Clay Montgomery

Actionable energy research and Contra-NetZero investments in #LNG #Coal #Steel #Fertilizer #Uranium #Options writer.
Member of @NEI and @NuclearTexas

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@rekurencja Thanks for running that down. I have found Grok to be really useful as a non-nuclear engineer discussing MOX and reprocessing, but it is important to check its assumptions.

I think those 34 tons of pure material will be a life saver for the SMR vendors that require HALEU.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

World Nuclear Fuel Market Conference - 2026 (Scottsdale, AZ)

Part 1

I attended this excellent conference for the first time this year, where uranium producers and utilities met to negotiate prices and deliveries. The attendance was large with the entire nuclear fuel supply chain being well represented.

The economics for utilities have improved so much that they are installing up-rated equipment as fast as possible, even beyond what is disclosed publicly, including moving to higher fuel enrichments (6.25% and up). This is the next logical step, after conventional up-rates are done. Analysts agree the supply chain is not ready for this, let alone new builds.
New builds are now competing for many of the same components required for the up-rate projects.

The term "super up-rates" is also being used some, informally. One example is retrofitting to move to metal fuel (something like Lightbridge) for the existing LWR fleet.

Most of the growth in mining is currently ISR, but uranium milling is still seen as a weak spot. However, Energy Fuels is still running their White Mesa mill intermittently.

New investment really needs to ramp very quickly, but it's mostly private start-ups stepping into the fray at present, particularly for conversion.

The field of SMR and fuel cycle start-ups is now about 150 companies and many are expecting a major shake-out, soon.

We have 2 new start-ups that will do uranium conversion in Texas, FluxPoint Energy and Raven-Flint. This is in addition to UEC's plan and Solstice's (Converdyn) announcement they are up-sizing their expansion plans for the Metropolis plant and even considering a "Metropolis 2.0", in some central Southern state.

If this new conversion capacity gets built, the pressure will focus on the enrichment bottleneck even more.

It really makes me wonder what Cameco has been waiting for at Port Hope and Springfields? I'm also concerned about the Cameco/Silex GLE partnership, but I'm writing a separate report on that (Stay tuned).

General Matter, a very private enrichment start-up that recently won a $900 million contract from the DoE, was a hot topic.

GM claims to be ahead of their competition and will have the lowest cost SWUs. Of course, that's only really possible if their technology is somehow more efficient than centrifuges and/or lasers.

Their arrogance is amazing. While their laser enrichment peers have spent years explaining the merits of SILEX, CRISLA and QLE, GM refuses to disclose anything about their tech. "Just trust us, you don't need to know". It really does not land well with utilities, coming from a Silicon Valley start-up with no experience in this industry. But, they have a website now and "EXIM-backed financing".

GM has said their prospective customers are in the loop on their technology. But, some large fuel buyers told me they somehow missed those meetings. They seem to know less about GM than I do.

As I have written, I think GM's tech is either an updated version of gaseous diffusion or Calutrons, but that would not be more efficient. But, why would this be a secret? Why insult the intelligence of your prospects in the room? My theory is their tech was granted to them from a DoE lab, with never-to-be-disclosed requirements attached, because of nuclear proliferation concerns.

More on GM's tech:
https://t.co/iSFWLTqRuG

It's uncomfortable, but GM represents a larger trend, most of the desperately needed new investment in the US fuel supply chain is coming from private start-ups that tend to be really opaque and short on commercial scale production experience.

I also got confirmation that the secret waivers from the Canadian government for Atlantic Ro-Ro carriers that transport the Russian uranium (EUP) to the US are continuing to at least 2028. There is an annual meeting in Canada where DoE officials renegotiate this. It's still one of the best cards Canada has in trade negotiations with the US and the details of these meetings are still secret, including the waiver documents themselves.

Imported EUP Schedule:
https://t.co/FmEDGhYGqW

The lack of discussion on spent fuel reprocessing and plutonium was disappointing. There is actually a lot of this work going on behind the scenes now. This industry still does not want to talk about it. This is for the next generation of reactors that need HALEU.

The Trump Administration is currently negotiating the sale of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium to 5 SMR start-ups to substitute for HALEU.

Doing the math, that could produce about 136 metric tons of MOX to substitute for HALEU (or about 680 tons of MOX to substitute for LEU). That is over 150 years of Centrus' current production from their 16 centrifuge cascade (which produces 900 kg/year from LEU feedstock). Seems important.

How could this affect uranium miners? That 34 tons of plutonium is energy-equivalent to approximately 17 million lbs of mined U3O8. Remember when we got into the uranium sector because "there is no substitute"? Well, a lot of uranium (for HALEU at least), IS being substituted, because of the looming enrichment supply crisis.

