Deep Fission, Inc. (FISN) Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you. Greetings and welcome to the Deep Isolation, Inc. Business Update Call. As a reminder, this conversation is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jen Stakich, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Deep Isolation's October 2026 Business Update Call. I'm Jen Stakich. Thank you to our shareholders, analysts, and everyone for joining us. Today, we will focus on our business, our technology, recent progress, and the milestones ahead. Deep Isolation is developing its first commercial power projects, so this call will have a different emphasis compared to a traditional quarterly earnings review. Our CEO and co-founder, Liz Muller, will begin with the market opportunity and technology. COO, Mike Brazel, will address the development and regulatory roadmap. David Nelson will cover borehole drilling and construction. And CFO, Mark Schmitz, will discuss the build, own, operate business model. Liz will then summarize the next key milestones before we open the call for questions. You may follow our presentation by navigating to the events page on our website at deepisolation.com. We expect to make a replay available on the Investor Relations website shortly after the call concludes. Before we begin, please note that today's call, including our remarks and responses to questions, may contain forward-looking statements regarding Deep Isolation's technology, regulatory approvals, deployment timelines, commercialization plans, financing, and future performance. These statements are based on current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For discussion of these risks, please refer to the risk factors and other disclosures in our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, available at sec.gov. Forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them except as required by law. And with that, I'll turn it over to Liz. Thank you, Jen, and thank you all for joining us. This is our first opportunity to bring together the full Deep Isolation story for investors and show where we stand on regulation, siting, fuel and construction, and what comes next on our path to commercial nuclear power. Our goal is to deliver reliable commercial nuclear power using proven technology in a radically different deployment approach. Our design combines established pressurized water reactor technology, standard low-enriched uranium fuel, and well-documented industrial drilling methods to place our reactor roughly 1 mile underground. On slide 3, you will see that we've organized our work around five areas that ultimately need to come together before customers can receive electricity. Regulatory approvals, commercial siting, fuel, construction, and of course, customers. Starting with regulatory, the Department of Energy approved our Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, or NSDA, in August. That is an important early step as it established the safety framework for the DOE pilot program. On commercial siting, the Great Plains Industrial Park in southeast Kansas has several thousand acres for data center and industrial development, requiring up to 2 gigawatts of power. X-energy controls a 100-acre site at the park for the DOE demonstration reactor and the first gigawatts of power with more land available for expansion. For fuel, we have an announced uranium purchase agreement with URANCO for standard low enriched uranium or LEU, an established fuel type that is already used in commercial pressurized water reactors. With respect to construction, we have completed a 6,000-foot data acquisition borehole, demonstrated prototype canister handling at shallow depth, and are advancing the next phase of large-diameter drilling and non-nuclear testing. And finally, customers. We have signed our Master Energy Purchase Agreement with Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons, Kansas. We intend to be judged against our progress in each of these areas. Throughout today's discussion, we will highlight the progress in each of these areas and fill you in on the next steps we are targeting towards commercial execution. Moving to slide 4, demand for reliable power is increasing, particularly among industrial parks, utilities, and data centers, as we all know. The forecast on this slide illustrates the gap between expected demand and the pace at which new generation can be brought online. For these customers, cost and timing both matter. Our designs intended to support smaller increments of generation located near demand, allowing development to proceed in stages as customer needs grow. On slide 5, we are targeting an initial pilot and commercial power milestone in December 2027, followed by the beginning of repeatable deployments in 2028. That is about 4 years from concept to commercial power, with pilot construction targeted to begin in March 2027 and speed to market in the coming years. Market is central to our strategy. Those are our targets. We believe that they are realistic and their achievement depends on the regulatory authorization, construction results, supply chain, financing, and customer agreements that Mike will discuss. In Parsons, Kansas, we've executed on the first application of that approach by signing a master energy purchase agreement, our first energy offtake agreement with the Great Plains Industrial Park. Our proposed development at Great Plains begins with a pilot-sized reactor for the available interconnection, currently targeted for up to 5 megawatts electric. Our broader plan contemplates potential phase development of approximately 150 megawatts electric in 2028 and, over time, up to 2 gigawatts electric development opportunities. We are also developing relationships with infrastructure and commercial partners, including those shown here, with Blue Owl, which has a real assets platform relationship with us and made a $20 million equity investment, and Endeavor for up to 2 gigawatts electric across cloud provider projects. These discussions help connect potential customers, sites, and project capital for future operations. The important question then is why we believe our design could help bring that power to market differently from a conventional nuclear power plant. On slide 6, our approach brings together three technologies with long industrial track records. First is a conventional pressurized water reactor, or PWR, using standard low-enriched uranium. Second is deep borehole drilling, where industries have decades of experience drilling, casing, and sealing boreholes. Third is a heat transfer approach informed by geothermal engineering. In a conventional above-ground PWR, substantial pressure management and containment infrastructure surrounds the reactor. Our approach, however, means that our reactors won't need a containment dome, pressurizer, or an additional emergency core cooling system. The rock provides containment and the mile deep water column provides the pressure and the emergency cooling. Innovation is in how these technologies work together. We plan to place a PWR in a purpose-built, cased, and cemented borehole roughly 1 mile underground, requiring minimal surface infrastructure. We benefit from existing fuel, industrial equipment, and specialized expertise as we advance the design. Moving to slide 7. At a depth of roughly 1 mile, a column of water produces the pressure in the neighborhood of 160 atmospheres. Our reactor concept is designed so that the water pressure outside the canister is comparable with the pressure inside the primary reactor system. The reactor uses conventional PWR fuel and heat is transferred from the reactor through a downhole heat exchanger, then towards the surface where the power generation equipment can turn into electricity. The surrounding rock, cemented casing, and water column contribute to our proposed containment and safety approach, including removing loss of coolant as a credible accident scenario. On slide 8, our work progresses through a sequence of three phases. Each phase is intended to reduce a different development risk. Phase 1, we drilled an approximately 6,000-foot data acquisition borehole in Kansas. That gave us direct information about the rock, drilling behavior, fluids, and conditions encountered at depth. Those lessons inform how we plan the more demanding boreholes. Phase 2, our next major construction step, is a program of large diameter drilling and testing. Since we laid out our initial plans, we have identified drillers with the capability to do much of this work. So we now see phase 2 as a program rather than a single borehole and part is already complete. The program is intended to test how we cut and remove rock, hold the borehole straight, install casing, place cement, and support the thermal and instrumentation equipment. As part of that program, we have already completed a separate shallow demonstration in Florida in which a full-size non-nuclear canister was installed and retrieved. We gained experience in handling and retrieval processes which will inform future deep borehole installations. For phase 3, our plan is to move from non-nuclear construction work towards the first nuclear pilot reactor, subject to the necessary Department of Energy authorizations, fuel and component readiness, and later, NRC commercial licensing. This phase program will help us develop a safe and repeatable construction and operations methodology. Moving to slides 9 and 10, for repeat deployment or end-of-a-kind reactor, our current planning assumption is 15 megawatts electric output per unit. 10 such units would represent about 150 megawatts electric and 100 units would represent approximately 1.5 gigawatts electric of generation capacity. Put simply, we have a modular system, so our customers can add capacity as demand grows. The illustration shows what a site could look like. Actual deployments will depend on customer commitments, engineering, and permits. At scale, we are targeting months, not years, from the start of drilling to the delivery of power with a 6-month objective shown here. Getting there will take demonstrated drilling, equipment fabrication, permitting, and construction coordination. The economic advantage is easy to describe. A conventional PWR needs a great deal of above ground infrastructure for pressure management, containment, cooling, and safety. A mile underground, the rock and the water column do much of that work for us. We still need an engineered reactor and pressure boundary, control systems, surface generation equipment, and regulatory approvals. The savings come from how much less we have to build above ground and from building the same unit again and again. Deep Isolation is designed for roughly 100 acres per gigawatt, compared with about 700 for the most recent conventional PWR and about 7,000 for utility-scale solar. With that technology background, I'd like Mike Brazel to explain how we are moving through our demonstration and commercial licensing milestones. Mike?

