LIGHTBRIDGE Corp (LTBR) Business

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

When used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the terms “Lightbridge,” the “Company,” “we,” “our,” and “us” refer to Lightbridge Corporation together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Lightbridge International Holding LLC and Thorium Power Inc.

Overview

At Lightbridge, we believe that increasing the supply of reliable electric power is necessary for people and economies to flourish. We are developing next generation nuclear fuel for water-cooled reactors that could significantly improve the economics and safety of existing and new nuclear power plants, large and small, and enhance proliferation resistance of spent nuclear fuel while supplying clean energy to the electric grid or to “behind the meter” customers for electric power, including data centers. We project that the world’s energy needs and climate goals can only be met if nuclear power’s share of the energy-generating mix grows substantially in the coming decades. We believe Lightbridge can benefit from a growing nuclear power industry, and that our nuclear fuel can help enable that growth to happen.

We believe our metallic fuel could offer significant economic and safety benefits over traditional nuclear fuel, primarily because of the superior heat transfer properties and the resulting lower operating temperature of our all-metal fuel.

U.S. and international electricity demand is growing rapidly due to AI-driven data centers, electrification, and industrial development. Solely in the U.S., demand is expected to grow by ~3 million gigawatt hours over the next 20 years, increasing demand by ~70% from current day. In particular, the data center demand tends to be stable around the clock and will likely require resources that can provide firm, reliable generation.

This potential need for firm, baseload power combined with on-going international, state, and corporate carbon emissions reduction targets means that nuclear power is expected to be a critical part of new electricity generation construction for the next few decades. Interest in advanced nuclear generating technologies is high, punctuated by the U.S. Federal Government’s target to expand nuclear generation capacity by approximately 300 gigawatts electric by 2050.

Lightbridge Fuel™ is an advanced nuclear technology that can be a large part of the planned expansion of nuclear generation. As designed, we expect that our fuel could increase output from existing nuclear reactors as well as reduce the unit generating costs and increase the output of new large-scale and small modular nuclear reactors. Furthermore, Lightbridge Fuel™ may provide safety benefits and non-proliferation benefits and may increase reactor uptime through longer fueling cycles.

Emerging nuclear technologies include small modular reactors (SMRs), which are now in the development and licensing phases. We expect that Lightbridge Fuel™ can provide water-cooled SMRs with the same benefits our technology brings to large reactors, with such benefits being even more meaningful to the economic case for deployment of SMRs, including potential load following capability when included on a virtually zero-carbon electric grid with renewable energy sources. We expect Lightbridge Fuel™ to enable power uprates in SMRs.

We have obtained patent validation in key countries that we believe would have a commercial market for our fuel and continue to seek patent protection in countries that either currently operate or we expect to build and operate nuclear power reactors compatible with our fuel technology.

In addition to patent protection, we rely on trade secrets, proprietary know-how, and confidential technical data to protect and extend the commercial value of our nuclear fuel technology. Certain data that will be generated from fuel fabrication, irradiation testing, post-irradiation examination, and related analyses will be maintained as trade secrets and will not be publicly disclosed. We believe that the protection of this proprietary information is important to preserving our competitive position, extending the effective life of our intellectual property portfolio beyond the expiration of issued patents, and supporting the long-term commercialization of our technology. We anticipate testing our nuclear fuel through third-party vendors and others, including the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories. Currently, we are performing the majority of our R&D activities within and in collaboration with the DOE’s national laboratories.

Our Nuclear Fuel

We are engaged in the design and development of proprietary, innovative nuclear fuels to improve the cost-competitiveness, safety, proliferation resistance and performance of nuclear power generation. Our fuel design remains in the research and development stage and will require extensive testing, regulatory review, and qualification before it can be commercially deployed.

Since 2010, we have been focused on the concept of all-metal fuel (i.e., non-oxide fuel) for use in currently operating and new-build reactors, inspired by the anticipated needs of prospective customers that have expressed interest in the improved economics and enhanced safety that we believe our metallic fuel can provide via power uprates.

The fuel in a nuclear reactor generates energy in the form of heat. That heat is then converted through steam into electricity that is delivered to the transmission and distribution grid. We have designed our innovative, proprietary metallic fuels to be capable of significantly higher burnup and power density compared to conventional oxide nuclear fuels. Burnup is the total amount of electricity generated per unit mass of nuclear fuel consumed and is a function of the power density of a nuclear fuel and the amount of time the fuel operates in the reactor. Power density is the amount of heat power generated per unit mass of nuclear fuel. Conventional oxide fuel used in existing commercial reactors is nearing the limit of its power density capability. As a result, further optimization is needed to (i) increase power output from the same core size to improve reactor economics, and (ii) enhance the fuel performance of nuclear power generation. We believe Lightbridge Fuel™ can meet these goals.

