Radiant: Fueling the Military's Future

Good evening and welcome to everyone who joined us this week. We are excited for renowned director Christopher Nolan’s biopic film, Oppenheimer, releasing this week. Reflecting on Oppenheimer’s legacy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “‘American Prometheus,” and the new Nolan film, we started to consider the potential of nuclear energy in defense tech.

This week we delve into the potential of Radiant’s microreactors as we traverse the bridge from the birth of the atomic age to the promise of a nuclear future.

This week’s post:

• ⚛️ A Conversation with Radiant Nuclear

• 💰 Term Sheet

• 🚩 Red Team Update

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Radiant Nuclear -
Pioneering Military Energy Solutions with Mars-inspired Technology

Today’s modern battlefield requires an ever growing need for energy solutions as the warfighter’s tools and weapons continue to evolve. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Powering the US Army of the Future,” puts the problem in perspective: “Since WW2, the Army is using ~20x more energy per soldier, while at the same time reducing the number of soldiers by a roughly equivalent amount. This direction of energy demand will likely continue in the future and highlights the importance of energy supply and management.”

If you’ve been reading Arsenal since the beginning, every technology we have profiled in these pages requires a massive amount of energy: C-UAS (directed energy weapons, continuous spectrum jamming), UAVs, hypersonics and missile defense, synthetic aviation fuel production, combat collaborative aircraft, etc. The command and control units for these weapons alone will require a massive amount of power.

Point of Use Energy Production Will Be Required

One problem set that has been popular among our readers here at AoT is contested logistics. We recently detailed the contested logistics problem here. As it stands now, the main sources of fuel for DoD are liquid fuels in the form of JP-8 (jet fuel) and diesel. The major drawback with using liquid fuels such as diesel is transporting the diesel to the point of use over the ‘tyranny of distance,’ or effectively the entire Pacific Ocean when addressing a peer adversary in INDOPACOM. In the Iraq War, transporting supplies of fuel, ammo and food produced one of the highest casualty rates per mission due to improvised explosive device (IEDs) ambushes on convoys. We know that contested logistics will be a nightmare when running supply routes in the Pacific Theater vs a peer threat.

One Solution - Radiant Nuclear

One company working on solving DoD’s required point of use energy needs at a cheap price, for long durations without refueling and at scale, is Radiant Nuclear.

Radiant’s minimum viable product (MVP) is Kaleidos - a portable nuclear microreactor that replaces diesel generators. Instead of us explaining the microreactor, watch Radiant’s explanation here. Kaleidos will provide 1 megawatt (MW) of electricity, capable of powering 1,000 homes up to 5 years. The microreactor can deliver facility heating and water desalination. Built to fit in a shipping container, Kaleidos includes the reactor, shielding, power conversion system and cooling system. The microreactor can produce 110x the energy density of diesel, enabling cost competition with transported fuel.

Kaleidos is factory constructed, delivered via truck, ship, or air and once it arrives, can supply full power within 48 hours. The electricity produced is clean with zero carbon emissions and once the reactor fuel is spent after 5 years, Radiant picks up the container (which can fit on the bed of a truck) and ships back to the factory with another container / reactor as a replacement. There is zero permanent waste at customer site.

Project Pele - DoD’s Request Inspired Radiant

In 2016, the Defense Science Board recognized that battlefield energy usage will likely increase significantly with the energy needs of current and future military capabilities and operations likely outpacing improvements to energy efficiency and management. To solve this problem, the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) launched Project Pele - the development of a safe, mobile and advanced nuclear microreactor to support a variety of DoD missions, such as generating power for remote operating bases. [For good measure, here’s a counterpoint to the military use cases for miniaturized nuclear power.]

Conversation with Doug Bernauer, CEO of Radiant

AoT recently had the privilege to sit down with the Co-Founder and CEO of Radiant to discuss how Kaleidos could solve DoD’s energy needs:

AoT: Why did you start Radiant?

