The reactor power sounds like it is in the range of TRIGA and you have a video of a TRIGA reactor on your FAQ page. It looks like you are planning to use a TRIGA design. Is that right?

NorthStar has started producing Mo-99 in accelerators without fissioning targets. Other producers may start soon:

Competitors abound to produce key medical isotope

After decades with no US producer, a plethora of hopefuls vie for a share of the molybdenum-99 market.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2019022...

Your FAQ says "As a private, production-oriented company, we intend to vertically integrate much of the radioisotope process to reduce inefficiencies and build a modular facility that can be expanded as a stable supply of radioisotopes encourages their use and increases demand." How much demand elasticity do you foresee, if Atomic Alchemy and competitors can easily produce more Mo-99 than was historically consumed?

I was planning on using the TRIGA design when I first started this company, but due to a number of regulatory and supply issues around TRIGA fuel, I have decided to instead use a variation of the PULSTAR design currently used by NC State University. The PULSTAR uses the same type of fuel that commercial power reactors use, but is scaled down to fit the mold of a university research reactor. And because the margin of safety is ludicrously high, you can actually pulse the... PULSTAR in the same fashion that the TRIGAs can be pulsed. I've mostly kept the TRIGA video up because those are much easier to come by, is of similar scale, and get the point across.

Regarding potential competition such as NorthStar or SHINE Med: Basically, the non-reactor technologies have very poor unit economics. The product is less pure (which is fun to say in the context that we're talking about "molly"), and the electricity costs alone for operating accelerators is on par with just purchasing nuclear fuel. And, for the same "fuel" costs, eight of the SHINE accelerators will produce about 4% of a single Atomic Alchemy reactor.

NorthStar's approach of converting Mo-98 to Mo-99 works, but is very inefficient from a nuclear physics standpoint, and requires the same chemical processing, if not more, due to its low purity. It's a band-aid and won't really be able to compete once more players enter the market.

I guess another way to put it is this: the common thread between everyone in the article (except BWXT) is that they are relying on government $$$, and government money is never free. The govt. $$$ is given out on the condition it be used for developing "alternative technologies." And it just so happens that most of these alternative ways are either inferior from a unit economics standpoint, or are a costly regulatory nightmare because licensing new nuclear technology is simply a nightmare.

Regarding demand elasticity: Demand is actually dropping every year as the supply decreases. The weekly demand for the largest market share of radioisotopes is about 3/4 of what it was earlier this decade. As the population around the world grows and ages, the demand will continue to grow. If the myriad other radioisotopes used in nuclear medicine were more abundant and had a more stable supply, the demand for them, from what I can tell, would skyrocket. So there is a ton of room to grow JUST TO MEET CURRENT DEMAND. If China and India were to use nuclear medicine on the same per capita basis that the United States does, the world market would double and then triple, respectively.

Thanks for the answers. A higher-power PULSTAR derivative still needs NRC design approval, right? Or will the reactors be built somewhere that has a simpler approval process for new designs? I've seen people say that Canada is more favorable to novel reactors though I haven't looked into the details.

The NorthStar chemistry advantage looks (IMO) to be the absence of fission products, which are diverse in chemical behavior and radiotoxicity. I have no idea if that can sufficiently offset the complications that come from lower specific activity in the product.

Good luck with your endeavor! I love to see startups that deliver physical products and not just software, especially a product as important as this one.

My pleasure. Great questions.

Yes--the scaled-up PULSTAR would still need regulatory approval for siting and operation, but would not need a new design certification (which is the real dream killer). I've deliberately chosen to use only technology that is commercially available to get a product to market as quickly and cost-effectively as is achievable.

In my last paragraph I should clarify something that sounds confusing as I re-read it: "perceived demand" is dropping, but it is dropping as supply decreases. All of the literature out there suggests that the demand for radioisotopes in medicine is growing by 5-10% per year. I think it would be much higher with a more stable supply.

This is pretty cool! I worked for a summer at Chalk River in Canada, and it was crazy that a few suppliers could produce so much of the world's medical isotopes. I remember reading about fears of a Technetium-99 shortage when it does shut down [1].

