Decouple

James Krellenstein and I continue our deep dive analysis of what went wrong at Vogtle.

As Canada embarks on a new nuclear build out of SMRs and large Reactors, Professor Duane Bratt joins me to provide a political scientists perspective on the history and future of the Canadian nuclear sector.

Noah Rettberg walks us through an in depth exploration on the challenges of decarbonizing process heat.

Ed Conway author of “Material World” joins me to explore the material world underpinning the ethereal world of our perceived reality. He explains how sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium are transformed with technology and energy into the building blocks of our built world and how fragile, vulnerable and complex these processes have become.

James Krellenstein returns to dig into what went wrong at Vogtle and why the nuclear “Renaissance” of the early 2000’s ended up a flop.

Extreme weather in Alberta leads to grid alerts and raises concerns about electricity planning. Alberta's wind fleet goes AWOL, prompting a feasibility study on nuclear reactors deployment in the province. The podcast explores the strain on the Alberta grid, resentment towards central Canada, transition to renewable energies, challenges of intermittent wind and solar energy, and the potential for nuclear power in Alberta.

Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO at Microsoft and vice chairman of TerraPower joins me to discuss his experience bridging the world of software and nuclear power.

Sec Ernie Moniz and I chat about best practices for “embarking” and “re-embarking” nations as 24 countries pledge to triple nuclear energy by 2050.

Humanity went from inducing the first fissions of heavy elements in 1938 to a nuclear powered submarine in just 16 years. Why has that tremendous pace of nuclear innovation seemingly slowed down to a crawl? Nuclear historian Nick Touran joins me for an in depth analysis of the historic preconditions of nuclear innovation and its opportunities and limits going into the future.

A discussion on the COP conferences and the contradiction of countries increasing coal-fired capacity. Exploring the challenges of meeting global energy demand and the issue of green colonialism. Discussing the global use of coal and the construction of coal plants. Examining the scale of energy consumption and the challenges of transitioning to renewable sources. Exploring the significance of firemaking and the concern over the replacement of traditional environmentalism. Exploring labor shortages and the complexity of the US electricity system.