Podcasts about three mile island

The Space Show Presents Tom Olson, Sunday, 12-28-25.Quick Summary:Our program focused on reviewing key space industry developments and trends in 2025, with Tom Olson leading a discussion on global launch statistics, commercial space progress, and future outlooks. The group examined SpaceX's dominance in launches, China's growing space capabilities, and the status of NASA's Artemis program, while also discussing emerging technologies like space-based data centers and AI computing. The conversation covered space debris concerns, the potential for nuclear power in space, and the future of human spaceflight, including the upcoming retirement of the ISS in 2030. The participants also touched on the commercialization of space resources, property rights discussions, and the increasing investment in space startups, with particular attention to Starlink's market expansion and its $80/month pricing in the US market.Detailed Summary:Tom and I discussed our plan for this year-end show, covering topics such as global launch, SpaceX Starship, and future policy ideas. Before moving on, I reminded listeners about the upcoming open line discussion on Tuesday, the last program of 2025 for The Space Show, with my making our Zoom program an open invitation program with the requirements of civility, no eating on camera, no name calling, no shouting and talking over people. Otherwise, even if you disagree with what is being said, be civil about it as you let us know your thoughts on the topic.Tom discussed upcoming events, including Starship's launch and a trip to India. He also shared details about his radio show and podcast, “The Unknown Quantity,” which focuses on the intersection of space and money. He highlighted the rapid growth of the space industry and his involvement in various events, including a pitch competition for young entrepreneurs and a panel discussion on lunar space economy. Tom expressed enthusiasm for these opportunities to engage with the space community and influence future developments.Our Wisdom Team brought up property rights in space, particularly regarding the moon, and the potential for helium-3 mining for quantum computing. Tom shared insights from a recent discussion with government officials about lunar economy development. The conversation touched on the Outer Space Treaty's limitations and the potential for private sector claims. Marshall raised questions about claim jumping and enforcement, while China's potential role in lunar development and the need for quick U.S. presence to establish dominance was highlighted. This part of our discussion concluded with a brief mention of 3D mapping technology's potential to resolve border disputes diplomatically.Tom reported that global launches in 2023 set a record with 328 launches, with the U.S. leading at 198 launches and only 4 failures, followed by China with 91 launches and 3 failures. He noted that SpaceX dominated U.S. launches with 150 flights, while Russia had 17 successful launches. Tom also discussed SpaceX's progress with Starship, including two successful test flights and plans for six Block 3 launches starting in late January, aiming to reach low Earth orbit and demonstrate refueling. As a group we briefly touched on Blue Origin's development of the Blue Moon lander and Rocket Lab's plans to launch from Wallops, with Thomas mentioning that SpaceX has received permission to launch from the Cape, potentially as early as late next year.Tom and David discussed the regulatory environment for space launches, noting that while intentions are good, legal challenges have slowed progress. They debated the future of NASA's Artemis program, with Tom suggesting that Artemis III will reach the moon before China but may be unsustainable at its current cost. The conversation also touched on commercial space activities, including Russia's recent launch facility accident and the status of the Starliner spacecraft after a long-duration mission.The group discussed the status of the Gateway project, which ESA and the EU have decided to build independently, taking it off NASA's hands. Tom said that European countries will continue to build components for Gateway, but now ESA will own and operate it. The discussion also touched on the increasing investment in space operations, with our guest mentioning that $3.5 billion in new money had been put into space operations by the end of Q3. Joe noted that Voyager, a space station company, has a European footprint through its partnership with Airbus. The conversation concluded with a brief discussion about space solar power, with Thomas expressing skepticism about its current feasibility due to challenges in power transmission.The group discussed several space-related topics, including a new startup using near-infrared light for energy transfer and the status of space solar power projects. Tom expressed skepticism about space solar power's feasibility, while also advocating for thorium reactors as a potential solution. The conversation touched on space debris concerns and the development of Starlink satellites. Tom shared insights on his company Avealto's plans to address the digital divide by building high-altitude platforms to provide affordable internet access in developing countries.The group discussed Starlink's pricing and availability, with David noting its $80/month offer in the US, while Tom mentioned plans for testing in Malaysia by year-end. Joe shared his experience with Starlink, paying $120 monthly for 200 Mbps download speed. The conversation then shifted to astronomy and space science updates, including the discovery of 6,000 extrasolar planets, new analyses of TRAPPIST-1E, and the first images from the Vera Rubin Observatory. Tom and John Jossy discussed upcoming developments in dark energy research and potential discoveries about dark matter. The conversation ended with a discussion about future trends in space exploration, with Tom predicting increased focus on AI and space-based data centers.The Wisdom Team discussed the feasibility and challenges of AI data centers in space, with Joe presenting an economic analysis suggesting it would cost three times as much as building data centers in Oregon. They explored the technical aspects, including latency concerns and the potential for clusters of satellites in sun-synchronous orbit. The conversation also touched on the future of the ISS, with concerns about maintaining research capabilities after 2030 and the potential for private sector involvement. Tom mentioned his organization, Center for Space Commerce, planning a Space Investment Summit in Turkey next year. John Jossy shared information about Rendezvous Robotics, a company working on space infrastructure, and their partnership with StarCloud for orbital data centers. David noted the absence of discussion on fusion energy, a topic he intended to address.The group discussed fusion energy, with Thomas expressing skepticism about its timeline and Jossy mentioning Microsoft's partnership with a fusion startup aiming for data centers by 2028. They also discussed nuclear power plants, including Microsoft's plans for Three Mile Island and the status of Diablo Canyon in California. Tom announced he would be running a business track and panel at the upcoming ISDC conference in McLean, Virginia. The conversation concluded with a discussion about the rapid development of AI processors and the need for new data center buildings in the coming years.Special thanks to our sponsors:Northrup Grumman, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Helix Space in Luxembourg, Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, Astrox Corporation, Dr. Haym Benaroya of Rutgers University, The Space Settlement Progress Blog by John Jossy, The Atlantis Project, and Artless EntertainmentOur Toll Free Line for Live Broadcasts: 1-866-687-7223 (Not in service at this time)For real time program participation, email Dr. Space at: drspace@thespaceshow.com for instructions and access.The Space Show is a non-profit 501C3 through its parent, One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. To donate via Pay Pal, use:To donate with Zelle, use the email address: david@onegiantleapfoundation.org.If you prefer donating with a check, please make the check payable to One Giant Leap Foundation and mail to:One Giant Leap Foundation, 11035 Lavender Hill Drive Ste. 160-306 Las Vegas, NV 89135Upcoming Programs:Broadcast 4480: Zoom Open Lines Discussion For All | Tuesday 30 Dec 2025 700PM PTGuests: Dr. David LivingstonZoom: Open Lines. Come One Come AllBroadcast 4481: Zoom from India with JATAN MEHTA | Friday 02 Jan 2026 930AM PTGuests: Jatan MehtaZoom: Happy New Year from India with guest JATAN MEHTABroadcast 4482: Zoom: Open Lines to kick of 2026 | Sunday 04 Jan 2026 1200PM PTGuests: Dr. David LivingstonZoom: Open Lines to start the New Year Get full access to The Space Show-One Giant Leap Foundation at doctorspace.substack.com/subscribe

The AI race isn't about chips anymore. It's about electricity. In a massive $4.75 billion deal, Google (Alphabet) just acquired Intersect Power, a major clean energy developer, to secure the grid access its data centers desperately need.But Google isn't alone. From Microsoft restarting Three Mile Island to Amazon's massive nuclear contracts, Big Tech is panic-buying power plants.In this video, we break down why the "AI Energy Wall" is forcing tech giants to become utility companies, and what this means for the future of the power grid, nuclear energy, and your electric bill.TIMESTAMPS0:00 – Intro: Bigtech Energy War0:44 – The Deal: Why Google Bought Intersect Power for $4.75B1:30 – The "Energy Wall": AI Power Consumption vs. The Grid2:01 – BigTech Energy Contracts in 20253:21 – Who Pays? The Impact on Consumers and InvestorsKEY TAKEAWAYS✅ Google's $4.75B Bet: Alphabet acquires Intersect Power to build "behind the meter" energy projects, bypassing the clogged public grid.✅ The Energy Crisis: AI queries use 10x more power than search. By 2030, US data centers will consume 9% of all electricity.✅ Nuclear Renaissance: Tech giants are single-handedly reviving nuclear power (SMRs & restarts) because they need 24/7 reliability that solar/wind can't provide.✅ Vertical Integration: Big Tech is now owning the entire stack: from the AI model to the chip to the power plant running it.SOURCES & DATA- Google Acquires Intersect Power ($4.75B Deal)- Microsoft Restarts Three Mile Island (Constellation Energy Deal)- Amazon Signs 1.9GW Nuclear Deal (Talen Energy)- Data Center Power Demand Forecast (Bain/Bloomberg)Links:Prashant Choubey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahabSubscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.comSubscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10X Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQVC10X website - https://vc10x.comFor sponsorship queries reach out to prashantchoubey3@gmail.comSUBSCRIBE FOR MORE MACRO INSIGHTSVC10X breaks down the most important stories in finance, tech, and markets every week. If you want actionable insights to help you navigate this volatile economy, subscribe now.COMMENT BELOWIs Big Tech buying power plants a smart move or a dangerous monopoly? Let us know in the comments.#AI #Google #EnergyCrisis #NuclearPower #Investing #TechNews #Microsoft #Amazon #CleanEnergy #IntersectPower #MacroEconomics

In Episode 402 Ken and Dave discuss Fani going before the State Senate, data centers sucking up power, banging on Burt Jones, the Brown University shooter, Trump's wild week, and Fulton's 2020 foulups. The Fanny Willis Senate Hearing Discussion of District Attorney Fanny Willis's testimony before the Georgia State Senate, highlighting her argumentative demeanor and the presence of former Governor Roy Barnes as her attorney. Insights into the billing controversies involving Nathan Wade, including reports of him billing up to 160 hours in a single week. Analysis of how the hearing impacts the public perception of the Fulton County DA's office. Donald Trump's Busy Week Marijuana Reclassification: Trump reclassified marijuana to allow for expanded medical research and standard tax deductions for businesses, though it remains federally illegal. The Kennedy Center: The board unanimously voted to rename the facility the "Trump President Trump Kennedy Center" after Trump appointed the board members. Patriot Games: An initiative to host a national youth fitness competition in honor of the country's 250th birthday. Military and Federal Perks: Trump announced $1,776 checks for military members (funded via housing allowances) and granted federal employees extra time off for Christmas. Controversy: Criticism of Trump's comments regarding the tragic death of actor/director Rob Reiner. Georgia Political & State News 14th District Race: Local businessman Brian Stover enters the race for the 14th District, immediately becoming a front-runner against Colton Moore. Dark Money in Politics: The Georgia GOP filed an ethics complaint against "Georgians for Integrity," a Delaware-based group spending millions on ads targeting Bert Jones. Data Center Expansion: The Public Service Commission approved a major energy expansion to meet the demands of nearly 10 new gigawatts for data centers and warehouses along the I-75 corridor. Nuclear Energy: A look at the return of nuclear power, including the reactivation of facilities like Three Mile Island using modern AI monitoring. National Headlines & Crime Brown University Shooting: Analysis of the shooting involving suspect Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a former student with a long-standing grudge, and the subsequent criticism of the university's lack of security cameras. Epstein Files: The release of new photos involving David Copperfield and Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to further debate over transparency in the investigation. Fulton County Election Gaffes: Fulton County admitted to procedural errors in the 2020 election involving 315,000 unsigned tabulator tapes, sparking renewed debate over election integrity. The Mule of the Week Hashim Walters: A 29-year-old "entrepreneur" accused of running a scam regarding a purported bid to buy Spirit Airlines and establish the first black-owned commercial airline. Quick Hits Jake Paul's $100 million payday despite a broken jaw. The massive $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot. Alabama's comeback victory to move forward in the college football playoffs.

It's our end-of-year membership drive! Become a member today. Our nonprofit newsroom is powered by our members. Now through December 31st, every donation up to $1,000 will be matched. One-time donations will be doubled and monthly donations matched 12 times. Another $1,000 will be unlocked if we gain 50 new members at any amount. Donate today.  Or send us a check to: The Allegheny Front, 67 Bedford Square, Pittsburgh, 15203.  And thanks!  On this week's show: How nature-based learning inspires human creativity. Pennsylvania is among the states suing the Trump administration over funding for electric vehicle chargers. We head out into the wilds of Pennsylvania with the people who keep an eye on the state's bears. We speak with the author of a collection of stories where bears are recurring characters. The US Environmental Protection Agency heard testimony in Pittsburgh about proposed changes to the Clean Water Act. A controversial data center has the green light to move forward with construction at the site of a former coal-fired power plant in Allegheny County. Three Mile Island is at the center of the Trump administration's push for new nuclear energy projects to power the ongoing race to advance artificial intelligence.   Sign up for our newsletter! Get our newsletter every Tuesday morning so you'll never miss an environmental story. 

