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spk00: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the LightBridge Corporation Business Update Conference Call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matthew Evanenti, Director of Investor Relations for LightBridge Corporation.
spk02: Thank you, Liz, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Joining us on the call is Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer, along with Andrei Mushikov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations. and Jim Fornoff, Vice President for Nuclear Program Management. I would like to remind our listeners that any statements on this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about the company's competitive position in product and service offerings. During today's call, words such as expect, anticipate, believe, and intend will be used in our discussion of goals or events in the future. This presentation is based on current expectations, and involves certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results that differ significantly from such estimates. These and other risks are set forth in more detail in Lightbridge's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lightbridge does not assume any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to our first speaker, Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer of Lightbridge. Hello, Seth.
spk01: Well, hello, and thank you, Matt. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are in the process of finalizing our audit and fiscal year 2021 financial results, which is why we have not yet issued our earnings press release. We anticipate that our results will be completed and disseminated in a press release next week, and in any event will not be issued late. At Lightbridge, we go on and have excellent progress to report, but we are mindful that this is a tumultuous time including nuclear power facilities in Ukraine under threat by Russia's military, endangering people in our industry there, and of course, so many other people. LightBridge reached many goals in 2021 that will support our long-term upward trajectory. We completed our first gain voucher with Idaho National Lab to develop the experiments to irradiate material samples of LightBridge metallic fuel in the advanced test reactor. We also began work on our second gain voucher in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Lab to demonstrate our casting process using depleted uranium, a key step in the manufacture of light-rich fuel. We anticipate completing this work in the second half of 2022. We successfully demonstrated our proprietary manufacturing process using our high-temperature co-extrusion process for three-lobe, six-foot-length surrogate rods, which is the typical length of the fuel rods used by small modular reactors now in development and licensing. Performing these initial fabrication development activities with actual nuclear-grade zirconium alloy and with surrogate materials instead of uranium allows us to use a broad range of suppliers and is a cost-effective approach since it doesn't require procuring uranium material. Andre will discuss these items shortly. As part of our fuel development work, we expanded our patent portfolio by successfully obtaining seven new patents in 2021 in the United States and in key foreign countries. As of December 31st, 2021, we held five U.S. patents and more than 140 foreign patents with 15 pending patent applications. These patents helped safeguard our intellectual property which is an integral component of the company's plans to monetize lightbridge fuel technology in the future. We anticipate that fuel development milestones over the next couple of years will include an agreement to manufacture our nuclear fuel material samples for capsule irradiation in a test reactor, while continuing to develop and optimize our nuclear fuel manufacturing processes using depleted or natural uranium, and initiating the design and manufacturing of a multi-lobe fuel rod with enriched uranium for fuel irradiation experiments in a test reactor. We are actively working with the U.S. government and the private sector to reach these key milestones. The benefits of nuclear energy have come into focus over the last year like never before. Accountability for achieving the net zero carbon targets being set by countries and companies around the world continues to drive the momentum toward more nuclear industry-friendly policy decisions. The horror in Ukraine, and before that, the energy crises experienced in some parts of the world, have amplified concerns from policymakers about energy security. These unfortunate events have only amplified the fact that energy security and energy infrastructure will be meaningful priorities which bodes well for nuclear power. Only nuclear power can expand the availability of clean and reliable baseload electricity without carbon emissions while weaning countries off dependency on fossil fuels from countries that threaten their national security. There is a growing consensus that nuclear power, with its clean emissions profile, reliable and secure baseload capability, and low levelized cost, will play a major role in achieving decarbonization goals. Throughout 2021, the United States, as well as the United Kingdom and France, reaffirmed their commitments to nuclear power by developing plans to support their existing reactor bases and are currently reviewing their policies to encourage even more nuclear capacity. In fact, the European Union demonstrated strong support for nuclear energy by agreeing in principle to include certain nuclear energy activities in its taxonomy for sustainable finance. Its inclusion will identify nuclear power as a climate-friendly investment and could result in increased investment in nuclear power technology. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's annual Regulatory Information Conference was held this week. We were heartened by Commissioner Barron's speech in which he gave strong support for the effort within the NRC to move toward technology-neutral, performance-based regulations for advanced nuclear fuels. Next week, I'll participate in an important session at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Dr. Sheta Chakraborty, who is an independent member of Lightbridge's Board of Directors and chairs our ESG committee, will lead this session. She also serves as president of U.S. Operations at We Don't Have Time, the world's largest climate action review platform dedicated to connecting key thought leaders about climate change initiatives. Part of my message that I look forward to conveying is that Lightbridge is a clean tech company because nuclear is a clean tech energy industry. With this technology that Lightbridge is bringing, We think many more people can start to see it that way too. Lightbridge Fuel addresses concerns that people have about nuclear power and together with small modular reactors can really help nuclear power grow and help others accept nuclear as a clean tech industry. It makes us stand out because as far as we can find, Lightbridge is the only pure play listed nuclear company in the world. While this is a time of great opportunity for our industry, I again want to acknowledge people in Ukraine who are operating nuclear facilities under the most difficult of circumstances. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Andrei Mushakov, Executive VP for Nuclear Operations, who will review our near-term research and development opportunities. Andrei.
