Thank you all for joining us today for the beginning of AECOM drilling here at site. My name is Matthew Barry, Director of Investor Relations and Capital Markets here at NANO Nuclear Energy, and I'll be serving as the Master of Ceremonies today. Appreciate the round of applause. Before we begin, as a reminder, NANO Nuclear is a publicly traded company, and management will be making forward-looking statements today. Just understand that these forward-looking statements are covered under U.S. Securities Law. If you have any questions regarding our forward-looking statement disclaimer, please check out this slide on our website. Today's event will have remarks from various distinguished guests and key stakeholders. These include NANO Nuclear Energy's management team, who will focus on the company's strategy, the widespread support for the project, as well as the value proposition of our technology. We'll also have the University of Illinois leadership here to speak about their strong support for the project. We'll have engineering, procurement, and construction management firm Hatch here, as well as construction firm PCL Construction, to highlight their support and strong interest in the project. We'll have an accomplished data center executive here to highlight the complex power needs of data centers and also touch upon why advanced nuclear solutions offer a compelling value proposition to address these power needs. We'll have a potential commercial partner here to highlight their interest in the KRONOS MMR for their infrastructure and manufacturing power needs, and we'll also have two NANO Nuclear Energy Executive Advisory Board members to highlight the applicability of the KRONOS MMR for various military applications. Following the prepared remarks, we'll host a Q&A session with management, and then that'll be followed by a lunch. We expect at the end of today's event everyone will leave here understanding why we internally at NANO Nuclear Energy are so confident that we can deliver upon our ambitious vision. With that, I'll hand it over to Susan Martinis, Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation here at the University. Good morning and welcome. It's such a privilege to be here. Such a beautiful day, a day we've waited for for a long time. I think I've been in my position for about eight years, and I can remember being briefed early on by Caleb about the opportunities here, so it's really exciting. It's a wonderful day to celebrate the next phase in the University's plans to site a micro modular nuclear reactor here at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I have to tell you again, those are not words that I've ever thought that would leave my mouth, but again, once you've heard Caleb brief you on the plans, it's so hard not to be excited about it. Projects like this are just beautifully aligned with our University's land grant mission to serve society, and of course, the State of Illinois is the nation's most nuclear state, so it's only fitting that this project should come to our campus. Some of you may know we hosted a reactor on campus before, not far from this site, but that's history. That's history, and we're just very, very excited about being part of the future. This project will help us power our campus and meet our clean energy goals, and there's never been a greater time where this shouldn't be an absolute priority. It'll open new research directions for our faculty, and that's going to set new frontiers that'll benefit far beyond our community, our state, and the nation. It's going to benefit the globe. It'll create incredible opportunities for students. It'll give them a leg up to go out into this industry, but also it gives us an opportunity to invest in that new workforce that's going to be so dearly needed. I'd like to thank NANO, the NANO team, for their confidence in our partnership and for their commitment to advancing this just super exciting technology. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is very, very proud to take this next step and partner toward a micro modular nuclear future. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Susan. I'm now very excited to bring on the stage NANO Nuclear Energy 's Founder, Executive Chairman and President Jay Yu. Hey everybody, thanks for coming here. It's an exciting time for nuclear energy, new nuclear technologies, and in the U.S. I just want to start off by telling you guys a funny story. When I met James Walker, our CEO, and I was recruiting him, he said to me, "You must be crazy. You're trying to start a nuclear technology company? I mean, I left nuclear. I started a new career. I left a new continent for it, and now you bring me back in?" I said, "That's right, James." Ever since then, let's fast forward. He also said, "There's no money in nuclear." I said, "Okay, so now we're here after raising $600 million, getting over reaching $3 billion market cap. Now, James, I think you're wrong about that." We captured the enthusiasm of Wall Street. We opted to go public early on, and we were faced with a lot of struggles and obstacles, but one thing people didn't know about us is we're born from grit, from grind. We're built as warriors and soldiers, so that's what we did. We sucked it up and with a little bit of luck and especially the acquisition of KRONOS MMR, now partnered with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, that has leapfrogged NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. now as a leading microreactor, not just in the U.S., but in the world. I'm very proud of what's happening. Obviously, as you can see on this slide, we've partnered with AECOM to drill the first site characterization here that we're going to use for a construction permit in Q1 to submit to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Also, NANO, obviously, we acquired a high TRL technology that had over $120 million spent over an eight-year period. Once again, NANO' s leapfrogged ahead in terms of the microreactor technology. It's a well-known high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. It came with dozens of patents. We're also advancing not just in the U.S., but in Canada as well. Once again, we raised over $600 million to date. We also have planned in place an additional almost $1 billion of financing. When people say this is impossible, we made it possible. Thank you. On top of that, in 2024, we were Wall Street's Cinderella story. We were the number one IPO performer in America, which once again shocked the world, I would say. We have a growing base of institutional investors. About two weeks ago, we raised $400 million. We publicly disclosed that some of the largest institutions in the world are now backing NANO. Once again, we continue to shock people. It doesn't shock us because, once again, we're built from nothing, from being grinders and being warriors, and this is what the American dream is about. It's about struggle. It's about being courageous and taking big leaps of faith, I would say. We've also built an Executive Advisory Board filled with former U.S. national leaders. We have some of them here today with us, like General Wesley Clark, retired Four Star General, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. We have Vice Admiral Joe Leidig as well. The U.S. is very eager to build out these new nuclear technologies, and there is a nuclear renaissance here, and NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. is a part of that renaissance. I just want to close off by thanking everybody for coming here, and I appreciate you, and we're very humbled, and we're going to put our heads down and continue to work. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. I'm now excited to welcome NANO Nuclear Energy Inc.'s CEO, James Walker, who will touch upon our differentiated strategy, key partnerships, and strong policy support. Hi everyone, thanks very much for coming out to our big event today. It's a great turnout, and even the weather's on our side today. It pays to name your reactors after gods. You got the gods on your side. Also, Jay mentioned that I did call him crazy, but I would like to point out that I said, "Look, I'll build you a wonderful reactor company. I'll build you a great nuclear company if you can raise the money." He was like, "No problem." At the time, I did think that was a big statement, and obviously he exceeded expectations on that front. Together I think we built a wonderful company, and it's got a great future. It's not hyperbolic or anything like that, just say I think we're going to be one of the world leaders in this sector. I won't go on too much about that because I've got a few other things to talk about, but I think it's a very important time in nuclear. I've been part of a nuclear renaissance before, and it sort of tapered off, but it's a very different time, and it's a very different time because of the interest that's coming into nuclear from the different areas. It doesn't matter if it's tech sector or data centers or industry in general. At the same time, the U.S. is looking to build back its infrastructure, but there's a reason why it's a very different prospect. The big light water reactors everyone's very familiar with, what we're building is very different. They're much more modular systems. We can now manufacture our reactors along a production line and mass produce them, so we can get economies of scale through numbers of reactors rather than economies of scale through the size of the reactor. That eliminates all sorts of other risks too. Construction times, overruns, all of those kind of factors factor into it. It's almost like industry's solution to get around some of the hurdles that have affected nuclear in the past. Even things down to the fuel is different. The worst disaster, I think, in U.S. history was Three Mile Island. Nobody died then, but that kind of disaster is just not possible with this next generation of reactors. The fuel is different. Not to mention just the higher melting temperatures of the fuel, but it's all contained too. It's a very different prospect, and it gives us an ability to deploy nuclear in a way that's never been done before. We can modular produce it. We can move all the components by road. We can assemble this. It doesn't matter if it's oil and gas sites, mining sites, remote habitation, island communities, data centers. We can deploy it. Military bases. It's going to be over the next few years once these start rolling out the door, and we'll roll out as many as we possibly can. It's going to be a very exciting time in nuclear. I think it'd be a very exciting time for industry in general because this is high baseload power. It can be deployed anywhere. It's going to be a very exciting time and a very, very, I would say, as innovative as like the 1950s and 1960s were in nuclear. There's a lot of work to be done. The nice part is we're coming into the industry at a time when all this opportunity is available to us. It's not just reactor systems. The whole nuclear fuel supply chain needs to be built back, and we're very happy to be part of that too. NANO. has related transactions in the enrichment space. We're looking at things as far as conversion and transportation here. The nice part is that being a dynamic company that's nimble, we can move into these areas, and we can establish ourselves as a