Canon Bryan is a serial entrepreneur and strategic investor operating at the intersection of energy, nuclear technology, and critical minerals. He is a co-founder of Uranium Energy Corp (NYSE: UEC), NioCorp Developments (NASDAQ: NB), and Terrestrial Energy (NASDAQ: IMSR), and has been early to some of the most consequential themes shaping global energy.
Canon Bryan has consistently identified inflection points where geopolitics, technology, and capital markets converge, helping build companies that address structural supply constraints in nuclear fuel, advanced materials, and low-cost energy. His work has included frontier technologies such as uranium extraction from seawater and synthetic fuels produced from ocean water using high-temperature energy systems.
In this exclusive interview with The New Money, Canon Bryan shares his long-term thesis on the coming energy super-cycle, why nuclear power will underpin AI and supercompute, and the overlooked importance of critical minerals.
You have been the co-founder and founder of multiple companies focused on energy and critical minerals. Where did the conviction initially come from to focus on those opportunities?
That’s an interesting question. In terms of energy, at some point, it became very apparent to me that there would be 3 industries that would experience massive growth this century: food, water and energy. So anything related to, or leveraging those industries would represent a potentially massive opportunity.
Another revelation was that low-cost energy and reliable energy and scalable energy would be on the frontier of the opportunity. Once you look at the galaxy of opportunities through that lens, the numbers of alternatives actually becomes extremely limited. High-temperature nuclear, synthetic fuel, superhot-rock geothermal, and really not a lot else. Bill Gates said that if he had one wish, it would be to provide abundant, low-cost energy. I share that wish. Low-cost abundant energy will massively improve the standard of living for billions of people. So, the dual purpose of achieving an intrinsic good, and providing significant returns to investors, is of great interest.
In terms of critical metals, it is a different dynamic. Many critical metals have the unique and unfortunate character of being abundant but geopolitically constrained. It is perfectly clear that the global supply chain is broken. It has been broken for at least 4 decades. However it is not beyond repair. Cracking the code on most critical metals is actually about thinking and doing business like the Chinese. If one can do that, the opportunity exists to remove supply constraints, and that also translates into an immense financial opportunity for investors. So, that dual purpose is interesting to me.
You were one of the co-founders of Uranium Energy Corp (NYSE: UEC) which first started more than two decades ago. What was your perspective on the need for domestic uranium production at the time that led you to start the company?
I was one of the 4 co-founders of UEC, but getting into uranium was not my idea. It didn’t take long to see the huge blinking lights in the market data. Domestic production was basically non-existent. Over 99% of all nuclear fuel was imported. Half of all nuclear fuel was coming from Russia as part of the Megatons to Megawatts deal, where both Russia and the US agreed to downblend the weapons grade fuel in about 20,000 (out of ~27,000) nuclear warheads each. (Russia held their end of the bargain. America did not. But I digress.)
There was no urgency. There was in fact complacency. Added to this was the full-blown Asian industrialization that was causing most all other commodities to skyrocket in the early 2000s. An excellent colleague of mine once said about Washington, DC, that there are only two modes of operation in Washington: complacency and panic. That aphorism applies to most markets. We were witnessing the complacency. We saw the opportunity for panic. And panic we got. Uranium spot price went from $16/lbs to $136/lbs in less than 30 months after we started UEC. Ironically, domestic production never increased all that much, and is still today around 1% of annual domestic reactor requirements.
Uranium has become a huge focus in federal policy lately in the United States of America. What do you think is causing that shift?
The geopolitically constrained nature of uranium is patently clear for all to see. It is much worse today than it was in 2004 when the spot price skyrocketed by 900% in 30 months. The reason is because in 2004-2007, Russia was more-or-less our friend. And secondly, the Megatons to Megawatts agreement was still in effect until 2013, with most government officials and pundits complacently and naively believing that the agreement would be renewed for another 20 years. It wasn’t. Today, over 60% of global uranium is produced by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Another 10% by Namibia and Niger. Less than ideal. That leaves Canada, Australia, and a spattering of others. America’s global contribution? Around 0.25 of 1%.
The second layer here is demand. The world is embracing nuclear power today in a way it has not done for over 50 years. Over 30 nations have pledged to treble nuclear capacity by 2050. America itself has pledged to quadruple nuclear capacity by 2050. One of the big drivers is AI-supercompute. The immense energy required for this AI revolution is now becoming not only apparent, but it is broadly cited by the AI industry experts as the biggest rate limiter. No energy = no supercompute. Nuclear holds the keys to this data center tiling unlock.
