Greyson Buckingham, CEO Disa Technologies

There's a way, way such a better way today, today. It makes your voice tell the world there's a better way, today there's a better way. This is Ryd Adams and it's time for another Rhetomics Show. My guest today is Grayson Buckingham, the CEO of Dis-A-Technology, a company that is doing something about an issue that has been used to get to the nuclear industry forever. That's going to address the uranium-mind tailings, the leftovers, from mining that leaves a lot of material behind while we extract the valuable fuels for nuclear power and in this case, from nuclear weapons. Grayson, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me, Ryd. It's a pleasure to be on and discuss all the fascinating work we're doing here at Dis-A and our journey to get to this point. Yeah, the journey is part of what we want to talk about because I first became aware of just a, I just looked it up. It was almost exactly two years ago. It was just second of January 2024. When I learned about the fact that you guys were trying to convince the nuclear regulatory commission that you should not be licenses if you were creating thousands of uranium bills, you tell us a little bit about the journey that you had from 2021 when you first started your interactions with the nuclear regulatory commission. Yeah, thank you, Ryd. Maybe I'll even step back a little bit to 2018 when we first started the company decided and what we do and the problem that we're trying to address to give further context to our engagement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which ultimately culminated in us receiving the first NRC service providers license for a ban in uranium mines. But it started in 2018. My background, law degree MBA worked in the energy industry for several years, worked in the Hill, spent almost 10 years in the Army with deployments to Iraq and Kuwait. And then really started the company up with my co-founder who's finishing up his PhD in mining engineering, John Lee in 2018 to advance a technology called high pressure, slurry ablation, hipster for short. Effectively what it is, it's a mechanical process. We don't use any chemicals, but we shoot rocks at each other in a way that breaks off minerals that folks care about and value from material that what's called in the mining industry gang material or material that doesn't really have any value. And this technology works exceptionally well on a ban in uranium mine material that's found in the Western United States. There's US EPA estimates that there are approximately 15,000 sites associated with the ban in uranium mines waste. In particular, there are documented 4,200 sites that are called defense related uranium mines, drum sites, largely mines that were mined during the Cold War era to provide uranium for those Cold War efforts. And what had happened is largely from the 1950s to the 1980s, the US government was encouraging different companies and folks to go out and mine as much uranium as possible to be the Soviet Union and stockpiling as much uranium. In fact, they were even incentivized folks that if they could show they had a productive mine, they would give them $100,000 for example and would buy the uranium at higher prices. And when the market ultimately busted in the mid 1980s, a lot of there were no bonding requirements back then. A lot of those sites, the waste rock that were mined on site just continued to remain on site. And so during this period when the mining activities were occurring, you'd mine for the uranium ore, you'd take the economic material to a uranium mill, convert that to you through your way, and it would enter the supply chain. And then the uneconomic material and then what we're discovering still had traces of uranium in it was just left on the surface. And so US EPA estimates have that there's approximately 3 billion tons on average, potentially 8 billion tons of this waste rock are overburdened material that continues to sit on the surface of these thousands of sites that were mined during that Cold War period. And so based on the success of our technology and being able to remove the uranium, 2 to 6 and other constituents are concerned from that material and be able to potentially recycle that material, we endeavor to begin the licensing process to address this complex situation. And really it comes down to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act and then certain rules and regulations that were promulgated from there on how to properly license different activities when it comes to uranium. And so we initially submitted a license application to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in late 2020 to be able to remediate these abandoned uranium mines and where the regulatory piece came in if you're recovering uranium and concentrating it even if it's for remedial activities, you need source material license to be able to possess uranium and quantities above 0.05%. And based on the way the results we were seeing in almost every circumstance we're going to have a uranium concentrate which is basically all the strip constituents are concerned above that 0.05%. And so the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment took a look at this and they effectively said, based on the Atomic Energy Act and a definition called the 11-e-2 byproduct material, we