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.
The podcast Decouple is created by Dr. Chris Keefer. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
This week, we return to China. David Fishman, senior manager at The Lantau Group, joins me again to dissect the unprecedented scale of China’s electrification, which Fishman says is driven by a mix of state planning, brutal market competition, and strategic energy security concerns. Our discussion ranges from the world's largest hydro projects to a coal industry that refuses to die; the forces driving China's power sector; the balance between state planning and market competition; and how this all fits into the larger economic shift towards innovation-driven, rather than imitiation-driven, growth.
Read extended shownotes on Substack.
Follow David Fishman on X.
This week,Decouple Germany correspondent Noah Rettberg, a physics laboratory technician and precision machinist, talks about the potential to restart German nuclear reactors. Anew analysis from Radiant Energy Group examines Germany's potential to redeploy nuclear power using its existing reactor fleet. Through assessment of recently shuttered reactors, their report suggests Germany could restore up to 13 gigawatts of nuclear power to the European grid within eight years – potentially at much lower costs and faster speeds than new construction. As Germany's electricity imports have risen sharply – from 9 TWh in 2023 to 25 TWh by late 2024 – and its economy faces headwinds, the country's nuclear infrastructure might offer a path forward if the political will appears.
This week, we talk carbon capture. Canadian engineer and entrepreneur Ian MacGregor joins me to explore this misunderstood technology through the lens of someone who's actually built it. MacGregor, the architect behind the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line—the largest carbon capture and storage project in the world—cuts through the hype to discuss the thermodynamic and economic realities that govern this technology. Informed by decades of hands-on experience, he challenges popular narratives while offering a pragmatic vision for how carbon capture might realistically develop.
Read more on Substack.
This week, we go to China. I spoke with David Fishman, senior manager at The Lantau Group, on the motivations and strategy behind China’s world-leading electrification efforts. What seems like a climate-action utopia to Western analysts appears to be a pragmatic response to pollution and energy security concerns. China's vulnerability to maritime oil blockades has spurred aggressive electrification across transport, industry, and urban infrastructure; and its state capitalist model has enabled a pace and scale of investment in nuclear power, electrified transport, and renewable energy that makes Western efforts to achieve an energy transformation look piecemeal.
Watch on YouTube.
Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group, joins us for a Masterclass on the slippery subject of oil. We zoom from ancient plankton to modern empires to see how a mysterious black liquid birthed from prehistoric seas now powers our civilization, touching on the complex chemistry, geology and history of oil.
Two thought leaders in the nuclear energy conversation, James Krellenstein and Ted Nordhaus, join Decouple for a “debate” over the question of reactor size: should advanced, small nuclear technologies lead the way for nuclear energy, or should conventional large reactors? What could have been a heated debate over nuclear energy's future ended up a nuanced discussion about the industry’s challenges—and how to overcome them.
James Krellenstein is the co-founder and CEO of Alva Energy. Ted Nordhaus is the co-founder and executive director of The Breakthrough Institute.
Jeff Waksman, program manager for Project Pele, joins Dr. Chris Keefer to discuss the impetus for the military microreactor project, the logistics and energy challenges at the heart of modern warfare, and the technical considerations of microreactor development. Few voices are more qualified to speak on the state-of-the-art in tiny nuclear reactors. Tune in.
Support Decouple: https://www.decouple.media
Steve Keen, economist and author, joins me to explain how modern economics has catastrophically misunderstood the role of energy in our world and underestimated the risks of climate change through oversimple models. In this in-person conversation, we discuss the evolution of economic thinking since feudalism, the shortcomings of prevailing economic models, modern monetary theory, the role of state capitalism in funding large infrastructure projects, and much else. Tune in!
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Support Decouple: https://www.decouple.media/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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 along with visuals.
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.
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 industry, Jigar sets the record straight on what the LPO can and, importantly, cannot do for the sector. While the LPO offers extensive support in the form of loans and high-quality information, it is up to industry to lead the charge. In his words, “we can’t want this more than industry.”
Read more on Substack: https://www.decouple.media/
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
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.
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.
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Mark P. Mills on X: https://x.com/MarkPMills
Decouple: https://www.decouple.media
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.
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.
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.
Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, joins me to disentangle the hope from the hype in the EV debate.
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.
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.
Historian of science Professor Alex Wellerstein joins me to talk about the sword haunting the ploughshare of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
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 ecoterrorist attack to construct the famous nuclear fleet that now lies underused and underappreciated.
Can France rediscover its greatest engineering hero, who died last year at the age of 101, in time to rescue itself and indeed all of Europe from its energy death spiral?
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.
Alberta, sitting on massive reserves of oil and gas, found itself teetering on the edge of blackout this week as temperatures in the negative 40 degree ranges led to multiple grid alerts. As a new record for peak demand was set at 12,384 MW, Alberta's 4481MW wind fleet went AWOL. This raises major concerns regarding electricity planning with a country wide federal mandate for Net Zero electricity by 2035 having already generated significant political controversy in Alberta which has imposed a moratorium on new wind and solar over affordability and reliability concerns. Its is therefore a timely occurrence that this same week Alberta's Capital Power and Ontario Power Generation announced a feasibility study looking at near-term deployment of a fleet of nuclear reactors in the province . Chris Popoff joins me to explain.
The recent cancellation of two large wind projects in New Jersey are the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent US offshore wind industry. Mark Nelson joins me to analyze whether the nuclear industry is vulnerable to the same cost drivers plaguing this sector.
Dr. Keefer’s speech at Minerals Week in Australia sharing the story of Ontario’s coal phaseout & the decarbonization of its electricity grid.
Systems engineer, James Fleay, joins me to discuss the unique relationship between liquid hydrocarbons and our six continent supply chains. Oil is the enabler of low cost transportation of people and goods. What does an inevitable decline in oil production, whenever it comes, mean for globalization and our future economies. What forms of economical and industrial complexity should be prioritized? All this and more in this thought provoking episode.
Madi Hilly, author of nuclear advocacy’s most viral tweet, joins me to discuss the ultimate bogeyman and best practices when it comes to talking about nuclear waste.
https://twitter.com/madihilly/status/1550148385931513856?s=46&t=N4_61zANEvl1W3Q_ehy1nw
Emmet Penney returns to offer a review of the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” which is based on the work of radical Swedish geographer Andreas Malm. Read About the Movie here: https://compactmag.com/article/a-hollywood-ode-to-eco-terrorism
Decouple host Dr. Keefer faces off against Canada’s most prolific antinuclear activist Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, in a cordial but passionate debate on the question “Do We Need to Scale Up Nuclear Power to Combat Climate Change?”
This public debate took place at the University of Ottawa on April 25th and was hosted by Canada’s former ambassador of Climate Change and former ambassador to Chile Patricia Fuller.
Today we deep dive fracking and shale, the energy source that put Peak Oil concerns on the back burner for a decade and a half. According to recent analysis by Goehring and Rozencwajg Shale field production is showing signs of sliding down the backside of Hubbert’s curve. What are the geopolitical and economic ramifications? Are there more shale booms on the horizon overseas? What are the implications for nuclear which has been sidelined in deregulated markets by cheap abundant gas? Leigh Goehring joins me for a detailed discussion. For a deeper dive check out Goehring and Rozencwajg latest quarterly analysis. http://info.gorozen.com/2022-q4-commentary-peak-oil
The topic of tritium continues to be a focal point for nuclear opponents, who use anti-science claims to stoke fear among a public they know does not, by and large, understand complex topics of radiation biology. Thus, to the victims of anti-nuclear ideology, the "science" behind tritium offers little comfort. Still, we try to do our best this week with radiation expert Dr. Geraldine Thomas.
Dr. Geraldine Thomas is a senior academic and Chair in Molecular Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London. She is an active researcher in fields of tissue banking and molecular pathology of thyroid and breast cancer, and the Director of the Chernobyl Tissue bank.
Note: This episode is a rerun from April 2021.
Original shownotes:
The decision by the Japanese government to begin releasing 1.25 million tonnes of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant site over a 10 year period has caused a major stir not only amongst environmental NGO's but also regional countries with historic emnity to Japan.
Greenpeace alleges that radionuclides released into the sea "may damage DNA of humans and other organisms." China states that "the release is extremely irresponsible and will pose serious harm to the health and sagety of people in neighbouring countries and the international community."
So what are the politics and science behind the controversy?
The Fukushima water has been treated and the almost all radio-isotopes have been removed except for tritium. Just how dangerous is it? Tritium is a weak beta emitter with 70x less energy then the the naturally occuring and ubiquitous intracellular radioisotope Potassium 40 which undergoes 4600 radioactive decays per second in our bodies.
The health impacts of a radioisotope are multifactorial. The type of radiation emitted, the energy of that decay, the physical and biologic halflife of the isotope. The amount of tritium that one would need to drink to match a dose from something like a CT scan is simply impossible to ingest.
In response to the Fukushima accident in an effort to gain the trust of the population Japan has already reset its regulatory limits for radiation in drinking water at 1/100th that of the EU. Are these efforts actually counter productive?
Decouple correspondent, Angelica Oung, joins me for a review of Bent Flyvbjerg’s new book which examines the lessons that can be learned from the failures and successes of mega projects.
https://twitter.com/dr_keefer/status/1627709184123740161?s=46&t=Q7nak44UxDdAvVJ7V61RsQ
Mark Nelson, managing director of the Radiant Energy Group, joins me for a deep dive of the uses and abuses of energy modelling.
Intro and outro music: Malagueña by Ernesto Lecuona performed by Mark Nelson immediately prior to the interview.
Dr. Simon Michaux, Associate Professor at Geometallurgy at Geological Survey of Finland, discusses the minimum requirements for a net zero future, as well as the restraints on our renewables going forward.
Read academic works by Dr. Michaux: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Michaux-2
Just as the political spectrum is divided between left and right, thinking on environmental problem solving is similarly split into two rival camps exemplified by the archetypes of the Wizard and the Prophet. Award winning science writer Charles Mann explores these archetypes as personified by the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug and the intellectual godfather of the environmental movement, William Vogt.
Crudely put wizards are foremost humanists who eschew limits believing that our growing population and appetites can be accommodated by the wise application of decoupling technology. Prophets are foremost environmentalists who believe that carrying capacity is limited and that humans must remain within natural energy flows or risk ecosystem and civilizational collapse.
Understanding the origins of one's opponents ideological beliefs and values goes a long way to depersonalizing a sometimes ugly debate and perhaps finding a small patch of common ground.
Prophets who have contributed some impressive advances in natural resource stewardship such as water conservation must wrestle with an ugly history of Malthusian ideas which at their worst have justified horrific campaigns of coercive population control. Despite the success of technofixes that fed billions and averted famines wizards must temper their scientific rationalism with a sociologic understanding of the dark sides of modernization such as enclosures of the commons.
Noah Rettberg, physics lab technician in training and popular Decouple guest, sheds some light on the protests regarding the expansion of the Garzweiler mine into Lützerath and unearths the deeps roots that Germany and lignite share.
Germany, with limited bituminous coal and no petroleum to speak of, has always been able to lean on its sizable lignite coal reserves. It has been transformed into anything from synthetic fuels to margarine to autobody.
Gerrit Bruhaug, based out of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at Rochester University, joins Decouple to talk about the significance of the recent ignition event at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.
An IAEA panel discussion at COP27 on how nuclear energy intersects with the lives of individuals and a diverse array of nations including Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, the USA and Sweden.
Moderated by: Mark Nelson, Managing Director, Radiant Energy Group Panelists:
Dr. Simon Michaux, Associate Professor at Geometallurgy at Geological Survey of Finland, uncovers the truth about the vast mining requirements behind any proposed transition to a "clean" energy future.
Watch the Decouple Studios episode on Dr. Michaux's work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19-gqgugKOc
Read academic works by Dr. Michaux: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Michaux-2
Seth Grae, CEO of Lightbridge Corporation, reflects on the 2022 UN Climate Chance Conference, or COP27, held this year in Egypt. We discuss perceived attitudes between the global wealthy and underdeveloped nations, how nuclear was nearly left out of the language in the final negotiated statement, and how the UAE can make the most of hosting COP28 next year in Dubai.
Mark Nelson, managing director of the Radiant Energy Group, debates Tobias Holle, an activist with Fridays for Future Germany, at the pavilion of the International Atomic Energy Agency at COP27 in Egypt. The question at hand: is nuclear power a climate friend or foe?
This event was streamlined live on IAEA social media channels on November 15, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdAV0kVJFWk
BF Randall, an environmental lawyer who has made a rapid rise on #energytwitter for his detailed threads on mining and energy, explains why we may be pursuing the wrong strategy to decouple human well being from emissions. Namely, by focusing on decarbonizing electricity, we are ignoring and even increasing the 85% of global primary energy that comes from fossil fuels for non-electricity uses. Randall argues that, more than almost anyone appreciates, crude oil heavy distillates are the lifeblood of modern civilization, and the heart that pumps it is the diesel engine. From mining to trucking to trains to marine transportation, the low RPM, high torque diesel engine is indispensable. The dramatic increase in global mining, ore processing, and transportation associated with stated goals for renewable energy would only cement the diesel engine's role as the machine behind the machine. To Randall, the diesel engine is not something we should get rid of but protect as "the most efficient engine ever created by humans." He argues that the low-hanging fruits of decarbonization, and the only option likely to make inroads into the fossil energy black box that makes up 85% of global energy use, are high-temperature nuclear heat and the synthesis of synfuels using non-crude-oil feedstocks to provide the heavy distillates required to sustain the engines of our civilization.
Read BF Randall's viral Twitter thread on copper.
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James Fleay, an Australian engineer and project manager in the energy sector, joins Dr. Keefer to discuss the "Hydrogen Alliance" proposed between Canada and Germany.
This Hydrogen Alliance is coming under increasing scrutiny due to allegations of a conflict of interest arising out of the Premier of Newfoundland, Andrew Furey's luxury trip to a lodge owned by Canadian billionaire John Risley this summer.
