All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Esteban Albarracin. I am with the TD Cowen energy team. I am here joined today with special guest Simon Irish, CEO of Terrestrial Energy. Thank you so much for joining us here, Simon. Thank you for having me, Esteban. Of course. All right, well, let us dig in because Terrestrial Energy has a very interesting product offering here that I want to ask a few interesting questions about. Terrestrial Energy has an IMSR as the flagship product. It is a molten salt reactor Gen IV, which uses LEU, which is very interesting in terms of, I think you are one of the few Gen IV that can actually just fully use LEU, which would be a great advantage on the fuel supply. Can you dig a little bit deeper on the technology, on how you were able to get the design to only use LEU? That would be some great color. Well, yes. I think our sort of market position is in part defined by our ability to use standard nuclear fuel, low enriched uranium, enriched no more than 5%. In fact, our level enrichment is significantly less than that. It is not 5%, it is significantly less. We are in the Generation IV camp, and we are really quite unique in using standard nuclear fuel. The reason that we are using it is probably twofold. The first point is that we recognized early on, about 10 years ago, that it is critically important if you are to achieve your foundational mission as a company, namely fleet deployment. It is not about the first one, you have to have a scalable supply chain. Fuel supply is such a critical central pillar of presenting a scalable supply chain. At the time, this is about 10 years ago, a time we recognized that if you weren't using standard nuclear fuel, you have some pretty severe bottlenecks. Now, we were able to use standard nuclear fuel because our reactor system would work with uranium enriched no more than 5%. The reason is this is a thermal spectrum reactor system, and you've got a superb moderator in the form of graphite. It's also quite a big system as well. So with a thermal spectrum graphite moderated system with quite a big core, you have the ingredients to use a low level of enrichment. You start being pushed out of that point if you have a small core, and you start definitely being pushed out of that point if you've got a reactor system that operates in a fast spectrum, that requires higher octane nuclear fuel. A lot of Generation IV systems, particularly anyone who operates a fast reactor, requires. They will not work with LEU. Technically, just from a physics perspective, you just can't get the thing to work. So a lot of Generation IV systems operate in the fast spectrum. They will not work. If you start making your reactor system too small, you start having to use higher octane fuel. So we were able to use it because we could, but we also, nearly 10 years ago, foresaw, quite uniquely, the problems that we would face if you're using HALEU. Perhaps at the margin, it may be a slightly better technology for us. We're not looking to come up with a perfect molten salt reactor. We're looking to come up with a commercially successful one. So in that reference point, we use standard nuclear fuel. Got it. Okay. That's helpful there. Now, with a lot of Gen IV and, of course, molten salt reactors as well, you might need some maybe specialized materials. Can we dig a little bit deeper on-? Yeah. Maybe some bottlenecks or importance of supplying and procuring a lot of that fuel. You mentioned graphite is a big component. So, where does that rank, and what should we be thinking about maybe in the next one to two years in terms of securing that? On material supply, it is not just about supplying the materials. Graphite is well supplied. It is a well-known nuclear material. Steels are well supplied. They have got nuclear grade steels as well. From a supply chain perspective, in terms of developing your supply chain, you need to be what is called qualifying, not just selecting the vendor, but also qualifying your fuel. This is just the part of the regulatory process. Qualifying means you have collected the data for that component, and you have collected it in a regime which is compliant, from a QA perspective, quality assurance perspective, with the regulatory needs. Therefore, the regulator will say, "I will accept that data in a license application." So with respect to qualifying, which is almost the same thing as developing your supply chain. Qualifying, in our case, I have mentioned we are a graphite moderated system. You need to start early when you are qualifying graphite. To qualify graphite means you need to demonstrate that you understand its performance in the conditions it is going to experience in the reactor core. You need to be putting in a test reactor. You cannot accelerate that because the test rate is limited by the power of the test reactor, and test reactors only have a certain level of power. So you need to put this stuff in early, graphite in early. We are, I think, quite well known in the Generation IV front of having started our graphite program, in our case, one of the most powerful test reactors in the world in the Netherlands. We have been testing our graphite in there, collecting the data on its performance, and we have been doing that for quite a few years now. That is true for other components as well, such as alloys. That is an important part of your R&D schedule, collecting the data, demonstrating the performance of the materials that go into your reactor system. It includes systems as well, and components. But that is just what everyone has to do when developing a reactor system, collecting the data, and preparing for that operating license submission. You have to collect data, and you have to test systems. Right. Okay. That is helpful. Maybe shifting gears to the regulatory side. You set up an expectation of topical report submissions. First, could you just clarify the importance of topical reports-? Yeah. in the NRC and in terms of how many you would expect to submit to the NRC before formally being comfortable, to submit in the future, a construction permit application? Well, the number of topical reports that you may wish to submit to the NRC