The Chris Cuomo Project - Nuclear Roundtable, Part 2 (with Michael Shellenberger, Jessica Lovering, and Heather Hoff & Kristin Zaitz)

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

In a special two-part episode of The Chris Cuomo Project in partnership with the Nuclear Energy Institute, Chris looks at how nuclear power can play a key role in going green. Michael Shellenberger (founder, Environmental Progress, and author, “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All”), Jessica Lovering (co-founder, Good Energy Collective), and Heather Hoff & Kristin Zaitz (co-founders, Mothers for Nuclear) discuss the potential for new nuclear tech to be part of a sustainable energy future, whether nuclear solutions are finding bipartisan support in Washington, challenges that other green power sources face, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to another special edition of the Chris Cuomo Project podcast. This is part two of our look into, hey, are we nutty when it comes to nuclear? I was raised to think it's too frightening to even discuss, even to look at anything like that. Did we have it right? And if we had it wrong, how does it fit into the picture of us trying to get to a better energy solution? Should nuclear be part of our future or is it relegated to part of the past? I want to continue our conversation that I'm doing in partnership with the Nuclear Energy Institute to try to get to the bottom of this, be skeptical about what is true, what isn't, and what it could mean. So let's continue our conversation with Michael Schellenberger, right? Because he is a journalist who's been looking at this and studying it for years, because he came from the same position I did, which is, you know, he was raised to think it's too dangerous. He saw the symptoms. Then you have Jessica Lovering. Now, she's a scientist

who looks at only the scientific capabilities of this. What does she think? And then these really interesting two, Heather Hoff and Kristen Zeitz. Now, they worked at a nuclear facility. They are moms who are now trying to, they say moms, you know, who are for nuclear for their kids. They're just playing around with that. But what's really interesting about what they're doing is they're trying to make a difference for the next generation. So let's have the discussion. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you

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online consultation with a health care provider and they will determine if appropriate restrictions apply you see the website you'll get details and important safety information you're going to need a subscription it's required plus price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? Because I like their sheets. That's why. A lot of people don't get a good night's sleep for a lot of reasons. One of the ones that you can control is bedding. One out of three of us report being sleep deprived.

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Now, so if you go to CozyEarth.com and you enter the code, enter the code Chris, and you can get up to 35% off your first order. CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. The idea of how do we get to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future? economy and lifestyle is seen as the opposite of nuclear power, specifically among those most concerned about the environment who tend to be on the left of the political spectrum. Democrats like nuclear power less than Republicans. Is nuclear power anathema to green energy solutions? No, I mean, nuclear is the most sustainable form of energy. It has the smallest environmental footprint by far. And by the way, this was all very well understood in the 1950s and 60s.

That was why people wanted nuclear is because it produced zero air and water pollution. This was not a controversial view at all. It was widely understood. People did know that there would be radiation to deal with, but they also understood that it was something that could be managed. There was really no comparison to the amount of pollution that fossil fuels produced. I think the other thing to understand is the amount of land it requires is close to zero. California's last nuclear plant produces enough power for three million people on an area about the size of three football fields. And the tide pools near the plant are in pristine condition because they don't allow schoolchildren to come and visit and tromp around and kill all the sea anemones and the starfish.

And then all the sea life is surrounding the plant. and the starfish. And then all the sea life is surrounding the plant. I mean, it's sort of shocking to see an industrial facility with that amount of wildlife near it and protected by the naturalists on staff. So it is the most sustainable form of energy. So then you get to the question of why do people that think of themselves as nature lovers, why do they turn against it? And it's because the environmental movement was a reaction actually against the original conservation movement. The Sierra Club fought to build the last nuclear plant in California because it was a good environmental alternative.

And then it was the baby boom generation reacting against the greatest generation. The main reason is they just did not want all the people coming to California that they thought that a large amount of power would enable. And so the original concern was so-called overpopulation. Now, most people are concerned about the opposite, not enough people, particularly for countries like Japan and Europe that are aging. one of the motivations, of course, for Putin to invade Ukraine. So we no longer are as concerned about so-called overpopulation. We now know we need to move towards zero emissions energy sources in order to deal with climate change and nuclear. You know, by far, if you just compare France to Germany, you know, Germany produces over 10 times more carbon emissions per unit of electricity than France. France spends a little bit more than half as much for electricity as Germany does. So we see from a sustainability perspective, I think a renaissance of thinking, particularly from the generation that didn't grow up under the fear of nuclear weapons, to see that we

really need nuclear for climate change. And if you go on Twitter, Chris, I had a friend who recently said, hey, I like Michael. I disagree with him about nuclear. And I was shocked that the reactions on Twitter were like 10 to 1 in favor of nuclear power at this point. So I do think there's been a tidal shift in views towards nuclear. Explain why France has lower costs and less emissions than Germany? What do they do differently? Yeah, so nuclear in France has been about 70% of its electricity. In Germany, they're phasing it out. I think if you have a picture in your head, just picture you have a small number of power plants with a very simple grid that provides the power to the whole country. It's a very simple

operation. In Germany, it's a kind of a clouge. It's very convoluted. You have coal plants, natural gas, solar, wind. Solar and wind in particular require a lot more transmission wires because you have to have much more land and many more projects to provide the same amount of power. To give you a sense of it, you need between three to 800 times more land to generate the same amount of electricity from solar or wind as you do from nuclear. That's a huge difference. I mean, even three to 10 times is a big difference, but three to 800 times is massive. And so one of the problems that renewables are having right now in the United States, in Europe, around the world, is that people are building projects, but they don't have the permission to get the transmission lines built. In part because people don't like big transmission lines going over their homes. It's bad for the

