The Daily Signal - The Nuclear Option: Unleashing America’s Energy Future (Bonus Interview)

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Nuclear power stands at a critical crossroads in America. With growing demands for electricity and a desire from the incoming Trump administration to bolster America’s energy independence, nuclear energy has the potential to transform our future. So what’s preventing the United States from experiencing a nuclear revolution? In a groundbreaking new book, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Jack Spencer argues nuclear power can be a dynamic, market-driven energy source—but only if government gets out of the way. “Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation” (Optimum Publishing International) makes the case that regulatory barriers have made nuclear power unnecessarily expensive rather than the economically competitive energy source it should be. Purchase your copy: https://www.heritage.org/NuclearRevolution Today, a maze of outdated regulations are stifling innovation while doing little to enhance safety. Spencer spoke with The Daily Signal to explain the challenges facing the nuclear industry and how it could power America in the future. Subscribe to Spencer’s podcast, “The Power Hour”: https://www.heritage.org/the-power-hour Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a special bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 22nd. I'm your host, Rob Lewy. And today we're doing something a little different. Jack Spencer, a senior research fellow for energy and environmental policy at the Heritage Foundation, hosts the Power Hour podcast. He's also the author of a brand new book, Nuclear Revolution, Powering the Next Generation, from Optimum Publishing International. I interview Jack about the book on his show, and today we're giving all.

our listeners an opportunity to hear that conversation. I've known Jack for nearly two decades, and he's among the most passionate advocates for nuclear energy that you'll meet. But he also believes a nuclear revolution must be driven by the free market, not government. The book is on sale now, and we've included a link in the show notes. Finally, I hope you'll consider subscribing to the power hour. The Trump administration has promised to unleash American energy in 2025, and Jack's show will track all of the developments that he'll be. you need to know. Stay tuned for the interview right after this. We get it. With big media bias, it's hard to find accurate honest news. That's why we've put together the Morning Bell newsletter,

a compilation of the top stories and conservative commentary. To subscribe, just head todailysignal.com slash morning bell subscription or visit DailySignal.com and click on the connect button at the top of the page. This is a real treat. You have to a new book. It is called Nuclear Revolution, Powering the Next Generation. And I'm delighted to ask you a series of questions about it, but also to hear from you why you are so passionate about this issue. And so before we get into the details of the book, maybe we can just start there. You and I've known each other for a long time. You've done everything from write white papers and provide policy recommendations to powerful people in Washington, D.C. to produce a

documentary film on the topic. What is it? Take us back to what made you so interested in this particular topic. Well, first of all, Rob, let me thank you for agreeing to do this today. For those of you don't know, as Rob mentioned, we've been friends and colleagues for a long time, and he's the one person that I really wanted to come interview me for this. And also, secondly, thank you for remembering Powering America, the documentary we made, which I have to say, I've looked at it a few times over the years.

recently, it still holds up. It's really good. And before we start talking about the book, Nuclear Revolution, you all need to go online and check out Powering America. It's a great documentary on nuclear power, and I'm very proud of what we produced here. We'll make sure that we provide a link in the show notes, so we make it easy for everybody to get it. And Jack, even more so, we should re-up it on the Daily Signal.

We should. So our Daily Signal subscribers can see it too. I like it. I like it. Let's do that. So, why am I passionate about nuclear power? Look, nuclear power is the one power source that can, I think, meet the most needs of the most people. It provides clean, reliable, safe, environmentally friendly energy. And what makes it unique, though, I would argue also coal and natural gas also do those things, actually. But what makes nuclear unique is that to use a, term that the that the kids are using nowadays, it's been gaslighted for decades. We've been told through through politics, through popular media for decades at nuclear is dangers. There's green sludge, it's radiation, fish with three eyes, all of the rest of it.

None of which is true. None of it's true. Despite literally decades of antagonism towards the technology, it remains in place. place, remains moving forward, slowly but surely, because of all these great things. So the reason I've been interested in it is what if we could remove those barriers and allow nuclear to be all that it can be? So that's, I guess, the foundation of why I'm interested. But there's a second reason that ties more into my interest in public policy more generally.

Now, you've known me for a long time. I'm a free enterprise guy, free market guy. Nuclear is interesting because it doesn't exist in a free market. at all. Yet, when it touches free enterprise, free markets, it does really well. Despite that, people who oppose nuclear, they argue that it costs too much. People who are for nuclear, they tend to express their pro-nuclear stance through public support, subsidies. Not always, but that's always a piece of the action. Now, that could be justifiable, maybe, given that so many of the obstacles that nuclear faces are government imposed.