People are very hesitant about nuclear power, but medical isotope manufacturing requires little enough nuclear fuel that it should be very safe. You sound like the right person to tackle this, and the market is definitely there. Good luck!

1. https://www.nature.com/news/reactor-shutdown-threatens-world...

Thank you for the comment and well wishes.

Chalk River shutting down was a huge blow to production capacity, as it alone supplied about 20% of the world's demand for radioisotopes. In fact, Chalk River shut down in 2016, but the license was extended for two years to keep it on hot standby solely because of its importance to nuclear medicine supply. When they finally permanently shut it down in March of 2018, I believe the reactor was over 61 years old!

You can find articles like this at least once a year, warning of the next shortage: https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/cardiovascular...

This is fascinating, and a niche where I can definitely see a smaller player causing a splash and driving down prices for nuclear medicine.

My question is, how equipped are you to handle regulatory hurdles for international customers? It's one thing for a small firm to deal with US civil nuclear regulations, but how are you going to deal with the regulators of each foreign market you intend to export to? I imagine that this is something that the larger providers in the field use economies of scale to deal with, but could be a hurdle for a startup.

Great question. The way I'm currently looking at that issue is that the market for the US alone is huge (50% of the world market). By the time I satiate the US market, I will have been able to hire that expertise in. Another possibility is that if I sell directly to a distributor/radiopharmacy, I won't have to deal with any of that anyways.

Regardless, that is an important issue, but one I don't have to have a solid answer to for several years.

Great username, btw. ;)

Just curious. It looks like you formed Atomic Alchemy in 2018 and from the "YC W19" in the title I can assume you've been accepted in YC in 2019. Is this correct?

If this is correct, can you bring an already formed startup to YC? I have always assumed YC was targeted towards very young "I have a million dollar idea" type entrepreneurs, given that they require you to move to SA for three months for $150k in seed money.

In any event, best of luck.

I formed Atomic Alchemy in 2018 because I thought that one had to have the credibility of a formed company in order to ever receive investment.

With YC, you only need the idea, and you can form the company after you are accepted. And in my case, you can certainly bring an already-formed company to YC. In fact, a small number of companies accepted into YC are already profitable.

That is awesome and fascinating at the same time. I genuinely hope you make a dent in the universe and succeed. I hope you post an update with your success dealing something out the door and dealing with the NRC.

Thank you; that means a lot to me. I will definitely have to follow up sometime in the future.

This is off-topic for the Atomic Alchemy post, and I don't want to distract from that, but I'll just briefly answer your question about YC.

Roughly half of the companies that join YC are new companies that are just getting started (< 6 months old), and roughly half are more established companies. There are even a significant number of companies each batch that are pretty large (say, > 20 people).

As a software engineer and nuclear enthusiast, I want to work with you. Do you have any openings?

Not at this exact moment, as the first steps require reactor engineers and chemists.

However, if my seed raise goes as well, I will have some margin to get a software person to help couple together some of the various modeling and simulation codes we use for reactor design.

Further down the line, I will definitely need some software engineers though. I have some novel improvements I want to make upon how material is inserted and removed from the core to be processed, and I will definitely need a custom software control system that talks to hardware to do that.

I make a note to check back with you when I make a posting that requires your expertise, and I will preferentially hire people like you who are passionate and enthusiastic. It's definitely easier to learn how nuclear tech works than it is to shed decades of crappy nuclear industry corporate culture.

Thank you!

Regarding the simulation codes, I worked (as a hobbyist) with OpenMC; but you are probably using something else, as OpenMC is more a teaching aid than a production code.

That's a huge boon. If you've already become familiar with nuclear codes by playing with OpenMC for fun, we may be talking sooner rather than later!

Theoretical/computational chemist turned software developer. What kind of skills are you looking for?

A radiochemist will help me determine the the size requirements of the hot cells for the final facility design. I understand the chemistry needed to separate out some of the most commonly used radioisotopes, but I don't have a sense of scale other than the processes being "bench top" scale.

Additionally, he or she (and with a few colleagues) will develop all of the processing procedures for the myriad isotopes that the facility will produce. A lot of what's publicly available for processing and purification has been optimized and is trade secret.

