ASP Isotopes enters loan agreement, supply agreements with TerraPower

ASP Isotopes (ASPI) announced that the company and certain of its subsidiaries have entered into multiple definitive agreements with TerraPower, a US nuclear innovation company, related to financing support for the construction of a new uranium enrichment facility capable of producing High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium and the future supply of HALEU to TerraPower, as a customer. The loan agreement provides conditional commitments from TerraPower to the company through one of its wholly-owned U.S.-based subsidiaries for a multiple advance term loan to partially finance a proposed new uranium enrichment facility at Pelindaba, South Africa, which is designed to produce commercial quantities of HALEU. The Company is also in discussions with a number of financial institutions to provide additional capital for the construction of this HALEU production facility, and all such additional funding for this facility is expected to be non-dilutive to ASPI shareholders and QLE convertible noteholders. The company intends to construct its initial HALEU production facility at Pelindaba, subject to the receipt of all required permits and licenses to begin enrichment of uranium in South Africa. Pelindaba is South Africa’s main nuclear research center, the headquarters of Necsa and is the home of the 20MW research nuclear reactor, SAFARI-1. The new uranium enrichment facility is designed to produce HALEU with an annual output of approximately 15 MTU of HALEU. The facility is expected to commence initial production of HALEU in 2027, subject to the receipt of all required permits and licenses to begin enrichment of uranium in South Africa, and is anticipated to create hundreds of full-time operational jobs and support thousands of additional jobs across a nationwide manufacturing supply chain. Concurrently, the Company and TerraPower have entered into a mutual commitment to explore further opportunities to develop uranium enrichment production facilities in the United States. In addition to a loan agreement, the Company and TerraPower have entered into two supply agreements for the HALEU expected to be produced at the Company’s uranium enrichment facility. The initial core supply agreement is intended to support the supply the required first fuel cores for the initial loading of TerraPower’s Natrium project in Wyoming.The long-term supply agreement is a 10-year supply agreement of up to a total of 150 metric tons of HALEU, commencing in 2028 through end of 2037. The company has two proprietary enrichment technologies – the Aerodynamic Separation Process and the Quantum Enrichment Process. The company believes that these enrichment technologies can be deployed in a new HALEU facility for considerably lower capital costs, and in much less time, compared to the construction of a uranium enrichment facility using other known methods.