The Trump administration is pushing new nuclear energy projects to power the ongoing race to advance artificial intelligence. Dauphin County’s Three Mile Island is at the center of that goal. The Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police is leaving Harrisburg for the national stage. Avian Influenza may be making a comeback among poultry flocks in Pennsylvania. About 400 snow geese likely died of the virus in Northampton County. In Washington, four centrist Republicans have broken with their party's leadership over health care. Three of the four are from Pennsylvania. They signed onto a Democratic-led petition, forcing a House vote on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans. Dauphin County Commissioners approved a 2026 budget plan Wednesday. It includes a 9.75% property tax increase - the second major tax raise in two years. Pennsylvania is one of 35 states reaching a settlement with automakers Kia and Hyundai over faulty anti-theft systems. The Pennsylvania company that makes the marshmallow treats known as Peeps announces it's planning a Peeps Chick Drop on New Year's Eve. If you already support WITF with an ongoing monthly contribution, thank you. If every member of WITF's Sustaining Circle increased their gift by as little as $12 a month, we could close the budget gap caused by cuts in federal funding and keep programming like the Morning Agenda. Increase your monthly gift today at witf.org/increase or become a new Sustaining Circle member at www.witf.org/givenow. And thank you.Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is restarting Three Mile Island the ultimate redemption story—or the industry's biggest PR gamble?Judy Rader, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer at Constellation Energy, runs communications for the nation's largest clean energy producer. Operating 21 nuclear reactors representing 25% of U.S. nuclear capacity, Constellation has transformed nuclear's narrative from defensive to proactive. "I want to save nuclear power plants. I think it's important for our climate," Judy told a skeptical colleague before joining the 2022 spinoff. She explains why restarting Three Mile Island was the right call, how eating a banana delivers more radiation than living near a reactor, and what it takes to build new nuclear at scale. Can America compete with China's nuclear buildout?Judy Rader is Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer at Constellation Energy, the nation's largest producer of clean, carbon-free electricity. With operational oversight of 21 nuclear reactors representing 25% of all U.S. nuclear capacity, Judy leads corporate communications and public affairs strategy. Her 20-year energy career began at ComEd in 2005 after agency experience with blue-chip clients including Kraft, Boeing, and Allstate. A passionate advocate for nuclear energy's climate benefits, Judy joined Constellation's 2022 spinoff from Exelon to advance the industry's clean energy mission. She spearheaded the Come Clean campaign, helping drive public nuclear support to 60%.In This Episode:(00:00) Judy Rader and Constellation Energy's nuclear leadership (04:08) From agency life to utilities, expecting boring work (08:18) Nuclear's perception problem and the Come Clean campaign (14:30) Three Mile Island restart announcement and strategic messaging (20:43) Radiation facts, banana comparisons, and public education (23:00) Building new nuclear capacity to meet demand growthShare with someone who would enjoy this topic, like and subscribe to hear all of our future episodes, send us your comments and guest suggestions!About the show: The Age of Adoption podcast explores the monumental transition from a period of social, economic, and environmental research and exploration – an Age of Innovation – to today's world in which companies across the economy are furiously deploying sustainable solutions – the Age of Adoption. Listen as our host, Keith Zakheim, CEO of Antenna Group, talks with experts from across the climate, energy, health, and real estate sectors to discuss what the transition means for business and society, and how corporates and startups can rise above competitors to lead in this new age. This podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group, a global marketing and communications agency that partners with Fully Conscious brands — those with the courage to lead transformative change across Climate & Energy, Real Estate, Health, and beyond. Our clients include visionary corporations, startups, investors, and nonprofits who recognize that meaningful impact requires more than awareness; it demands bold action. In today's Age of Adoption, where every sector must incorporate sustainable solutions into foundational systems, we amplify brands standing at the forefront of change, shaping a better future for our planet and its people. To learn more, visit antennagroup.com.Resources:Judy Rader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyrader/Constellation Energy: https://www.constellationenergy.com/Antenna GroupKeith Zakheim LinkedIn

The White House has promised to quadruple nuclear power by 2050. To get there, some closed nuclear plants are coming back online, including one near the site of a reactor that partially melted down more than 45 years ago. Here & Now's Chris Bentley visits two of them: the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan and the Crane Clean Energy Center on Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.And, we talk with Katy Huff, associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, about what it will take to increase the role of nuclear in the country's future energy mix.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Space Show Presents Open Lines, Sunday, 12-7-25Quick recapThe program began with discussions about space-related topics including data centers in LEO, NASA's Artemis program, and orbital debris concerns. The conversation ended with our Wisdom Team talking about the geopolitical implications of returning to the moon, the challenges of space exploration priorities, and the disconnect between space technology and the general public.Detailed SummaryWe various space topics such as NASA's Artemis program and the appointment of Isaacman as an administrator, with David expressing skepticism about the program's future. John Jossy shared insights from discussions on space solar power and orbital debris concerns. We concluded with a brief mention of Isaac Arthur's show on AI and data centers in space, and Dr. Sherry expressing confidence in Sam Altman's ability to pursue such projects.We began with a discussion about AI and data centers in space, with David mentioning his contact at Stoke and the lack of media interest from the company. Ryan, a long-time visitor, was encouraged to become a $100 donor to join Zoom calls rather than using Zoom phone lines. I mentioned upcoming guests and topics, including Dr. Antonio Del Popolo discussing extraterrestrial life on December 26th and Dr. Mike Griffin returning to the show on Tuesday, Dec. 23. The conversation ended with a reminder about the importance of donations and sponsorships to support the program.The Wisdom Team discussed Jatan's Moon Monday blog and his poetry about space, with John Jossy recommending it as an excellent source of information. I proposed an off-topic space show program about the origins of dogs and wolves based on recent research, which Ajay and Philip supported, suggesting a connection to human adaptation for future space missions. This portion of the conversation ended with Ajay praising David's work and mentioning his own upcoming high-level government hearing related to nuclear technology and Russian missile developments, while David advised caution due to potential global listener conflicts.Our Wisdom Team discussed Ajay's upcoming meeting with Vice President Vance, including the security protocols and potential interactions. They also debated Jared Isaacman's appointment as NASA administrator, with concerns raised about his close relationship with SpaceX and the need for increased transparency regarding contractor performance. The conversation concluded with a discussion about the Artemis program, with Mike Griffin advocating for its immediate cancellation to develop alternatives, while others believed it should continue, particularly given SpaceX's human lander contract.The Wisdom Team discussed the U.S. lunar return strategy and potential competition with China. David and Michael expressed concerns that China might secretly aim to reach the moon earlier than their public timeline, potentially requiring a return to an Apollo-style approach. Bill noted that both SpaceX and Blue Origin had resubmitted more competitive lunar lander proposals. The discussion also touched on legal and treaty implications of a U.S. return to the moon, with Ajay explaining the vast size of the South Pole region and Peter inquiring about potential legal restrictions on U.S. presence.We moved on to discuss the geopolitical implications of returning to the moon, with Michael emphasizing the need to establish a presence there to prevent China from claiming sovereignty and potentially using it as a precedent for broader space claims. Ajay suggested focusing on infrastructure development rather than planting flags, while David highlighted the importance of the moon mission in maintaining U.S. influence and national security. The discussion touched on the trade-offs between pursuing the moon mission now versus waiting a few years for better technology, with Peter questioning the value of the current moon mission in light of other priorities like cislunar space development.The group discussed the challenges and priorities of space exploration, focusing on whether to prioritize a moon landing or orbital technology development. Michael and Ajay advocated for a moon landing as a more feasible and urgent goal within the decade, while David emphasized the need to confront China's aggressive space program and geopolitical influence. Peter raised concerns about the realism of these goals given Congress's limitations and the country's financial situation. The discussion also touched on China's space capabilities, including their reusable rocket program and plans for a lunar research station, as well as the potential for sustainable space activities like mining resources on the moon.We addressed SpaceX's potential IPO, with Elon Musk downplaying a recent Wall Street Journal article about the company's valuation. They debated whether Musk would give up control by going public, with Peter suggesting he could maintain control through a class of stock. The conversation then shifted to Starlink's pricing strategy and potential competition from Amazon's constellation. Finally, Peter raised the question of orbital data centers, discussing their potential advantages and the likely resurgence of nuclear power as a more cost-effective solution for data center power needs.The Wisdom Team discussed the feasibility and implications of placing data centers in space, with Ajay emphasizing the potential of advanced nuclear reactors on Earth as a more efficient and cost-effective solution. Michael highlighted China's plans for a data center constellation in sun-synchronous orbit, while Peter and others debated the economic viability and environmental impact of such projects. Our conversation mentioned Microsoft's refurbishment of Three Mile Island and the long-term vision of Sam Altman regarding the expansion of energy consumption beyond Earth's capabilities.We talked about the disconnect between space technology and the general public, with David expressing concern that the space community is out of touch with the everyday issues facing Americans, such as debt and inflation. Philip shared insights from a survey revealing low public knowledge about space, while Michael suggested focusing on the practical benefits of space technology in everyday life. Bill and others acknowledged the challenge of engaging the public in space issues, with Bill suggesting that technology is often taken for granted. The discussion highlighted the need to bridge the gap between the space community and the general public, though no concrete solutions were proposed.We promoted the idea of the importance of allowing different fields and individuals to continue their unique contributions without expecting them to understand or align with each other's work. Ajay emphasized that the progress of humanity benefits from the synergy of diverse efforts, including those of poets, artists, and sportspeople. Bill highlighted the need to avoid negativity around space exploration and noted that most people find it interesting, despite not fully understanding it. David expressed frustration over societal disconnect from space's potential benefits, while Michael shared an anecdote about law students showing interest in space law. The group also discussed the challenges of information overload and the increasing reliance on smartphones, particularly among children. The conversation ended with a brief discussion about the National Space Society and its upcoming events, as well as a conversation about the lack of evidence and the potential national security implications surrounding UAPs.Special thanks to our sponsors:Northrup Grumman, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Helix Space in Luxembourg, Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, Astrox Corporation, Dr. Haym Benaroya of Rutgers University, The Space Settlement Progress Blog by John Jossy, The Atlantis Project, and Artless EntertainmentOur Toll Free Line for Live Broadcasts: 1-866-687-7223 (Not in service at this time)For real time program participation, email Dr. Space at: drspace@thespaceshow.com for instructions and access.The Space Show is a non-profit 501C3 through its parent, One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. To donate via Pay Pal, use:To donate with Zelle, use the email address: david@onegiantleapfoundation.org.If you prefer donating with a check, please make the check payable to One Giant Leap Foundation and mail to:One Giant Leap Foundation, 11035 Lavender Hill Drive Ste. 160-306 Las Vegas, NV 89135Upcoming ProgramsBroadcast 4473 ZOOM Manuel Cuba | Friday 12 Dec 2025 930AM PTGuests: Manuel CubaZoom: Manuel reports back from Helix Space in Luxembourg on private space investment in Europe and more,Broadcast 4474 Zoom Isaac Arthur | Sunday 14 Dec 2025 1200PM PTGuests: Isaac ArthurZoom: Isaac return with NSS news and other space, science, engineering news and questions and answers Get full access to The Space Show-One Giant Leap Foundation at doctorspace.substack.com/subscribe