environment. And so what's actually good for the environment tends to be good for the bottom line, because you want to use less material resources, less mining, less land, less fuel, fewer people to bring down the cost of energy sources, and that makes a lighter footprint. So you can see a picture of the world that has, frankly, a very small number of power plants providing sufficient energy for 8 billion people. It's a world where the footprint is much smaller, as opposed to one that we're all using solar and wind. You're talking about losing large amounts of farmland, large amounts of pristine deserts. They're talking about building wind farms on the east coast,

and they're very concerned because there's an endangered whale species, the North Atlantic right whale, of which there's only 335 of them left. Any single whale that's killed by building these wind turbines or operating the wind turbines could mean the end of the species. And so you want to reduce humankind's footprint, And that means that you're going to move towards, again, more energy dense sources like ones like nuclear. You say that not only is nuclear not the opposite of achieving zero emission goals and fighting global warming, you say you can't fight global warming the way we want to without nuclear. How so? Well, you can just look at it here in California. It's a good example. We look at California and

New York where every time a nuclear plant shuts down like it did in New York, it's replaced 100% by carbon emitting sources. And so we just saw they shut down Indian Point in New York. It was replaced by natural gas and carbon emissions went up. Same thing in California. They shut down San Onofre and it was replaced basically one to one with natural gas. We then did a lot of solar, more solar than almost anybody in the world in California. And we're only back to the levels that we were before we shut down that nuclear plant. So it's like a kind of treadmill to trying to, if you shut down nuclear plants and trying to replace them with renewables, because you have to do so many more renewables and then you never really move. As opposed to what you see in a country like France or in Korea or elsewhere, you build a nuclear plant and you can shut down a coal plant. You build a nuclear plant, you can shut down a natural gas plant. If you build a solar farm, you can't shut down your natural gas plants because the sun doesn't always shine and you have to have a 100%

backup. So even in California, where we have more solar than almost anybody else, we came close to blackouts during the summer, during the sunny summer, because when the sun sets in the end of the day, it's when everybody turns on all of their electricity in the house. And so you have this poorly matched resource to when people are actually using electricity. Another aspect of it is people think that with the fuel rods that are the radioactive risk of making nuclear power, is it true that now people have found out one of the problems with burying the rods is that people are finding ways to reuse the rods, that there's a lot of energy-making capacity, even in what used to be seen as spent fuel rods that are creating an entire second wave of utility? Yeah, that's right. So what we do in the United States is that the fuel is used once, it's called once through, and then it comes out the

other end and there's still, you know, over 98% of the energy in those used fuel rods. The French take the used fuel rods, they cut them up and they so-called reprocess them to repurify essentially the radioactive elements, the uranium and the plutonium, and then they make new fuels out of it. We could have done that, and there was a lot of concern about it because it is a process that is, again, it's a dual-use process, and you can make weapons grade materials out of it. But yes, we can definitely recycle the used nuclear fuels if we want to. For me, it's sort of not been a major issue because I'm not that worried about the nuclear waste that we have. There's so little of it.

But certainly over the long term, over the next several hundreds of years, you'll probably just see those used fuel rods be recycled and turned into new fuel. What do people need to know if they care about global warming? Well, I think the most important thing is you're always wanting to move towards a cleaner fuel. And so there's a lot of conversation around how much of this or that can we use and by what date. There's enough imprecision on certain things.

So, for example, if you double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels, you know, we think we'll increase the temperature of the earth between two and four and a half degrees. There's a huge amount of uncertainty there. So the most important thing is just if you're using wood and dung, anything is better than that, including coal. If you're using coal, natural gas and nuclear

are better to move towards. And people sometimes ask me if I'm in favor of natural gas. And what I always say is I'm in favor of natural gas when it's replacing coal because it produces half the carbon emissions and less than a percent of many of the other pollutants because it's just a gas. I'm against natural gas for replacing nuclear

because nuclear is effectively not producing any carbon emissions worth measuring. It's so little. So for me, the way to think of it is as an energy ladder, and you want to go up the energy ladder towards cleaner burning fuels away from dirtier fuels. Another way to think of it is you're moving from solids to liquids to gases, and that's been a benevolent transition. It's really from carbon-intensive fuels towards hydrogen-intensive fuels. Why in California did they decide ultimately to not close the nuclear reactor recently?

There was a ton of political support to get rid of it. Seemed that your governor Newsom was on board. Then all of a sudden it didn't happen. Why? Well, the main reason is that the state could not maintain electricity supply. We were coming close to blackouts for three years in a row. And if you had shut down the source of electricity, which provides power for three million people, you very well could have had blackouts or you would have just have to have burned much dirtier fossil fuels. And I mean, not just gas, but also

diesel, potentially coal. So, you know, and we see there's these old diesel generators that were in poorer communities that they had been, I mean, there's many press releases over the last decade announcing the closure of these really dirty peaker plants, meaning to meet peak demand with dirty diesel energy. They said they were going to shut them down, but they've had to keep them online, which is an environmental justice issue because they're usually in communities of color and poor communities. So we had to have Diablo Canyon operating. I think the work of my colleagues and I to change attitudes had an impact. I've been fighting to save Diablo Canyon since 2016. We organized climate scientists to defend the plant. We protested in defense of the plant. I ran for office twice, in part in order to pressure the governor to keep it open. So I think all of those things helped to contribute to a changing of attitudes.

