01:13:48 · Isaiah Taylor
[01:13:48] S1: for It's so important that people understand that these things are possible in technology, right? And I... That... It's probably one of the biggest contributions that Elon has made to mankind, is that he's given people a category for like absolutely fundamental change in the trajectory of an industry. Right? Like, I think if you ask people in the early two thousands, if you showed people that graph beforehand, they'd be just like, no. Science Right? Like, you're you're... This is just not possible. And he gave people a category for, no, no, no, this is possible. You can actually go from, you know, being the the loser in an industry as a country to, like, stratospheric change. And that is exactly what we are trying to do here. And it it flows into really every choice that that Valar has made. You know, I I like to say if you poke Valar in any place, you prick us in any place, we'll bleed scale. We have meticulously, ruthlessly engineered everything we're doing for maximum scale. And it actually goes back to the safety thing. Like, you could argue that you don't really need to make a plant this safe. One of the biggest criticisms that we get is for using Triso, because people are like, Triso's super expensive. And I'm like, well, one, we're gonna make it cheap, so that's fine. But, you know, like, it's expensive because no one makes it, right? There's like a couple companies that are starting to get back into it, and they'll scale, and we'll keep buying it, and it'll get cheap, right? So I don't think that's a big problem. But deeper and more fundamental point is like, if you're serious about scaling nuclear to the inflectionary degree that we believe is possible, your plants really should be unbelievably safe. Like, it's just gonna be simpler and faster for us to scale with extreme safety. Because extreme safety means that you can simplify operations, can simplify manufacturing, you can broaden your supply chain, you can do all of these things that are impossible if you have to have a, you know, accept a high level of hazard. So we are serious as a company about building tens of thousands of reactors, eventually hundreds of thousands of reactors, if that's the case, these things need to be really, really safe. So, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is people don't do things that they believe are impossible. Right?
01:16:10 · Isaiah Taylor
Like belief is is a prerequisite, even if it's a bit of suspended disbelief. Right? But like you have to have some degree or some manner of belief order to do something. And I'm okay with suspended disbelief. You know, I think there's plenty of people that we hired in the early days who I was like, you know, we're gonna go build a reactor, and it's gonna turn on Budget July 4. And, like, maybe? Like, we'll see. And hey, you know, we're we're a month and a half out. We still got a lot to get right before that thing turns on. But I think over time, it's acceptable to to suspend disbelief for a while, and then you and you watch it happen. But in that suspension of disbelief, and in these beliefs of being able to build tens of thousands, you have to make real trade offs for that outcome. Right? And a good example of that is Triso. Another good example of that is using a low power density format reactor. Right? An HDGR is not a high power density reactor. But it's so simple that we can build thousands of them. And I believe that building thousands is essentially the only thing that will matter. Right? That and pace. Right? Doing it fast and doing it many times is is in the long term, and by long term, I mean five to ten years, the only thing that will matter. And in order to do that, you have to have some simplicity and you have to have safety, which leads you to a high temperature gas reactor. It leads you to pure graphite, trisofuel, helium coolant, and the approximate size that we're that we're talking about here. So, yeah, scale, I think, is is a thing that humans in general don't have a good intuition for. Like, it's just hard for us to imagine something going from zero to one to a thousand to 10,000 to a 100,000 to a million, And I just think about the million a lot. Like, it's just something that, like, keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning. I want to get to the millionth reactor very badly.
01:18:07 · Ty Morse
[01:18:07] S0: If you had to, like, self analyze and think about the way that you think versus how other people think, what is the biggest difference between those things? I have
01:18:15 · Isaiah Taylor
[01:18:15] S1: a very high tolerance for looking dumb. That's one of my secret weapons is like, I am perfectly fine looking like an idiot. And I've done it a lot. I've had a good amount of practice looking like an idiot. Some of those times were because I was, and a lot of those times were because, you know, I was right, it took a while for me to realize it. It's maybe fifty fifty. But but no, like, a huge, huge part of my advantage is, like, I am perfectly okay being the idiot in any room. And that room could be, you know, a group of policy people. It could be a group of engineers. It could be on a construction site. It could be in the room with the president of The United States. And I am perfectly happy looking like an idiot. Because in the long term, my ability to uncover what is actually true is directly correlated with my ability to make the right decisions and move fast. And I have... I've had to, like, come to terms with specific moments like that over the last, honestly, seven years of building different companies, but it's painful. Like, people don't like it. People really, really hate looking dumb. And I kind of embrace it, kind of like it. You know, I've had some hit pieces about me, and I like to laugh about them, and I tweet about them, and I like to, you know, print them out and stuff. Because the more that you can get used to that and, like, flex the muscle, it's like a superpower. It's like a crazy unlock that, like, gives you access to the root truth of the world because no one else is willing to look dumb enough to to go find out.
01:19:50 · Ty Morse, Isaiah Taylor
[01:19:50] S0: On the, like, hip pieces point, did you learn anything from Palmer? [01:19:54] S1: I have always appreciated Palmer for not letting, like, not letting it slide. Right? Like, he is... You know, he's actually a very warlike person. He's a very nice person, but he's he's, like, always at war with, like, somebody... But, like, that's the the nature of reality is, like, every CEO is at war. They're just... Like, a lot of CEOs are, like, kind of in denial that they're at war. They wanna try to, like, think about something else. They wanna go to the beach or whatever. And, yeah, like, I... That's something that I very much very much appreciate about Palmer. And, you know, actually, shout out to to him for in the early days of the company. Was one of the first, like, well known people to, like, vocally defend us and come to our defense when we were in the early days with this crazy vision that we wanted to go fast. And, you know, spent a lot of time actually defending me on Twitter in the the early days where people were saying this guy's a high school dropout, like, is he doing? You can't do this without a nuclear PhD. So, yeah, I I will always be very appreciative of that.
01:19:54 · Isaiah Taylor, Ty Morse
[01:19:54] S1: I have always appreciated Palmer for not letting, like, not letting it slide. Right? Like, he is... You know, he's actually a very warlike person. He's a very nice person, but he's he's, like, always at war with, like, somebody... But, like, that's the the nature of reality is, like, every CEO is at war. They're just... Like, a lot of CEOs are, like, kind of in denial that they're at war. They wanna try to, like, think about something else. They wanna go to the beach or whatever. And, yeah, like, I... That's something that I very much very much appreciate about Palmer. And, you know, actually, shout out to to him for in the early days of the company. Was one of the first, like, well known people to, like, vocally defend us and come to our defense when we were in the early days with this crazy vision that we wanted to go fast. And, you know, spent a lot of time actually defending me on Twitter in the the early days where people were saying this guy's a high school dropout, like, is he doing? You can't do this without a nuclear PhD. So, yeah, I I will always be very appreciative of that. [01:20:56] S0: There's this idea of doing things like just attacking the critical path, and that's like the thing that is in bold red letters on the screen, but then you also have to be doing things in parallel at the same time Yes. To make sure that basically, like, all these different things come together to achieve the critical path at some point down the line. So how do you kind of think about parallel pathing and structuring that the best?