Safe by Design: How Terra Innovatum’s Micro Reactors Are Changing Nuclear Energy

The grid is strained, AI data centers are exploding in demand, and clean baseload is once again on the table. Alessandro Petruzzi, Co-Founder and CEO of Terra Innovatum, joins the show to talk about a different kind of nuclear power: micro modular reactors that are safe by physics, not by emergency equipment. ☢️

Terra Innovatum has developed the Solo, a 1 megawatt electric micronuclear reactor. Alessandro discusses how 1 megawatt is physically small-scale, how the low power makes decay heat much easier to manage, and how the reactor is engineered so it cannot melt down. He also shares how the company is using existing nuclear fuel and supply chains to build the reactor, which will shorten the timeline to building the first one. 🏭

For use cases, Alessandro shares how these nuclear reactors could supply power to AI data centers waiting on grid transmission upgrades, mining operations that need to reduce their CO2 emissions, and even provide bonus outputs that may be even more important. Microreactors can provide desalinated water to areas with water scarcity issues or produce medical radioisotopes for hospitals to treat cancer patients. ⚡

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“Energy means progress. Without energy, you don’t progress.”

Alessandro Petruzzi, Co-Founder and CEO of Terra Innovatum, explains how micro nuclear reactors could bring reliable power to industries, data centers, and remote communities worldwide. ⚡🌍

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Steven Ruffing 0:01

Welcome to the Four Worlds Podcast from Tomorrow's World Today. We're diving into the latest in tech, science, and sustainability, from nature's mysteries in the world of inspiration, to the hands-on crafts of creation, the bold breakthroughs of innovation, and the scaled-up wonders of production. This is your ticket to the stories shaping tomorrow. Welcome back to another episode of the Four Worlds Podcast. Today, we are joined by Alessandro Petruzzi, the CEO of Terra Innovatum. Alessandro, thank you so much for joining us. And I just want to kind of kick things off. And if you could just give us a brief overview of Terra Innovatum, what you guys do, who you are, and all of that good stuff. Once again, thanks for joining us.

Terra Innovatum And Microreactor Basics

Alessandro Petruzzi 0:46

Thank you to you, Steven, for your invitation. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Terra Innovatum is a micronuclear reactor designer and vendor. What we do is a micronuclear reactor one megawatt electric, five megawatt turnout, which is deployable anywhere, thanks to its reducible size, modularity, scalability, and very high-safe profile. The design concept started in 2018, and after six years of advancement, we were able to start our USNRC licensing approach. And our final mission is to deliver this sort of battery of electricity for 15 years without interruption and with just a rechargeable every 15 years up to 45 years everywhere in the world.

Steven Ruffing 1:39

So, you know, this kind of industry within an industry, talking about like micro-nuclear reactors, all within the greater nuclear industry, you know, specifically those micro-modular nuclear reactors, what kind of makes them different? You talked about the that battery technology from traditional nuclear reactors.

Alessandro Petruzzi 2:00

I'm a nuclear engineer and I always work with a large nuclear reactor and I fan of them. But from the other side, when we started in 2018, the idea was how we can really let nuclear energy penetrate in the market. Because nuclear energy is really a new from the 60s that is there. We were not able to penetrate in the market for several reasons. Some depending on the nuclear engineers, some not. But definitely we were not able to penetrate in that kind of market that is the small size. So, and the reason why we want to go there is because there is a relevant large amount of people and industry that may need, but from the other side, the idea was the following. Large nuclear power plant, in order to be safe, they need equipment. They need extra pump, extra accumulator of water, extra auxiliary system, they are calling emergency coal cooling system in order to cope with accident scenario. Our idea was different. Let's go low with power. At that level of power, the safety profile increases a lot. Because whenever you shut down a reactor, actually it's not like shutting down gas power station. That you push the button, power goes down. In our case, power is still there. It's a 6%, more or less, plus or minus, depending on the technology, of a denominal power. But 6% of a large nuclear power plant is 180 megawatts or even larger, is an enormous amount of power that you have to remove with that emergency cooling system. In our case, 6% is 300 kilowatts, something that you cannot remove with the natural circulation of air. In other terms, our reactor cannot melt by physics, not by equipment. So it's like when you try to cook pasta with a pan full of water, but you have just a lighter and not a big fire. So you cannot boil the reactor. We cannot melt. Sorry, you cannot boil the water. We cannot melt the water.