MN voter registration list request refusal, SNAP data request, Breaking Federal Reserve News, make America affordable again, sports talk, Three Mile Island, we lost another musician, the nutcracker, Christmas with Elvis, and Merry Tuba Christmas in Virginia...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chesapeake Bay officials elected Gov. Josh Shapiro to lead a regional agreement to help clean and restore the waterway. he first-term Democrat will take the reins at a tumultuous time for the forty-year-old partnership. Gov. Josh Shapiro says he’s going to break Pennsylvania from its history of taking a BACKSEAT to Chesapeake Bay conservation. The group Shapiro will lead FAILED to meet many of the goals it set for its members more than ten years ago. Like CUTTING POLLUTION and BOOSTING WILDLIFE along the watershed. But members extended the group’s deadlines to meet its goals to 2040. Some environmental groups are criticizing the new plan as being UNAMBITIOUS. But many say they’re hopeful Shapiro’s leadership will help push the group to act more quickly. Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry is looking to open its rural dental education center and clinic at the site of a former Rite Aid in downtown Tamaqua. Temple has partnered with the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership on the project. The center awaits approval by the Temple University Board of Trustees. The proposed center would have 24 chairs and will host 20 dental students on the rural dentistry track. Dental students will complete the final two years of dental school at the Tamaqua campus and provide dental services to residents of Schuylkill, Carbon and Luzerne counties. Students will live in downtown Tamaqua, in an old department store that will be renovated into apartments. Temple told WVIA earlier this year that the dental school will cover students’ housing costs, which will be financially supported by tuition. The clinic also is expected to create about 20 new jobs. Temple’s dentistry school also started discussions with Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) about a dental hygiene program that will train six to 10 students. Argall chaired a public hearing through the Senate Majority Policy Committee about dental care shortages in rural Pennsylvania. Renovations on both the education center and student housing are expected to begin before the end of this year. Officials have said the center is expected to open for the Fall semester in September 2026. Constellation Energy’s project to restart a nuclear reactor at the former Three Mile Island plant in Dauphin County is getting a boost from the federal government in the form of a one billion dollar loan. The energy produced there will power Microsoft AI data centers The project has drawn some opposition from the community surrounding the site, where a partial meltdown more than 40 years ago caused the nation’s worst nuclear power disaster. Supporters have pointed to potential economic benefits such as construction jobs. And Constellation has said the plant will help offset data centers’ demand on the power grid. A company representative also says the taxpayer-backed loan will be repaid with full interest. It’s being financed through the Trump administration’s Energy Dominance Financing Program focused on expanding the country’s energy infrastructure for the Artificial Intelligence industry. The TMI Unit 1 reactor is expected to be operational in 20-27. Holiday book shopping is in full swing at Midtown Scholar, where families, students, and solo readers fill the aisles each December. On The Spark, bookseller Catherine Lawrence described the season as one of the most joyful times in the store.Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(00:00:00) Chesapeake Bay officials elected Gov. Josh Shapiro to lead a regional agreement to help clean and restore the waterway. he first-term Democrat will take the reins at a tumultuous time for the forty-year-old partnership. Gov. Josh Shapiro says he’s going to break Pennsylvania from its history of taking a BACKSEAT to Chesapeake Bay conservation. The group Shapiro will lead FAILED to meet many of the goals it set for its members more than ten years ago. Like CUTTING POLLUTION and BOOSTING WILDLIFE along the watershed. But members extended the group’s deadlines to meet its goals to 2040. Some environmental groups are criticizing the new plan as being UNAMBITIOUS. But many say they’re hopeful Shapiro’s leadership will help push the group to act more quickly. Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry is looking to open its rural dental education center and clinic at the site of a former Rite Aid in downtown Tamaqua. Temple has partnered with the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership on the project. The center awaits approval by the Temple University Board of Trustees. The proposed center would have 24 chairs and will host 20 dental students on the rural dentistry track. Dental students will complete the final two years of dental school at the Tamaqua campus and provide dental services to residents of Schuylkill, Carbon and Luzerne counties. Students will live in downtown Tamaqua, in an old department store that will be renovated into apartments. Temple told WVIA earlier this year that the dental school will cover students’ housing costs, which will be financially supported by tuition. The clinic also is expected to create about 20 new jobs. Temple’s dentistry school also started discussions with Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) about a dental hygiene program that will train six to 10 students. Argall chaired a public hearing through the Senate Majority Policy Committee about dental care shortages in rural Pennsylvania. Renovations on both the education center and student housing are expected to begin before the end of this year. Officials have said the center is expected to open for the Fall semester in September 2026. Constellation Energy’s project to restart a nuclear reactor at the former Three Mile Island plant in Dauphin County is getting a boost from the federal government in the form of a one-billion-dollar loan. The energy produced there will power Microsoft AI data centers the project has drawn some opposition from the community surrounding the site, where a partial meltdown more than 40 years ago caused the nation’s worst nuclear power disaster. Supporters have pointed to potential economic benefits such as construction jobs. And Constellation has said the plant will help offset data centers’ demand on the power grid. A company representative also says the taxpayer-backed loan will be repaid with full interest. It’s being financed through the Trump administration’s Energy Dominance Financing Program focused on expanding the country’s energy infrastructure for the Artificial Intelligence industry. The TMI Unit 1 reactor is expected to be operational in 20-27. (00:21:48) Tips for Getting through the Holidays - practical tips for navigating difficult conversations with friends and others.Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we talk about radioactive waste, neutrons, and burn while breeding cycles.We also discuss dry casks, radioactive decay, and uranium.Recommended Book: Breakneck by Dan WangTranscriptRadioactive waste, often called nuclear waste, typically falls into one of three categories: low-level waste that contains a small amount of radioactivity that will last a very short time—this is stuff like clothes or tools or rags that have been contaminated—intermediate-level waste, which has been contaminated enough that it requires shielding, and high-level waste, which is very radioactive material that creates a bunch of heat because of all the radioactive decay, so it requires both shield and cooling.Some types of radioactive waste, particularly spent fuel of the kind used in nuclear power plants, can be reprocessed, which means separating it into other types of useful products, including another type of mixed nuclear fuel that can be used in lieu of uranium, though generally not economically unless uranium supplies are low. About a third of all spent nuclear fuel has already been reprocessed in some way.About 4% of even the recyclable stuff, though, doesn't have that kind of second-life purpose, and that, combined with the medium- and long-lived waste that is quite dangerous to have just sitting around, has to be stored somehow, shielded and maybe cooled, and in some cases for a very long time: some especially long-lived fission products have half-lives that stretch into the hundreds of thousands or millions of years, which means they will be radioactive deep into the future, many times longer than humans have existed as a species.According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, something like 490,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel is currently being stored, on a temporary basis, at hundreds of specialized sites around the world. The majority of this radioactive waste is stored in pools of spent fuel water, cooled in that water somewhere near the nuclear reactors where the waste originated. Other waste has been relocated into what're called dry casks, which are big, barrel-like containers made of several layers of steel, concrete, and other materials, which surround a canister that holds the waste, and the canister is itself surrounded by inert gas. These casks hold and cool waste using natural air convection, so they don't require any kind of external power or water sources, while other solutions, including storage in water, sometimes does—and often the fuel is initially stored in pools, and is then moved to casks for longer-term storage.Most of the radioactive waste produced today comes in the form of spend fuel from nuclear reactors, which are typically small ceramic pellets made of low-enriched uranium oxide. These pellets are stacked on top of each other and encased in metal, and that creates what's called a fuel rod.In the US, alone, about 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is created each year, which is just shy of half an olympic sized swimming pool in terms of volume, and in many countries, the non-reuseable stuff is eventually buried, near the surface for the low- to intermediate-level waste, and deeper for high-level waste—deeper, in this context, meaning something like 200-1000 m, which is about 650-3300 feet, beneath the surface.The goal of such burying is to prevent potential leakage that might impact life on the surface, while also taking advantage of the inherent stability and cooler nature of underground spaces which are chosen for their isolation, natural barriers, and water impermeability, and which are also often reinforced with human-made supports and security, blocking everything off and protecting the surrounding area so nothing will access these spaces far into the future, and so that they won't be broken open by future glaciation or other large-scale impacts, either.What I'd like to talk about today is another potential use and way of dealing with this type of waste, and why a recent, related development in China is being heralded as such a big deal.—An experimental nuclear reactor was built in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, and back in 2023 the group achieved its first criticality, got started up, basically, and it has been generating heat through nuclear fission ever since.What that means is that the nuclear reactor did what a nuclear reactor is supposed to do. Most such reactors exist to generate heat, which then creates steam and spins turbines, which generates electricity.What's special about this reactor, though, is that it is a thorium molten salt reactor, which means it uses thorium instead of uranium as a fuel source, and the thorium is processed into uranium as part of the energy-making process, because thorium only contains trace amounts of fissile material, which isn't enough to get a power-generating, nuclear chain reaction going.This reactor was able to successfully perform what's called in-core thorium-to-uranium conversion, which allows the operators to use thorium as fuel, and have that thorium converted into uranium, which is sufficiently fissile to produce nuclear power, inside the core of the reactor. This is an incredibly fiddly process, and requires that the thorium-232 used as fuel absorb a neutron, which turns it into thorium-233. Thorium-233 then decays into protactinium-233, and that, in turn, decays into uranium-233—the fuel that powers the reactor.One innovation here is that this entire process happens inside the reactor, rather than occurring externally, which would require a bunch of supplementary infrastructure to handle fuel fabrication, increasing the amount of space and cost associated with the reactor.Those neutrons required to start the thorium conversion process are provided by small amounts of more fissile material, like enriched uranium-235 or plutonium-239, and the thorium is dissolved in a fluoride salt and becomes a molten mixture that allows it to absorb that necessary neutron, and go through that multi-step decay process, turning into uranium-233. That end-point uranium then releases energy through nuclear fission, and this initiates what's called a burn while breeding cycle, which means it goes on to produce its own neutrons moving forward, which obviates the need for those other, far more fissile materials that were used to start the chain reaction. All of which makes this process a lot more fuel efficient than other options, dramatically reduces the amount of radioactive waste produced, and allows reactors that use it to operate a lot longer without needing to refuel, which also extends a reactor's functional life.On that last point, many typical nuclear power plants built over the past handful of decades use pressurized water reactors which have to be periodically shut down so operators can replace spent fuel rods. This new method instead allows the fissile materials to continuously circulate, enabling on-the-fly refueling—so no shut-down, no interruption of operations necessary.This method also requires zero water, which could allow these reactors to be built in more and different locations, as conventional nuclear power plants have typically been built near large water sources, like oceans, because of their cooling needs.China initiated the program that led to the development of this experimental reactor back in 2011, in part because it has vast thorium reserves it wanted to tap in its pursuit of energy independence, and in part because this approach to nuclear energy should, in theory at least, allow plant operators to use existing, spent fuel rods as part of its process, which could be very economically interesting, as they could use the waste from their existing plants to help fuel these new plants, but also take such waste off other governments' hands, maybe even be paid for it, because those other governments would then no longer need to store the stuff, and China could use it as cheap fuel; win win.Thinking further along, though, maybe the real killer application of this technology is that it allows for the dispersion of nuclear energy without the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. The plants are smaller, they have a passive safety system that disallows the sorts of disasters that we saw in Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island—that sort of thing just can't happen with this setup—and the fissile materials, aside from those starter materials used to get the initial cycle going, can't be used to make nuclear weapons.Right now, there's a fair amount of uranium on the market, but just like oil, that availability is cyclical and controlled by relatively few governments. In the future, that resource could become more scarce, and this reactor setup may become even more valuable as a result, because thorium is a lot cheaper and more abundant, and it's less tightly controlled because it's useless from a nuclear weapons standpoint.This is only the very first step on the way toward a potentially thorium-reactor dominated nuclear power industry, and the conversion rate on this experimental model was meager.That said, it is a big step in the right direction, and a solid proof-of-concept, showing that this type of reactor has promise and would probably work scaled-up, as well, and that means the 100MW demonstration reactor China is also building in the Gobi, hoping to prove the concept's full value by 2035, stands a pretty decent chance of having a good showing.Show Noteshttps://www.deepisolation.com/about-nuclear-waste/where-is-nuclear-waste-nowhttps://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuelhttps://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-advanced-reactor-systems-watch-2030https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realitieshttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-all-the-nuclear-waste-in-the-world/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_managementhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_wastehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repositoryhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/er.3854https://archive.is/DQpXMhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_powerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

Hanover Foods has agreed to pay $1.1 million in fines - and improve its wastewater treatment - to resolve a federal lawsuit filed by the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association. The U.S. Department of Energy says it's loaning $1 billion to help finance the restart of the nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. And today we have two deep dives into Pennsylvania’s water quality: Turning to Western Pennsylvania - while air pollution in the Mon Valley has been the focus of environmental concerns and lawsuits for many years, some groups are also looking at water quality. Microplastics have been found in humans’ bodies, at the bottom of the ocean and in the Arctic. They’re an emerging concern for scientists — and for a group of active seniors working to safeguard Philadelphia’s environment.Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prices keep climbing, patience keeps thinning, and that pressure is redefining politics at every level. We open with the cost of living crunch—how 25% higher prices since 2020 and a rise in repossessions are shaping voter mood and scaring off potential contenders in New Mexico. If you run tethered to Trump, you risk moderates; if you run away from him, you risk your own base. With Latino approval shifting and filing deadlines looming, the path gets narrow fast.Then we pull back the curtain on a Minnesota fraud web that moved from pandemic meal programs to alleged autism services kickbacks. Claims exploded from millions to hundreds of millions, with new providers multiplying overnight. Prosecutors now allege parents were paid monthly per child, with authorizations juiced to raise payouts. The uncomfortable layer: money flows through remittance networks where, according to law enforcement sources, terror groups take a cut. This isn't a culture war story—it's a systems story about oversight, media vigilance, and political incentives that kept guardrails loose until the numbers screamed.We also break down a surprising Trump–Mandani “love fest,” what it signals inside the broader coalition, and why performative politics often beats policy in the headlines. Back home, DA Sam Bregman proposes legislative term limits and salaries, plus a longer session. We weigh the upside of fresh blood against the real risk of giving an overactive legislature more time to overreach. Finally, we pressure‑test a viral renewable claim against real grid math. With AI data centers and electrification soaring, nuclear energy is back: a federal loan to restart Three Mile Island's undamaged unit and Utah's push for small modular reactors hint at a new era. New Mexico already builds SMR components, studies designs, and produces fuel; now's the moment to scale, modernize transmission, and become the nuclear state alongside oil and gas.If the economy is the problem, abundant reliable energy is a big part of the solution. Lower power costs ripple into food, housing, and jobs. That's how you cool tempers, steady households, and widen the lane for pragmatic politics. Enjoy the ride, and then tell us what leaders should tackle first. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review to help more people find the show.Website: https://www.nodoubtaboutitpodcast.com/Twitter: @nodoubtpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoDoubtAboutItPod/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markronchettinm/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

It's our end-of-year membership drive! Become a member today. Our nonprofit newsroom is powered by our members. Now through December 31st, every donation up to $1,000 will be matched. One-time donations will be doubled and monthly donations matched 12 times. Another $1,000 will be unlocked if we gain 50 new members at any amount. Donate today.  Or send us a check to: The Allegheny Front, 67 Bedford Square, Pittsburgh, 15203.  And thanks!  On this week's show: The Ohio River Basin is poised for a multi-year ecological restoration after decades of industrial pollution, but only if Congress decides to fund it. Constellation Energy's project to restart a nuclear reactor at the former Three Mile Island plant in Dauphin County is getting a one billion dollar loan from the federal government. Allegheny County Council voted unanimously to approve a series of fee increases for facilities that produce air pollution. Ohio's Great Black Swamp might hold the key to reducing pollution in the Great Lakes. The first leg of a new trail system in Centre County, Pennsylvania, is ready for visitors. A percussionist from Brazil turns discarded objects into musical instruments.   Sign up for our newsletter! Get our newsletter every Tuesday morning so you'll never miss an environmental story. 

