesting module because we like to call it a power unit, like a battery. The unit, in fact, the reactor is inside this concrete building, which is 10 m x 10 m high, 10 m x 10 m x 10 m. This represent, in fact, as you see people around it, represent really the border. You can sleep close to this reactor, and you will get less than 1 mSv per year, which is the actual normal regulation on the radiation exposure. This is really unique because it means that we can claim in our reactor that there is no exclusion zone, and the reactor can be built one close to the other. That is why we provide this image of scalability and placing multiple units, one close to the other. I said, this safe by physics is very simple.
A nuclear reactor, as you know, one of the aspects is to exchange the heat on the reactor itself and to extract the heat. All the nuclear reactors today, you shut down, you keep pumping water to cool down the reactor. Our reactor by physics, does not need really water because it has been designed with the helium on the first circuit for cooling. The heat extraction of the reactor is, in terms of power, is very low because the reactor is 1 MW electric. The extraction heat is only a few percent of the total power. We are talking about 30 kW. 30 kW is like 15 hair dryers that you need to really exchange in the air, in natural conventional air. We do not need really lots of circulation system, and by physics, it has been designed completely safe.
We factory build the component, and we integrate the component. Actually, the scheme of the logic of our model is we buy components which are qualified, and we do the assembly on site in a contract manufacturing place. That is really one way to streamline all the activity, and also is the only micromodular reactor which is using low-enriched uranium. Low-enriched uranium is the material which is today available and is today used in all light- water reactors worldwide. You probably know that most of the projects which are being conceived in microreactor are not using low-enriched uranium, but using high-enriched uranium. High-enriched uranium is not yet commercially available and has to be produced. The terms of production is going to take long because obviously you need to build the first centrifuge, an enrichment plant to produce it and then to use it as a fuel.
We start today to say, "Our design is using existing fuel." We are not going to wait 10 years. We can use also HALEU in our reactor, and eventually it will last even longer with HALEU, but we can deliver this today because the fuel is available today. That is an important aspect and differentiator of our. It actually simplifies also the scheme of the, generally, the licensing of the microreactor, because it is not proliferant. As you may know, the high-enriched material is proliferant and is considered as a potential risk for proliferation. We want to deploy our reactor everywhere. That is why we start with this concept. There should not be any restrictions.
It is a versatile application because you can use it and scale and really multiply the number of reactors, and eventually you can create a different scheme of operation with multiple units, one close to the other. You can scale the power. The fact that our first-of-a-kind reactor is equal to the NOAK. There is no change between our first unit, which we are going to deploy, you will see in St. Louis, Illinois, from what is going to be commercially available. It is exactly the same. This will be straightforward. The day that we started the operation of the first-of-a-kind, we started the commercial operation of it. That is the scheme. I mentioned that there is no exclusion zone because I was referring to the fact that the reactor is safety and contained in this containment of concrete of 10 m x 10 m x 10 m.
It is proliferant- resistant because it is using low-enriched uranium. It is safeguards by design, runs 24/7 on the site, and no hydrogen and no explosion or melting risk. We do not use water, we use helium. Water is beautiful for, I mean, the light- water reactor, high power, but water is corrosive. Water creates turbulence and fretting of the fuel assembly which are inside the reactor. Our flow is helium, so we do not have any fretting, no, let us say, mechanical stressing, and then we do not have also the problem of the explosions because we do not have hydrogen. When you have hydrogen, then this can create eventual explosion. It is not our case. This is just to remind the main advanced reactor program, which are relying still on R&D. We are not in R&D. We are in licensing. The R&D is complete. Now we are just progressing our licensing path.
I mentioned about the fact that the supply chain is secure because we based the design on the existing component. We do not, let us say, develop a design and look for develop, I mean, the parts of it. We start from existing components qualified under the ASME Standard International to be used and under the quality program for nuclear. The licensing is well on progress, and the FOAK is expected to be at the end of 2027, commercialization on 2028. Interesting aspect, the U.S. NRC has been start to develop the Part 57, which is a new path forward for the licensing for micromodular reactor, because the government realize that they wants to really accelerate, I mean, the micromodular reactor deployment. Part 57 is perfectly aligned with our design and is facilitating the licensing path.
