Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

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Atomic Show #284 – Meredith Angwin, Author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid

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Meredith Angwin has become an authority on the arcane topic of governing electric grids in the United States. She’s concerned and thinks others will may share her concern when they recognize there is a key missing element in grid governance.

There is no organization or individual that is responsible for making sure that electricity is generated, transmitted and delivered to customers.

Various organizations, often with competing or conflicting interests, have shared responsibility for different parts of the system that includes generators, transformers, switchyards, transmission lines, distribution lines and billing systems, but “the market” has been assigned the responsibility of supplying wholesale electricity.

And that market is not the free market, but instead is a hybrid that is governed by an ever changing stack of layered rules where many of the important decisions are made by participant groups that do not include customers or even enabled representatives of customers.

A growing portion of the grid’s electricity is dependent on free, but uncontrolled natural flows. Another portion comes from generators whose fuel is delivered by capacity-limited pipes in a “just in time fashion.” When the natural flows are interrupted or something interferes in the pipelines’s capability to deliver fuel, generators stop producing power.

There are processes that can be called into action, but costs can skyrocket in times of scarcity. Some market players thrive in times of crisis and have few incentives to ensure those crises never arise.

Meredith has produced an accessible, clearly written book that reveals important aspects of a complex topic. It deserves to be on the reading list for people who are interested in electricity.

It belongs in the library of every congressional and senatorial office. At least one person in each staff should be assigned the task of reading it and preparing a report for their member.

Governors and state level legislators might want incorporate lessons revealed in the book and reconsider their decisions to rely more heavily on markets than on well-regulated monopolies with an obligation to serve.

Meredith is a delightful guest who brings the wisdom of a long and productive professional career to her writing and speaking engagements. I’m pretty sure you are going to like this show.

As always, I invite you to participate in the discussion thread.

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Atomic Show #283 – The Good Energy Collective

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Jessica Lovering, Rachel Slaybaugh, and Suzy Baker founded and lead Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that is actively “building the progressive case for nuclear energy as an essential part of the broader climate change agenda.”

Inspired by the dynamic leaders and new organizations that are successfully making the case that addressing climate change is an imperative that demands immediate action, they determined that now is the time to build coalitions and join forces with others who share similar concerns.

They recognized that nuclear energy is often left out of discussions, and they believed that needed to change. They have each been studying and working in nuclear energy fields for a decade or two and understand that it is fundamentally capable of supplying the clean, abundant, reliable and affordable energy that should be more equitably available to everyone.

But they also recognized that “nuclear” needed to look very different from the image that it currently creates when the word is spoken or written.

Not only is there a need for additional new technologies and designs that make nuclear energy accessible to broader applications and a greater diversity of customers, but methods used to talk about nuclear energy need to be improved and modified to suit current times. Old ways of doing things need to be altered in recognition of past failures, real and perceived.

Though they believe there is a continuing role for large nuclear power plants that can serve the needs of densely populated cities, they also know that the spectrum of communities and customers is so large that it demands a wide variety of solutions.

They are devising and promoting new ways of engaging with people who might eventually choose to use nuclear technology to address their energy needs. But before that happens, they have to learn, trust and accept. They want to help create situations that have better chances of success because entire communities are supportive and encouraging.

Good Energy Collective was officially launched in August 2020, but it has been busily publishing reports, stimulating discussions and developing coalitions. Its leaders do not believe there is any time to waste. They are highly motivated to make rapid changes that will enable a better story to be told about the future of nuclear energy.

Please listen carefully to these amazing women tell their story and share their plans to modernize nuclear energy products, projects and perceptions.

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Atomic Show #282 – Chris Keefer, Decouple Podcast

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Chris Keefer is the creator and host of the Decouple Podcast. He is an emergency room doctor whose activist bent and desire to make the world a better place has led him to become a nuclear energy proponent. Chris is the founder and a director of an organization called Doctors for Nuclear Energy. One of […]

Atomic Show #281 – Paris Ortiz Wines – Global Coordinator for Stand Up For Nuclear

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Paris Ortiz-Wines wants you to Stand Up for Nuclear Energy. She is the global coordinator for the annual, month-long event that includes actions in several dozen locations around the world. On this episode of the Atomic Show, Paris explains how she came to be a pro-nuclear activist, why she believes nuclear energy is an important […]

Atomic Show #280 – Zion Lights – Director, Environmental Progress UK

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Zion Lights is a formally trained science communicator, author of a carefully researched book titled The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting, and an experienced environmental activist who worked for a year as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. About a month ago, she began openly advocating for an expansion of nuclear energy as a major tool […]

Atomic Show #279 – Michael Shellenberger talks about Apocalypse Never

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Michael Shellenberger’s new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All has provoked numerous reactions and conversations. It is a carefully researched, 400 page work where 25% of the book is endnotes that document sources for the statements in the book. Michael is a stranger to the “go along to get along” mode of […]

Atomic Show #278 – Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) project partners USNC, GFP and OPG

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Global First Power (GFP), Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) recently announced that they had formed a joint venture called Global First Power Limited Partnership. That venture will build, own and operate an installation called the Micro Modular Reactor (MMR™) at the Chalk River Laboratories site. Mark Mitchell and Eric MGoey […]

Atomic Show #277 – Simon Wakter, pro-nuclear engineer in an ambivalent country

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Simon Wakter is a strongly pro-nuclear engineer in a country that passed a referendum officially phasing out nuclear energy since several years before he was born. He has to round up to be called a thirty-something. Simon works in the nuclear energy branch of AFRY, a well-established 17,000 employee, all-of-the-above. engineering company that recently adopted […]

Atomic Show #276 – HolosGen Claudio Filippone and Chip Martin

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HolosGen has attacked the nuclear power plant cost and schedule challenge from the opposite direction chosen by many nuclear reactor developers. Claiming to be agnostic about the reactor specifics – as long as it produces reliable heat in a small-enough configuration – HolosGen founder Claudio Filippone decided to focus on radical improvements to the “balance […]

Atomic Show #275 – Managing advanced nuclear development during pandemic

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Managing any business is hard work, especially during a global pandemic with stay-at-home orders in place. It requires creativity and flexibility along with some amount of prior preparation. On May 11, 2020, I gathered a group of representatives from several start-up companies that are developing advanced nuclear technologies to talk about how they are making […]

Atomic Show #274 – Thomas Jam Pedersen, Copenhagen Atomics

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Copenhagen isn’t the first city name that comes to mind as the place to start a nuclear company. Denmark has decommissioned its last research reactor and has never had a nuclear power plant. That hasn’t deterred Thomas Jam Pedersen and his colleagues at Copenhagen Atomics. Starting a decade or more ago, they began learning about […]

Atomic Show #273 – Liz Muller, Deep Isolation

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Liz Muller is a co-founder and the CEO of Deep Isolation, a company that makes the modest claim of having invented a solution to nuclear waste. The politically unsolved waste issue has plagued nuclear energy development since the mid 1970s. That was when it became abundantly clear that the original plan to recycle used fuel […]

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