And it's amazing, Chris, because in California now a solid majority of people support nuclear power. And I don't think many people 10 years ago after Fukushima would have predicted that within a decade, a majority of Californians would be pro-nuclear. In my research, there was an interesting irony that kept appearing that, you know, I think America's commitment is something like 17 billion or something to the France Accords, the Paris Accords about what we're going to do to bring down emissions and this and that, and forget about the fact that this country is pledging to do more than a lot of other economies, even if those other economies could do more.

But it's like we're making it harder for ourselves to ever achieve those goals because we're neglecting what is maybe the fastest-growing power technology in other major economies, which is new nuclear. What is new nuclear versus the nuclear we have? And why are they making it when we were one of the pioneers of nuclear? And how do you reconcile us wanting to meet these goals with not using what the rest of

the world sees as the fastest way to get there? The cheapest, safest, and best nuclear is the kind that we have the most experience with. So I'm a bit of a heretic among heretics in the sense that I'm a pro-nuclear environmentalist, but I am more of the view that the nuclear we have is the nuclear that we should build more of because we have the experience. Where you see big cost increases is when we try to move towards these radical designs that nobody has ever built before. Arrogance has been a big problem in this technology because it attracts enthusiasts and it attracts people like Bill Gates, who I think his heart is in the right place. But I think they're overly confident about their ability to

create a totally different kind of nuclear power. I tend to be in support of people like the Koreans who, because they didn't have very much money, they had to focus on a single standardized design and basically build the same kind of reactor over and over again. So for me, I just think the next president needs to propose taking nuclear from 20 to 50 percent of our electricity and that we should have a single what maybe two standardized designs that's what we did after in the 1950s under eisenhower because we don't want state-owned companies we don't like socialism in the united states you would just have two what we call national champions in the united states it was westinghouse and general electric that would basically offer two standardized nuclear power plants

that utilities could build and have some sort of federal loan guarantees or something to reduce the cost of money, basically, since it's a long-term investment. It's guaranteed to be a good return to ratepayers. And so taxpayers have some benefit in just making the cost of capital a little bit lower. Two more things. One, how fast is the rest of the world running away from us in terms of they're maximizing the value of nuclear? The big threat has been the Russians and the Chinese. And I was more worried about that before Russia invaded Ukraine. I think Russia is going to have a hard time selling its reactors abroad. Although even as I say that, I'm not so sure because,

you know, but I think the point is that Russia and China have made big government investments to support the technology, whereas the United States did not do that. So we saw Saudi Arabia go with the Chinese in nuclear building. I'm not a huge fan of the Saudis, but nonetheless, it's a major U.S. ally. We should have been building those nuclear plants. Similarly, Asia and Africa are places that the Russians and the Chinese are seeking to build nuclear plants, and we should be doing that. There is a strategic issue here, which is that it is always a dual-use technology. You train nuclear engineers. There's always the risk of it turning into a weapons program. And so for that reason, what you want, and this is what the great insight after World War II,

is that you want the United States to be involved because you want to be involved. And also nuclear is actually a great way to just build relationships between countries, between scientists, between engineers, at a security level, at an industrial level. It's part of what makes for good globalization, for liberal democratic globalization rather than the kind of totalitarian systems that the Chinese and the Russians are promoting. What does it mean that China and Russia, who are known for oil and gas, are putting a lot of money into nuclear? It means that they're smart on the technology. You know, we may not agree with their politics and their approach to governing societies, but they know that nuclear is a really good value and they know that it's a reliable source of energy. You know, we're still in a terrible energy crisis where Europe doesn't have enough natural gas.

And as a result, we had the biggest year of coal ever last year. We were supposed to be moving away from coal towards gas, but we didn't have sufficient gas in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so nuclear, meanwhile, has been chugging away. I mean, it's been a reliable source of electricity around the world. You can store a lot of nuclear fuel on site. You can have it available. So it just ends up being a really reliable and secure source of energy in a time of significant volatility. Also, you had a lot of the Europeans buying on fear because they thought they weren't going to be able to get it. And that obviously spiked demand for them to fill all of their capacities, which because of a relatively mild winter to this point, they have plenty of fuel right now because they bought in advance thinking

that the downturn in supply and the upturn in need because of the winter would be more of a factor than it has been to point, but we'll see what happens going forward. Last one. Doing my homework, and I kept bumping into this thing of, hey, man, if you want to be part of the solution, getting an EV right now isn't as helpful as you think because it's about how the electricity is getting made. You're buying an EV, but you're just putting more strain on a system that's using dirty technologies to create enough electricity and put it into a grid that can't handle it, that we won't put the infrastructure money into it. If you want to be part of the solution, focus on what's making the power, not what's using the power, which would be your EV. How do you understand that? Yeah, this is a huge issue. I mean, in California, for example, they announced a ban on gasoline-powered vehicles and then five days later said, please don't charge your electric vehicles because we're at risk of blackouts. So you're going to see an increase of demand from electricity by somewhere around 50% if you were

to move to 100% electric vehicles. So whether you're using electric vehicles or fuel cells, you're going to need a much larger power sector, all the more reason to have nuclear and all the more reason to do some good planning. Because I think there's a lot of hand-waving saying, oh, well, the technology will kind of solve itself. But no, you're potentially running the risk of over-reliance on electricity and losing that diversity that we know is so important for reliability. that diversity that we know is so important for reliability. Where do you think we are one year, three years, five years from today when it comes to nuclear power? Well, I think the trends are really positive. And I think that the big event is just changing hearts and minds and reaching people. And that's happening.

