Phil Chaffee, Editor of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly and Bureau Chief of Energy Intelligence’s New York offices, joins me to discuss the implications of a second Trump administration on U.S. nuclear energy. Will the tantalizing nuclear power purchase agreements signed by hyperscalers evaporate as carbon pricing becomes less likely? Will free-market ideology manage to sustain the government support needed to deploy nuclear power at scale? We speculate about these questions and more. Note: This int...
Dec 03, 2024•51 min•Season 26Ep. 10
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science & technology, shares how European societies grappled with climate change centuries before modern science proved the scale and breadth of its impact, revealing a forgotten saga where colonial ambitions and volcanic winters shaped our earliest understanding of Earth's shifting climate. Grounding our discussion is his Fressoz’s 2024 book Chaos in the Heavens: The Forgotten History of Climate Change , co-authored with Fabien Locher....
Nov 26, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Season 26Ep. 9
Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies, takes us to the depths of Australia’s security predicament as a country near Maritime Southeast Asia dependent on liquid hydrocarbon imports. We discuss military strategy, the use of nuclear and diesel-electric submarines, and the continent’s precarious dependence on maritime trade and military alliances.
Nov 19, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Season 26Ep. 8
Nick Touran, a nuclear engineer and manager at TerraPower, unearths the sobering realities of micro nuclear reactors. Through a detailed discussion of physics, engineering, economics, and history, Touran explains why microreactors face fundamental challenges that factory production alone cannot solve.
Nov 12, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 26Ep. 7
Nick Touran tells the story of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear Navy” and author of the legendary "Paper Reactor" memo . We discover how Rickover’s hard-driving management and obsession with practical engineering shaped not just the US nuclear navy, but the entire landscape of modern nuclear power. Touran is manager of digital engineering at TerraPower and creator of Whatisnuclear.com . Decouple Substack: https://www.decouple.media/...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 26Ep. 6
James Krellenstein, co-founder of Alva Energy, explains precisely what happened at the Three Mile Island accident, in which an ordinary reactor trip cascaded into a partial meltdown due primarily to errors in the human-machine interface. Krellenstein discusses how the 1979 incident, despite its severity, actually showed the effectiveness of the “defense in depth” principle and led to significant improvements in plant operations and nuclear safety culture. Watch the episode on YouTube to follow a...
Oct 29, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 25Ep. 5
Koroush Shirvan, an MIT professor and consultant on recent major reports on nuclear economics, sheds light on the hidden costs of small modular reactors. Lower power densities, ballooning containment and reactor vessel sizes, poor economies of scale, and missed opportunities for cost reductions mean that SMRs may not be the panacea for nuclear that many believe them to be.
Oct 22, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 25Ep. 4
Jigar Shah, Director of the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy, joins me to discuss his office’s latest Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report on nuclear energy. We touch on the state of the American nuclear industry, its surge of policy and private sector support, and outstanding obstacles to tripling nuclear capacity in the United States. In addition to emphasizing the need for standardization in reactor designs and a unified communications strategy from the nuclear ind...
Oct 15, 2024•54 min•Season 25Ep. 3
Fred Stafford, a STEM professional and anonymous energy commentator, discusses the Tennessee Valley Authority's potential to lead a nuclear revival in the United States — that is, if it can overcome the tensions between public and private interests and a looming debt ceiling that threatens to dim its nuclear ambitions. Read more on Substack: www.decouple.media
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 25Ep. 2
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science and technology, challenges our understanding of energy history. He unravels the myth of energy transitions, revealing symbiotic relationships between coal, wood, and oil that have shaped our world in unexpected ways.
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 25Ep. 1
Mark P. Mills returns to Decouple to challenge our understanding of energy scarcity and efficiency. In this episode, he unravels the paradox of how pursuing energy efficiency often leads to increased consumption, and explains why he believes our energy resources are functionally limitless. -- Mark P. Mills on X: https://x.com/MarkPMills Decouple: https://www.decouple.media
Sep 25, 2024•57 min•Season 24Ep. 10
Microsoft and nuclear plant owner Constellation have entered into to an unprecedented deal to restart the closed Three Mile Island by 2028 to power its data centres. Microsoft will purchase as much power as possible from its 880 MW reactor over 20 years for prices rumored to be above $100 per MWh. Most famous for its 1979 meltdown, TMI closed in 2019 because of cheap fossil fuels and tech companies refusing at the time to consider buying its electricity to meet clean energy goals....
