Why Nuclear's Moment Is Now: Stefano Buono, CEO of newcleo

For newcleo founder and CEO Stefano Buono, nuclear energy's next chapter has been more than 30 years in the making. Now, rising electricity demand, energy security concerns, and changing attitudes toward nuclear are creating an opening for ideas he began pursuing in the 1990s.

In this episode of Green Giants: Titans of Clean Energy, host Wes Ashworth, President of Lee Group Search, sits down with Buono to explore what makes this nuclear moment different and what it will take to turn that momentum into commercial projects.

A physicist and entrepreneur, Buono previously founded Advanced Accelerator Applications, the nuclear medicine company acquired by Novartis for approximately $3.9 billion. He shares how that experience prepared him to return to his original ambition: developing a different approach to nuclear energy.

Today, newcleo is developing lead-cooled fast reactors designed to use recycled nuclear fuel. Buono explains the technology in accessible terms, including why useful energy remains in spent fuel, how liquid lead supports the company's approach to passive safety, and why the economics of recycling matter.

The conversation also tackles the difficult questions: plutonium security, the history of costly U.S. fuel projects, regulatory approvals, and the challenge of financing and building an entire reactor and fuel supply chain.

In this episode:

• Why decarbonization, energy independence, and AI-driven electricity demand are reshaping nuclear's opportunity.
• How lead-cooled fast reactors differ from conventional nuclear plants.
• What recycled mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel could mean for fuel supply and nuclear waste.
• newcleo's proposed work with Oklo and its ambitions at Savannah River.
• Why industrial heat and manufacturing matter alongside data centers.
• The milestones that will show whether newcleo is moving toward commercial deployment.
• Buono's advice for founders building technologies that take decades to reach the market.

Release update: This conversation was recorded ahead of newcleo's Nasdaq debut. The company subsequently completed its business combination with NewHold, securing approximately $247 million in gross proceeds, and began trading under NWCL on September 22, 2026.

For energy leaders, founders, and anyone curious about advanced nuclear, this episode connects the science to the practical work of bringing new energy projects to life.

Subscribe to Green Giants: Titans of Clean Energy wherever you get your podcasts, and share this episode with someone following nuclear's next chapter.

Links:
Stefano Buono on LinkedIn
newcleo's Website
newcleo's Nasdaq Listing and $247 Million Funding Announcement
newcleo Targets US Expansion with Nasdaq Debut, AI-Driven Power Demand

Wes Ashworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weslgs/

• Email: wes@leegroupsearch.com
• https://leegroupsearch.com/green-giants-podcast/
• https://leegroupsearch.com/

The nuclear renaissance is about far more than building reactors.

It is also about capital, fuel security, recycling, infrastructure, commercialization, supply chains, workforce, and whether the energy system can scale fast enough to meet a new era of electricity demand.

In this episode of Green Giants: Titans of Clean Energy, Wes Ashworth, President of Lee Group Search sits down with Michelle Urben, Managing and General Partner at The Synergos Fund, to explore what it will actually take to finance and build the next generation of energy infrastructure.

Michelle brings more than three decades of experience across banking, asset management, investor relations, and venture capital. Her path from the Philippines and an oil-industry family to Wall Street and deep-tech investing gives her a unique perspective on energy affordability, energy security, and the role patient capital can play in solving foundational infrastructure challenges.

The conversation begins with a fundamental investing question: Is traditional venture capital structured for technologies that may require years of technical validation, regulation, demonstration, and infrastructure before reaching full commercialization?

Michelle explains how The Synergos Fund approaches that challenge through milestone-driven investing, long-term alignment, active participation, and a focus on durable companies across energy, manufacturing, food, and health.

From there, the discussion moves into one of the most overlooked pieces of nuclear energy: the fuel cycle.

Michelle shares why nuclear recycling company Curio became such an important part of her transition into deep tech and why she believes spent nuclear fuel should increasingly be viewed as a strategic energy resource rather than simply as waste. The conversation explores fuel security, domestic nuclear supply chains, recycling, commercialization, and the broader ecosystem required around the reactor itself.

Wes and Michelle also examine the massive increase in electricity demand being driven by AI, data centers, reshoring, and electrification. If generation, grid infrastructure, and behind-the-meter solutions cannot keep pace, the constraint may increasingly become access to reliable power.

They also discuss Gate 5, a wastewater-to-energy technology in the Synergos portfolio, as an example of a broader investment philosophy: finding valuable energy resources in places the traditional system often treats as liabilities.