And it was happening generationally just because people are, you know, the kids today are more worried about climate change than they are about nuclear war. I think it's also as Fukushima recedes into the distance, as we get better technologies, I think it's really positive. I think that the nuclear industry often undermines itself by overpromising on particularly new whiz-bang technologies rather than going what's tried and true. new whiz-bang technologies rather than going what's tried and true. But there is now a grassroots pro-nuclear movement around the world that I think is offering a really salutary role in making the case for nuclear power. You got the doomsday clock just set by those scientists that measure it, put just 10 seconds or something from midnight, which is doomsday.

So the nuclear fears haven't disappeared when it comes to weaponry. But the urgency of getting to a greener, better economy is certainly equal in its intensity. And it'll be interesting to see which messaging wins out. And we'll be watching and we'll be talking about it. Thank you very much, Schellenberger. Appreciate you, brother. Great to be with you, Chris. Appreciate you. about it. Thank you very much, Schellenberger. Appreciate you, brother. Great to be with you, Chris. Appreciate you. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right from your couch.

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and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why? Because the science changes, okay? It's not like politics where people decide to believe one thing and no matter what happens with the facts, they never shift. This is the opposite. Ooh, prebiotics work with probiotics, but in this way.

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Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. Green and nuclear seem as though they are opposites when it comes to environmental science of energy. What is the reality about nuclear when it comes to going green? Yeah, I mean, green is an ambiguous term. People mean different things when they talk about green. Yeah. I mean, green is an ambiguous term. People mean different things when they talk about green. I think in the EU, they classified nuclear and natural gas as counting as green in terms of investments. I don't agree with the natural gas part of that, but was excited to see nuclear included in that.

And I think there's definitely been a shift. So maybe 10 years ago, groups working on clean energy would not have considered nuclear green, ago, groups working on clean energy would not have considered nuclear green, but the realities of decarbonization of climate change are really changing how people think about it. And I'll give you a few examples. So the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has been a long time anti-nuclear organization, they came out a few years ago saying, you know, it's really not good that existing nuclear power plants are closing prematurely because when they close, fossil fuel use goes up. So we've seen this time and again in the U.S. And that was a big deal for them to make that shift.

In California, where I live, Governor Gavin Newsom has changed his position on nuclear. We had a power plant, Diablo Canyon, that's supposed to close down. It just got a lifetime extension. Hopefully, it'll extend even longer because of the realities of grid reliability. We are having power outages in California sometimes in the summer when there's not enough electricity. And also we have a 100% clean electricity target. It's going to be very difficult to meet even if we keep Diablo Canyon running. And then in Europe with the shutoff of natural gas pipelines from Russia, they're having huge power crunches and also just rising prices because they don't have enough electricity and they, you know, built out a lot of natural gas capacity.

So whether you consider, you know, ideologically, if nuclear is green, it's definitely low emissions. It's definitely doesn't have that water pollution. low emissions. It definitely doesn't have that water pollution. And so it's starting to get another look in terms of how it's incentivized, because that's really the big reason that we haven't heard much about nuclear, you know, in the past 20 years is it hasn't had those financial incentives the way that renewables have, for better or for worse. And so that's starting to shift in Europe and the U.S. in terms of federal incentives for clean energy. And so as far as the current Biden-Harris administration is concerned, nuclear is green, nuclear is clean energy, and they've shown that through legislation. But they're not building any either.

The U.S.? You know, like the Biden-Harris administration, they haven't come out loud and proud about how they're promoting nuclear energy. They have at different times. I mean, there's a lot for nuclear and the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bifriter's infrastructure deal. Biden's been very supportive of nuclear, even from his campaign. That was a big compromise between Biden and Bernie Sanders and their unity task force was support for nuclear, which is also a big shift from Bernie Sanders, who's been a longtime anti-nuclear. And why do you think Bernie was off about how he felt about nuclear? You think he just tied it to weapons? Not only tied it to weapons, but also

tied it to traditional utilities, sort of big, you know, corporate entities, whereas, you know, Vermont and people who live in those sorts of places are focused on, you know, smaller scale, distributed energy. That's sort of, you know, it's like log cabins and solar panels. It just, that's how they feel. It's not, you know, they're not comparing the stats or the numbers on emissions and cost. They just like the feel of renewables. And I think that's true for a lot of people. Stigma versus science. That's what gets you. It's not even stigma. It's just aesthetically people like that small-scale energy. And that's something that might shift as newer nuclear technologies are becoming much smaller and modular.

You might not have, you know, your own nuclear reactor, but your, you know, small town of 10,000 people might have a small modular reactor. And that, you know, might feel better for people. They can understand it. They can go and touch it. They have, you know, might feel better for people. They can understand it. They can go and touch it. They have more control and ownership over it. The idea that if we want to go green, if we want to hit our emissions targets, if we want to bring down carbon in the environment, in the atmosphere, the way we protest that we do, nuclear has to be part of the solution. Is that true? Yes, 100%.