Risley happens to be one of the principal investors in a project called Nujio’qonik, one of three projects competing to be part of the Canada German Hydrogen Alliance alongside EverWind Fuels in Nova Scotia and the Port of Belledune project in New Brunswick.
Beyond a potential political scandal lies a very real energy scandal.
Fleay describes the chemistry, thermodynamics, and economics required to turn electrons generated by wind turbines in Canada into ammonia to be shipped across the Atlantic to be burned in German Power plants, a process which he describes as being "The least efficient way to get electrons on the German grid imaginable." Decouple takes a look at who will foot the bill and who will profit.
The total output of the Canada German Hydrogen Alliance which requires a near doubling of Canada's total national wind fleet, expensive electrolysis equipment, ammonia production through the energy intensive Haber Bosch process, large scale shipping and potential energy hungry reconversion to hydrogen for burning as fuel in German thermal plants is almost equal to the output of a single German nuclear station, ISAR 2, one of the three remaining nuclear plants still under threat of closure in Germany.
With the myth of cheap Canadian exportable hydrogen as a tool to replace Russian natural gas busted we examine Canada's only truly green and ultra low carbon energy export: its nuclear technology and uranium which is already used in near carbon free power plants domestically and around the world offsetting a full 1/3 of Canada's total all sector emissions.
Hang onto your hats. This is an interesting one.
Dr. Chris Keefer teamed up with Dr. Douglas Boreham, Professor and Division Head of Medical Sciences at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, to speak before residents in South Bruce, Ontario, the potential site of Canada's Deep Geological Repository for used nuclear fuel. The event, organized by the local grassroots group Willing to Listen, features presentations from each speaker followed by an open Q&A session. Recorded Sept. 17, 2022.
**DECOUPLE READS**
We are excited to launch Decouple Reads with Brahm Neufeld!! Join us on Patreon for virtual book club meetings on selected books from the Decouple library: https://www.patreon.com/decouple
Listen to Brahm's first appearance and book review on Decouple: https://www.decouplemedia.org/podcast/episode/36d91df3/decouple-reads-fossil-futureclimate-change-as-class-war
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Learn more about Willing to Listen: https://www.willingtolisten.ca/
Learn more about the Deep Geological Repository project from nuclear operator Sheila Whytock, an organizer for Willing to Listen, on the We CANDU It podcast: https://anchor.fm/wecanduit/episodes/Deep-Geologic-Repository--Willing-to-Listen-feat-Sheila-Whytock-eqo293/a-a4n6q4k
Listen to Douglas Boreham's appearances on Decouple:
Noah Rettberg returns for an update on the tragedy of German energy and energy policy. As politicians continue to mislead the public and force a nuclear phaseout amid a full-blown energy crisis, the country has become a lesson in what not to do when it comes to clean energy. We discuss:
Follow Noah on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoahRettberg
Robert Parker, a civil engineer and ex-president of the Australian Nuclear Association, walks us through Australia's misguided energy aspirations, and what it will take to get the country on track for a feasible and affordable low-carbon power grid. By repealing its ban on nuclear, the island continent could get up to speed on nuclear by collaborating with countries that have maintained a thriving sector, like Canada. In addition to proposing an Australia-Canada partnership on nuclear, Parker offers insight on the notion that Australia will somehow become a renewable energy and hydrogen superpower; on what he calls Australia's "RELIC" economy; and on the nuclear technologies and energy mix the country should embrace.
Michael Shellenberger, best-selling author and an early organizer of the pro-nuclear movement, joins Dr. Keefer to discuss the landmark victory of saving Diablo Canyon with the passage of California Senate Bill SB846 on August 31. Shellenberger reflects on the history of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the early days of the fight to keep it open, and what this victory means for the future of nuclear power.
Ontario can't seem to make up its mind about energy. Partway through a historic nuclear-powered coal phaseout, the province adopted the Green Energy Act (GEA), which established costly feed-in-tariffs for renewables in the footsteps of Germany's Energiewende. Now, three years after rising energy costs prompted the GEA's repeal, the planned 2025 closure of the 3.1 GW Pickering Nuclear Generating Station is leaving Ontario with no option to meet coming capacity shortfalls without winding back climate progress by burning much, much more gas.
Chris Benedetti, Managing Partner at Ontario-based Sussex Strategy Group and Head of its Energy and Environment Practice, extracts lessons from the fascinating energy case study that is this Canadian province.
Note: This episode was recorded on June 1, 2022 and contains outdated information pertaining to provincial elections.
Ted Nordhaus, executive director of The Breakthrough Institute, discusses his recent article in Foreign Policy: "Russia's War Is the End of Climate Policy as We Know It." The current energy crisis and Russian invasion are quickly causing us to prioritize energy security over climate targets. Could this, paradoxically, be a good thing for the climate?
Nordhaus argues that the carbon intensity of the global energy system fell faster in the 30 years before the first major U.N. climate conference than after it—a result of rising energy efficiency, the spread of nuclear power, and the changing composition of the global economy. With new pressure to fortify ourselves against dependence on gas and energy imports, he argues that climate and energy policies, especially in the West, may shift from subsidizing demand (for things like solar panels and electric vehicles) to deregulating supply (of things like nuclear power plants and high-voltage transmission lines). This could put clean energy policies on a much firmer economic footing and better align climate objectives with energy security imperatives.
Read the Foreign Policy article here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/05/climate-policy-ukraine-russia-energy-security-emissions-cold-war-fossil-fuels/
Dan Campbell, a licensed nuclear operator, reflects on losing his job at the coal-fired Nanticoke Generating Station during Ontario's coal phaseout and his subsequent move to the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. As we discuss the elusive "just transition," Dan shares a unique inside perspective on the possibilities for transitioning fossil fuel workers to new, high-quality jobs; the importance of considering working people when deciding on energy policy; and how it felt taking pride in his work at Nanticoke while learning of the harms that coal causes through air pollution and carbon emissions.
Hang on to the very end of the episode for an extra treat. In yet another first for Decouple we have the honour of premiering Dan's band latest single called "Town Line." Enjoy and keep an eye out on the charts for the "Charlie Eddie and the Dan" band.
Saloni Shah, a food and agriculture analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, dives into the policy disaster that was Sri Lanka's sudden ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for farming. How did the policy come to be, and how did it go so wrong?
Read Saloni Shah's and Ted Nordhaus' article in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/
Michael Edesess, a mathematician, economist, and former chairman of the board of the Rocky Mountain Institute, discusses his recent article for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "We need to get serious about the renewable energy revolution—by including nuclear power."
We discuss changes in energy spurred in the 1970s, Michael's personal acquaintance with the mastermind of the soft energy path, Amory Lovins, and the shortcomings of the all-renewables vision of our energy future.
Read the article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/we-need-to-get-serious-about-the-renewable-energy-revolution-by-including-nuclear-power/
Bret Kugelmass, host of the Titans of Nuclear podcast and Managing Director of the Energy Impact Center, joins with Dr. Keefer to share their experiences advocating for nuclear energy. They reflect on nuclear messaging, how the nuclear sector can rebrand, communications pitfalls, finding the right audience for nuclear advocacy, and the intersection of nuclear, politics, and public opinion. Dr. Keefer dives into his energy advocacy journey and recent work before the highest levels of Canadian government, which represents one of the best-positioned supply chains in the world to meet the nuclear energy needs of emerging economies.
This episode was cross-published on Bret's podcast, Titans of Nuclear.
Check out Titans of Nuclear: https://www.titansofnuclear.com/
Learn about the Energy Impact Center: https://www.energyimpactcenter.org/
Support Decouple on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/decouple
Edgardo Sepulveda, energy economist and seven-time Decouple guest, returns to delivers a synthesis episode. We draw together our previous analysis of the financial and regulatory conditions that enabled the initial build out of our grid, explore the Amory Lovins lost decades that saw electrification atrophy and examine the tools at our disposal to achieve an electrfication 2.0 to deliver a doubling of our current grid to help us meet net zero goals.
This conversation builds off of Edgardo's recent research piece on the critical role that nuclear energy has played in the decarbonization of the electricity sector and what should be done to make sure this legacy is continued. Over the last six months Edgardo has compiled an extensive electricity and emissions dataset for 30 countries over the last 50 years at https://edecarb.org/. Based on this project, Edgardo was invited by Myrto Tripathi, head of the France-based nuclear advocacy group the Voices of Nuclear, to prepare this think piece, which went out as the March Newsletter in English.
Sepulveda calculates that, over the last 50 years, countries that adopted nuclear power consistently reduced emissions intensity by more than three times as much as those that went without nuclear. Looking forward, the massive “Electrification 2.0” that will require a doubling or tripling of electricity generation by 2050 would provide the financial rationale for the needed massive capacity investments, particularly in nuclear. Lastly, we discuss market reforms that would be needed to correctly value the low-emissions, firm electricity provided by nuclear energy.
Edgardo Sepulveda, a regulatory economist and the creator of edecarb.org, responds to the exclusion of nuclear energy from the recently-released Canada Green Bond Framework, alongside “sin stocks” like firearms, tobacco, and gambling.
We explore the exciting world of bonds, taxonomies, and what the lack of official definitions for "green" or "sustainable" means for this framework. If you are a Canadian citizen, sign the petition to include nuclear energy in the Canada Green Bond Framework: https://www.canfornuclearenergy.org/green-bond-framework
Check out Edgardo's Profiles in Decarbonization: https://edecarb.org/
Kalev Kallemets, CEO of Fermi Energia, joins Dr. Keefer to reflect on energy, geopolitics, and SMRs in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Recorded on February 24, 2022. The current geopolitical situation with Russia and Ukraine is fast-moving, and this interview does not reflect the most recent developments.
As the politics of energy factor heavily in the Russia-Ukraine war, Dr. John Constable, Director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, shines a light on the faltering illusion that the transition towards an energy paradigm of intermittency can progress without serious upheaval.
Mark Nelson breaks the news that the German Ministry of Finance is discussing rolling back the country's nuclear phaseout. Why? How foreseeable was this? And what would it mean for Germany?
Mark Nelson is the Managing Director of Radiant Energy Group. https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/
Mark Nelson provides early insight on the news that Russian forces have captured the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
Mark is the managing director of Radiant Energy Group. He holds degrees in mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, as well as Russian language and literature.
Iida Ruishalme, biologist and science communicator behind the blog Thoughtscapism, digs into the origins and dogmas of organic agriculture. Does the public perception of organic foods as healthier or more environmentally sustainable withstand scientific scrutiny, or is it another example of the naturalistic fallacy? Join us as we peel back the layers of the organic onion.
Read Thoughtscapism: https://thoughtscapism.com/
Janice Kulyk Keefer, literary theorist, writer, award-winning poet, and my mom decodes the Romantic tradition for me. Janice weaves a compelling narrative connecting Germany's founding national myths in the dark primordial forest of Herman the German to William Blake's dark satanic mills and Thoreau's Cabin at Walden pond. Through her storytelling, she helps us understand the importance of the Romantic tradition as an essential foundation of the environmental movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_Kulyk_Keefer
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5aEtsu26DfI
Read Janice Kyluk Keefer's essay on German Romanticism: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ2-iYQDTPtVZYv2N1bxUozsKoweyMLyGRokK7XcwlUTpc3w2tI5gr4pHtKjNnTQ73FvwhPI0B_csGO/pub
Madeleine Redfern is an Inuit businesswoman and former two-term mayor of Iqaluit in the far northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. Redfern describes the harsh energy situation in Canada’s remote, indigenous communities, which face extreme darkness and cold, a reliance on diesel generators, limited ability to fundraise for new projects, and high costs. She assesses the merits of different energy technologies for these communities, making clear the challenge of choosing an energy path in a situation with so many constraints. Madeleine Redfern has been a prominent advisor and consultant on telecommunications, transportation, and energy in Canada, including for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. She has also been a central member and volunteer of several Aboriginal and Inuit organizations addressing issues of housing, education, and health.
Dr. Geraldine Thomas, Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank and leading global expert on the impacts of radiation, joins me to discuss the phenomenon of “radiation vacations” for children believed to have been affected by the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl Children International (CCI) has organized close to 1 million such trips for children from Ukraine and Belarus with the claim that these vacations extend these children's lives by on average 2 years. It also supports a number of orphanages and social services in Belarus. In Ireland CCI is one of the most successful charities in the country's history having fundraised over 100 million euros to date. https://www.chernobyl-international.com/ Dr. Thomas gives an overview of the science behind transgenerational effects of radiation and assesses the scientific and medical reasoning behind claims specific to Chernobyl. Dr. Thomas also explains the very real impact of thyroid cancer upon a specific age group of children exposed to high levels of Iodine 131 during a narrow time interval after the accident and what their medical treatment involves. It is estimated that 16,000 additional thyroid cancers will occur within this age group with a mortality of 1%. We discuss the harm that radiophobia is capable of causing, illustrated in part by a critique of the Academy Award winning 2003 documentary, “Chernobyl Heart” which features Adi Roche the founder of CCI. https://youtu.be/jFwGEsJg2MI
Tracy Primeau is a retired Shift Manager at Bruce Power who is now on the Board of Directors at Ontario Power Generation (OPG). She is a member of the Nipissing First Nation, and was the first woman to make her way to Shift Manager from the shop floor. She discusses her first hand perspective as an energy worker while Ontario transitioned from coal to nuclear, and the life quality benefits it brought to both workers and the province broadly. Primeau shares her experience of what it is like working at a nuclear plant and leading company engagement with surrounding communities, especially as an indigenous woman. We discuss the importance of nuclear energy companies engaging towns as collaborators rather than groups merely to be convinced, especially given the deep-rootedness of the “nuclear waste story” in indigenous communities. Finally, we discuss paths forward for nuclear in indigenous communities, developments underway, and the likelihood of meeting stated goals to get indigenous communities in Canada off of diesel by 2030.
