Hope Dose

Project Omega: Staff Sheehan

Episode Summary

For the very first episode of Hope Dose, Matt sits down with Dr. Staff Sheehan, co-founder and CEO of Project Omega — his first interview since the company came out of stealth. Project Omega is tackling one of the most stubborn problems in clean energy: the roughly 100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting on the campuses of power plants across America, managed — almost unbelievably — through decades of lawsuits rather than a real plan. Staff's insight is that this "waste" still holds more than 90% of its original energy and is more than 95% reusable uranium. Project Omega recycles it: pulling out the reusable fuel, and turning the leftover fission products like strontium-90 into tiny, long-duration power sources — what Staff calls "batteries that never die." It's a conversation about second acts (Staff's last company, Air Company, started by making vodka from CO2 before pivoting to sustainable jet fuel), about why hardware is having its moment again, and about a go-to-market playbook borrowed from the history of the solar cell. Along the way: the three kinds of radiation explained without a textbook, why you shouldn't eat your smoke detector, and the affordability case for energy abundance. A note on format: this is episode one, Staff was gracious enough to be our "guinea pig," and we're still finding our feet. Thanks for being here at the start.

Episode Notes

Guest bio

Dr. Staff (Stafford) Sheehan is an American scientist and serial entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of Project Omega, a nuclear recycling company rebuilding the US nuclear fuel cycle. Project Omega recycles spent nuclear fuel into long-duration, high-density power sources and critical materials for the advanced reactor industry, working with the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The company emerged from stealth in February 2026 with an oversubscribed $12M seed round led by Starship Ventures.

Previously, Staff co-founded Air Company, where as CTO he invented a carbon-dioxide-to-hydrocarbon catalysis process — first commercialized as vodka and perfume, then as sustainable aviation fuel, including powering a US Air Force drone on CO2-derived jet fuel. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum.

Key takeaways

• America stores ~100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel across 100+ sites — and that fuel still contains 90%+ of its energy and is 95%+ reusable uranium.
• The current US "plan" for waste is largely concrete storage pads plus settlement payments, after the government defaulted on its 1998 obligation under the Standard Contract.
• Project Omega's wedge product is a betavoltaic power source built from strontium-90 — a "battery that never dies" over a span of decades.
• Recycling first removes the hard-to-contain fission products (strontium, cesium) and shrinks the truly-permanent waste from "the size of a room" to "the size of a tennis ball."
• The go-to-market mirrors solar cells: start in high-value government/defense applications, ride the cost curve down toward commercial uses like edge compute and AI power.
• Early revenue is the hardware survival strategy — the comp Staff and Matt discuss is Avalanche Energy (a fellow portfolio company), which found ways to earn revenue before the ultimate goal.

Links & resources mentioned

• Project Omega — Staff's company; nuclear recycling and "batteries that never die"
• Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Bob Mumgaard) — the "first guest" good-luck callback
• Slow Ventures — seed investor; host of Staff's first post-stealth podcast
• Air Company — Staff's previous company (CO2 to vodka to sustainable jet fuel)
• Idaho National Laboratory (INL) & Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) — DOE partners
• Yucca Mountain — the failed US permanent repository
• Avalanche Energy — referenced as a hardware-with-early-revenue comp
• Orano — the French nuclear recycler (~$20B facility) used as the cost contrast