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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

01:41:30

Nuclear Reprocessing: Promise vs Reality

Decouple ·

2026/04/09

In this episode of Decouple, Chris Keefer is joined once again by Michael Seely of the Atomic Blender to explore nuclear fuel reprocessing and the promise of unlocking vastly more energy from existing nuclear waste. We deep dive how processes like PUREX attempt to separate and reuse valuable materials like uranium and plutonium. Using real-world examples such as France’s La Hague reprocessing plant and the EBR-2 sodium fast reactor experiment, the episode situates reprocessing within its historical

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01:06:57

Greenwashing with Chinese Characteristics

Decouple ·

2026/04/02

In this episode we are joined by Seaver Wang to discuss the physical foundations of China’s industrial dominance in solar, batteries, electric vehicles, semiconductors, rare earth magnets, and aluminum. We examine how these sectors are presented as evidence by climate activists that clean technology is delivering a new kind of green industrial superpower and interrogate that claim at the level of production. What sits upstream of the electrotech stack is not a network of modular green technologies,

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01:17:03

The Luxury Beliefs That Broke Europe’s Energy System...

Decouple ·

2026/03/24

Europe once treated energy as the foundation of civilization. After the oil shocks of the 1970s, it built nuclear at scale, opened the North Sea, and secured long term pipeline supply. That system produced resilience, surplus, and industrial strength. Today, the arithmetic has flipped. Europe consumes roughly 38 exajoules of hydrocarbons and produces about 6. This episode examines how that reversal happened, not as an accident, but as the result of political choices that prioritized higher order

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01:16:41

What's happening with CANDU?

Decouple ·

2026/03/19

This episode features Joe St. Julian, President of Nuclear at AtkinsRéalis, outlining why Canada may be closer to a new nuclear fleet build than most observers realize. Drawing on his background delivering complex U.S. nuclear megaprojects, St. Julian explains why the recent refurbishment programs at Darlington and Bruce have rebuilt the workforce, supply chain, and execution capability needed for repeatable construction. The conversation explores the Monark concept, the strategy of replicating

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01:15:31

The Week LNG Became a Target

Decouple ·

2026/03/13

The Iranian drone strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan industrial complex has sent shockwaves through global energy markets, triggering force majeure on 20 percent of the world’s LNG supply and closing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. To understand what just happened and what comes next, Decouple is joined by Stephen Stapczynski, Bloomberg’s leading LNG correspondent and one of the few journalists who has spent years tracking the shadow fleets, supply chains, and geopolitics that sit behind the

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01:25:26

The Fuels Powering Nuclear's Biggest Promises

Decouple ·

2026/03/05

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01:20:46

Nuclear Fuel: The Most Sophisticated Industrial...

Decouple ·

2026/02/26

Nuclear fuel is nothing like the coal or gas it replaces. Where fossil fuels are destroyed in combustion, nuclear fuel must survive years of continuous fission inside a reactor and come out the other end looking almost exactly as it went in. In this episode, fuel engineer Michael Seely breaks down how uranium dioxide pellets are made, why the fuel rod is one of the most sophisticated manufactured objects in the world, and how an industry that once ran more than half its fleet on leaking fuel pins

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01:05:29

The Most Boring Path to 10 Gigawatts: Why Nuclear...

Decouple ·

2026/02/17

For two decades the nuclear conversation has revolved around new builds, advanced reactors, and megaproject risk. Meanwhile, forty Westinghouse pressurized water reactors continue operating at roughly the same thermal output they were commissioned at decades ago, leaving six to ten gigawatts of potential capacity sitting inside existing plants. In this episode, I speak with Robb Stewart and James Krellenstein of Alva Energy about why power uprates may be the fastest and most capital efficient way to

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01:06:11

AI with Chinese Characteristics

Decouple ·

2026/02/12

In this episode of Decouple, Chris sits down with Kyle Chan of the High Capacity Substack to unpack what “AI with Chinese characteristics” actually means. Rather than framing artificial intelligence as a simple US–China race to AGI, they explore how each country is building AI inside very different institutional systems. The conversation covers DeepSeek, compute constraints, quantization, and the surprising reality that many Chinese AI labs operate with far less capital than their American

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01:03:06

A Case Study of Excellence from Canada’s Nuclear...

Decouple ·

2026/01/29

In this special episode of Decouple, Chris Keefer speaks with Ken Petrunik, one of the few leaders in the Western nuclear industry who has taken large reactors from first concrete to operation under budget and ahead of schedule. Petrunik’s career spans Canada’s nuclear golden age and its export era, with senior roles in Romania, Argentina, and China, including leading the Qinshan Phase III CANDU reactors, delivered ahead of schedule and under budget under a fixed price engineering, procurement, and

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01:17:24

EPR: The Reactor That Tried to Please Everyone and...