You can technically do 100% zero carbon power grid without nuclear. I mean, some people will contest that. You can do it. It's just going to be crazy expensive and it's going to take a ton of land because wind and solar are quite land intensive for the amount of energy produced

and you have to build a bunch of storage. And right now we just don't have the technology to do that level of storage by many orders of magnitude. We have very little energy storage. Even if you're doing pumped hydro, even if you're doing big grid scale batteries, we're so far off and you have to overbuild. So if you need five gigawatts of power in your city in the middle of the summer, you have to build 25, 30 gigawatts. So you have to have a lot the summer. You have to build, you know, 25, 30 gigawatts. So you have to have a lot more infrastructure. You have to build a lot more transmission lines, a lot more. And that's really hard to cite in today's political climate. Nobody wants

transmission lines going through their yard. You think people don't want to live next to nuclear power plants. Nobody wants a transmission line running through their yard. So that's really difficult. And I think that's something that we're just starting to talk about more is this huge build out of renewables, which we need for decarbonization, really relies on a huge build out of new transmission infrastructure. And we're not sure how we're going to do that. So there is an irony at play here that at the same time that we are ramping up in our political rhetoric, got to go green, got to go green, especially on the left. It's become a great cudgel on the right

that, man, this is crazy. They want us to ban gas engines. We're not even close to ready to have in all EVs. But at the same time that the left is getting more and more aggressive with its green rhetoric, it's been fighting to close down nuclear plants all over the place. And, you know, at the worst and at the best, they're not singing about nuclear as part of the solution. So it's like one of their best options to get where they want to go. They're against. Do I have it right? Yes. Traditionally, although I will say again, things are changing. So, for example, the Green New Deal, you know, framework for aggressive action on climate change, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, big lefty, she said that it was open to including nuclear. You know, the Inflation Reduction Act, you can

argue, is somewhat a Green New Deal, just with a different name. And it has a ton of supports for new nuclear, existing nuclear, you know, and it got the votes it needed to pass, including from the more progressive and most progressive members in the House. So I think give them credit for being pragmatic. You know, the goal is reduce emissions. The goal isn't, you know, build my favorite source of energy. And so whatever you can do to bring emissions down as fast as possible. And I think we've seen a lot of pragmatism from the left. And then to further that point, I mean, something that people maybe don't think about is that nuclear is really bipartisan in the Senate and in the House. There's been a lot of bills in

the last years in support of nuclear that have got crazy, you know, 80 votes in the Senate. You never see that for anything, even for, you know, renaming a post office. And so I think that's something that we need to capitalize on. As you said, you know, this debate over, you know, gas cars or gas stoves, as we saw last week, a lot of polarization between Republicans and Democrats. But on nuclear, there's a lot of agreement. And I think we're going to see more of that going forward. And that's something, you know, who knows why, but Republicans really like nuclear power and it's low carbon. So I'd say we just go with it. I don't see as much sunshine in the present or in the future as you do. The right is less antagonistic towards nuclear power than the left

because they don't want to agree with the left. And there's a difference between what you vote for about infrastructure and what's going to bring jobs and bring money into your constituency as opposed to what you want to stand up and fight for as a policy. And the left is highly antagonistic to nuclear traditionally. Even AOC saying she's open, you know, that's an ambivalence that she almost never has about anything, you know, strong and wrong is like, well, you know, part of her license plate, you know, on certain things, she knows that she's right and she likes it. Other things, she knows that she's right and

she's wrong and she still likes it. But I digress. You don't see people jumping up and down for nuclear the way they do on the left for wind and solar. That's why they get the money, those industries. Those industries have played the game better and they don't have the stink on them that nuclear power does. that nuclear power does. And on the right, they are so tied to coal and fossil fuels, and they are kind of having to double down on that to combat the left, because in a binary system, it's zero-sum, right? So they need for the left to lose, and that means they must be in favor of what the left doesn't like, that bleeds into nuclear a little bit also. It's kind of the enemy of your enemy, winds up being your friend. So that's the politics of it. I don't see as much sunshine because I see it as more tactical than I do strategic, that it works for them. But you could be right, and I'd rather you be right because I'd like to have better solutions. Let's go with you. One year, three years, five years. What do you think is a potential trajectory of change

with respect to the United States and nuclear power? Yeah, so we are actually seeing projects move forward. You know, there's this big traditional nuclear power plant that's about to come online in Georgia. You know, the electoral politics of Georgia are shifting, but I still think we would consider it a quite conservative area in terms of, you know, congressional representation, at least. So that's a huge project, you know, over two gigawatts coming online this year. But in terms of new nuclear projects, you know, there is a lot of interest from Republican

controlled states. One of the big projects that's moving forward is in Wyoming, and it's being built at a coal plant that's retiring or has retired. And that's, you know, on the ground, state legislatures and state policymakers, you know, for all the rhetoric, they are really interested in bringing new jobs to their communities, to their states. And nuclear, for all of its green credentials, it actually employs a ton of people, probably the most of any electricity generating source, more than the coal plant that it would be replacing. And it's highly unionized, which the left does like. And so there are other reasons that Republicans would support nuclear,

not just to own the libs. And you are seeing this play out at the state level. Coal power plants have been closing rapidly over the last decade, mostly because competition with cheap natural gas is difficult. State level policymakers know this. For all the rhetoric around saving coal during the Trump administration, these plants are closing, these mines are closing. It's for economic reasons. It's for free market reasons. So there's a lot of interest in how to help these communities, how to diversify their economies, how to bring new jobs in. And that's why there's so much interest from our organization, Good

Energy Collective, but of course, from the Biden-Harris administration in coal to nuclear repowering. That's something where the actual power plants are quite similar. The workforce can be retrained quite easily. You know, operating a coal power plant or nuclear power plant, it's actually not as different as you might think. It's just boiling water at the end of the day. So there is genuine interest.

