Lightbridge Corporation

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the LightBridge Corporation Business Update and Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matthew Abinanti, Director of Investor Relations for LightBridge Corporation.

Thank you, Justin, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. The company's earnings press release was distributed after the market closed yesterday. and can be viewed on the investor relations page of the LightBridge website at www.ltbridge.com. Joining us on the call today is Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer, along with Larry Goldman, Chief Financial Officer, Andrei Mushikov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations, Sherry Holloway, Controller, and Jim Fornoff, Vice President for 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 and 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 to 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'd like to turn the call over to our first speaker, Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer of LightBridge.

Hello, Seth. Thank you, Matt. and thank you all for joining us to discuss LightBridge's second quarter 2022 results. LightBridge's progress and momentum during the first half of 2022 has been encouraging, and our outlook for continued momentum in the second half of the year is just as promising. Also, thus far in 2022, we have further strengthened our intellectual property protection of LightBridge Fuel Technology by securing patents from Canada and Eurasia ensuring that our intellectual property will enjoy broad protections in support of our efforts to commercialize Lightbridge fuel. Last week, we announced that Lightbridge signed a memorandum of understanding with Curio, a company that is developing technology called TruFuel to produce transuranic materials from recycling used nuclear fuel. Under this MOU, we will explore government funding opportunities with Curio, relating to Curio's true fuel technology and potential use of transuranic material as feedstock in Lightbridge-designed metallic fuel rods to power existing large reactors and coming small modular reactors. We're impressed with Curio's recent progress, including their MOU with Energy Northwest as an industry partner and potential off-taker of products produced through Curio's nuclear waste recycling process. Last month, we announced that MIT was awarded an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy University Program R&D Awards to study the deployment of accident-tolerant fuels in small modular reactors. Within this study, MIT will simulate the usage and safety performance of light-bridge fuel inside a new-scale small modular reactor. Importantly, this research dovetails with our strategic focus on fueling SMRs and of the future and the potential additional benefits Lightbridge fuel rods will bring to SMRs. This is another example of the exciting collaborative efforts between Lightbridge and DOE. This project, similar to our two GAIN vouchers, represents important work on the path to commercialization that is being supported by DOE. We are seeing growing support for nuclear power, particularly in government, in providing energy security for ourselves and our allies, and also for climate reasons. Importantly, we are seeing stepped-up support for nuclear power from government, which Lightbridge expects to benefit from. LightBridge's nuclear fuel technology can help the US government meet its strategic goals. As I've spoken about in prior calls and interviews, LightBridge is in negotiations for a strategic partnership project under which LightBridge Fuel will help America meet its clean energy and energy security goals. This series of agreements will allow for cooperative work at Idaho National Laboratory leading up to irradiation testing of fuel samples in the advanced test reactor. This is a key critical path step necessary to support fuel performance modeling and regulatory licensing efforts for commercial deployment of light-rich fuels. As you have seen in the news, many European countries will start rationing natural gas and will hope for a mild winter. Germany will soon decide which companies have to shut factories to ration power. The great need in the marketplace is for more power. It's not a coincidence that earlier this month, the European Union voted to include nuclear power in its green energy taxonomy, which will help bring more money into projects that the EU considers to be sustainable and will slash greenhouse gas emissions. New reactors are under construction on order or planned across the UK and throughout Europe. It's also encouraging to see that Belgium has scaled back plans to phase out nuclear reactors and similarly over in Asia, South Korea has scaled back plans to phase out nuclear reactors. The technology surrounding reactors of the future is compelling. For their reduced size and greater efficiency, However, at Lightbridge, we believe that fuel is the secret of nuclear energy, and our fuel will help shape the future of nuclear energy. Current fuel rods have only had incremental changes in design over the approximately 65 years of the nuclear power industry. Lightbridge has reimagined the nuclear fuel rod using advanced technology to make nuclear fuel even safer and more economical than today's fuel rods without compromising on safety and quality, much of the discussions among industry, the administration, and Congress is about energy security and ensuring that there's enough power being supplied. One of the many benefits of light-rich fuel will be 30% more power than with standard nuclear fuel rods for new reactors designed to take that added power. The 30% is based on a preliminary assessment we performed for a power upgrade for an EPR reactor. We believe similar power upgrades will be feasible in other large reactors as well as SMRs. Our confidence continues to grow about the improving competitiveness of nuclear energy for baseload power generation and transitioning our power grid to clean energy sources by 2050. The Breakthrough Institute published a report that evaluates what a clean energy transition in the U.S. will look like, incorporating advanced nuclear energy, stating that bold investments in advanced nuclear technology in the United States will advance technological innovation, secure leadership in international nuclear markets, and support national energy security and electricity grid resilience. all while improving the environment and health and accelerating U.S. climate action. A report published by the International Energy Agency last month concluded that, quote, the policy landscape is changing, opening up opportunities for a nuclear comeback, unquote. Countries seem to be waking up to the realization that they can't meet their national security, energy, or climate goals without nuclear energy. And now we're seeing this is really starting to happen. Just yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised with the news of a deal between Senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer on a reconciliation bill that will invest $370 billion in clean energy and climate change programs, which offers support for hydrogen, renewables, and nuclear energy. We are happy to see that the bill includes a production tax credit for existing nuclear plants to help keep them operating. Plants that keep operating will be able to use our fuel, which also will provide economic benefits to the plants. In addition, the bill includes funding for national labs, which is important for testing new technologies such as ours. And most importantly for us, the bill includes $700 million to support the availability of HALU for research, development, and demonstration. HALU is used in our fuel technology. This bill is a major and necessary step forward to secure domestic HALU supply, which is long overdue and will have a strong positive impact on our ability to produce light-rich fuel rods. I'll turn the call over to Andrei Yushakov, Executive VP for Nuclear Operations, who will give us a quick review of our near-term research and development activities. Andrei.