cornerstone of the industry even ahead of when the reactors are ready to go out to market and be mass deployed. All of these different sectors, we're looking at mining. We're looking at conversion. We're looking at enrichment and deconversion and transportation. This will establish us as a business even before the reactors come online, but it'll also give us a more competitive product. By inserting ourselves now to de-risk our own reactors rolling out the door, we'll have a business, an established business, a successful business even before the reactors. Obviously, it's all in the aim of producing these reactor systems that can go out the door, and obviously that's why we're here. We'll demonstrate this system. We'll prove that it's effective, and it's efficient, and it'll serve the purposes of the next generation of nuclear power requirements. As part of what we've been doing, Jay has spoken to it already, putting together the right partnerships in place. I'm very grateful to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for all of their support on this. Obviously, this project would not be possible if they weren't completely behind it, and they've helped push it for us, and I can see a number of them here today that have pushed this along to enable this to go ahead. This will hopefully be one of the first, if not the first, microreactor to be built in the U.S. at full scale to be licensed, and then at that point, we'll be ready to roll reactors out of the door, and all the subsequent reactors will be licensed by the fact that this is being built. It's not just the University of Illinois. The state has also been enormously supportive. There have been incentives as well, and it's no accident we're here. This state has the most nuclear power powering it of any% of any state in the country. It's got that pedigree to it. It's a great place to build out the U.S.'s first microreactor system. We can demonstrate it here, and we can just carry on that Illinois legacy. There are other partners too that are here as well today. Hatch and PCL Construction, we can't build these things en masse unless we've got experts in the field that know how to build these kind of vessels, these kind of components, because obviously if you're trying to do things like reactor vessels or things like that, you're going to be spending 10 years getting yourself up to a point where you are competent enough to roll these out the door. We don't need to do that. There are companies that already can get certified in the time that it takes to get this reactor licensed, and then when we're ready to, we have a licensed reactor to roll out the door, they can roll the components out of the door, and we can mass produce these systems. The partnerships have been very important here. It goes beyond that too. At the federal level, there's never been this much support for nuclear, I think, in decades. I think even last year there was something like $8 billion- $9 billion of grants put out there for infrastructure support to build back the national infrastructure so we have the capability as a country, again, to be able to mass manufacture the fuel to go into the mass manufacture of reactors. It all ties together. Our timing is great. When Jay approached me a few years ago, this was before this nuclear renaissance, which is why I said he was crazy, but the timing was perfect, and we were able to take this onto the market at a time when it enabled us to be the best performing IPO of 2024. It's a very unique position to be in. Typically, something like nuclear would just not have that kind of market pull, but it does now because the demand is there. The investment is going into it, and it's something we need. It's an incredibly exciting time to be in nuclear, and it's also just wonderful to be part of an organization like this that is this dynamic, and that is pushing things along like this. We'll be a country leader. We'll be a world leader. I think it's already written right away. Hopefully that's a good summary of it, and I'll pass it over to Florent now, he's our Chief Technology Officer. Again, thank you very much all for being here today. Thank you. Thank you, James. Now, extremely excited to welcome Florent Heidet, our Chief Technology Officer and Head of Reactor Development, who's going to highlight and provide us a deep dive into the KRONOS MMR technology, as well as highlight its compelling value proposition. All right, good morning everybody. Very excited to be there. Now, maybe it's time to tell you what KRONOS is. You know, you're all there for it, but you know, I'll give you a quick overview of what the reactor is, the plans moving forward, and why it makes sense. First, looking at the picture and related to the work that's taking place today, this is an artist's rendering picture. It's in the middle of bedrock. We don't want to find bedrock. So far, AECOM, as mentioned, they haven't found any bedrock on the site, so good news. Don't trust the picture. KRONOS is what we call a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. This is one of the Generation IV or advanced reactors. This implementation in particular relies on very simple materials, helium. Why helium makes sense: it's already boiled, it's already a gas, it does not change phase. We're using for the fuel TRISO. This is one of the most resistant fuel forms. This is what was mentioned before. This is really a key enabler to the technology. It's been developed by the U.S. DOE program over the last few decades. This is not a new fuel form. This will be the first reactor to use that in a commercial reactor. In terms of the other material, graphite, steel, they are traditional materials. We're trying not to reinvent the wheel. We're not pushing with new materials. We're staying well within the envelope of what was done before and what's understood. This reactor, it's relatively small. We call it a microreactor because it is less than 100 MW thermal, but it's also small in size, which makes it much easier to deploy. It's also the performance. It is designed currently for 45 MW thermal, which means 15, a little bit more than that, 15 MW electric. The university is interested to use that electricity, but also to use the residual heat. The campus is using district heating to some extent, so you can use low temperature steam as a byproduct of the energy conversion to power and provide energy to the campus. This type of reactor only requires one ton of fuel. If you're not familiar with it, one ton of fuel could stand on that desk. Nuclear fuel is very, very dense, so it's a very small volume. The balance of plant, we're not reinventing the wheel, but the key aspect to understand, the nuclear heat goes to salt, solar salt. This solar salt is used across the world for concentrated solar plants. There's nothing new in there, but the key advantage of that is you can disconnect the power production for the nuclear reactor from the energy usage. This is key to NANO, to that technology, to enabling wide deployment opportunities. Overall, this is a Generation IV microreactor, so you'll find the typical attribute, which is passive safety, energy storage. It is road transportable because it is small, and I'll cover a bit more on the passive safety aspects of it. Keep in mind that although we call it an advanced reactor or Generation IV microreactor, this reactor technology was built in the 1950s. It was already built a long time ago, not in that format, not in that size, not with that implementation, but there is a story of building it before that we're leveraging to make sure that this is going to be a successful project. Now, this reactor we're looking at, or we should have a 3D projection of it, but it is a research reactor because this is supported by the university. You have to understand although it is a research reactor, in practice, the engineering realization of it is the same as a commercial unit. There will be no difference between what's built there and a commercial unit. This is just a categorization from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of the purpose of the university and how they're going to use the reactor. In terms of construction and everything that's going to be there, this will be the same as a commercial deployment. Like I was saying, KRONOS can come in different implementations. The reactor unit itself is going to be always the same, but you can have one reactor unit. That will be the case for the university. You can get up to 16 MW electric out of it. You could have a site where maybe you need a reactor on each corner of your large site. We can do that because those are small units, so this is easy to deploy, and you could have one control room that operates the four reactors, or you can look at large data centers where we will have a series of those together, so they will all be adjoined, and we can go to the GW level with that technology. It provides a lot of versatility in how we can implement it. This is why a lot of private partners have been very interested in leveraging it for their particular application. It goes from remote communities where they need one reactor, they need 10 MW of electricity, all the way through data center, we're looking at GW level plus implementation and everything in between, which is a lot of industrial heat needs, desalination, etc. In terms of what's a key enabler to the technology, this is really this principle of passive safety of TRISO-fuel. If you look at a reactor operating around us, like it was mentioned, Illinois is a state with the largest number of nuclear reactors in the United States. Wherever you are in Illinois, there's probably a nuclear reactor operating within 50 mi from you. I don't know what the nearest one from here is, so people from the university after me can point it out, but I live up in Chicago. There are a bunch of reactors within 20 mi. The difference is on this reactor, you have an emergency planning zone that is 10 mi. With this reactor, the emergency planning zone is zero miles. It is limited to the building itself, which means you can co-locate with anything. This is why building this one on campus presents no issues. Where I stand here with a reactor operating over there, I will not be in the emergency planning zone. It will be limited to just that plot over there. That's a huge difference in terms of even public acceptance and integration. The picture on the bottom left is a rendering of a project we are developing, a proposal. This is with 56 units. This is assuming all 56 units undergo a very severe accident at the same time, and if you're looking at the red contour, which is relocated right above the building, this is what defines your EPZ or emergency planning zone by NRC regulation. Even with 56 units going wrong at the same time, you're still limited really just to the site. The other thing that really makes this a very reliable and simple reactor is the passive nature of it. When something goes wrong, we don't need to take any action. We'll take an action, but we don't have to credit the ability of taking the action. All the physics, all the passive feedback guarantees that it stays safe and nothing wrong is happening with the reactor. The reason for that is simply because we have materials which have high thermal capacities, like the graphite. We have the fuel that can operate at very, very high