Episode 512 Scott Adams: Pro-Nuclear Environmentalist and Expert Michael Shellenberger

Date: 2019-04-30 | Duration: 57:16

Topics

Guest: Michael Shellenberger, nuclear power expert, environmentalist France: 75% nuclear powered, less pollution created, lower costs Germany: No nuclear, 50% higher energy costs, more pollution Sunless, windless days make those alternative possibilities unreliable Both require batteries, lots and lots of batteries Environmental cost of batteries Unreliable producers of energy Michael Shellenberger: We should stick with and develop light water cooled nuclear solutions, not Gen IV Bill Gates has embraced Gen IV research and development 12 startups are pursuing Gen IV technology Nuclear energy is promoted as safer, cleaner than coal Congressional support for development is bipartisan Climate change people fear that more than nuclear concerns If you’re pro-science, nuclear power is the best known answer Solar and wind will NEVER provide world’s power needs

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:07]

[Music] bah-bah-bah bah boom boom boom hey everybody yeah it's time for coffee with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams this is my coffee and I know why you're here partly it's for the amazing content and provocative thoughts but mostly is for the simultaneous sip which you are going to enjoy right now but only if you have a cup of mug a glass possibly some kind of a Stein or a tankard maybe a thermos or a flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous it well in a few moments I'm going to invite a very special guest that you can enjoy a lot and his name is Michael Shellenberger

[1:09]

and his name is Michael Shellenberger and I'm going to invite him now and while he's coming on I'll give you the intro so Michael Shellenberger is a Time magazine hero of the environment Green Book Award winner and the founder and president of environmental progress and Michael can you hear me I can hear you can you hear me Scott I can hear you yes let me finish your intro and then we'll ask a few questions he's one of the world's leading pro-nuclear environmentalists so it's exactly who you want to hear from and he's a leading energy security and environmental expert he's advised Poly's policy makers and countries around the world and he's helped saved nuclear reactors around the world from Illinois's in New York to South Korea and Taiwan thereby preventing an increase in air pollution equivalent to adding 24 million cars to the road and he's

[2:10]

million cars to the road and he's written a number of books including eco modernist manifesto and he was called prescient prescient by Time magazine and the best thing to happen to environmentalism since since some other book alright Michael did I leave anything out that the you already alright so I've I've seen a number of your articles recently and people will forward them to me because they know I'm on the page of saying that whether or not climate change is the big problem we think it is it still makes sense to pursue nuclear in the smartest fastest way we can I'd like to start with getting a grounding on your view of I know this isn't the main pot topic but for the context for the audience where do you stand on climate change I mean I think um you know I basically agree with

[3:10]

think um you know I basically agree with the mainstream climate science you know I think it's a you know long-term environmental challenge I don't think it's the only environmental challenge that we have I don't think that we need to sacrifice a high standard of living in fact I think that to deal with climate change we need to accelerate human progress and economic development because that's what's gone hand in hand with decarbonisation which is the reduction of intensity of energy alright so climate change is a risk in your opinion and do you have an opinion on whether the the dire predictions of the majority of climate scientists are credible or not credible would you say we should worry about it or definitely worry about it I mean I think you have to put climate change in the context of other risks you know if everybody if we were to try to you know radically increase the cost of energy or reduce

[4:10]

increase the cost of energy or reduce the amount of energy we use that would create other risks I mean I think most climate scientists are are quite quite consistent with the mainstream science there's just a small handful of pretty misanthropic scientists out there who've been vocal but the truth is we work with you know more climate scientists and Queen James Hansen who are very Pro nuclear who understand they need for a high energy civilization so I don't gift but the activities of a small group shape our perception of everybody all right so for the benefit of the audience in terms of credibility Michael believes that climate is a risk that needs to be addressed but there are other risks and there risks of addressing it as well so all the risks have to be included but I think that gives you credibility because anybody who believes that the climate science story is something we need to worry about and is also on the on the page of nuclear is sort of unique that

