When Nucleation's portfolio company, Deep Isolation, choose in early 2025 to access the public markets to complete a reverse merger into a shell company and simultaneously raise approximately $30 million—their last tranche of capital—they did so with one big goal in mind: funding the costs to complete their full-scale test of their deep borehole nuclear waste solution.
Deep Isolation had been, by that point, developing this concept and testing aspects of their design for a full decade, having been founded in Berkeley, California in 2016 by the UC Berkeley physicist and MacArthur Genius Award-winner, Prof. Richard Muller, and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller, in an effort to provide a cheaper, easier and yet potentially permanent alternative solution for disposing and/or storing nuclear waste.
The only other waste solutions that have been developed and used for nuclear waste (post-cooling tank) include ground-level storage in dry cask containers in protected areas on the grounds of nuclear power plants (seen as temporary, not completely satisfactory but largely cost-effective), and below-ground mined repositories that are virtually impossible to site (think Yucca Mountain), are quite expensive, difficult and time-consuming to build and which would require being fully staffed and powered forever (needing electrical power for heat, lights, air circulation and ventilation, among other services, and requiring regulators to perform routine checks and security teams to provide protection around the clock, at enormous expense).
In contrast, the Deep Isolation solution leverages highly mature, deep-borehole drilling technology developed for the oil and gas extraction industry (which has now drilled hundreds of thousands of extractions boreholes) but modified so as to enable sealed stainless steel canisters of waste to be lowered into deep, horizontally-drilled boreholes and either termporarily or permanently sealed up, thereby minimizing ongoing costs.
It is an elegant and highly viable solution because the drilling technology exists to emplace those boreholes in layers of the earth's strata a mile or two underground that are highly stable. Deep Isolation has, in the interim ten years, been amassing patents and now has a portfolio of more than 100 patents protecting this waste storage solution. They have been working to educate potential customers about their solution, earning bits of revenue by developing feasibility studies with EPRI for the U.S. and European countries like the UK, Estonia, Solvenia and, through ERDO, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. And, importantly, they have developed technology and provider partnerships with groups like Halliburton, Bechtel, Amentuk, NAK, Occlusion Nuclear Solutions and Westinghouse. These partners would do the hard work of the drilling, casing and emplacement—which they already know how to do—and Deep Isolation would continue to make sales and earn a premium as the technology developer and owner of the proprietary aspects of their solution. It's a highly workable solution.
Now that Deep Isolation is a publicly listed company (OTCQB: DBHL), there has been growing press coverage of their activities. We expect that, as word gets out, more investors and analysts will come to recognize that Deep Isolation has a very unique opportunity here to help address the nuclear waste issue. Furthermore, assuming their full-scale testing process is successful, there could be a sharp increase in revenues as orders are placed, which for this still small but highly innovative company, means that nearly all of their growth is ahead of them.
Fortune recently published an article by Jordan Blum, titled This nuclear startup and Halliburton repurposed oil-drilling tech in a bid to solve America's radioactive waste problem. This title may give Halliburton too much credit but, thanks to its successful reverse merger financing, the company has the requisite capital to pay Halliburton to actually drill a new well at the larger diameter specified by the Deep Isolation design and deploy a full-scale test using the universal canister developed with the help of the U.K. government. Proving that they can actually store waste deep underground is the last hurdle anticipated to be covered before quite a few prospective customers could begin to place orders, according to company officials and others.
The Mullers moved on in 2024, having taken the company as far as they could, but Deep Isolation is now led by Rod Baltzer, the CEO since 2024 and the former COO, who is an experienced oil and gas executive. There could well be a little bit of trial and error completing this first true test of the technology, which must be drilled at about triple the standard fracking well size, yet those in the industry with expertise see no major barriers that would prevent their success, and Mr. Baltzer is up for the challenge. Meanwhile, the real work is now happening at a time of intense and growing interest in deploying additional nuclear power as a solution to energy security, energy growth and concerns about carbon emissions and climate change, and the emergence of an easier, potentially cheaper and more flexible waste storage option can make those deployment decisions easier.
We are thrilled that Deep Isolation is finally going to be able to showcase a true demonstration of their solution and transition from a trickle of revenue—largely from feasibility studies and government grants—to actual orders in the hundreds of millions for their solution to be implemented both in Europe and in the U.S., where progress is being made in solving the nuclear waste storage impasse. The Trump Administration has already made noises about passing legislation that would enable each state to determine if they would like to host a waste storage facility. We think, placing nuclear waste deep underground in safe but cost-effective boreholes could be one of the most important technological steps forward that helps expand support for nuclear power while preserving our ability access to that used fuel material when we have better waste reprocessing capabilities.