believe that you would have to be licensed under what's called a milling framework, versus source material license or a remedial activity framework which had it been done to date. And so a milling license which was regulated under 10 CFR Part 40 Appendix A takes years to obtain, it's a significant cost. For example, there's only three actively licensed uranium mills in the United States today. And those uranium mills take uranium to yellow cake which anywhere typically 97% to 98% uranium. And we were just taking material from most cases from this waste rock 0.05 to 0.25%. And that material, if you wanted to, to enter the supply chain, was still needed to be taken to a mill and we weren't using any chemicals and we were restoring the lands and demonstrating that we could meet cleanup standards under the NRC unrestricted release criteria. And so we said, you know, that this regulatory framework doesn't make much sense. And, you know, we were then told to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license and for the NRC to take a look at our activities and see what bucket it falls under. And so we resubmitted a similar license application to the NRC staff directly after taking a look at it, you know, the NRC staff had indicated that based on the current guidance from our existing guidance from the NRC Commission as well as interpreting the Atomic Energy Act that we would still need to be regulated under a milling license under the Tensor FAR part 40 appendix A, although they recognize that, you know, we were providing substantial benefit to remediating these waste rock piles and that certain exemptions, you know, we could apply for exemptions under a milling license framework. And for us that approach, you know, didn't make much sense and didn't seem like the best approach. I'm just given the fact how lengthy a milling license takes, how we'd have to get a license for every single site and, you know, as of which there are thousands. And, you know, we effectively argued that any type of approach to remediating these sites, whether it's through using high pressure slurry ablation or another approach, you know, you want to get a reduction in the overall volume of waste material. And that would require concentrating those contaminants and constituents of concern, you know, the uranium and radium, uh, 226, which would, you know, effectively trigger a milling license. And so, um, our team had discussions with the NRC Commissioners, um, you know, laying out this, uh, question set and the, um, NRC Commissioners instructed the NRC staff to put together what's called a staff requirements memo in SRM, uh, which outlined every way that, uh, our activities could be regulated. There were, uh, ultimately four different options. Um, yeah, we're going to do for a second place. Yep. You've got to give me a chance to jump in and ask a few questions. Wonderful story. It's sometimes we get it. Get it. Uh, now when you had this issue with the NRC, did you get any, uh, allies that anybody getting, step in and say, hey, wait a minute, these guys are really doing something important to us. Can you help them a little bit or try or try to listen to them more carefully? Yeah. Uh, certainly we had a lot of support, um, you know, in particular, uh, Senator Llamis and Senator Kelly, uh, we're, we're strong, uh, champions for this issue, um, advocating that treatment technologies need to be encouraged that, you know, this issue of legacy waste, um, you know, is, is ultimately going to be addressed through innovation. Um, the, the current methods of addressing this problem, um, you know, before, uh, we came onto the scene was either doing nothing, which is almost all, it has been, uh, the case entirely, um, bearing the material on site, which doesn't address the issue of, uh, contaminants leaching into the waterway or dust particles pulling into population centers or hauling all the material off site, um, which in most cases is cost prohibitive and we don't even have the disposal capacity to take, you know, millions of tons of material to a different location and really is just taking the problem from one location to the next. So, you know, they, they were significant champions. We also, um, uh, presented, uh, this possible remedy to the Navajo Nation in 2019 to the Danae Uranium Remediation Advisory Commission, um, which led to, uh, additional studies and test work with the Navajo Nation EPA, um, and culminated in a EPA treatability study sponsored by US EPA and Navajo Nation EPA in 2022 and 2023. So the Navajo Nation EPA, um, were strong supporters as well as several other, um, NGOs and, um, think tanks, uh, that are focused on these types of issues from, uh, you know, clear path to third way, uh, breakthrough institute, um, uh, among several other, you know, dozens of different NGOs that helped write letters of support, um, to the, to the NRC on this particular issue. Yeah, it's, it's on them. Your technology, it takes a look at all this rock and, and stand and all that contaminated waste and you just have big pilots and said, okay, now we're going to go through this high pressure storage violation and we're going to clean up a bunch of this material, but obviously that means that some other portion of the materials going to have all of the, the material that we don't want just laying around. Uh, what's the portion