Scott Nolan on Rebuilding US Uranium Enrichment and the Cost of Nuclear Power

Scott Nolan, co-founder and CEO of General Matter, joins John Collison to discuss nuclear fuel, uranium enrichment and the economics of building new capacity in the United States. Nolan says the company’s first mission is to produce fuel for advanced reactors before the end of the decade.

Nolan began looking at enrichment in 2023 after reactor companies told him their biggest obstacle was obtaining fuel. He says both existing and new US reactors depend on foreign enrichment suppliers, principally in Russia and Europe.

He describes the nuclear-fuel chain as mining uranium, converting it into gas, enriching it, converting it back to solid form and fabricating fuel. The enrichment stage increases the proportion of the fissile isotope uranium-235.

Existing large reactors generally use uranium enriched to around 3–5%, Nolan says. Many advanced designs seek high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, just under 20%. Higher enrichment can support smaller cores and longer intervals between refueling, depending on the design.

Collison summarizes the appeal of small modular reactors as shifting work from custom construction toward repeatable factory production. Nolan agrees that reducing construction work is a central aim.

Nolan says a substantial share of US enrichment supply has come from Russia, with other supplies from European providers. Uranium itself is mined in several places, including Canada and Kazakhstan, before conversion and enrichment.

For advanced-reactor companies, he says the immediate concern is availability of HALEU for initial deployments and later scaling. He describes the US restrictions on Russian uranium imports and General Matter’s goal of supplying fuel before the end of the decade.

Commercial nuclear fuel is primarily regulated by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he says, while some government and research paths involve the Department of Energy. Nolan describes his experience with the NRC positively and says licensing centers on safety, security and environmental analysis.

Most reactors on the US grid are light-water designs using low-enriched uranium, with water serving as coolant and moderator. Nolan contrasts their large construction projects with newer companies seeking smaller, modular designs.

He explains the connection between smaller cores and enrichment: some remote reactors aim to run for years between refueling, and their fuel and core designs must support that operating period.

When Collison asks whether higher enrichment itself makes a reactor passively safe, Nolan corrects him: the safety characteristics come from reactor design, not enrichment alone. He describes passive and active safety ideas used in different proposed designs.

Asked about AI data-center demand, Nolan says most near-term contracting for an enricher is still with existing utilities. He expects nuclear demand to grow, but says the balance between large reactors and small modular designs will depend on how quickly and cheaply each can be deployed.

Nolan argues that nuclear has advantages as low-carbon, reliable power but has not competed well enough on cost. Collison raises solar plus batteries as a rival; Nolan questions whether storage costs will fall enough for highly reliable data centers and speculates about other alternatives.

On nuclear costs, Nolan argues that projects never achieved enough repeatable scale. Supply chains and workforces shifted between projects, while long construction timelines made financing costs consequential.

He points to high interest rates in the period when nuclear construction slowed and argues that cost competitiveness was central. Safety concerns may have contributed, he says, but he rejects treating them as the only explanation.

His proposed path to lower costs is to build more reactors faster and create stronger incentives to reduce prices. He compares parts of the nuclear supply chain with the launch industry before low-cost competitors emerged.

Collison describes a swing from early optimism about nuclear power to strong public opposition. They discuss divisions within the environmental movement and the relative merits of energy conservation and different power sources.

Nolan sees a more favorable public and political climate today, citing bipartisan support for expanding nuclear generation. These are his assessments of the policy and energy landscape.

Asked about potential customers, Nolan describes a range from very small reactors for military or remote uses to larger systems aimed at data centers and the grid. He names several companies while noting that fuel choices vary by design and availability.

He says some proposed reactors may initially use lower enrichment because it is available, while larger existing designs have their own limits. The discussion distinguishes civilian HALEU from the substantially higher enrichment used in some naval applications.

General Matter began in late 2023, Nolan says, and has grown to just over 200 people. Its headquarters and engineering are in Los Angeles, while its first facility is planned for Paducah, Kentucky.