Another nuance is SMRs. Small Modular Reactors. These represent the next generation of technology for nuclear power. The trick is though that many of the designs require special fuel with much higher levels of U235 isotopic enrichment. That means much more yellowcake is required to fuel these SMRs on a per-unit-of-energy basis. That will also be a huge driver of demand.
Based on where you see nuclear energy going, how much more investment and government funding commitment do you see needing to go into uranium exploration companies and producers to really be able to meaningfully scale up uranium production within North America?
I don’t think government funding is the answer for uranium mine development. Equity investment is more traditional. The economics of these mines must stand alone -- without subsidy. More common sense and streamlined regulation would be useful as a government input.
The US needs to increase production from around 400,000 lbs/year to about 45,000,000 lbs/year immediately to become completely self-sufficient. And then likely increase that to 180 million lbs/year by 2050 -- or more, if America is contemplating becoming a net exporter of nuclear fuel, which I think would be a very good thing. How much investment do you need to bring that much reserves into production? Exploration, reserve definition, feasibility and finally construction, are not trivial costs. Let’s assume $30/lbs in pre-op costs for a reserve base of, say, 1 billion lbs. That’s $30 billion. It’s a lot of capital, but not really much relative to how much is invested into supercompute nowadays. Later on, that developed reserve base will likely have to grow to 2 or 3 billion lbs or more.
What is something you think most investors don’t yet fully understand about the amount of demand for uranium in the future?
Investors likely don’t get that most of AI-supercompute, robotics, EVs, etc, will be powered by nuclear. The piece of the pie is growing for nuclear. But the entire pie is also growing much faster than people can imagine. This is a reversal of the past 30 years of electricity markets in the US.
Mindsets have calcified around low- to no- growth of electricity demand. Those days are absolutely gone, and for the foreseeable future. Deterministic thinking will find investors on the wrong side of the nuclear trade.
You were also one of the co-founders of NioCorp Developments (NASDAQ: NB) which is a critical minerals company focused largely on niobium, scandium and titanium. What was the big idea that led you to form that company?
I love Niobium. It has near-magical properties in steel fabrication and other technology compounds. But global niobium production is highly, highly concentrated in a couple of mines in Brazil, which are now majority owned by the Chinese. Not good. A vast reserve lives right in the dead center of our own country – in Nebraska. We would be fools not to exploit it.
Obviously niobium and scandium have really become an area of focus alongside of other rare earth elements. Can you share a bit of your own perspective on why these minerals are so essential to the future?
My previous answer provides a clue. But more broadly, critical metals are so essential in so many thousands of industrial applications: compounds, components, etc. And like uranium, almost all these metals are totally controlled by foreign nations, usually China. Without these metals, there can be no innovative technologies for the future. Not having sustainable access to these metals is just as bad as them not existing at all.
NioCorp Developments’ flagship deposit is the Elk Creek Project in Nebraska. Can you share why you chose to focus on that property in particular?
Back in 2007, I had developed a significant database of critical metals projects that I could pursue. They were universally unwanted at the time, so I had my pick. Elk Creek really stood out for a bunch of reasons. The sheer immensity of the deposit: 5 miles in diameter with basically no limit at depth. It is an ancient, underground, richly-mineralized volcano that is 5 miles wide and goes all the way to the core of the earth. And it has lots of other goodies in it besides just Niobium. My geological consultant at the time, Anthony Mariano, PhD, a global expert on carbonatite structures, had worked extensively on the Elk Creek project in the 70s and 80s, and he had boxes upon boxes of materials on it: reports, studies, maps, drill results, models, and more. The location is excellent, with a willing community, and excellent infrastructure. It’s all there. This deposit, once in production, puts America right back in the international niobium game.
What is something you think most investors probably don’t fully grasp yet about the strategic importance of a domestic supply chain for niobium and scandium.
If there were one thing, it is probably niobium’s superior characteristics as a steel additive when it replaces molybdenum. It is far less dense, meaning lighter, but it has far more tensile strength. That means you can make stronger steel with lower mass. That will have massive ripple effects throughout the global industrial economy.
You were very early on small modular reactor technology as well. Can you share what got you involved with Terrestrial Energy (NASDAQ: IMSR) at the start from an opportunity perspective?
Back in 2007, I formed a company to interrogate the investment opportunities in critical metals, nuclear fuels, and nuclear technologies. I pursued all three simultaneously. I went on a deep, deep dive down the rabbit hole on the next-generation reactor technologies. I settled early on molten salt reactor technology, but it took me fully five years before I connected with my future co-founders of Terrestrial Energy.