between those two to clean material versus the now concentrated material that has these minerals and, yeah, no, uh, great question. And a lot of the material, um, is a connotite mineralogy. So, you know, you get a Effectively imagine a, you know, there's a mineral patina coating that forms along this quartz mineral. And so the quartz mineral is hard on the most scale hardness. It's a seven. The carneotype mineral is a two to three and the most scale. So a lot softer and almost all of your uranium, badadium and radium are in that, in that mineral patina coating that coats that sand. And so when we shoot those collisions at each other, we're just breaking off that mineral patina coating. So you can imagine a bunch of tennis balls covered in mud and shooting those tennis balls at each other. We break the mud off, but the tennis balls stay intact. And that's what's unique about our technology. We're not just breaking everything apart. We're breaking along the different minerals along their phase boundary lines. And so in running the, uh, a U. M. material through our system, we, you know, if 100% of that materials put through typically 80% of that material is that clean sand or records type mineral that can be left on the surface that meets those clean up goals and, and can be considered clean. And then 20% of that material that we break off that are in the fines has over 90% of the uranium, vanadium and radium located at the stake and off site. So from a waste minimization perspective, you know, we're reducing if you're to haul all the material off site, where we're reducing that amount by, you know, typically over 80%. So now you've got this material that used to be considered waste. It was not very carefully piled up on the surface. And now 80% of it's clean sanding material that might be valuable simply to foundations for roads and bridges and, and buildings and that sort of stuff. The other part has the minerals that were causing the contamination of those minerals sound like they have some value, are you going to be able to sell off those that concentrated mineral pile? So yeah, so, so all your comments are correct that that clean course fraction or the material that remains on site could be used for, for road base and other applications currently for the sites that we're looking at. We plan on just returning that material to the site and restoring that site to where it was before that waste rock was left there. And then the what we call our concentrate fraction that fraction that's typically 20% of the overall mass volume with over 90% of the uranium vanadium and radium that we recover. And in the sites that we've we've addressed and looked at can be upgraded to economic grades of of uranium to where it can be recycled and you know eventually used. You know, converted into you three away to enter the nuclear fuel supply chain. When you do this war, obviously there's working folks here who's going to be paid for the process is to be done. So so there's really two different cases from a business model standpoint. One is work where there's either settlement funds or remediation funds that can pay for the work. So in the case of the Navajo Nation, for example, there are 523 superfund sites that are abandoned uranium mines. There was some recent news reporting that we received a contract from the Navajo Nation to do a cleanup on a site early next year. And from there we're just paid to do the cleanup work. But for a lot of the vast majority of these sites, there aren't any funds that have been set aside that can be used for the cleanup. And so we're able without even using any taxpayer dollars for those sites to go remediate that site. And then from our the fines concentrate for all the uranium that we've removed from that waste rock. Because we're able to get it to high enough grades where it's economic, we're able to take that to a uranium mill to eventually be converted to you three away. And so you know in those cases we would either be paid by you know a utility. Or be paid by the whatever entity owns that uranium mill from from a purchase of that material. You said you had some good cooperation from organizations or government entities within the Navajo DNA nation. How are the people that live near these sites responding to your efforts, your proposed processes. And we've spent, as I mentioned since 2019 having multiple public meetings. Chapter House presentations. We presented to the resource development committee for the Navajo Nation Council presentation so the Navajo Nation EPA. At present we there's five chapter house resolutions on the Navajo Nation that indicate support for for looking at our technology and evaluating it further for remediation solution. And you know, as I mentioned, it's a continued advocacy our. We've had a lot of you know great partnership with the Navajo Nation EPA in particular on advancing this as a solution and really where the Navajo Nation EPA. It's most focused on that present is we had really successful results at the pilot level back in 2022 and 2023 under that EPA treatability study. And now what we're going to be doing early next year is taking a commercial size unit to do remediation of an entire area to really demonstrate that we can get the same results. At scale as we did at that pilot level and you know as president Niagara the Navajo Nation. His