He says the company had just submitted an NRC license application. Licensing, engineering, manufacturing and construction all support a public target of bringing the facility online by the end of the decade; he presents this as a company plan, not a completed facility.

Nolan expects the timing to address a potential supply gap after the Russian-import restrictions and to coincide with proposed advanced-reactor deployments. He acknowledges utilities have some inventory and other contracts that can bridge part of the gap.

Collison asks about the aggressive “green lights to Malibu” scheduling philosophy associated with SpaceX. Nolan says General Matter’s end-of-decade date is its external target, while the internal objective is to move as quickly as possible.

An aggressive schedule can expose the critical path and reveal wasted time, but it also creates risks: teams can make poor architectural choices to save a day, and managers must judge performance against a near-perfect plan. Nolan says leaders must be willing to protect sound engineering decisions.

Nolan joined SpaceX as an intern in 2003 and later worked on engine components and early Dragon subsystems. He describes helping ensure components could withstand thermal and structural loads, alongside more experienced designers.

The lesson he draws is to look for important bottlenecks in industries that have not fulfilled their promise. Small satellites, for example, needed cheaper access to launch; advanced reactors similarly need reliable and affordable fuel.

He says fuel can be a substantial share of a small reactor’s overall energy cost, depending on design and market prices. General Matter therefore wants both to remove an availability bottleneck and eventually lower enrichment costs.

Hardware companies face long periods of spending before meaningful revenue, Collison notes. Nolan describes equity, debt and non-dilutive funding as possible sources and says General Matter received a $900 million government award for building capacity.

Nolan explains that enrichment is a separation process; his team still needs nuclear and chemical expertise, especially for safety. He says the company will disclose more about its particular technique later, and does not claim that its new facility uses the earlier Paducah plant’s method.

The company considered sites across more than ten states before choosing Paducah. Nolan emphasizes a community familiar with enrichment and an available talent base, as well as shared services and existing environmental characterization at the Department of Energy site.

He explains that enrichment separates uranium isotopes, increasing the proportion of uranium-235 from its natural level. The harder business challenge, in his view, is making the process scalable and internationally cost-competitive.

Nolan traces the decline of earlier US enrichment capacity to old technology, competition and the post-Cold War shift toward trade, including the Megatons to Megawatts program. He argues that import restrictions and emerging reactor demand have created a new opening.

Collison asks how a new entrant can compete with established producers. Nolan points to decades of technological improvement that he believes incumbents have not fully incorporated, alongside scale and simpler design. The company’s proposed cost advantage remains a future claim to demonstrate.

They compare the opportunity with startups challenging slow incumbents in launch and defense. Nolan says the opportunities became visible to people who went deep into each industry and discovered a persistent bottleneck.

From an earlier internship at Boeing, he recalls how cost-plus incentives could allow teams to grow without making a project move faster. He says such contracts can be useful when costs are highly uncertain and a project is urgent, but may encourage poor incentives in a mature market.

At SpaceX, Nolan saw a much smaller team execute quickly enough to challenge incumbents. That experience made him more willing as an investor to believe that a small team with a clear vision could win.

Collison asks about Founders Fund’s connection to several hard-tech companies. Nolan points to a shared interest in important overlooked problems and in first serving a small market that urgently needs a solution.

He says he did not want to start a company merely for its own sake. The opportunity had to be important, underserved and matched to his skills; that narrow intersection gave him the conviction to leave investing and build General Matter.

Working backward from the target date, Nolan identifies licensing, construction, procurement and manufacturing as parallel workstreams. General Matter says it has built an in-house engineering, procurement and construction team rather than outsourcing the entire facility.

He argues that the bottleneck differs by project: a large reactor may be chiefly a construction challenge, a small reactor a factory challenge, and General Matter a manufacturing challenge. The company still has to prove it can manufacture at scale and meet its target economics.

Asked what he learned at Founders Fund, Nolan says to look for an important problem others are not solving and where one has a distinctive ability to contribute. His example is fuel as a constraint on scaling nuclear reactors.

His final advice is to follow an interest deeply enough to see neglected problems before they become obvious trends. Collison closes by thanking him for the conversation.