So, as I argue in the book, I wouldn't invest one of my own dollars in nuclear unless there was some public support matching that or helping support that. What I also argue in the book is that's no way to build a nuclear, any industry. And so what has always been the focus of my work is arguing that rather than subsidized, nuclear, let's get to the underlying problems that has inflated the costs over the years. And as we talk about in the book, it used not to be so expensive. So I'm not arguing that nuclear will be as inexpensive as it was in 1967 or five or whatever, but it might be. It might be less. But what I know for sure is it doesn't have to be as expensive as it is today. So the answer lies somewhere in between. And here's the other thing I would argue. No one knows. No one knows people who support

nuclear say it's the cheapest thing ever and people who oppose it's too expensive. Here's what I know as a free enterprise guy. No one actually knows what it will cost. But let's give it a shot because it has a whole lot to offer. That's great. Thank you for that answer. But one more question about you and your interest in this topic before I delve into some of the contents of the book. you and I, as you've mentioned, have known each other for quite a long time. And I think that when I first joined Heritage in 2007, I think you were here at the time. I had a decade in by that point. So you got a head start.

When you decided that this was an area of public policy that you wanted to focus on, was there a particular moment or something that you saw, you know, maybe a void in the marketplace where you said, Hey, I want to be a passionate champion of this. And I want to bring a free market perspective to the conversation. There's a huge void in the, if you are a free market person and pro-nuclear person, it's a small island that you live on. Like, I'm there. And every once in a while, someone else will pop up.

But there's not a whole lot of us. But I'll give you the quick story. So when I first came to Heritage in 1998, it's not quite a decade, but close to it. I did national security issues. I did that for six or seven years. And then I left and worked for a company called – it was Babcock and Wilcox and BWXT. Now it's BWXT. Anyway, they're a great American nuclear company.

And I was there for two years and I learned a ton about nuclear energy. It was when the first so-called nuclear renaissance in the mid-2000s was sort of emerging when we all thought nuclear was going to take off. And the reason we thought it was going to take off because there was a lot of subsidies around it. Anyway, I was part of that company. I'm forever grateful for having had that experience because they're a great company and they taught me a ton. But what I noticed quickly, given sort of where I'm from philosophically, that all of the discussion around the issue was about how government can push this forward. And as I learned more about it, I started to these things, you know, my synapses started going off thinking what I know works economically is not being applied here.

And there are all of these policies and regulations and approaches or whatever that are obstacles to an actual free enterprise-based industry emerging. And so Heritage at the time, so this would have been 2007-ish, was when the whole cap-and-trade stuff was really starting to emerge. And Heritage wanted to bring someone in who was free market and wanted to bring something to the debate other than no, no, no to everything. So they saw nuclear power as being an area where conservatives could have something interesting to offer in the CO2 space, but still not deviate from what our principles are.

So, you know, I had maintained a relationship with Heritage and that opportunity arose to come back to Heritage and do nuclear energy. And so that was how I got into the nuclear energy game. And that became a passion because it combined these two things that I thought were interesting from a policy standpoint, nuclear energy is interesting, but from a philosophical worldview standpoint, no one is really applying free market principles to the policy reforms that were being offered out there. Yeah. Jack, I love your personal story in part because it's similar to mine in some ways.

You and I were both tapped to be vice presidents and heritage. We served dutifully for a number of years, and we've both gone back now to, I think, what we're truly passionate about. my case, journalism leading the Daily Signal, in your case, nuclear energy. And let's talk about the book, Nuclear Revolution, Powering the Next Generation. You write that nuclear energy needs a revolution, in your words, rather than a Renaissance. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, that's my favorite question. Thank you for asking.

When people talk about the reemergence and interest in nuclear power, they called it, it was a term really coined, I guess, as I mentioned in the mid-2000s, the nuclear renaissance. There was a nuclear renaissance happening. And that fizzled. And now that there's this new reemergence and interest in nuclear power, people are hesitant to call it the nuclear renaissance because it was such a failure the first time. But that's what they call it. And my point is we don't need a renaissance. When you actually look at what a renaissance is, it's a reemergence in interest.

People are thinking about it, talking about it, interested in it. I don't think we need more interest in nuclear power. We need a revolution in nuclear power. Look, the fact of the matter is we have these massive electricity and power demand that is on the horizon, whether it's for AI or other technology or just, you know, regular industrial processes. We have a lot of electricity that we're going to need. And, you know, without getting political, I think that a lot of us on the conservative side see a lot of economic growth as well on the horizon, given the changes in the political landscape that have happened. And one thing that's as true as death in taxes is that as your economy grows, so does your energy demand. So nuclear energy can help provide all of that.

But it's not going to do it if you're just messing around on the margins. You know, a little bit of regulatory reform here. And all of the people who are working towards regulatory reform, those are all good steps in the right direction. I'm not bashing those or criticizing those. Those are all good. But that's how you get a renaissance. I argue that if we're going to meet the energy. demands of this country, and if nuclear is going to provide it, we don't need a Renaissance.