Is the sky falling on the west? I am joined by the green chicken avatar representing the anonymous Substack: Doomberg. Doomberg is home to entertaining and insightful essays on all things energy, industry, finance, politics, and more. We touch on each of these topics in our wide-ranging discussion of the consequences of bad energy and industrial policy, the West's hopefully reversible decline, and how we understand and feel about the future. Subscribe to the Doomberg Substack: https://doomberg.substack.com Follow Doomberg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoombergT
Dr. Anna Veronika Wendland is a scientist at the Herder Institute and a historian of science and technology. She calls in from Germany's Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in its final 24 hours of operation. Germany has forced the political closure of its remaining six nuclear plants, three of which—Grohnde, Brokdorf, and Gunndremingen—are being lost this New Year's Eve, 2021.
Dr. Wendland conducts her research at Grohnde and has dealt heavily with the human factors of nuclear energy and nuclear safety. As we discuss these human factors, she offers exceptional insight into the on-the-ground happenings of the plant as it prepares to close, as well as how broader anti-nuclear policy in Germany will continue to play out even as public opinion shows signs of shifting away from its historically anti-nuclear paradigm.
Follow Dr. Anna Wendland on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/VeroWendland
In this short episode, I am joined by Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute, to discuss Adam McKay's film "Don't Look Up," an overt commentary on climate change. We comment on the importance of climate communication through media and art, though critique the film's use of the common "asteroid metaphor" for climate change. To Trembath, McKay portrayed climate change as a "simple problem" as opposed to the "wicked problem" that it is. Beyond the movie, we take a moment to reflect on how climate change is often thought about and framed. Who is the most affected? The most passionate? And whose fault is it?
Read Alex Trembath's review of "Don't Look Up" in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/18/dont-look-up-review-mckay-comet-climate-change/
Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group, and I dig into his claims about the functional "immortality" of nuclear power plants. We explore the physics of the limitations of reactor life and whether keeping existing nuclear online as long as possible is an intelligent investment. We take a look at the peculiarities of different reactor designs and their impacts on longevity including the unfortunate decision of the UK to go it alone with its gas reactor fleet whose internals cannot be refurbished. Finally we take a detour to explore just what is going on with the French fleet which is running at only 2/3 capacity during the worst energy crunch since the OPEC crisis. Enjoy!
Learn more about Radiant Energy Group: https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/
Dr. Kenneth Cassman joins to explore the state of innovation in agriculture. Where are the knowledge gaps? And what changes must take place if we hope to feed a growing and increasingly wealthy world population? Dr. Cassman stresses the need for open-access, high-quality climate data to accelerate not only farming technologies, but the knowledge base behind their design and implementation.
Dr. Cassman is the Emeritus Robert B. Daugherty Professor of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who among numerous other achievements is a Fellow at several leading research institutes relating to crop science and agronomy.
If you enjoyed the topics covered in this interview, we recommend listening to Dr. Keefer's interview with Dr. Channa Prakash, "How to Feed a Warming Planet": https://anchor.fm/chris15401/episodes/How-to-Feed-a-Warming-Planet-feat--Dr--Channa-Prakash-e18ks0i
Rauli Partanen, an award-winning science communicator and energy analyst from Finland, comes on to discuss his new report, “One Billion Tons" on the wide-ranging consequences of Germany’s nuclear phaseout, and the benefits that would result from keeping the country’s last 6 reactors online. The title references the huge amount of added carbon dioxide emissions that will result from Germany’s nuclear phaseout between now and 2045. Rauli also provides a backgrounder on the German Energiewende and it’s impacts so far, including market aberrations such as negative pricing. Find the report here, available in both English and German: https://www.onebilliontons.org/
Dr. Hannah Bloomfield, a Climate Risk Analytics research associate at the University of Bristol, describes an extreme weather event that affected European energy output significantly this year: a wind drought. We discuss how unequal warming between the poles and the equator is potentially leading to a pattern of decreasing mid latitude wind speeds, a phenomenon known as global stilling and the consequences this will have for electric systems that are becoming increasingly reliant on the weather.
Follow Dr. Bloomfield on Twitter.
In this very special episode, I am joined live in Berlin by the "Godfather of Climate Science," Dr. James Hansen.
Dr. James Hansen is the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is now the Director of the "Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program" at Columbia University's Earth Institute. He was one of the first to bring climate change to the public eye with his famous testimony before the U.S. congress in the 1980s. Since then, he has continued to be at the forefront of the climate debate.
We discuss a wide range of topics:
This interview was recorded live from Berlin. Watch the video!
Watch Dr. James Hansen's TED Talk.
Dr. Vijaya Ramachandran is tracking the lastest in eco-colonialism. Numerous countries and investment banks have blocked the financing of fossil fuels and even hydroelectric projects in Africa, the continent most afflicted by serious energy poverty and the related problem of vulnerability to climate change. From an environmental perspective, it is counter-intuitive that an increased use of fossil fuels should be allowed anywhere. But with Africa accounting for just 1% of global carbon emissions, Dr. Ramachandran argues that policies forcing Africa to develop only with weather-based energy systems does more harm than good.
Dr. Vijaya Ramachandran is the Director for Energy and Development at The Breakthrough Institute.
Read Dr. Ramachandran's article in Foreign Policy.
In this episode, Dr. Keefer and economist Edgardo Sepulveda cover a lot of ground:
• Edgardo’s new website that includes the electricity profiles of 24 OECD countries and whether, using which tech and at what price they have lowered emissions over the last 60 years is at (https://edecarb.org/)
• Edgardo noted the increasing recognition by many expert economists that "restructured" energy-only generation markets probably cannot facilitate the massive, long-term investment necessary for electrification, especially with the entry of (subsidized) renewables, is summarized here: (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1389298276827021319.html)
• Chris and Edgardo discussed the most recent global electricity investment data from the IEA, including that for 2020’s global $800 billion investment (including $300 billion of transmission and distribution), renewables made up 45% and nuclear only 5%. Nevertheless, the global total is less than half estimated ($2.3 trillion) amount for net zero by 2050 (https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2021)
• Nevertheless, Edgardo’s preliminary statistical analysis suggests that renewables entry is associated with electricity price increases. One example is Germany’s residential renewables surcharge, which totaled 25.6 billion in 2018 (https://www.iea.org/reports/germany-2020), which households appear to support, while in Ontario voters revolted, booting out the political party that introduced the GEA, with the incoming Government revoked the legislation and started subsidizing electricity prices, including $3.1 billion/year just for renewables https://www.ontario.ca/page/expenditure-estimates-ministry-energy-northern-development-and-mines-2021-22#section-6
• Speaking of investment, Edgardo and Chris noted that Bruce had just announce the over-subscription of what is billed as the world’s first “Green” nuclear bond for CAD$500 million. The “Second Party Opinion” (SPO) was provided by Cicero, which out of their three shades of green, gave it a “medium green” rather than a “dark green” set aside for wind and solar and the like, because of residual risks on proliferation, waste and radiation accidents: https://www.brucepower.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Second-Opinion-Bruce-Power-16July2021final.pdf
• Edgardo noted that in his most recent blog looking at the cost-benefit of refurbishing Pickering Nuclear Generation Station (PNGS) versus going forward with the IESO replacement scenario (https://www.ieso.ca/en/Learn/Ontario-Supply-Mix/Natural-Gas-Phase-Out-Study), the refurbishment scenario is a better financial and cost abatement cost option (https://edecarb.org/analysis/ontario-ix)
The Dark Lord takes a break from singing 80s parodies outside the gates of COP26 to talk to us about his love for geoengineering. For an argument against Marine Cloud Brightening, here's a briefing from Geoengineering Monitor: www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2021/04/marine_cloud_brightening/
Watch the video on Decouple's YouTube channel.
Mining underpins nearly everything in our modern lives. Essentially, if we didn't grow it, we mined it. Dr. Richard Herrington, an academic geologist and Head of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, digs deep on the topic of mining. Yet in terms of public visibility, mining is perhaps even more hidden from view than agriculture in rich nations. Dr. Herrington offers a brief history of materials use, from a time when we used only a few minerals to the present, where we regularly use many dozens of different elements in a single product due to their varied and unique properties. We discuss the environmental and human impacts of mining as well as important processing stages, which often have hard-to-avoid impacts, such as the inherent formation of carbon dioxide in concrete making and iron smelting. Among Dr. Herrington's research interests are more environmentally-benign industrial processes, such as using lower temperatures or microbes. We move onto geological topics relevant to the energy transition, touching briefly on Deep Geological Repository for used nuclear fuel before discussing Cobalt, Lithium, and the utter certainty that renewable technologies will lead to increases in mining and mineral requirements. Other topics include why much of the mining and processing for rare earth metals and electric motors takes place in China and, finally, prospects for deep sea mining.
Special Decouple Studios mini-doc from inside the walls of COP26. Decouple's Jesse Freeston follows two young nuclear energy advocates, Shirly Rodriguez and Princess Mbthobeni, as they roam the conference searching for evidence of a meaningful plan to reduce emissions AND raise living standards in Africa and beyond. Shirly Rodriguez is a nuclear engineer, and Princess Mbthoneni is the Nuclear Stakeholder Management Advisor for South Africa's Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, as well as the founder of Africa4Nuclear. Watch the original video version here https://youtu.be/WjbvxwSy3O8
What has the Energiewende achieved, what hasn't it? An interview with the spokesperson for the German delegation to COP26, Stephan Gabriel Haufe. We discuss the expedited nuclear phaseout, ongoing reliance on coal until 2038, advances in solar + wind energy and the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline.
In this episode, I am joined by returning guest Michael Shellenberger. We briefly discuss his new book San Fransicko, which, like his best-seller Apocalypse Never, takes a heterodox stance on an issue that progressives feel they champion -- in this case, the drug and homelessness epidemic. We then transition to his past (and future) work in nuclear advocacy.
Shellenberger has paid a toll for challenging orthodoxies within the environmental and nuclear communities, including the loss of many donors to his organization Environmental Progress. At the same time, he has managed to reach and engage broad audiences in a way that most within the environment and energy spheres only dream of.
We dive into the internal politics of nuclear advocacy, even offering a taxonomy of the nuclear advocacy ecosystem. In this taxonomy, Shellenberger self-identifies as a mix of Libertarian and Climate-nuclear, though he is admittedly “lukewarm” on climate.
Dr. Keefer and Shellenberger both worry that the nuclear establishment will “fuck up” its opportunity for another nuclear renaissance. Its attempts to placate the renewable lobby has, among other things, distracted from the value of existing nuclear. Shellenberger would prefer “boring nuclear,” proven designs done over and over, funded with patient capital, "pension fund stuff.”
There are, however, reasons to be hopeful. Shellenberger calls a recent video posted to President Macron's Twitter, which situates nuclear in the context of technological sophistication, hope, and achievement, a “watershed moment in the pro-nuclear movement.” In major news media, pieces have come out about the pronuclear movements in Belgium, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. It is a moment we need to seize.
Lastly, we touch on Shellenberger’s view of the connection between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Moreso than other nuclear advocates, he sees them as connected. This is in fact a major topic in Shellenberger’s next book.
Listen to Michael Shellenberger on Joe Rogan: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NxzDE5TmviUV8te2eZjMP?si=pka9Kr0bTc2K1gEQMhYc1g
Buy San Fransicko and Apocalypse Never.
I am joined by Yuriy Humber, founder of Japan NRG, to discuss Japan’s complex relationship with nuclear technology and its energy issues past and present. The first and only wartime victim of atomic weapons, it went on to embrace nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, becoming a world leader in the manufacture of nuclear technology and relying on it for 30% of its electricity before turning against nuclear after the Fukushima accident in 2011. Public opinions against nuclear energy ran as high as 80% at one point.
A decade on and with new commitments to reducing emissions, public opposition is turning, and the government wants to revive nuclear power to improve Japan’s energy security in the context of the country’s high dependency on fuel imports and ongoing energy shocks around the world. Japan has started to invest in nuclear power technologies again, with some private money going into Small Modular Reactors (SMR) in the U.S. and state funding trickling into Japan’s own High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) program. Although local municipalities have the final say on restarting nuclear power plants, Humber says that the pro-nuclear message has been re-gaining popularity with many arguing that Japan cannot meet its “green growth” strategy without it.
We discuss how Japan went from being the victim of nuclear weapons to a major player in nuclear energy, tying that in with a broader history of energy of Japan, characterized by a series of rapid energy transitions. The transition from coal to nuclear could serve as an example to other countries, though it was a process that faced many challenges of its own and relied on making some promises the government ultimately couldn’t keep. As someone who lived near both the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents at the time when they occured, Humber has a first hand perspective on the cultural and political changes around nuclear in 2011. We discuss these aspects as well as technical problems facing Japanese energy supply following the closure of its many nuclear plants.
Finally, we discuss the alternatives for Japanese decarbonization. The challenge of providing constant power to a megapolis such as the Tokyo metro area is immense. Already Japan has the most solar panels per square meter of any country on Earth. And it has ambitious plans for off-shore wind and eventually a hydrogen economy. Carbon capture has been discussed, yet only one geological carbon storage test facility exists in all of Japan. The obstacles to more ambitious renewables plans too are becoming clear, not only from land use, materials intensity, and issues of intermittency, but NIMBYism. About 1/10 of all municipalities in Japan have ordinances to limit wind and solar deployment or ban it completely. Offshore wind forecasts of 10 GW by 2030 and 45 GW by 2040-2045 have slowed to perhaps 2-3 GW by 2030. Even if Japan is able to rely on nuclear for 20-22% of its electricity needs, decarbonization will be a long and bumpy road, with a likely dependence on LNG and other fossil fuel imports for long into the future.
Yuriy Humber is the founder of the Japan NRG platform, which provides regular information and analysis about the Japanese energy and power industry, markets, and policy. He is also a columnist on energy issues for the “Nikkei Asia” and co-author of an economic research report on Japan by the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
I am joined by returning guest and co-founder of The Breakthrough Institute, Ted Nordhaus, to discuss degrowth as a proposed solution to climate change and other environmental issues.
Nordhaus has written forcefully against the idea of degrowth, which posits that growth in human populations and consumption levels will inevitably bring us to the brink of what this planet can sustain. The only way to avert catastrophe is to therefore reduce human populations and minimize consumption.