policy for remediating abandoned radio minds is called safer sooner approach and I think where the you know a lot of frustration lies on the Navajo Nation is you know there's been billions of dollars and settlement funds for over a decade. And you know there's been really no meaningful cleanup to date and I you know largely the the the approach historically from. US EPA has been just to recommend bearing the material on site and you know the issue with that is those caps can erode over time the material can leach. Still in to waterways you know after those caps erode after 90 plus years and it doesn't solve the problem and you know as I mentioned earlier hauling all that material off site. And so that's where you know a lot of folks from on the leadership level the Navajo Nation as well as at the chapter level are very excited to have another you know potential remedy. To address this issue that really is remain unresolved for you know since the cold war. And so there's a Navajo Nation are excited the people nearby are excited the NRC. And least three or four years to finally accept an application once they got that application accepted to be a was it a source material and what you. And you submitted that service providers application in April of 2025 how long do you take them to review it. So yeah kind of going back in in the story in 2020 September of 2024 is when the NRC commission unanimously voted. To regulate our technology under that service providers license as opposed to the the milling license framework that we had discussed earlier. And once we had that guidance and the staff had the the proper guidance from that staff requirements vote or the sake vote. We then recompiled our license. And you know made some edits to fall within the guidance that that was promulgated in that sake and and really it was a it was a great experience with the NRC staff from that from submission to that license to receiving it. We did a pre submission audit with the NRC staff beforehand where they were able to you know look at different gaps in our license to make sure that we were addressing everything that they needed to look at. And so we're going to be able to receive the license from when we submitted it as you mentioned, Rod in April, you know they committed to a six month timeline and we received the license within that six month timeline. You know we were awarded in September 30th of 2025 our license. And the patient to work through that process from I guess you start starting with the state government 2020 and finally got your license. The one that she really needed to be able to do the business you want to do and provide the service that you believe and and the this is a nomination and others affected by this believe is needed. It took you five years that sounds like a lot of a lot of effort. There certainly was a lot of effort and education and demonstrating you know how we can be a you know a major solution to this complex issue. And that's the first of a kind anything is always you know a tough uphill road and you know it was you know as you mentioned it certainly took a long time and a lot of belief you know our team was extremely motivated and tackling this issue. And you know we believe that that we can offer a significant solution to to an issue that that's for me and on address for decades. And so you know largely you know as I had mentioned earlier through the support of you know leaders like Senator Lummis and Senator Kelly as well as other groups that were passionate about getting this work done and finding a right regulatory solution. You know we we continue to press on thankfully we also had you know patient investors that continue to support us and you know saw the you know opportunity that that we had before us. And so you know after you know doing dozens and dozens of demonstrations. And so from the EPA treatability study where right now you know a president were the only EPA validated treatment technology for ban and uranium mine material we also had a separate verification study for my to national labs. And so that's what we had that helped us get to this point. But it is you know kind of that chicken and egg problem rod where we were allowed to test small quantities of material. But without the NRC license we couldn't test commercial quantities of material but we couldn't prove that we could do the commercial quantities without the NRC license and so that was a very long journey. But you know ultimately like from with the leadership of you know commissioner right now chair chairman right as well as other leaders on the NRC and members from Congress and other support groups. We were able to find a pathway forward to be able to deploy this technology to address this long standing issue. So there's patient investors are probably pretty happy just going on though you still need to figure out how you can scale your business. What is your plan. I know your system is kind of modular. Can it be manufactured and used in multiple instances at the same time. Is it a series going from one site to another. How's that going to work? Yeah so they are mobile systems. We've already built our first commercial system. That we have here in Casper Wyoming and we plan on bringing that system for that site on the Navajo Nation early next year. We also plan on going to a non Navajo site. Next