Tell us what you think of the show! This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm's Mike Casey.This week's episode features special guest Amy Harder from Axios, who wrote about an oil industry lobbying group spending big to advertise during Paramount's second season of “Landman."This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Glenna Gannon, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Glenna led research for an agrivoltaics project in Alaska, helping grow potatoes, kale and spinach underneath the panels. Congratulations, Glenna!This Week in Cleantech — November 21, 2025 Hydropower Is Getting Less Reliable as the World Needs More Energy — The New York TimesWhy the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy – The New YorkerUS loans Constellation $1 billion for Three Mile Island reactor reboot — ReutersWorld Is Off Course on Pledge to Rein in Emissions of Heat-Trapping Methane — Bloomberg"Landman" TV show reflects oil industry's renewed swagger — AxiosWant to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing Paul.Gerke@clarionevents.com

Scammers have created a fake website for water bills that people should be aware of. Three Mile Island is getting a little federal help. Two airport security checkpoints are reopening now that the shutdown's over. And if you love sports, then these are the cities for you. 

The Trump administration is putting a $1 billion dollar loan toward helping restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The move underscores the administration's push for nuclear power as energy bills rise for Americans. POLITICO's Kelsey Tamborrino breaks down why the Department of Energy is moving forward with the loan. Plus, the Trump administration launched an effort to roll back the Biden administration's changes to the Endangered Species Act. Kelsey Tamborrino is a reporter covering clean energy for POLITICO. Josh Siegel is an energy reporter for POLITICO and the host of POLITICO Energy. Nirmal Mulaikal is the co-host and producer of POLITICO Energy.  Kara Tabor is an audio producer for POLITICO. Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO.  Ben Lefebvre is the deputy energy editor at POLITICO.  Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Our theme music is by Pran Bandi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Day in Legal History: Ratification of the Bill of Rights by New JerseyOn November 20, 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights, a landmark moment in American constitutional history. Just months after the U.S. Constitution went into effect, debate over its lack of explicit protections for individual liberties sparked calls for amendments. Responding to this concern, James Madison introduced a series of proposed amendments in the First Congress in June 1789, aiming to ease Anti-Federalist fears and solidify support for the new federal government. Congress approved twelve amendments on September 25, 1789, and sent them to the states for ratification.New Jersey acted swiftly, ratifying eleven of the twelve proposed amendments less than two months later. The state rejected the first proposed amendment, which concerned congressional representation, and accepted the rest, including protections for freedom of speech, religion, the press, the right to bear arms, and safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. New Jersey's early endorsement gave momentum to the broader ratification effort, which required approval by three-fourths of the states.By December 15, 1791, ten of the amendments had been ratified by the necessary eleven states and became known as the Bill of Rights. These provisions would become foundational to American legal doctrine, judicial interpretation, and civil liberties jurisprudence. New Jersey's rapid ratification also signaled the willingness of smaller states to embrace a constitutional framework that better balanced federal power with individual protections.The ratification process itself reflected the structural legal mechanism required to alter the Constitution—Article V mandates both congressional proposal and state approval. This episode demonstrates how early American legal institutions navigated public pressure and political compromise to create durable legal norms. The Bill of Rights remains central to constitutional interpretation today, frequently invoked in court cases involving speech, privacy, and due process.A group of senior judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has recently influenced several rulings on politically sensitive cases, softening the conservative tone of one of the nation's most right-leaning appellate courts. These judges, many appointed decades ago by presidents like Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, were part of three-judge panels that struck down or allowed challenges to laws involving religion in schools, drag shows on campus, and firearm signage. However, these decisions are now set for reconsideration by the court's full active bench in January, as part of a growing trend of en banc rehearings.The Fifth Circuit includes 17 active judges and seven senior judges. While senior judges can still hear cases and author opinions, their influence is ultimately limited because active judges control en banc reviews, which can overturn panel rulings. Most of these upcoming en banc cases saw dissents from Trump-appointed judges at the panel level. Some senior judges, like Edith Brown Clement, are conservative and remain highly active, while others like James Dennis and Patrick Higginbotham are known for their moderate or liberal views and are key voices in current and upcoming decisions.Legal experts say senior judges' experience and moderation often make them more willing to adhere to precedent rather than pursue ideological shifts. Their dissents and opinions can also help signal to the U.S. Supreme Court that a case warrants review. With an increase in ideologically charged cases on topics like immigration and free speech, the Fifth Circuit's internal dynamics reflect a broader national tension between judicial restraint and a more activist, conservative legal agenda.Full Fifth Circuit Overrides Moderate Senior Judges' RulingsThe Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has asked a federal court to enforce a subpoena against the University of Pennsylvania as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged antisemitic harassment. The EEOC's request was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and stems from a charge initiated in December 2023 by Republican-appointed Chair Andrea Lucas. The agency is seeking documents and information identifying victims and witnesses to reported religious-based harassment affecting faculty and staff.The investigation centers on claims that the university failed to adequately respond to internal complaints of antisemitism. The EEOC under Lucas—particularly during and after the first Trump administration—has prioritized enforcement actions related to religious discrimination, with higher education institutions facing increased scrutiny. Penn has not yet issued a public response regarding the subpoena or the broader investigation.EEOC Seeks UPenn Information Disclosure in Antisemitism ProbeCryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced that it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. The move positions Kraken among several digital asset firms seeking to go public amid renewed investor interest in the crypto sector. Other companies like Circle and Gemini have also made progress toward U.S. listings this year.Kraken recently reported a $20 billion valuation in its latest fundraising round, marking a 33% increase over the past two months. While the company did not disclose specific details about the IPO structure or timeline, the filing indicates growing momentum for digital finance firms in public markets.Crypto exchange Kraken confidentially files for US IPO | ReutersThe U.S. government has loaned Constellation Energy $1 billion to restart a nuclear reactor at the former Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania. The project, now called the Crane Clean Energy Center, involves reviving an 835-megawatt reactor that was shut down in 2019. Constellation entered a partnership with Microsoft in 2024 to help offset the tech company's energy use, especially for power-intensive data centers. The reactor's restart reflects rising energy demand tied to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office (LPO) issued the loan to help lower financing costs and encourage private investment. Officials emphasized that nuclear energy offers stable, carbon-free baseload power critical for both grid reliability and climate goals. While Constellation is financially strong enough to obtain private funding, the administration said public support signals a national commitment to clean and dependable energy infrastructure.The plant still needs regulatory approvals, including from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Constellation has already begun hiring workers, inspecting systems, and ordering essential equipment. The company now expects the reactor to come online by 2027, a year ahead of the original timeline due to an accelerated grid connection review.US loans Constellation $1 billion for Three Mile Island reactor reboot | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup, Stuart Turley breaks down the DOE's $1 billion loan to restart Three Mile Island and why it marks a major win for American energy security and nuclear renaissance. He then dives into how China now sets the floor and ceiling for global oil prices, and why China and India continue buying Russian oil despite sanctions and shifting tanker data. Stu also covers Japan's accelerating geopolitical posture toward China, Europe's dangerous dependence on China for rare earth processing, and the EIA's surprising crude inventory draw that signals a bullish outlook for oil. Packed with analysis, global insights, and energy market implications, this episode keeps you sharp and ahead of the curve.Subscribe to Our Substack For Daily Insights Want to Add Oil & Gas To Your Portfolio? Fill Out Our Oil & Gas Portfolio Survey Need Power For Your Data Center, Hospital, or Business? Follow Stuart On LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuturley/ andTwitter: https://twitter.com/STUARTTURLEY16 Follow Michael On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelta... andTwitter: https://twitter.com/mtanner_1 Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro00:20 - $1 Billion Loan from the DOE to Restart Three Mile Island: A Boost for American Energy Security02:07 - China Sets the Floor and Ceiling for Global Oil Prices05:04 - Why China and India Continue Buying Russian Oil?07:47 - Japan Might Challenge China Sooner Than Expected – Andrew Korybko09:17 - Europe Has Rare Earth and Critical Minerals, But Is at China's Mercy Just Like Everyone Else14:07 - EIA Reports Surprise Crude Oil Inventory Dip16:37 - Outro Links to articles discussed:$1 Billion Loan from the DOE to Restart Three Mile Island: A Boost for American Energy SecurityChina Sets the Floor and Ceiling for Global Oil PricesWhy China and India Continue Buying Russian Oil?Japan Might Challenge China Sooner Than Expected – Andrew KorybkoEurope Has Rare Earth and Critical Minerals, But Is at China's Mercy Just Like Everyone ElseEIA Reports Surprise Crude Oil Inventory Dip

The chip maker's report after the market close beat analyst expectations. Plus: Constellation Energy announces it will restart operations at Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Katherine Sullivan hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. An artificial-intelligence tool assisted in the making of this episode by creating summaries that were based on Wall Street Journal reporting and reviewed and adapted by an editor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exposing the Upside Down: Power, Politics & Protection

Kevin Green and Diane King Hall kickstart the market coverage ahead of a highly anticipated Nvidia (NVDA) earnings report before discussing developments on the Fed Chair search. On the equity front, Constellation Energy (CEG) is on the move following a $1B loan from the U.S. government to restart Three Mile Island. Then, KG chimes in on Lowe's (LOW) earnings and the home improvement company's guidance. For Wednesday's range on the S&P 500 (SPX), KG is watching 6705 to the upside and 6550 to the downside. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Constellation Energy will use the loan to refurbish a reactor it idled in 2019. Microsoft has agreed to buy the power once the facility reopens in 2028. Also, Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clem Delangue says all the attention is on LLMs, but smaller, specialized models will make sense in many use cases going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a bonus episode in which Kt and Laurel have award winning author, screenwriter and essayist, Barret Baumgart, in the Smoke Circle. Together we discuss his newest book Yuck: The Birth and Death of the Weird and Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca Brevifolia. You might not believe it, but the Joshua Tree has a strange little part to play when recounting the history of the American West and Westward Expansion and Barret is here to tell us about it.In addition to Yuck, he has also authored some more strange nonfiction--China Lake, his debut novel, is about one of the strangest places in America: China Lake, which is the US Navy's largest single landholding. The top secret base researches and develops about 85% of the country's weapons and armaments...and sits on top of THOUSANDS of Native American pictographs.He is currently working on a book that might take the care in "weird"--the history of the United State's worst nuclear disaster in Los Angeles in 1959 (no! It's not Three Mile Island! I know! We were shocked too!) that was covered up by the government until the late 1970s and the land is now owned by Boeing....so....nothing weird at all. We had a blast having Barret on the show! Please check out his Substack and his books, especially if you love your history on the weird side!We will be back in two weeks with episode 109, back on track for the rest of the season!~~~~~~~~~~~*Barret's WebsiteBarret's Substack "Dumpster Fires"Barret's Instagram ProfileBuy Barret's Books Here!~~~~~~~* Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Welcome to a bonus episode in which Kt and Laurel have award winning author, screenwriter and essayist, Barret Baumgart, in the Smoke Circle. Together we discuss his newest book Yuck: The Birth and Death of the Weird and Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca Brevifolia. You might not believe it, but the Joshua Tree has a strange little part to play when recounting the history of the American West and Westward Expansion and Barret is here to tell us about it.In addition to Yuck, he has also authored some more strange nonfiction--China Lake, his debut novel, is about one of the strangest places in America: China Lake, which is the US Navy's largest single landholding. The top secret base researches and develops about 85% of the country's weapons and armaments...and sits on top of THOUSANDS of Native American pictographs.He is currently working on a book that might take the care in "weird"--the history of the United State's worst nuclear disaster in Los Angeles in 1959 (no! It's not Three Mile Island! I know! We were shocked too!) that was covered up by the government until the late 1970s and the land is now owned by Boeing....so....nothing weird at all. We had a blast having Barret on the show! Please check out his Substack and his books, especially if you love your history on the weird side!We will be back in two weeks with episode 109, back on track for the rest of the season!~~~~~~~~~~~*Barret's WebsiteBarret's Substack "Dumpster Fires"Barret's Instagram ProfileBuy Barret's Books Here!~~~~~~~* Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Amir Adnani, CEO of Uranium Energy Corp. (UEC), explains why this is the most exciting uranium market he's ever seen… why uranium is critical to the AI growth trend… and why uranium prices could surge nearly 100%. In this episode: This is the most exciting uranium market Amir has ever seen [2:35] Uranium used to be a partisan issue—not anymore [5:12] Microsoft's Three Mile Island deal is an inflection point for AI [11:40] MSFT also joined the World Nuclear Association: Why it's a big deal [16:50] The U.S. uranium market is coming back with a vengeance [21:52] President Trump's energy agenda = a major tailwind for UEC [31:46] Why uranium prices could surge nearly 100% [36:53] Did you like this episode? Get more Wall Street Unplugged FREE each week in your inbox. Sign up here: https://curzio.me/syn_wsu Find Wall Street Unplugged podcast… --Curzio Research App: https://curzio.me/syn_app --iTunes: https://curzio.me/syn_wsu_i --Stitcher: https://curzio.me/syn_wsu_s --Website: https://curzio.me/syn_wsu_cat Follow Frank… X: https://curzio.me/syn_twt Facebook: https://curzio.me/syn_fb LinkedIn: https://curzio.me/syn_li