We need a revolution. And a revolution in nuclear energy starts with a revolution in policy. And so that's what I try to put forth. I try to put forth a series of recommendations that largely rejects the underlying notions that drive nuclear energy policy and regulation and creates alternatives to it. So one of the things I try to do is not – I'm not – I'm not recommending we get rid of all of the old ways we do things. There's a lot of institutional inertia that I think arguing to get rid of that stuff would

just end in failure. And I don't know that that's the wrong thing. As I mentioned earlier, if I was in the nuclear industry, I wouldn't want, you know, your whole business is built around this structure. However, I don't think that's how you get large growth, sustained growth in nuclear energy. I think we need to do something different. So I try to create alternatives. So for firms who want to do it a different way, they are free to do it a different way.

To take on the full financial responsibility, everything that goes with that, you will be given a light regulatory touch and you can go off and build nuclear power plants. And my theory is that the most innovative firms, the entrepreneurs in the industry, the people who have a lot of capital behind them, they'll go off and do that and they'll succeed or fail on their own. And I think that they'll succeed. And over time, we'll see a migration from the old way of doing things to a new way of doing things. Or maybe I'm wrong and we'll just continue with a slow, old, expensive, ultimately failing industry. I don't know. We'll see what happens. Well, there's so much I want to ask you about from that answer. But let me start with the topic

that's on so many people's minds. Obviously, just a couple of weeks ago, we had the U.S. presidential election, a new administration coming to Washington, D.C. obviously with a different cast of characters. So you talked about policy being an important role. How do you see, what lessons did we learn from the first Trump administration, first term of Trump, and that you expect to come back into play? And how does that maybe differ from what we've experienced over the last four years? Or maybe you'll tell me that not a whole lot changes because Washington is, you know,

controlled by this administrative state that is so difficult to break. Yeah, I can't answer that question. I don't know because people who support nuclear power across both parties have generally demonstrated that support through the same mechanism, which is subsidies and a recognition that the regulatory process is antiquated, but rather than providing alternatives trying to make the current system work better. My argument is the system is broken. Making it work better is not what you need to do.

You need something an alternative to it. So to answer your question, what does a new Trump administration bring? I don't know because the last Trump administration was very pro-nuclear, but there wasn't, there wasn't this push to really change how policy is done. And also, it bears mentioning there wasn't this renewed interest in nuclear energy back then. There was sort of there's been this sort of ongoing certain high level of support for nuclear amongst conservatives forever. I mean, that's sort of, you know, the conservative thing has been, you know, we're pro-nuclear, pro-coal pro-gas. The left is pro-renewables or whatever. And that's sort of the policy baseline.

But you have these ticks up. And we're right now in a tick up. So how a Trump administration who's coming in rejecting the administrative state also being pro-nuclear, how that all meshes together, I don't know. I'm hoping they have a look at my book and they're like, hey, this is interesting. Now, here's where I'm kind of excited about the opportunity. Elon Musk not long ago had a video on Twitter or someone sent it to me. I think it was on X saying we should get rid of all energy subsidies. And so, like, that's a basic tenant of my approach.

So Elon has said, I'm getting rid of the administrative state. He's against energy subsidies. You have RFK Jr. you're saying, you know, if you're in the public health sector, start packing your bags. So like if this mentality is brought government-wide, I think that there's going to be a real opportunity on nuclear, especially given where a lot of the interest in nuclear is emerging from right now. It's not emerging from the utilities.

Though that's there, it's also on this tech side. And the interesting thing on the tech side is you have to have. folks with a lot of money who aren't interested in waiting around for bureaucrats to fill out the forms. Like, they're like, I need power now. I need to make a billion dollars and you're standing in my way. So I'm going to go do this. And I feel like I believe that if given a pathway to do that, they will.

So that's where I think there are a lot of pieces that could fit together that will lead to change. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. Yeah, just to pick up on a couple of things. First of all, going back to the title of your book, I do feel like we are, perhaps the first Trump term, we were in the Renaissance period. I mean, I do feel like we're in a revolution given some of the words that they're saying. Now, obviously, words are one thing. It's a lot harder to carry out these actions and change the way Washington operates.