Nordhaus’s objections are epistemological as well as pragmatic. While degrowth risks stalling innovation and adaptation in the face of climate change, it is unclear that the proclaimed limits to human consumption (at the root of degrowth thought) are actually knowable or would even be met in the normal course of human development. Nordhaus points out the difficulty of defining the line between necessity and luxury, and argues that there is no actual science or evidence behind claims that we are approaching or have passed “planetary boundaries.”
Nordhaus emphasizes that he cares about the environment and other species, but that there are “non-apocalyptic reasons to protect nature.” As for what society should do to address the climate crisis and other environmental issues, Nordhaus offers a decision-making framework that acknowledges the vast uncertainties of any future scenario: Do more of the stuff that brings us in a direction we want to go, and less of the stuff that doesn’t.
To Nordhaus, foretelling disaster based on what he says are unscientific limits to growth is “an authoritarian claim” that at best leads to regressive policies and at worst creates self-fulfilling prophecies.
We go on to discuss the common use of WW2 as a metaphor for the scale of climate action needed, and contrast it with a Cold War metaphor that yields more technological optimism. Finally, we touch upon a concept near and dear to this podcast: decoupling.
Read Ted Nordhaus's commentary on Vaclav Smil here: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/must-growth-doom-the-planet
I am joined again by Mark Nelson to speak on the energy shocks tearing through Europe and Asia. What are its causes, and what will its consequences be?
The crisis comes on the heels of what academics and policymakers thought was an energy transition away from fossil fuels. But as countries pay record prices to scrap together enough coal, gas, and oil to avoid shortfalls, we are seeing just how unprepared they were for the fossil-free world they have been trying to create. The procurement of low-carbon energy sources was dominated by short-term thinking, favoring solar and wind over nuclear power, and pre-emptively drawing the line in the sand for fossil fuel investment.
Mark reflects on European energy decisions over the past decades, the constant shaving down of reserve energy supplies for the sake of avoiding “wastefulness”, and how during the energy crises of the 1970s, some countries drew winning hands and others drew losing hands in their responses. Namely, those who drew winning hands built nuclear, and a lot of it.
Mark worries that “it’s not clear that Europe knows how to expand energy production now, only reduce it.” Will this energy shock be a tipping point? Will it have sobering effects on the debate over the EU Green Taxonomy and the decision of whether to include nuclear power?
As in the children’s story of the industrious ant and the worry-free grasshopper, will this winter reveal the stark differences between those who prepared and those who didn’t—those who shored up their own low-carbon energy supply with nuclear, and those who optimistically trotted down the path of solar, wind, interconnections, nuclear phase-outs, and gas imports?
The EU Green Taxonomy has been a source of acrimony in the EU since it launched. It was meant as a tool to guide investment towards a "low carbon, resilient and resource-efficient economy" by classiflying technologies into three tiers: "Sustainable," "Transitory," or "Brown."
The initial categorization committee did not include scientists or engineers but rather limited itself to green finance and environmental NGO's who constrained the sustainable definition to wind, solar and tidal, exluding nuclear and even hydro.
Over time, more and more interest groups have entered the fray, exposing serious dissension within the EU member states, who are bitterly divided into blocs based on their opinions about the role of Nuclear Energy and Natural Gas.
In addition to EU members, green NGOs, oil and gas, the renewable industry and nuclear advocates have stepped into the fray. As a result the sustainable category has grown to include bio-energy, geothermal, and hydro alongside wind and solar.
Nuclear went under the closest scrutiny of any power generation technology, with a Joint Research Council report finding that nuclear was no more harmful to human health or the environment than other electricity production technologies already included in the sustainable category of the Green Taxonomy.
As it stands, Nuclear and Natural gas have been put in a special category for further consideration, but nuclear seems to be out of the running as a "sustainable" technology. The fate of its final status will have dramatic impacts on the ability for nuclear to bring back energy sovereignty and stability to the EU grid, which is currently in crisis due to volatile and extremely high gas prices.
Myrto Tripathi of Voices of Nuclear joins me to lay out the cast of characters and the soap opera-like drama of the EU Green Taxonomy process so far. Join her at Stand up for Nuclear Paris, which will be occurring Oct 9th from 1100-1700 local time. For more info go to https://www.voicesofnuclear.org/stand-up-for-nuclear-2021/
We are often told that we need a World War 2 level mobilization to address the looming threats of climate change. What if there is a better historical precendent for climate action based on science, peace and cooperation rather than total war, competition and destruction?
We often speak of France as a shining example of a nuclear buildout done right. In the last quarter of the 20th century, under the Messmer Plan, France completed 43 Light Water Reactors in 15 years out of a total fleet of 56 — a rate that is unfathomable today.
As a result France has one of the most reliably low-carbon grids in the world with emissions free nuclear power continuing to supply upwards of 70% of France’s electricity. In addition France has electrified 55% of its rail network and a substantial amount of its heating with this abundant low carbon energy.
The Messmer plan was not however simply a political decision delivered by the stroke of a pen.
I am joined by Francois Perchet, a retired nuclear engineer at France’s state utility, EDF, with nearly 40 years of varied experience in the nuclear sector, to dive into the complexities and preconditions of the Messmer Plan.
We discuss the history of France’s nuclear research, its post-war industrial and human resources, its political system, France's lack of fossil fuel resources, and the impact of the 1974 oil crisis to understand how such a buildout of low-carbon nuclear power might become replicable one again.
In this episode, I am joined by Angelica Oung, an energy reporter from Taiwan, to discuss Taiwan's plan to power the island with up to 50% natural gas, 30% goal, 20% renewables, and 0% nuclear. This would mean shutting down its three operable nuclear plants, and flushing the money spent on a fourth fully constructed but never used reactor down the drain.
The plan appears to be a whole-hearted embrace of what Meredith Angwin calls the "fatal trifecta" of energy: over-reliance on renewables, just-in-time natural gas, and energy imports. Taiwan produces no fossil fuels of its own, so must import 100% of its fossil fuel needs. And without any real goals of decarbonization, imported LNG is, as Oung says, "a bridge fuel to nowhere."
Oung also reflects on her experience in the offshore wind industry; her shift from opposing to supporting nuclear; her realization that intermittency poses a special problem for Taiwan's isolated electric grid; the politicization of nuclear power from a journalistic perspective; and the past energy decision of Taiwanese governments.
Germany has once again embarked on a war on two fronts this time attempting to phase out its two main sources of reliable baseload power, Nuclear and Coal. Nevermind the fact that during a climate emergency nuclear, despite being almost zero carbon, is being phased out at breakneck speed while coal will languish on the grid for another 15 years. Germany is not alone. In many countries in the EU baseload electricity generation is on the chopping block.
European energy systems are largely following the illogic of what Meredith Angwin calls the "fatal trifecta:" Over reliance on weather dependent renewables, just in time natural gas and imports. The weather is getting no more reliable, EU gas prices are skyrocketting and electricty imports will not be dependable given the amount of generation coming off line over the next decade. This phenomenon will lead to blackouts within the next couple of years according to my guest Kalev Kallemets.
Kalev is the CEO of Fermi Energia, a company of nuclear scientists, energy experts and entrepreneurs looking to bring SMRs to Estonia and other countries in the EU as a vital tool for meeting its climate, economic development and energy independence goals. Kalev argues that ever increasing EU carbon pricing and volatile natural gas prices make an excellent business case for nuclear energy.
Kalev believes that after the difficulties encountered with building 21st century large scale nuclear on budget and on time SMRs using tried and tested light water technology offer the most compelling options going forward. He argues that as has happened with Tesla in the electric vehicle market the private sector can pick a winner in order to deliver the economies of multiples required to make SMRs economic.
The IPCC has released its first major update in 8 years, the sixth assessment report (AR6). Zeke Hausfather, who contributed to the IPCC report and is a climate and energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, joins us to help us make sense of it all.
AR6 provides greater resolution and precision in terms of our understanding of climate sensitivity and the resulting temperature ranges we can expect moving into the future. It also gives us a more confident estimate of climate impacts like sea-level rise and the effect of climate change on extreme weather events.
Zeke’s contribution to AR6 demonstrates that most of our historic climate models are performing well by accurately predicting the trends of the last two decades. We explore the claims of climate change lukewarmists and skeptics, such as Steve Koonin, whose recent book “Unsettled” has been making waves. We also explore the implications of ecomodernist vs. degrowth responses to climate change.
Medical isotopes make modern medicine possible. We depend on a steady supply to sterilize medical equipment, as radiation sources for oncology treatments and for diagnostic imaging. Canada is a world leader in the production of medical isotopes and punches far above its weight.
Canada's national research reactor, which closed in 2016, provided a number of isotopes including Molybdenum 99 which treated 76,000 patients a day in over 80 countries.
Now CANDU power reactors have been put to the job and crank out enough Cobalt 60 to sterlize 25 billion pieces of medical equipment and 40% of the world's single use surgical instruments.
I am joined by James Scongack, chair of the nuclear isotope council and an executive at Bruce Power, Canada's largest power plant, to deep dive this topic.
In the West, many nuclear advocates have pinned their hopes for a nuclear renaissance on Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. SMRs range from a potentially faster way for nuclear nations to build more plants; to a way for countries to start their nuclear power programs; to special application power sources that serve specific country needs, such as those under development in Russia and China. Yet-to-be-built SMR designs make a lot of bold promises. A question looming over the nuclear industry is: will they fulfill those promises?
In this episode, I am joined by Tony Roulstone, a lecturer in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge with 10 years of experience as a nuclear engineer at Rolls Royce, which is currently developing its own SMR. We discuss the “secret sauce” of past successful nuclear buildouts; the necessity of state funding; failures of economic policy for long-term infrastructure; the true meaning of modular construction; the trade-off between small modular construction and economies of scale; the minimum order sizes for companies like Rolls Royce to actually begin manufacturing their SMRs (10 GW); the different types of SMRs; and the current status of SMR development around the world. The result is a detailed and sober conversation on the benefits, drawbacks, and challenges of SMRs.
If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to help new listeners find the show!
We live in a radioactive world. Every minute, 7,000 potentially cell-damaging radioactive releases occur in our bodies. How are we still alive? And what are the real risks associated with radiation?
In this episode, Dr. Keefer is joined by Dr. Douglas Boreham, a world expert in the effects of low doses of ionizing radiation, to tackle the biological effects of radiation.
They discuss various types of radiation; the linear no-threshold hypothesis; fears of airborne "hot particles" of uranium; our bodies' sophisticated cellular repair mechanisms; the surprising mechanics behind cell damage from radiation; the elusive idea of hormesis; and the "choreography of fear" that comes from an abundance of caution at nuclear plants.
Dr. Douglas Boreham is a Professor and the Division Head of Medical Sciences at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, as well as a Professor in the Department of Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Sciences at McMaster University. He has 35 years of experience researching the biological effects of environmental and medical exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation.
Intermittent weather-dependent sources of electricity need backup storage to compensate for gaps in production. Elon Musk has promised that Solar + Powerall batteries ensure that your home will never lose power. In this episode, returning guest Mark P. Mills breaks down the concept of energy storage, the physical requirements and limitations of our current storage technologies, and what to expect in the future.
Batteries will play an important role in the future of the grid and will continue to improve. However, the laws of physics and chemistry dampen some of the magical thinking that surrounds batteries, putting limits on their efficiency and energy density as well as demanding dramatic increases in mining if lithium-ion batteries are chosen for grid-scale storage.
In a purely wind/solar grid, storage must be able to bridge days-long periods without sun or wind, which occur several times per decade in North America. Currently, all the grid-scale lithium battery storage in the U.S. could keep the country powered for just 20 seconds.
This contributes to the economic reality that battery storage is unlikely ever to be cost-competitive with the storage of fossil fuels. While wealthy nations may be able to afford to go further down the path of a "green energy" transition, these costs will be prohibitive for poor countries. The fragilization of the grid and the crises of reliability that are beginning to impact states with a high penetration of wind and solar, like California, are beginning to create some of the characteristics of a third-world grid, such as a skyrocketing demand for gasoline backup generators (learn more about Nigeria's backup generator situation: https://www.energyforgrowth.org/memo/the-love-hate-relationship-with-self-generation). This is an impending disaster for a state pursuing an "electrify everything" agenda.
An outcome of the high costs and impracticality of using batteries to back up intermittent generation is that grids with high renewable penetration have built parallel generation portfolios: one low-carbon, and the other, in the absence of abundant hydro or nuclear, dominated by fossil fuels.
The renewables portfolio spares some fossil fuels, but it doesn't displace the need for maintaining fossil generators to run when it's not windy or sunny. This is why Germany, despite spending 500 billion euros on renewables, has kept 70% of its coal-dominated fossil fleet and is continuing to build natural gas infrastructure such as the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
Dr. Keefer and Mills also reflect on the timescales of innovation and the (un)likelihood of achieving ambitious 2030 decarbonization goals; the concept of "energy Lysenkoism"; the geopolitics of China's energy policy; and Mills' forthcoming book, The Cloud Revolution.
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he co-directs an Institute on Manufacturing Science and Innovation.
Apologies for connectivity issues throughout the interview that garbled some of the audio.
Vogtle was supposed to be the beginning of a nuclear renaissance. The two AP1000's at this site were the first new reactors to be built in the USA in the 21st century. There was optimism that a novel modular design that economized space and materials would be on budget and on time. Vogtle, however, has become the poster child of the United States' inability to build affordable nuclear reactors.
The timeline has almost doubled and the cost overrun tripled. The project bankrupted the reactor vendor Westinghouse and almost bankrupted its parent company Toshiba. Decouple veteran Mark Nelson returns to discuss what we can learn from the challenges of this megaproject.
Mark argues that Westinghouse, which had become divorced by a generation from nuclear construction, created a design that looked good on paper but presented major construction challenges. Rather than learning from contemporary successful reactor builders like the South Koreans, the company believed it knew best.