temperature, and we are very far away from those temperatures, and all the radionuclides, all the activated products stay contained within the fuel. In terms of why micro reactors, and this really speaks to future development beyond this one, why micro reactors make very much sense, there are different aspects. Micro reactors are probably the best technology, the best option to deploy off the grid. If you have a site in the middle of Illinois or middle of Kansas or other states far away from grid, your option is to either deploy the grid for over a few hundred miles or to be fully independent from the grid. With micro reactors, you can become fully independent from the grid, and if you look at your cost of electricity that all of you are probably paying every month, look at the breakdown of the cost. Only a fraction of it is the cost of production. Most of it is transportation of electricity and other fees. While, you know, small factor, shape factor for micro reactor, if you're looking at the capital cost, pay amount of energy is going to be more expensive. Everybody understands the economy of scale. With micro reactors, you can have economy of numbers. If you deploy 10 small reactors together in the same site, there's going to be the economy of having built 10 times the same things. Historically, if you look at all the reactors we have in the U.S., not two of them have been the same, and they always were five or ten years apart. If you're building 10 reactors back to back in quick succession, the heavy industry has demonstrated that there is a learning curve and savings that are occurring. This is a curve on the top right, this is a representative curve that compares small modular reactors like ours, the red or orange curve, with a blue curve that, yes, maybe the first unit is less expensive for large deployment, but quickly and over time, and those numbers are not just our numbers. The national labs have a number of studies that show exactly the same trend. The other thing is if you're a data center, for instance, you need your AI machines to be running 24/7. You're not going to be tolerating that one month every 18 months we need refueling so the reactor will shut down. With micro reactors, what you do, you'll deploy them in an n + 1 configuration. You have always one reactor being maintained or refueled while you maintain the same baseload power. When we have this discussion with data centers, I can tell you they get very excited about it. This is kind of, you know, the illustration of why microreactors make sense. This is one unit single-handedly, so that's the top left point on this red curve, and obviously this is a single unit, so when we'll be doing refueling, it will go offline, but we'll demonstrate the feasibility of doing all of that. Not just talking about the path forward for NANO, especially in the state. You might have seen in the news over the last few months, we acquired a large facility in Oak Brook, Illinois. It's 30 minutes away from Chicago downtown. It's 20 minutes from O'Hare Airport, and this is two hours away from the university, so that's where I came yesterday from. It's up the street, literally. You make one turn, you drive for two hours, you're at the university. This is strategically positioned to support this project. Also, because it was mentioned, Illinois has a huge history of nuclear energy, so this is why we're strategically positioned there. You have seen also probably in the news a couple of weeks ago how the state has granted us and included us in a tax incentive program for that deployment. We've already hired over the last couple of months over 20 people. I think we are 25 people hired in the state. We're looking at hiring another 60 people by mid-2026. We're growing very fast in the state. We're developing that support and that expertise in the state. Just a side note, a lot of the people we interviewed, they actually happen to be graduates from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The loop is closed, and we have great candidates coming from this university. We're definitely looking forward to more of them being trained by the university. We're not just focusing on the development. This facility is obviously to demonstrate the fabrication of key components for the reactor. We will be making some of those components that will be loaded up and equipped on this reactor you see there. We're also developing very actively supply chain, building one reactor. It's easy. You can get a one-off component. If you're looking at future deployment, you need a full supply chain behind it to make sure that you're not being bottlenecked by the supply chain. That's all I have for you today. Hopefully, that gives you a good overview of what KRONOS technology is and our plans moving forward. I'm very excited to see so many people today. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Florent. I'm now excited to welcome Rashid Bashir, Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering here at the University of Illinois. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. All right. I didn't know I could bring slides. I would have brought slides and done a thing too, so I didn't get that memo, but I really appreciate everyone being here. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This is really exciting. I'd like to extend my appreciation to everyone here, including NANO Nuclear Energy Inc., AECOM, the State of Illinois, as well as my university colleagues in attendance, and thank you for everyone's support and partnership. I thank you, Jay, James, Florent, General Clark. It's an honor to meet you. Thank you for Senator Paul Faraci. I know he's here. I want to recognize him. Thank you for being here. He's right over back there. Mallory Wentworth from the Congressional Office from Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski 's office. Mallory's here. Also, Christopher Walton, who's the Deputy Manager for the City of Champaign. Thank you for being here. Also, Senator Chapin Rose also was here earlier. Thank you all for being here. Today is really a milestone in the development of a micro modular nuclear reactor on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I'm just so excited to see this collaboration between NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. and the University of Illinois and the Grainger College of Engineering. Our goal always has been, we live with this motto of having a bold vision and then turn that into transformational impact, and we do that in partnership with the right people. In the nuclear area and the NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. area, this is just a wonderful partnership. We're just so excited. For those of you who might not know, our college and our campus has been home to some of the most groundbreaking technologies that were developed here or that we partnered with key companies or individuals and brought them here. We're home to the ILLIAC, to the Mosaic. The first web browser was written here on our campus. The co-founders of YouTube, PayPal, the inventor of the transistor was here, John Bardeen, the only two-time Nobel Prize winner in physics, inventor of the LED. Blue Waters was an amazing partnership with the National Science Foundation to build the first supercomputer on a university campus was here. We're used to these big ideas and turning them into transformational impact. We're now actively driving the future of quantum with the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronic Park that Susan is overseeing in Chicago, driving the future of AI, the data centers of the future. This nuclear energy and the future of nuclear just fits right in the middle of all of these things, and we're just so excited. The work that has gone into this project up to this point has been very significant, and I really want to again recognize and appreciate all of the efforts by Professor Caleb Brooks of our Nuclear Engineering Department and the department itself. Many of the department faculty are here, so thank you for your leadership, Caleb, and look forward to continuing to advance that. As Director of the Illinois Microreactor Research Development and Demonstration Center, Professor Brooks has brought together the right people to provide the expertise needed in reactor physics, nuclear security, and energy economics, thus supporting the growth of sustainable nuclear generation for years to come. I know Katie Huff is here. She provided tremendous leadership at the DOE at the national level over the last few years as well, so thank you, Katie, for your leadership. We meet here today at a pivot point. The need for carbon-free, resilient, deployable, highly efficient clean energy systems requires focus, grit, hard work, dedication, and innovation. Our college is ready. We provide the place and the people to conduct rigorous research in these very important areas for national security and for the world at large. Through collaborative work, we can also demonstrate that micro modular reactors, these micronuclear reactors, play a very important role in energy generation and energy independence. Though the ground is being tested physically today, everybody here will agree that we stand on a metaphysically shifting ground. Technologies that require massive levels of electrical energy are growing by leaps and bounds, and that is just not sustainable. We have to turn to nuclear. The future requires the development of safe, on-demand, capable, and advanced commercial nuclear microreactors. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the Grainger College of Engineering, we are ready. Our sleeves are rolled up, and we're ready to begin building that future with our partners at NANO Nuclear. Thank you all for attending and for helping us take these very exciting next steps. Now that all of you are here, I have to do this. I-L-L and then I-N-I. I'm going to say I-L-L. That's what we do here at the end of every event. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for the remarks, Rashid. I'm now happy to welcome Caleb Brooks, Professor and Donald Biggar Willett Faculty Scholar here at the University. Thank you, Rashid. Thank you, Susan. Thank you to the Illinois leadership that's here. Thank you to the NANO team and AECOM for doing the drilling and the collaboration that we've had together. Thank you to the local community leaders and community members that have come. It's really great to be able to welcome you here. I don't care if it's a little cold. It's great that we're all here together. I'm Caleb Brooks. I'm a Professor, and I'm the Director of the Illinois Microreactor Demonstration Project. Some of you might be surprised that this event is happening on a university campus, but the taming of nuclear energy happened first at a university. Nuclear power technology was replicated, refined, scaled, and made accessible by universities. After the first demonstration of its peaceful use, it was universities where the technology was widely and rapidly deployed as research reactors that drove groundbreaking research in fundamental nuclear science and deployment of engineering practices that led to commercial power systems. In fact, the University of Illinois had a research reactor that operated safely for nearly 40 years in the heart of our campus. 