Blame it on AI - new excuse: Flirty Chatbots NVDIA earnings the high point for a while? Announcing the WINNER of the CTP PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Interactive Brokers Warm-Up - Tariffs deemed illegal? - So much for rates coming down - Long bond up again - Announcing the WINNER of the CTP - Blame it on AI - new excuse.... Flirty Chatbots Markets - NVDIA earnings the high point for a while? - Good month - August is green - Sept starting out wobbly - AI News  - Valuations - TO THE MOON NVDA Earnings - From last Wednesday - STRONG: Nvidia reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Wednesday, and said sales growth this quarter will remain above 50% - Earnings per share: $1.05 adjusted vs. $1.01 estimated - Revenue: $46.74 billion vs. $46.06 billion estimated - Overall company revenue rose 56% in the quarter from $30.04 billion a year ago, Nvidia said. Year-over-year revenue growth has now exceeded 50% for nine straight quarters, dating back to mid-2023 -Stock opened Thursday at $180 - now trades near $168 --- Some concern over data-center revenue declining 1% from previous quarter due to $4B less in sales of H20 chips NEW CLEAR - The Duane Arnold nuclear plant northwest of Cedar Rapids, Iowa is pressing ahead with plans to restart operations by the end of the decade after shutting down for economic reasons in 2020 - NextEra Energy (NEE) - Duane Arnold would follow similar restarts planned for the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which plan to resume operations later this year and in 2027 - Big Change on the economics is just 5 years! USA Travel - Who needs those pesky visitors anyway - Overseas travel to the U.S. fell 3.1% year-on-year in July to 19.2 million visitors, according to U.S. government data. It was the fifth month of decline this year, defying expectations that 2025 would see annual inbound visitors finally surpass the pre-pandemic level of 79.4 million. - New VISA INTEGRITY fees on incoming travelers from many countries - The extra charge raises the total visa cost to $442 for non-via waiver countries like Mexico, Argentina, India, Brazil and China - In China, arrivals have remained muted since the pandemic, with July numbers still 53% below 2019 levels. The visa fee also threatens travel from India, where visits are down 2.4% so far this year, driven by a near 18% drop in students. Tariffs Illegal? - A divided U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that most of Donald Trump's tariffs are illegal, undercutting the Republican president's use of the levies as a key inter - Trump lamented the decision by what he called a "highly partisan" court, posting on Truth Social: "If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country." national economic policy tool. - So, now it goes to the Supreme Court (non - partisan?) - Talk of the Bond Vigilantes making a move if the tariffs struck down because not much to pay the huge deficit and debt encumbered with new OBBBA   Check this out and find out more at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ Speaking of Rates - Since the Powell hint of cuts - rates on the rise - -Longer-Term rates - Mortgage rates are the highest in months and the 10-Yr is at approx 4.30% -- Please note, the Fed controls short-term rates.... Some influence on mortgages due to Quantitative easing, but even if rates are dropped does not mean that longer-dated paper will see a drop in the rates DEE MINIMUM US - The de minimis exemption, which allowed shipments valued under $800 to enter the country duty-free, came to an end globally last Friday.

Medicine has come a long way in the past 50 years, but here's what's fascinating: many of the breakthrough treatments we use today for pain, addiction, and mental health started with a handful of doctors who were willing to go against the grain.In this conversation, Sam sits down with Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a triple board-certified physician whose career reads like a roadmap of medical innovation. We're talking five decades of pushing boundaries - from emergency medicine to nuclear war prevention to being at the ground floor of psychedelic research.Dr. Kornfeld doesn't just share stories (though he has plenty). He walks us through his transformative experiences at Esalen Institute, his pioneering work with buprenorphine treatment, and his connections to the key figures who literally shaped modern psychedelic medicine as we know it.What makes this conversation essential listening? Dr. Kornfeld's journey shows exactly how questioning established medical practices - while still maintaining rigorous, evidence-based standards - can lead to treatments that actually change lives. His story proves that individual physicians can drive real systemic change, but it requires persistence, innovation, and the willingness to work outside conventional healthcare systems.If you've ever wondered how breakthrough treatments actually make it from "experimental" to mainstream, or if you're curious about what it really takes to challenge medical orthodoxy, this conversation will give you the historical context you need.What You'll Learn in This Episode・How questioning medical orthodoxy led to breakthrough treatments and career-defining insights・The evolution of pain medicine from the 1920s through today and lessons for modern practice・Dr. Kornfeld's journey from emergency medicine through nuclear activism to integrative practice・Historical context for psychedelic medicine's current renaissance and key pioneering figuresEpisode 39 show notes:00:00 Teaser - Physicians as Shamans of Our Culture00:34 Welcome Back To the Podcast 03:04 Challenging Medical Orthodoxy: The Mastectomy Story 07:04 Triple Board Certification Journey 09:41 Cook County Hospital vs Prestigious Academics 12:55 Esalen Institute: A Medical Education Like No Other 17:37 Three Mile Island and Nuclear War Prevention 31:08 Meeting Sasha Shulgin and Early MDMA Research 35:32 Entering Addiction Medicine36:43 The Esalen Psychedelic Research Conference 49:05 From Nuclear Activism to Addiction Medicine 53:037 Buprenorphine: Years Ahead of Everyone Else 1:00:14 The Pendulum Swings of Pain Medicine 1:14:15 Recovery Without Walls Clinic Model 1:17:37 Ketamine's Paradoxical Nature in Addiction 1:20:38 Treating Ketamine Use Disorder 1:22:20 Starting Your Own Practice: Practical Advice 1:28:21 Advice from Your 100-Year-Old Self 1:31:52 Contact Information and ClosingThanks for listeningConnect with Dr. Howard Kornfeld at:Recovery Without Walls

In this fascinating episode, Bryan welcomes back longtime friend and nuclear industry veteran Bill Nowicki to discuss a recently released document from DHS and NUSTL that provides new recommendations for HVAC operations during nuclear events. Bill brings over 40 years of nuclear experience, starting as a 19-year-old Navy nuclear operator (after being deemed "not ready for the grill" at Friendly's restaurant) and progressing through various roles, including lead engineer on critical control systems at nuclear facilities. Bill shares his journey from nuclear plant evaluator to leadership trainer, now working internationally to help nuclear professionals develop their skills. His current podcast, "The Nuclear Leader," continues this mission alongside his passion project, "Navigating Mental Illness: Parent Stories." Bill provides an accessible explanation of nuclear reactor operations, using the analogy that "contamination is the poop and radiation is the smell" to help listeners understand the difference between radioactive material and radiation itself. He walks through the three-barrier system in nuclear plants: fuel cladding, reactor coolant system, and containment structures. The discussion covers how fission works, the controlled chain reaction process, and what happens when these systems fail, using examples from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima to illustrate different failure modes. The episode explores the current nuclear renaissance driven by AI data centers and industrial companies seeking clean baseload power. Bill explains how private industry is now directly funding nuclear projects, bypassing traditional utility structures, with companies like Microsoft and ExxonMobil investing billions in new nuclear facilities. This represents a dramatic shift from the post-Three Mile Island era when nuclear construction essentially stopped in the United States. The core discussion focuses on updated emergency guidance that reverses previous recommendations. Instead of the old "shelter in place and shut off your AC" advice, the new guidance suggests keeping HVAC systems running while eliminating outdoor air intake. This approach recognizes that modern, well-sealed buildings with high-efficiency filtration can provide better protection by maintaining positive pressure and filtering recirculated air rather than allowing uncontrolled infiltration. Bill and Bryan discuss how building characteristics dramatically affect the best response strategy. High-performance homes with tight construction, MERV 13+ filters, and controlled ventilation systems offer significant advantages, requiring only the ability to shut off outdoor air intake. Conversely, older, leaky buildings may still benefit from complete system shutdown to prevent contamination circulation. The conversation highlights how lessons learned during COVID-19 about airborne contamination and filtration directly apply to nuclear emergency preparedness, emphasizing the importance of case-by-case analysis rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. Topics Covered Nuclear industry career paths - From Navy nuclear training to civilian plant operations and leadership roles Basic nuclear physics - Fission process, chain reactions, and the difference between contamination and radiation Nuclear plant safety systems - Three-barrier containment approach and historical accident analysis Current nuclear renaissance - AI-driven power demand and private industry investment in new reactors Emergency preparedness evolution - How COVID-19 research influenced nuclear emergency HVAC guidance Building performance factors - Impact of construction quality, filtration, and ventilation design on safety HVAC system modifications - Importance of outdoor air shutoff capability and high-efficiency filtration Case-by-case response strategies - Why building characteristics determine optimal emergency procedures Podcasting journey - Early days of niche podcasting and building communities around specialized topics Leadership development - International nuclear industry training and professional development Personal stories - Navy submarine experiences and nuclear plant operational challenges   Here is the full document from the DHS: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2425/ML24250A059.pdf Have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast? Submit your questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/hvacschool. Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. Subscribe to our podcast on your iPhone or Android. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our handy calculators here or on the HVAC School Mobile App for Apple and Android

On March 28th, 1979, the United States came terrifyingly close to a full-scale nuclear catastrophe. The Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania was supposed to be “contained,” with officials insisting that no serious harm was done. That's the story we were told. But behind the official narrative lies a trail of cancer clusters, silenced victims, and a government desperate to bury the truth. In this episode, I sit down with a whistleblower who lived through it all, and her testimony paints a far darker picture than anything admitted to the public. - SUBSCRIBE TO "THE CONSPIRACY FILES" on YouTube!: https://www.youtube.com/@UCsYWvjBZc6nhVspRKh9BppQ - LISTEN TO "THE CONSPIRACY FILES" WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS!: -Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5IY9nWD2MYDzlSYP48nRPl -Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-conspiracy-files/id1752719844 -Amazon/Audible - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ab1ade99-740c-46ae-8028-b2cf41eabf58/the-conspiracy-files -Pandora - https://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-conspiracy-files/PC:1001089101 -iHeart - https://iheart.com/podcast/186907423/ -PocketCast - https://pca.st/dpdyrcca -CastBox - https://castbox.fm/channel/id6193084?country=us - "THE CONSPIRACY FILES" is the most DANGEROUS show on the internet. Join host COLIN BROWEN (of "The Paranormal Files" and "Murder In America") as he dives deep into some of the world's most dangerous and disturbing conspiracy theories. From Epstein Island to the North Fox ring and the murder of Marilyn Monroe, NO STORY is off limits and NO DETAILS or INFORMATION will be left out. If you like conspiracies, mysteries and true crime, then THIS SHOW is for you. Get ready to have your mind blown. - SUBSCRIBE to "The Paranormal Files" (my ghost hunting channel!): https://www.youtube.com/theparanormalfilesofficialchannel?sub_confirmation=1 - LISTEN TO MURDER IN AMERICA (my podcast)! SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/episode/204fV6xstY3a5atxoHOhz8?si=H1einpJoR42jnfmEjqk5qw APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-in-america/id1547409175 SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/tkz56KWDmYAyVNAZA - Connect with me on social media!  Colin's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/colinbrowen/ The Conspiracy Files INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/conspiracyfilespodcast?igsh=MWgxamxmOW44MWZpOA== FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/share/PUK2AgELoekFzHye/?mibextid=LQQJ4d TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@theparanormalfiles -

On today's episode of The Daily Windup, I sit down with Marsha, a seasoned professional who's been in the world of government contracting since 1981. She cut her teeth as a cost engineer on the historic Three Mile Island cleanup contract with Bechtel and later sharpened her expertise at McDonnell Douglas as a pricing specialist. With decades of experience spanning pricing, accounting, and contracts, Marsha reveals why understanding strategic pricing is the foundation of success in government work. We dive deep into the reality of pricing government contracts—breaking down cost-plus, fixed price, and time & materials—and expose the challenges that companies face when moving from commercial work into federal projects. If you think government money is “easy money,” think again. Marsha explains the hidden complexities, compliance burdens, and regulatory hoops that can make or break your success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to break into government contracting and avoid costly mistakes.