Thank you, Liz. And good morning, everyone. Moving to slide 11. Our near-term program has three distinct phases. Demonstrate the non-nuclear construction and handling process, move through the nuclear authorization and licensing steps, and then demonstrate that we can repeat the process at commercial scale. In 2026, our focus is the non-nuclear work. Borehole engineering, large diameter drilling, casing and cementing, instrumentation, thermal testing, and the equipment and procedures required to install and retrieve the down-hole components. This is where we answer practical questions that determine whether the design can move from drawing to repeatable construction. We are using those results to refine the next borehole and the overall schedule. For the initial pilot, we are targeting up to 5 megawatts of electric with a December 2027 commercial operation objective. That output reflects the pilot design and available grid interconnection path. Once we have obtained the needed authorizations and demonstrated the initial installation, we expect to use the operating data to support the end-of-a-kind design. On slide 12, you will see our path from today to commercial power across four core work streams, regulatory, siting, fuel, and construction. For context, other nuclear SMR programs target first deployment in 2029 and beyond. On the regulatory side, the DOE approved our nuclear safety design agreement on August 6th, and we released it publicly to provide transparency into our safety methodology. We are continuing the DOE pilot program design and regulatory engagement, including the preliminary documented safety analysis or PDSA review. Nuclear operation will only begin after the appropriate safety and readiness authorizations have been obtained. In parallel, we are engaging with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the path to commercial licensing. We are targeting the NRC's new Part 57 framework designed for the rapid licensing and high-volume, standardized deployment on low-consequence nuclear reactor designs. We expect the pilot program's technical work to inform our application. The NRC will independently approve the commercial license. Our milestone chart shows the steps we currently expect to complete across the remainder of 2026, 2027, and 2028. We will update those estimates as our engineering, regulatory engagement, and construction progress. Fuel is another work stream we are advancing in parallel. We have announced an arrangement to purchase standard low-enriched uranium from Urenco and currently working on a longer-term low-enriched uranium supply agreement. Fuel and core analysis are underway with fabrication scheduled for mid-year 2027. In the coming months, we expect to provide updates, including results from large-diameter borehole construction, thermal and mechanical demonstrations, advancement of the safety review, and readiness of the fuel and reactor supply chain. David Nelson is our vice president of drilling and completion. He is leading a key part of that program. I'll turn the call to David to explain what we are learning about the boreholes themselves. David?