The design features of the AP1000 which boasted 1/5th the amount of concrete and steel of a typical reactor and modular construction were supposed to enable parallel construction and speed up the build. In reality, they resulted in unprecedented challenges such as working in confined spaces and defective modules which led to interruptions in the critical paths of the construction schedule.
Furthermore, the engineering, procurement and construction firms engaged to build Vogtle had almost no workers or management with lived experience of building reactors let alone a first-of-a-kind novel design like the AP1000. Communication between the Chinese who were years ahead with their four AP1000 builds broke down and lessons were not shared with their American counterparts.
The history of successful nuclear buildouts in countries like France, Japan and South Korea shows that lived construction experience and consistent designs built over and over are what bring down nuclear costs and timelines. In essence the tacit knowledge of a skilled management and workforce trumps a fancy new design especially for an atrophied nuclear sector.
Vogtle is a cautionary tale for the western nuclear industry which has recently pinned it hopes almost exclusively on the role of advanced nuclear and novel SMR designs. Mark argues what is needed is humility, consulting with and employing the lessons of successful contemporary reactor builders, building simple reactors we are familiar with and focusing on optimizing construction ease over novel designs at least for now.
Nuclear energy is only possible thanks to a highly-skilled, largely unionized workforce. In popular culture, nuclear workers have been portrayed as incompetent (e.g. the Simpson) or as evil incarnate by anti-nuclear activists like Dr. Helen Caldicott. In Canada, nuclear generation is publicly owned and run by a highly unionized workforce. It provides cheap, clean, and reliable energy to the commons AKA our grid. Due to the energy density of fission, each nuclear worker has an outsized role in preventing the burning of fossil fuels and producing large amounts of air pollution-free and low emissions electricity. I am joined by Bob Walker, the national director of the Canadian Nuclear Worker's Council, to demystify what nuclear workers do, how nuclear energy is a uniquely potent job creator, and why political parties and many unions have not engaged or even turned their backs on nuclear workers and their unions.
This interview was originally recorded for the January 3, 2021 episode of We CANDU It.
Seth Klein, a writer and public policy researcher, joins Dr. Keefer to discuss his book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.
Klein draws on the history of Canada during World War II, when the country massively industrialized to help Britain with the war effort in what he describes as a "true society-wide mobilization." He uses this history to argue for a similar society-wide, wartime-like mobilization to fight climate change.
Klein makes a bold argument: We have tried and fail for 30 years to "incentivize our way to victory," and we will lose the climate battle if we think strategic subsidies, incentives, and taxes alone will lead to decarbonization. Rather, we need the state to take charge and institute rapid, mandatory measures.
During crises, Klein argues, populations actually respond positively to mandatory measures. For example, in World War II the backlash feared from rationing and other mandatory measures rarely manifested. We have seen a similar phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some dissent, there has been wide support for social distancing and mask requirements. On climate change, Klein argues that people "in the main" are ahead of the political curve and demanding strong climate action.
In this episode, Dr. Keefer and Seth Klein discuss the nuances of this argument, including the important question of the technological choices made during a hypothetical wartime-like mobilization, and how we can avoid making progress in the wrong direction.
Seth Klein recently launched the Climate Emergency Unit following over two decades of experience at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and in various other policy roles focused on poverty reduction, social, and environmental justice.
Learn more about the Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/
Gaopalelwe Santswere, a nuclear physicist and regulatory expert, joins Dr. Keefer to discuss the electricity sector in South Africa whose aging coal fleet is in need of replacement. Despite operating the only two nuclear power reactors on the continent at Koeberg, and plans in the early 2000’s for nearly 10,000MW of nuclear, the government is pursuing an energy policy that prioritizes wind and solar.
Gaopalelwe tracks the influence of foreign powers in the direction of South African energy policy. Countries such as Germany, as well as regional and international development banks, have taken an active role in promoting wind and solar and creating barriers to nuclear energy in Africa. So far, the wind and solar build-out has had negative consequences for South Africa, whose public utility Eskom is able to charge electric users only 40% of what it currently costs to produce the power using renewables due to generous subsidies reaped by wind and solar developers.
With industry already leaving South Africa, Gaopalelwe argues that the embrace of intermittent renewables is leading to deindustrialization at a time of record unemployment and represents a regressive energy policy for South Africans and the neighbouring countries that depend on its electricity exports. In Europe and North America, the energy debate is detached from the energy poverty experienced by much of the world. Although South Africa's energy supply is more secure than in much of Africa, Gaopalelwe brings an invaluable perspective and context to a debate dominated by voices from the global north.
Gaopalelwe holds a Master's degree in Applied Radiation Science from North-West University Mafikeng Campus, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. He is the president of African Young Generation in Nuclear (AYGN), and a national chairperson of South African Radiation Protection Association, SARPA.
Returning guest Zion Lights, a powerhouse pro nuclear advocate whose most recent initiative has been to launch the group Emergency Reactor, joins me this episode with reflections on her activism in the pandemic; her observations speaking with more receptive, younger generations about nuclear power; navigating political media; "lifestyle politics" versus data-driven activism; and confronting backward environmentalist notions such as overpopulation and the idea that we cannot make progress on climate goals without total political system change.
Check out Emergency Reactor at: https://www.emergencyreactor.org/
At its birth, nuclear energy entered a highly competitive market for electricity generation. Oil was so cheap that it was stealing market share for electricity generation from coal and driving prices to all-time lows. Despite being a brand new technology 1960s nuclear plants were hitting prices of 3 cents/kWh in today's dollars. Gaddafi and OPEC then contributed to the price of oil skyrocketing. All of a sudden, many wanted to build a nuclear plant and early adopters were reaping huge profits. Nuclear energy featured prominently in the 1964 US democratic party platform. Democrats in the USA even threatened private utilities that if they would not build more nuclear reactors the government would start public utilities that would. So what happened? The Rockefeller Foundation was plagued by guilt over its role in supporting the science that led to the atomic bomb. In fact Ernest Lawrence the inventor of the cyclotron wrote to them to tell them that “had it not been for the Rockefeller Foundation there would be no bomb.” In an attempt to atone for its pivotal role the Foundation became invested in promoting the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation-induced harms as a tool to fight atmospheric weapons testing and try to force the atomic weapons genie back into the bottle. LNT was accepted by the nuclear establishment in part because of hubris. The thinking was that it didn't really matter what radiation model was in place and how conservative it was since a core meltdown and radioactive release were thought to be impossible. LNT laid the groundwork for a regulatory paradigm that has plagued the nuclear industry since, “ As low as reasonably achievable. (ALARA) What “reasonably achievable” meant was really “what can you afford?” Because early on nuclear was very profitable in the context of the oil crisis and escalating fossil fuel costs there was a lot of room to maneuver in terms of adding on more and more costly features to reduce radioactive emissions that had no impact on health. The regulatory ratchet only tightens one way, so when the coal industry got its costs under control the inflated costs imposed by ALARA on nuclear prevented it from becoming cost-competitive again. ALARA means that nuclear can never be cheaper than its rivals because it is only reasonable that it spends any difference on measures to reduce any radioactive emissions to near zero. As Jack Devanney the principal engineer and architect of THORCON and author of “Why nuclear energy has been a flop” explains, the boom of nuclear power in the USA in particular was short-lived. No new nuclear plant was ordered in the 20th century after 1974, 5 years before the Three Mile Island accident. Interestingly the safety performance of the pre-ALARA early fleet has been exemplary and TMI was the most recent design. Jack Devanney argues that accidents will happen but emphasizes that their health consequences will be very minor as dose rates that the public experiences that are even 10-20x average background rates are not a health hazard in any meaningful sense.
The Taishan nuclear plant in the Guangdong province of China houses two French-built EPR reactors, the first of their kind in the country. For the past couple of weeks, equipment has registered slightly elevated radiation readings inside and directly outside the plant. The cause so far appears to be leaks from one or more fuel rods. Mark Nelson joins me in this brief episode to reflect on this breaking story; its coverage in the media; the phenomenon of fuel rod leaks; issues with first-of-a-kind reactors; the knowns, unknowns, and clues of this particular incident; and the issues of policy on background radiation limits. Despite media coverage claiming the leak is a disaster in the making, the minor fuel-rod leak is unlikely to cause any direct harm to people or the environment. At the current leak rate, if left unattended for two years the elevated radiation at the detection point near the plant would hardly amount to a quarter of someone's yearly background radiation dose here in Ontario.
In this episode, Mark lays out possible paths along which this story could develop. We still do not know exactly how extensive the fuel rod leaks at the reactor are—whether it is a one-off or a systematic issue with the EPR design. However, Mark argues that the lack of a reactor shutdown to prevent expensive potential damage is a clue that the leak is just that, and not a cover for more concerning reactor damage. In Mark's words, the incident constitutes "bad industrial hygiene," but certainly not a "nuclear accident." Still, the leak could lead to political pressure on China, perhaps to implement a "zero leaker" policy similar to the United States.
Mark's Twitter thread on Taishan can be read here: https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1404476721076781060?s=20
A special crosspost from the WeCANDUIt podcast. Jay Harris, an indigenous energy consultant and proponent of small modular reactor (SMR) for remote locations talks about the energy, nutrition and water challenges facing remote northern communities.
We explore the fascinating history of SMRs in remote environments which goes back to the 1950's and we look at the possibilities and challenges of SMRs in the far north.
Jay is a member of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan and has worked as an aircraft maintainer in the Air Reserves and in the RCMP in the far north. He was the first aboriginal person to attend the World Nuclear University program in Oxfordshire UK.
Nuclear North of 60 Slideset https://www.slideshare.net/harrisja/north-of-60-2013-cns-toronto
Edgardo Sepulveda, a telecoms regulatory economist, returns to the Decouple podcast to discuss energy equity and how it relates to discussions of energy poverty and energy democracy with a deep dive of the June 2 Public Power Resolution tabled by Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Electricity is considered a “necessity good” in economics. For a variety of reasons in the industrialized world people will use about the same amount regardless of income. Given, however, that income is not evenly distributed this means that lower-income households will spend between 5% to 10% of their income on electricity, compared to just 1% by high-income households. This results in energy poverty. Edgardo describes the types of programs established to mitigate its depth and incidence. There is broad consensus that such programs have not been sufficient, and together with the climate crisis this has resulted in calls for “energy democracy”, a term first introduced by US activists in the 2000s that has gained traction in Canada and Europe.
Edgardo reviewed a sample of the literature and noted that while there is no accepted definition, it tends to mean greater “energy citizenship” – broader participation in decision-making processes – and also greater individual and community control of energy infrastructure, with a strong preference for localism and renewables. A good conceptual review article is: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629620303431
Nevertheless, the empirical evidence is that energy democracy’s gains have been modest, and many of the policies to promote greater individual and community control of energy have been regressive – that is, have resulted in greater income inequality. Figure 7 of this ex-post review shows that 29 of 37 studies looking at feed-in tariffs or NEM were regressive and 7 neutral; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc11f Chris and Edgardo close off the episode discussing the June 2 “Public Power” Resolution tabled in the US House of Representatives (HR) by Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) & Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), two members of the “Squad.” The Resolution calls for the Federal government to acquire all private electricity assets and transfer them to lower jurisdictional levels and communities, while requiring 100% renewable generation. In @Dr_Keefer's words the @CoriBush & @JamaalBowmanNY resolution advocates for an "occupy Wall Street grid."
Its ideological commitment to small is beautiful localism, 100% renewables & magical thinking about the grid makes a public power bill a danger to the public. As such, the resolution appears to be a good example of how energy democracy is seen by progressives in the US and provided Chris and Edgardo with a concrete proposal to discuss. https://bush.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/bush.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Bush%20Public%20Power%20Resolution%20FINAL.pdf Edgardo’s Twitter handle is @E_R_Sepulveda
Humanity has emitted over 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, raising atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from 280 to 417ppm. Every year, we add another 50 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, meaning that in 20 years we will double our total emissions.
There are signs that global emissions are plateauing, and many governments around the world have penned ambitious commitments to reach net zero. However, talk is cheap, and many plans hinge on dubious assumptions around the role of bioenergy with CCS for example.
There has been a shift in the climate debate with by and large an abandonment of the “denier” position and a growth in the lukewarmist camp, which acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic climate change but minimizes its consequences.
In a previous episode with Mark Lynas, we explored what 1-6 degrees of warming looks like in terms of its impacts on humanity and the environment. Today, we do our best to understand the probabilities of reaching 3+ degrees of warming. How has climate modeling held up over the years? How likely are phenomena like methane clathrates to act as a significant positive feedback mechanism? Will the climate stabilize if and when we reach zero emissions?
Zeke Hausfather is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst whose research focuses on observational temperature records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. He was the senior climate analyst at Project Drawdown, and the US analyst for Carbon Brief. He has master's degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a Ph.D. in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.
The Byron and Dresden nuclear plants, which supply 30% of Illinois CO2-free energy will power down in 4 months without government intervention. These plants, which are licensed to operate well into the future, are uneconomic amid deregulated energy markets and the cheap natural gas unlocked by the fracking revolution. Keeping existing nuclear plants operating in the northeast USA has a carbon abatement cost of $25/ton of CO2. This is half the social cost of carbon in Biden's proposed carbon tax of around $50/ton. By comparison, rooftop solar costs $800/ton and utility wind and solar $300/ton. As Robert Bryce has pointed out, solar gets 250x and wind 160x more in federal tax credits than nuclear per unit of energy produced.
In a number of jurisdictions, legislators have recognized the important contribution of nuclear to grid resiliency, decarbonization, and clean air with measures like Zero Emissions Credits. In some areas these subsidies have paradoxically decreased the cost of electricity.
The Biden administration has committed itself to a decarbonized power system by 2035. There are mixed signals from his administration of their perception of the importance of nuclear energy to have a chance at achieving this ambitious goal. Senator Joe Manchin has urged Biden to support the continued operation of the US fleet and Jennifer Granholm, the DOE secretary, has floated the idea of federal subsidies to keep existing nuclear plants open. However, firm commitments to creating effective policy that can preserve the 50% of all US clean energy that nuclear provides are lacking. If Byron and Dresden are allowed to close, they will be replaced largely by imported fossil fuels with their accompanying pollution and carbon emissions.