I'm not sure on this one. On the one hand, Isabelle Boemeke is a pin-up of an environmentally activist generation - going from superstar Brazilian model and Instagram influencer to the author of Rad Future, a manifesto about how nuclear electricity will save the world. On other other hand, there's something slightly troubling in our social media age about this kind of dramatic trajectory - especially given the existential stakes here. Especially since Boemeke - who happens to be married to Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder and one of the world's richest men - acknowledges her lack of scientific knowledge about electricity, nuclear or otherwise. The New York Times just ran a piece about Boemeke , describing her appearance as “like the heroine of a dystopian novel”, and expressing similar concerns, even wondering is she might be in the pay of the nuclear electricity lobby. I guess my worry is less about Boemeke and more about a culture that is comfortable transforming “saving the world” into an Instagrammable meme. Or maybe, as Boemeke suggested in our feisty conversation, I'm just an old fart who just doesn't get the immediacy of the existential environmental crisis that the world now faces. 1. Nuclear Energy Has Surprising Bipartisan Political SupportUnlike most energy sources, nuclear power enjoys support from both Trump and Biden administrations. This rare political consensus suggests nuclear might transcend typical partisan energy debates, making it more viable for large-scale implementation than other clean energy sources.2. The Weapons-Electricity Connection Is Largely OverblownOnly 7 of the 31 countries with nuclear electricity have weapons, and 5 of those had weapons before developing civilian nuclear programs. The data suggests the fear of proliferation from civilian nuclear programs may be largely unfounded, challenging a core anti-nuclear argument.3. Nuclear Safety Data Contradicts Public PerceptionNuclear power has a death rate per terawatt hour comparable to solar and wind, and significantly lower than hydropower. Boemeke argues that Three Mile Island wasn't actually a disaster (no health impacts), and that safety fears are largely based on outdated perceptions rather than current data.4. Shutting Down Nuclear Plants Increases Fossil Fuel UseEvery time a nuclear plant closes (like Indian Point in New York), it gets replaced by fossil fuels, not renewables, despite political promises. This pattern suggests that nuclear closures may actually harm climate goals rather than help them.5. Expertise vs. Influence Raises Troubling QuestionsBoemeke's transformation from model to nuclear advocate highlights broader questions about who gets to shape critical policy debates in the social media age. Her acknowledged lack of scientific expertise, combined with her massive platform and wealthy connections, exemplifies tensions between technical knowledge and cultural influence in addressing existential challenges.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,Nuclear fission is a safe, powerful, and reliable means of generating nearly limitless clean energy to power the modern world. A few public safety scares and a lot of bad press over the half-century has greatly delayed our nuclear future. But with climate change and energy-hungry AI making daily headlines, the time — finally — for a nuclear renaissance seems to have arrived.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Dr. Tim Gregory about the safety and efficacy of modern nuclear power, as well as the ambitious energy goals we should set for our society.Gregory is a nuclear scientist at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory. He is also a popular science broadcaster on radio and TV, and an author. His most recent book, Going Nuclear: How Atomic Energy Will Save the World is out now.In This Episode* A false start for a nuclear future (1:29)* Motivators for a revival (7:20)* About nuclear waste . . . (12:41)* Not your mother's reactors (17:25)* Commercial fusion, coming soon . . . ? (23:06)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. A false start for a nuclear future (1:29)The truth is that radiation, we're living in it all the time, it's completely inescapable because we're all living in a sea of background radiation.Pethokoukis: Why do America, Europe, Japan not today get most of their power from nuclear fission, since that would've been a very reasonable prediction to make in 1965 or 1975, but it has not worked out that way? What's your best take on why it hasn't?Going back to the '50s and '60s, it looked like that was the world that we currently live in. It was all to play for, and there were a few reasons why that didn't happen, but the main two were Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It's a startling statistic that the US built more nuclear reactors in the five years leading up to Three Mile Island than it has built since. And similarly on this side of the Atlantic, Europe built more nuclear reactors in the five years leading up to Chernobyl than it has built since, which is just astounding, especially given that nobody died in Three Mile Island and nobody was even exposed to anything beyond the background radiation as a result of that nuclear accident.Chernobyl, of course, was far more consequential and far more serious than Three Mile Island. 30-odd people died in the immediate aftermath, mostly people who were working at the power station and the first responders, famously the firefighters who were exposed to massive amounts of radiation, and probably a couple of hundred people died in the affected population from thyroid cancer. It was people who were children and adolescents at the time of the accident.So although every death from Chernobyl was a tragedy because it was avoidable, they're not in proportion to the mythic reputation of the night in question. It certainly wasn't reason to effectively end nuclear power expansion in Europe because of course we had to get that power from somewhere, and it mainly came from fossil fuels, which are not just a little bit more deadly than nuclear power, they're orders of magnitude more deadly than nuclear power. When you add up all of the deaths from nuclear power and compare those deaths to the amount of electricity that we harvest from nuclear power, it's actually as safe as wind and solar, whereas fossil fuels kill hundreds or thousands of times more people per unit of power. To answer your question, it's complicated and there are many answers, but the main two were Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.I wonder how things might have unfolded if those events hadn't happened or if society had responded proportionally to the actual damage. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are portrayed in documentaries and on TV as far deadlier than they really were, and they still loom large in the public imagination in a really unhelpful way.You see it online, actually, quite a lot about the predicted death toll from Chernobyl, because, of course, there's no way of saying exactly which cases of cancer were caused by Chernobyl and which ones would've happened anyway. Sometimes you see estimates that are up in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl. They are always based on a flawed scientific hypothesis called the linear no-threshold model that I go into in quite some detail in chapter eight of my book, which is all about the human health effects of exposure to radiation. This model is very contested in the literature. It's one of the most controversial areas of medical science, actually, the effects of radiation on the human body, and all of these massive numbers you see of the death toll from Chernobyl, they're all based on this really kind of clunky, flawed, contentious hypothesis. My reading of the literature is that there's very, very little physical evidence to support this particular hypothesis, but people take it and run. I don't know if it would be too far to accuse people of pushing a certain idea of Chernobyl, but it almost certainly vastly, vastly overestimates the effects.I think a large part of the reason of why this had such a massive impact on the public and politicians is this lingering sense of radiophobia that completely blight society. We've all seen it in the movies, in TV shows, even in music and computer games — radiation is constantly used as a tool to invoke fear and mistrust. It's this invisible, centerless, silent specter that's kind of there in the background: It means birth defects, it means cancers, it means ill health. We've all kind of grown up in this culture where the motif of radiation is bad news, it's dangerous, and that inevitably gets tied to people's sense of nuclear power. So when you get something like Three Mile Island, society's imagination and its preconceptions of radiation, it's just like a dry haystack waiting for a flint spark to land on it, and up it goes in flames and people's imaginations run away with them.The truth is that radiation, we're living in it all the time, it's completely inescapable because we're all living in a sea of background radiation. There's this amazing statistic that if you live within a couple of miles of a nuclear power station, the extra amount of radiation you're exposed to annually is about the same as eating a banana. Bananas are slightly radioactive because of the slight amount of potassium-40 that they naturally contain. Even in the wake of these nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, and more recently Fukushima, the amount of radiation that the public was exposed to barely registers and, in fact, is less than the background radiation in lots of places on the earth.Motivators for a revival (7:20)We have no idea what emerging technologies are on the horizon that will also require massive amounts of power, and that's exactly where nuclear can shine.You just suddenly reminded me of a story of when I was in college in the late 1980s, taking a class on the nuclear fuel cycle. You know it was an easy class because there was an ampersand in it. “Nuclear fuel cycle” would've been difficult. “Nuclear fuel cycle & the environment,” you knew it was not a difficult class.The man who taught it was a nuclear scientist and, at one point, he said that he would have no problem having a nuclear reactor in his backyard. This was post-Three Mile Island, post-Chernobyl, and the reaction among the students — they were just astounded that he would be willing to have this unbelievably dangerous facility in his backyard.We have this fear of nuclear power, and there's sort of an economic component, but now we're seeing what appears to be a nuclear renaissance. I don't think it's driven by fear of climate change, I think it's driven A) by fear that if you are afraid of climate change, just solar and wind aren't going to get you to where you want to be; and then B) we seem like we're going to need a lot of clean energy for all these AI data centers. So it really does seem to be a perfect storm after a half-century.And who knows what next. When I started writing Going Nuclear, the AI story hadn't broken yet, and so all of the electricity projections for our future demand, which, they range from doubling to tripling, we're going to need a lot of carbon-free electricity if we've got any hope of electrifying society whilst getting rid of fossil fuels. All of those estimates were underestimates because nobody saw AI coming.It's been very, very interesting just in the last six, 12 months seeing Big Tech in North America moving first on this. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta have all either invested or actually placed orders for small modular reactors specifically to power their AI data centers. In some ways, they've kind of led the charge on this. They've moved faster than most nation states, although it is encouraging, actually, here in the UK, just a couple of weeks ago, the government announced that our new nuclear power station is definitely going ahead down in Sizewell in Suffolk in the south of England. That's a 3.2 gigawatt nuclear reactor, it's absolutely massive. But it's been really, really encouraging to see Big Tech in the private sector in North America take the situation into their own hands. If anyone's real about electricity demands and how reliable you need it, it's Big Tech with these data centers.I always think, go back five, 10 years, talk of AI was only on the niche subreddits and techie podcasts where people were talking about it. It broke into the mainstream all of a sudden. Who knows what is going to happen in the next five or 10 years. We have no idea what emerging technologies are on the horizon that will also require massive amounts of power, and that's exactly where nuclear can shine.In the US, at least, I don't think decarbonization alone is enough to win broad support for nuclear, since a big chunk of the country doesn't think we actually need to do that. But I think that pairing it with the promise of rapid AI-driven economic growth creates a stronger case.I tried to appeal to a really broad church in Going Nuclear because I really, really do believe that whether you are completely preoccupied by climate change and environmental issues or you're completely preoccupied by economic growth, and raising living, standards and all of that kind of thing, all the monetary side of things, nuclear is for you because if you solve the energy problem, you solve both problems at once. You solve the economic problem and the environmental problem.There's this really interesting relationship between GDP per head — which is obviously incredibly important in economic terms — and energy consumption per head, and it's basically a straight line relationship between the two. There are no rich countries that aren't also massive consumers of energy, so if you really, really care about the economy, you should really also be caring about energy consumption and providing energy abundance so people can go out and use that energy to create wealth and prosperity. Again, that's where nuclear comes in. You can use nuclear power to sate that massive energy demand that growing economies require.This podcast is very pro-wealth and prosperity, but I'll also say, if the nuclear dreams of the '60s where you had, in this country, what was the former Atomic Energy Commission expecting there to be 1000 nuclear reactors in this country by the year 2000, we're not having this conversation about climate change. It is amazing that what some people view as an existential crisis could have been prevented — by the United States and other western countries, at least — just making a different political decision.We would be spending all of our time talking about something else, and how nice would that be?For sure. I'm sure there'd be other existential crises to worry about.But for sure, we wouldn't be talking about climate change was anywhere near the volume or the sense of urgency as we are now if we would've carried on with the nuclear expansion that really took off in the '70s and the '80s. It would be something that would be coming our way in a couple of centuries.About nuclear waste . . . (12:41). . . a 100 percent nuclear-powered life for about 80 years, their nuclear waste would barely fill a wine glass or a coffee cup. I don't know if you've ever seen the television show For All Mankind?I haven't. So many people have recommended it to me.It's great. It's an alt-history that looks at what if the Space Race had never stopped. As a result, we had a much more tech-enthusiastic society, which included being much more pro-nuclear.Anyway, imagine if you are on a plane talking to the person next to you, and the topic of your book comes up, and the person says hey, I like energy, wealth, prosperity, but what are you going to do about the nuclear waste?That almost exact situation has happened, but on a train rather than an airplane. One of the cool things about uranium is just how much energy you can get from a very small amount of it. If typical person in a highly developed economy, say North America, Europe, something like that, if they produced all of their power over their entire lifetime from nuclear alone, so forget fossil fuels, forget wind and solar, a 100 percent nuclear-powered life for about 80 years, their nuclear waste would barely fill a wine glass or a coffee cup. You need a very small amount of uranium to power somebody's life, and the natural conclusion of that is you get a very small amount of waste for a lifetime of power. So in terms of the numbers, and the amount of nuclear waste, it's just not that much of a problem.However, I don't want to just try and trivialize it out of existence with some cool pithy statistics and some cool back-of-the-envelopes physics calculations because we still have to do something with the nuclear waste. This stuff is going to be radioactive for the best part of a million years. Thankfully, it's quite an easy argument to make because good old Finland, which is one of the most nuclear nations on the planet as a share of nuclear in its grid, has solved this problem. It has implemented — and it's actually working now — the world's first and currently only geological repository for nuclear waste. Their idea is essentially to bury it in impermeable bedrock and leave it there because, as with all radioactive objects, nuclear waste becomes less radioactive over time. The idea is that, in a million years, Finland's nuclear waste won't be nuclear waste anymore, it will just be waste. A million years sounds like a really long time to our ears, but it's actually —It does.It sounds like a long time, but it is the blink of an eye, geologically. So to a geologist, a million years just comes and goes straight away. So it's really not that difficult to keep nuclear waste safe underground on those sorts of timescales. However — and this is the really cool thing, and this is one of the arguments that I make in my book — there are actually technologies that we can use to recycle nuclear waste. It turns out that when you pull uranium out of a reactor, once it's been burned for a couple of years in a reactor, 95 percent of the atoms are still usable. You can still use them to generate nuclear power. So by throwing away nuclear waste when it's been through a nuclear reactor once, we're actually squandering like 95 percent of material that we're throwing away.The theory is this sort of the technology behind breeder reactors?That's exactly right, yes.What about the plutonium? People are worried about the plutonium!People are worried about the plutonium, but in a breeder reactor, you get