25 university research reactors remain in operation in the U.S., continuing to fulfill the mission of supporting nuclear science and education. Today, the nuclear industry is evolving. New technologies are opening new opportunities. The Illinois Microreactor Demonstration Project is designed to ensure that opportunity is met with preparation, resolve, and capability. The project had humble beginnings. Myself, Professor Huff, Professor Kozlowski, we asked a simple question: How do universities accelerate and expand safe, clean, reliable nuclear energy? This question leads to one place, an unshakable realization that the University of Illinois is the perfect location to again drive nuclear demonstration into a new age for nuclear power. There are many, but I'll give you four reasons for nuclear microreactors to find an early home and where else the University of Illinois. First, small nuclear power technologies like the KRONOS MMR enable a complete reimagining of nuclear power. The 45 MW capacity packs a punch, and its small footprint and unmatched safety characteristics allow for microreactors to be deployed alongside existing power generation infrastructure. Nuclear power no longer has to be held hostage by the economics of grid-scale power. Universities like the University of Illinois are major energy users. We own and operate our own power generation infrastructure and transmission infrastructure, and therefore we can leverage our existing precedent for campus deployment to demonstrate new nuclear technologies like the KRONOS MMR in actual prototypic scenarios. Second, from this research setting, technology can be optimized for key markets like data centers, combined heat and power for process heat users, and end users who prioritize resilience like military installations and medical campuses. With these markets and new technologies' safety profile, new approaches to instrumentation, operations, maintenance, and plant monitoring can drive the nuclear industry to new heights. We can rethink the way we do all aspects of nuclear power. Industry-wide challenges like cybersecurity, energy storage, materials qualification, and better computational modeling can be directly addressed for all stakeholders to bear witness. Third, there is a revamped workforce that's needed for the nuclear industry, a workforce unlike anything the industry has seen, not just in those who will install, operate, and maintain these devices, but in those that will be required to interface with the technology and the new markets that they enable. The process heat engineers and technicians that feed high-temperature process heat to their chemical plant, the data center system engineers that rely on these new systems for clean, reliable power and cooling for their data centers, the soldier who will keep a microreactor operating because resiliency means operational readiness. The University of Illinois will be ready to train them all. Lastly, and I say this all the time, all roads for nuclear power go through public perception. Until we redeem the public perception of nuclear, all the science and engineering, all the innovation, all the potential is merely an exercise. This project is not about proof of concept. We have demonstrated and deployed gas core reactors. We understand the physics. We understand the materials. We understand the safety. This project is a proof of packaging. Can we take this inherently safe reactor technology and package it in such a way that it can be widely deployable and revolutionize a world that is starved for clean, reliable power? It is time for universities to once again step up and demonstrate clean nuclear power for the world to come, see, witness, and embrace clean, reliable power for all. Thank you all for joining us in this hard and very necessary work to revolutionize an industry. Thanks to the project team: Tim, Les, William, Ron, Dennis, Tomas, Angela, Jim, Rizwan, and the countless students who have been a part of it along the way and will continue to be an integral part of the project. We have a lot of work ahead. There'll be more engineering, more planning, a lot more paperwork, more obstacles, but also engagement and education and more progress. This is work that's worth doing. Let's do it. Thank you. Please join me in welcoming Paolo Mesiti, Director of Nuclear Projects from Hatch. Morning everyone. I'm here today to discuss how Hatch can support the successful deployment of NANO 's KRONOS MMR Energy System here at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Hatch is one of the largest privately held engineering, procurement, and construction management firms in North America, with 10,000 employees managing over $75 billion in capital projects around the globe. We've been active in the nuclear sector since the early 1970s, but what matters here for this project is that for the last decade, Hatch has been focused on the emerging SMR market. Ten years ago, we were engaged to perform Canada's first major SMR feasibility study at a time when most people thought nuclear meant GW-scale plants, decades-long construction schedules, and meaningless budgets. At Hatch, we started beating the SMR drum before SMRs were cool. That early engagement gave us experience that nobody else has. We've worked with X-energy, Terrestrial, ARC Clean Technology, GE Hitachi, Ultra Safe Nuclear, Kairos, Oklo, and of course NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. We've seen what works, but more importantly, we understand what doesn't. Hatch has been closely tracking NANO Nuclear Energy Inc.'s progress on the KRONOS MMR Energy System since its inception, and we understand what it takes to deliver a first-of-a-kind project. First-of-a-kind nuclear projects don't fail because of insufficient enthusiasm. I can see in this room there's plenty of enthusiasm. They fail because predictable technical challenges end up getting in the way. These challenges include systems that don't integrate properly, regulatory pathways that aren't clearly defined or understood, construction planning that doesn't account for site constraints, and quality programs that create bureaucracy without delivering any value. At Hatch, we've done this before. We specialize in exactly these problems. Our culture is built around one core principle. We live to solve the most difficult challenges our clients face. We design novel equipment for extreme environments for clients all over the world: high temperature, high pressure, corrosive, radioactive, you name it. Not just because it's interesting, but often because nobody else will do it. We engineer systems where standard design practices fall short, and novel, custom solutions are required. Our team has done work that others often walk away from. This isn't a sales pitch. We've supported X-energy's ARDP program. We're currently supporting the ongoing work at the Darlington New Nuclear, which is going to be the G7's first SMR, and we're supporting Canada's deep geological repository. All of these are first-of-a-kind projects in North America requiring solutions that didn't exist when we first set out to work on them. All of us sitting here understand that nuclear energy is the future. Renewables, while critical to provide clean power, face inherent limitations, unlike nuclear energy, which can provide 24/7 carbon-free power. Microreactors can help address critical infrastructure needs, not just as some distant future technology, but addressing infrastructure that's needed right now. The need is urgent, and to us, we see the applications as clear. Data centers, remote mines, and off-grid communities all need nuclear power sooner rather than later. Microreactors form an integral part of the energy mix needed to ensure security and decarbonize hard-to-reach sectors where conventional solutions tend to fall short. At Hatch, we serve heavy industry. Our clients, such as U.S. Steel, ExxonMobil, BHP, Rio Tinto, and Vale, all want to decarbonize their operations in remote locations while driving down the cost of energy. They need reliable, firming, and scalable energy solutions. Today, we find ourselves with a book of clients eagerly awaiting the first successful deployment of a microreactor, which will enable them to pursue the deployment of their own. All eyes are on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. What do we bring to this endeavor? We bring proven first-of-a-kind execution capability. We manage integrated project delivery teams for billion-dollar underground repositories and other critical infrastructure projects around the world. We've developed construction execution strategies for nuclear waste facilities where every decision has regulatory consequences, and our clients keep Hatch on speed dial for when they need to fix problems that others couldn't solve the first time. We specialize in technical execution that separates success from failure on first-of-a-kind projects. Again, site integration engineering, helping our clients navigate complicated regulatory and licensing frameworks, and supporting construction partners such as PCL Construction to execute builds on highly constrained sites. Hatch has the technical depth to solve the difficult problems, the first-of-a-kind experience to navigate uncertainty, and the execution discipline to help NANO. deliver on schedule and on budget. When novel reactor designs need to integrate with existing infrastructure, when regulatory pathways are untested, and when construction must happen on a constrained site, we don't hesitate. We rise to the challenge. We're here, and we're ready to support the UIUC and NANO. Thank you. Please join me in welcoming Peter Tawfik, Director of Nuclear Operations from PCL Construction. Good morning, everybody. I'm Peter Tawfik, Director of Nuclear Operations with PCL Construction. Firstly, I'm relieved to hear that there's no bedrock underneath here. That's perfect for me. One of the big exciting questions here today is what is the plan for delivery? As a construction partner, I'm here to talk about three things. One, who is PCL Construction? Two, how are we going to construct not just this project, but the mass-scale deployment of this exciting KRONOS technology and why we are believers in NANO's mission. PCL Construction is one of the largest general constructors in North America. We do over $12 billion annually in civil infrastructure, heavy industrial work all across North America. We are 100% employee-owned, which is a very unique culture. We deliver large-scale projects for numerous clients in the oil and gas, petrochemical, mining, and power generation sectors. We are fully qualified to deliver nuclear construction projects and have delivered over 60 GW of both conventional power and solar power all across this continent and Australia. We deliver up to $4.5 billion worth of large-scale EPC projects. As a tier one constructor who is financially strong, we are highly bondable, have an excellent reputation with the financing community, and are capable of delivering this project. PCL Construction supported NANO's predecessor USNC with pre-construction activities, constructability of the design, and we have a familiarity of the technology as well as competitors in the advanced reactor space, all key factors for success on this project. PCL Construction is committed to supporting NANO and continuing pre-construction, which means supporting NANO's selected engineering