Sep 20, 2024•17 min•Season 24Ep. 9
Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, is embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with Westinghouse over IP rights and export control obligations. Will this conflict stymie Western nuclear ambitions? Does this legal battle risk ceding the longterm geopolitical alliances intrinsic to nuclear exports in non-aligned countries to Russia and China? What are the motivations and likely outcomes? Phil Chaffee of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly joins me to provide context and inferences.
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 24Ep. 8
Tim Freeman, VP of Field Services and Manufacturing at CANDU Energy Inc joins me to discuss the 3rd most widely deployed reactor technology in the world, Canada's Heavy Pressurized Water Reactor the CANDU. Note this conversation was recorded in March of 2024.
Sep 05, 2024•55 min•Season 24Ep. 7
Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, joins me to disentangle the hope from the hype in the EV debate.
Aug 17, 2024•55 min•Season 24Ep. 6
Robbie Stewart and Enrique Velez-Lopez, the founders of nuclear start up Boston Atomics, join me to discuss the true costs of advanced nuclear design engineering.
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 24Ep. 4
Jimmy Fortuna of Enverus takes me on a world tour of oil production by region illuminating the unique geopolitical, technological and political challenges to accessing our most important form of energy.
Aug 03, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 24Ep. 3
Aidan Morrison, Director of Energy Research at the Centre for Independent Studies joins me for an update on the Australian nuclear debate which is shaping up to be a core issue in the approaching federal election.
Jul 27, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 24Ep. 2
Mark Mills is the executive director of the National Centre for Energy Analytics and author of “The Cloud Revolution” How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. Join us as we explore how to power an AI enhanced Cloud network and its implications on the grid and climate politics.
Jul 17, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 24Ep. 1
Professor Alex Wellerstein returns for a part two answering questions about the bomb, near misses, command and control and more.
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 48 min•Season 23Ep. 10
Is overzealous regulation the root cause of the contemporary crisis in deployment of nuclear reactors in the USA? James Krellenstein argues that Nuclear Regulatory Commission critics are trapped in the 1980’s and that the spectre haunting today’s deployments are not primarily regulatory. Due to simplified systems and lower material costs modern NRC approved passive reactors should be cheaper than complex Gen 2 reactors. In addition there are 17GWe worth of combined construction and operating lic...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 23Ep. 9
Science journalist Peter Brannen joins me to discuss the kill mechanisms of Earth’s five mass extinctions. Humanity has developed the god like power’s to mimic all of them. From altering the carbon cycle to eutrophication of oceans and to a far lesser degree our asteroid like thermonuclear weapon arsenal.
Jun 08, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 23Ep. 8
How should we think about modularity in the nuclear space? Jesse Hubesch joins me to disentangle the much hyped concept of modularity from his perspective as a chemical process engineer.
May 23, 2024•50 min•Season 23Ep. 7
Historian of science Professor Alex Wellerstein joins me to talk about the sword haunting the ploughshare of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
May 14, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 23Ep. 6
Marcel Boiteux, a shy economist who escaped occupied France to fight the Nazis before working out the theory of electricity pricing for newly-nationalized Electricite de France, rose to become the greatest builder of nuclear power the world has ever seen. Mark Nelson, founder of Radiant Energy Group, explains what forces shaped his mind, his role in the fateful "War of the Nuclear Systems," how he prepared for the oil crisis that triggered the "all nuclear" Messmer plan, and how he survived an e...
May 09, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 23Ep. 5
While the west struggles to deliver nuclear plants and dreams about novel reactor technologies China is deploying it all: large LWR, SMR and MSR/HTGR. World Nuclear Association China lead Francois Morin joins me to catch us up on recent developments and trends.
May 08, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 23Ep. 4
In the early days of nuclear power uranium was thought to be a critically rare mineral. Nuclear engineers sought to solve this problem with a special type of reactor that produced more fissile material than they consume. Nick Touran joins me to discuss and explore the long term sustainability of nuclear power.
Apr 22, 2024•58 min•Season 23Ep. 3
The Grand Finale is here. We wrestle with the question of whether nuclear can find its groove and the positive learning rates that have eluded it so frequently. Vogtle unit 4 came in 40% cheaper than unit 3. Can those gains continue downwards? Is Vogtle 5 more likely to follow this cost reduction curve compared to a new AP1000 elsewhere?
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 23Ep. 2
Emmet Penney joins me to shoot the breeze and catch up on the whirlwind developments of the last few months.
Apr 09, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 23Ep. 1
Fan favourite, Mark Nelson, joins me for an update on California’s soaring electricity prices and worsening grid dysfunction.
Mar 30, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 22Ep. 10