rid of the plutonium because you split it into fission products, and fission products are still radioactive, but they have much shorter half-lives than plutonium. So rather than being radioactive for, say, a million years, they're only radioactive, really, for a couple of centuries, maybe 1000 years, which is a very, very different situation when you think about long-term storage.I read so many papers and memos from the '50s when these reactors were first being built and demonstrated, and they worked, by the way, they're actually quite easy to build, it just happened in a couple of years. Breeder reactors were really seen as the future of humanity's power demands. Forget traditional nuclear power stations that we all use at the moment, which are just kind of once through and then you throw away 95 percent of the energy at the end of it. These breeder reactors were really, really seen as the future.They never came to fruition because we discovered lots of uranium around the globe, and so the supply of uranium went up around the time that the nuclear power expansion around the world kind of seized up, so the uranium demand dropped as the supply increased, so the demand for these breeder reactors kind of petered out and fizzled out. But if we're really, really serious about the medium-term future of humanity when it comes to energy, abundance, and prosperity, we need to be taking a second look at these breeder reactors because there's enough uranium and thorium in the ground around the world now to power the world for almost 1000 years. After that, we'll have something else. Maybe we'll have nuclear fusion.Well, I hope it doesn't take a thousand years for nuclear fusion.Yes, me too.Not your mother's reactors (17:25)In 2005, France got 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear. They almost decarbonized their grid by accident before anybody cared about climate change, and that was during a time when their economy was absolutely booming.I don't think most people are aware of how much innovation has taken place around nuclear in the past few years, or even few decades. It's not just a climate change issue or that we need to power these data centers — the technology has vastly improved. There are newer, safer technologies, so we're not talking about 1975-style reactors.Even if it were the 1975-style reactors, that would be fine because they're pretty good and they have an absolutely impeccable safety record punctuated by a very small number of high-profile events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. I'm not to count Three Mile Island on that list because nobody died, but you know what I mean.But the modern nuclear reactors are amazing. The ones that are coming out of France, the EPRs, the European Power Reactors, there are going to be two of those in the UK's new nuclear power station, and they've been designed to withstand an airplane flying into the side of them, so they're basically bomb-proof.As for these small modular reactors, that's getting people very excited, too. As their name suggests, they're small. How small is a reasonable question — the answer is as small as you want to go. These things are scalable, and I've seen designs for just one-megawatt reactors that could easily fit inside a shipping container. They could fit in the parking lots around the side of a data center, or in the basement even, all the way up to multi-hundred-megawatt reactors that could fit on a couple of tennis courts worth of land. But it's really the modular part that's the most interesting thing. That's the ‘M' and that's never been done before.Which really gets to the economics of the SMRs.It really does. The idea is you could build upwards of 90 percent of these reactors on a factory line. We know from the history of industrialization that as soon as you start mass producing things, the unit cost just plummets and the timescales shrink. No one has achieved that yet, though. There's a lot of hype around small modular reactors, and so it's kind of important not to get complacent and really keep our eye on the ultimate goal, which is mass-production and mass rapid deployment of nuclear power stations, crucially in the places where you need them the most, as well.We often think about just decarbonizing our electricity supply or decoupling our electricity supply from volatilities in the fossil fuel market, but it's about more than electricity, as well. We need heat for things like making steel, making the ammonia that feeds most people on the planet, food and drinks factories, car manufacturers, plants that rely on steam. You need heat, and thankfully, the primary energy from a nuclear reactor is heat. The electricity is secondary. We have to put effort into making that. The heat just kind of happens. So there's this idea that we could use the surplus heat from nuclear reactors to power industrial processes that are very, very difficult to decarbonize. Small modular reactors would be perfect for that because you could nestle them into the industrial centers that need the heat close by. So honestly, it is really our imaginations that are the limits with these small modular reactors.They've opened a couple of nuclear reactors down in Georgia here. The second one was a lot cheaper and faster to build because they had already learned a bunch of lessons building that first one, and it really gets at sort of that repeatability where every single reactor doesn't have to be this one-off bespoke project. That is not how it works in the world of business. How you get cheaper things is by building things over and over, you get very good at building them, and then you're able to turn these things out at scale. That has not been the economic situation with nuclear reactors, but hopefully with small modular reactors, or even if we just start building a lot of big advanced reactors, we'll get those economies of scale and hopefully the economic issue will then take care of itself.For sure, and it is exactly the same here in the UK. The last reactor that we connected to the grid was in 1995. I was 18 months old. I don't even know if I was fluent in speaking at 18 months old. I was really, really young. Our newest nuclear power station, Hinkley Point C, which is going to come online in the next couple of years, was hideously expensive. The uncharitable view of that is that it's just a complete farce and is just a complete embarrassment, but honestly, you've got to think about it: 1995, the last nuclear reactor in the UK, it was going to take a long time, it was going to be expensive, basically doing it from scratch. We had no supply chain. We didn't really have a workforce that had ever built a nuclear reactor before, and with this new reactor that just got announced a couple of weeks ago, the projected price is 20 percent cheaper, and it is still too expensive, it's still more expensive than it should be, but you're exactly right.By tapping into those economies of scale, the cost per nuclear reactor will fall, and France did this in the '70s and '80s. Their nuclear program is so amazing. France is still the most nuclear nation on the planet as a share of its total electricity. In 2005, France got 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear. They almost decarbonized their grid by accident before anybody cared about climate change, and that was during a time when their economy was absolutely booming. By the way, still today, all of those reactors are still working and they pay less than the European Union average for that electricity, so this idea that nuclear makes your electricity expensive is simply not true. They built 55 nuclear reactors in 25 years, and they did them in parallel. It was just absolutely amazing. I would love to see a French-style nuclear rollout in all developed countries across the world. I think that would just be absolutely amazing.Commercial fusion, coming soon . . . ? (23:06)I think we're pretty good at doing things when we put our minds to it, but certainly not in the next couple of decades. But luckily, we already have a proven way of producing lots of energy, and that's with nuclear fission, in the meantime.What is your enthusiasm level or expectation about nuclear fusion? I can tell you that the Silicon Valley people I talk to are very positive. I know they're inherently very positive people, but they're very enthusiastic about the prospects over the next decade, if not sooner, of commercial fusion. How about you?It would be incredible. The last question that I was asked in my PhD interview 10 years ago was, “If you could solve one scientific or engineering problem, what would it be?” and my answer was nuclear fusion. And that would be the answer that I would give today. It just seems to me to be obviously the solution to the long-term energy needs of humanity. However, I'm less optimistic, perhaps, than the Silicon Valley crowd. The running joke, of course, is that it's always 40 years away and it recedes into the future at one year per year. So I would love to be proved wrong, but realistically — no one's even got it working in a prototype power station. That's before we even think about commercializing it and deploying it at scale. I really, really think that we're decades away, maybe even something like a century. I'd be surprised if it took longer than a century, actually. I think we're pretty good at doing things when we put our minds to it, but certainly not in the next couple of decades. But luckily, we already have a proven way of producing lots of energy, and that's with nuclear fission, in the meantime.Don't go to California with that attitude. I can tell you that even when I go there and I talk about AI, if I say that AI will do anything less than improve economic growth by a factor of 100, they just about throw me out over there. Let me just finish up by asking you this: Earlier, we mentioned Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. How resilient do you think this nuclear renaissance is to an accident?Even if we take the rate of accident over the last 70 years of nuclear power production and we maintain that same level of rate of accident, if you like, it's still one of the safest things that our species does, and everyone talks about the death toll from nuclear power, but nobody talks about the lives that it's already saved because of the fossil fuels, that it's displaced fossil fuels. They're so amazing in some ways, they're so convenient, they're so energy-dense, they've created the modern world as we all enjoy it in the developed world and as the developing world is heading towards it. But there are some really, really nasty consequences of fossil fuels, and whether or not you care about climate change, even the air pollution alone and the toll that that takes on human health is enough to want to phase them out. Nuclear power already is orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels and I read this really amazing paper that globally, it was something like between the '70s and the '90s, nuclear power saved about two million lives because of the fossil fuels that it displaced. That's, again, orders of magnitude more lives that have been lost as a consequence of nuclear power, mostly because of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Even if the safety record of nuclear in the past stays the same and we forward-project that into the future, it's still a winning horse to bet on.If in the UK they've started up one new nuclear reactor in the past 30 years, right? How many would you guess will be started over the next 15 years?Four or five. Something like that, I think; although I don't know.Is that a significant number to you?It's not enough for my liking. I would like to see many, many more. Look at France. I know I keep going back to it, but it's such a brilliant example. If France hadn't done what they'd done in between the '70s and the '90s — 55 nuclear reactors in 25 years, all of which are still working — it would be a much more difficult case to make because there would be no historical precedent for it. So, maybe predictably, I wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a French-scale nuclear rollout, let's put it that way.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedMicro Reads▶ Economics* The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics - WSJ* AI Spending Is Propping Up the Economy, Right? It's Complicated. - Barron's* Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle. - NYT* Sam Altman says Gen Z are the 'luckiest' kids in history thanks to AI, despite mounting job displacement dread - NYT* Lab-Grown Diamonds Are Testing the Power of Markets - Bberg Opinion* Why globalisation needs a leader: Hegemons, alignment, and trade - CEPR* The Rising Returns to R&D: Ideas Are not Getting Harder to Find - SSRN* An Assessment of China's Innovative Capacity - The Fed* Markets are so used to the TACO trade they didn't even blink when Trump extended a tariff delay with China - Fortune* Labor unions mobilize to challenge advance of algorithms in workplaces - Wapo* ChatGPT loves this bull market. Human investors are more cautious. - Axios* What is required for a post-growth model? - Arxiv* What Would It Take to Bring Back US Manufacturing? - Bridgewater▶ Business* An AI Replay of the Browser Wars, Bankrolled by Google - Bberg* Alexa Got an A.I. Brain Transplant. How Smart Is It Now? - NYT* Google and IBM believe first workable quantum computer is in sight - FT* Why does Jeff Bezos keep buying launches from Elon Musk? - Ars* Beijing demands Chinese tech giants justify purchases of Nvidia's H20 chips - FT* An AI Replay of the Browser Wars, Bankrolled by Google - Bberg Opinion* Why Businesses Say Tariffs Have a Delayed Effect on Inflation - Richmond Fed* Lisa Su Runs AMD—and Is Out for Nvidia's Blood - Wired* Forget the White House Sideshow. Intel Must Decide What It Wants to Be. - WSJ* With Billions at Risk, Nvidia CEO Buys His Way Out of the Trade Battle - WSJ* Donald Trump's 100% tariff threat looms over chip sector despite relief for Apple - FT* Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival - FT* Threads is nearing X's daily app users, new data shows - TechCrunch▶ Policy/Politics* Trump's China gamble - Axios* U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China - NYT* A Guaranteed Annual Income Flop - WSJ Opinion* Big Tech's next major political battle may already be brewing in your backyard - Politico* Trump order gives political appointees vast powers over research grants - Nature* China has its own concerns about Nvidia H20 chips - FT* How the US Could Lose the AI Arms Race to China - Bberg Opinion* America's New AI Plan Is Great. There's Just One Problem. - Bberg Opinion* Trump, Seeking Friendlier Economic Data, Names New Statistics Chief - NYT* Trump's chief science adviser faces a storm of criticism: what's next? - Nature* Trump Is Squandering the Greatest Gift of the Manhattan Project - NYT Opinion▶ AI/Digital* Can OpenAI's GPT-5 model live up to sky-high expectations? - FT* Google, Schmoogle: When to Ditch Web Search for Deep Research - WSJ* AI Won't Kill Software. It Will Simply Give It New Life. - Barron's* Chatbot Conversations Never End. That's a Problem for Autistic People. - WSJ* Volunteers fight to keep ‘AI slop' off Wikipedia - Wapo* Trump's Tariffs Won't Solve U.S. Chip-Making Dilemma - WSJ* GenAI Misinformation, Trust, and News Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment - NBER* GPT-5s Are Alive: Basic Facts, Benchmarks and the Model Card - Don't Worry About the Vase* What you may have missed about GPT-5 - MIT* Why A.I. Should Make Parents Rethink Posting Photos of Their Children Online - NYT* 21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work - NYT* AI and Jobs: The Final Word (Until the Next One) - EIG* These workers don't fear artificial intelligence. They're getting degrees in it. - Wapo* AI Gossip - Arxiv* Meet the early-adopter judges using AI - MIT* The GPT-5 rollout has been a big mess - Ars* A Humanoid Social Robot as a Teaching Assistant in the Classroom - Arxiv* OpenAI Scrambles to Update GPT-5 After Users Revolt - Wired* Sam Altman and the whale - MIT* This is what happens when ChatGPT tries to write scripture - Vox* How AI could create the first one-person unicorn - Economist* AI Robs My Students of the Ability to Think - WSJ Opinion* Part I: Tricks or Traps? A Deep Dive into RL for LLM Reasoning - Arxiv▶ Biotech/Health* Scientists Are Finally Making Progress Against Alzheimer's - WSJ Opinion* The Dawn of a New Era in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Treatment - RealClearScience* RFK Jr. shifts $500 million from mRNA research to 'safer' vaccines. 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Electricity demand is booming, and it’s not just because of artificial intelligence. So much so that many are ready to revisit the idea of nuclear power. Microsoft signed a $16 billion deal to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power their data centres for the next 20 years. But developed countries haven’t built more than a handful of new reactors in decades. When they have tried, the cost of those nuclear plants and the time to build them has been extraordinary. Will this renewed interest yield different results? Nuclear scientist and partner at venture capital firm DCVC Rachel Slaybaugh joined Akshat Rathi on Zero to discuss how these new dreams of growing nuclear power can become a reality. Explore further: Nuclear Fusion Is Unlimited Clean Power. So When Can We Have It? Long-Unloved Nuclear Power Is Staging a Comeback UK Inks Investment Deals on £38 Billion Nuclear Plant Three Mile Island's Nuclear Reboot Moves Into the Fast Lane in Win for Microsoft Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Siobhan Wagner, Sommer Saadi and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Mark Nelson joins us to deliver his second annual “State of the Atom” address. The nuclear power landscape has transformed in the last two years. Russia continues its nuclear export dominance while the West at last awakens from its stupor, driven by an unexpected force: artificial intelligence's insatiable appetite for baseload power. From Amazon's billion-dollar Susquehanna deal to Three Mile Island's resurrection, Big Tech is discovering what nuclear advocates have long known: that when you need reliable electricity around the clock, few other generation sources compare. Nelson maps the new nuclear battlefield where Chinese reactors scale up to 1,700 megawatts, European phase-outs crumble, and Western teams scramble to assemble the talent and capital needed to compete.Read more on Substack.