year as well for remediation. So part of our NRC license that we received one of the conditions was for really that entire service providers license to be unlocked. We have to go clean up a site less than 12,000 tons and demonstrate that we can meet the unrestricted release criteria under our NRC license and once we're able to demonstrate that we can effectively clean that that first site up. And then that conditions met and then we're able to clean up. I for really any sites through a pre-mobilization notification that for sites that are on federal lands. And so to your earlier question, it is a mobile system. So we can deploy the technology on site, perform our remediation activities. And then we can take that same system to a nearby site and continue moving that. And so as we continue to scale up, we imagine having a fleet of these different units that'll be moving from site to site. And some of these sites vary in size. Some sites only have 5,000 tons of material. Some sites have over 20 million tons of material. And so for those larger sites, you would just have multiple systems. And for those smaller sites, in some cases, we'd be able to clean up in weeks. Are you going to be manufacturing or someone these mobile units yourself, do some of the parts come from other suppliers? How does that work? Yeah, so we do all the assembly ourselves. There's really three major components to our system. The first is the pump that moves the material throughout the system. And there's several well-established vendors that we procure those pumps from. The second is manufacturing the skid itself and there's several vendors that we use that build those skids. And that's a relatively straightforward process. And then the third is all the automation that we put into our system. And we even have machine learning that's integrated into our system that looks at different variables and can make adjustments on the fly to make sure that we're treating the material as efficiently as possible. And we use what's called a PLC and BFD. And which is pretty neat because our engineers they can control the system and different parameters within our system just on using their phone or tablet. And we're constantly collecting that data. So those are the three major components and then we'll package all of that together at our facilities. And then we'll be able to ship the units out from there. And then I'd add which we haven't really gotten into on this discussion, but our technology in addition to treating a van in uranium-based material is used for other applications for critical minerals. And so we've been able to scale up significantly in that sector where we have a unit that runs at 50 tons per hour. That's at a FOSA mine currently. We were installing a 100 ton per hour unit at a copper nickel mine in Michigan. That unit's gonna be shipping here any day now. And then we've got several other units really throughout the globe on all different types of minerals from graphite, gold, copper, potash, phosphate, et cetera. Sounds like you guys are gonna be pretty busy. You take your inspass for Wyoming where your factory is and all the units will be assembled there. As we continue to grow, I imagine even having a larger footprint our headquarters is in Casper. We have an office in DEM outside of Denver, Colorado. Additionally, we have a presence down in the western slope of Colorado. Here we are starting to become more international. We have two employees in Canada for example. We have an employee that's gonna be joining us and Dubai here in the near term in Chile as well. So it's been fun and fast growth. Two years ago, we were at eight employees. This year we started with 25 employees and currently we're sitting at 53 employees. So as we continue to grow that footprint we'll continue to evolve as well. You just still at the relatively pilot stage because you still have to do that one major process. So you haven't really started building a lot of system yet. Any bunch of get that approved. Sounds like you're gonna be really making way. Well, and we're we're still at the pilot stage on the uranium front. But from critical minerals, we have hit that commercialization phase. So which has been awesome because it's allowed us to really hone in our core technology to establish our supply chains. Really lean into our manufacturing capabilities, develop those relationships with vendors. So on the mineral processing side of our business using effectively the same type of technology. We've been able to gain a lot of experience and what that looks like scaling up. That positions us well to be able to quickly scale up these systems for a bin and uranium mine applications. That's pretty cool. Do you think you could once you have something to say processing phosphate waste and you finish up with that same system be used for other materials? So it's a little different on the mineral processing side. We're just one unit operation out of an entire circuit. So up to 4% of global electricity is just used to break rocks apart in different mining applications. And so in phosphate and copper and these other applications that we're in, we're competing with a ball mill or we're in that grinding circuit that helps with size reduction. And liberation is the technical term where you're liberating those valuable minerals from that gang material, those