00:00So how close are we to commercial viability, not only for you, but for the broader nuclear fusion industry?
00:07First of all, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:10And I think this is what excites us about our industry right now,
00:13is we've long told a story about decades of working on the science.
00:18Now we're seeing engineering solutions that are creating pathways to scale.
00:23That's a large part of what we did in the first prototype that we built,
00:26and the sizzle reel that you just gave. Thank you for that.
00:31But now that the companies are articulating the engineering pathway,
00:37that the science is broadly understood by the industry,
00:40the real question is becoming, can we design these machines in ways that can be easily maintained, operated?
00:48Because it is in those details that the practicalities of scale that will determine the economics
00:54and whether or not fusion is actually a useful tool in the race for energy abundance.
01:01So now that you have your first prototype device, this was junior, right?
01:05In order to see whether it can work at many times scale, what's the next phase for you?
01:12So the next phase for us is to build a device we call Tahi.
01:16Tahi is our demonstration of all of the performance aspects of our particular technology.
01:23So junior was very much a demonstration of plugging together technologies that had not been put together before
01:29and showing that they worked as expected.
01:32Now we need to prove the performance, and we want to do it in a scenario that's not yet nuclear.
01:39So that reduces the cost, it allows us to move significantly faster.
01:43And so Tahi allows us to say, if we spend X dollars here, it turns into Y performance here and
01:50affects our LCOE here.
01:52And so we can answer the majority of the questions that we need to by building that device.
01:56And that's what we have New Zealand government support to do over the coming years.
02:02You're seen as a more high-risk, high-reward sort of bet when it comes to nuclear fusion technology,
02:07given that it could become a simpler endeavor, but at the same time it's a very theoretical and engineering challenging
02:15work.
02:16How do you compare it to competitors, especially in trying to make this commercially viable?
02:22So there are probably two major distinctions.
02:25So the first, which I've already touched on, is maintainability.
02:28So when you build these really complicated machines, typically,
02:32we would say that the dipole is the simplest kind of arrangement for a fusion device,
02:35you often end up in this problem that the machine is very tightly intercoupled.
02:40It's very hard to pull one component out from another without doing a wholesale dismantling of the machine.
02:47And so you wonder, are you really doing maintenance,
02:49or are you actually just building a brand-new power plant every time one of these things wears out?
02:54That's not the case in the dipole.
02:56You can take the central magnet, which is the kind of complicated, expensive component.
03:00You can take that magnet out.
03:01You have a magnet that's ready to go back in and provide that role of confining the plasma
03:06and keeping that plasma hot.
03:08And you can get the power plant back up and running in about two weeks.
03:11So that's the first point.
03:13And then the second point is, you know, the mission of OpenStar and companies like us
03:18is to provide clean and abundant energy for the world.
03:21But there are other very valuable things that we can do before we get to that milestone
03:26that can help us put a commercial engine in behind what we are trying to achieve.
03:31And so for us, that would be an application like producing medical isotopes,
03:34which is itself a multibillion-dollar industry per annum,
03:38has massive supply chain challenges occurring over the next five years,
03:42and we're literally saving lives for the products that we would be producing.
03:47It's very interesting that your home is New Zealand.
03:51OpenStar got started there because it's supposed to be nuclear-free, right?
03:55What do you find in terms of the supply chain, the talent, in order to grow your business?
04:00Just quickly, if you can.
04:01Yeah, the supply chain and the talent is fantastic.
04:04So, I mean, we live in a globally interconnected economy
04:07where we can pull in what we need, what we can't make in New Zealand.
04:10But on the talent, you've got to remember that New Zealand is now
04:12the third most frequent rocket-launching nation on Earth.
04:16Japan now relies on us to send satellites into space with high responsiveness.
04:22We are the kind of country that can work at this kind of highest level of human ingenuity.
04:27And so our ability to draw in those engineers locally is fantastic.
04:31But I also must say, I'm here in San Francisco for a reason.
04:34We have to expand globally in order to solve global-scale challenges.
04:39What are you seeing in terms of fundraising?
04:41Just very quickly, 30 seconds.
04:45Fundraising, like you said, there's been $4.5 billion last year.
04:49That was 70% of an increase in the year before that.
04:52We expect that same trend to continue.
04:54We're seeing the fundraisers close that reflect that.
04:57And so from a fundraising perspective, we believe that all the capital we need
05:01to continue our pathway is available.
05:04And we're putting that pitch in front of investors as we speak.
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