[5:10]

page of nuclear is sort of unique that do you find that there aren't many people in your camp or is it a growing number it's definitely growing and I think we're actually starting to see it in some of the polling data I mean Gallup just came out with a new survey that shows increasing support and they mentioned in there that supported that maybe increasing because of concerns about climate change so I mean I think the thing you have to remember is that a lot of the people that got concerned about climate change we're anti-nuclear to begin with I mean when when the Cold War ended a lot of the anti-nuclear weapons and nuclear energy activists kind of glommed onto climate has another apocalyptic threat so the policy framework really came from the anti-nuclear movement and it's really taken a while for people to understand that nuclear energy is the best and I think really only solution to significantly reduce our emissions well let me ask you this I I believe you've said some things about the potential economics of wind and solar or green energy in general and and you've pointed

[6:12]

energy in general and and you've pointed out their limitations but would you say that we should still do everything as fast as we should in other words push every and every energy source we can as much as we can and still be safe would you say that that or would you say we should maybe move our focus away from the green stuff well I think we should we should focus on what works I mean I always point out there's really a real-world case study that we've had last 20 years France and Germany France a little bit more than half as much for electricity as Germany and yet its electricity supply produces one tenth of the carbon emissions and so what's the difference well France to 75% nuclear and Germany's getting out of nuclear so sometimes people say what we should do at all but you know when France tried to integrate a lot of unreliable solar and wind into its grid it actually had to use more natural gas more fossil fuels and do less nuclear well but let me let me push back a little bit let me be devil's advocate here if you were to look at any one of these technologies

[7:14]

look at any one of these technologies you know nuclear solar or wind you could quite reasonably say there are all kinds of problems with each one and we haven't fully solved them but we think we're getting closer to you know improving in all of those things wouldn't you say that all of the major solutions to energy have pretty big engineering and practical and maybe legal and public problems involved with them but that they're all improving is that not true well that used to be my view and so in the early 2000s I was one of the architects of the original green New Deal which was focused on solar and wind and I thought that technological innovation could improve solar and wind and what I learned was that the problems with solar and wind aren't essentially technical they're natural so it's the low it's the energy dilute nature of sunlight and wind that make them require 450 to 750 times more land than nuclear it's they're essentially unreliable anyway but but let me let me pause just

[8:16]

anyway but but let me let me pause just so we don't lose this point the fact that wind and solar require lots of land does that really matter because we're not really running out of land yeah we actually first of all it matters in a lot of different ways I mean the first way it matters is that indeed land is scarce in particular land near places where we use a lot of energy like cities and industry we don't have a lot of land even in California where people said we have all these huge deserts well it turns out that there's a lot of wildlife in those deserts including some pretty rare and threatened wildlife and so what really changed my mind was the fact that much of the opposition to build big solar and wind farms is coming from conservationists it's coming from people who are concerned about the natural environment plus you know the other problem is that you just get much larger transmission costs much more much higher costs with the unreliability so the the physical nature of renewables which is that they're unreliable and energy dilute stands as really a physical a

[9:21]

dilute stands as really a physical a hard physical barrier to being able to scale them up and don't take my word for it the University Chicago just came out with a study showing that solar and wind are increasing electricity prices across the United States specifically for both the unreliability and because of the large land use demands now in in the interest of you know me being the independent a question asker here I have not reviewed the economics of any of these technologies but every time this topic comes up there will be somebody who will point me to an article or a study this says here's the study the show is absolutely green energy is less expensive or at its current rate will be less expensive than so then nuclear energy and then I see people in your camp who have sources and in estimates and links to exactly the opposite so what do you agree that there are there are opposite messages out in the world and people like me can't tell the difference is is that is that fair to say there are directly opposite messages

[10:23]

say there are directly opposite messages on which ones of these are the economical ones well I think what you're seeing is that people will use they'll basically say when solar panels are producing electricity the electricity is really cheap and that's true the problem is is that we need electricity 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year and so that's why I always point to national level comparisons so when you look at again you know if nuclear were so much more expensive and if renewables were so cheap you would expect Germany to have cheap electricity instead it's electricity prices increased fifty percent over the last decade it will have spent five hundred and eighty billion dollars on renewables on the related infrastructure by 2025 and its emissions will they're B flat or have gone up meanwhile France generates one-tenth the carbon emissions and pays about half as much for electricity so you have to look at the set sort of national levels otherwise there's too much it's too easy for people to cherry-pick data yeah look um the other thing that I