French start-up Nuward is even using MOX substitution as a selling point for their SMRs, in Europe.

#Uranium #nuclear #SMR $CCJ $LEU $SOLS

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

What is the uranium enrichment technology currently being developed by General Matter?

Some of their recent statements and a big award from the DOE forced me to rethink this and I found something that changes my opinion on their viability.

GM says their technology is novel but has a high TRL (technology readiness level). "Novel" rules out centrifuges and "high TRL" rules out laser enrichment. So what else could it be? I thought it was an electrochemical process, such as Ubaryon, but there is a better candidate - Gaseous Diffusion updated with modern technology.

The old GD machines at Paducah used 50x more power per SWU than centrifuges. But, what if they were redesigned using modern tech? That 50x gap could be reduced considerably with higher quality porous membranes. Perfect membranes would require billions of precision 10 to 20 nm holes per inch. That was really hard to do in 1945. But, today it is routine in the semiconductor industry.

Modern chip fabs can make nearly perfect membranes for higher efficiency Gaseous Diffusion of UF6.

But, can silicon withstand corrosive UF6 gas? Not directly. However, aluminum metalization layers are commonly used on most chips today and Al does handle UF6 very well. It was used in the old GD machines.

General Matter has its origins in silicon valley where they know what can be made in chip fabs. I worked in the semiconductor industry for 25 years.

Remember inkjet printers? They work by squirting ink through an array of precision microscopic holes in a silicon chip.

The biggest technical obstacle for GM would probably be demonstrating that they can handle the UF6 corrosion with aluminum metalization. The remainder of GD machines are basically just gas compressors and cooling equipment. That's the sort of conservative tech that fits DOE's mandate for supplier diversity to reduce risk.

It's hard to know how far a perfect membrane could go to closing the power efficiency gap with centrifuges and laser enrichment. But, I now think General Matter could quickly become a serious competitor to GLE and Centrus Energy.

If I'm right about this, it means that new GD machines will eventually populate the same building that used to house the old GD machines (and next door to GLE) in Paducah, KY.

#Uranium #nuclear #silex $ccj $leu

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

Lightbridge ($LTBR) attended the White House meeting today to discuss the DoE's new UPRISE initiative.

This is about up-rating equipment at existing US nuclear plants as well as restarts. Lightbridge's participation shows the interest in retrofitting existing LWR plants with metal fuel, as I discussed in my recent report on the WNFM Conference. #uranium

https://t.co/NY9aMP1zwX

https://t.co/afqGPYKL7j

[Lightbridge Corp @LightbridgeCorp]

CEO Seth Grae attended the White House launch of UPRISE, a federal initiative to expand U.S. nuclear capacity by maximizing output from the existing reactor fleet.

Lightbridge advanced #nuclearfuel technology is designed to do just that -- enable reactors to produce more power from the same facility. Hence, it could play a major role in increasing existing U.S. nuclear plant output.

@GovNuclear
Learn more about Lightbridge Fuel here: https://t.co/0f5Noqbmas

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

No. I'm saying it's understood that recycling spent fuel to make MOX currently costs many times more because of all the impurities that must be removed, such as Americium. Reprocessing start-ups like Oklo, Exodys and Curio will live or die based on how well they can reduce those costs.

Meanwhile, the simple way to assess the near-term impact of the 34 tons announcement is to assume it's already very pure, because that's required for weapons-grade. That is why they are starting with that material.

Grok's analysis is 6 pages and I reviewed it carefully.
The reasoning looks very good, but it's not simple. The sources list is 85 web pages. But, the 'share' button is not working. If you DM an email address I can try sending you a word document.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@rekurencja Correction, that was 34 tons. Not 50.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

There are a lot of variables. The purity of weapons grade plutonium is essential. Here are the prompts I gave Grok (in Expert mode):

How much mox nuclear fuel can be made from 50 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium?

How many pounds of yellow cake uranium would be required to produce an amount of HALEU energy-equivalent to MOX produced from 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium?

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@_HonestInvestor There was no detail on ISR challenges. I'm working on CCJ.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

Part 2 - Tour of Palo Verde Generating Station

We also toured the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, 4 GW of very reliable power in the Sonoran desert, 20 miles SW of Phoenix.

It's a very impressive triple LWR plant which uses recovered waste water from Phoenix for cooling. Palo Verde has 9 cooling towers, but they are only about 15 feet high. They were designed specifically for the hot and dry climate.

It seems like this design could be replicated through out the Southwestern US, but they are spending $10 million just on cooling tower maintenance, each time they replace fuel. The biggest problem is removing calcium deposits from the hard water. The water is recycled up to 25 times before it evaporates.