Wyoming State Legislature has passed several pieces of legislation to help support and accelerate the transition to new nuclear. So it's not just, you know, rhetoric. There's a lot happening on the ground. There's maybe six or seven projects moving forward in the U.S. and at first commercial demonstrations of new nuclear technologies, really cool designs. So I think in one year, we'll have a lot more commitments on new projects. Within three years, we'll have a lot more shovels

in the ground, construction going and in places that don't have a lot of experience with nuclear, you know, Wyoming, West Virginia, Colorado, Alaska. So that's, I think, going to be really exciting. And then again, you know, people sometimes complain with these new nuclear designs that, well, it's, you know, we're not really going to see much happen before 2030. And that may be true, but we still need to decarbonize after 2030. We're still going to have, you know, hopefully a lot more electric vehicles. We're going to need electricity, you know, hopefully a lot more electric vehicles. We're going to need electricity, new electricity for those. So the power sector is still going to be growing. We're going to have a lot more carbon to get rid of by 2030.

So there's a huge market, even if these technologies aren't sort of up and running until then. I think there's still a huge growth market. And then after 2030, you know, there's still the rest of the world. There's still a lot of places burning a lot of coal. And they need options, too. And for a lot of them, they still have a lot of heavy industry. Renewables just don't make a lot of sense because of those reliability issues. And there is over 30 countries right now around the world that want nuclear, that don't currently have nuclear, and they're working through the process to get it. In terms of competitive advantage and growth, the rest of the world is catching on to nuclear or new nuclear.

And America is holding itself back intentionally from addressing the needs of those emerging markets and wants by being able to be a pioneer of providing nuclear, which was what we were way ahead of in the beginning. And we're starving ourselves of it as well and losing competitive advantage. True? Absolutely true. I have a great paper to this effect. But to summarize, you know, the U.S. launched this initiative, Atoms for Peace. It's a speech by Eisenhower in the 1950s saying we want to share nuclear, the peaceful uses of nuclear with the world. And we did. The U.S. was the largest exporter of commercial nuclear technology

up until the 90s. You know, they built reactors all over the place. But really, because of stagnation in the domestic industry, you know, over the last 30 years, they've really ceded leadership to Russia and China primarily, and also to France and South Korea. South Korea is sort of growing in that space. But there's been a lot of rhetoric in the U.S. government over the last 10 years of like, we need to get back in the game. We need to regain our market share. And not just for economic reasons, because when you build a nuclear power plant in another country, you're establishing a 100-year relationship and partnership with that country. So for allies, it's really important. And it was something when the U.S. was during the Cold War,

it was sort of, you know, the U.S. was competing with the USSR on building reactors in often low-income countries and emerging economies. And we're starting to see that again, particularly since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. A lot of countries that had agreements with Russia were kind of saying, wait a second, are we going to be dependent on Russia for our power sector, for our nuclear fuel? And U.S. companies have been stepping in

to sort of say, hey, we can offer some of these services, we can get you fuel. Or we're seeing now more and more just in the last couple of months, new partnerships, new announcements on building reactors or doing feasibility studies for reactors, particularly in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia. So there's actually a lot happening on the international front as well. But the U.S. is at a disadvantage, is a little late to the game, but I think they're ramping up quickly. And there's just a lot of

companies working in this space in the U.S., but they haven't had that sort of federal support the same way that Russia and China have very state-supported industries that are hard to compete with. But the U.S. is getting up to speed. What do you tell your friends when you're out on the backpacking, mountaineering trails, and they're talking about what we need to do going forward. And you want to say, don't hate on nuclear power. What's your sell to your fellow greenies? We can't fully decarbonize without nuclear. And definitely it's going to be much faster and easier and cheaper to fight climate change if we have nuclear in our tool belt. But we do

want to sort of sharpen that nuclear tool, make it better. And so I think good policies can really help nuclear be a just and equitable energy technology. It's already, you know, a clean and reliable electricity technology, but good policies can help us get it to be sort of, you know, an even better option.

And that's what I'm working on. What are the problems with it right now that have to be solved to get it where it needs to be? The main one is cost. better option. And that's what I'm working on. What are the problems with it right now that have to be solved to get it where it needs to be? The main one is cost. Even though I've made the argument several points that it is affordable electricity once you get it built, it's so hard to finance this, particularly for small utilities, municipal utilities, publicly owned utilities. They don't have the capital to finance such a large project. So it's not safety. It's money. Yeah, it's money.