[11:25]

yeah look um the other thing that I heard the other day which I forgot to include in my understanding of this is that when you're looking at solar it's not just the case of whether the whether it's daytime or nighttime or cloudy or not not it's also the season right there there are seasons when there just isn't going to be as much Sun and so what do you do then is that first word yes sure like we measured how much if you used every battery in California and we've spent more on batteries than any other state including every battery in every car and truck you would only you would have less than a half an hour of electricity from the grid backed up well you need thousands of hours to make it through the windless and sunless days of winter so any thousands of hours we have less than half an hour you're talking trillions of dollars really not even even even renewables advocates don't think that we're gonna just be able to get our way there with that so so would it be fair to say that all of these comparisons they do apples and oranges because you know the Apple in this case

[12:26]

because you know the Apple in this case is nuclear which once it's built it's just continuous and you know doesn't have a slight low patch versus the green energy is they just sort of leave out the batteries or assume that someday we'll invent them how do they even compare these things when it's it's like comparing a bicycle to an airplane you know that the airplane isn't going to improve to the point until it flies you know are they literally being that disingenuous that they just leave no batteries and leave out the fact that they're not continuous power is it that simple there's actually two they do two things the first is that they will just point out how much electricity costs when the sun is shining on a solar panel the other thing they do is they will construct very elaborate models that allows them to hide the assumptions and those models just assume a lot of things that don't exist right now assume for example all of our hydroelectric dams are used for storage this was what the Stanford professor mark Jacobson did is that he he estimated that we would have really a

[13:29]

he estimated that we would have really a hundred times more storage or I'm sorry I think there's more like a thousand times more storage from hydroelectric dams than was physically available and he got called out in a Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences report and you can sort of tell by people's behavior he then in filed a lawsuit against the people that wrote the paper debunking him I think that sort of speaks loudly about the confidence that they have in those models well alright so it's scary when you hear that such a major decision is probably being dominated by economic analyses that are would you say fraudulent intentionally can we even tell or are they just incompetent well what it is is that there's a there's a deep ideology behind moving towards renewables that is really quite it imagines that we're all gonna go live a very low-energy lifestyle that we're all going to voluntarily decide to live with a very small amounts of energy

[14:29]

live with a very small amounts of energy it's a very sort of it's both dystopian and utopian at the same time so it's not like it's I mean yes I think there's some dishonesty in it but I think you have to remember that it's incredibly motivated by a very dark ideological underlying kind of structure ok now my audience here on periscope and in Twitter we've had the benefit of one of my nuclear well my only other nuclear adviser Mark Snyder and he's been educating us all on the potential for generation for now we understand generation four to be sort of that an umbrella that would include a number of new technologies for nuclear can you give us your opinion or whether the generation four is where all the action should be or is there something that's more more already ready to go that you recommend or both yeah I mean so I think it's important to stay really close to the data on this issue so what the data

[15:29]

the data on this issue so what the data show is that the the cheapest nuclear power is is the is the nuclear that we have a lot of experience building operating and regulating it's water-cooled it's not cooled by any exotic materials or metals or gases basically it's experience experience experience you know if we had decided in the 1950s that we were going to use that everybody in the world would use a different kind of nuclear then that nuclear would probably be cheap although there's even some doubts about that I mean I sent I forwarded to you a graph that basically shows that you know we did that Britain for example used non water-cooled reactors they used gas cooled reactors they just turned out to be more complicated more expensive they they don't last as long so it just turns out that the water-cooled reactors that we have which can run for 60 80 maybe a hundred years are the best of the nuclear technologies we tried so many

[16:30]

nuclear technologies we tried so many technologies over time but the water-cooled are the ones that the public is going to be scared to death of is that Truluck is well yeah the public is scared of nuclear for reasons that have to do with the associations with the bomb has to do with manipulations of public fears but yeah I mean if you if you tell people that we've got some new nuclear that has that doesn't create any waste that doesn't have any risk of accidents and I can't be used to make a bomb if you lie to people then yeah you might be able to win them over the problem is is I don't think lying is a particularly good marketing strategy well let's say instead of lying let's say optimism and my understanding is that there are gen 4 technologies that are going into production I'm not the expert but I think Canada has one that they just put into production is that true so Canada uses heavy water-cooled reactors I think they're great they have a lot of experience making them the reason that the the reason the you the