It is expected to come out at the end of September, probably will be by the end of the year. This will simplify the licensing in general, but especially for our design, it looks like the Part 57 has been built based on our specification, because we are a low-risk profile reactor, we are a non-proliferant reactor, and we are 1 MW electric, and the FOAK is a NOAK, which means when we have executed the first-of-a-kind, we can do any commercial site, and we can multiply the number of unit by site for the Part 57. This would be tremendous important impact for the deployment, also for data centers, for instance. This will facilitate the opportunity on a specific site. When you have done the environmental assessment of it, then you can scale unit, one close to the other.
This would be an acceleration project. In fact, as I mentioned already, the FOAK is equal to the NOAK, so this is facilitating our progress in a commercialization, and this would be facilitated by law, by the Part 57 in this case. We have secured the supply chain for all the components. With our supply chain, we have not only secured the component for the first-of-a-kind, but we also analyze with them the needs for the growth in terms of quantities. We are building with them the path forward for the commercial ization, which is very important to us. We are talking about hundreds of units, and so we need to be ready with the material and with the components. There are no limits on the components and material. Lead time is basically today for the first-of-a-kind, below generally eight months.
In a regular production facility, we expect to be within six months. This will be tremendously important because with the supply chain supporting the project and anticipating the order to them, they will prepare the elements which will be needed to deploy. This has been complete, has been formally announced publicly, and now we are ready, for instance, investing in some machining tool to fasten the production, for instance, of the graphite, which is part of our reactor. Just to give you an example. This is for the global deployment because it's non-proliferation. I want to step a little bit on this topic because it's so important, and the reason why we choose the non-proliferation, it's so important, too. It's not obvious for everyone, but you need to know that low-enriched uranium is really non-proliferant and is facilitating the deployment.
If you want to deploy a reactor which is using LEU and is safe here by design, we can do it even in Africa. If you have high-enriched uranium, you cannot do it. You can do it only with countries which are weapons state country under specific agreement with U.S. We are targeting commercially, internationally, the deployment of this reactor with no restriction, by design. That's very important. We have a strong traction on commercial activity. We have already a memorandum of understanding for more than 200 units, $4 billion pre-commercial commitments, basically. We signed a commercial letter of intent with Waiken for the deployment of SOLO, I think it was announced a week ago. This is also an important aspect. We are really moving forward to the binding agreement as we speak. This is really an important step.
We strongly believe that we can announce shortly the commitment for our customers as a binding. This will be a tremendously important impact. Our market is towards the infrastructure, obviously the utilities, where with units between one and five units, we can support industrial factories, medical healthcare, and data centers. Data centers, when you have a technology ready, data centers, as you, I think, heard about it, they're ready to invest a huge amount of money when the technology is ready. We are the most advanced in the process of licensing. You can go to the ADAMS system, U.S. NRC website, you can see where we are in terms of licensing. It's public information. Then we think we will be the first to be able to deliver a first-of-a-kind unit. The markets, however, are very large.
We could probably technically saturate our capacity of production, but we are looking in parallel to those four segments because they will give us an important presence in different segments and market. The first of deployment site will be in Admiral Parkway, Illinois. Rock City, as you can see from the picture, is a limestone, a very large site, where inside this limestone, there are miles of tunnels with deposit of foods and also the National Archives for United States. They expect to implement also data center inside because of the cooling, and this will be the first location where we have already signed a memorandum of understanding for 50 reactors on that site. They expect to expand with a data center shortly. This is a strategic first location for us and is a perfect location to execute the first of a kind.
Then we have signed an agreement with Uvation for 100 reactors for data centers, and we are talking shortly for some important project which are in progress. I think we will be able to evolve this memorandum of understanding to more binding commitments. Obviously, we are progressing with our licensing, which today is one of the key aspect to execute the project. Then we also signed agreement with Ameresco, and we established a partnership with them for the deployment of multiple reactors in different sites, which are for the U.S. government, but also for industrial site. We signed an agreement for 50 reactors with them and ready to deploy. They have lots of interesting engineering capability, which could also be eventually useful for deployment of a reactor at the same time. They are expert in energy deployment in DOE and DOD sites.