But obviously, I think we both remain hopeful that things like ending subsidies could be on the table. Are there other specific regulations or policies beyond just eliminating subsidies for energy that you advocate for in the book and you'd like to see policymakers consider? Yeah, I mean, there's probably seven or eight big things that I offer. One is getting rid of all energy subsidies and I think that that will allow all energy sources, including, by the way, renewables be more successful because it's not like renewables are immune. from the drag that subsidies put on in industry. If you subsidize something, you perpetuate mediocrity. My argument is you have all this money going into renewables. If you get rid of the subsidies, the money will coalesce around the best ideas and those

will move forward. But you didn't ask me about renewables. I couldn't help it. Here are some things that I think we need to do. Empower states to have more control over the nuclear industry, over the nuclear industry, to regulate nuclear power. legislation that exists that currently governs nuclear power, the Atomic Energy Act, it allows for states to have control, regulatory control, over certain slivers of nuclear power,

of nuclear power, the nuclear industry. And that didn't happen by accident. The federal government originally had a monopoly in the 50s over nuclear power, over everything nuclear. And they understood that for this to be successful because the government wanted a successful commercial nuclear sector because they saw that as essential for national security reasons. We can get into that if you're interested, but that just is what it was. And so the Atomic Energy Act allowed for the commercialization, the privatization of nuclear

technology. It wasn't long after that that states were like, hey, you're doing a bunch of the stuff in our states. We'd like to have some regulatory control over it as well. So the Atomic Energy Act was amended to allow for certain, things in nuclear power, not commercial power production, but things like some smaller reactors, research reactors, isotope production, some different things like that for them to have control over.

My argument is, let's expand on that idea. Nuclear power is neither new nor scary. Literally we have 70 years of safe operations. We have decades now of knowing that the federal government doesn't do a great job of regulating new and innovative technology. can do that, especially with these new nuclear technologies or the new app, the commercial application of technologies that haven't been commercialized yet. The federal government doesn't have that expertise.

They need to build it. My argument is if states want to expend those resources, let them do it. Let them regulate it. I think that they can. They've done it on other things nuclear. States regulate all sorts of things. It's not like Washington bureaucrats have a monopoly on the ability to efficiently regulate. In fact, I don't know that they have the ability to efficiently regulate.

So let's do that. But there's another part to that. The United States has 94 nuclear power reactors currently operating, many of them very old. And the NRC, the federal regulator, has a lot of history and know-how in regulating those. Those reactors, there's a lot of demand, regulatory demand, to increase their operating age or their ability to operate longer than their currently licensed for, to operate their power, to do all sorts of things. Let the federal regulator who has a lot of experience in that technology focus where the demand is for those things rather than building a whole new infrastructure for which there's not a ton of current demand despite the rhetoric of how everyone's talking about small modular and advanced nuclear, but no one's building them yet. Let the federal regulator instead of putting additional effort into those new technologies focus on what we know there's demand for and let states take more of a role in these new emergencies.

technologies, which, by the way, are smaller. They use less nuclear fuel. They don't operate, many of them under pressure. So there's a lot of reasons why states can do that. So that's a long-winded answer for just one thing. Here's a big one, and it's controversial, but I think it's necessary. One of the things that drives costs on nuclear power is the way they regulate and it's the basic theme of nuclear regulations protecting from radiation exposure.

That's a good thing. should regulate against radiation exposure. Here's the problem. The basis on which radiation exposure regulation, the basis of that is something called linear no threshold theory. This is the theory that any exposure to any low-dose radiation increases your risk to cancer. Here's the problem with that. It's not true.

We are exposed to low-dose radiation literally right now from space, from Earth, from all over the place. not to mention things like, you know, medical x-rays, flying in an airplane, like, were constantly bombarded by low-dose radiation. There are places in the world that have much higher levels of low-dose radiation exposure just by virtue of the region they're in. And there's no evidence that exposure to low-dose radiation necessarily increases your risk to cancer. Yet, having that as the basis, in other words, if the basis of your radiation protection is linear no threshold theory, which states that

any exposure to any low-dose radiation increases your risk to cancer, then the regulatory, the purpose of regulation is to have no exposure to low-dose radiation. If that's what you're trying to do, you're increasing costs exponentially for no additional health benefit. So here's what I argue in the book. Get rid of the LNT. That doesn't mean you don't regulate against low-dose radiation exposure, but build those radiations around the actual risk, not around this theoretical model that has been proven, or I shouldn't say prove, that there's lots of evidence that shows that it's not the case. There's even historical evidence, which we cite in the book, that the people who originally advocated for it didn't really think it was true. And this

has been a lynchpin of the anti-nuclear movement. And some have argued, and we reference it in the book, that they put so much emphasis on this in the early days of nuclear power or middays of nuclear power because that then became a launch point for fighting against nuclear energy. And so that's one thing. Jack, before you go on with others, can you just connect the dots for me? Why does that regulation increase the cost so exponentially? Because it requires you to, in building a nuclear power plant, both from the, from the core all the way out to what's protected, to put additional layers of protection that are not necessary.