[17:31]

reason that the the reason the you the non-proliferation community doesn't like them is that there is there it does seem to be a little bit easier to make plutonium and hide the creation of plutonium for weapons using that kind of reactor so it's not a favorite of the international community but wait a bit there wasn't there a Gen 4 that just came online which is now yeah isn't is it can do what it what is the site that just came out yeah can use our heavy water reactors they're great I think they're really they low-cost Jen I think generation four you should realize is just a marketing term it's just two it actually refers to I mean really the reactors that who will refer to as gen four existed before we move to light water reactors I mean we had the predecessor to chemical cooled reactors we had gas cooled reactors we had sodium metal cooled reactors all before we used white water reactors in fact the French and British wanted to go to gas cooled reactors the United States went to water

[18:33]

reactors the United States went to water cooled reactors France followed Britain didn't and France has just a much more successful program than Britain the Russians have the most advanced sodium metal cooled reactor and it's just much more complicated and expensive than water-cooled reactors so how might now my understanding is that the Gen 4 stuff was the the big win should it ever come to pass would be that they could make them smaller and simpler and then reproduce them in mass so that they're sort of pre-approved we know what we're getting and and the economies of scale come down now why is that not true why is it generation four not yet ready but we should be able to iterate our way to do the smaller reproducible economical model at what part of that story is yeah credible half of what you said is correct that's pretty good for me making so we know what makes nuclear cheap as making the same kind of nuclear reactors

[19:34]

making the same kind of nuclear reactors and nuclear plants over and over again that allows stand that standardization allows the experience that brings the cost down that's occurred in in Korea and in France and in some periods in Japan and in those situations they do end up manufacturing a fair amount of the components and factories on this on the issue of size the data is overwhelming that moving to larger reactors makes for cheaper tricity why is that well it's because you don't need you can increase the size of the reactor the Koreans went from a thousand megawatts to 1,400 megawatts a 40 percent increase without significantly increasing either the number of workers you need to build it or the number of workers you need to operate it so small I think we kind of end up thinking that energy is like information and computing technologies like microchips it's completely different it's about a transformation of natural energy stocks and flows into usable electricity totally different

[20:36]

usable electricity totally different physical processes I think we have to remember that when it comes to energy bigger makes things cheaper if you can make more of the components and factories great but even that is no guarantee there's a lot of what you what you really need is you need a lot of repetition you need a lot of quantity so a one-off project building a factory could end up being more expensive than just something built in the field well the the comparison is that the the ones building the factories they make more and more of them until the price comes down so it's a question of quantity is it right and so right there we have a problem right because we are now making more and more the Russians for example are making a big investment to make a lot of light water reactors that's what's cheap and so if you were to say well let's let's make a switch to some completely different reactor first of all those those different reactors have been more expensive to build in the past in part because they're more complex both in terms of the science and the

[21:37]

both in terms of the science and the engineering and then also it assumes that somehow we're going to have a huge demand you have a chicken-and-egg problem so why do we think we're gonna have more demand for some alternative design than we have for nuclear today wouldn't wouldn't the demand be the same which is that we need energy anywhere we can get it so if we can get it from this design versus that design it should be the same demand it's just a different solution right so I mean I think just look at what we have me so if you kind of go there's two leaders in building nuclear plants the Chinese and the Russians the Russians will build you a sodium-cooled reactor on cooled reactor or they can build you a water-cooled reactor the reason people are the reason that countries by the water-cooled one is because it's a lot cheaper the risks are a lot lower they actually are making a lot of those components in factories whereas the sodium reactor it's just much more complicated much more difficult much more expensive and really there's no

[22:37]

more expensive and really there's no need for it I mean you get all the same benefits from the water-cooled one well isn't the is it true that the benefits of generation four are that it's safe from meltdown versus the water-cooled which can have a higher risk which which I'm sure you would say is overblown in terms of the risk and I wouldn't disagree with you there but isn't there a big difference in the risk I mean I mean the truth is that you can have accidents including fires with all kinds of nuclear plants and under that situation the radiation can escape the plant just like you can with a water-cooled reactor and there's a difference so let me just check some of my facts here my assumption my belief is that if a generation four had a problem the problem would cause it to stop being a reactor whereas the water-cooled if it has a problem the reaction is