As the nuclear power industry prepares to meet the increasing global demand for electricity production, nuclear utilities are seeking longer operating cycles and higher reactor power outputs for current and future reactor fleets. We believe our proprietary nuclear fuel designs have the potential, based on our preliminary evaluations, to improve the nuclear power industry’s economics by:

We believe our fuel designs, which use multi-lobe metallic fuel rods with a proprietary helical geometry that enhances heat transfer with the goal of improving thermal margins, may allow current and new-build nuclear reactors to safely increase power production and reduce operations and maintenance costs on a per kilowatt-hour basis. New-build nuclear reactors could also benefit from the reduced upfront capital investment per kilowatt of generating capacity in the case of new-build reactors implementing a power uprate. In addition to projected electricity production cost savings, we believe our technology may allow utilities or countries to deploy fewer new reactors to generate the same amount of electricity (in the case of a power uprate), resulting in significant capital cost savings. For utilities or countries that already have operating reactors, we expect that our nuclear fuel could be utilized to both increase the power output of those reactors as well as enable them to load follow with electric grid demands, which demands have become increasingly variable with large additions of intermittent renewable energy generation.

Anticipated Safety Benefits of Lightbridge Fuel™

The anticipated safety benefits of Lightbridge Fuel™ are as follows:

Due to the expected significantly lower fuel operating temperature and higher thermal conductivity, our metallic nuclear fuel rods are expected to provide major improvements to safety margins during certain off-normal events. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing processes require engineering analysis of a large break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), as well as other scenarios. The LOCA scenario assumes failure of a large water pipe in the reactor coolant system. Under LOCA conditions, the fuel and cladding temperatures rise due to reduced cooling capacity. A recent analytical modeling study of Lightbridge Fuel™ by Structural Integrity Associates that was funded by the U.S. DOE shows that under a design-basis LOCA scenario in a PWR reactor, unlike conventional uranium dioxide fuel, the cladding of the Lightbridge-designed metallic fuel rods would stay below the 850-900 degrees Celsius temperature at which steam begins to react with the zirconium cladding to generate hydrogen gas. Build-up of hydrogen gas in a nuclear power plant can lead to a hydrogen explosion, which contributed to the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Lightbridge Fuel™ is expected to mitigate hydrogen gas generation in design-basis LOCA situations.

Lightbridge Spent Fuel – Proliferation Resistance

The April 2018 issue of Nuclear Engineering and Design, a technical journal affiliated with the European Nuclear Society, included a peer-reviewed article stating that after analyzing Lightbridge’s fuel, the authors concluded that any plutonium extracted from Lightbridge’s spent fuel would not be useable for weapon purposes. We anticipate the following proliferation resistance advantages for our metallic fuel:

Therefore, our spent fuel would be unsuitable as a source for weapon purposes.

A modified variant of Lightbridge Fuel™ incorporating plutonium instead of, or in addition to, uranium in the metallic fuel rods could potentially be used to dispose of plutonium from reprocessed used reactor fuel, utilizing the plutonium to generate electricity. We believe a modified variant of our fuel also has the potential to be used to dispose of excess plutonium from nuclear weapons.

Target Market for Lightbridge Fuel™

We expect Lightbridge Fuel™ to be suitable for improving the operations of a broad range of water-cooled nuclear reactor technologies. Our potential market segments include uprates to existing water-cooled commercial power reactors, advanced fuel in new large-scale water-cooled reactors, and advanced fuel in new water-cooled SMRs.

We believe the most significant economic benefit of Lightbridge Fuel™ may be its potential to provide a 30% power uprate in new-build water-cooled reactors, where power generation and containment equipment can be designed to accommodate the higher power output potentially achievable with Lightbridge Fuel™.

While existing large reactors may not be able to realize that full benefit because their systems are not designed to handle that much of an increase in power, for existing large PWRs we estimate power uprates that could be taken from Lightbridge Fuel™ to be 17% or potentially higher. Additionally, existing large PWRs could benefit from longer fueling cycles, increasing generation and availability at these facilities.

The all-in costs of owning and operating a nuclear power plant include fuel costs, operating costs, and, for new and recently built or up-rated plants, recovery of capital costs. These costs are spread out over the generation that the nuclear plant is able to produce. Because nuclear fuel cost is a relatively small fraction of total generating cost, particularly for new or uprated plants, even a relatively modest increase in power output or longer cycle time between fueling (reducing downtime and increasing availability) could have an outsized economic benefit by increasing the generation that capital and fixed operating costs are amortized over, potentially making Lightbridge Fuel’s value proposition (uprate, efficiency, safety) more compelling. Additionally, Lightbridge’s safety benefits could provide some benefits to fixed operating costs while improving a plant’s safety profile and reducing risk.