Thanks Mike. Many people ask, can these boreholes be drilled? Which we can unequivocally answer, yes. Large diameter borehole drilling is routine in the water disposal industry. 4 holes 60 inches and wider were drilled decades ago at a Nevada test site. We announced the collaboration with Youngquist Brothers, a company with decades of experience in large diameter drilling. The value to us is the opportunity to apply established drilling practices the specific geometry and operating requirements of our design. We are evaluating approaches such as reverse circulation drilling to remove cuttings, project-specific large diameter bits, electrically powered equipment, and carefully manage cement placement and monitoring. Each addresses a practical part of constructing a reliable deep borehole. Our initial work with Youngquist is a technical collaboration. We expect field results to provide a better basis for evaluating future drilling costs. The objective is to leave each step with better field data and a more repeatable construction plan. Moving to slide 14. The next question is, can these large diameter boreholes be drilled economically? Our work today is focused on proving they can be drilled and our collaboration with Youngquist takes us a long way towards that answer. On cost, the framing to keep in mind is the path from a single pilot reactor of up to 5 megawatts electric to a phased deployment of approximately 150 megawatts electric in 2028. We are not putting a per borehole cost estimate on the table today. The large diameter program will give us the field data to do that with confidence. What we can tell you is where we are focused to bring that cost down as you reach that scale. Our phase 1 borehole gave us the first hand data on the formations in Kansas and on the tools and the procedures that worked with that. We are now using those observations to design the more demanding large diameter work. There are four areas that have the greatest practical effect on the construction process. First, location customization. We will drill where our customers need power, and every site will differ from Kansas, but we have made significant progress in understanding how we drill and we expect each subsequent site to be largely similar to the one before it. We will get easier with time. Second is design evolution. Each borehole we construct refines the design of the next, the borehole architecture, the casing program, the cementing procedure, and the materials. A streamlined design drives cost down. The third is rig management. How we procure and manage rigs and crews across a program of boreholes rather than one at a time is a meaningful lever on cost. How we do that is still to be determined, but we know the efficiencies are there. Fourth. High volume procurement. By encasing cement and equipment in volume and sufficiently in advance rather than one borehole at a time, once we are operating at scale, we expect significant supply chain efficiencies. A key milestone for investors will be a successfully constructed, cased and tested borehole of the required diameter and depth, followed by the evidence that we can repeat the process. The additional work we have done on large diameter drilling over the past few months has allowed us to project significant savings in our development program compared with the plan we shared at the time of our IPO. That brings us to the business model. Mark Schmitz will explain how we intend to participate in the long-term value of the power assets we develop.

