Emmet Penney is an unlikely, but effective pronuclear advocate. He earned his degrees in fine arts and great books and worked for several years as a professional poet – along with working in a bookstore as a way to keep paying the bills. He gradually transitioned from poetry into writing thoughtful essays on a variety of topics. One of those pieces…

Doug Sandridge is a lifelong oil and gas guy whose father was a geological engineer. While he was growing up, Doug lived a significant portion of his life overseas as his father’s job took the family to several different locations. When it was time to go to college, Doug returned to the United State to attend the University of Oklahoma. He took a b…

James Krellenstein is a physicist, consultant and nuclear energy historian. He is currently employed as a senior advisor to Global Health Strategies. He started up their decarbonization practice with an emphasis on nuclear energy along with renewables. He was the lead author on GEH’s report on ways to reduce global dependence on Russia for necessar…

Stefano Buono is a physicist and the successful founder of Advanced Accelerator Applications, a multibillion dollar company that pioneered the use of several therapeutic medical isotopes. After making several people very rich, including himself, he sold the medical isotope business and returned to his early 1990s field of study – nuclear fission re…

Zeno Power makes cost-effective radioisotope power systems (RPS) for some of the most challenging environments in the solar system. Its systems use a proprietary package that allows a wider variety of isotopes to perform functions previously reserved for Pu-238, a rare isotope that is slowly produced at great expense. What is the value of RPS? RPS’…

Mary Jo Rogers is a trained clinical psychologist who developed her interest workforce safety cultures and leadership in the nuclear power sector while consulting and working for ComEd (later Exelon). At the time she began her work, ComEd was a perennially under-performing utility with new leaders that were committed to turning it into the best nuc…

In the past few years, there has been a strong revival of interest in using nuclear fission energy to power space travel and planetary exploration. There have also been new developments in radioisotope thermal generators that will make them more widely available with greater energy density. Though there has been interest in using nuclear energy in …

Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University. He writes about energy, economies and the way that energy sources have influenced modern societies and economies. One of his first books was Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (2013) which is very briefly described as follows: Looking beyond the usual culprits, “Lifebloo…

Alyssa Hayes is a leader in the pro-nuclear movement. She is a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee and she has been interested in policy making and politics since interning with her local representative when she was 14 years old. She was involved in the successful efforts to save four nuclear power stations (Clinton,…

Mark Nelson has been traveling the world in an effort to help create a sustainable pronuclear movement. His focus includes both saving existing plants and encouraging the construction of new reactor in areas that have operating reactors, those that have shut down their nuclear plants and in countries that have never operated nuclear plants. We spok…

Westinghouse, one of the world’s first nuclear power plant vendors, recently announced a new small modular reactor (SMR) design called the AP300. It is described as a simplified version of the AP1000, four of which are currently operating in China and two of which are in the final stages of operational testing in Georgia, United States. Six additio…

On Apr 28, the much anticipated film, Nuclear Now, will premier in selected theaters in New York, Sedona and Los Angeles. It will remain available in those venues for a week. On May 1, 2023, the film will be shown at 350 theaters across the US and Canada. The film is co-written by Oliver Stone and Joshua Goldstein. Here is a blurb about the film. N…

Dr. Leonard Rodberg spent most of his adult life being opposed to nuclear energy. A half a dozen years ago, he abruptly changed his mind. Ever since, he has been a strong and vocal advocate for the increased use of nuclear energy. On Atomic Show #304 Len and I discuss his education, career, his changing attitudes towards nuclear energy and the impo…

Rendering of Last Energy’s 20 MWe installations (Last Energy) Last Energy is an innovative new company governed by a philosophy of avoiding the invention of anything that has not been done before. They have created a business that is laser focused on building, owning and operating small (20 MWe), modular pressurized water reactors and selling the e…

Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association, visited the Atomic Show to provide an international perspective on the revival in interest in nuclear energy deployment. As the head of the organization that represents the global nuclear indus…

The nuclear energy policy landscape in the US has changed significantly during the past 5 years. Once seen as an issue with enormous differences between the political parties, it has become one of the few topics on which both parties can have a civil discussion and agree on many key provisions in supportive legislation. Matt Crozat: NEI, Executive …

Modeled waste volumes for selected reactor designs (From “Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors”) Dr. Lindsay Krall is a geochemist currently working on projects characterizing the behavior of radioactive isotopes that will eventually be stored in a deep geologic repository being designed in Sweden for construction within the next decade. Durin…

Dr. Chris Keefer is one of the busiest and most successful nuclear energy advocates working today. He is a Canadian emergency room doctor, the founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, the founder and host of the Decouple podcast, the founder of Decouple Media, and the founder and President of Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE). And to think, just a …

Reactor Internals by Marcus Seidl Marcus Seidl is a German nuclear professional who received his PhD in nuclear physics in 2002, a year after his home country decided that it would exit nuclear energy in favor of investing in a large roll out of renewable energy sources. He has worked for German utility companies, for a vendor erecting a state-of-t…

Krusty Core showing heat pipe arrangement Patrick McClure and David Poston successfully developed, obtained funding, constructed and operated a new atomic fission power source that produced useful quantities of electricity during the period from 2014-2018. That puts them into a rarified, perhaps unique position. Few US-based technologists have been…