In 2012, we agreed to form a company around Dr. David LeBlanc’s brilliantly elegant MSR design. We incorporated in January 2013. Based on what I saw, and what the 3 partners agreed, David’s design had the best chance of being a low-cost and modular design, capable of fleet deployment in the 2020s. It took us longer than we thought, but the economics and modularity are being borne out by the engineering work.
Terrestrial Energy is on the leading edge of new molten salt technology for small modular reactors. Why is that important?
Whichever advanced reactor design deploys first will have a competitive advantage, just by dint of being first. The reason is that there is still very low user sophistication in the end-user market, and in the investment community. However, low-cost is the biggest characteristic of SMR designs that will matter long-term. And Terrestrial Energy is designed to be a low-cost system, whereas most other SMR designs are not.
Where do you see the future of small modular reactors going from a deployment perspective in the future?
The demonstration reactors and FOAK reactors are being designed and developed now. The next step is the fleet-scale deployment, where hundreds or thousands of reactors are built and deployed. After that, one can imagine a world where Super-Intelligence coupled with robotics are deploying completely autonomously. ASI will deploy nuclear quickly, accurately, with robust safety, at low cost, on a self-regulated basis. Ten years of community and regulatory handwringing to make a go/no-go decision will be distilled down a 3-microsecond computation.
You also started a private company SuperCritical Minerals which is focused on uranium extraction from seawater. How does this technology work and why did you want to pursue that?
The technology is a fairly low-tech but very effective approach for accessing the trillions of pounds of uranium sitting in the world’s oceans. It uses chemically-treated acrylic fibers to adsorb uranium minerals in the ocean. The uranium minerals accumulate in the fibers over about 21 days. Then the fibers are eluted (another chemical treatment) to remove the uranium and other metals. The fibers are then retreated and redeployed, and the cycle continues. This technology is proven in a lab, but has never had proper systematic engineering done to see if it could be scaled to industrial scale. So SuperCritical is doing that. The results so far are surprising. The bottom line is that if we can prove that we can scale this, then there is an infinite, low-cost supply of nuclear fuel until the end of time. I thought that would be worth pursuing.
Do you anticipate a significant amount of investment capital to start pursuing new types of resource extraction similar to what SuperCritical Minerals is doing as one of the next big technology breakthroughs for energy and commodities?
Actually, yes. There’s lots of interesting stuff in the oceans, and other aqueous media. For example, the ocean has an infinite supply of hydrogen. And carbon. If you dissociate those and then chemically bind them in the right way, you get jet fuel. Pretty much every element in the periodic table lives in the oceans in vast quantities. It is just sitting there waiting to be extracted for our industrial use. All that’s needed is investment and engineering work in novel technologies.
You also are involved in a synthetic sustainable aviation fuel company that just went public Syntholene Energy (TSXV: ESAF). Can you share a bit about what they do and why you got involved?
Syntholene is in the business of synthesizing jet fuel from ocean water. This is not new technology, but it has never been low-cost before. Syntholene has cracked the code on low-cost, high-performance jet fuel, made out of water, and powered by high-temperature geothermal. I got the idea from the work Terrestrial Energy did with Idaho National Labs on using high-temperature nuclear to make low-cost hydrogen via high-temperature electrolysis. High-temperature and shallow geothermal provides the same character of energy as high-temperature nuclear. Namely, thermal energy.
How big of an opportunity do you see in sustainable fuels as a whole?
Basically infinite. The condition is that they must be low-cost. The global aviation industry consumes about 400 billion liters a year today. That is projected to increase to 900 billion liters/year by 2050. The entirety of global liquid fuels is up to 4.5 trillion liters/year. And that is projected to grow significantly as well. This can all easily be serviced by the existing high-temperature shallow geothermal. All the world’s greatest products are synthetic. It is only a matter of time before this essential commodity is replaced by low-cost synthetics.
From your perspective, what is one of the most overlooked themes that is starting to really emerge in the public markets?
Multiple but interrelated answers here:
1) The immense need for energy.
2) The dangerous dependence on geopolitically constrained commodities.
Who is one of the smartest people you know who you’d like to see us interview next?
I can maybe suggest Lord Matt Ridley of the UK. He is a member of the House of Lords, an accomplished scientist, and successful author. He spends some cycles studying and writing and polemicizing about the global energy system. A very illuminating man.