Steven Ruffing 3:59

And so with all those things considered, one of the things that stuck out to me with these micromodular reactors is the word safer. How does all of this, all that information you just say, you just said, you know, how does all of this kind of shift the scale and fundamentally change the way that we think about building and deploying nuclear energy?

Alessandro Petruzzi 4:20

Yeah, the safety profile, as I mentioned, is fundamental because sooner or later when we will be able to deploy our technology, I'm pretty sure that public opinion will be very important. And we have a big topic, a big argument is to sustain our technology in front of the public opinion. In addition, we use a fuel which is the same fuel adopted in the nuclear industry since 60 years and is available. There are more than one supplier, there is no risk of supply chain. So we can really pass to the commercialization very soon. Now, I mentioned when I started that our reactor is also a micromodular reactor, where the first modular means that we can build several of these units. Each unit, just to give you an idea, is 33 feet by 33 feet. So very reduced amount of surface. But we can build several of these close each other. Just to give an idea, 1000 of these reactors can stay in a surface that is equivalent to one-third of Central Park in New York, just to give you an idea. So very large amount. This is the way by which we can scale up from one megawatt electric to one thousand or one hundred, one thousand megawatt electric. And each unit is safe by itself. Whatever happens to each unit does not propagate it to the other unit. And modularity is very important, in particular nowadays, due to the data center, due to the high demand of energy, due to the fact that we need also to bring electricity where there is not the grid. And modularity is our answers to this uh request that the new demand is is occurring.

Steven Ruffing 5:56

And when we talk about the technology and the infrastructure that kind of goes into all this, uh, you know, you really emphasize the use of existing supply chains and commercially available components. Why is that important for you, Antera Innovatum, to kind of build on this proven hardware rather than building something and developing something entirely new and experimental?

Alessandro Petruzzi 6:20

We want to build the reactor today, not in 10 years, not in 15 years. I had the luck to work in a very nice environment, which is the nuclear engineer. I had the possibility to take part to several licensing processes. And I touch by myself really the fact that whenever you have an innovation in nuclear technology, even if you're good, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of RD. I'm in favor of innovation because this is the way by which we progress. But at the same time, the nuclear technology of today is safe enough to bring the reactor existing today. So our concept was we want there is completely the licensing. We want there completely the supply chain. We want to build the reactor today and take benefit of the innovation in 10, 15 years, whenever there will come and if there would come. That this was our flow.

Steven Ruffing 7:16

Yeah, and and when you mention the safe by design concept and the physical principles, let's talk about the solar reactor specifically, all right? For a non-technical audience, how would you kind of explain? You know, we did kind of go over this a little bit, but for a non-technical audience, the difference between a reactor that relies on active safety safety systems versus one that is inherently incapable of melting down. Thanks.

Alessandro Petruzzi 7:41

Thanks for this question, because I think it's one more value of a micro reactor respect to other technology. Whenever you have a larger reactor, as I mentioned to you, the decay power, this is the power that stay that stays there even if you shut down the reactor, is large. It's 180 megawatt at the beginning and it's going down for a reactor of uh 1000 1000 megawatt electricity. And they require time. And in order to remove this power, you need extra equipments. But these extra equipment should be there. You should uh maintain, you should check if they are operating for all the time up to the accident. Maybe you cannot use like the accident this is occurring, they should be there, and they should be also redundant. Not just one, but several of the same type. Because one may fail, so you need two, maybe two can fail, so you need three. We talk about two over three, two over four failure times. In our case, as the power is low, we don't need those equipment. We have no possibility to melt just because when we are in the power, the power that we have is not enough to reach the melting. Like I was saying before, we don't have enough power with the lighters to boil the water in a pump.

Steven Ruffing 8:53

Right, right. I love that. I love that comparison to the the I'm gonna have to steal that one. It's like boiling a bottle of water with a lighter. That's perfect.

Alessandro Petruzzi 9:02

So charge a long pen.

Steven Ruffing 9:04

Yeah. So I love the technology aspect of it, building on stuff that's kind of already been there. You talked about this this being around since the 60s, but this is still something new and where these micro-modular reactors can be deployed. We you highlight behind the meter and off-grid applications. What are the most urgent, unmet energy needs that you see today that traditional power grids just simply can't solve?