partner, Hatch, to ensure the design is construction-friendly, modular, and incorporates industry learnings not just from the nuclear space, but more importantly from other industrial sectors that have experienced large-scale builds in the past. PCL Construction owns and operates fabrication and module facilities, and all of this means that PCL Construction is ready now to deliver the best-in-class scaled and rapid deployment of the NANO KRONOS reactors across North America by doing the reactor fabrication, the module fabrication, and delivering the onsite construction. Large-scale SMRs and grid-sized reactors are highly valuable. However, it's presently not possible in those applications to achieve rapid deployment or provide energy to locations with infrastructure or market limitations. KRONOS, however, provides a meaningful opportunity to host sites and off-takers that are not connected to electrical infrastructure or cannot accommodate large amounts of energy. KRONOS presents a unique opportunity to accelerate accessibility of nuclear power. This is due to its unique design that is highly modular relative to competitors. From a constructor's perspective, the KRONOS design can utilize the benefits of modularization to a high degree relative to large nuclear projects, and more modularization means more standardization, which means quicker deployment and reduced cost per plant. Simply, the KRONOS microreactor can accelerate the goals of this nuclear renaissance by deploying a clean energy option to further reaching applications while creating energy sovereignty and reliability. To close, since I'm going to be living here for a little while, I figured I need to embrace this. I-L-L. I-L-L. There you go. Thank you very much. Please join me in welcoming Matthew O’Hare, Certified Data Center Specialist and Managing Director at Power Construction, as well as VP of AFCOM Chicago. Good morning. I'll be able to keep it short. I think we only have 12 pages here, so bear with me. My name is Matthew O’Hare. I'm the Managing Director of Power Construction's Data Structures Group. Power Construction is a Chicago-based general contractor. Next year, we're celebrating our 100th year anniversary. Just for reference, we are the builder who are constructing the hyperscale data center at the former Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. I'm also the Vice President of AFCOM Chicago chapter, and I'm really here as a representative of AFCOM because we're an organization that furthers the education and advancement of the data center industry. It's a privilege to be here today at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign among such a distinguished group of people for the groundbreaking of the NANO Nuclear KRONOS MMR Energy System. Today, I'm not here as a nuclear specialist, but as someone who spent years building data centers and advising owners, operators, investors, and policymakers on how to navigate the rapidly evolving demands of our digital economy. A little appendix here for reference because we're going to be talking about sizes of infrastructure and power. If you think about the Willis Tower or any Gen Xers and older, the Sears Tower, it has a power load of about 10 MW of power. If you think about a 100 MW site for a data center, 10 Sears Towers, 1 GW site. There you go. The math was out there. A simple truth. If the United States wants to keep pace with the exponential growth of AI development around the world, we need to rethink our electrical infrastructure. That is why the KRONOS project and the advanced nuclear industry in general matter so much to our industry. We're entering a new era of compute density. The rise of the large language model, generative AI has fundamentally shifted the energy profile of the data center. The real transformation is just beginning. As inference workloads scale, we're seeing persistent real-time demand across billions of interactions, which requires a reliable baseload source of energy. The current digital evolution of AI is not a bubble. It's a structural shift in computational workloads. According to the International Energy Agency, global electricity demand from AI data centers, AI compute, and crypto could double by 2026, reaching over 1,000 TW hours annually for our industry alone. In the U.S., data center power demand is expected to grow by 20%- 40% in 2025 alone, and Deloitte projects that AI data center power's needs are estimated to grow from about 41 GW in 2025 to about 176 GW by 2035. On a related note, we're already seeing hyperscale compute campuses come online, being built with multi-GW footprints. Texas, Wyoming, even in our own Illinois backyard up in Grays Lake, many single-site developments are now measured in GW of IT load, backed by multi-billion dollar investments and capital plans. These aren't just data centers. They are industrial-scale compute labs engineered to power our enhanced digital economy. Boy, are they coming fast. The AI data center market is growing at 28.3% annually, far outpacing historical growth in our sector. It is estimated that by the end of 2025, 1/3 of global data center capacity and development will be dedicated to AI compute workloads. Let's get a little technical for a moment. Data centers traditionally operate at five nines. That's 99.999% reliability, meaning they have less than six minutes of unscheduled downtime per year. To meet that standard, data centers need energy that's not just abundant, but is unshakably reliable. Intermittent renewables and batteries, they are part of the solution, but they're not the foundation. What we need is clean, resilient, always-on baseload power, and we need it close to the load. Advanced nuclear, particularly microreactors, offers a compelling answer for our industry. Through my conversations with NANO. And what we're hearing here today, I come to understand that these systems are modular, safe, designed for distributed deployment, and can provide behind-the-meter power directly to the data centers, bypassing grid congestion and reducing reliance on costly transmission infrastructure. They scale incrementally, allowing energy infrastructure to grow as our capacity grows in sync with demand, and they offer a level of energy independence that's increasingly critical in today's volatile grid and cybersecurity environments. From the data center perspective, the advantages are clear once we begin to deploy advanced nuclear. We have reduced grid dependency, no multi-year waits for interconnections, lower transmission costs, no need for massive infrastructure upgrades that become a cost burden to the general public. Scalable deployment, as mentioned, we add capacity as our workloads grow, and resilience maintains uptime even during public grid instability. This isn't just about energy. It's about business continuity, cost control, and the competitive advantage. The benefits of the advanced nuclear industry are not just a benefit for our industry. Advanced reactors like KRONOS can be designed to serve more than just our compute workloads on our hyperscale campuses. For example, why can't we put light manufacturing co-located on our hyperscale campuses to create mixed-use environments, creating skilled jobs, which benefit the local communities? These technology campuses can now become economic anchors. Why can't excess power from these reactors be routed to the nearby communities, thereby helping stabilize the local grid, reducing community energy costs, and supporting electrification goals? Communities where energy affordability is a growing concern, which we all know it is, this kind of distributed baseload capacity can be transformative. Studies show that nuclear facilities often become pillars of local economies as well, driving job creation, infrastructure investment, and long-term stability. With thoughtful planning, we can ensure that advanced nuclear doesn't just power AI and data center, but it powers opportunity. Today's groundbreaking is more than a milestone. It is a signal, a signal that advanced nuclear is stepping up to meet the energy demands of the enhanced digital economy. As someone who works closely with the data center developers across the country, I can tell you we need more projects like this and not just in Illinois, but nationwide. If we want to support the future economy, we need to build the future of energy, and advanced nuclear must be part of that solution. Finally, I stand before you as someone who has witnessed the changes in our industry and its impacts over the past 30+ years. I can tell you right now we are truly witnessing a new evolution in the human interaction to our digital world. If I could just end on a little quip, something funny I heard yesterday. Our industry is full of acronyms: UPSs, PDUs. Now we've got MMRs and SMRs. We've got NIMBY in my backyard. There's another one that's called NOTE. Anybody know what NOTE means? It means not over there either. Now we've finally heard another one. It's called BYONCE. Okay, Bring- Your- Own- Nuclear- Clean- Energy. Thank you. Join me in welcoming Derek Matthews, Chief Strategy Officer and Electrical Architect from BaRupOn. Good morning. It's an honor to be here. I'm humbled to support NANO on this exciting day. Do you know every second humanity uses enough electricity to power 10 million homes? It's shocking. It's scary. That demand is not decreasing. It is increasing every second. I know that because right now I'm building one of the world's largest sites. It's a 700-acre facility, 40 minutes northeast of Houston, and it encompasses advanced manufacturing and AI data centers. The site in its entirety is about 1.2 GW. Everyone here is talking about those GW sites, and I'm currently building it. I will tell you that it is a monumental challenge. From the very beginning, the power was the challenge. We got the land, the rail, the port, the airport, the water. The power, the cornerstone of our project, is a government site. It is a contract to manufacture a critically strategic material called MAA. A delivery timeline for the government is next summer. The grid could not support that in any way. We were three years out and hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades. Instead of decelerating, we accelerated. We are running a 12-inch pipeline to provide 250 MW of gas turbines this year and another 250 MW through 2026. 