So that means more distance for, to protect against potential accidents, more concrete, more everything that, increases costs. Again, I can't emphasize enough, Rob. I'm not saying not to protect against radiation leaks. Yes. But it should be based on the actual risk, not on a theoretical model that is proven not to be true. Right. And so here's how we know it increases costs. nuclear power used to be affordable, certainly compared to other energy sources in the late 60s, well, throughout the 60s into the early 70s. In the early 70s is when the federal regulator took on linear no threshold as the basis for its regulation, as its official basis. That's when you saw the first big step increase in nuclear power costs.

and you had a big step increase then, and then you had your next big step increase after Three Mile Island. And so we know that before L&T was the official regulatory basis of nuclear regulation, that it was far more affordable. And I need to point out, because this is important, the first 10 nuclear power reactors that we built have the exact same safety record as the last 10 nuclear power reactors that we've built, which is the same as everyone in between,

which is that no one has ever died or been sickened as a result. of radiation exposure in commercial nuclear power in the United States, ever. So we just need to recalibrate that. Not throw radiation protection to the side. I'm not saying that. Recalibrate it. The other one that I'll mention real quick, we can talk about others if you want, is privatizing nuclear waste management.

This has been a huge failure of the federal government. The federal government took control of nuclear waste management in 1982. It just shouldn't have. The federal government is, it's proven since 1982 incapable of doing it, but even if it was capable of doing it. This is something that the private sector should do. You produce the waste. You should manage it. Not just because if you produce what you should manage it, but because it has real world market implications.

If you're responsible for managing your waste, then you're going to be incentivized to figure out ways to produce waste that's easier to manage, that produces less waste. We wonder, you know, how to manage waste. If I'm responsible for it and you, then you are incentivized, Rob, to develop a technology to help me manage it. That's how markets work. That's how we solve this problem in an economically rational way, not by letting, you know, a bunch of bureaucrats in the Department of Energy be responsible for it. We just know that they can't because they haven't. And by the way, they're creating huge liabilities for the American taxpayer and not fulfilling their obligation. But even if they were doing it, as soon as they came up with a method, then the entire industry

coalesces around that. So you're going to build reactors not based on what makes the most sense economically necessarily, but what makes the most sense given that approach to managing waste. So there are a lot of different reasons that the private sector should do it. So thank you for taking us there because we've talked a lot about government policy and regulation. Let's talk about the private sector. What are some of the things that you think the industry can do to be more effective in terms of driving innovation, competitiveness, demonstrating, I think, to the public and to government

that they are responsible actors here and can take on this responsibility? I'm going to give a very unsatisfying answer here probably, but I'm going to answer it anyway to the best I can. I don't see it my place nor that of any politician or bureaucrat to tell any industry how to be better. That's industry's job. What I think is interesting and what I think is the proper role of public policy is getting politicians in special interest to quit telling industry how to be better.

Industry can handle that. So what can they do better? I'd like to say things like quit asking for subsidies, but like I said, I don't blame them because government has created all this problem. So I think the private sector will take care of itself. But here's what it absolutely has to do. From a safety standpoint, what it's always done, which is operate safely, operate as economically as possible.

Look, the industry does a great job with safe operations. You know, I've had the opportunity to tour countless nuclear power plants and reprocessing facilities and just different things. And I can tell you, without hesitation, there's not a more professional class of people in the world. There's just not. I mean, the people from top to bottom are just extraordinarily professional, extraordinarily competent.

We have the way that we, the way responsibility is structured in the United States in terms of responsibility for each nuclear power plant is the right way to do it. Whereas at any nuclear power plant at any given time, there's someone in charge and they can turn that plant off, like, whenever they need to, for whatever reason, if they think that anything's going wrong. They don't need to call the regulator or the governor. Like, they just shut it off. These power plants exist in our communities.

They exist in the communities that the workers are in. Just the safety record is unbelievably good. So the industry just needs to do what the industry does. Even from an economic standpoint, I mentioned earlier that when subjected to the free market or to free enterprise, nuclear energy does good. There are a number of examples of it, one of which is whenever we started deregulating certain electricity markets. You had at that time the nuclear industry working together to drive down costs to maximize competitiveness.