Alessandro Petruzzi 9:34

Definitely. Today the AI is the driving force in all this. It's a national security issue. It requests a lot of energy, a lot of power to the data center. And data centers need to be built in an already infrastructure, existing infrastructure. That's the problem. They need a lot of power. The generation of power is is uh obviously a challenge, but more than this, as you outline, is the electrical grid. To modify, to improve, to extend electrical grid nowadays in any western country is a nightmare because uh it requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money. So data center definitely is is one of the reasons for which uh solar is there, but at the same time, I think the mining, look for instance, the mining, mining are in a very remote area. They need to get more clean and to reduce the CO2. And we can bring their reactor without grid and contributing to be to be clean. And let me say also that one important aspect we had is when we decide to go down power and to penetrate in the market, the real the idea was, let me say, democratize or retain the electricity and the energy need. So the possibility really to bring the reactor everywhere, there is a demand of energy. And remember, energy means progress. Without energy, you don't progress. So without a reactor, we can arrive everywhere. Let me get this. Whenever you build a very large nuclear power plant, there is a lot of work that you have to do in advance to prepare the sun. I was participating in the construction of a couple of nuclear power plants, and every day, for instance, the one in Argentina, they have more than 4,000 people every day going to work. This means that before starting the construction of the nuclear power plant, you need to build a site, you need to build a beam, you need you need to build hospital, restaurant, and whatever. With our reactor, you can bring the reactor wherever you wish, just a road is enough, and you don't need a lot of work in advance. And this kind of work are long, you pay a lot, and usually these are not included in the cost of the of the nuclear power plant. So also in our in the in our case, in this case, solo is a is a good answer because we save a lot of money also in this space.

Steven Ruffing 11:57

Yeah, I think that's the most glaring thing is the movability and being able to bring the reactor, the solar reactor to wherever you you want to go. And I'm glad that you brought up the AI data centers because that's the biggest thing right now that's pushing kind of like a resurgence of nuclear energy. I think a lot of people are like, wow, we need we need clean energy. So the AI data centers are one thing. How could these modular units help other industries in the future that typically struggle to go green and transition away from fossil fuels? One that comes to mind is like the steel industry. Really, really hard to go green. How do you see these modular units maybe one day kind of branching out to other industries like that?

Alessandro Petruzzi 12:44

Nuclear energy is the answer. Not only our macro reactor, but whatever nuclear power plant is the answer to this request to be clean and reduction of the CO2 emissions. In addition to this, solo and our technology as a micro reactor behind the meter is contributing even a lot even more. Because you know, to build a grid, you need a lot of copper. And to have a lot of copper, you need to do a lot of mining. So, in some ways, is there is a cycle. The fact that we are behind the meter application allows also to save a lot of CO2 emissions because you don't need that copper that you needed to mine and for which you are emitting CO2.

Clean Water And Cancer Treatment Isotopes

Steven Ruffing 13:29

No, that's great. And and to that point, kind of leads into my next question. Kind of shifting in a way, I just want to talk about the humanitarian potential of pairing these micro reactors with the clean water production in regions that are facing water scarcity. Can you kind of touch on that and what Terra Innovatum does in that space?

Alessandro Petruzzi 13:49

When we consider our reactor, the idea obviously is to be successful and to bring the reactor everywhere. But from the other side, we have the two other outcomes of this endeavor is to bring the reactor where energy is needed today. Where in those kind of villages where there is very difficult to bring electricity and they are struggling for that. So the possibility really to bring the reactor in that village and give electricity is the real success, the success to the square that our project can achieve. And we can use this reactor for desalinating water in those areas where water is not present, but we can use, and this is also very important, use our reactor for the medical health application to radarize water production.

Steven Ruffing 14:37

And you Alessandra, I love I love when guests do this. You kind of lead me right into my next question because just talking about that radioisotope production for the cancer treatment being a key benefit. So let's jump into that. How could a network of these micro reactors change that global supply chain for life-saving medical treatments that are currently just centralized in a few locations?

