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PODCAST

Decouple

Dr. Chris Keefer

There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview world experts to uncover hope in this time of planetary crisis.

science

All Episodes

01:25:15

The Forgotten Climate Debate

Decouple ·

2024/11/26

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science & technology, shares how European societies grappled with climate change centuries before modern science proved the scale and breadth of its impact, revealing a forgotten saga where colonial ambitions and volcanic winters shaped our earliest understanding of Earth's shifting climate.Grounding our discussion is his Fressoz’s 2024 book Chaos in the Heavens: The Forgotten History of Climate Change, co-authored with Fabien Locher.

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01:27:20

Defense in Depths

Decouple ·

2024/11/19

Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies, takes us to the depths of Australia’s security predicament as a country near Maritime Southeast Asia dependent on liquid hydrocarbon imports. We discuss military strategy, the use of nuclear and diesel-electric submarines, and the continent’s precarious dependence on maritime trade and military alliances.

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01:22:37

Microreactors, Macro Problems

Decouple ·

2024/11/12

Nick Touran, a nuclear engineer and manager at TerraPower, unearths the sobering realities of micro nuclear reactors. Through a detailed discussion of physics, engineering, economics, and history, Touran explains why microreactors face fundamental challenges that factory production alone cannot solve.

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01:15:43

Paper Reactors to Power Reactors

Decouple ·

2024/11/05

Nick Touran tells the story of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear Navy” and author of the legendary "Paper Reactor" memo. We discover how Rickover’s hard-driving management and obsession with practical engineering shaped not just the US nuclear navy, but the entire landscape of modern nuclear power.Touran is manager of digital engineering at TerraPower and creator of Whatisnuclear.com. Decouple Substack: https://www.decouple.media/

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01:06:30

TMI: Too Much Intervention?

Decouple ·

2024/10/29

James Krellenstein, co-founder of Alva Energy, explains precisely what happened at the Three Mile Island accident, in which an ordinary reactor trip cascaded into a partial meltdown due primarily to errors in the human-machine interface. Krellenstein discusses how the 1979 incident, despite its severity, actually showed the effectiveness of the “defense in depth” principle and led to significant improvements in plant operations and nuclear safety culture.Watch the episode on YouTube to follow along

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01:12:40

Small Reactors Are Bulking Up

Decouple ·

2024/10/22

Koroush Shirvan, an MIT professor and consultant on recent major reports on nuclear economics, sheds light on the hidden costs of small modular reactors. Lower power densities, ballooning containment and reactor vessel sizes, poor economies of scale, and missed opportunities for cost reductions mean that SMRs may not be the panacea for nuclear that many believe them to be.

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00:54:08

321, Liftoff!

Decouple ·

2024/10/15

Jigar Shah, Director of the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy, joins me to discuss his office’s latest Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report on nuclear energy. We touch on the state of the American nuclear industry, its surge of policy and private sector support, and outstanding obstacles to tripling nuclear capacity in the United States.In addition to emphasizing the need for standardization in reactor designs and a unified communications strategy from the nuclear

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01:02:32

Lead the Way, TVA

Decouple ·

2024/10/09

Fred Stafford, a STEM professional and anonymous energy commentator, discusses the Tennessee Valley Authority's potential to lead a nuclear revival in the United States — that is, if it can overcome the tensions between public and private interests and a looming debt ceiling that threatens to dim its nuclear ambitions. Read more on Substack: www.decouple.media

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01:18:23

The Energy Transition Will Not Happen

Decouple ·

2024/10/02

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science and technology, challenges our understanding of energy history. He unravels the myth of energy transitions, revealing symbiotic relationships between coal, wood, and oil that have shaped our world in unexpected ways.

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00:56:43

The Bottomless Well

Decouple ·

2024/09/25

Mark P. Mills returns to Decouple to challenge our understanding of energy scarcity and efficiency. In this episode, he unravels the paradox of how pursuing energy efficiency often leads to increased consumption, and explains why he believes our energy resources are functionally limitless.-- Mark P. Mills on X: https://x.com/MarkPMills Decouple: https://www.decouple.media

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00:17:00

The Three Mile Island Melt Up

Decouple ·

2024/09/20

Microsoft and nuclear plant owner Constellation have entered into to an unprecedented deal to restart the closed Three Mile Island by 2028 to power its data centres. Microsoft will purchase as much power as possible from its 880 MW reactor over 20 years for prices rumored to be above $100 per MWh. Most famous for its 1979 meltdown, TMI closed in 2019 because of cheap fossil fuels and tech companies refusing at the time to consider buying its electricity to meet clean energy goals.

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01:08:58

A Westinghouse of Pain for Korea

Decouple ·

2024/09/10

Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, is embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with Westinghouse over IP rights and export control obligations. Will this conflict stymie Western nuclear ambitions? Does this legal battle risk ceding the longterm geopolitical alliances intrinsic to nuclear exports in non-aligned countries to Russia and China? What are the motivations and likely outcomes? Phil Chaffee of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly joins me to provide context and inferences.

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00:55:01

The CANDU Story

Decouple ·

2024/09/05

Tim Freeman, VP of Field Services and Manufacturing at CANDU Energy Inc joins me to discuss the 3rd most widely deployed reactor technology in the world, Canada's Heavy Pressurized Water Reactor the CANDU. Note this conversation was recorded in March of 2024.

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00:55:18

Will EVs Deliver on Decarbonisation?

Decouple ·

2024/08/17

Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, joins me to disentangle the hope from the hype in the EV debate.

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01:03:10

The real costs of advanced nuclear

Decouple ·

2024/08/08

Robbie Stewart and Enrique Velez-Lopez, the founders of nuclear start up Boston Atomics, join me to discuss the true costs of advanced nuclear design engineering.

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01:09:53

The Geography of Oil

Decouple ·

2024/08/03

Jimmy Fortuna of Enverus takes me on a world tour of oil production by region illuminating the unique geopolitical, technological and political challenges to accessing our most important form of energy.

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01:07:13

Australia’s Nuclear Debate

Decouple ·

2024/07/27

Aidan Morrison, Director of Energy Research at the Centre for Independent Studies joins me for an update on the Australian nuclear debate which is shaping up to be a core issue in the approaching federal election.

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01:17:07

Is an AI Energy Crisis Looming?

Decouple ·

2024/07/17

Mark Mills is the executive director of the National Centre for Energy Analytics and author of “The Cloud Revolution” How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. Join us as we explore how to power an AI enhanced Cloud network and its implications on the grid and climate politics.

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01:48:21

We’ve Got to Talk About the Bomb Some More

Decouple ·

2024/07/01

Professor Alex Wellerstein returns for a part two answering questions about the bomb, near misses, command and control and more.

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01:19:06

Is Regulation Strangling Nuclear Energy?

Decouple ·

2024/06/24

Is overzealous regulation the root cause of the contemporary crisis in deployment of nuclear reactors in the USA? James Krellenstein argues that Nuclear Regulatory Commission critics are trapped in the 1980’s and that the spectre haunting today’s deployments are not primarily regulatory. Due to simplified systems and lower material costs modern NRC approved passive reactors should be cheaper than complex Gen 2 reactors. In addition there are 17GWe worth of combined construction and operating

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301 results

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