Thanks, David. Fundamentally, our plan is to operate on a build, own, operate business model, outlined on slide 15, whereby we retain an ownership interest in project companies and benefit from project-level cash flows from electricity generation over the operating life of the facility, including licensing of intellectual property, upfront site-specific engineering, and ongoing operations and maintenance services. Our goal is to maintain flexibility, tailored to customer requirements, while accessing the largest economic returns from each project. And in many cases, that will be returns flowing from long-term power purchase agreements. On slide 16, to reemphasize what we have said in our public disclosures, we believe our anthracite project economics are fully sufficient to support project financing and provide an attractive return to equity investors. That is based on achieving up to 15 megawatts electric of power output per reactor, which is different from the approximately 5 megawatts in the pilot, with a refueling cycle of 7 to 10 years and a targeted upfront capital cost per nth-of-a-kind reactor of about $84 million at 2024 economics, including the initial fuel load. Specific categories of upfront spend will change as engineering progresses and supplier quotes are obtained, but $84 million remains our target. And each 15 megawatt nth-of-a-kind reactor is expected to generate approximately $600 million of operating cash flow over its projected 40-year life. Capital costs will be met in part by judicious use of project finance, and we will avail ourselves of investment tax credits, either by bringing in tax equity partners or throughout right sales of the tax credits. We are often asked for an estimate of our levelized cost of electricity, or LCOE, and while we do not wish to publicize a point estimate, we are confident that with a middle-of-the-road sale price of $110 per megawatt hour at 2024 Economics, these sales will be project returns can be realized. We believe that a project ownership model and gives us an opportunity to align our economics with the delivery of power over many years. The milestones that Liz and the team have outlined are the steps that have to come first. Turning to our balance sheet, Deep Isolation has a healthy cash position. When we file our Quarter 3 10-Q in early November, we expect to report a cash balance as of September 30 of $71.7 million. We expect to end the year with a cash balance of approximately $40 million, assuming no financings before then. We have been judicious in our spending, continuing to execute our programs with a view towards achieving milestones with economical use of capital. Our intent is to be opportunistic on the timing and amounts of additional capital raises. I'll now turn it back over to Liz.

Thanks, Mark. One reason we believe our approach is practical is that much of the industrial expertise and equipment already exists. Our job is to integrate those capabilities into a reliable nuclear construction and operating program. As highlighted on slide 17, the key point on fuel is that we are able to use commercially available fuel assemblies, a fuel type that are already licensed and in use today. Our Urenco arrangement, which Mike covered, gives us access to that established supply chain, and the enriched uranium product for our pilot has already been procured. On construction and engineering, we have been working with organizations including Day & Zimmerman, Halliburton, Youngquist Brothers, and RV Industries, which delivered our prototype reactor, and Sparks Engineering, which is designing the instrument hub and electronics that monitor the reactor. Their roles differ from construction planning and engineering to announced collaboration, procurement arrangements, and equipment delivery. And we will continue to update investors as the particular agreements and deliverables are finalized. This ecosystem allows us to draw on industries that have performed many of these individual tasks before, even as we work through the challenge of bringing them together in a new deployment program. Turning to slide 18, stepping back, we believe the opportunity rests on a combination of strengths, familiar PWR technology and fuel, an underground design intended to simplify above ground infrastructure, already underway in Kansas. A modular design that can be deployed at scale. Defined regulatory and commercialization program. Our central point of differentiation is how we combine familiar technologies in an underground configuration and the opportunity to demonstrate safe, cost-effective, repeat deployments. Those benefits still need to be supported by field demonstrations, licensing outcomes, and repeat unit economics. We expect future updates to give investors increasingly concrete evidence that the design is delivering the advantages we are targeting. In closing, we see a significant opportunity to bring reliable nuclear power to market differently by using established technologies in a new underground design. What matters now is execution. Investors should watch our progress as we work towards DOE and NRC approval, progress at Parsons, and on commercial agreements, as well as results from our large diameter drilling program. We are targeting initial commercial power in December 2027 and the start of broader deployments in 2028. We set those targets deliberately and we believe that they are achievable. They remain dependent on regulatory approvals, technical results, financing, and customer commitments. We will report meaningful progress through our public communications as we reach those milestones. Finally, on a personal note, I, along with other members of our management team and board, plan to buy Deep Isolation stock when our trading window opens in the coming weeks. We appreciate your interest in Deep Isolation and we look forward to updating you as we move through these next steps. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question is from George Giannourikis with Canaccord Genuity.

