For the nuclear energy nerds, last night Erik Townsend joined ZH to host a panel with the founders of modular nuclear reactor startup Aalo Atomics, Matt Loszak and Yasir Arafat. 

Townsend is a committed nuclear energy bull and has invested in many nuclear energy startups, his largest allocation being Aalo, a company that hopes to pump out small modular reactors on a mass scale to solve the rising energy costs that AI is rapidly ushering in.

Here were some highlights from the panel for those short on time:

The Data Center Dilemma

AI data centers have become the boogeyman recently, facing opposition on the populist right and left as nobody wants one in their backyard goosing up local energy prices. Loszak said the solution to this dilemma is stand-alone modular reactors that power data centers independent of the grid.

"Our whole thesis is we are really building the ideal product market fit for AI data centers… If you look at how we're powering data centers today, it is not with gigawatt-scale nuclear plants. It is actually with 15 to 60 megawatt gas turbines... We're essentially making the nuclear version of that."

He argued that standardized, factory-built reactors could ultimately outcompete traditional nuclear projects on speed and scale.

"You could build a fleet of smaller reactors and get to many gigawatts per year... way more reliably and predictably with this model than the gigawatt-scale AP1000 model… This is a contrarian view. Not everyone in nuclear believes this... but the reality is the past does not always look like the future."

Reactor “Assembly Line”

CTO Arafat said Aalo's long-term goal is to manufacture reactors the way other industries mass-produce complex products, to scale towards creating the industry's first nuclear reactor “assembly line”.

"We want to actually build the first nuclear assembly line where you have jigs and equipment and processes where material flows through, and then you can make the same modules over and over and over again."

This is not something that is currently in development, Aalo said, but perhaps on the horizon as they look to raise $500 million in a series C. The fundraise would then, in theory, go to finance a massive factory to mass produce modular reactors… which could one day power private homes.

Watch the full debate below or on our YouTube channel.