[23:39]

if it has a problem the reaction is uncontrolled so that one of them is inherently safe the one that if something goes wrong it just stops working now if it leaked let's say terrorists got to it or something wouldn't the generation four have a pretty small footprint for that radiation leak compared to a larger pressurized water cooled situation well we don't really know I mean we haven't we've first of all we've had pretty bad accidents with both gas cooled and sodium metal cooled reactors in the past including people being killed and they're being fires so I mean there's there's a lot of reasons to be suspicious of the claims that we're going to get some sort of perfectly safe reactor when radiation escapes from existing nuclear plants the truth is is that it's just very small amounts that caused a little harmine I I don't even think scientifically you could say that the reactor is safer without running it for a hundred years because so few people have been killed by our existing nuclear

[24:41]

have been killed by our existing nuclear plants I mean well look but let me make I shouldn't use analogies but if you're comparing a hand grenade that's loaded to you know a bowl of Cheerios you wouldn't have to run test forever and it seems to me that the generation four would be built by design so they couldn't at least explode and send radiation of our distance is that is the problem with the water-cooled that people imagine that if the worst case happened which I believe has never happened right there's there's never been a worst-case scenario that the kind we imagined involved with the older reactors has er well I mean I think you could argue that Chernobyl was the worst that could that you could imagine it's hard to see anything getting worse than that and I mean in terms of the inherent safety so look at Three Mile Island you had the worst possible disaster with that reactor with one of the two reactors the reactor melted and the

[25:43]

reactors the reactor melted and the containment structure worked if you're standing right next to the plant you got less radiation than you would get from an x-ray so I think you have to kind of ask yourself you know what are you hoping how what kind of safety benefits are you hoping to get I think what we see from the accidents is that the vast majority of harm is caused by people panicking you know so you see people in Fukushima they're pulling people out of nursing homes out of hospitals a completely unnecessary overreaction because of exaggerated fears of radiation that's what caused all that's what caused I mean there's likely to be no deaths from the radiation from Fukushima but 2,000 people will have died in the evacuation so do you think the new nuclear new nuclear plant a generation forward we call generation four plan if there were an accident can you be sure that you won't have a panic because that's where the harm comes from I think the assumption that you wouldn't have that panic is wishful thinking I think the fears of nuclear

[26:43]

think the fears of nuclear have basically come from people thinking that nuclear plants are sort of like a bomb and that a nuclear accident is sort of like a bomb going off yeah the the psychology is always gonna be the tough part let me see if I understand this fine point if we were good to start building nuclear right now to really get aggressive and address climate change and just address even just address pollution and the need for more energy in general I think your point is that the only technology that could do that right now as the technology we've used and has worked for a long time and has been way safer than people imagine but here's the question first of all did I get the first part right yes okay the second part of my question is there is always a better technology so and I'm sure you would agree with the general statement that whatever technology you're talking about so if you wait long enough that people work hard enough they're gonna come up with one that's safer cheaper better you

[27:44]

with one that's safer cheaper better you know you don't believe that we have the ultimate solution right now is that correct right and I think that we are getting great progress but it's within the water-cooled designs so we've had a huge number of changes to make them much safer over the last several decades and many of the important changes have been human factors it's been improved human performance checklists Trent worker training things that aren't as sexy maybe but have actually been the difference in terms of increasing the safety and performance yeah you know the trouble is that as soon as you say we got our checklists and our human processes are much better I just see Homer Simpson like you you you can't tell the guy who writes Dilbert for a living well we'll bring the people better that should keep us safe from nuclear disaster so there's there's a natural problem with that even if everything I'm assuming everything you're saying is 100% true I don't have any reason to doubt it and it seems obvious that that's true but your brain

[28:46]

obvious that that's true but your brain can't wrap around oh people will be smarter therefore we're safe from a nuclear disaster that's exactly the
so there's I say we can certainly yeah so I could only point you to many technical changes that have been made in the plants but I do think it's interesting to point out that when Three Mile Island happened in 1979 American plants were running about 50 percent of the year after that accident and then many ways that Three Mile Island accident was the best thing to happen to nuclear the performance improved so much at the plants that they now run over 90% of the year so those were changes made mostly by improving the the operations of these plants you know jet planes it's a similar story with jet planes we've had a huge decline in jet plane crashes over the last you know 70 years or so some of that is because of improvements the technology but another big part of