Maybe first around this 25-year Master Energy Purchase Agreement that you announced. There weren't details around the power price assumptions that you have in there, but is it fair to say, based on Mark's presentation, that they fit within this long-term project parameter around $110 a megawatt hour? Yes.

Yes, great question, George, and good to hear from you. What I can say is that the Master Energy Purchase Agreement is a binding agreement, and it supports the planned development at Great Plains Industrial Park. The up to 2 gigawatts electric year describe so longer term opportunity and the first opportunity is 150 megawatts electric in 2028. We are not disclosing the terms at this time, but I will ask either Mike or Mark if they want to jump in with any additional details so we can provide.

No, Liz, that's all the details we can provide this time.

All right. Thanks, Mike. And maybe just a couple of follow-ups. Actually, that was a really good blog post you put out several weeks ago around borehole deep borehole drilling. And with regard to the progress you've made with Youngquist, I'm wondering, you didn't share any financial details around what the economics there would be, but I did notice again in Mark's presentation that he did mention that the economics of your project should fit within this $84 million construction number. Is it fair to say that the learning so far from working with Youngquist implies that the borehole drilling estimate that are coming in in line or maybe even less than what you had assumed previously in around that $84 million number?

Yeah, I think it's still really too early to see with confidence what the cost estimates are going to look like. What I can say is you may remember we had a research and development program that we were planning on in order to develop 60 inch diameter boreholes. The cost of that has come down thanks to this collaboration and additional learnings over the previous month. So we can say that with confidence. In terms of the specifics for each project, I would say that that's still something that we are actively looking at and we will provide additional details when we have that. Dave, I don't know if you want to jump in with anything else on that.

No, I think you covered it Liz.

Yes, that's all for me.

Liz, could I just add that there's an important note here that the Youngquist technology involves something called reverse flood or cuttings removal. And that really is a key to being able to drill the larger boreholes at a satisfactory speed. So we're really happy about the way this is progressing.

Yes, thanks, Mark. Agreed.

And I remember from reading your blog post, that's like cleaning your teeth, not to get too technical, but that sounds like that's what the technology covers. Anyway, last question for me, just with regard to the commercial deployments in 2028. It sounds like they're contingent upon approval under Part 57. Any sort of smoke signals that you're receiving from the administration as to how quickly we can see that particular regulatory framework caught up?

Thank you. Yes, I mean, it sounds like Part 57 is still tracking. And at the same time, we are also in discussions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about options to use other pathways if need be. We remain very hopeful, optimistic about the ability to meet the licensing in the timeframes that we have described.

Thank you. Our next question is from Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners.

Hi, good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, I wanted to ask about the recognition of expenses related to the Parsons, Kansas project. So in Mark's prepared comments, he indicated that the cash at the year end will be roughly $40 million. That's about a $50 million burn from the middle of the year. Over this period, you've communicated that you're going to do substantially most, if not all, of the deep borehole drilling there. Portion of the preparation and pre-purchases of equipment for the surface structures at the site. You know, that seems to be quite a lot less cash need than the $152 million you said for your first project. Can you maybe just talk us through how much of the $152 million you see is sort of being complete at that point? It seems that you could be tracking for quite a lot less than that as far as the actual cash need for this first project.

Yes, thanks, Craig. Great question. I will actually let Mark answer that.

Yes, sure. Sure. So, first of all, we should mention that we're expensing everything that's related to the pilot turning commercial project. It's not being capitalized. I just want to make sure you're aware of that. So we've disclosed in our public filings that we're going to spend about $200 million in total to complete our pilot to commercial program. And we have spent at this point about $40 million of that. The $200 million, there's a range of uncertainty around that, but it remains our best estimate at this time. And we've got cash on hand of $70 million today, about $70 million. $40 million already spent on the project, so that leaves about $90 million yet to spend on that pilot commercial project. And that's, in addition, we've got to spend, we've got to fund our basic corporate overhead, which is, they're running about $3 million a month. So maybe that provides the right perspective you're looking for on the rate of spend. It does vary significantly quarter to quarter based on our development activity.

And supplier payments. That makes complete sense. So is there an opportunity to capitalize projects?

Costs in the future? I mean, is this something you can do on this initial project or is that not available to you at this stage?

Well, absolutely, in the future we will capitalize, but for this first project, it's all being expensed.

