There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview wor...
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 interview was recorded on 20 November 2024.
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50:31
The Forgotten Climate Debate
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.
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1:25:15
Defense in Depths
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.
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1:27:20
Microreactors, Macro Problems
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.
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1:22:37
Paper Reactors to Power Reactors
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/
There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview world experts to uncover hope in this time of planetary crisis.
Brasil