Another interesting problem is how to turn more of your waste into wealth? Currently, Mo-99 (the radioisotope with the largest market share) is primarily produced by extracting the Mo-99 from fission products. Mo-99 is produced in 7% of fissions. Well, if I process out the Mo-99, how many times and how many different processes on that waste can I perform to extract out other radioisotopes before I have to dispose of it?

Early on I'll need a radiochemist with a certain level of hands-on experience because their work will directly tie into the regulatory process, but as I raise more money and build my team, I'm certain that a computation chemist can help answer that last question which could be a huge innovation.

Hi Thomas! Congrats on the launch! You are meeting a real need, so I hope you make lots of money doing it.

I mainly just wanted to say "Hello", since it's a small industry, and if you have quality issues at some point we will probably end up talking anyways (one of my jobs is maintaining calibration traceability for a major dose calibrator manufacturer).

I sent you a LinkedIn contact; it appears we have a mutual friend.

Do you have any interesting innovations you are considering, other than consolidating production facilities? I presume you are planning on sticking with the normal "cows and pigs" methods of delivery to pharmacies, for compatibility.

By consolidating production facilities and positioning the facility as a factory, I can add some unique capabilities for moving things in and out of the reactor core.

As an example, most research reactors have a facility called a "rabbit tube" which is similar to the pneumatic tubes at a bank. You can basically shoot little capsules in and out of the core at will this way. But most of these reactors only have one of these tubes, or none, and every experiment they move in or out of the core is done by hand with 20 foot poles.

I want to automate the entire process by making every irradiation facility in the core accessible via a pneumatic tube system, and have a software system automatically eject material that had "cooked" long enough and send it straight to the chemical processing rooms via this shuttle system. This would drastically reduce human performance errors, reduce personnel requirements, reduce radiation exposure, reduce the capex required to move highly radioactive material around the facility, and allow me to move things in and out of the core without first needing to shut down the reactor.

In the short term, I'll most likely be sticking to the "cow" method, but as I learn more about that end of the supply chain, I'm sure I'll find more places to push for innovation.

What is preventing larger players who already operate reactors from doing exactly what you propose (ie close packed supply chain)? I'm curious what kind of protection you can have for an idea that is essentially - let me put all the tools in the same room.

That is an interesting question that comes up a lot.

There really are no larger players who already operate reactors other than the power industry (power reactors generally cannot be used for radioisotope production) or government-run research laboratories. Realistically there is nothing preventing a government entity from joining the fun, but they will never be competitive. South Korea has spent several billion dollars designing a new reactor model and developing fuel for it (which I tested in ATR a few years ago, oh the irony!). It will be dedicated to doing the exact same thing I am. They've been at it since 2012 and they haven't broken ground on their facility yet. Last I checked the project caught a bad case of NIMBY.

The second part of the answer is that most of the processes are trade secret. If you dig deep enough, you can find a journal article or two from several decades ago, and even some newer ones where a different approach is studied. However, most of the existing players have an optimized process protected by trade secret. It takes a lot of domain expertise spread over several hard science fields to effectively get into the business.

Do you already have NRC clearance? Are the reactors designed and approved? Are you aware of the duration of the regulatory process? These are important questions which should be answered and properly disclosed to potential investors. Regulatory approval for anything of this scale by the NRC could take cumulatively up to a decade if not more.

Indeed, the first step is to get all of the regulatory approvals to 1) construct and 2) operate the facility.

Due to the simplicity of the reactor design and facility, and the low power it will operate at, it should take about 18 months for each of these approvals, and both can be (mostly) done in parallel. I anticipate production starting in 2024 or 2025. There are a variety of things that can speed this up or slow it down, but this is my best projection to date.

The Advanced Test Reactor is regulated by the Department of Energy, which is way more stodgy than the NRC can be, so I definitely appreciate the importance of navigating the regulatory environment carefully. It can take ten years if done horribly wrong.

Another thought--one of my biggest challenges with speaking to investors is the fixation on the regulatory process because it can be onerous. Interestingly enough, because this project is much smaller and simpler than a power plant, it is actually a much more straightforward process than it is perceived to be.