Alessandro Petruzzi 15:02

You see very well, Stephen, that so far the radio is auto production, radio pharmacy production is um is a very critical, in a very critical situation. Human population is becoming older and older every day. We need more, obviously, of this radio pharmacy. And right now, radio pharmacies are built on the radio isotopes, and the radio isotopes are produced by accelerator or nuclear power plants. But there is very few centers where you can produce radio isotopes worldwide. And uh the production is not only limited, but there is also characterized by a difficult and complex transportation system. The larger part of these radio isotopes, once they have been produced, they needed to be transported from the production point in all worldwide, mostly Western countries, they needed to be transformed in a radio pharmacy, they needed to arrive to the hospital and they needed to be used by the hospital for the for the for the people for the patient. Now, all of this should happen in average six days. Six days from when the radio isotopes have been produced. So that is very difficult and very complex, very expensive. In our case, each hospital can get solar. And while solar is producing electricity or even heat for them, we can produce as a by-product radio isotopes. And they have radioisotopes available close to the hospital. They can transform in radio pharmacy and they can use locker. So in this way, we simplify a lot the complexity of the transportation. We think we may reduce the cost of radio isotopes, and we can definitely contribute to the possibility that everybody in the world, not only the western country, have access to this uh technology.

Steven Ruffing 16:45

Yeah, is that something that yeah, I'm sure your company is obviously very proud of? Is that one of the things you kind of hang your hat on? Obviously, you're doing really great things, really innovative things. How would you how do you just kind of you know realize so some of the stuff that you're doing and just realizing how proud of it and what you've accomplished?

Alessandro Petruzzi 17:06

We will be very proud when we will uh be to work, we need to execute. We have um I I think was very natural for us, for my team to to develop and design this design. There was not a sort of breakthrough, but there was more a progressive development toward this kind of solution. So we are very proud now, but the amount of work to do is is still large. We need to execute, and we are fully committed to bring our first of a kind as a real product in uh Rock City, Linois in 2027.

Licensing Commercialization And Scale-Up

Steven Ruffing 17:43

Yeah, in 2027, the eyeing up commercialization of this, and and a big part of this is just navigating those new nuclear regulations. You know, they're famously difficult. How is Terra Innovatum's you know, regulatory strategy designed to kind of overcome the typical decade-long timelines that have historically slowed down nuclear innovations?

Alessandro Petruzzi 18:05

At least two factors contribute to this. The first one is us. All my team were working in licensing applications worldwide. We participated in the preparation of safety analysis for four different technologies in four different countries for four different regulators. This definitely needs a lot of uh expertise internally, the same expertise that we use to design our reaction. So we are very confident about this. We are very we know that licensing is a complex process, but it's a work that we need to do, that we need, that we have to do, but it's something that we feel very comfortable to succeed. From the other side, uh, we have to uh acknowledge that definitely there is a several deregulation that is right now ongoing in the United States, in particular for micro reactors, because a micro reactor is different from large reactors. And the difference, going back to the first point, is the decay power. Whenever you eliminate the decay power, your system becomes very similar to, let me say, to a now, this is not very technological, but very similar to a gas power plant. So the fact that we have low power, we have low amount of fuel, make the application definitely easier and faster than a large reactor. Right now, USNRC is producing what it is called low consequence reactor class. And this definition, nuclear engineers were never good in using words. I cannot say what low consequence might appear, so there is a consequence, but this is an engineer, you know, risk zero does not exist. So low consequence means micro reactor for which the emergency planning zone is zero. So you may stay in front of the reactor 24 hours a day, 365 days per year for 10 years, and nothing happens to you. It's like if you do one extra three in 10 years, just to give you. So that's the big difference between a micro reactor and rational report.

Steven Ruffing 20:07

Yeah, that's uh um yeah, right, right, right. And I'm glad you put that in there because I think that's one thing that you know always catches the eye of someone that might not be familiar with nuclear and only knows the word nuclear. They kind of there's kind of a stigma uh about it. And I'm glad you you added that because it does kind of put things into perspective with what you're doing and what this technology does. So it's really interesting. Yeah, of course, of course. So as we look into the future where global energy demand is expected to skyrocket, we're seeing it right now, skyrocketing right now. What role do you see these micromodular reactors playing in the overall energy mix, let's say, alongside renewables like wind and solar energy?

