Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining H.C. Wainwright's 27th Annual Global Investment Conference. My name is Max Mahr, and I'm with H.C. Wainwright. Now I'd like to turn our attention and welcome Oscar Leandro, VP Corporate Development for NANO Nuclear Energy Inc.
Thanks, Max. Well, thanks everyone for joining, both in person and online. I'm Oscar Leandro. I'm the VP of Corporate Development at NANO. I've been with the company for way over a year now, and a lot of my work has to do with our go-to-market strategy, growth strategy, and how can we achieve our goals of vertical integration within the industry. So NANO Nuclear Energy is a company that focuses on developing nuclear energy projects by integrating the micro reactor developments with fuel processing cycle benefits. So we both are developing solutions in the fuel processing, in the fuel life cycle, as well as partnering with other companies to solve for issues within the industry, which are the main bottlenecks to deliver our reactors into the market. So our investment thesis is that our reactors are fully modular.
I'll talk more about them later, but with our deployment strategy, we know we can achieve low energy needs from, for example, mining companies, small operations for electrification of fleets in cities, all the way up to data centers, and we're in the middle of the center of this so-called nuclear renaissance. We know that this has years in the making, and we're standing on the shoulders of giants right now, but it is the combination of major clean energy and reliable energy needs for new infrastructure projects, sustainability and independence from foreign supply chains, and great bipartisan support. We are seeing it. We saw it with the last administration with the ADVANCE Act, and we're seeing it right now with the flurry of executive orders to support nuclear development, and what are the benefits of nuclear compared to wind and solar, for example?
Beyond the wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine all the time, we have a greater baseload capacity. We are not geographically restricted, and we have the capacity to grow and scale from 50 MW to 1 GW of energy produced by nuclear reactors. 31 countries are tripling their commitments to nuclear developments. There are 140 companies doing deals and investments right now in nuclear energy. We're seeing banks and users from both investment and big developers starting to embrace nuclear as the new alternative source of energy. We see it. We saw it last week with the dinner at the White House with all the technology executives where they were committing to building more infrastructure capacity in the United States. They're committing to GW of AI training, machine learning, computing, defense data centers. All of that requires a lot of energy.
The commitments we're seeing them from Microsoft and founder Bill Gates with the investment in TerraPower, but not only TerraPower, but the reactivation of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. We saw with Amazon and their commitment with X-energy and for the new developments of AWS. Google with their investment in Kairos Power, Oracle, NVIDIA, Meta. All of Meta has issued the new RFP with Constellation to follow up Microsoft on increasing their nuclear load to build and co-locate data centers with them. What is the big advantage and differentiator of our reactors? Well, micro reactors are different than SMRs. There are economies of scale. We can bulk up and create benefits in the same footprint of land, multiple reactors. We are safer. The fuel needs of one of our reactors are for 10 years.
It's the same amount of fuel that you have in an SUV for any fuel out that you have, so less than a week. It's fully modular and assembly capacity on site. Our key, our flagship product is the KRONOS MMR reactor. It's a modular system of high temperature gas cooled reactor designed ideally for data center and energy intense operations. We use helium as primary coolant, and we can produce up to 15 MW of energy electric and 45 MW thermal. However, when you see that picture, you can imagine that we only built one per site. We built multiples. We've had projects that we have planned for 32, for 60 of these reactors in just one site, which enables for increased capacity. When we talk with clients, when we talk with potential customers, it's not about how many reactors you want.
It's about how much energy you need, and we do all the design and feasibility to know how many of KRONOS reactors would be on one site. Enrichment right now is at 9.9% with a goal of going to 19.9%. At 9.9%, which is what we call LEU +, we have a refueling time of three to four years depending on geography. At 19.9%, we will have a refueling time of over 10 years, so when we consider diesel generation, when we consider remote power communities and the different needs for refueling, it is a big advantage, and that is what a market that NANO is trying to overtake. The KRONOS MMR reactor, we're currently building. We currently have a construction permit to build in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will be our first construction in the United States.
And our first international construction will be in the Chalk River with the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. These are in partnerships with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to ensure the full prototype and the field scalability of our reactor and proof of concept of our reactors. We are one of the few companies with an approved design for construction. So where are we right now? We have a high technological readiness with substantial investment of over $120 million that the U.S. Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation did in the MMR design that we acquired at their bankruptcy.