[29:47]

the technology but another big part of it is just the improvement of the operations and maintenance of those jet planes yeah I would I would caution you against using that analogy because when people think about it they think about the crash not the success maybe you're right but I have to say I think the the reason I like it is because I think we all we all fly a lot these days and I think we get on airplanes and we look over at the pilot and the pilot comes out to meet us and we feel like we're in safe hands we know that there's a risk but I think most of us that fly a lot we go hey this is this is run by people that know what they're doing and yeah there was a crash with a newer technology I mean and I think that's a notable thing right newer technologies often bring with them problems like we've seen with the new Boeing jet so you know I mean I think like like you would expect that a radically new technology which is what nuclear power was in 1957 would take some time for humans to get used to

[30:47]

some time for humans to get used to using in the same way that it's taken us some time to get used to you know dollars and making operating and flying jet planes no but but check my thinking here there are something like a dozen generation for startups is that right yes
yes and and is that just the United States where's that worldwide well in that's just just in the United States I mean I think internationally though you have smaller players but they tend to be part of much bigger company so like I said I mean okay the Russians are the ones that are out there with a sodium-cooled reactor right now and then so we we've got ten dozen or so startups working on it and Bill Gates is Pro generation four is he not or at least pro development of it not he's now saying it's ready to go is that true or not true he has had yes so he had a joint venture in China that was using a sodium-cooled reactor and

[31:49]

was using a sodium-cooled reactor and they've not built a demonstration reactor yet and like I said the Russians actually have one they're building and we've been doing sodium-cooled reactors for a long time and they've just proven to be much more expensive so the thing that we can't know is how how effective those startups are at accomplishing the hard part which is making it simpler and safer at the same time now that's the magic bullet right simpler and safer simultaneously I think that the I think the I think we should measure progress by results and by performance and so you have a lot of people with designs but you have to remember we've also done a huge number of experiments I mean we've had now almost 70 years of nuclear research development demonstration experimental reactors all over the world not just in the United States so now you have people that kind of come back and they say well I'm gonna try this older design but I'm gonna call it Gen 4 and

[32:51]

design but I'm gonna call it Gen 4 and somehow it's all going to be different this time I think it's fair to say there's a lot of wishful thinking in this community as well but how do how do we as citizens you know we're standing on the outside and we're looking at this and it seems to me that you you could have said at any time in the past you know before the the Wright brothers well we've tried these flying machines for a hundred years and people just fall off a cliff and they kill themselves why would it work so you know most of us have in our heads multiple histories in which things didn't work until they did and when we see that there are a bunch of startups working on it and the startups are not the dumb people you know it's not a lot of dumb people who went to work for a nuclear startup Bill Gates is not a dumb guy and he's putting his money into it so we look at this and we think yes you know I I definitely believe that believes that what we have now if we were to start today would be

[33:52]

were to start today would be unambiguously using the stuff we know that works but it feels to me like if we're looking at a climate change and we're doing 80-year predictions that new technologies of nuclear is just guaranteed to be a big part of that am I wrong about that well I think you might want to ask yourself so we have a particular kind of jet plane right now right are there alternative ways to have jet travel well there are actually other than using the jet turbines that we have there might be other ways to there's other ways to create nuclear power but I think you have to ask yourself in the case of jet engines have after we had after we invented jet engines and started using jet engines after World War two did we need to switch to different engines to get these incredible improvements in performance the answer is no so the question is why do we think we would need to with nuclear when we've had really major performance improvements with existing

[34:52]

performance improvements with existing water cool designs well I think people think in terms of stories and you know narratives and histories that they've seen before and everything we've seen before is that there's no such thing as a technology that doesn't improve and and for example you know the electric car was not a great thing until Tesla you could argue so why wouldn't there be a Tesla of generation for nuclear in our 40 year future doesn't see it I mean maybe there will be other questions let me ask you this renovation we asked you this specific question then you over a 40-year period would you say is closer to a hundred percent chance that we'll have safer different designs than the current ones or would you say is closer to zero well I think that we will continue to have a lot of