It's through that process that made our nuclear industry extraordinarily efficient, by far the most efficient energy producing industry that we have. They operated a capacity factor, which is the ratio of potential, in any given amount of time, the potential of your ability to operate, which would be 100, versus how much you actually operate. Nuclear is in the mid-90s. When you, compared to anything else, coal, gas, not even to mention wind and solar, which are in the 20s, nuclear energy is extraordinarily efficient. When you look at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which publishes, you know, costs and things like that,

they're always driving down costs. So the ability of nuclear to operate in whatever environment it has, they have a great history of doing it. So my critique is not of what the industry can do. They need to continue doing what they're doing. My critique is of policy. And even if some in industry are hesitant or are skeptical of a pulling back of public support, I hope that by offering alternatives that some within industry will take advantage of that

and lead the rest of the industry to this new approach to doing things. Do you see the public support shifting, though? You talked earlier about how in the tech community because of the demands for electricity when it comes to AI and some of the other growing needs that we have as a society, there are people who may have been, I don't want to say anti-nuclear, but certainly maybe just not as passionate about it, who are speaking favorably. So my question is, and I hope your book, Nuclear Revolution, plays a role in this to change

some of those public perceptions that people may have, whether it's a straightforward anti-nuclear position that they may hold, to see that, no, maybe this is something that I should reconsider. And how do you go about addressing some of those myths that maybe still exist? Well, a handful of things here. First, generally speaking, the public is fairly accepting. of nuclear power right now. It's very much in an uptick. That can change on a dime if another Fukushima happens, if whatever happens.

From a political support standpoint, I don't know that I've ever seen nuclear be more publicly supported from a political standpoint. And that is because people on the left have been pushing the CO2 agenda and it became clear that you can't power a modern industrial economy with windmills and solar panels. So they needed something to square that circle. And nuclear power really is the only thing. So you have this unprecedented public support. And I think that that has bled into public support or maybe public, you know, they've bled

into each other. So there's general support for it. But that can change in an instant. Here's where I think that there's something to be done in that space, though. there's going to be another accident of some kind. There just will be. Now, whether it's like Fukushima or three, like, I don't know what it's going to be. What we need to do is prepare the public for that so that it doesn't scare them to death

and doesn't completely cut out support for nuclear power at the knees because here's a couple of things that are true. As scary as Fukushima was, no one died, no member of the public was sickened because of Fukushima. There were real economic costs and real psychological costs. By the way, most of the psychological costs, I would argue in the book, the same thing with Chernobyl, is not because of the actual dangers of nuclear power, but because of the myths that surround the dangers of nuclear power, people get scared by it. So we need to continue to talk about what the actual risks of nuclear power are, what the results of past accidents have been, and to ensure the public that should an accident occur, we are prepared to, that industry and government working together is prepared to respond and mitigate the consequences of it. You know, we live in this risk-averse society now that it's just, you know, if anything goes wrong, then the, you know, the politics and the narratives and everything are just layered on, and it's impossible to get anything done. So we as Americans need to decide, you know, are we going to just be so risk-averse? Are we going to risk-averse ourselves back into the Stone Age?

Or are we going to build and do things and create? And if you're building, doing things and creating, sometimes some things go wrong. Now, I'm not saying that everything's going to go wrong or anything's going to go wrong with nuclear power, but we've got to get rid of that. mentality, that makes it so if you make any sort of mistake, like you totally lose support for it. So one of the ways to do that, by the way, is to get government out of financially supporting an industry. Because as soon as you have politicians who financially support something, the moment

there's political hay to be made by opposing it, they will. So let's get government out of the game of financially supporting an industry. let's make sure that we are talking in real terms about the costs and risks of every technology, including nuclear, and work to make sure that if something goes wrong, which eventually it will, that we have policies in place and procedures in place to mitigate the potential harm that's done. I know I keep talking. I want to go back to what you asked me earlier about what industry can do. Here's something that industry can do.

I shouldn't say industry because it's not a homogenous thing. Here's something that those of us that want nuclear power to succeed can do. Be more realistic in setting expectations. People, if you were to open up a newspaper article or go to a pro-nuclear panel, you hear about how nuclear can do all things for all people, can be affordable and all these things. It might be able to do all those things, but we need to allow there to be some room in there that it's not, I don't think that we're going to have a situation where, like, we're just going to build all these nuclear power plants and everything's going to be cheap and fun and

rainbows. Like, we need to have the policy reforms and allow it to meet its potential in the best way it can and be honest about it. The other thing is, and this I will criticize a little bit, even though I hate criticizing any industry. They've tied themselves so close to CO2 reduction. And look, I believe that CO2 goals are bunk. And there's so many good reasons to pursue nuclear power outside of that.

And eventually, I think the whole CO2 house of cards is going to crumble. And then where does that leave these industries nuclear or otherwise that have hitched their wagon so close to that? Now, I get why they do it. Going back to, government has had its claws so tight into the industry that you want to do whatever you can to build support. So I get that. I just, I want, I want people to understand that nuclear has a lot to offer outside of that. Let me ask you about that, but you mentioned criticizing industries.

