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Decouple

Dr. Chris Keefer

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There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview world experts to uncover hope in this time of planetary crisis.
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Mark Mills is the executive director of the National Centre for Energy Analytics and author of “The Cloud Revolution” How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. Join us as we explore how to power an AI enhanced Cloud network and its implications on the grid and climate politics.…
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Is overzealous regulation the root cause of the contemporary crisis in deployment of nuclear reactors in the USA? James Krellenstein argues that Nuclear Regulatory Commission critics are trapped in the 1980’s and that the spectre haunting today’s deployments are not primarily regulatory. Due to simplified systems and lower material costs modern NRC…
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Science journalist Peter Brannen joins me to discuss the kill mechanisms of Earth’s five mass extinctions. Humanity has developed the god like power’s to mimic all of them. From altering the carbon cycle to eutrophication of oceans and to a far lesser degree our asteroid like thermonuclear weapon arsenal.…
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Marcel Boiteux, a shy economist who escaped occupied France to fight the Nazis before working out the theory of electricity pricing for newly-nationalized Electricite de France, rose to become the greatest builder of nuclear power the world has ever seen. Mark Nelson, founder of Radiant Energy Group, explains what forces shaped his mind, his role i…
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The Grand Finale is here. We wrestle with the question of whether nuclear can find its groove and the positive learning rates that have eluded it so frequently. Vogtle unit 4 came in 40% cheaper than unit 3. Can those gains continue downwards? Is Vogtle 5 more likely to follow this cost reduction curve compared to a new AP1000 elsewhere?…
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Alberta, sitting on massive reserves of oil and gas, found itself teetering on the edge of blackout this week as temperatures in the negative 40 degree ranges led to multiple grid alerts. As a new record for peak demand was set at 12,384 MW, Alberta's 4481MW wind fleet went AWOL. This raises major concerns regarding electricity planning with a coun…
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Humanity went from inducing the first fissions of heavy elements in 1938 to a nuclear powered submarine in just 16 years. Why has that tremendous pace of nuclear innovation seemingly slowed down to a crawl? Nuclear historian Nick Touran joins me for an in depth analysis of the historic preconditions of nuclear innovation and its opportunities and l…
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Dr. Keefer sat down with some of the Titans of the nuclear fuel cycle at the “Net Zero Nuclear Summit” on the sidelines of COP28 in the UAE where 24 countries have pledged to triple nuclear energy by 2050. The topic: How to scale up Uranium mining, enrichment and advanced fuel manufacturing in the context of our emerging multipolar world and the We…
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Chris Adlam joins me to discuss Ontario’s attempt to imitate Germany’s Energiewende. It began as an attempt to kickstart a green energy industry by retooling struggling automotive plants in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The lucrative 20 year feed in tariff contracts for wind and solar will end up costing Ontario more than 62 billion…
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One in 20 American homes are powered by Russian enriched uranium because the USA lacks sufficient enrichment capacity to meet its own needs. Energy and fuel security are supposed to be a strong point of the technology but the US nuclear industry faces further reputational risk because no-one is taking responsibility and adequately planning adequate…
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Dr Keefer’s Testimony at the House of Commons Natural Resources Committee on what Canada can learn from the Inflation Reduction Act’s “good union jobs” provisions. In the words of NYT labour reporter Noam Scheiber“The green economy is shaping up to look less like the industrial workplace that lifted workers into the middle class in the 20th century…
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Muckraking physicist and data scientist Aidan Morrison has thrown doubt on the oft repeated mantra in Australia that wind and solar are the lowest cost option for a clean energy transition. He discovered that the modelling used to justify these claims leaves out the massive investments in storage and transmission required to balance the system trea…
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Enhanced geothermal has been a scientific white whale since the 1970’s but a recent breakthrough announcement is causing waves. Is Baseload cool again? Will enhanced geothermal eat nuclear’s lunch or for that matter renewable’s lunch? The potential to unlock the energy potential of hot dry rocks by leveraging hydraulic fracturing opens up a vast ge…
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“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Physicist James Krellenstein joins me to deep dive the history of America’s great nuclear build out, its stalling and the age of the operator which saw capacity factors at US plants leap from 60% to 90%. How should this history inform future policy? What's the bull’s case for US nuc…
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