Decouple ·

2026/01/15

In this episode of Decouple we deep dive the European Pressurised Reactor and what its troubled construction history reveals about the real constraints on nuclear build out in the modern West. The conversation traces how a design intended to satisfy every regulator through a design philosophy of extreme redundancy and conservative safety margins instead exposed the limits of Western construction capacity, supply chain readiness, and project management culture. The episode also places the EPR in

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01:26:57

Why Nuclear Shipping Is Inherently Niche

Decouple ·

2026/01/08

Why have we built nuclear ships before, proven they can operate, and still not made them commonplace? Nick Touran breaks down the history of maritime nuclear power, from the Nuclear Ship Savannah and Otto Hahn to Japan’s Mutsu and Russia’s Sevmorput, then pivots to floating nuclear power concepts such as the MH 1A Sturgis and the Offshore Power Systems program. We explore what worked, what failed, and what keeps blocking adoption, including port access rules, indemnity and international agreements,

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01:12:44

Janus: The Army’s Second Attempt at Fielding...

Decouple ·

2025/12/18

In this episode of Decouple, Dr. Jeff Waksman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, explains how the U.S. Army is making a second attempt at making microreactors great again. The discussion situates the Janus microreactor program in the long history of the Army Nuclear Power Program and Project Pele, highlighting why earlier small reactor deployments failed to compete with diesel and grid power even in extreme environments, and why Janus

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01:33:58

Why the First Nuclear Renaissance Failed: Can America...

Decouple ·

2025/12/11

The first U.S. nuclear renaissance collapsed under the weight of cheap shale gas, lost institutional expertise, and disastrous projects like Vogtle and Summer. Today, America is planning a fleet of eight AP1000 reactors, backed by unprecedented federal incentives. But can the country actually build large nuclear again?In this video, we break down what really killed the 2000s revival, why Fukushima wasn’t the turning point, and how AP1000 and ESBWR passive safety performed in station-blackout

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01:03:39

The Real Stakes of a Saudi Nuclear Deal

Decouple ·

2025/12/02

Saudi Arabia burns nearly one million barrels of oil per day to keep its lights on, yet it has cheaper and faster ways to replace this than by building large nuclear reactors. So why is the Kingdom pushing so hard for a civil nuclear deal? This episode walks through the strategic logic that has animated Riyadh’s nuclear ambitions for more than a decade. The answer lies in prestige, industrial capacity, and the latent fuel cycle capabilities that come with a power reactor programme, all set against

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00:50:15

Microreactors: A Mirage of American Nuclear Innovation?

Decouple ·

2025/11/25

In this episode, Chris Keefer speaks with Hadron Energy founder Samuel Gibson, the twenty four year old entrepreneur pursuing a ten megawatt integral pressurized water microreactor through a one point two billion dollar business combination with GigCapital7. Gibson outlines why he believes light water is the fastest licensing path, how he assembled a veteran nuclear team, and why Hadron shifted from a one megawatt concept to a ten megawatt design built around LEU plus fuel, modular plant layouts,

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01:08:58

The AP1000 Masterclass

Decouple ·

2025/11/18

Fan favourite, James Krellenstein, returns for a deep dive into the AP1000. We walk through how its conservative nuclear steam supply system is built from proven Westinghouse and Combustion Engineering lineage, and where its true innovation lies, in a radically passive safety architecture that removes the traditional race against diesel generators during LOCAs and station blackouts. From core makeup tanks and automatic depressurization to canned pumps, the in containment refueling water storage

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01:26:42

The Great Nuclear Reshoring

Decouple ·

2025/11/11

In late October, amid the choreography of President Trump’s visit to Tokyo, two vast and curiously intertwined announcements were made: an $80 billion strategic partnership between the U.S. government and Westinghouse Electric Company, and a $550 billion investment framework between the United States and Japan.This episode of Decouple, hosted by AJ Camacho of Politico and E&E News, brought together Michael Seely, Yuri Humber and Chris Keefer this time in the guest seat to discuss the

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01:05:31

Russia’s Maritime Nuclear Fleet: A Glimpse Behind the...

Decouple ·

2025/11/04

This week on Decouple, I sit down with Aleksey Rezvoi, a veteran maritime nuclear engineer who began his career in the Soviet Union designing third- and fourth-generation submarine and icebreaker reactors before later working in the U.S. nuclear sector.We explore the hidden history and living reality of Russia’s civilian nuclear fleet—a line that began with the icebreaker Lenin in 1959 and continues today with the RITM-200, the world’s only serially produced small modular reactor.From Arctic

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01:13:36

How China Builds Reactors So Fast

Decouple ·

2025/10/28

This week I sit back down with François Morin in his third appearance on the show. François is the World Nuclear Association’s point person on China. He works and travels inside China, speaks fluent Mandarin, and spends time at the conventional and advanced reactor sites that the rest of us argue about on Twitter. We cover how quickly China is really building nuclear power compared to the heyday of the French Mesmer plan, how that compares to Chinese coal and gas deployment, why Chinese nuclear is

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318 results

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