In this context Madi and a group of committed volunteers are leading an all-out effort to save the Byron and Dresden Nuclear plants, the zero-air pollution and zero-emissions energy they provide, and the thousands of union jobs that are on the line. Sadly they are opposed by environmental NGOs, like the NRDC, which recently danced on the grave of Indian Point, which had provided 2.5x the amount of zero-carbon power as the entire New York wind and solar fleet.
To learn more about the campaign to save Byron and Dresden follow @Madi_Czerwinski and the @Campaign_GND, @ByronDresden, and check out https://savebyron.com/ https://saveilnuclearpower.com/
Adam Blazowski is a co-founder of the Polish pragmatic environmentalist group FOTA4Climate. FOTA came together in 2018 out of frustration with the limits of the mainstream environmental movement. The organization includes a broad spectrum of experts and activists ranging from energy analysts to herpetologists and characterizes itself as a “tech agnostic group.” FOTA are supportive of nuclear energy not because of a bias towards the technology but rather because they believe it is the most effective means to the end of preserving bio-diversity, mitigating climate change and maintaining human development. Poland is a highly fossil-fuel dependent country, with 80% of its electricity generated by coal. As these plants reach the end of their life, and climate and air pollution become more pressing concerns, there is growing support for nuclear energy as a replacement on climate and energy independence grounds. Adam and I explore wheter there is a role for wind as a transition technology and fuel sparing tool in the context of such a fossil fuel heavy grid or will increased investment in wind lock in natural gas infrastructure that will become difficult to retire for economic reasons? We examine why Poland has no nuclear energy while its neighbour Ukraine gets 50% of its electricity from nuclear despite the Chernobyl accident? We explore some of the underlying geopolitics facing Poland with a need for energy independence from both Russia and Germany. We also discuss the EU politics, the green taxonomy with its loopholes that favour the use of biomass and what it means for the funding of nuclear projects in Poland. Adam explains that with the nuclear shutdowns in Sweden and Germany these countries are increasingly importing Polish coal-fired electricity to meet their shortfalls. Fota4Climate is a small but growing volunteer grassroots organization which on a shoestring budget has managed to do impressive on-the-ground activism. They participate regularly in climate events and even staged a protest against the closure of the Phillipsburg Nuclear power plant in Germany with 20 Poles traveling over 800 kilometers to condemn the climate vandalism of the AtomExit. Adam Blazowski is a founder of the Polish pragmatic environmentalist group FOTA. He is a software engineer, manager, author and activist with over 15 years working in energy efficiency, smart cities, renewable energy, and advocacy for tech agnostic decarbonisation.
Carbon capture and storage. Loved by some, hated by others, essential to many an energy transition modeller for achieving net zero emissions. On today's show we explore some of the science and engineering challenges underlying Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS.) We look at CO2 capture at the stack, from the air and oceans examining the technical possibilities, the energy and material costs and the scaling difficulties.
The history of human influence on the climate system is thought to predate the industrial revolution. For example the Little Ice Age is correlated to massive human population die offs and accompanying reforestation secondary to the Black Death and old world diseases running rampant in the Americas.
Since the industrial revolution the burning of fossil fuels has taken us from an atmospheric concentration of 280ppm to 417ppm of CO2 with an accompanying 1C increase in global average temperatures. The laws of thermodynamics make reversing our centuries long liberation of hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon unimaginably difficult.
Enslaving carbon by emitting a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere to power an army of machines and chemical processes has brought humanity unimaginable wealth, freed slaves and extended lifespans but threatens future prosperity. Truly reverse engineering that process to put that CO2 back underground comes with a near impossible price tag, new infrastructure and energy requirements.
Keeping carbon in the ground and abating emissions as much as possible is an urgent matter however many environmentalists and climate activists chearlead the closure of zero emissions nuclear plants like Indian Point last week. An ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure but in a global society utterly dependent on fossil fuels for energy, transportation, cement, steel, fertilizer and many other vital processes is CCS part of the solution?
I am joined by Sean Wagner a materials engineer with a masters of science in engineering focused on nanotechnology from the University of Alberta. Sean is a master science communicator and lead writer and editor at the Alberta Nuclear Nucleus, a co-founder of Canadians for Nuclear Energy and the lead science advisor for the Decouple Podcast.
Heather Hoff is the co-founder of Mothers for Nuclear, and the mother of Zoe. She is a materials scientist, nuclear reactor operator and lifelong environmentalist.
In the words of their website Mothers for Nuclear is an organization of environmentalists, humanitarians, and caring human beings.
"We were initially skeptical of nuclear, but learned through asking a lot of questions. We started Mothers for Nuclear as a way to share our stories and begin a dialogue with others who want to protect nature for future generations."
Heather describes her trajectory as the daughter of an eccentric tinkerer growing up without a flush toilet in the desert in Arizona, to the co-leader of her campus recycling program, to her unexpected employment at Diablo Canyon as a reactor operator and her role as a co-founder of Mothers for Nuclear.
Environment, Social, Governance investing is a paradigm that is quickly becoming a driving force for global finance. Investors are increasingly paying attention and demanding disclosure of ESG metrics to guide their decisions.
At best, nuclear energy sits in an ESG limbo. At worst, it is listed alongside alcohol, tobacco, and pornography as a sin stock. In the EU, the battle over whether to include nuclear in the EU Green Taxonomy still hangs in the balance.
Nuclear checks all of the ESG boxes, providing ultra-low lifecycle emissions electricity without any air pollution, containing all of its waste, providing high-quality intergenerational union jobs, and submitting itself to the most intense regulatory frameworks on earth.
What is the relevance of nuclear achieving ESG status? Would this change the cost of capital and make new builds in the west more economical? How would the Uranium sector be impacted by ESG eligibility?
I am joined by Arthur Hyde, a partner and portfolio manager at Segra Capital Management. In the words of its website, “Segra Capital focuses exclusively on contrarian or underfollowed investment ideas,” and today we dive deep into one such topic.
Russia has been in the nuclear energy game now for over 75 years and its nuclear industry has bounced back to become the leading exporter of reactors around the world. What accounts for this success?
In the context of oligarchs balkanizing and profiteering off of sectors of the USSR's formerly centrally planned economy the Russian nuclear industry managed to re-consolidate itself into Rosatom, a collection of over 360 enterprises.
Rosatom is a vertically integrated state owned enterprise which offers partnering countries around the world the full suite of services and training to bring it nuclear energy generation capacity.
The core of Russia's nuclear program is the VVER design however Russia is also a world leader in SMR and advanced reactor technologies with concepts that have left the computer simulator and are connected to the grid gaining real world engineering and operational experience. What lessons can we learn from its advanced reactor program?
I am joined by Mark Nelson, managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund. Mark is a leading researcher and speaker on the status and prospects of nuclear and alternative energy around the world. He holds degrees in mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering as well as Russian language and literature.
The decision by the Japanese government to begin releasing 1.25 million tonnes of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant site over a 10 year period has caused a major stir not only amongst environmental NGO's but also regional countries with historic emnity to Japan.
Greenpeace alleges that radionuclides released into the sea "may damage DNA of humans and other organisms." China states that "the release is extremely irresponsible and will pose serious harm to the health and sagety of people in neighbouring countries and the international community."
So what are the politics and science behind the controversy?
The Fukushima water has been treated and the almost all radio-isotopes have been removed except for tritium. Just how dangerous is it? Tritium is a weak beta emitter with 70x less energy then the the naturally occuring and ubiquitous intracellular radioisotope Potassium 40 which undergoes 4600 radioactive decays per second in our bodies.
The health impacts of a radioisotope are multifactorial. The type of radiation emitted, the energy of that decay, the physical and biologic halflife of the isotope. The amount of tritium that one would need to drink to match a dose from something like a CT scan is simply impossible to ingest.
In response to the Fukushima accident in an effort to gain the trust of the population Japan has already reset its regulatory limits for radiation in drinking water at 1/100th that of the EU. Are these efforts actually counter productive?
Dr. Geraldine Thomas is a senior academic and Chair in Molecular Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London. She is an active researcher in fields of tissue banking and molecular pathology of thyroid and breast cancer. She is also the director of the Chernobyl Tissue bank.
Mark Z Jacobson's roadmap is cited by politicians like AOC, Bernie Sanders, and many others as an article of faith that a 100% renewables system is achievable and desirable. With great power comes great responsibility, and it is essential that those in the political class wrestling with climate change are well-informed about the consequences of their policy decisions.
Enter Michael Conley and Tim Mahoney, who in their book "Roadmap to Nowhere" work through the implications of Mark Jacobson's plan. This includes a massive parallel HVDC transmission system to connect far-flung wind and solar installations to load centres, and a "fuel-less" system that matches supply and demand with very little reserve, predicated on a weather modeling system designed by Mr. Jacobson himself. Lastly, the plan calls for a dramatic increase in hydro involving increasing current capacity by 13x, which would result in discharges that would regularly dwarf historic 100-year floods and wash away population centres on America's major river systems.
Rather than quaint scenes of small-scale, localized, democratically controlled infrastructure, the plan calls for industrialization of America's countrysides with almost 500,000 wind turbines 35 stories high and 14.5 billion square meters of utility solar panels.
When Jacobson's plan was criticized in the academic community, rather than defending his ideas in scientific journals, he responded with a 10 million SLAPP lawsuit alleging defamation. This lawsuit was subsequently thrown out, and Jacobson has been ordered to pay the defendants' costs.
It's time for policymakers to devote themselves to energy literacy, understand the studies that they reference, and make informed decisions to guide us through something as consequential as an energy transition.
What happens to our decision-making when we turn nature into God? Humans crave cognitive shortcuts to spare us the metabolically costly mental labour of reasoning through complex decision-making. The heuristic of "Natural Good, Unnatural Bad," has become one such shortcut. But what is natural? Why have we come to deify nature? And does worshipping it help us to make the best decisions for humanity and the environment?
Natural is not always what is good for humans or the environment. Nature, for instance, is very good at killing off children under the age of five. Charcoal production, while quite natural, is leading to rapid deforestation throughout Africa. And biomass burning is treated as carbon neutral by many government regulations partially because it feels natural.
Humans are not the first species to radically alter the planet and its atmospheric chemistry. During the Paleoproterozoic era, the first mass extinction was caused by cyanobacteria metabolizing CO2 into O2, turning the oceans and atmosphere from a reducing to an oxidative environment which wiped out most of life on earth. Humans, via our harnessing of technology, have radically altered the carbon, nitrogen, and hydrological cycles of the planet. As a result, standards of living have improved but a deep existential angst and fear of technology is building as we threaten the ecosystem life support services that "nature" provides us with. Can humanity have its cake and save nature too?
While some dispute the very notion of nature claiming that everything is natural and made of stardust, traditional environmentalists and ecomodernists both heavily reference nature, though they have radically different conceptions of it and tools for how to preserve and interact with it. Environmentalists favour harmonizing with nature through agroecology and renewable energy, with human populations and energy infrastructure distributed diffusely across the land. Ecomodernists favour "decoupling" from nature by continued urbanization and intensifying agriculture and energy production on the smallest footprint possible to allow rewilding.
We live in strange times where rather than setting clear goals and searching for the best tools to achieve them we make emotional decisions based on deifying nature and what feels natural. We are at risk of relying on simplistic labels and slick marketing in making our most consequential decisions like how to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Alan Levinovitz is a professor of Religion at James Madison University. He works at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and science, focusing especially on how narratives and metaphors shape belief. His most recent book is "Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science."
Books Referenced:
Sapiens: Noah Yuval Hariri
Factfulness: Hans Rosling
Biologist and science communicator Iida Ruishalme used to sing a Finnish antinuclear protest song about hiding from the Chernobyl plume in her youth. More recently, she had the chance to visit Chernobyl with a group of scientists and filmmakers. With her trusty Geiger counter in hand and her relative risk thinking cap on, she drew some very interesting conclusions from her visit. We continue our exploration of the concept of hazards and relative risks as Iida describes her flight to Ukraine through the radioactive cosmic rays of the upper atmosphere; to smog-choked Kiev; to the city of Narodychi, which refused to evacuate from the exclusion zone; to the dogs and wildlife of the zone; and finally to touching the switch in the control room that was the last straw in the tragedy of errors which caused the accident.
China is currently 3rd in the world in Nuclear Energy capacity with ambitious plans to have the most reactors in the world by 2030. The Tsinghua climate plan calls for a 7-fold increase by 2050. Is China on the verge of a historic moment like the French Messmer plan, which saw France accidentally decarbonize by nuclearizing its grid in 15 years while electrifying a significant amount of heating and rail transport? The answer is a very complex "No."
At great expense in a time of post-civil war, crushing agrarian poverty and "great leap forward" economic mismanagement, China managed to join the nuclear weapons club in 1964. It was, however, very late to develop power reactors, with its first coming online only in 1991. Since then, China has imported many different turnkey projects from Europe, the USA, Canada, Russia while also developing its own indigenous designs culminating in the Hualong 1.
For a variety of pragmatic reasons, including the transport and air pollution externalities of coal and the ability to make nuclear cheap and profitable by very low-interest financing, nuclear is on the rise in China. However, coal use is still rising, as is energy demand, with data centre and 5G infrastructure expected to use as much energy as is currently produced by the entire Chinese nuclear fleet.
I am joined by Francois Morin, the China Director of the World Nuclear Association, to discuss the fascinating past, present, and future of nuclear energy in China.
On the progressive side of the political spectrum, it is assumed that with an increasing acknowledgment of the reality of climate change will come default support for a progressive Green New Deal agenda. There is, however, another possible outcome of the far-right abandoning climate denial: Avocado Politics, green on the outside, brown(shirt) on the inside.
In the words of Nils Gilman, "The strong state demanded by right-wing environmentalists will not be one that is liberal, tolerant, or inclusive but rather one that prioritizes the welfare of the native-born and ethnically pure while enforcing punitive restrictions against foreigners, immigrants, and the ethnically impure."