materials you don't care about. And so we act as a, you know, our main value proposition and those mineral processing circuits is a reduction in overall energy and we're increasing grades and recoveries of those minerals to improve those operators bottom lines. So for those types of applications, you know, it's just our core technology design that's plug and play and then that's permanently installed. Whereas on the abandoned uranium mine front, it's a mobile system that can be deployed to various sites and there are different ancillary pieces of equipment that we would, you know, that we tack on to that system so that we can do for the front, to back end treatment of that waste. The one on the end of uranium site of an uranium mine waste is pretty much a stand-alone unit. It's just taking waste and converting it into clean and less clean, potentially more valuable. It's not part of a complete process line. Correct, exactly. So, you know, we do the grinding and liberation of the minerals like in our abandoned uranium mine systems. We also have screens because when we break the material apart, you know, we found that the uranium is super fine. And so we typically cut it at around 270 mesh to put that in a perspective that'd be the diameter of a hair follicle. And so we use the screens to cut that clean sand, which is plus 270 mesh from the uranium, which is typically minus 270 mesh. And so we have like that additional step, for example, after we use our core technology to break those minerals apart, then we screen it. You create those two different streams by screening that material. And then we do use water in the system. It's continually recycled. And so we have a dewatering step as well that will remove the water from the solid so that that water can be then again recycled throughout the system as it continuously treats the material. Does your system have any applicability in the new uranium mine or an active uranium on it? Is already producing material to that? Yes, it does. The same technology can be used at, you know, in the band and uranium mine site as well as in active uranium mine site with our NRC license that we recently received this September, that license is specific to a band and uranium mines. And so if we were to look at, you know, deploying our technology to an active uranium mine, I would fall under an entirely separate licensing framework from the NRC. So our NRC license with that service, the service provider's license we have is specific to inactive, abandoned uranium mines, a legacy sites for that specific purpose. Okay. Now I'm gonna use the word license in a different context here. Obviously there's people out there minding uranium today and they're being encouraged by the same kind of aggressive support for a US production of uranium and other critical minerals. If they have a license for a mine, would it be possible or is it lucrative for you to think about licensing your equipment to them for them to use in their licensed mine? In other words, a intellectual population's from you to them and then put that in their equipment or your equipment or similar equipment into a licensed that is approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium. And that's probably a complicated question. But no one, at present we're focused strictly on remediating abandoned uranium mines and recycling, you know, they're recovered contaminants from those particular sites. By in any application, if you reduce the amount of volume that needs to be transported off site and you get high recoveries and you do that in an energy efficient way, you know, the economics are going to be strong. You know, we're so focused and passionate about resolving the abandoned uranium mine issue. That's, you know, that's our focus as a company. But yes, it could be used at active uranium mines as well and to make those operations more economic and sustainable as well. You know, that's really interesting. Again, it's great to be focused on cleaning up an old problem but it never hurts to have a new problem to address as well with the same technology. You would consider your secret sauce in this to be almost software rather than hardware since it's down like the equipment that you use is available from a number of different vendors and you assemble it together. But the software sounds pretty unique and that's be a good interpretation. Yes, and the software definitely allows us to hone in our trade secrets and, you know, largely the secret sauce is revolves around our collision chambers in our nozzles and how we're controlling, you know, those materials breaking apart and the breakage mechanism. You know, what's unique about our technology versus a ball mill, for example, and you know, ball mills were originally introduced during the medieval ages and that's what's used to grind material still to date and what we're, you know, competing with in the mineral processing side. They have an external media. So they have these, you know, ceramic balls that are spun around to break this material part. We're using the material itself and shooting material material to break itself apart. And that's what's unique in our technology versus, you know, ball mill or rod mill, for example. And so, but there's a lot of, while it's, you know, relatively straightforward and that we're just shooting material at each other in