500 MW is a ton of power, but that is not even half of what our site requires. Our company started to get really serious about power last year, and we approached NANO six months ago to understand how we can incorporate these KRONOS reactors across our site. Our site is incredibly demanding. It will test these reactors to their limits, and we are incredibly excited. We're entering into a feasibility study right now to understand how we can incorporate approximately 15 of these reactors into a highly demanding technology campus. Our purpose of this is to create a blueprint of how these gigasites can be created harmoniously and environmentally friendly. My friend Matt is, really Went into some great detail about the benefits of co-location and the environment and the community. When you build a site this large, the community is incredibly impacted. If we increase their power prices by 30% or we take their water, we're suddenly not as welcomed in the community. Our goal is to create an entire power island and not use any of the community's power. In fact, give back power to the community to bring down their cost. This is the model of the future. I think that NANO and BaRupOn are here today to show that nuclear isn't some distant dream. It is the reality today. If you have not gotten involved to understand how nuclear is incorporated on your facility, you're probably already behind. A lot of us are soldiers and patriots out here. This is our duty to America to make sure that we stay at the forefront of power. It starts with nuclear. I'm excited. Thank you very much. I'm now excited to welcome Vice Admiral Joe Leidig, Jr. U.S. Navy retired, part of NANO Nuclear Energy Inc.'s Executive Advisory Board. Good morning, everyone. As Matt said, Joe Leidig. I'm excited to be here. I represent an investment from your country. I served 35 years in our Navy's nuclear program, and I have a passion for nuclear power. I've believed forever, beginning with my interview with Admiral Rickover. I'm old enough that in 1977, I had to go visit this elderly gentleman who ran the Navy's nuclear power program. I was 22 years old, kind of full of myself, I would say. My interview to join the program was over in 30 seconds. It ended with five words that have rung in my ears for the last 50 years: get him out of here. It was over. I was 22 years old. I didn't know what I was going to do. Like many of Admiral Rickover's stories, I was placed in a cubicle for five hours by myself. Not a single human being came and talked to me while I pondered what I was going to do the rest of my life. I had already proposed to my wife. I thought I had a job coming up. He let me back in after five hours. He yelled at me for approximately 60 seconds this time and then accepted me into the program. Ever since that time, I've had a passion for nuclear power. What I love about what I've heard today, to be honest, is this partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I come from a little bit of an academic background. I taught at the Naval Academy on a couple of occasions and actually helped them start their nuclear engineering major in 2014. When I heard the Chancellor speak and Rashid speak and others, I love the fact that I'm jealous that you'll have an operational reactor on your campus to teach students, to do research. At the Naval Academy, we have a subcritical reactor, which is fine, but not like this. I love this partnership. I'm thrilled immensely at what it's going to do for your university. What I'd like to do is take my 35 years of experience in the military then and translate it into what I see for the future. Jay and James and Florent, thanks for bringing me onto the team because I think we're going to do great things for our country. As you can see from my slide, what I think about the role that nuclear power will play on our military installations in the future, you've heard many of the bits and pieces. From a military perspective, what is extremely important is safety, security, and resilience. You've heard those words. You've heard them explained. The Navy has a very safety culture conscience when it comes to nuclear power. Our record in the nuclear Navy is unmatchable. We have operated reactors since the mid-1950s, 70 years, and have never had a major incident or accident. I know what it takes to do that. I see that in the passion of this team here. We're going to be able to do this and make this culture safe. It's going to be required for us to message that to the U.S. military, the Department of Defense, or Department of War, I think is what they call themselves now. We got to message that to them and explain to them why it's so safe. Our fuel selection makes it extremely safe. Our coolant selection of helium makes it safe, and it makes it safe for this campus at the same time. From a security perspective, you've heard described how these will be built, how they'll be deployed right to this site here. They can be very secure with a minimum of additional security required by our U.S. military. No additional burden, I think, will be necessary. Finally, like we've talked about a nuclear renaissance, the military has bought into this concept of wanting to power our installations off the grid. In any future war-fighting scenario, cyber will be part of the beginning of the battle. We need our military infrastructure to be independent and safe from an attack like that. One of the very best ways to do that is with an independent power source like the KRONOS MMR. I think we're in a great position. We've already done some work. You probably know we have a contract with the Air Force to do a study at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C. We're in talks with other bases around the country about what we can do and what their specific needs are. This is a scalable power source. It's impressive, and it's extremely safe from all the analysis I've done. I'm proud to be on the team. We're going to make this work for DOD. Thank you. There is probably no better person to end our prepared remarks than General Wesley K. Clark, U.S. Army retired, another member of NANO Nuclear Energy Inc.'s Executive Advisory Board. What a thrill it is to be here. Jay, James, Professor Brooks, Dean Bashir, our French expert, who I'm going to have to interrogate in great look. First of all, I can't tell you what a thrill it is to see this collection of experts, businessmen, leaders, the academic community. This is American power. I'm an unapologetic patriot. I went to West Point. I know Joe went to Annapolis. I went to West Point shortly after Nikita Khrushchev had come to a farm in Iowa and said, "We communists will bury you." I was 14 years old when that happened. It made a lasting impression. I went to West Point because I believe in this country. It was an engineering school. I had to take all of the engineering courses. Of course, we did two years of calculus and math. I did advanced physics, advanced chemistry, fluid mechanics, regular mechanics, nuclear physics. The crowning choice was, were you going to take concrete or something new, nuclear engineering? Of course, I went to nuclear engineering. It was the first bloom of nuclear engineering in colleges. We had a one-semester course in it. I was an expert in nuclear flux and how to use those tables. We studied light water reactors until the sun went down. It was a really exciting time. You know, when we developed nuclear energy in this country, it was a weapon of war. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower decided he had to change it. He created the Atoms for Peace Program. That's when we really distributed nuclear energy away from a talk about submarines and stuff, but into the world. We encouraged people all over the world to look at nuclear reactors. I was caught up in all of this. It was a really exciting time. One of my best friends from Oxford went to Westinghouse and decided he would go into nuclear fuels. He was the highest-paid young executive in Westinghouse doing nuclear fuels in the late 1970s. What happened? Three Mile Island happened. It wasn't the kiss of death. It was the embrace of death. It really, really hurt us in nuclear energy. The French kept going. There was Chernobyl in 1986. All over the world, people realized nuclear energy, it was a great dream. Yeah, back in, but remember back in the 1950s, everybody talked about it. When you come down to the cost, the risk, the radiation, what to do with the nuclear fuel, the construction delays, the regulation, and who's going to pay for the insurance on it? Yes, nuclear engineering and nuclear construction continued, but at a much diminished rate. Germany, in the middle of all this, decided it would get rid of its nuclear reactors and go back to coal, even as they were committed to the environmental movement. It's been crazy. Now, I think we're really here. When I see this conjunction of great entrepreneurial spirit, great technology, academic buy-in, a community, this is what progress is really all about. Jay, I just want to say thank you. It's such a privilege to be with you and James and so forth, the industry leaders here. This is so impressive. I went five times to Indonesia last year. I just got off the phone with Ukrainian parliamentarians yesterday. The world outside the U.S. is not easy. In Ukraine, we've got a major war. It's not stopping. Putin wants all of Ukraine. He wants the U.S. out of Europe. This is a 25-year dream. Now he's willing to kill people to do it. On the other side of the world, there's China. China, the greatest civilization for 4,000 years of human history, and over the last 200 years, humiliated, torn apart. Xi Jinping wants China's rightful place back in the world. In the meantime, here we are in America. We've got a great democracy. We've got a great economy. We're trying to balance all these things. You can't appreciate what a powerful symbol you are right here. If I could take this assembly and move it to Kyiv, or I can put it in Jakarta, or take it even into someplace like South Korea, which is doing great, they don't have this. This is America. As Joe mentioned, we really need you. We really need this, not just for the military, not just for the data centers. By the way, Joe, I want to hear more about the submarine service and your nuclear stuff. You guys never talk. I know when Jay introduced you, he didn't say you were a nuclear submariner. I know you told him not to say that. It's so secret. I know James was an SAS guy. He admitted it. Most of them won't admit it because it's so secret. The motto of the SAS is, who dares, wins. I think, NANO, you've dared. I think you're going to win on this thing. We need this because the greatest threat to the U.S., from a strategic point of view, is not China taking Taiwan. It's not war in Europe. It's not even drones and missiles. It's the electricity grid. The electricity grid is the most complicated machine ever built. More than 5,000 different organizations, businesses, government, everybody's involved in it. It's brittle. It was never designed to do what it's doing. The Department of Homeland Security, look, I'm sorry, I'm a General. I got to scare you, OK? Otherwise, I haven't done my job. The Department of Homeland Security did an unclassified study and released it in 2020. In the event of a catastrophic failure of the U.S. electricity grid, 80% of Americans would die within six months. 