Alessandro Petruzzi 20:50

I think all the type of uh source of energy should contribute to the energy mix because it is an added value. But at the same time, what I feel as an engineer is that sometimes we are comparing Apple with uh orange. What I mean is that as a nuclear engineer, we were uh educated to do the cost, including everything, from mining to the commission. Some other application, for some other application, this is not done. So I'm extremely in favor of mixing energy. I think this is the right direction, but at the same time, I would like to say that not always a megawatt thermal that needs to be stored. Sometimes it's more economical to throw away one megawatt thermal than to store because maybe the cost is higher. So this is to say that I see in the future, in terms of nuclear energy, I think that we will see much more large nuclear power plants and several thousand and micromodular reactors. This is where I see the development. Our soil is such that is uh we can One typical difficulties of a nuclear power plant is to follow the loads. So to change the amount of power based on the load. We conceive our reactor, we design our reactor in the way that without touching the primary system, we can arrive to dispatch at zero power and going up to the request, the full demand of power in a relatively short time. We are talking about minutes. This means that our solo can be coupled with batteries, electrical batteries, also for systems that they have a larger simulation in terms of power. And we are talking about not large uh batteries, just because in our case we are able to follow the power the route in a few minutes.

Steven Ruffing 22:51

Incredible. Incredible. So there's a lot of moving parts. I think that's one thing people can take away from this. There's a lot that goes into it. You know, whether you believe, you know, whether you you know like it or not, that's just how it goes. That's how this industry goes. And and you know, as we wrap up here, I just want to know with all of that considered, what are the scaling goals? How does Terra Innovatum get there?

Alessandro Petruzzi 23:14

Okay, this is we need to talk about commercial fiction, you know. Um so far we are really focused on execution that will bring us to the deploy the personal reactor, which is by the way, is a commercial is is a reactor in an industrial side. It's not a reactor in a laboratory side, it's a reactor that will provide electricity to the owner of the site. This is also a big difference respected to many of our competitors. We we consider the commercialization basically divided into phase. Phase one, that is between 2028, 2030, and phase two. And the scale up is such that we are able to provide up to 400 units by 2030 with the current supply chain. If we need more, obviously we need to develop, to extend, maybe to invest in this current supply chain. But this will depend on how many orders we will do. After this, in 2013, we will have the phase two of commercialization, which will be characterized by hundreds, several hundreds of reactors per year. And in this case, the scanning at the scanning up is the real challenge. But solar has been considered to be producing in a factory. So you should imagine that one day, with for a scene around 2029-2030, we will have a factory that is able to assemble all the components of the reactor inside. This process is very similar, or we plan to be very similar to the assembling of a car. So this is the way by which we can really see that we can scale up and reach IV production period.

Steven Ruffing 24:51

Yep. At the end of the day, commercialization is key. There's a lot of steps to get there, and there's a lot going on in the nuclear industry, especially within the micromodular nuclear reactors that you guys are working on. And I'm glad you could hop on here and just give an idea of what's going on and you know what you guys are doing. So once again, I really appreciate your time, Alessandro.

Alessandro Petruzzi 25:15

Thank you, Steve. So far, as I say, we are really focused on execution. Uh licensing. Licensing is the first step, as you mentioned before. We expect to submit our safety analysis report for construction permit June, July this year. So in a few months. And we expect to receive the construction permit in June, July 2027. So this is therefore where we are focused now. At the same time, we are uh transforming all our agreements with the supply chain in real order. So we start to receive some material, we start to build some mock-ups that will help us to build the reactor next year, starting from January, February next year. So this is where we are really focused today.

Steven Ruffing 26:02

Yep. And for any audience members that want to learn more about all of that, everything that we've talked to, and maybe some other things that we haven't touched on, where can they follow you and uh where can they get more information from Tara and Vana?

Alessandro Petruzzi 26:14

Yeah, definitely on our website, on our socials, but also we open our meeting with uh USMRC. Anytime we do a meeting, a licensing meeting with USMRC, there is at least 15 minutes of public meeting, and we invite everyone who wants to know about the status of our project directory to attend to this meeting. So you can get information, you can get see, you can really see the development and where we are going. Every month there is a one of these public meetings.

Steven Ruffing 26:45

That's great. And I advise anyone listening to this to check them out. They have a lot of cool stuff going on in the energy sector right now, it is just booming, especially the nuclear industry. Alessandro, thank you so much for joining us.

Alessandro Petruzzi 26:59

Thank you, Stephen. It was a really pleasure.

Steven Ruffing 27:02

It was, it was a good one, and thank you everyone for listening. That's all the time we have today. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Four Worlds Podcast. Until next time, you can catch up on the latest innovations shaping our world at tomorrow'sworldtoday.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.