slurry form, there's a whole plethora of variable that, you know, just a slightest change in how our tinks design, the angles of our nozzles, the outlets of our nozzles, the type of material we're using in our nozzles or our chamber all have an impact on how effectively and efficiently we break those materials apart. And so that's really the core of our IP and what we use in the software, we use to augment our learnings and to get to those solutions quicker. You know, there's a lot of, you know, none of this material that we're treating either mineral processing or abandoned or any of mine waste is homogenous. And so there's a lot of variability in the type of material we put through our system. And so by being able to, you know, leverage machine learning and software, we're able to make adjustments, you know, automatically within our system that can lead to better outcomes and results. With some of the sites it's going to be going to, I imagine that there's pretty dry, pretty remote, how do you provide the, I know you said the water is a closed system, which is gonna bring some water to say. And where's the power come from for your pumps and the rest of your equipment? Yeah, so for power, if there's not line power easily accessible, we would use a generator. You know, a lot of these sites is funny. We actually identify because you can find, you know, line power going out to the site when it was a larger mine. But for these smaller sites, we would use a generator to provide power. The throughput of our units for a band and your EDMine sites are 50 tons an hour to 100 tons an hour. You know, once we get larger than 100 tons, it's too difficult to transport those systems from site to site. And so for a larger site, you know, we would have multiple systems if we wanted to clean that, if the objective was to clean that site up quicker. And then for the water component, we do recycle the water throughout the process. We lose about, you know, 10 to 15 percent of the water in the process during that dewatering stage, although, you know, that works out quite well because, you know, that's about the moisture levels that you want for compaction when you return that course material back to the surface. And then so we do require a little bit of makeup water every day, you know, in practice, you know, that translates to about one to two water trucks that would need to be taken to site every day. Do you have any feel for why there are so many sites? Sounds like an awful lot of your any advice. Yeah, there's there's certainly a lot in it. It's been amazing just traveling to these different sites and, you know, a lot of times if you didn't know what you were looking for, you just think it's another pile of rocks that you drive by. During the hay day of the cold war, there were a lot of smaller operations that we're trying to find a site and go after it. And you know, as I mentioned, the Atomic Energy Commission, now the Department of Energy was very encouraging for the US to to get as many sites and mines online. You know, a lot of the acid do with the geology of these areas and the different pockets of uranium and then the, you know, different volatility of prices over time of, you know, and like a lot of the smaller sites that we've seen were mined in the 50s are, you know, late 40s and then the larger sites, you know, come online, you know, later in like the 70s and 80s. It's been, yeah, fascinating to learn about it because where the US government is on a good job is, you know, there's a there's a database that shows where, you know, that that 15,000 site estimate of sites associated with the ban and uranium mines ways that the EPA has a database and other states and USGS as well have databases. But what that database doesn't show is the size of the sites or the levels of contamination in each site. So, you know, we have an internal team here at this that's, you know, taking those extra steps. And so we have our own proprietary ArcGIS database. We have a thousand sites in there right now. And, you know, it's, it's really neat. You're, you know, we're able to go back in time and see what the site looked like, you know, what it looks like today through satellite imagery. And then, you know, looking at photos from the from the 60s, for example, in 70s. And you can see when that mining activity occurred. There's a lot of initial desktop review that we do to say, okay, you know, EPA has identified a location here. Let's, let's go see if via the satellite imagery. This actually looks like an abandoned uranium mine site. And there's several different indicators that we looked at. And then once we have confidence that it is actually waste rock from an abandoned uranium mine site, we'll send a team that'll go do gamma walkover scans. And, you know, in a lot of cases, you know, those readings will be significantly higher than, than background. And then, you know, well, then we have the confidence that that it is indeed waste rock. And it is a legacy from historic uranium mining. And then, you know, we'll proceed to, to do further investigation of that site. When you have a system operating, do you need any operators on site you can do some control via phones and pads, but do they have to have somebody there watching the gauges and making sure that not also so properly adjusted. So we, we, we endeavor to automate