What if getting your big idea across the finish line wasn't about pitching harder, but about thinking like a storyteller… or a mastermind? In this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Ed Essey, Director of Business Value at The Microsoft Garage, to uncover the surprising mechanics behind one of the most successful innovation engines in tech. Ed isn't just helping Microsoft employees come up with bold ideas. He's teaching them how to bring those ideas to life, secure executive sponsorship, and scale them globally. With more than 20,000 projects emerging from Microsoft's annual hackathon, his work is reshaping what innovation looks like inside a giant. We discuss the Garage Growth Framework, the storytelling techniques that help innovators get to 'yes,' and why corporate innovation often needs to feel more like a heist than a business plan. Along the way, Ed shares the powerful backstories of projects like Repowering Coal, which sparked the revitalization of Three Mile Island with clean nuclear energy, and MirrorHR, a deeply personal project that's helping families reduce epileptic seizures using AI and wearables. Ed also gives us a preview of his upcoming book, The Inside Job, a heist-themed guide to innovation for intrapreneurs looking to create meaningful change in complex organizations.

In 1979, one of two nuclear reactors at the Three Mile Island power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a partial meltdown. The second reactor was shut down 40 years later for economic reasons. Now, work is underway to restart that second reactor to produce electricity for a single customer, Microsoft. To learn what it takes to restart and ensure the safety of a nuclear power plant, and to explore the role of nuclear energy in a mix of renewable resources, we've invited back Dr. Elmer Lewis, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. Dr. Lewis is the author of the books “Nuclear Power Reactor Safety” and “Fundamentals of Nuclear Reactor Physics,” and he will soon publish his latest book, “Renewables or Nuclear, Which Should Lead in Curbing Climate Change?”

In 1979, one of two nuclear reactors at the Three Mile Island power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a partial meltdown. The second reactor was shut down 40 years later for economic reasons.  Now, work is underway to restart that second reactor to produce electricity for a single customer, Microsoft. To learn what it takes

In 1979, one of two nuclear reactors at the Three Mile Island power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a partial meltdown. The second reactor was shut down 40 years later for economic reasons. Now, work is underway to restart that second reactor to produce electricity for a single customer, Microsoft. To learn what it takes to restart and ensure the safety of a nuclear power plant, and to explore the role of nuclear energy in a mix of renewable resources, we've invited back Dr. Elmer Lewis, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. Dr. Lewis is the author of the books “Nuclear Power Reactor Safety” and “Fundamentals of Nuclear Reactor Physics,” and he will soon publish his latest book, “Renewables or Nuclear, Which Should Lead in Curbing Climate Change?

This week, we dig into Trump's surprise Iran strike: two-week warning turned two-minute missile salvo, 37-hour B-52 round trips, and vaporizing Iran's version of Three Mile Island. It's the same “stop WMDs” story from '08, but now with F-bombs on CNN. I even sketched out a gold “What Are We Doing” button he should carry for moments like that.Then Nickelodeon canceled Tiny Chef after two seasons. That little guy's lips were quivering—come on. We need a petition, a Netflix revival, or at least a uniform at Popeye's.Will Smith's music comeback? Cringe-core. His freestyles sound like 2005, his new chorus only works at 1.25x speed, and no one moved at his street show. Sorry, Will, stick to movies.The Liver King saga hits peak absurd: raw-meat guru exposed as a steroid user, challenging Joe Rogan to a fight, arrested in Texas, now ranting on TikTok. Dude needs help.Shoutout to Brendan Shaw, who moved his podcast into a Texas storage locker—no AC, auto-shutoff lights, train horns every 20 minutes. Fighter and the Kid is spiraling, and Thick Boy Studios is hemorrhaging cash.Finally, David Spade's new movie Bus Boys is stacked with Rogan pals, YouTubers, and Kill Tony alumni. Bet Tony Hinchcliffe cut a deal behind the scenes.I'm wiped from editing two client shows, so this one's a bit short. I'll be back full-force for episode 196. If you haven't yet, subscribe, like, and ring the bell. Follow wherever you scroll. What are we doing? See you next week.

While Pennsylvania lawmakers haggle over the state budget, liberal advocacy groups are using protests to call for higher taxes on billionaires to fund public services. In 1979, Three Mile Island was the site of what is often called the worst nuclear power accident on U.S. soil. Our colleague Jaxon White, from LNP | LancasterOnline, has the latest on the restarting of the Island’s nuclear reactor. Environmental groups say Tokyo-based Nippon Steel’s recent purchase of U.S. Steel should lead to cleaner operations at the company’s Pittsburgh-area plants. But they haven’t heard much from the Japanese steelmaker. New disclosures with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show President Trump will control the so-called “golden share," as part of the national security agreement under which he allowed Japan-based Nippon Steel to buy out iconic American steelmaker U.S. Steel. With the state budget deadline approaching, the company that owns “skill game” terminals throughout Pennsylvania says lawmakers have pushed it out of discussions on how the industry should be regulated. Taxing the casino-style games is a key part of Governor Josh Shapiro’s budget, one that would raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund schools and public transit. The former captain of a Dauphin County fire company is wanted by police after missing two court appearances earlier this year. A Dauphin County judge issued a bench warrant for 55-year-old Steven Bartholomew’s arrest in March. He's accused of driving firetrucks for the Paxtang Fire Company No. 1 several times in 2024 without a valid driver’s license. Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After 19 years, paranormal researcher Larry Arnold returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about the strange and frightening phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). He is regarded by many as the world's expert on SHC, but others regard him  as a “mystery monger” and “world-class fool.” After leaving Lafayette College and a brief career in electrical engineering, Arnold founded PSI: ParaScience International in 1976 to pursue the exploration of Fortean anomalies and consciousness. His controversial article published in August 1978, titled “Meltdown…at TMI-2,” would 8 months later be termed “uncannily accurate” by The Philadelphia Inquirer in presaging the future of that nuclear power plant's “impossible” Class IX meltdown near his home. The tragedy was best known as Three Mile Island. This discussion will cover both the nuclear incident and his 1995 classic title, “Ablaze!” This large book contains hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible. Arnold has been a guest on hundreds of radio and internet-radio programs and a number of radio and TV shows that include provocative radio host Howard Stern. He has also delivered lectures at a number of colleges and universities. His “unofficial” website is www.ParaScience.com. Caution: This episode has graphic descriptions of episodes of spontaneous human combustion.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-paracast-the-gold-standard-of-paranormal-radio--6203433/support.

After World War II, nuclear power was heralded as the future of energy. Then the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 marked a turning point and solidified opposition. In two decades, a dozen U.S. reactors have closed and only three have come online. But the site of America’s worst nuclear accident may now be the site of its rebirth. William Brangham reports for our series, Tipping Point. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Preview Colleague Henry Sokolski recommends what can be done with present technology to prevent unknown actors threatening nuclear power plants with drones. More later. 1979 THREE MILE ISLAND

The nuclear renaissance of the 2000s turned out to be something of a mirage. Buoyed by rising fossil gas prices, growing climate awareness, and steady load growth, nuclear seemed poised for a breakout moment. But that momentum stalled. Electricity demand flatlined. The fracking boom sent gas prices plummeting. And Fukushima rattled public confidence in nuclear power. Ultimately, only two new reactors, Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Georgia, reached completion over a decade later. So is this latest wave of nuclear hype any different? In this episode, Shayle talks to Chris Colbert, CEO of Elementl Power, which on Wednesday announced a deal with Google to develop three nuclear projects of at least 600-megawatts each. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, is an investor in Elementl.) Chris, a former executive at NuScale Power, thinks last year may have marked the start of a nuclear revival: the recommissioning of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island and Michigan's Holtec Palisades; Big Tech deals to support small modular reactor development; and the start of construction on TerraPower's Wyoming reactor, the Western Hemisphere's first advanced nuclear facility. But until new reactors move beyond one-off projects to serial deployment, nuclear won't achieve the cost reductions needed for widespread adoption. Chris and Shayle discuss what it will take to turn this groundswell of activity into widespread deployment, covering topics like: Current tailwinds, like load growth and interest from corporate buyers Why corporate buyers may be better positioned than utilities to take on development risks Elementl's technology-agnostic approach Different nuclear technologies — light water, non-light water, and advanced designs — and Chris's predictions for when they'll reach commercialization Why iteration is essential to driving down costs (and why the Google deal involves three separate projects) How regulatory timelines are speeding up The steps of project development with a corporate buyer Chris's criteria for site selection — and why attracting skilled labor ranks surprisingly high Resources: Latitude Media: Was 2024 really the year of nuclear resurgence? Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback? Catalyst: The cost of nuclear Latitude Media: Trump's DOE is reupping Biden-era funding for small modular nuclear reactors Latitude Media: Utah bets on a new developer to revive its small modular reactor ambitions Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a platform enabling solar and storage developers and buyers to save time, reduce risk, and increase profits in their equipment selection process. Anza gives clients access to pricing, technical, and risk data plus tools that they've never had access to before. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

Rising demand for electricity, largely to power the artificial intelligence boom, has stirred a resurgence in nuclear energy. Older plants like Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania are being brought out of retirement, but there’s also investment in smaller-scale reactors with different designs. The fresh interest in nuclear generation has also renewed discussion about how to build these facilities ethically, in other words, with an approach that’s sensitive to the needs of the community and the world at large. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aditi Verma, assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, who co-created an undergrad course about ethically designing modern nuclear facilities. Verma discussed her effort to train young engineers to transform the industry. For some engineers, it’s also renewed a discussion about how to build these facilities ethically. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aditi Verma, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan who co-created a course for undergraduate students about how to ethically design modern nuclear facilities, about why it’s so important to be teaching this to young, would-be engineers now.

Rising demand for electricity, largely to power the artificial intelligence boom, has stirred a resurgence in nuclear energy. Older plants like Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania are being brought out of retirement, but there’s also investment in smaller-scale reactors with different designs. The fresh interest in nuclear generation has also renewed discussion about how to build these facilities ethically, in other words, with an approach that’s sensitive to the needs of the community and the world at large. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aditi Verma, assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, who co-created an undergrad course about ethically designing modern nuclear facilities. Verma discussed her effort to train young engineers to transform the industry. For some engineers, it’s also renewed a discussion about how to build these facilities ethically. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aditi Verma, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan who co-created a course for undergraduate students about how to ethically design modern nuclear facilities, about why it’s so important to be teaching this to young, would-be engineers now.

March 28, 1979. The worst Nuclear accident in American history begins when Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island power plant experiences a partial meltdown. This episode originally aired in 2023.Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more.History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.