A Green/Far Right alliance has sprung up in Austria which calls not just for 100% renewable energy, but also banning Islamic headscarves and detaining asylum seekers. The El Paso and Christchurch shooters both centered their manifestos around ecological justifications for their mass murders.
There is a deep intellectual history for these ideas going back to Social Darwinism and beyond. The founder of the term "Ecology" Ernst Haeckel also invented the term Lebensraum which the Nazis used to justify their destruction of the peoples of Eastern Europe. In America, up until the 1990s, the Sierra Club was one of the fiercest anti-immigrant organizations in America.
Nils offers a sweeping history and analysis of the phenomenon of Avocado politics and cautions progressives that catastrophist language may have unintended and unfortunate consequences.
Nuclear has not always been a culture wars issue. Is there an opportunity for the Left with its concern for climate action and the Right with its trust in large scale energy projects to come together around the importance of nuclear energy to address our social and environmental challenges? Historically many nuclear build outs were accomplished by social democratic governments with support accross the political spectrum. Why is harnessing this support from a more traditional left and right politics so difficult at present? In some ways the modern political expressions of Left and Right traditions are unrecognizable to their founding thinkers.
On the Left the science part of scientific socialism has eroded away as the left has moved away from a broad based working class politics into the safety of liberal arts departments on university campuses. The Left's new embrace of "small is beautiful" post-modern politics are hostile to notions of progress and the large centralized projects that have successfully brought basic services to the masses. Degrowth and eco-austerity is the guiding light of so called "eco-socialists" articulating a romantic vision for a way out of our ecological challenges.
On the Right, modern conservatism has undergone a mutation due to exposure to neoliberal economics which has given social license to greed. The value of conserving all different kinds of capital: social, human, cultural and the meta resource: a habitable earth for future generations has been replaced with an ideology that only values a short sighted maximization of financial capital. Free market fundamentalism has led to a fear and loathing of government and a belief that markets are the only way to organize the economy including basic human services and the monopoly that is the electrical grid.
Can we find commonalities across our ideologies again to support Nuclear energy, a technology which can deliver prosperity not austerity, reliability not black outs and economic growth without ecological collapse?
"What man desires is not knowledge but certainty." Winston Churchill In this episode Iida Ruishalme, the brains behind "thoughtscapism" discusses science and risk communication. We explore the inner workings of human thought and the cognitive biases that make us vulnerable to junk science and its prophets. We identify some of the red flags that should cue us to move from intuitive thinking to analytical thinking and we look at the real harm of fearmongering around vaccines, biotech and nuclear energy.
In the developed world we have been liberated from the major hazards and risks that have plagued humanity and shortened lifespans through public health measures like vaccination, the regulation of pollution and abundant energy which has enabled a high quality of life.
However notions of purity and anxieties around contamination have led to dramatically inflating the sense of danger from trivial or imagined hazards and the concurrent rise of anti-vaccination, anti-biotech and anti-nuclear activism that threatens some of the fundamental advances of the 20th century.
Iida Ruishalme is a biologist specialised in biomedical research, an environmentalist, a writer and a science communicator. She is also a mother who takes the future of her children very seriously. She has become well known and respected for her blog Thoughtscapism.com
The Tohoku earthquake which led to the Fukushima accident was the 4th most powerful earthquake in the world since modern measurement and record keeping began in 1900. This earthquake was so powerful that it redistributed earth’s mass sufficiently to shift the earth’s figure axis by 17cm and shorten our days by 1.8 microseconds.
There’s a tendency in the West to forget about the earthquake in our fascination with the nuclear accident in Fukushima. Paul Blustein is a former Rhodes scholar, journalist and writer who has written about economic issues for more than 40 years and lives in Kamakura Japan with his family where he experienced the earthquake and its aftermath. Paul was an early voice of reason dispelling some of the worst radiation fear mongering at the time. He has made a point of supporting the farmers of Fukushima by eating and promoting produce from the prefecture where safe radiation limits are set at 1/10 those of Europe.
In this episode we discuss the lived experience of the earthquake and its aftermath as well as the enormous damage caused by the failure of NRC chairman Gregory Jackzo to correct the record on a modelling error he publisized. This led to suspicion that the Japanese government was suprressing the seriousness of the accident and significantly eroded public trust and exagerated panic.
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A deep dive into Bill Gates most recent book "How to prevent a Climate Disaster" with Leigh Phillips. Bill Gates has burst onto the climate scene and is generating a lot of press. Will he grow to monopolize the debate as he has with Global health where it has been said that “you can’t cough, scratch your head or sneeze in public health without coming to the Gates Foundation.”
In this entertaining read Gate's provides an accessible birds eye view of the problems and scale of climate change. He draws attention to hard to decarbonize sectors like Agriculture, Cement and Steel and introduces the concept of the "Green Premium" as a metric to identify decarbonization innovation priorities.
Gates pours cold water on the common use of Moore's law as a model for rosey energy sector modelling. He points to the importance of marrying mitigation to adaptation in order for those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change to have the best chances to endure it.
Leigh and I talk agriculture, energy, innovation and most importantly the politics including taxation that can enable the state investment in R&D and deployment that Gates calls for and yet has resisted many times as a member of the billionaire class.
Leigh Phillips is a science writer and political journalist whose work has appeared in Nature, Science, the Guardian, and Jacobin. His areas of specialization include climate change, energy systems, the earth system, and microbiology. Leigh is the author of 2 books, The People's Republic of Walmart and Austerity Ecology.
The Philippines exports its people to earn foreign exchange to, amongst other things, pay for imported fossil fuels to power the country. Families are broken up, parents absent for years at a time, and many of the brightest Filipino minds leave the country causing a significant brain drain. While its neighbours have experienced steady economic growth and improvement in standards of living, the Philippines has stagnated, burdened by high energy prices and unreliable power that has deindustrialized the country and discourages foreign investment and development. Nuclear energy due to its low fuel and transporation costs and the ability to stockpile years of fuel onsite has the potential to deliver the energy security and the reliable power needed for economic development at an affordable cost and prevent the hemorrhaging of so many Filipino's from their country and families. It can also address the water and air pollution caused by coal ash which has significant impacts on the health of Filipinos. What's most surprising is that there is a nuclear plant, Bataan, that was built in the 1980's that was 100% complete and ready for fuel loading but never actually brought online. It has stood idle for 36 years while the Filipino grid has been strained and electricity prices have been some of the highest in the world due to fossil fuel and shipping price volatility. I am joined by Mark Cojuangco, a former Representative of 5th District of Pangasinan and the vice-chairman of Committee on Appropriations. He is the author of the House Bill 04631 that sought the immediate re-commissioning and commercial operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
Due to the global geopolitics of the 1940's Canada became the unlikely centre for the world's second largest nuclear research infrastructure at the end of World War II. Devoting itself to the peaceful use of the atom It went on to develop a unique power reactor design, the CANDU, based on the use of heavy water to avoid the need for uranium enrichment and pressure tubes to get around the need for a heavy forging industry for reactor vessels. These features make the CANDU ideal for export and technology transfer to less developed countries with industrial capacity resembling that of Canada back in the 1960's.
CANDU reactors provide 61% of the power for the Ontario grid, the largest province in Canada, making it one of the cleanest electricity grids on earth and allowing for the complete phaseout of coal. CANDU has been exported internationally and delivered on budget and on time in China, South Korea and Romania. Alongside it's high grade uranium deposits which are the richest in the world, Canada has a unique ability to foster a made in Canada reponse to climate change. It can export its ultra low carbon technology to address its climate debt by helping developing countries to leapfrog fossil fuels on their way to ultra low carbon energy.
CANDU meets many of the criteria for an advanced reactor design with passive safety elements, modular design, and the ability to use nuclear waste as fuel. Why then is CANDU languishing especially in a country where the supply chain is 95% in country?
Dr. Jeremy Whitlock former president of the Canadian Nuclear Society and Section Head of the Dept of Safegaurds at the IAEA walks us through this incredible history. He is the brains behind nuclearfaq a treasure trove on the history of nuclear energy in Canada. http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/
The Texan grid AKA the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a house of cards. It is an energy only, deregulated market which does not reward keeping spare generation capacity on board and keeps a razor thin cushion to buffer against unpredictable surges in demand. It has isolated its grid from the rest of the conry in order to avoid federal reguation. Texas has made the decision to invest heavily in wind and natural gas, pairing an unpredictable and intermittent energy source with a dispatchable source that relies on just in time delivery of its fuel.
In the clutches of a polar vortex which has covered wind turbines in ice, frozen natural gas infrastructure and driven up demand for gas for both home heating and electricity ERCOT is strained to the breaking point with rolling blackouts affecting millions in this freezing weather. Welcome back for another Decouple short. We are joined by energy analyst Mark Nelson, the managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund to understand this breaking news out of Texas.
While wealthy countries in the West are engaged in an energy transition obstensibly away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy the developing world is emerging from energy poverty largely through the use of fossil fuels. Four million people die every year as a consequence of indoor air pollution from cooking using biomass in poorly ventilated homes. This is more lives lost year after year, every year than COVID in 2020 and more than Malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. The transition away from biomass towards sources like liquid petroleum gas cooking fuels is an undeniable global health benefit.
How do we balance the immediate needs of people to exit energy poverty with the fossil fuel driven threat of climate change that looms on the horizon. What are the consequences of market interventions and economic planning when policy makers struggle with basic energy literacy?
Dr Scott Tinker is a geologist, educator, energy expert and documentary filmmaker. He is the bureau of economic geology at the University of Texas and the chairman of the Switch Energy Alliance which aims to inspire an energy educated future through film.
Just as the political spectrum is divided between left and right, thinking on environmental problem solving is similarly split into two rival camps exemplified by the archetypes of the Wizard and the Prophet. Award winning science writer Charles Mann explores these archetypes as personified by the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug and the intellectual godfather of the environmental movement, William Vogt.
Crudely put wizards are foremost humanists who eschew limits believeing that our growing population and appetites can be accommodated by the wise application of decoupling technology. Prophets are foremost environmentalists who believe that carrying capacity is limited and that humans must remain within natural energy flows or risk ecosystem and civilizational collapse.
Understanding the origins of one's opponents ideological beliefs and values goes a long way to depersonalizing a sometimes ugly debate and perhaps finding a small patch of common ground.
Prophets who have contributed some impressive advances in natural resource stewardship such as water conservation must wrestle with an ugly history of malthusian ideas which at their worst have justified horrific campaigns of coercive population control. Despite the success of technofixes that fed billions and averted famines wizards must temper their scientific rationalism with a sociologic understanding of the dark sides of modernization such as enclosures of the commons.
This conversation challenged my cognitive biases more then I was expecting. I hope it does the same for you.
Is part of our rejection of expertise, distrust of science and weaponization of the precautionary principle tied to how suicidally close we came to mutually assured destruction during the cold war? What are the cultural drivers that have led the modern left to reject nuclear energy? How did we come to exaggerate the potential harms from a nuclear accident to biblical proportions? How is the idea of nuclear apocalypse different from climate apocalypse in terms of its imagery and cultural framing? I am joined by Spencer Weart the retired director of the Center for History of Physics for the American Institute of Physics to answer these questions. Spencer holds a Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics and has devoted much of his career to working as a historian of science. He is the author of a number of books including “The Rise of Nuclear Fear.”
There is money to be made in Nuclear Fear. Consider this. In Japan over the last 10 years since the Fukushima accident, approximately 50 billion USD a year in additional fossil fuels have been traded to supply energy demands that would have been provided by Japan's shuttered nuclear plants. The ability to terrify people with the prospect of serious health harms from low dose radiation has kept most of the Japanese nuclear fleet idle and created an enormous market for LNG and Coal as well as a significant burden of disease secondary to particulate air pollution.
On June 12th 1956 the National Academy of Sciences released its report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR.) It became part of the basis for a paradigm shift in radiation protection towards the Linear No Threshold model which proposes that radiation is a uniquely dangerous toxin with no safe lower dose limit.
The BIER report was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation whose endowment came directly from the Standard Oil Company. Did the Rockefeller Foundation and its fossil fuel baron patrons have a vested interest in exagerating the dangers of radiation to disparage a potentially disruptive, air pollution free technology that threatened the market share of the fossil fuel industry? Was their support coincidence, conspiracy or just good business acumen?
I am joined by Rod Adams, a former US nuclear submarine engineer officer, who runs the Atomic Insights blog and hosts the Atomic Show podcast to discuss this tantalizing question.
I am joined by Robert Bryce, an American author, journalist, filmmaker and podcaster in a wide ranging discussion of the politics of the world's unfolding energy transitions.
Energy illiteracy is epidemic and basic concepts such as power density and scale are absent from most policy discussions. We discuss the impacts of fracking on the nuclear renaissance and the mounting resistance to wind and solar farms in rural America.
Big decisions lie before our government representatives and the technological choices they make will be hugely consequential not only to limiting climate change but also the health and stability of the commons in the form of the network that underlies all modern networks, the grid.
Fusion is supposed to be even more powerful than fission but without the baggage. It resonates with the appeal to nature fallacy with notions of bringing the power of the sun down to earth. 39 years ago Dr. L. Lidsky wrote that "The scientific goal of fusion energy turns out to be an engineer's nightmare."
Building a reliable, affordable power plant that requires achieving temperatures hotter than the sun and as cold as physically possible within several meters of each other all under the materially challenging conditions of high energy neutron bombardment is only the beginning. Low power densities and parasitic load further chip away at the potential performance of "the ultimate solution" to our clean energy challenges.
Gerrit Bruehogg is a nuclear engineer with a background in fission reactors and particle accelerators who is currently doing his thesis at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics on inertial confinement fusion. Join us for a lively discussion that leaves no subatomic particle unturned.