as much as we possibly can with our system, although it does require operators to be on site, you know, for example, you need one individual that's running a loader that's, you know, picking up the waste rock and putting it into our system. You know, we'll have a radiation safety technician on site and as well as folks just to make, you know, manual adjustments as needed to the system. But, you know, as we've continued to advance the technology over the years, you know, we have pneumatic valves and automatic sensors. So a lot of that is done without manual interference, but, you know, as a practice and just given, you know, the amount of material that's being loaded on loaded, we do, you know, our, our field crews are, you know, we anticipate as we start these deployments next year, you know, around four folks that are operating the equipment and managing the system as it does its treatment activities. Very good. All right, Grayson, I am going to offer you the opportunity to tell us anything that you want to talk about that didn't, I didn't ask, didn't ask you. It sounds like you guys have got kind of a winter gourd here. No, yeah, thanks for the opportunity and thanks for having me on Rod. I think, you know, we're just extremely grateful that, you know, the, we found a regulatory path forward to address this long standing issue. As I've, you know, mentioned, you know, earlier, there's, there's thousands and thousands of sites and there really has not been a lot of meaningful work done to address these legacy sites. And so we're excited to have a technology that can play a major role in not only remediating these sites, but also recovering uranium that can be ultimately recycled and, you know, help support the sneaky of the Renaissance that we're seeing occur, you know, not only in the United States, but throughout the globe. Yeah, I'm going to finish with make one more comment and you can respond if you'd like to my audience. One of the reasons I was been talking to integration and following the disestories is intrigued me to see the kind of challenges they were having, getting the nuclear regulatory commission to interpret their own rules. It was really a matter of understanding what the rules said and what they met in order to, to allow this beneficial cleanup technology to be approved. And it took the NRC a long time years to make the decisions, necessary. And in some cases, there was, there was some staff who've done and sitting on Commissioner's desk for over a year. And the chairman of the commission didn't do anything to really push it along. But times had changed. Once the NRC decided what the right way to go was, the modern NRC, the NRC being led today by the commissioners that are there, got things going and the review took about six months. So once they have made the decision and read their rules and interpreted a logical way, they can move pretty quick. And the last thing is, Grayson, like many people in the new presidency didn't really want to tell this story until after the decision will make. I think it's kind of a problem for the fact that the nuclear folks tend to not want to upset the NRC just so they can get to write decision. What do you say, Grayson? Is that an uncere thing to say? I would just comment, Rod, I think with, you know, chairman, right and his leadership and the commissioners in place, you know, as the last year has been amazing working with the NRC and, you know, complex issues take a lot of time, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, I can feel like a lifetime. And, you know, I think when you're looking at, you know, a law that was passed in 1954, it didn't really intend for technologies like ours or, you know, couldn't, couldn't foresee the different technologies that would come about and the different solutions that innovation can bring. And so I think, you know, with just a flexible approach and that's why we're very appreciative you know, license I was issued in September. It's, you know, it almost felt like over the years we're trying to fit, you know, a square peg into a round hole, but the way that the commissioners, you know, the NRC staff provided different options in the way the commission voted unanimously to regulate our technology, you know, now allows us to go be able to address this long standing issue. Congratulations. I applaud your patience and applaud whoever your investors are, you really mentioned them, but applaud them for having had the patience to keep supporting you. It's one of the things that is helpful in an environment like the US as, but we've got the ability for people to make investments. Don't always have to wait for appropriations or get taxpayer assistance to wait things out. We do have people that can say, okay, it's a risk, but we'll only accept it because there's a potential reward here at the end. Grayson, thank you for your patience and take care. Yeah. Thank you, Ron. Have a great rest of your year. Yeah. And it won't be very much. You've left it as, okay, I will work to make sure it's a great one. Yeah. All right. At the time this show was released, nucleation capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show had no financial interest in dis-it technologies. We like the way they're thinking and the way they're building a business to solve a long standing problem. Hope you enjoyed the show.