“I joined SpaceX and worked there for 12 years. I wanted to keep working on a meaningful mission that would lead to colonization of Mars. A meaningful mission was defined as Starship landing on Mars with no people on board and then you refuel it. To do this you would use Martian water, ice and CO2 from the atmosphere, using power to process those propellants, you refuel Starship and send it back to Earth. To solve that mission, you need a lot of power. At first, I tried to solve the problem with solar. If you go toward the Martian ice, you’re away from the sun, so your solar power is way over scaled and you would need two rockets to land to carry the solar and battery systems. This broke my mission design. Elon told me that nuclear would be better. I had done zero nuclear at that point and found that solar versus nuclear was a no brainer. Nuclear power was way easier than using solar. While working on solving nuclear power for the Starship Mars mission, DoD announced the Pele Program. I was super excited learning about the program because you could change maybe 10% of the DoD requested design and send that to space. It was tough to build a prototype at SpaceX, so I left and founded Radiant. I took a year to learn more about nuclear and put together a plan. I found that there was no modern nuclear technology company. No one can build a reactor on time and on budget. The more I studied it, the more I found that it was doable with good engineering.

You’re focused on Kaleidos. Could you talk about the reactor you’re building and how it’s differentiated from other systems?

Kaleidos is the main focus and only thing we are working on. Every dollar, every hour, every person is focused on building this unit, getting it fueled and doing a fuel demonstration in 2026. The plan is to fuel and test the design at the Idaho National Lab’s DOME facility no later than 2026. We will operate Kaleidos for at least one week at the DOME demonstration. We are not offering different designs to different customers, we have one design that we are working on.

Some unique characteristics of Kaleidos:

• TRISO fuel - ceramic coated fuel is meltdown-proof, handles 1,600 degrees Celsius

• Helium coolant - if the system leaks, radioactive material will not leak since Helium does not become radioactive in the system

• Using CO2 and not steam - maintains portable advantage without steam

• Passive cooling air system - keeps fuel and vessel temperatures cold even if power is lost; cooling still functions even after an EMP pulse!

Our service model is that you are running the reactor out in the field, you don’t need anyone around to run the reactor. The reactor will be monitored from Radiant’s offices. If something doesn’t work, the reactor will self-shutdown and Radiant will deliver a new reactor to replace the one that is not working.

A highly touted industry figure is that nuclear fuel is 2 million times hydrocarbons in energy density and it’s true! While you can’t keep the system critical as the uranium continues to break down, you are utilizing a much larger energy density with nuclear compared to diesel.

If we place Kaleidos at an Air Force base or in an expeditionary / remote location for DoD, it could be targeted. What safety mechanisms or criteria do you require for Kaleidos?

I doubt there would be a base that we would place inside the engagement zone or lack air supremacy preventing the protection of soldiers and airmen. Fuel bladders exist on the every base, especially in expeditionary environments, and could be targeted or destroyed very easily. For the reactor, it’s not designed to be a bomb. The worst case scenario would be losing some of the shielding and create a radiation hazard, but you can have people move out of the area. To prove this, DoD could fund testing at a site such as the Yuma Proving Grounds to shoot multiple weapons at a mock reactor and see what would happen to the reactor after an engagement with the riskiest weapon type.

What do you see as the military use cases?

Some of the interesting things you could do or utilize the reactors for:

• Backup power for fixed base installations - replacing backup generators for critical infrastructure during power fluctuations or natural disaster relief

• Primary power source for expeditionary or remote bases - due to the highly portable nature of the reactors, could embark the reactor as part of the expeditionary footprint when establishing a new base

• Since you have five years of power with Kaleidos, you can continuously run C-UAS weapons so you can’t be swarmed because the defense systems are always powered

• Could use these reactors as power sources on unmanned islands or leave these early warning radars or missile defense systems powered for 5 years at choke points or strategic small islands without any person there to required to manage the system

• Directed Energy Weapons (e.g., microwave weapons)

What are your funding sources?

Private - We have raised $54M from Series A, B and seed rounds:

• Seed Round: $1.2M

• Series A - $13M led by Union Square and Decisive Point

• Series B - $40M led by AndressenHorrowitz (A16z)

Public - $2.3M total, the majority from a DoD Phase II SBIR from AFWERX at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. We are modeling and simulating energy resilience and microreactor integration scenarios at Hill AFB. What this demonstrates is that Kaleidos will be prime power in remote or expeditionary base locations and back up power at fixed base locations.

What do you see is the best funding going forward?

STRATFI or any non dilutive capital from a government funding program. The Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF) could work. This could be run out of SCO similar to the Pele Program. We would love to work with DoD more. I love the culture of DoD because they are all about getting stuff done. There are schedules and clear and up front success criteria.