I have no problem criticizing the news industry, particularly their coverage of nuclear energy. And you and I've had conversations about this and just their misinformation or just lack of knowledge that they have. And so I think probably educating journalists and those who cover. things when there is an accident so you don't have scaremongering headlines and news reports would go a long way to probably, you know, alleviating some of the fears. But let me slightly push back on the CO2 thing, not necessarily because I disagree with you, but from a strategic political position, isn't it a smart move on their part?

Because you have a situation now where there is, particularly with younger Americans, this fear unfounded, as it may be, of climate change. and maybe they see nuclear energy as a solution because we know that renewables won't provide the electricity needs that our country will have in the future. And so I don't know, maybe that's their rationale for doing it. No, no, I see the rationale for it. Here's my problem with it is that they've hitched it too closely to CO2. So the way I look at it is, and I talk about it in the book, like if you want to reduce CO2,

nuclear is a way to go. I don't say do nuclear because you want to reduce CO2. So I think it's a maybe I'm being too picky here, but I've sat in a lot of meetings where nuclear is presented as the reason we knew it's presented as such. We need nuclear to reduce CO2. And I reject that. So my fear is that these things become symbiotic, that our push to nuclear, that nuclear justifies. CO2 regulation and CO2 regulation justifies nuclear. That's what I want to get outside of.

And so you see this in a – I said I don't want to criticize industry. I'm happy to criticize industry whenever they get involved in public policy when I think the public policy is wrong. Here's an example of that. You see lots of energy industry, lots of people within the energy industry being supportive of CO2 reductions because they see that as somehow either regulating their competition, or competition out of the market or being the vehicle to bring public support into that industry. I'm not saying that nuclear is either of those things.

I'm just saying as someone who has been playing this public policy game for a long time, you see how people who should in a rational world be opposed to these policies being supportive of them. And then that becomes mutually reinforcing. And then eventually that narrative gets baked into the status quo policy baseline. And what I mean by that is you start to erode opposition to these things like CO2 policy because everyone seems to have been supportive of it and accepting it as fait accompli. And that is kind of where we are now with CO2 in many regards. And that's why I don't like seeing something like nuclear power, which I think is so essential for so many reasons,

always hitching itself to the CO2 wagon. That's my reasoning for it. And I get the rationale for arguing that CO2 is it or that nuclear energy is an essential part of CO2 reductions. I agree with that. But even absent the need to reduce CO2 nuclear energy is equally as important is what I would argue. Fair enough. Fair point. Thank you for answering that.

So sometimes Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts will ask his guests if they can have a magic wand and wave it what they'd like to see accomplished. You've done that a little bit for us already, but I wanted to ask about it in the context of the energy mix in the United States. And so you've talked about how renewables aren't going to provide the electricity that we need for all of these emerging technologies. Paint us a picture for how you would see nuclear fitting in, whether it be like a percentage base or just broadly, you know, how it fits with the other energy sources. Well, this is going to be another one of those non-statement. satisfying stupid free market answers.

I don't know. My book's not my Magic Wand book, by the way. My Magic Wand book would be to totally get rid of all of the infrastructure governing nuclear power right now and allow people to go build nuclear power plants. And if you create a problem, you are subject to being sued in court and having to pay for whatever problems you cause. That's my magic wand. That's not what I recommend here.

Here's the way I look at it. The basis of U.S. energy policy should not be to mean. a certain mix of energy sources. It should be to ensure Americans have access to affordable, reliable energy. The question then becomes, how do we do that? I argue that the United States is in the midst of an era of energy abundance. We have enough energy to power this country literally for thousands of years. Energy is a multi-trillion dollar market. It's about a trillion in the United States 10 times that globally. Lots of money.

Everyone uses it. There are literally thousands of people who provide it, billions of us who use it. If ever there was a market rod that did not need government intervention, it is this one. Yet government intervenes all over the place. So if I had a magic wand, what would that energy mix look like? First of all, I wouldn't define it.

My magic wand allows the market to do what the market does. The government would get out of the way, provide some regulation, preferably at the state and local level and let consumers of energy and producers of energy engage in voluntary exchanges to get what people need. That's the right answer. However, I do go through in the book, what would happen if? What would happen if you wanted to reduce CO2?

I put it in the context of CO2 reductions, and we spent billions of dollars and subsidized whatever and we get virtually no CO2 reductions. What would happen if? The United States built about a hundred and twenty-five, thirty nuclear power plants. And about a similar number have, there were efforts to begin building, but stop construction or stop the process for whatever reason. What would happen if the government had stepped aside, we built a hundred and whatever we

built, and we built the other hundred and some that industry wanted to build, but for whatever reason didn't? What would happen? So you more than double nuclear power, which is CO2 free. What would happen if instead of government demonizing coal, government got out of the way and allowed coal to continue to become more efficient and more and cleaner from a CO2 standpoint? Here's a modern coal plant, people don't recognize is about 25% more CO2 efficient than your average coal. plant. So let's say you continue building more efficient, more technologically advanced coal

plants, and you continue building natural gas, which produces about half as much CO2 as a traditional coal plant. You have massive, massive freaking CO2 reductions if government had just stayed out of the way. And that gives you an energy mix of, you know, that would be roughly 40 per, you'd probably end up with something like 40%, 35, 40% nuclear. You'd probably end up with 30 some percent. And the rest would probably be split between coal and natural gas. And you'd have a handful of windmills and solar panels or something else. Oh, we have hydro. That would be your energy mix.