Nuclear Power as Clean and Low Carbon Emissions Energy Source

Nuclear power provides clean, reliable baseload electricity. The growth of electric power demand in the U.S. and globally from data centers, building and transportation electrification, and industrial expansion will require large amounts of new baseload energy, which nuclear energy is well positioned to provide. Other competing power sources, including natural gas generation, wind and solar energy, batteries, geothermal energy, and hydroelectricity have some combination of geographical and infrastructure constraints, cost challenges, or intermittency and reliability challenges which will limit their ability to serve this new baseload power demand without a large increase in nuclear energy.

According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), nuclear reactors produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and over the course of their lifecycles, produce about the same amount of CO2 equivalent emissions per unit of electricity generated as wind power. The WNA further notes that almost all proposed pathways to achieving significant decarbonization suggest an increased role for nuclear power, including those published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

We believe that deep cuts to CO2 emissions are only possible with electrification of most of the transportation and industrial sectors globally, which will require powering such sectors, and other current global electricity needs, with non-emitting or low-emitting energy sources or no-carbon liquid fuels. We believe this can be done only with a large increase in nuclear power—several times the amount that is generated globally today. We believe that our nuclear fuel technology could play an important role in reaching this goal.

Development of Lightbridge Fuel™

Fuel Development Strategy – Lead Test Assemblies (LTAs)

We believe our metallic fuel can be used in different types of water-cooled commercial power reactors, such as PWRs, boiling-water reactors (BWRs), Russian-designed water-cooler commercial power reactors (VVERs), Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) heavy water reactors, water-cooled SMRs, and water-cooled research reactors. The long-term milestones towards development and commercialization of nuclear fuel LTAs include, among other things, irradiating nuclear material samples and prototype fuel rods with enriched uranium in test reactors, conducting post-irradiation examination of irradiated material samples and/or prototype fuel rods, performing thermal-hydraulic experiments, performing seismic and other out-of-reactor experiments, performing advanced computer modeling and simulations to support fuel qualification, designing an LTA, entering into a lead test rod/assembly agreement(s) with a host reactor(s), demonstrating the production process of lead test rods and/or lead test assemblies at an expandable fuel facility and demonstrating the operation of lead test rods and/or lead test assemblies in commercial reactors.

Below is a brief description of certain key fuel development steps leading up to an LTA operation in a commercial reactor.

Fuel Fabrication

In the short to medium term, we expect the development of the fabrication processes for Lightbridge Fuel™ to continue to be performed utilizing existing facilities and equipment within the DOE national laboratory complex at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Discussions are currently ongoing with the INL to perform the next phase of process development activities and establish the capability to manufacture development quantities of prototype fuel rods for irradiation testing.

Fabrication of LTAs will require deployment of a dedicated Lightbridge Expandable Fuel Facility (LEFF). We estimate the major scopes of work to establish a manufacturing capability for lead test rods/LTA could take several years to complete and require tens of millions of dollars or more in capital expenditures. Expanding the throughput of LEFF from LTA to batch reload quantities would require a substantial additional capital investment in the manufacturing facility and equipment and, based on our preliminary cost estimates, will require hundreds of millions of dollars or more in capital expenditures. These cost estimates assume sufficient funding availability and that the LEFF project receives prioritization by the DOE and NRC to facilitate access to the required quantities of the high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) material, and timely regulatory licensing of the LEFF.

Nuclear Fuel Material Coupon Sample Irradiation Test

Lightbridge’s irradiation testing program includes irradiation of fuel material coupon samples of its uranium-zirconium fuel alloy which will allow characterization of the underlying thermophysical behavior of the fuel alloy. This project is currently underway with INL. We began irradiation testing of the Lightbridge Fuel™ material coupon samples in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) in November 2025. The fuel material coupon samples are contained within sealed irradiation capsules during testing and are not in direct contact with reactor coolant. We expect the initial batch of partially irradiated fuel material coupon samples to come out of the ATR in 2026, with post-irradiation examination anticipated to begin in late 2026 or early 2027. The remaining fuel material coupon samples will continue their irradiation testing until reaching their target burnup which is currently expected to occur as soon as 2028. The data obtained from this fuel material coupon sample irradiation program is expected to be a fundamental component of Lightbridge’s accelerated fuel qualification approach described below, as it will be used to inform and develop the physics-based models and simulations of the fuel rod behaviors.