Okay. Doc, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. This has been great. No, listen, I'm happy to do it. I'm going to stay on it. You've got a friend or another friend in the media. As things come up that you think are interesting that are being ignored, plus minus, reach out to me. Let me know. Yeah. And if you ever have questions on something that comes up in the news related to nuclear, happy to talk. Appreciate it, Doc. Be well. So, Heather, what was a big bright light for me in this, because I was open-minded, first of all, and I think you kind of have that going for you. Cultural stigma aside, I definitely grew up

thinking this is some scary stuff right now, and conflating weapons, same thing, that's a big bomb, that reactor thing, and it looks alien to begin with.'s just no good but stigma aside it's not an active battleground okay we're not fighting nukes like when the no nuke shirt came out in the 80s which was really just about the weapons and certainly bled over to the technology in general we're past that you're in a no zone right now and what changed it for me was how do we get to this no carbon thing? Like, how do we reach these goals that we just put all this money into in these Paris accords? Like, how are we going to do this? A few of us got Teslas where I live. And like the electricians were saying, you know, we're going to have brownouts over here if you guys were all charging

at the same time. I was like, what? And I started to do some research and I was like, I don't understand why people don't talk about nuclear power if they're all into going green because it seems like you have to have it. So is that the link? Moms care about their kids, care about their future, and the future when it comes to energy can't be what we want it to be without nuclear. Is that a true proposition, Heather? Yes, definitely. And like I said, I kind of happened into nuclear and I happened into my job at the power plant. And I think it's really important to be curious. I'm a curious person. So I asked a lot of questions and I kind of changed my mind about nuclear. I learned a lot of what I had heard was, you know, misinformation and just a fear and people being scared and kind of spreading the wrong information. So, this is ridiculous. We really need to change how

we're thinking about things. And I think that's our biggest challenge right now, even though we've said we're going to continue to run Diablo Canyon, it's still a conversation about reliability and just having enough energy, period. It's still not about clean electricity and how we need so much more clean electricity. And yeah, so it's definitely the more I look, the more I realize that we cannot accomplish any of our goals without nuclear. And there's a lot of challenges with a lot of other renewable energies that people don't really talk about in an honest way. And, you know, we're supportive of all clean energy, but we also think it's really important to look at things on a level playing field

and to look at the downsides, land usage and intermittency and raw materials. And there's a whole lot of things that have to go into this decision that we're trying to make for how to power our future. And it's complex and we really have to be honest about it. And so we're trying to share

the honest information about nuclear. Well, the media is even tiptoeing in the direction, not taking as big strides as we may usually. I was reading one of the articles about you guys starting the group and it was from CNBC, which is obviously a business oriented thing. But even that article, there was a feel to it that I wasn't crazy about, you know, that it was like, you know, Heather Hoff worked in a Diablo Canyon controls room and all of a sudden she became in favor of nuclear energy. You know, like, well, did she get hit by some gamma rays or some shit? Is that what it was? Did they just pay her off? Yeah, like the if-then nature to it didn't play right,

didn't hit me right. It was set up as, this is kind of weird, you know, like that this mom wants nuclear. And I think even at Diablo Canyon, Kristen, that's because it plays as a must, not as a want,

that Diablo Canyon is still open because it has to be because you guys are so screwed up not as a want, that Diablo Canyon is still open because it has to be. Because you guys are so screwed up that you can't do the right thing, which is to close Diablo Canyon. And where do you see an avenue for advancement here in the conversation about how we go from where we are to where we want to be? This is such an interesting question and something that Heather and I are thinking about constantly. And we've been thinking about it for six years since we started Mothers for Nuclear.

You know, the nuclear industry messaging for many years, well, firstly, it's been no messaging because no news is good news. So they're just going to fly under the radar and continue to provide reliable electricity without telling anyone about it. And then when they do tell people about it, when they talk about nuclear energy, they're just going to tell you how safe they are. You know, you look at any nuclear plants messaging or nuclear industry messaging, we are safely providing electricity safely to you every day safely. They just can't stop. But what does the public hear in that? They hear like, gosh, there must be something so dangerous going on there because they have to tell me how safe it is. It's not like you go on an airplane and they're like, welcome to the safest airline. We're going to safely fly you to Hawaii today. They're like, come fly the friendly skies, right? They're talking about the value of the service they're providing. And nuclear, we just don't talk about the value. And what is the value? People don't even know.

People don't even know it's carbon-free. Nuclear is carbon-free. Go out on the street right now and take a survey of people, and I bet you that you'd be very surprised. People just don't realize that. So we need to talk about, well, what's it done for me lately? And what it's done for people lately is it's kept their energy prices down, right? It's avoided burning fossil fuels by having a reliable, clean source of electricity. It's providing jobs to a lot of small towns and people in small towns and boosting economies.

It's saving land so we don't have to use all these beautiful natural spaces with electricity that only operates intermittently. You know, nuclear has a great value message, but the industry is still hiding it. And it's still hidden, like politically, you know, we don't talk about that. In California, that's not like the number one thing you see in the headlines. And that's what we have to switch. We have to start talking about the value. Yeah. And the question is how you do that. Rule one, if you're explaining in a controversy, you're losing. Right. You got to remember that. So if you've got to say you're safe, you're automatically, your safety's in question. Two, that you have a better chance of helping people understand data if it's ranked.