But technology and capital alone will not build the next energy system.

The episode closes with one of the most important constraints facing the industry: people. Engineers, welders, electricians, operators, technicians, construction professionals, regulators, and other skilled workers will all be necessary to turn ambitious energy plans into functioning infrastructure.

In this episode:

• Why Michelle moved from traditional finance into nuclear and deep tech
• What patient capital should demand from infrastructure companies
• Why timing matters in private-market investing
• The nuclear fuel-cycle opportunity beyond the reactor
• Why spent nuclear fuel could become a strategic resource
• How AI and data centers are reshaping electricity demand
• Wastewater-to-energy and the opportunity behind overlooked resources
• Why commercialization requires strong operators, not just investors
• The workforce challenge facing nuclear and energy infrastructure
• Why the companies quietly building through difficult problems may ultimately shape the next energy era

For investors, founders, energy executives, and anyone thinking seriously about the future of nuclear power and energy infrastructure, this episode offers a much broader framework for understanding what the next energy system will actually require.

Links:
Michelle Urben on LinkedIn
The Synergos Fund Website
Curio's Website
Episode 89 with Ed McGinnis of Curio

Wes Ashworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weslgs/

• Email: wes@leegroupsearch.com
• https://leegroupsearch.com/green-giants-podcast/
• https://leegroupsearch.com/

Breakthrough science is only the beginning. The harder challenge is turning promising technology into a system that can operate reliably, economically, and repeatedly in the real world.

In this episode of Green Giants: Titans of Clean Energy, Wes Ashworth, host and President of Lee Group Search sits down with Tina Tosukhowong, Investment Director at TDK Ventures, to explore what separates deep-tech companies that scale from those that stall between the lab, pilot plant, and first commercial facility. Tina brings an unusually valuable perspective to venture investing. Before becoming an investor, she spent years as a chemical engineer and industrial operator working across process development, pilot operations, scale-up, commercialization, manufacturing, and customer qualification.

That operating experience shapes how she evaluates climate tech, advanced materials, AI infrastructure, and other capital-intensive technologies today.

Tina explains why scaling is not simply a matter of building a larger version of a successful pilot. At commercial scale, entirely new risks emerge around heat transfer, fluid flow, contamination, materials handling, uptime, permitting, utilities, feedstocks, safety, supply chains, and integration with customer sites. The companies that succeed are often the ones that identify failure modes early, run the right experiments, and learn faster than their capital disappears.

The conversation also tackles one of the most important questions in deep tech: When has a company actually earned the right to scale?

Wes and Tina explore why raising too much money too early can be dangerous, how founders should think about risk retirement before committing hundreds of millions of dollars to a first commercial plant, and why the strongest financing strategy aligns capital with specific learning milestones. They also discuss founder-market fit, coachability, executive hiring, productive board conflict, and why the right investor syndicate can matter as much as valuation.

The discussion then moves into the rapidly evolving physical infrastructure behind AI. Tina breaks down opportunities across data-center power delivery, energy storage, cooling, thermal materials, networking, semiconductors, and photonics. She explains why the next wave of AI infrastructure innovation may come not only from better chips, but from everything required to power, connect, and cool them efficiently.

The episode also explores fusion energy, synthetic fuels, critical minerals, and frontier technologies, including Tina’s perspective on Type One Energy, INERATEC, and the growing overlap between clean energy, computing, advanced materials, manufacturing, and national supply-chain resilience.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why industrial scale-up exposes risks that laboratory success cannot predict
• What founders should prove before committing to a first commercial facility
• How capital discipline can prevent expensive first-of-a-kind mistakes
• Why learning speed and coachability matter so much in deep-tech leadership
• When experienced executives help startups and when they can slow them down
• Why investor syndicates and boards become critical when plans break
• Where Tina sees overlooked opportunities in AI data-center infrastructure
• Why cooling, rack-level power conversion, and photonics could become major bottlenecks
• What industrial operating experience reveals about the future of fusion
• How e-fuels, critical minerals, AI, and advanced materials are increasingly converging

For founders, investors, operators, and leaders building the next generation of clean energy and deep-tech companies, this episode is a practical look at what it really takes to move from possibility to commercial reality.

Links:
Tina Tosukhowong on LinkedIn
TDK Ventures Website

Wes Ashworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weslgs/

• Email: wes@leegroupsearch.com
• https://leegroupsearch.com/green-giants-podcast/
• https://leegroupsearch.com/