Leapfrog Nuclear
Real Nuclear Innovation in America
Leapfrog Nuclear
Real Nuclear Innovation in America
safe, economic, and soon
For the first time ever ...
An original form of nuclear fuel has been invented entirely outside the establishment.
You won't find this anywhere in the public domain. It didn't come from a government lab, a university, a corporation, or a billionaire's think tank.
Rather, it came from a stigmatized broke unemployed man messing around in his general contractor friend's barn, with free range chickens.
As it turned out, this fuel has unique properties that open up an entirely new design space for nuclear reactors - a unique confluence of safety, economics, and timeline.
With radical, steadfast commitment to a mission...
After earning a doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and working for a couple of advanced nuclear companies, the man's once promising career was derailed by unfortunate circumstances and subsequent cancel culture. Almost no one would hire him, despite his stellar record of achievement. After a period of soul searching, he eventually came to a resolution.
What happened to him was wrong and unfair, but it likely couldn't be changed. So, he would flip his curse into a blessing. Hitting rock bottom with nothing more to lose was actually an opportunity, to take a risk and pursue something big.
He vowed to stop caring about his career, social status, reputation, likability, approval, money, comfort, or security. Instead of caring about what humanity could do for him, he would care only about what he could do for humanity. How could he use his unique gifts and skills to most benefit humanity?
Then he had a wild idea, completely absent from existing literature.
He had lost most of his network, and few nuclear professionals would talk with him. So, he went back to the people he grew up with. One of his lifelong friends is a general contractor with a barn and tools. He took a leap of faith, bought lab equipment and materials on his credit cards, and tried to make the thing.
It worked on the very first try.
The Nuclear Redemption Reactor (NRR)
The result was an original, credible, and near-term form of nuclear fuel.
It was a miracle, but great perspiration and sacrifice still lay ahead. He continued his vow to pursue whatever endeavor would allow him to most benefit humanity - no matter what. He remained broke for another year, living in his garage while combing through the existing literature and data, to design the best conceivable nuclear energy system.
The new fuel form's unique behavior dovetails with a new type of nuclear reactor - superior in terms of safety, economics, and development time. He called it The Nuclear Redemption Reactor (NRR).
While most credible advanced reactor companies are deploying designs very similar to those already built in the 1960s and 1970s (or, in a couple of cases, designs originating from government programs in the past couple of decades), the NRR is entirely new.
While existing designs are optimized for physics, the NRR is optimized for economics, simplicity, and deployment time.
With inherent meltdown-proof safety and online refueling, its power density is multiple times that of any credible reactor that can claim those same features.
It's also extremely modular, with no structural containment or core pressure vessel; every reactor core component can be manufactured and tested in a lab.
No multi-year irradiation testing is required; we already have all that data. Furthermore, it can operate without high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel, which is scarce and a supply chain bottleneck for most advanced reactors.
Oh, and once fresh fuel enters the reactor, it doesn't leave. Spent fuel and nuclear waste are removed only once - after the reactor's end of life.
The Team
That's astonishing, but building a company to deploy new technology involves a lot of challenges (and grueling work) beyond the actual technology. His world-changing technology was a strong foundation, but a lot more would be needed - requiring skills sets he didn't have. He was still the weird guy in a barn, after all.
That's when the second miracle hit.
Another guy he and the general contractor grew up with somehow wound up becoming the third co-founder of Robinhood, before going on to co-found and invest in many other successful tech companies. When this guy saw what his old friends had created, he flew into the little regional airport to see the barn lab. Then he wrote the first check into Leapfrog Nuclear and joined as a co-founder, bringing his world-class business acumen, salesmanship, and investor network to help build a real company.
That's doubly astonishing, but could this team actually build a power plant? That requires yet another set of completely different skills.
Then the third miracle hit.
The broke unemployed man's long-lost cousin, who he'd never met until ten years previously, was a world-class executive in the energy industry, who'd led billion-dollar transactions, managed multi-billion-dollar budgets, and actually built multiple types of power plants. When his cousin saw the fuel and reactor design, he committed to leaving his Fortune 500 C-suite executive position to join Leapfrog Nuclear.
The Leapfrog Nuclear Company
When the broke unemployed man showed his fuel and reactor design to the few nuclear engineering experts who would bother listening to him, they were universally shocked and impressed. None of them had ever heard anything about this, and they couldn't identify any show-stoppers. World-class technical experts joined Leapfrog Nuclear as advisors.
When he randomly sent photos from the chicken barn lab to the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy on LinkedIn, she invited him to brief her at the DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Forrestal Building security people seemed puzzled by the strange metallic samples, but they let us in...and the DOE had never heard of this before.
Word spread, and more former friends and colleagues began to talk with him again, after years of silence. The grip of cancel culture began to weaken.
Then, the greatest affirmation of all came. World-class nuclear engineering technical experts and executives chose to leave secure, lucrative jobs in billionaire-funded companies...to join a stigmatized broke man in his garage. These are the best people.
Yes, this whole story is 100% true.
If you find yourself in a dark place, where all hope seems lost...count it as a blessing and an opportunity. Determine how you can most benefit humanity, and throw yourself into that good endeavor with every last drop of vigor you have. You won't regret it.