For instance, instead of saying the value proposition with nuclear power is that our cost per unit is X. I don't know what that means. And I worked in finance and I don't understand it. But if you were to say, what is the lowest unit of cost for mass production of electricity? Because, you know, the renewables are going to be lower because even though they have costs, you know, there's massive infrastructure costs initially with nuclear because it's a big plant and it's sophisticated. You rank them. I did this on Google. You have to look for nuclear to be included in the ranking. They do, obviously, the renewables, right? Especially that one, because they kill it on

that one. But if you do emissions, carbon, environmental fallout, cost over time, that's when you start to see nuclear pop up if you can find it, because nobody ranks it because it's not part of the discussion, which has an upside and a downside. I mean, I guess where you guys have to start is with the, what do you care? Okay, you work at a place, you want to make sure that the kids you had and the kids you may still want to have aren't going to have two heads. All right, I get that. You were curious, but now why, like, why do you care so much? You work there. I get it. You believe it's safe. You believe we should use it more. A lot of people believe that about where they work and what they do, Heather, they don't become advocates for the industry.

We're not making very much progress on the things that I care about in terms of climate and everyone that I know that cares about the same things, I kind of expect them to have the same level of curiosity and to kind of investigate this nuclear thing. And I just, I see so many people that should care about this, that want the same things as I do, and they're doing the exact opposite of what is going to actually accomplish what they care about. They're shutting down nuclear and it's getting replaced with fossil fuels. And they just don't quite have the Google search skills. Maybe you said it was hard to find the data and it really is hard to find. So people don't know what happens when we shut down nuclear.

And they don't know that a lot of our, you know, clean energy is a result of trading carbon credits. And it's like this paper shuffle thing. And there's a whole lot of stuff out there that seems so good. And if it seems so good, you know, it probably is too good to be true. And it's not really working and not really doing the things that they want it to do or that they're expecting it to do. So, yeah, I mean, Heather and I spent a lot of our lives from our childhoods trying to be great environmentalists. I was an obsessive recycler. Heather was like president of the recycling club at her college.

We both like, you know, can't walk by a trash can and see an aluminum can in it and just let it be like I have to recycle it. It's compulsive. And we thought for a long time, just by being good stewards of what we had, you know, using less and recycling, you know, that's how I was taught I was going to save the world and make a difference. And then when I learned about what was going on with nuclear, you know, both of us thought, oh my gosh, like this is how we can really make a difference. Like I'm going to make such a huge impact on the future, my kids'

future and for the environmental cause if I just could save one nuclear plant, right? Versus all the recycling that I've ever done in my full life. And so we decided instead of being like anti-fossil fuels or anti-everything, I see so many anti-everything groups. We had to be for something. It seems like humans, we kind of bond together a little better if we're complaining or we're like together being against something, but that's depressing to me. We have solutions to problems. And so if someone's anti-climate change, like where's that moving us? It's not moving us anywhere. I want to be for a solution. So that's why we're for Mothers for Nuclear.

And it helps both of us feel like we're doing something positive for our future. What's the growth you've seen, Heather? Well, when we first started Mothers for Nuclear, it was pretty lonely. It felt pretty crazy. Yeah, our first couple of interviews, you know, like they would ask, we hear you started a group called Mothers for Nuclear, and we would begin to respond. And then they're like, wait, stop. Everyone in the office is laughing. Hold on just a minute. Like, what is this thing? Mothers for Nuclear? And it was a really small group of people. And we quickly made, you know, like three or four connections with other groups that were pro-nuclear. Since then, it's been a huge explosion of people, like I said, being curious and, you know, realizing that this is the key to our future. And we've seen huge growth in nuclear advocacy and people talking about it in different ways from different perspectives. And, you know,

we're the mothers for nuclear. We're trying to reach a certain audience of other mothers and women, but there's lots of other nuclear advocates out there that are like the nuclear bros, and they're really extreme, and they want all nuclear all the time. And that's great. You know, they reach their people.

And then there's like Izzy, and she does social media and TikTok, and she reaches the young crowd because nuclear is cool. And we just think all the advocates are so important. And we're so excited to see it growing into a big community. Extreme sell. I know that nuclear has to be part of the discussion. How much? What form? Where? Sure, you got to figure that out about everything. But we're hurting ourselves because we keep

setting these goals and targets and we're having fights about whether or not to ban combustion engines in the next 10 years or not. We're never going to be able to do that anyway. Forget about the fact that I drive a 67 Nova. It's that we're never going to be able to meet any of these targets if we're not using all the tools available. And as you said, instead of being against no more gas engines, and then Wyoming says, oh yeah, no electric engines. You know, what does that do for us? And I believe that you got to be looking for solutions. I love that you're doing it. I love that you're doing it with an eye on what matters most, which is our kids.

And I wish you good luck and consider me an ally. Thank you so much. Thank you for helping me understand it better. Of course. Take care, guys. Appreciate you. All right. Thank you once again for being part of this experiment, this conversation and critical thinking about nuclear power and why it should figure as part of our solution in our transition

from fossil fuels to cleaner burning energy to get to a better place of where everything is green. Whatever that means, ultimately, I think we're still figuring it out. And that's okay. You don't have to be positive about everything to be positive about your future. So subscribe, follow, give me comments about what worked for you about this and what did not. Appreciate my partner at the Nuclear Energy Institute. I hope we get to do more of this. As long as what I believe they're telling me checks out with my own research,

I'm good to go because I want to have a conversation that benefits you by giving you more fuel, pun intended, for thought. I'll see you next time. Don't forget to subscribe at YouTube. It's free. And News Nation, check us out, 8 and 11 p.m. Eastern. It's for the independent-minded critical thinker. So nice, they play us twice.