Tom Sanders took office as the President of the American Nuclear Society on June 18, 2009. Rod Adams spoke with him on the day before. Tom explained his goals for the year, the importance of nuclear technology to national security and the enthusiasm that he has for “right-sized” reactors.
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Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.
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Jason – Glad you enjoyed the interview.
With regard to sound quality, sometimes you just have to listen a bit more closely. I have thought about getting some lapel microphones to improve the sound quality when I get a chance for a face to face interview, but have so far determined that I get better interaction when I use a simple, small device that fades away from consciousness.
Many people who are not communications professionals get quite nervous in the act of putting on a microphone and begin thinking more about what they are going to say than in simply responding to questions from the heart. There are also people like Tom who are naturally soft spoken.
I will, in the future, try to better position the device or ensure that people speak up a bit.
Interesting interview. Too bad the sound quality coming from Tom wasn’t very good.
I thought it was a swell interview. I don’t follow ANS closely, but it’s great that the president of that fine club is at SNL, right down 9th street from our lab. We often have business in his building’s basement (where there’s a radiological measurements lab) and meetings in “the breezeway.”
Mr. Sanders, if you happen by here, you may want to know that there is a recently delivered first blade of a wind turbine sitting just inside the TA-III gate, supposedly to start bringing intermittent wind power to the southern hinterlands of KAFB. Bleh, will probably ruin the view of Gwyneth Cravens’ famous “hollow mountains.” Well, I’m used to the Solar Power Tower prototype (a relic of 1970s “alternate energy” research).
How about we get us one of those mPower B&W reactors installed in TA-V. Air-cooled condensers! Cool! We could do a paper comparing the three types of power plants in close proximity and their relative merits.