Our licensing is well underway. We're one of the few companies that has a pre-construction license, as I said, with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And we're going through NRC pathway. And it's ideal for AI data center projects. But not only data center projects. We're talking with remote communities.
We're talking with mining companies. I just had a conversation around how can we provide clean energy to provide biofuels in the Midwest. Our reactor has a broader solution for different energy demands across the market in the United States and abroad. So we also have two other reactors that are complementary for different use cases. Our low QMR reactor, which produces 0.5-3 MW electric, originally planned for lunar exploration, space propulsion, and lunar mining, has the ability to also be used terrestrially for marine powering, flight power, and air powering. Our ZEUS reactor will be our transportable reactor that can produce 0.5-3 MW electric as well, thinking of a fully transportable reactor. We are currently in the process of doing already testing of the core for Zeus before going forward with the licensing process.
Zeus has a fully made in America life cycle developed by the head of the engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley. We know that vertical reactors are the flagship and what brings the interest. We're also very involved in the integration of the fuel supply chain, from uranium mining to the yellowcake to conversion and enrichment of uranium. All of this provides bottlenecks, and all of this provides possibilities. 80% of the marginal cost of energy comes from enrichment and conversion of the uranium. If we are able to cut 25% in those costs, we're increasing 10% of our margins. That is a differentiator that we see that we can bring to this market.
NANO recognizes the need to secure our own fuel supply chain, which is why we did an angel investment in LIS Technologies, an enrichment company that is part of the LEU task order with the Department of Energy. LIS Enrichment has been proven in the past by Cameco, and when, as we heard recently, Russia flooded the market with cheap helium fuel and cheap LEU fuel, we stopped proceeding with the testing for proving these technologies, but LIS is bringing it back, and they are in the process of developing their commercial enrichment capacity with the task orders from the DOE. We are looking at mergers and acquisition opportunities in the market for transportation service. We acquired a cask design for transport of helium fuel. GNS, German contractor, is helping with the manufacturability testing and licensing for our cask for helium fuel.
We're currently adapting it to also be able to transport TRISO LEU+ fuel needed to fuel our Kronos reactors. We will be pursuing further conversations with players in the transportation market. We are building, as we grow our company, we acquired a 23,000 sq ft facility in Illinois for our engineering and R&D team. We have a facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where we incubated originally LIS. We're building capacities internally to offer consulting services to end users. End users are looking for feasibility studies to adopt nuclear. How can they adopt the transition to nuclear? What would fit their bill? Also, what M&A opportunities are there in the nuclear space to increase our consulting capacity? NANO is collaborating with the U.S. government in several areas. We were recently awarded to become a phase II contractor for R&D at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.
We will be testing our reactor to provide energy resilience for military bases in the United States, and this program will also become a differentiator contractor with proven capacity with the Department of Defense, but we have also signed cooperative agreements with the Idaho National Laboratory to support advanced nuclear reactor technology. We were awarded a CRADA that enabled us to do some of our testing, especially for our Zeus reactor in INL. I mentioned that we are building the footprint in two of the states that are strategic to us, Tennessee, where it's the fuel development. We are in the same neighborhood as X Energy, Kairos, Y-12, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Illinois, which is going a bit under the radar right now, but it's the state with the largest output of nuclear energy in the United States.
It is where the conversion of uranium occurs in the ConverDyn facility. It is where Constellation has its HQ to be able to supply energy for the Meta and Microsoft contracts. In Westchester, we contracted a robotics company to do some of the testing for our ALIP technology, our annular linear induction electromagnetic pump for molten salt cooling, which will be used in molten salt reactors and has already gained traction to be our first product that we can sell to other nuclear companies or also space companies, because it's the most efficient cooling in space. We're about to start our core Zeus design non-nuclear testing in Westchester. Some MOUs that we have signed recently with Centrus, who we were just here for, who we just heard from, to provide the fuel for KRONOS reactors.
