Curt Tirani, CEO of Standard Nuclear, left Ultra Safe Nuclear to lead a company backed by former CIA officer Richard Hollis Helms. The team includes an ex-CIA operative, an Iranian nuclear scientist, and a former Green Beret. Standard Nuclear's facilities are in Oak Ridge, the historic nuclear research hub.
I mean, I transitioned to this company, uh, called, uh, Ultra Safe Nuclear in, in 2021.
Here's the best name. There's— I covered Ilya's, Ilya's startup, Super Safe Intelligence. This is— don't worry, guys. Yeah, this is really safe.
So, so it was Ultra Safe Nuclear.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was a company, you know, um, that was there. I I thought at the time, you know, it had the, I wanted the right level of control for doing what I wanted to do and they had the right level of capital. It was primarily backed by, you know, one major investor. His name was Richard Hollis Helms. He was a patriot, ex-CIA. Nice. Uh, this is bananas, man.
We got an ex-CIA, an Iranian nuclear scientist, a Green Beret.
All right.
Well, our guests today are Curt Tirani and Thomas Hendricks. Do you prefer Tommy or Tommy? Tommy Hendricks. Okay. So Curt is the CEO of Standard Nuclear. You're a nuclear scientist by trade from, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tommy, you are the chairman of Standard Nuclear, one of its main investors, and you're at Decisive Capital.
Decisive Point.
Decisive Point. And you're, uh, you're a venture capitalist. That's right. And a Green Beret. In a former life. In a former life. Okay. Um, and so, you know, a couple weeks ago I went out to Tennessee and, and went to visit Standard Nuclear, which is near Oak Ridge. Is it technically in Oak Ridge?
It's in the city of Oak Ridge. Okay. And it's in the big Oak Ridge Reservation.
Okay. Okay. And you guys are, I just wanna set a little context for people of what you guys are doing. First of all, the company has an incredible story. You both have incredible personal stories. There's been, been quite a journey. The Wall Street Journal did this very interesting article. And then what the company's doing is, is fascinating, making a very safe type of fuel for nuclear reactors in particular. There's a focus on these small modular nuclear reactors that I think people are going to start hearing. It's, it's in this era of AI data centers and just needing more energy in general. This idea that you can, you can do nuclear safely and a bit more portably, I guess, than we have done in the past.