Loop Irradiation Testing

The purpose of the loop irradiation testing of Lightbridge’s prototype metallic fuel rods is to demonstrate the performance and behavior of the fuel rods under prototypic commercial reactor operating conditions typical of PWRs at a power level and burnup accumulation higher than the fuel would experience in normal operation in a commercial power plant. This will provide a physical demonstration of the capabilities of the fuel rods to ensure reactor safety. Such testing is expected to provide sufficiently detailed information to validate the performance of individual fuel rods, ensuring that their behavior under normal operating conditions in an NRC‑regulated nuclear power plant is well enough understood to support a license amendment request to the NRC for an LTA operation.

We plan on such a loop irradiation test to be performed in the ATR at INL. The ATR currently has limited irradiation loop test facilities; however, the planned installation of the new so-called “I-loops” in the coming years will increase the loop irradiation capacity of ATR for performing tests on Lightbridge Fuel™ in the desired test conditions.

We expect the performance of the loop irradiation test to take three years of in-reactor time plus an additional one year for post-irradiation examination, wherein analysis of the fuel rod performance and behavior is performed, from the time when the additional test loop becomes available.

Preparation for an LTA Operation

Insertion of LTAs with Lightbridge’s fuel rods in a nuclear power plant requires the power plant owner to obtain approval from the NRC based on a safety evaluation and justification that the LTAs will not be detrimental to the plant’s licensed operations. This justification must address numerous technical areas (e.g., neutronics design, mechanical design, thermal hydraulic design, materials science, reactor operations, etc.) and include considerations of the performance of the limited number of LTAs themselves as well as their interaction with other fuel assemblies in the reactor core which may be impacted by the presence of the LTAs. The safety evaluation must result in confirmation that the plant’s ability to ensure plant worker and public safety is not compromised due to the operation of the LTAs. This safety justification will require cooperation between Lightbridge, the fuel manufacturer for the current fuel assemblies operating in the host reactor core, and the power plant owner and will depend on the realization of the following:

Expected Fuel Development and Commercialization Timeline and Factors Affecting Timing of Commercialization

There are inherent uncertainties in the cost and outcomes of the many steps needed for successful deployment of our fuel in commercial nuclear reactors, which makes it difficult to accurately predict the timing of the commercialization of our proprietary nuclear fuel designs and manufacturing processes. However, based on our best estimate and assuming adequate R&D funding levels, we expect to begin demonstration of lead test rods and/or possibly LTAs with our metallic fuel in commercial reactors in the early- to mid-2030s and begin receiving purchase orders for initial fuel reload batches from utilities in the late 2030s. Lightbridge aims to engage early with relevant nuclear regulators to inform our future R&D activities.

While we continue to target LTAs with our metallic fuel in commercial reactors in the mid-2030s, there are several potential developments that, if successful, could potentially accelerate our anticipated timelines by up to a few years. These developments include:

Next Steps Toward Our Fuel Development and Timeline for the Commercialization of Our Nuclear Fuel LTAs

We anticipate fuel development milestones for Lightbridge Fuel™ over the next 2-3 years will consist of the following:

Certain Challenges and Uncertainties Affecting the Development and Timing of Commercialization

1. Funding and/or in-kind support from government and/or strategic partners and/or other third-party sources

Presently, our ability to fund our fuel development program at a level necessary to adhere to our projected fuel development timelines depends on the amount of funding available to us. In addition to our fuel development costs, we have ongoing corporate overhead and other fixed costs, such as in-house project management and project control personnel. To date, most of our funding has come from the Company’s equity offerings via our at-the-market (ATM) facility. As a result, we believe our ability to continue raising additional capital through our ATM facility (which is subject to favorable market conditions and availability) and/or seeking and securing significant funding and/or in-kind contributions from government and/or strategic partners and/or other third-party sources to support our fuel development program is essential for us to adhere to our expected timelines for our fuel development and commercialization efforts.

2. Availability of suitable test loops in the ATR

The availability of irradiation test loops for fuel in the ATR is limited and highly competitive. If sufficient loop capacity within the ATR is not available, we may not be able to obtain sufficient data to justify regulatory approval for LTA demonstration in a large commercial PWR in a commercially feasible timeframe. This would likely necessitate additional loop irradiation testing in another test reactor or a lead test rod (LTR) demonstration in a large commercial PWR before LTA demonstration could commence.