Okay, excellent. And then previously the company had communicated that there was a potential event where you could energize maybe before the end of this calendar year. Is that still within the range of something feasible, or should we expect that sort of mid to late 2027 at this point? Yes, to energize, we're targeting end of 2027. So, energize, you mean producing electricity, not just lighting the reactor, correct? Correct. Yes. Okay. Okay, excellent. So then as you address technical capabilities, one of the questions that's come up with different investors is the ability to control a vessel a mile away, you know, at the bottom of a bore hole. Can you maybe just talk us through the design maturity at this point? What you see as the feasibility of some of these control cables, the physical manipulation at the bottom of the borehole. What experience is there in adjacent industries that gives you confidence that this is an engineering problem easily solved?

Yes, great question. I will ask Mike to take that one.

Yes. Well, obviously, we're using pressurized water reactors, and those pressurized water reactors are very proven with 7 decades of operation behind them. So, the core aspects and core neutronics are very straightforward and well understood. From a control perspective at 1 mile deep, we're using boron, which is a typical use, a typical control mechanism used in pressurized water reactors. The loop time is a little bit longer, but otherwise it's the same process. We're using oil and gas technology from fiber optics to pressure and temperature monitoring that they do typically right now to monitor the reactor while it's down in the hole. There is no power requirements running down there, so there's no power cables, just instrumentation cables that run down there. So it's actually very quite easy to control the reactor from 1 mile deep. The feasibility of it is part of our demonstration program. So even though we've got established technology, it's the application of putting those together and showing that we can do it from that mile underground. And that's what our development, our phased approaches we talked about in our presentation, to show through a non-nuclear borehole to the pilot reactor being done under the DOE authorization program to have a test program to demonstrate and show those. So it's a phase development process to commercialization.

Excellent. Then just last one is another one we've gotten many times from investors. Refueling of the units. Can you maybe just discuss the design of how you plan to refill the units and what the practical considerations are there?

Yes, I'll start and then I'll invite Mike to jump in if he wants to add anything. But the general approach is that rather than refueling each reactor canister, we are going to use the fuel inside the canister until it's no longer useful. And then we are going to replace the entire canister. The reason that we can do that is because of some of the advantages, the safety advantages that Mike has touched on. And so we are able to get the cost of our reactor canisters down significantly lower than you would see for a typical above ground reactor. The intent is to use the fuel in the reactor for the lifetime, which we expect to be between 7 and 10 years, and then to replace the entire reactor. Now, we are also expecting to lower the used reactor deeper into the borehole, and that is going to be our spent fuel. So this is again similar to what you do with above ground reactors with when you put the used fuel into a pool for cooling and temporary storage. The difference is that our spent fuel pool is going to be at the bottom of the borehole.

Excellent. Thanks for taking my questions and I'll hop back in the queue.

Thank you, Craig. Our next question is from Tate Sullivan with the Maxim Group.

Thank you. Actually, following up that last question on the 7 to 10 year refueling life, but then I think one of the economic slide indicated a total useful life of the borehole itself of 40 years, or is that implying 4 canisters then plugging the hole, please? Yes.

Yes, I'll let Mike jump in on that one.

Yes, the each reactor right now is planned to operate from 7 to 10 years, and then the borehole design life is 40 years. So we can put upwards of 4 or 5 reactors per borehole. If borehole integrity, which we monitor continuously and make sure that it's solid and integrity there, we could go possibly longer if that's the case, and potentially use more reactors per borehole. Thank you. And then separately, you had an installing and retrieving the reactor news in September, and that was in Florida. As part of your drilling in Kansas, are you going to conduct any more installing and retrieving the live reactor or a test reactor as well, or will you be doing that in the future? Get to the targeted depth before doing any of that kind of work. Michael, keep going. Yeah, I want to make sure I understand the question. Could you repeat that? I'm sorry. Will you be doing any lowering and retrieving of the reactor deeper than 1,000 feet, similar to what you announced in September. Yes, we will. In our non-nuclear hole, that borehole that we are using, we will be lowering a test reactor down that will be doing thermal performance testing below 1,000 feet and then as work up to the actual pilot reactor before we start up, we will do a full insertion and retrieval just as part of our testing to ensure that we can put it down and bring it up before we start the reactor up.

I'll add on top of that. I think there's a real opportunity to practice with a non-nuclear environment to make sure that we have perfected everything that we're going to need to do before we load our reactor with actual fuel.

Thank you. And the last one for me is you mentioned 2028 broader deployments. Is that referring to within the footprint of the Kansas facility or are you already talking about other sites with potential customers in different states? Yes. Yes.