Decouple is a show which is fundamentally about attitudes to technology and the role that decoupling technologies, so called technofixes, can play in mitigating and solving our environmental challenges. As we are becoming increasingly aware, geology and its earth systems have not just shaped us, we are shaping the earth through our technologies and indeed our most current geologic epoch, the anthropocene, bears our name as a result. In this episode we dive deep into geologic determinism and a history of technology made more entertaining by the thought experiment of exploring how to rebuild civilization after a global cataclysm with astrobiologist and polymath, Lewis Dartnell who is the author of the books "Origins" and "The Knowledge."
Sometimes an outsider's perspective can lead to startling conclusions. Bret Kugelmass is a successful tech entrepreneur turned climate activist. His empiric analysis of the problem of climate change led him towards embracing nuclear energy as the only technology capable of scaling to achieve deep decarbonisation and powering negative emissions. After conducting well over 1000 interviews with nuclear engineers, regulators and analysts, Bret has developed some very bold and very controversial policy solutions to make nuclear energy cheaper then coal and unleash its climate change fighting potential. All he's got to do is convince an industry that it is its own worst enemy and to abandon some of its most central dogmas.
Dr. Rudolf Virchow, one of the founders of scientific medicine, said that "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale." Beyond caring for the sick, doctors have played an important role in calling attention to the social determinants of health. International physicians for the prevention of nuclear war (IPPNW) played a pivotal role in the cessation of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing at the height of the cold war. This anti-weapons activism later came to be directed towards civilian nuclear energy by the likes of anti-nuclear crusader Dr. Helen Caldicott who is well known for her unwillingness to back up her outlandish claims with scientific evidence. Doctors for Nuclear Energy is a new international group of physicians who argue that nuclear energy is a keystone technology for the elimination of air pollution and CO2 emissions. Co-founders Dr. Van Der Merwe and Dr. Keefer share their perspectives on relative risk assessment, radiophobia and its public health consequences and our clean energy future.
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https://www.doctorsfornuclearenergy.org/
Ted Nordhaus is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Breakthrough Institute, the world's first and most prominent Ecomodernist think tank.
We talk about the origins of the concept of ecological decoupling, the New Left's ceding of class and materialist politics to the right and the empty radicalism of the Green New Dealers.
Ted shares his thoughts on the wicked problem of climate change which he compares to a chronic disease like diabetes rather then an acute problem like an asteroid strike.
Ted also opines on energy policy where he argues that the most effective root to deep decarbonization, a centrally planned and coordinated massive build out of gigawatt scale nuclear, is not viable given the political economy of our time. He argues instead for a pragmatic, non-radical strategy that adapts itself to our liberalizing energy markets with a mix of renewables, natural gas, and advanced small scale nuclear.
Please support Decouple with a donation to our patreon so that we can continue to build our library of transcriptions on our website and produce more engaging content.
A wide ranging conversation with Michael Shellenberger exploring the Malthusian origins of environmentalism and what happened to the left as it morphed from a promethean movement concerned with material improvement of the living conditions of the masses towards a romantic longing to return to a pre-industrial Eden. Michael explains that modern infrastructure such as flood control systems, weather prediction and modern healthcare have played a decisive role in the 100 fold drop in mortality from extreme weather events in the 20th century and demonstrate the need for ongoing industrialization within countries most at risk of climate impacts. We also explore recent developments in the UK with the pending approval of Sizewell C and the end-game for renewables as the marketing claims begin to wear thin and the taboo on criticism falls away.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/decouple-on-41428860
The European Union finds itself at an energy crossroads. Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, has been rushing to shut down its nuclear plants as quickly as possible while leashing itself to Russian natural gas via the Nordstream 1&2 pipelines. France's nuclear electricity infrastructure is being eroded through premature political closures and taxes on ultra low carbon nuclear to pay for gas backed renewables which is enticing de-electrification. Green taxonomies are being contorted to favour the financing of fossil gas and punish nuclear. The geo-political implications of the control of the master resource of energy is leading to a revival of nuclear energy, recently with US funding, as smaller EU countries like Poland, Romania, Finland, Czechia and others seek to maintain energy independence in the face of Russian and German influence. Energy analyst Mark Nelson breaks down this great game for the control of Europe's energy future with his usual verve and deep knowledge of the players and history.
The Green New Deal has become a catch phrase but very few people, including the politicians who envoke its memory, have a solid grasp of the context and pragmatics of the original New Deal. Today I am joined by Emmet Penney, to discuss an article he co-authored with Adrian Calderon titled “Why we need a Nuclear new deal not a Green new deal.” Emmet walks us through the context and consequences of the New Deal and provides a history of US industrialization with an emphasis on the role of the automobile.
Over the last 40 years the USA has become an "undeveloping" country due to offshoring and globalization. Its creaky economy is increasingly based on finance, service industries and dollar hegemony. Given the urgent need for decarbonisation and a revival of American industry in order to meet the environmental and economic challenges ahead Emmet lays out why Nuclear energy must replace the automobile as the driver of US re-industrialization and the why and how of a Nuclear New Deal.
In France we don't have oil but we have ideas! Myrto Tripathi is the founder and president of Voices of Nuclear. We explore the past, present and future of Nuclear Energy in France. Devoid of fossil fuel resources and seeking energy independence, France turned to nuclear energy in an ambitious build out which saw 59 reactors built in just 15 years. The rallying cry was "Nuclear Electricity and Electrify Everything!" Inadvertently this energy transition provided a powerful roadmap of what rapid and deep decarbonisation looks like. We discuss why centralization and specialization in energy systems are actually a reflection of social solidarity and why French nuclear is under threat in a Europe more obsessed with substituting renewables and natural gas for nuclear than tackling climate change.
The Grid has been described as one of the preeminent engineering accomplishments of the 20th century and the world's largest machine. However, when people debate the best strategies to manage a successful energy transition they often limit their analysis to electricity generation. What is neglected is the elephant in the room: the grid. There is an obvious reason. To non-specialists it is complicated. My guest Meredith Angwin is going to help us get a grip on the grid so that we can make informed decisions about the best way to move forward to clean, reliable electricity that can get us to deep decarbonisation while meeting the demands of the world's poor to fight their way out of energy poverty.
Meredith is a physical chemist and one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. Over her career she has headed projects to help power plants become more reliable and less polluting. In the past decade, she has studied the grid as a system, and taken part in grid oversight and governance.
Dharnai Live was Greenpeace's showcase rural electrification project that aimed to prove that solar microgrids were the way to meet rural India's power needs in a sustainable manner. The solar electricity proved to be frustratingly unreliable and insufficient even for the most basic subsistence needs of the villagers. So much publicity was generated by Greenpeace that when the day came for the ribbon cutting ceremony the Chief Minister of Bihar attended. He was met with placard waving protestors demanding real, not fake electricity. One week later a transformer was installed and the village was connected to the grid. Gayatri Vaidyanathan walks us through the history of this project and the contradictions between the environmentalist's values and rural Indian realities and perspectives.
Paris is the Director of Outreach and a former analyst at Environmental Progress who oversees the organization’s outreach and engagement efforts.
In 2019, she organized the first global pro-nuclear movement called Stand Up for Nuclear held in over 30 different cities and 19 countries around the world. This year we have just begun Stand Up Season and it promises to be even bigger. Join us as Paris explains the origins of this grassroots movement and where it is going next... Hint its coming to a city near you!
In this episode Isabelle Boemeke and I talk about the ins and outs of Nuclear Advocacy with a special look at "Influencers" and the use of novel platforms like instagram and tik-tok. Isabelle is the founder of Isodope, a revolutionary way to teach younger generations about the benefits of nuclear energy. She is passionate about science and the environment. She leverages her background in the fashion industry and culture to transform complex nuclear energy concepts into accessible, youthful entertainment for everyone. When she’s not producing content for Isodope, she actively models, having worked with some of the biggest brands and photographers in the fashion industry. She’s influenced by the work of Carl Sagan, Lil Miquela, Rosalía and Sam Harris.
Dreams of advanced nuclear and the SMR revolution around the corner which will solve all of Nuclear's problems such as economics, safety and load following are very popular within the Nuclear Energy community. These technologies are exciting and an inevitable addition to the nuclear energy mix but are they the quickest nuclear route to deep decarbonization? Are they a substitute for our existing cutting edge large scale nuclear technology like the recently unveiled Barakah station in the UAE or our "old" reactor designs like CANDU which can burn used nuclear fuel and thorium?
I am joined by Mark Nelson, the managing director of Radiant Energy Fund and a leading researcher and speaker on the status and prospects of Nuclear Energy to wade into this controversy. Mark is a former generation fellow at the Breakthrough Institute and was a senior analyst at Environmental Progress. He holds degrees in mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering.
This is gauranteed to be a controversial show and I look forward to the debate it will spark. Please follow us and join the debate on Twitter @decouplepodcast and on our Decouple Podcast Facebook page.
There is a popular misconception based upon charicatures of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons that Nuclear Energy is an evil, capitalistic and undemocratic form of Energy. In fact almost every major deployment of Nuclear Energy has been a publicly funded social democratic project. This week we talk about Sweden, the homeland of Greta Thunberg and one of the world's foremost social democracies which boasts one of the fastest ever decarbonisations of its electricity thanks to a strategic investment in Nuclear in the 1970's. We explore the past, present and future of Sweden's Karnkraft with John Ahlberg the co-founder of Kärnfull Energi, Sweden's first 100% nuclear electricity provider which is celebrating its 1 year anniversary this month.
In his most recent book, Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger has stirred some major waves particularly in his promotional efforts where he recently penned an article professing an “Apology on behalf of environmentalists for the Climate Scare.” and where the key messaging seems to be “Everything you thought you knew about Climate Change and the environment is wrong.”
In this Episode Leigh Phillips, a science writer and author of "Eco-Austerity and the Collapse Porn Addicts" and I discuss Michael's book. Themes include: Climate Alarmism vs Catastrophism, Eco-Imperialism, Big Green's problem with fossil fuel funding and the need for economic planning vs. the free market to meet the challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation.
Mark Lynas is a science writer and author of numerous books on the environment including High Tide, Six Degrees, The God Species, Nuclear 2.0 and Seeds of Science. His most recent book is ‘Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency" In this book Mark summarizes thousands of IPCC source material studies and lays out degree by degree the human and environmental implications of our warming world. Mark has demonstrated a principled committment to following where the science leads him. He was a prominent anti-GMO activist who changed his mind after after studying the scientific consensus supporting the safety of GMO's. Mark was a co-authot of the Eco-Modernist Manifesto and is currently a visiting fellow with the Cornell Alliance for Science at Cornell University, which engages in pro-science advocacy and research around the world.
“Science adjusts its views based on what is observed. Faith avoids observation so that belief can be preserved.”
Tim Minchin
Zion Lights is a British author and environmental activist. She was a prominent spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and the founder and editor of XR's Hourglass newspaper. Zion holds a masters in science communication and is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting. Most recently Zion has made waves by resigning from her role as one of Extinction Rebellion’s most well known media spokespersons and joining Environmental Progress, an environmental group focused on promoting Nuclear Energy. Listen in to find out why.
Dr. Geraldine Thomas is the director of the Chernobyl tissue bank and a Chair in Molecular Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London. Surprisingly her research on the health impacts of the Chernbyl accident led her towards a pro-nuclear position due to the technologies clear benefits of slowing climate change and saving lives by producing no air pollution. Dr. Thomas shares that contrary to popular belief there is a scientific consensus that the Chernobyl accident has resulted in the deaths of less than 55 people as a result of radiation. This is based on the work of the UN scientific committee on the effects of atomic radiation (UNSCEAR) and the Chernobyl Forum that involved 8 major UN agencies and the participation of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Alternative reports quoting death tolls orders of magnitude higher are methodologically flawed and were sponsored by the European Green party and NGO's like Greenpeace who had an ideological objective and cherry picked evidence to match their hypotheses. For more information from Dr. Thomas see below
https://www.chernobyltissuebank.com/useful-podcasts-and-videos.htm
Politics, confidence in science and attitudes towards surveillance technology have led to very different outcomes between the East and the West when it comes to COVID-19. Many Asian countries have achieved containment of the virus while the West largely remains caught in a quagmire with no end in sight. What explains these differences? Cultural attitudes? Neo-liberalism vs. State capitalism? Bankrupt social welfare systems? Distrust of elites and institutions? I am joined by Nils Gilman of the Berggruen institute who helps us unpack the complexities and learn the lessons of our COVID successes and failures.
Ecomodernism holds out the promise of decoupling human flourishing from environmental impacts through investment in mission-oriented research, development and deployment of an array of breakthrough low emissions technologies that can transform industry, transportion, agriculture and energy systems. It is a movement founded and largely based in the USA which tries to create a big tent and appeals to an all of the above politics. It embraces the roles of private sector entrepreneurs, free markets, civil society and the state in pursuing their goals. I am joined by Jonathan Symons who argues that a real crisis like climate change requires collective agency in the form of state funded democratically controlled intervention. It's how we got a man on the moon, how we developed nuclear energy and how competent nations like Taiwan and Australia are containing the COVID pandemic. The market isn't up to the challenge. To fulfill its promises ecomodernism requires a social democratic politics.
Between 2005-2014 the Canadian province of Ontario phased out its coal fired electricity generation in what some call the greatest single greenhouse gas reduction initiative in North America to date. It was the equivalent to taking 7 million cars off the road. Climate benefits were accompanied by dramatic improvements in Air Quality with smog days dropping from 53 per year to zero once the phaseout was complete. The elephant in the room that noone wants to talk about is the role that Nuclear Energy had in making this historic energy transition possible. Our guest Steve Aplin shares Ontario's example for the world as we aim for a transition to a zero emissions energy system.
My name is Chris Keefer. I am an Emergency Physician concerned with fighting climate change and poverty. Join me on my journey into the frontiers of science, technology and politics as I explore solutions to the climate and poverty crises. I’ve moved from being a green environmentalist advocating degrowth and opposing new technology towards embracing technologies that can decouple human well being from its environmental impact and imagining the kind of politics and economic system necessary to pursue this goal. Welcome to Decouple. In this inaugaral episode Jesse Freeston and I dive deep into it all. Fasten your seatbelts and dive on in.
Referenced Books:
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.