Lt. General Eric Wesley (Ret.), US Army, is an advisor for us and shared his message in a blog post on the website here. Lt. General Wesley is helping us with sharing Radiant’s progress and approach to Congress, who debates funding this nuclear technology, and anyone else who listens. Flexible sources of funding are a must and we really like the program APFIT which is a competitive, merit-based program for innovative and mature technologies - with priority given to those technologies developed by small businesses and/or nontraditional defense contractors.

What I like to talk about a lot is NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) / Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) and SpaceX. In the first few years that SpaceX started, they raised $180M from private capital from many rounds, but won $350M of COTS funding through NASA which remained competitive throughout. We believe this is the ultimate way to fund something. SpaceX was funded at 2:1 ratio of public to private capital. We would like Radiant to get to that ratio and if we look at the SpaceX comparison, the challenge for nuclear microreactors is as big as the space industry and reshoring America’s launch capability, getting it back from the Russians and back on American soil. In nuclear similarly, the US relies on the Russians for fuel and enrichment. I am very open about Radiant’s milestones and funding as we grow. But for Radiant to raise $54M from private and only $2.3M from public sources demonstrates the need for the public funding system to evolve.

Who do you see as your competitors?

Time! We are focused on having the first fueled microreactor by 2026 and demonstrating that in Idaho as a major milestone for the nuclear industry and Radiant. The DoD and other sources of federal support should make it a program and keep it continuously competitive, with real success criteria which is what the military does best.

What we don’t want is open ended long contracts with no clear milestones or goals and the lack of open discussions in the public sphere about whether those companies are succeeding or not. The more money that gets lost in unsuccessful efforts in nuclear, the industry will create a record of failures that will stick in everyone’s minds. Congress and the public will no longer support future funding for these programs.

Lastly, what do you want to leave Arsenal’s readers with?

Radiant is laser focused on developing microreactor technology that is fueled, demonstrating a MVP. We’re deserving for maybe 10% of the excitement in nuclear right now and if we had access to just 1% of the funding in the nuclear industry, we will be on track and will hit schedule. Currently there are very large amounts of public funding, but it isn’t going to Radiant.

Nuclear is surging positive with movie and documentary releases, bipartisan congressional support and DoD exploring nuclear energy technology to fuel the modern force. We will provide a portable, clean power source as electrification continues to take hold (EVs, Temporary Power, Prime +Heat) and potentially in the future power spacecraft, moon or mars surface expeditions and unmanned underwater vehicles.

We enjoyed the conversation and certainly agree about adding competition into the defense industrial ecosystem to spur innovation. Doug, thank you so much for the time and best of luck to you and Radiant. Congrats on the Series B and we’ll be watching closely. Thank you to Decisive Point and A16z for facilitating this discussion and supporting emerging defense tech. 

Red Team Update

Russian and Chinese designs dominate nuclear reactors, warns IEA chief

Energy security = national security. Echoing Radiant’s desire to spur innovation through increased competition, here’s a timely statistic from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Executive Director Fatih Birol : “27 out of 31 reactors that started construction since 2017 are Russian or Chinese designs.” We’re no experts on building nuclear power plants, but it seems that project mismanagement in the form of cost overruns and schedule delays have contributed to the decline of Western designs. Sounds like a DoD major acquisition program!

Could China build the world’s smallest nuclear power plant and send it to the South China Sea?

The bad news: China has also funded, and probably is still funding, miniaturized nuclear reactors. From Power Engineering: “The hedianbao, or “portable nuclear battery pack,’ is partially funded by the People’s Liberation Army and would utilize a lead-cooled reactor to generate 10 thermal megawatts (MWt), sufficient to power about 50,000 Chinese households. Similar to technology used on 1970s-era Soviet submarines, it could run for decades without refueling, the Post [South China Morning Post] reports.” Ostensibly for civilian power requirements, they’d be convenient to power the energy-hungry man-made and natural islands which the PRC has fortified in the South China Sea (e.g., Mischief Reef).

The good (maybe?) news: A lot of the publicity on the hedianbao is from 2016, and the stated goal was to have the system operational within five years. We haven’t seen much on open source since then, so perhaps it was an intentional misdirect. Another interpretation: maybe it was successful and it’s being a closely guarded secret.

Another reason to hope for increased competition to spur innovation in the dual-use alternative energy space!

About Us

Our team has 30+ years of combined experience as military officers using the end products. We’ve worked in both government and industry. From MIT to Wharton, Wall Street to biotech, and DARPA to the flightline, we offer you a unique perspective on how to navigate America’s defense tech industry.

The opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of DoD, our employers or any affiliated organization. This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal, financial or professional advice.