Episode Details

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.

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