spk04: As Seth mentioned, we continue to make progress in our fuel development program in 2021. We completed work under the U.S. Department of Energy's GAIN voucher program in collaboration with Idaho National Laboratory. Our work consisted of designing an experiment for the irrigation of light-rich metallic fuel material samples in the advanced test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory. Together, we established a test plan for the measurement of key thermophysical properties of light-rich fuel material both before and after radiation of the advanced test reactor. From there, Idaho National Laboratory performed a detailed design and established the safety case needed for insertion of the experiment in the advanced test reactor. This included the control of parameters such as sample enrichment, thermal hydraulic capacity, maximum sample temperature, neutron fluence, and the physical location of test capsules within the advanced test reactor. Next steps in the testing program will be to contract for the high FSA low-end risk uranium material and fabrication of the sample coupons for insertion on the advanced test reactor. Our goal is to have the experiment available for insertion on the ATR when its core internal change-out maintenance outage is completed. The timing of the insertion is subject to the final duration of the maintenance outage, the availability of piston positions in the advanced test reactor, Idaho National Laboratory's prior commitments for piston, as well as fabrication and delivery of the coupon samples. Once the required burn-up is achieved in the advanced test reactor, post-radiation examination will be performed. We began work on our second game voucher with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for PNNL in the third quarter of 2021. The scope of this project is a demonstration of our fuel testing process using depleted uranium in a 50% by weight alloy with zirconium. This is a key step in the fabrication process of our fuel, and it also feeds into our needs for fabrication of irrigation fuel samples for the advanced test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory. We have completed the procurement and delivery to PNNL of depleted uranium and zirconium materials with our sub-tier vendors, which is a component of Lightreach's mentioned contribution to the project. The total value of the project is approximately $663,000, with three-quarters of this amount funded by the U.S. Department of Energy for the scope performed by PNNL. We also had a successful demonstration of our patented co-extrusion process using surrogate materials in place of uranium. The surrogate rods manufactured using our co-extrusion process had the six-foot nominal lengths designed for small modular reactors. This successful demonstration of our high-temperature co-extrusion illustrates the primary forming process for light-bridge fuel, including the helical twist of the fuel rods and the metallurgical bond between the central displacer, circuit fuel alloy, and the cladding. Rods produced during this demonstration will be used for further development activities, including validation of computer models of the extrusion process and corrosion testing of as fabricated cladding alloys. We designed the light-rich fuel to enable small modular reactors to more efficiently load hollow, bringing up and down in power as renewables are available, replacing fossil fuel plants. In addition, we expect this technology to reduce the cost of generating electricity from a small modular reactor, which strengthens the business case for deploying large numbers of small modular reactors to deliver reliable power and meet climate goals. Back to you, Seth.
spk01: Well, thank you, Andre. And now we'll go to the question and answer session. Thank you to everyone who has submitted questions. Matt?
spk02: Okay, your first question. Has there been any progress or updates regarding the possible additional test loops at the advanced test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory?
spk01: Yes, there are updates. My understanding is that the U.S. Department of Energy is funding Idaho National Laboratory to add one additional test loop at the advanced test reactor. That's nice progress, but we don't think it's good enough. We are in contact with officials to explain why we believe it is important for U.S. energy security to add an additional one or two test loops to that reactor, beyond the one that is available to industry now and the one that's being added. Of course, our focus is on Lightbridge fuel, But it's also important for advanced nuclear technology in general to have this added testing capacity if the U.S. is to compete successfully against China and Russia in international markets. China's and Russia's equivalent test reactors already have the added test loop capacity. Next question, Matt.
spk02: Okay. How confident are you that Lightbridge will be able to obtain sufficient quantities of HALU to perform the irradiation testing experiments in research reactors?
spk01: Well, HALU, high assay, low enriched uranium, is the material we're talking about, and DOE, the Department of Energy, has expressed support for advanced reactors and fuel designs. As Andre mentioned, the next step in our testing program will be to enter into a contract with DOE that will include DOE providing this HALU, this high assay, low enriched uranium, for our fuel samples that will be inserted into the advanced test reactor. We look forward to announcing that contract, which will be a positive answer to your question, but we're still working on it. We'll announce it as soon as we sign it. Next question, Matt.
spk02: How will the waste from spent light-rich fuel compare with existing nuclear fuel rods?
spk01: How will the waste compare? Well, current nuclear fuel is already pretty highly proliferation resistant. According to a report by Siemens and a peer-reviewed article in a major technical journal, light bridges used fuel would have significant added proliferation resistant benefits as compared to current nuclear fuel. We believe this advantage is of particular relevance for small modular reactors and that are being developed and we expect will be deployed in large numbers around the world, so they can't be used for weapons programs during the decades that they will operate in many different countries. Also, the nuclear power industry did not create the weapons-grade plutonium that governments produce, particularly the U.S. and Russia, but we believe that Lightbridge's nuclear fuel technology could be used to dispose of it five times faster than any other technology. You have another question?
spk02: Yes, this is our last question. Is LightBridge pursuing additional game vouchers or any other government funding or cooperation?
spk01: Well, over to Jim. You want to take that one?
spk03: Yeah, sure, Seth. Yes, LightBridge is continuously looking for non-dilutive government funding opportunities that can align with our fuel development program schedule. At the same time, considering and minimizing any concerns that we might have regarding protection of our intellectual properties. We believe that performing well on our first GAIN voucher has helped lead to the second GAIN voucher, and we're now focused on performing well under that second GAIN voucher at the Pacific National Lab. which we believe will lead us to future opportunities for government funding support.
spk01: Thanks, Jim. Next question, Matt?
spk02: That's the last question.
spk01: Okay. Well, thank you to everyone who submitted those questions. We appreciate your joining us on this call. We look forward to additional updates in the near future. In the meantime, we can be reached at ir.ltbridge.com. Stay safe. Stay well. Goodbye.
spk00: Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.
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