The NRC has two guides for licensing non-power reactors: NUREG-1537 Parts 1 and 2. Part one lays out the format and information required in a license application, and part two is the review guide that the NRC uses to evaluate the application. So really, all of the questions AND answers are published. A prospective applicant just needs to say what they're doing, show how it meets safety criteria, and prove they're doing what they said they'd do when they build the thing.

It's obviously much more complex than that, but that's the gist of it.

Thanks for your reply. I apologize if I provide seemingly vague details but it's a rather small industry and I'd like to protect my identity. That being said, I only ask because I have witnessed firsthand how a project with:

* existing facilities

* already funded 50m+

* existing staff

* ironed out ideas

Were unable to get NRC clearance for a variety of things for an extended amount of time. Granted, this was an accelerator based method, not reactor-based. However, this leads me to my second point.

What kind of fuel are you planning on using for these reactors? From my understanding, the NRC has expressed interest in removing reactor-based methods for mediso generation and instead aiming for domestic accelerator-based production. Companies like North Star, Nordion, and the Mallinckrodt nuclear spinoff are aiming for similar goals and seem to have expectations aligned with mine. If it were truly as easy as getting a reactor designed, a couple million dollars, and six years, don't you think these massive DoE/DoD contractors would have done it by now? As you said yourself, the market is limited but the potential for growth is massive if we can get a stable supply.

Again, sorry for all the questions, take the time you need. I don't mean to come off as arrogant or inflammatory, just curious.

No need to apologize for asking questions!

I'm using commercially available fuel that is available from fuel vendors. UO2 with zircaloy cladding.

As far as I'm aware, the NRC has no stated mandate for removing reactor-based methods. Or, if you have a source for that, I'd love to see it because that's a big deal. What you may be thinking of is the DOE/NNSA grants that are being given out for encouraging a domestic Mo-99 supply, which have strings attached which mandate it be for developing an "alternative" technology. I've found that the correlation is very strong between nuclear startups which have failed and which ones rely on government money.

I'd be curious why you think those projects have failed. I've had many discussions with other nuclear startups and friends at INL on this topic, and it's pretty nuanced.

Having been a DOE contractor, I have some... strong opinions about how nearly everyone in the industry operates or their approach to regulation. To refrain from ranting, I'll just say that it is my strong opinion that pretty much everyone does things "they way we've always have done them" and that everything is over-engineered and costs way more than it needs to. Most people I've spoken to seem to think it costs $100M to build hot cells. I know it doesn't cost that much to build a glorified box of concrete, even if that's what cost-plus entities have historically paid for them.

We could take this discussion offline as well, if you'd prefer. Then we can both be more specific and protect anonymity. Feel free to shoot me an email at info@atomicalchemy.us if you wish.

Sounds good. I'll contact you over email. Thanks!

Another observation that I've had to support my hypothesis: NuScale is one of those entities doing something modestly different and has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars on just the regulatory component.

Here in Silicon Valley, there are a few nuclear startups working on various non-LWR concepts. One of them has done roughly the equivalent amount of work that NuScale has done but has only spent on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars, and with a team of less than 20.

So to me, it is clear that there are better and worse ways to go about things.

Very cool. Any idea on the market size you are addressing? Are you currently raising, and at what conditions?

The world market is somewhere around $2Bn, even though current supply is not meeting demand. I think it can be much larger. If China and India were to use nuclear medicine at the same per capita basis as the US, those countries alone would be a market of $2Bn each, at a bare minimum.

I have proof of the desperate need of of these materials with two LOIs valued at up to $100M.

For the first phase of this project, which is mostly regulatory, I'm raising 1.5 on 12.

This is absolutely brilliantly cool!

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Unsure why my previous comment was deleted, but I'll ask again. Have you received NRC regulatory approval? Do you have an estimate on how long that will take? This is important to know for potential investors.

Your original comment got hit by a software filter. A moderator saw it and unkilled the comment, and marked your account legit so this won't happen again.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

The moderators personally emailed me to let me know that this question was asked but was snagged by a software filter, and has been "unkilled." I'll answer on your original post.