You'd be something under 50% nuclear, something under 50% some mixture of natural gas and coal, depending on market. And then a handful of new technologies that are on the margins that people will – that's where innovation will happen. and that's where you'll get new technologies that may expand that part and take market away from those other ones, but of course they'll continue innovating. And we'd all be paying way less and we wouldn't have these issues of the grid literally degrading around us because of bad policy. You know, that's my magic wand. Jack, I have a couple more questions before we wrap here.

The first is for anyone who might be listening today who is still skeptical after after hearing your arguments or maybe on the fence about nuclear energy, what do you want to say to them? Why should they pick up a copy of your book, Nuclear Revolution? Well, nuclear revolution does a handful of things. It makes the arguments that we just make from a policy standpoint, but it also goes through some of the facts of the matter. It goes through what nuclear energy used to cost and some of the things that have driven that cost over time. It goes through how the regulatory burden has been ratcheted it up over time and juxtaposes that against the safety record, which has been great all along. It goes.

through some of the myths. I mean, there's a whole chapter on myths that goes through what happened in Chernobyl on Three Mile Island or talks about, you know, the truth about transporting nuclear waste and all of those sorts of things. But most importantly, I think what this book brings to the table that's different than what other people have written or talked about is it's pro-nuclear, but it's not religious about it. So I'm not saying that America is going to be weak if we don't build a bunch of nuclear power plants and come hell or high water, we need to build these power plants.

It argues that America needs access to affordable energy. Nuclear should be part of that mix and that policy has prevented it from being what it could be. Rather than politicians dictating how much nuclear we have or whether or not we should have it, let's build policy around the facts of the matter. matter and allow nuclear to be whatever it can be. So it's pro-nuclear. It argues that nuclear will be expanded, but not that it should be expanded as a matter of policy, but rather that expansion should occur on its own merit. So it's a, I think it's an even-handed approach to nuclear energy while being pro-nuclear.

Well, thank you for writing it. For those who want to purchase a copy, what's the best way for them to get their hands on it? if you can imagine such a thing, we're able to get the website, Nucleararrevolution.com. Nuclearrevolution.com, you can log on to that, and you'll get, you can see where to get it there. But it's also, you can get it at Amazon, wherever you get books online, and we're even going to be in some bookstores.

But I don't know which ones. I know Amazon, wherever you get your books online, and Nuclearrevolution.com. Excellent. Excellent. And what's the best way for people to keep tabs on things that you're doing? Well, Rob, it's interesting. You say that as a matter of being a participant in this book process, I've had to get an X account. And my...

Jack on X. Yeah. My X handle is W-W-J-W-S-I-I-I-D. Those are initials for, what would Jack W-W-W-W-D? what would Jack Watson Spencer the third do? And also if you just search on X Jack Spencer, I come up and you'll see which one that is. But the best way, I don't know how active I'm going to be on Twitter. I'm going to try.

I'm going to try. But you can always go to heritage. Heritage.org and check me out there. But most importantly, Rob, most importantly of all, the way to find out what I'm doing is to tune into this. podcast right here, the power hour, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. And you can search heritage.org. I'm sorry, heard at heritage. We're on that feed, but you can go to Spotify or iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts.

And as I always remind you, you can always email me at the power hour at heritage. org. And you can just ask me what I'm up to. And I'll email you back and tell you exactly what I'm up to. Those are all the ways you can do it. Excellent. We will be sure to provide a link to purchase the book in the show notes as well as your ex-accounted. With Elon maybe out there as a champion, who knows?

Maybe he'll repost you and you'll get a huge following. I think Elon will love this book. I think so. It's speaking to maybe not Elon himself, but I feel like people like Elon. So we'll say. Jack, it was a real honor to guest host The Power Hour today. Thank you for the opportunity. And thanks for sharing with all of our listeners about nuclear revolution.

powering the next generation. Very excited for you. And thank you for writing this book. Thank you, Rob. And that'll do it for today's special bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Please leave us your feedback and let us know how we're doing. And be sure to check out our regular daily show right here in this podcast feed. I'll be back this afternoon with the day's top news at 5 p.m.

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