3. Partnerships with fuel vendors and nuclear utilities

The ability to design and fabricate an LTR and/or LTAs, and engagement with a nuclear utility that is willing to accept our LTR/LTAs, is required to demonstrate our nuclear fuel in a commercial reactor. In the U.S., the nuclear fuel fabricator and the nuclear utility will be primarily responsible for securing the necessary regulatory licensing approvals for the LTR/LTA operation. We plan to also build relationships with large reactor and/or SMR reactor fuel vendors, as well as existing nuclear utilities and/or potential SMR customers.

4. Supply chain infrastructure for HALEU

Establishment of required supply chain infrastructure to support HALEU metallic fuel is a necessary step in the commercialization of our nuclear fuel. Existing commercial nuclear infrastructure, including conversion facilities, enrichment facilities, de-conversion facilities, fabrication facilities, fuel storage facilities, fuel handling procedures, fuel operation at reactor sites, used fuel storage facilities and shipping containers, were designed and are in most cases currently licensed to handle uranium in oxide form with enrichment up to 5% in the isotope uranium-235. Our fuel designs for light water reactors are expected to use uranium metal with uranium enrichment levels up to 19.75% and would therefore require certain modifications to existing commercial nuclear infrastructure to enable commercial nuclear facilities to receive and handle our fuels. Those nuclear facilities will need to complete a regulatory licensing process and obtain regulatory approvals to be able to process, handle, or ship uranium metal with enrichment levels up to 19.75% and operate commercial reactors and spent fuel storage facilities using our metallic fuel.

To support establishment of domestic HALEU infrastructure, the DOE announced on December 7, 2022 the creation of a HALEU Consortium. According to the DOE, the purposes of the HALEU Consortium include: (1) providing the Secretary of Energy HALEU demand estimates for domestic commercial use; (2) purchasing HALEU made available to members for commercial use under the program; (3) carrying out demonstration projects using HALEU under the program; and (4) identifying actionable opportunities to improve the reliability of the HALEU supply chain. On December 15, 2022, the Company submitted a formal request to the DOE to join the HALEU Consortium to mitigate HALEU supply risk. On January 12, 2023, the Company received written confirmation from the DOE of Lightbridge’s membership in the HALEU Consortium. HALEU is a key component necessary for the fabrication and operation of Lightbridge Fuel™ in light water reactors.

5. Need for experimental data on our metallic fuel

There is a lack of publicly available experimental data on our metallic fuel. We will need to conduct various irradiation experiments to confirm fuel performance under normal and off-normal reactor conditions. Irradiation testing of Lightbridge Fuel™ in conditions that are prototypic of commercial reactor operating conditions and that represent off-normal and/or accident conditions, as well as other experiments on unirradiated and irradiated metallic fuel samples will be essential to demonstrate the performance and advantages of our metallic fuel. We are planning loop irradiation testing of our metallic fuel samples in the ATR at INL as part of this effort. Additionally, we need to conduct thermal-hydraulic experiments to collect experimental data relating to pressure drop, critical heat flux performance, and other thermal-hydraulic parameters for Lightbridge Fuel™. There are a limited number of experimental facilities with suitable capabilities for performing these experiments.

6. Need for development of new analytical models to support our metallic fuel

Existing analytical models may be inadequate to fully analyze our metallic fuel. New analytical models, capable of accurately predicting the behavior of our metallic fuel during normal operation and off-normal events, may be required. Experimental data measured from our planned irradiation demonstrations and thermal-hydraulic tests will help to identify areas where new analytical models, or modifications to existing ones, may be required.

7. Need to develop and demonstrate a qualified fabrication process for our metallic fuel rods

Demonstration of a qualified fabrication process both for partial-length irradiation fuel rod samples and subsequently for full-length (approximately 12 to 14 feet) metallic fuel rods for large PWR or BWR LTAs and shorter length for SMRs (approximately 6 feet) is required. Past operating experience in icebreaker reactors (a nuclear-powered icebreaker ship), with differently shaped fuel rods with a similar metallic fuel composition involved fabrication of metallic fuel rods up to 3 feet in length. To date, fabrication of full-length uranium-zirconium metallic fuel rods for large PWRs and BWRs has not been demonstrated. In 2021, we demonstrated the co-extrusion of full-length rods using surrogate materials (i.e., rods which replaced the uranium component with a suitable physical analogue). On February 12, 2025, we announced a successful co-extrusion demonstration of a clad cylindrical rod comprising depleted uranium and zirconium alloy with a length of approximately eight feet. Co-extrusion is the primary forming operation in the manufacturing of our fuel and these demonstrations were important milestones on the path to developing and qualifying the full manufacturing process for actual fuel rods with enriched uranium and zirconium alloy.