This is just a recap of the value propositions for the different segments which I was referring. Basically, one common aspect to all of them is the scalability and the easy integration. To give you an example, for a data center, if we put together multiple units, if we want to provide 20 MW electric, we don't need 20 SOLOs. We will need only 16 SOLOs, which means 16 units by 1 MW, because we will use a common turbine, and a common turbine which will give us up to 20 MW electric, plus the thermal, which will be available eventually to do cogeneration. The scale in modularity gives you the chance not only to be in the Part 57 licensing and expand rapidly, but also when you scale, you can optimize using an adapted turbine to do it.
It's public information that we signed an agreement and also order with Baker Hughes for the turbine. This has been already secure for the supply chain, also the turbine, and this is well in place, and they also are working with us on the evolutionary steps for the turbine, for the scale-up in terms of nodes. We call it SOLO nodes, when you scale the units in terms of quantities. Existing cash expected to fully funded. I mentioned that we've been fully funded with the SPAC $130 million. We have, as of today, $96 million, and we expect $70 million to fund all the activity up to the first-of-a-kind, including all the material.
We are perfectly on track, and actually, we have more money than expected to complete this, which means we have also the possibility to anticipate even materials and more elements with our supply chain. Which is a perfect situation to be, because we don't have to be funded, at least for the next three years. Important aspect of it, our target is to get the order with pre-payment. Actually, there are lots of positive signs for it because, as you heard about, for instance, for data center, they're really ready to invest quite lots of money, even as prepayment if they have energy available. We are in a very good shape from a financial point of view, and I thank you for the attention and ready for any questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Massimo. I'll take a seat next to you, maybe ask you a couple of questions. Do not want to sit—
Oh, thank you.
—You mentioned the multiple applications that your micromodular reactor is potentially useful for. One that we've talked about in the past is mining specifically. I'm curious, you have this Part 57 that appears to be the most optimal pathway for regulatory approval for your reactor size. How leverageable is that to other geographies? Say there are mines in other continents that can use your reactor. How easy is it to take that, if it happens, when it happens, and then apply it to places in Africa, places in Latin America?
Very good questions, and thank you for that question because it's really important. There is a strong attention worldwide to what is coming up with the Part 57 regulation, because this is a unique opportunity for some countries to get back into nuclear. Basically, to give you an example, Italy, the decreed law has been approved by the Council of Ministers, has been approved by the First Chamber, and is under discussion on the Senate, which probably this will turn with a positive vote with the law. At the end, then you need to have established a safety authority, and the Italian safety authority already signed an agreement with the U.S. NRC for getting the support from them to really prepare the licensing for micromodular reactor, because it's never been done before. There is a strong attention all countries to what NRC, U.S. NRC is doing.
Many countries are signing bilateral agreement to facilitate the possible implementation of the Part 57 in the specific countries. For what is specific, Africa is a good question. I was in Africa a few months ago, and I was surprised because Africa has been signed agreement with Rosatom for deployment of a larger reactor. Many countries actually. Nothing is happening because, at the end of the story, to deploy a reactor, which is even from support and financed by Russia, at the end, they need to put on the table more than $1.5 billion.
They are struggling with that. When they heard about our project, I was surprised the rest of the week, everyone was considering SOLO like the only possibility to be implemented because they discover what? They discover that this is a reactor which is non-proliferant, which means this will be accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They discover that this is easy to be financed because a reactor costs $17.5 million for the first load. 15 years, it is lasting 15 years. Then they can also get the support to be implemented because of the regulator. They can also sign agreement through the International Atomic Energy Agency to get the Part 57. For them, it is a perfect combination. Many countries we are receiving this type of attention, including countries in Asia—
Interesting.
—For the same reason.
Well, looks like we are about on time. Thank you so much. That was great. Appreciate it, Massimo.
Thank you.