80% fatalities in six months. Why? Because we're all totally reliant. We can't talk. We can't drive. We can't communicate. We can't grow our crops. We can't get anything. It's a vulnerability that has only increased over the last 20 years as we moved into bits and bytes. It makes us even more vulnerable. What would cause such a failure? One thing is an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation. One nuclear explosion over the United States, and all those bytes and bits that aren't protected would be gone if it's not shielded. If I talk to the electricity industry about this, they say, oh, God, please don't mention electromagnetic pulse. It's a $2 trillion, $3 trillion problem. Don't mention it. You can't be in the national security business without knowing about it. The other thing is, of course, we know we've got malware in our electricity grid. Bad software, bad hardware. We're not even producing our own transformers. We buy them from overseas. We put other people's software in it. It's not necessarily checked. What can we do? This is why Admiral Leidig is saying we've got to have independent power on our bases. Why? If something happens, we've got to be able to reconstitute. Those bases, those facilities provide the critical means of reconstituting the American economy should something happen. I've come here this morning to celebrate with you. I'm so proud to be part of your team, Jay. I'm also here to scare you because there are big challenges out there. Every day, you don't wake up to think about those challenges. Somebody is thinking about it. Those men and women in uniform in the Pacific, in Europe, on bases and posts here in the United States are trying to do their best to protect us in their daily work. They can't do it without you. You are the future. You are the strength of America. I'm just here to celebrate you. Congratulations to NANO Nuclear Energy, the University of Illinois, the Fighting Illini or something? I'm a Razorback, OK? You've got our former football coach up here. You're 5 and 2. In Arkansas, we're 2 and 5. We're jealous. You all are going to have a great experience here. I just love being here and seeing part of this. Congratulations. Go Illini. Go NANO. Let's do it. I'd now like to welcome NANO Nuclear Energy Management, as well as the University of Illinois leadership, to the stage for a short Q&A session. Hey, guys. Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright, right? Congratulations on this event and what you have achieved so far. It was talked about, the challenges that you foresee in this. It includes regulatory challenges as well as technological and engineering challenges. Which of these do you think are the bigger ones and difficult to solve? Yes, thank you for the question. It's between regulatory and engineering. Neither. At this point, from the regulatory standpoint, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has invested a lot of resources over the last several decades. The technology we are pushing forward, like I was saying, has been built in the 1950s for the first time. It's well understood. We're not pushing the envelope on any of the limits that are known to today's materials. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is fully ready and capable right now to license this type of technology. On the engineering, same part of the answer. On the pressure level, it's been demonstrated you can go to 12 MPa. We backed up to 6 MPa. The material can go up to 900 degrees or 1,000 degrees. We're at 600 degrees. Neither are the bottlenecks. The bottleneck is the work needs to be done. There's really no huge risk or any breakthrough that's needed. There's nothing that's holding us back, just putting the work in and doing it. It is a major engineering project. It is a nuclear reactor. It's not just designing one pump or one pipe. It is designing everything that goes with it. It takes a lot of experts to come together and to do the work. We have support from the university. We have support from us, from PCL Construction. Everybody needs to come together. It's really this agglomeration of skill set and knowledge that is taking time. There is no way to fast-track it. The work needs to be done. Let's get Caleb. You want to say anything? Yeah, on the regulatory side, by going with a university reactor, we help de-risk a lot of the regulatory challenges that straight-to-commercial projects are facing. With a research reactor, we have a special classification within the regulatory framework. That means that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission gets to apply the same rigor of safety and assuring safety of the reactor system, but under a framework that's more prototype-friendly for non-traditional, typical light water reactor technologies. That gives our project, I think, a leg up as compared to other advanced reactors that may want to be deployed under a commercial-first type of approach. Maybe a follow-up for Rashid and Caleb. How is the permitting environment? Who controls the permitting process on the university campus? What all kind of permits will you be requiring? How easy will they be? That's right. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is responsible for regulating all uses of radioactivity, including nuclear power. Through a very rigorous application process, which we hope to submit in the next five months, it starts with a construction permit application, followed by an operating license. A construction permit application doesn't commit anyone to do anything, but what it does is it says this site, because of two things, because of the environmental impact of the reactor on the site and also the preliminary safety of the technology, meets the regulations to ensure safe use of nuclear energy. Our pathway establishes that, and we're able to leverage the research reactor avenue that's been well demonstrated in the U.S. Are there any municipal or university regulations that need to be followed? No, at this point, I mean, we're going to be working very closely with, I mean, obviously, we have been, actually, by the way, for the last four years, Caleb and the team have been working very closely with our Facilities and Services group on campus, with the Abbott Power Plant, which, as was mentioned, the university owns and runs. The team has been working on this project for over four to five years already, and thinking about how this will get integrated into the campus grid. Clearly, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission process is much more stringent than anything else. We're going to continue to follow that while continuing to follow our campus safety considerations and guidelines as well. Last one from me, probably Jay and James. 10 years from now, 15 years from now, where do you see NANO? Will you be a microreactor company, a power company, a vertically integrated company? What's the future look like? It's a good question. 10 years, I'd say in five years, we'll have the reactor built. It'll be licensed. We'll have a reactor core operation going where we can mass manufacture the systems. Early 2030s, the rollout, the door of dozens, hopefully hundreds of these systems. At that point, servicing, I mean, it got mentioned today, military bases, data centers. That's principally what the company is focused for. Over the 10 years, there'll be a vertically integrated strategy that we'll implement. That's starting right now. Already, we're looking at very key acquisitions to position ourselves so we can mass manufacture the reactors so they can be more competitive than anything else on the market. It's that mass manufacturing capability. We'll be a lot of a larger company than we are now, with much greater mass manufacturing capability and diversified into many different areas. We touched on fuel supply, transportation. There'll be engineering services. The nice part is that we're at this point now where the growth of the nuclear industry is happening alongside us. We can grow with it. In 10 years' time, it should look a lot different. It's nice. We kind of know it's coming. The event is kind of a celebration of starting this whole process. A vertically integrated company that is deploying reactors around the world. In 10 years' time, we should be there. Are there any additional questions from the audience today? I was very struck by all the remarks about the industry and the rapid growth you're expecting, thinking about your workforce needs. If this works, it's going to be explosive on needs. I'm thinking that we'll have a single reactor to train on. What are your thoughts about connecting the workforce needs of the future with your growing company and the industry you're building out? You think a lot about it with quantum, too. How are we going to meet those needs to really scale rapidly? It's a good question, actually, because even at the moment, even before all of this has taken off, it's still ramping up quite considerably now. I think Florent is spending about 40 hours a week interviewing people at the moment just to build up our teams. We can't scale quick enough, I think, is the thing. It takes a long time to train a nuclear engineer. It takes a long time for a nuclear engineer to get experience. It's not just even them. It's technicians. It's electricians. It's everyone who's going to be a part of it. The scale-up and the personnel is going to be a challenge. I would say if you're young and you're looking at the future and you're wondering where you could fit in, energy is going to be a big one. Those jobs are just going to increase in terms of number, just supporting this grow-out. There have been a few jokes about AI taking jobs. AI can't take your jobs unless it's got the power to do so. That power is going to have to come from industries like this one. It's a good time to be putting yourself, if you're young, in that direction to get qualified to work with companies like ours to produce that kind of power. We're going to have to invest, too. As a company, if we don't start investing in programs with universities like yours, we're not going to have the pipeline of personnel coming in to support us. We're going to need a lot of people. We're trying to upscale quickly. Florent already speaks to that a little bit. It's a challenge to get the right people for the right jobs. Yeah, I mean, I will add one consideration that's of importance. You're looking at us, NANO, and we are looking at nuclear engineers and people who are working on the design. If you look at the history of nuclear light water reactor, there have been continuous development and improvement for over 60 years. Nuclear engineers and people who are experts on reactors have job security for a few generations. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. When we're going to construct thousands and hundreds of these facilities, it is all the supply chain, all the providers. They will need the labor. They will need the workforce. You're looking at new manufacturing techniques, additive manufacturing, et cetera. We're embracing those techniques. This is coming from a partner. It's not just a nuclear company we are going to be hiring. It's also everybody who is going to provide equipment to us. They need to be able to make and design the equipment for us. That's a huge ecosystem behind it. I just wanted to add that from inception, we always knew there was a bottleneck in human capital. That's why NANO, we've always partnered and collaborated with universities from inception, whether it's UC Berkeley or Cambridge University and now University of Illinois. We've always had that focus where we wanted to develop a pipeline of human capital, of nuclear engineers for the future so that when it does come the time when we build our reactors, there will be that human capital available for us. We've already predicted this, I would say, many years ago. To see it happening now, this is great. We also knew that was going to happen. This is why having this partnership with the University of Illinois is so important for us. If I can add something to that, too. I think that's exactly what we're in the business of obviously doing, to anticipate the needs and make sure that we can produce the workforce of tomorrow. Our nuclear engineering department, I think, is ready to grow more, to train more students, but also these important related industries, right? We would need people to be thinking about data center designs. How do you connect, as was mentioned, the nuclear energy sources to data centers? We have one of the best power engineering programs as well here, actually. About 20 years ago, many universities said that electrification is power is out. Many places actually closed their power programs. Ours, we kept it going, and now it's back stronger than ever. This project is actually having, I think, a very positive impact on many other programs across the college as well and across the campus in terms of training and connecting, now talking about the grid. Information security is mentioned. We have this Information Trust Institute here for the last 20 years thinking about the security of the grid and the cybersecurity aspect. All of those things are going to be important to produce the workforce of the future. It's all connected. I think this technology will revolutionize all those industries. We also did receive, oh, I'm sorry. Hi there. I'm Mike Larson. I work across the street at the power plant. I had a front seat in all this going on. Dr. Brooks, you mentioned public perception is a big deal, assuming you guys have some resources. What kind of resources can you help when people ask us questions? Also, in that line, how can we equip ourselves to partner with you guys to change that public perception? Yeah, I love that question. I truly believe that the road to nuclear power goes through public perception. We have a website. Definitely direct you all to the website where we keep a lot of information on the status of the project, why we're doing it, why Illinois. We have open-to-the-public meetings every month. We've been doing these open-to-the-public meetings for almost four years now. We've been able to engage with the students, see the passion from the students to get off our reliance on coal, move towards clean, reliable nuclear energy. We want the community to have a say. That's a priority for us. That's the role that universities, I guess, universities have been underappreciated for in nuclear, our ability to bring the public in to really see and understand and gain appreciation for the technology. That's something that universities can uniquely do very well. That's really core to our project. Please have them reach out to the project team. Go to the website, Illinois Microreactor Demonstration Project. We've got a LinkedIn page, lots of resources out there. We definitely want to hear from you. Thank you. I could add on to a bit of what Caleb said there. You mentioned resources as the second part. The first part, public perception, is going to be very important here. I think, unfortunately, the difference between the reality of nuclear and the public perception of nuclear is quite vast, probably the biggest difference, I think, between any form of power. It's always surprising, I think, to people to find out that if you look at nuclear power in terms of deaths per GWh, it beats out everything. It beats out even wind and solar in terms of safety for the amount of power it outlays. I think that messaging gets lost. Three Mile Island and Fukushima came up during this conference. Even then, it's worth pointing out that nobody died in those incidents. You just have essentially a melted-down reactor and a cleanup operation. Still bad. You still lost your reactor system. It's still a very safe form of power. What we're dealing with, obviously, is very different. You mentioned having enough resources to do this. I think that's why Jay mentioned in his speech as well that when we were talking about doing this, I said this is a big undertaking. It's a very capital-intensive industry. We're going to have to put the necessary resources in place so we can build this out and do this properly. Jay was very confident. He said, I can do this. I can raise the necessary capital. With his banking background, obviously, put the resources necessary in place where now we're already in a position where we can build this out fully, even before we've got going on the construction. We're in a very comfortable position now, which is, I would say, very unique amongst the people in the reactor development area. It's why we've got a very high confidence in success now. We've done years of legwork to get us to this point. Now we're in that comfortable position where we can afford to push the project forward and have confidence to get it all the way to the finishing line. It has to be done alongside the communication part of it. Caleb plays a big role in that, as does the university. It does need to be communicated that this is a very different prospect. It's a very different tech. The risks that were present before aren't present now. It all needs to feed together so we can deploy this technology successfully and with good support. We're in a nice position at the moment in the country where the support for nuclear is the highest it's ever been, I think. It's something we're at like that. It's like 80% support with bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle. Very unique position for any industry or any policy or anything that's being delivered in the country at the moment. The resources are there. The sentiment is getting better all the time. It's always stuff we're going to have to work harder to keep working at to achieve. Good morning, Eric Oesterle. I just wanted to add that in addition to this increased focus on nuclear energy creating opportunities for nuclear engineers, it also creates fantastic opportunities for electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, civil structural engineers. We need it all, including skilled craftspeople. In addition to that, I was wondering if you could speak to this fantastic opportunity that this partnership between NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign creates for developing a pipeline of trained operators for the KRONOS MMR facility because we also need trained operators for these new plants as well. That's right. Yeah, as part of our license application, we have to have a training program in place. The training program necessary for the first operators, that development starts now. To understand the technology, to review the plans, to review the operational paradigms that we want to do with the reactor, all of that is already under development for a reactor that we hope to be operational in 2029. A lot of work to do there. Luckily, it's a very safe reactor, and there's a lot that we can do with it to demonstrate the potential of nuclear power. That starts now. It's part of our license application. It gets reviewed through rigorous NRC review, and we look forward to that process. Yeah. If I can add to that, I mean, that's what we're going to be in the business of doing, so to speak. I think we have to think about that very carefully in terms of what degree levels are needed, what skill sets are needed. We have existing partnerships with Pathway and community colleges, like Pathway programs with community colleges, actually across the state, with City Colleges of Chicago, for example, one of the largest community college networks in the country. I think we have the infrastructure in place to partner and actually work on training the next generation of workforce at various levels with partners as well. One last question from someone who couldn't make it today. Just given the growing landscape of different SMRs, microreactors, different types of reactors, molten salt fast reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, as well as different types of fuel, what specifically do you guys view as the advantages for NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. in these areas? In addition, the strategy of the company and how that may differ from some other companies out there. I can give a bit. Florent, you could probably comment on this after me, too. I would say that it's become a very hot space in the market. What that's led to is there's been a lot of developers coming into the area of nuclear to be part of this renaissance. I would say that there's some very big bottlenecks to success. Obviously, one is capital needs. It's very capital-intensive. I think already that's going to shrink down the number of successful candidates to probably a few. It becomes a question of what's the most viable tech. I think there's gradually a convergence in types of technology. You don't want to go too novel. It makes it very difficult to get licensed. It makes it very difficult to prove out because the data sets just are not there. If you're going to do things like novel coolants or novel fuels, you might be spending a huge amount of your time just getting those qualified. That's going to be very capital-intensive, too, and put you behind your competitors. Doing a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor with TRISO, already that's a very popular model. Ourselves, X Energy, Radiant, BWXT, it's all high-temperature gas-cooled reactors that utilize TRISO. That's not an accident. There's very strategic thinking behind that strategy. It's because it's a known tech. It's known by the regulator. It has the data sets. You can operate within very big margins of safety. For that reason, you're going to see sort of a convergence around who can take it forward and then what kinds of technology is going to be the most commercially viable tech. Florent, you could probably speak a little bit about the different technologies that are available at the moment. I'll keep it simple. Just two remarks. The first one is we can show you what the reactor looks like because we have a design that's clear and simple. This is all based on commercial off-the-shelf technology. I'll tell you a secret, which is simply a reactor without fuel doesn't work. The fuel we use is commercially available today, not in 20 years. I'll just leave it at that. The reactor can be fueled without fuel, meaning mostly other designers are using enrichment level, which are not commercially available today. They may be in five years, in 10 years. We are not dealing with uncertainty. We're just designing and using what's currently available. I'd just add from the university perspective, this is the safest technology, right? This is the safest technology. It can be safe with a minimal number of active systems or no active systems. It just also happens to be the highest Technology Readiness Level, and it can pair with the most end-use applications. This is the technology that makes the most sense for deployment now. If we don't have any additional questions, we'll now pass the mic to our Founder, Jay Yu, just to give a few closing remarks. Thank you, everybody, for coming out here. Really appreciate everyone here in attendance. NANO Nuclear, when I founded the company about four years ago, I had a dream. Now today, we're one step closer to that dream with support from our investors. Some of them are the biggest in the world. With the support from the University of Illinois and with the support from everyone here, we're going to continue our mission. We're going to stay focused, stay humbled, and we're going to execute. We're going to continue to grow. Higher by next year, we'll hopefully have hundreds of full-time employees. We're looking forward to working with the military and also the global community as well. Thank you very much.