But moreover, I just came back from Argentina, where we were talking with Dioxitek, their conversion company, to further explore their capacities to conversion. We also were talking with UrAmerica, the largest uranium deposit in South America, that will have enough reserves to provide enough uranium for the United States. So by looking for integration with Western allied countries, we are able to de-risk not only the time we need to build the capacity in the United States, but also cut the dependency from Russia and China once and for all. In Africa, we've seen a lot of movement to adopt nuclear. NANO has been there showing face and answered their call with the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board for the stability of using micro reactors to power remote communities and industrial base.
With the Republic of Togo for water-cooled reactors to power their main cities and replace diesel generation, and with the Namibia Industrial Development Agency to look for ways in which NANO could support the industrialization of their uranium mining capacity. Namibia is currently the third largest uranium exporter in the world, fourth largest reserve, or fifth largest reserve in the world. We have a leadership team with vast experience in academic fields, financial fields, government engagement services, which if I talked about them, it would just take another 30 minutes to talk about all their achievements, but now I want to open the floor for questions.
Does the utilities require any subsidy to connect to the network?
It varies state by state. Ideally, utilities are a perfect client because they're operators.
The utilities, as the end customers, are seeing this bring your own power kind of business model, which we need to see how it evolves. Some states, Pennsylvania, I would say Illinois, are allowing for utilities to build microgrids for data center hyperscalers producers. We're seeing other states that are in discussions, I think mainly Maryland would be one of those examples, Virginia as well, where utilities would put the power into the grid and would be connected to the grid and then do the offtake directly. So you will put the power into the grid and then you take from the grid in whatever project you have. From a policy perspective, that's what makes the most sense. From a business perspective, there is more right now opportunity in the microgrid construction. For us as a company, we're happy with either.
Yes. Can you talk a little bit about the fuel rods? Are they the standard fuel rods? Are they different?
We just try to design fuel rods. It is a pebble compound for low-enriched uranium plus. It allows for connectivity and control of the reactor, so how much power you generate when you want to stop generating energy. It is an easier way. It allows to be combined with graphite. So it's covered by graphite, which helps with the main cooling system. So it's not standard, but we're seeing more and more reactors adopting TRISO designs for reactors.
What's the count of uranium? You were talking that it was four to six years of grid fuel, and now you're going from up to 10 years?
At 9.9, the Uranium fuel cycle, we're building capacity as a country and as an industry.
Right now, there is what we call LEU plus capacity, which is what this task order is building. A lot of the reactors that we're building with HALEU, low-enriched uranium, HALEU fuel are moving to LEU plus. And there's a lot of funding from the DOE to use LEU +. LEU + is from 5%-9.9%. We expect that the refueling needs at 9.8% and 9.87%, which is what our reactor will use, is every three to four years, depending on geography. Cooler climates, four to five. Warmer climates, closer to three. As we advance and there is HALEU-enriched capacity, we can make the same TRISO rod with HALEU. And at that power capacity, at 17% capacity standard, we believe that we can do 10 plus years of refueling.
And is that for virgin material or all?
It is purely about enrichment capacity. The process to make the TRISO is basically the same.
What about safety issues? How much of a land area do you need to surround your system? What are the issues if there's an issue? And then as well in Africa, when you go there, is there any terrorists or kind of issues involved in putting plants in Africa?
Okay. I'm going to answer first the U.S. component of the question. So we expect that the base footprint of our reactor is four acres. And in four acres, we really are only using 0.5 acres for the reactors. The amount of fuel in one of our reactors is less than the amount that you will have in an SUV. When we talk about that, it's fully walk-away safe. There is no risk or very little to no risk of any problems with it with low enriched uranium at 9%.
You just put water and it cools. It is a very durable technology. And for the sake of time, going to the Africa component to it, we only talk about building reactors where there is a 123 Agreement signed within the United States and those countries. So as of right now, we haven't talked about putting any reactors in Africa. We're collaborating with countries that are studying the feasibility and what policies that we need to implement to put reactors there. The countries where a U.S. company can put a reactor on, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, would be countries that are one to three agreement signatories and are compliant with the policies and safety that require that. So if you go Google into the Department of Energy, one to three agreement signatory countries are mainly Western allied countries.
We're seeing a lot of inroads in Southeast Asia countries in the Pacific, so Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, which there are already a lot of advanced policy measures on the safety of a reactor. But in itself, nothing in our reactor is proliferation-grade material. Nothing in our reactor would make weapon-grade material technology.