is, to some extent, perhaps as much as you want. Theoretically, you could. Each topical report discharges a particular element of the end license application. As you're preparing for that operating license application to the NRC, you probably intelligently want to start removing some uncertainty from your licensing strategy by asking the regulator to agree a particular element of it. Okay, we agreed on that. Let's move forward. We agree an element of that, and that's how you build up your license application. You could theoretically, I suppose, do the whole thing through topical reports. I suppose that's theoretical. We're intending to, like many others in the sector, to use topical reports, to establish that very solid foundation for a regulatory strategy. We've been establishing that solid foundation for some time now, but in terms of topical reports, we submitted one last year called Principal Design Criteria. I think that gives the game away. It's fundamental to the entire design, is the Principal Design Criteria. Another one called Postulated Initiating Events. Again, foundational to safety analysis. You want that to be agreed first, okay, before you move on. Yes, you have. You agree that with the regulator, let's move on with other topical reports. We submitted another recent topical report on our methodology to qualify graphite. We're doing this testing in our test reactor, not our test reactor, but a test reactor in the Netherlands. We just want to make sure that in terms of how we're doing that and the scope of that testing and the data we're collecting, that that methodology is indeed the methodology that the NRC would accept in the end license application. It's understandable we want to confirm that methodology with the NRC, and that's the most recent topical report we announced. We did give guidance at the beginning of the year that we'd be submitting at least three topical reports in 2025. Okay. Sorry, 2026. Yeah, 2026. Okay, maybe shifting gears again to just be a little bit more on how you're looking at the strategy and business model of Terrestrial Energy. Is Terrestrial mostly strictly expecting to procure materials, not owning any of the plants? Is that the right way to think about it? What would you expect in terms of the scope amount of that Terrestrial Energy will have for a commercial IMSR project? In terms of the scope, we've got. I suppose this is pretty foundational in terms of your business strategy. We're not looking to build and operate, in part because there are others that are probably much better than we could possibly be in owning and operating a nuclear plant, and building it as well. There are others that can do that. We're picking our lane where we think we have an advantage. Our business model is to play a major role, but not a leadership role in construction because it's our design. But that, if you looked at our unit economics, that only represents probably about 20% of the value creation of the future business. In the 2030s, when we're up and running, building that, developing and expanding that portfolio, that's probably only 20% of value creation. The 80% of value creation is associated with services and components that we'll be supplying after the plant's been built. So a Gillette- type business model here. We'll anticipate supplying the fuel on a regular basis over a 50-year life through long-term contracts. That fuel contains our IP as well. It goes into a reactor system that we've designed. So I think that's a good business for us to house its principle. The other element of this Gillette business model is the supply every seven years of that signature component, which is that sort of frames the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, that replaceable Core-unit, so a new one has to be supplied every seven years. That is 50%- 60% of what will be the value creation running in the 2030s, will be through the supply, the regular supply of Core-unit s over the life of a plant of about 50 years. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. In terms of optimizing capital to develop your business, you want the biggest return on the capital unit you commit, and we think we can get that through those principal businesses I've just described. Right. Optimal place for us to be, I think. Right. Okay. That makes sense. In terms of target to get a commercial IMSR deployed, I know Terrestrial is working on some pilot projects to help with the development of the technology, so working through that. But eventually you want the commercial scale reactor, and what is the goal to have that deployed by? Well, we have discussed that we're working on 10 commercial projects with that model I've just described. Of those 10 projects, we have been more transparent with three of them. One's in Texas at Texas A&M. The other one is a relationship we have with Riot Platforms that's got a large data center. Actually, it's a compute operation. They've come from the Bitcoin mining world, so a large significant operation that they have in Texas. We've disclosed a relationship with them to support their future activities in the data center sector with power from our plant. Very recently, we issued a press release announcing that we were the technology that had been selected as part of Ameresco's bid to the U.S. Army for the Aberdeen Proving Ground site in Maryland. So those are the commercial projects that are currently in play at this point in time for us. We've also got two very important projects with the DOE. Those are the projects associated with the pilot reactor. Again, pilot reactor, collecting data, preparing for the operating license, and a pilot fuel plant. Again, important for us because that's the pilot plant that establishes the methodology, the process for us to. That's the first step as we build that principal business of fuel supply in support of the fleet in the 2030s. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. Maybe sticking a little bit with some of the customer pipeline there. You mentioned a few agreements and partnerships, Riot Platforms, Texas A&M, and Ameresco. How should we think about upcoming updates and which in the pipeline you would say is furthest along in terms of commercialization? Where should we focus on? Yeah. We haven't provided guidance on where each project is relative to each other. What I have said, though, because I think people want to understand what the schedule looks like for this type of project, what I have disclosed to provide a framework to start thinking about where we are with our projects now, where others are as well, is that a small and modular nuclear power plant project, your starting point to iterate on a final model would be that it's a 5+ year project. The moment you say, "Let's look over there as a site that could potentially be a site for a nuclear power plant that's small and modular," from that opening bell, you'll do site characterization work, collect the data to support an operating license, a construction permit to the NRC, and the whole process of collecting that data, preparing the construction permit, the NRC adjudicating on that construction permit, probably five years. At least what we know today, you can speculate probably in a pretty compelling way, that's going to be shortened going forward given the regulatory reform that's in play now. That's definitely going to squeeze that. The first five years, getting yourself ready for construction, and the next five years is building it and getting the operating license. Everything, I think the first point to iterate as you're looking on any project in the SMR space is this 5+ year model, and then sort of iterate from there. That provides, I think, some guidance, some framework for others to think about where we are with the 10 projects I've just referenced. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. You also mentioned the pilot projects, which you've started using the DOE authorization pathway there had the OTA approved for both earlier this year. There's a lot of, like how you mentioned, testing to make sure the design is progressing along. Anything that we should look out for in terms of milestones or any learnings that you're looking out for to validate the design as well? Yes. If I could just simply provide some context for those, particularly the pilot reactor project. The pilot reactor project was already embedded in our testing program. We are part of a relatively small cohort of reactor developers that started over 10 years ago, 12 years ago. We have taken our design through the Canadian regulation, increasingly through an active program of topical reports with the NRC. What that means is you have a design, and you actually have a detailed testing program, which that testing program is designed to collect the data necessary to allow you to demonstrate to the regulator the performance of systems, components, and structures. It is foundational to the whole operating license. We have been preparing for that. When the DOE came along with its OTA program, the OTA program was something that sort of slotted into the. We wrapped it over the top of our existing testing activities. That is how it came to be for us. It permits us to, in many respects, accelerate some of those testing activities, particularly when you do not have to use the more established method of seeking an operating license for a test reactor, the NRC, it has some, I think, significant benefits. But that is how those two pilot reactors, that is why we applied for those two pilot programs. Okay. Maybe once, we talked about the topical reports, we talked about the pilot projects. Yeah. Using DOE. The NRC has now published the Part 53 rule, which is very technology neutral, which should fit, with Terrestrial Energy's technology, right? Yeah. Is there maybe, would you leverage Part 53 as-? Yeah. For your first commercial, or will you stick with Part 50? I think we, along with many others, are looking at that very carefully, as perhaps an unexpected and alternative method to not only seek efficiently license for first plant, but take all those regulatory experiences to efficiently license a fleet. In the past, if you looked at the before Part 53, if you looked at the challenges of solving two problems at the same time, the efficient way to license the first plant, and then the efficient way to license the fleet. Efficiency of the fleet scale is you get something that's generic, agreed with the NRC, and then you rinse and repeat. But the first plant, you don't want to do that because that takes too long. What you want to do is to license the first plant on a standalone basis, but that limits how you can rinse and repeat on two, three, four, five. Part 53 is very interesting. It's also interesting because it's captured some of the, I would say, the virtues of the Canadian process that we have completed. We're obviously very familiar with that approach, which, and the Canadian process is principle-based, risk-informed, and it's phased and gated, and then you step into it. But principle-based, risk-informed allows you to achieve a technology agnostic position. It's not prescriptive. The problem about prescriptive regulation is you're prescribing safe operation. By construction, you need to also prescribe safe operation of what? And that's been a little bit of the problem in recent years with the NRC. If you're prescribing it, then what's the prescription for our system? And it's obviously not there. The Part 53 approach is very interesting. I think it illustrates the extent to which the NRC, with some direction from Congress and the White House as well, has, I think, really made some very, very significant changes to accommodate an industry that is moving towards an innovative phase, looking to see how nuclear innovation can really solve the really, really big challenges of our day in terms of clean, firm energy supply that will require different technologies, different approaches, and the NRC with Part 53 and other new rules that are coming down the pipe today. Part 53 became a reality this year, that the NRC is responding to the industry in quite an impressive way, actually. Yep. All right. Well, we are at time here. Thank you very much for the insightful answer, Simon, and thank you for joining us here. It is a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Okay. Have a good one. You as well. Bye.