They also share some of the water with gas-fired plants next door, which produce twice as much power.

It's impressive how self-sufficient Palo Verde is. They do almost all maintenance themselves, particularly on the cooling towers because these things are so unique. Everything is on site, dedicated security, impressive emergency vehicles, 40 years of spent fuel casks and the previous turbines that they replaced decades ago. They even pour the concrete for their dry cask storage containers on site. No thank you Orano.

Their only external dependency is their just-in-time fuel deliveries from Westinghouse and Framatome.
They don't keep a fuel inventory and they don't buy EUP from Russia!

The frequent question was "why aren't you building more reactors yet?" More water is available from a growing city and the power is certainly needed.

The answer is complex. The grid does not have any capacity to spare and the switch yard needs to be completely rebuilt. It's already one of the largest in the US.

Palo Verde is owned by a consortium of 7 utilities that are very risk-averse and building another 8 foot water pipe 20 miles to the city and a pump station, would be expensive.

This plant funds a big slice of public education in Arizona and Palo Verde really struggled in its first 15 years and very nearly failed because of technical problems. The owners are not eager to relive those years. The unspoken reason is because natural gas is still so cheap.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

The Diablo Canyon story is amazing. It was law that Diablo would close in 2025, because it was "harming marine life" and they did close much gas-fired power for the same reason. So many lawyers, pseudo-scientists, court time and money spent. And they won! It was a done deal - until the laws of physics plowed-over the laws of California. In the end they finally realized that closing Diablo would likely cause a statewide blackout, not good for Newsom's political ambitions. They waited so late that Diablo had to beg for fuel from neighboring states, just to stay on. Incredible recklessness.

If you don't understand that the Palisades fire was intentional, you need to study the Diablo Canyon story. Political corruption in California kills people. It really should be a required course in law school.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@foxandfriends @JohnCornyn John starts wining on election day? What a useless RINO. Yes, the DC swamp will hate Ken Paxton, that's the point!

I told @JohnCornyn he was getting fired over a year ago:

https://t.co/FQGKxijUHc

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@KenPaxtonTX Goodbye John.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

Remember when we used to create tutorial programs to show how new software algorithm concepts work called "Hello World" programs? The idea was simple, condense example code down to the most minimal form that still demonstrates the new concept, so that learners don't get distracted by implementation details.

One of my favorite YouTubers, Dave Plumber (who created the Task Manager for Windows 95) has created a sort of Hello World program for the foundational AI concept called "Transformers".

Maybe this is only cool for me (because I took a pdp-11 assembly programming class in 1983 and actually liked it), but implementing Transformers on a 6 MHz DEC VAX minicomputer with only 64K of RAM, brilliantly guarantees there is no superfluous complexity and the instructor stays focused.

This is not only nostalgic, but Dave gives a great and concise explanation of how Transformers actually work, with not-so-subtle reminders that these algorithms are really not so new or magical. AI still has real fundamental limitations no matter how much it is scaled up or used as an excuse for layoffs.
#aipower #AI

https://t.co/R6Tv6BbmzV

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

They need some future source of huge power growth to point to that supports the AI boom thesis. Otherwise, that falls apart. Nuclear power is a good source to grift about because most investors know so little about the current situation and there's been so much positive news lately.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

Yes, me too. But they are both meme stocks now and too volatile to hold long or short. Both are opaque and require significant time to understand.

The foot dragging completely contradicts Secretary Wright 's recent statements. I think there is probably a lot more EUP inventory undisclosed. We know the DOE has all the inventory numbers for the entire commercial fleet.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

The relationship between the DOE and Centrus is nuanced and complicated and I don't like how Centrus management never bothers to explain it. But, Centrus currently operates the cascade because they won the DOE contract to do so. But, that contract was also bid by BWXT. So, if BWXT had won, they would be operating Centrus' cascade?

BWXT is also involved in manufacturing some of the components. And I think much of the IP is shared between DOE/Centrus/BWXT, also.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@UnoMasReactor The other possibility, is that onshore inventories of EUP are really so huge that US utilities have more time to build enrichment infrastructure than we think.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@DrPaulyDeSantis @UnoMasReactor It might be believable if some uranium enrichment capacity was actually being built somewhere in the US. You believe 10,000 centrifuges will be built in 2 years? It's not happening.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

@DrPaulyDeSantis @UnoMasReactor Restore? Imports of EUP from Russia have accelerated since the Ukraine war started. So, somehow, the politically unacceptable and toxic dependency continues to be tolerated. The DOE secretary already has the authority to waive the ban in 2028.

[Clay Montgomery @ClayDMontgomery]

https://t.co/PkKIexsblM