[35:52]

will continue to have a lot of technological innovation and that the nuclear plants that will continue to be the safest the cheapest and the highest performing ones are going to continue to be light water-cooled reactors I mean I think you gotta remember you're you're imagining that these folks are trying to invent something new when the reactors that they're trying to that they want to invent we're all already experimented and developed many years ago and and okay so here's the problem just the it's always hard for we as observers to look at this complicated area because we're always missing something and and here's what I'm missing in in no reality I can imagine could there be twelve startups and Bill Gates investing in in these newer kinds of technologies and I think even the Energy Department just approved a thing a facility for testing you know Jen for fuels and iterating there's no way I can conceive that all of them have missed

[36:53]

conceive that all of them have missed the obvious which is that it can't be done that I guess that's not conceived I do you think so then what's your explanation for why over the last sixty years we've demonstrated every single kind of reactor that you're talking about gas cooled sodium metal cooled chemical cooled so so why why did they not why have they not been able to succeed up until now and what makes you think that another demonstration reactor which by the way we're not we're nowhere close to building not even an experimental test reactor what makes you think another experimental reactor is going to make a difference well remember for thing we are not talking with technical expertise so we're just saying sort of generic things which are always true in every situation which is when you've got this many smart people who are sure to change their jobs that invest you know Piper millions of dollars in it when that many people think something is

[37:55]

when that many people think something is probably going to happen sooner or later with some amount of Federation they're almost always right let me you know I've lived through for example smart phones being invented and and even yeah basically I worked at the phone company when we're trying to invent a handheld device so that everybody could have a wireless phone and all of the talk at the time was yeah we've had wireless cell phones for 30 years they're never gonna catch on and then we just made them smaller and cheaper and put a screen on it connected it to the internet invented apps and suddenly you can't live without it so if you have like I have live through a number of time where even the smartest people in the field said you can't really have cell phones and everybody's pocket because the the radiation will kill you they had lots of reasons they were all bad reasons but well this doesn't look different than all the times people said well you never make a plane the flies

[38:56]

well you never make a plane the flies okay there's a plane to fly as well you never have an electric car okay you have an electric car you'll never be able to have cell phones and everybody's hands with no wires well okay that way I'll have one why would this be different and then by the way I'm not doubting those if it's not it's not different actually I mean I'm pointing out that actually it's it's the same in fact you know we've had a huge amount of innovation with water-cooled reactors over the last 60 years we've done all sorts of experiments with other kinds of reactors and so and light water have I mean it's like light water er light water reactors that we have or like the smart phones I mean I mean so I guess the question is back to you why are you so pessimistic about the progress of light water reactors so here's why if you said to me yeah you got your smart phones and everybody's using them and they all sort of look the same whether it's an apple or an Android they're sort of the same but there are 12 startups who are working on a direct brain interface and

[39:58]

working on a direct brain interface and if you're 20 years in advance you're not going to have thing in your hand it's gonna be a direct brain interface and we know that because there's so many smart people working on it we don't know which one's gonna win but the one thing you could say for sure is that in 20 years you're not going to be holding something in your hand that you call a phone now I don't think there are 12 startups doing that but if there were I would say yeah if you look in 20 years out you're not gonna be holding you're not gonna be holding a piece of equipment in your hand that is very unlikely and so I just extend the same thing likewise with electric cars you know I don't think anybody will be driving in a car in 20 years I think they'll all be self driving an electric probably so I guess the central question is whether there's something special about the the water-cooled versus the other Cooling's that means that forever the other kind will be complicated is it is it such

[41:02]

will be complicated is it is it such that the current technology by its nature doesn't get complicated and we can figure out and do it better for a long time whereas the new technology just by its nature can't be solved is there something that the nature of the distances it's a little bit of both and it's not entirely clear I mean like I said the British we have we have two other experiments right so we have the British and the Canadians who have done different kinds of designs the Canadians have done a heavy water-cooled reactor that's been amazing great program it appears to work as good if not better than light water reactors it's fabulous the British did gas cooled reactors when you get them up and running and you kind of get better at using them they operate pretty well but they've had a shorter lifespan because of some inherent physical problems the graphite bricks have been cracking it's sort of the biggest one whereas with the light water reactors in the United States we can

[42:03]

reactors in the United States we can refurbish them we can upgrade the parts and they can run for 60 80 100 years so to some extent there's a physical difference you know if we had all been using sodium-cooled designs for 60 they might be as good the problem with fast reactors where you're not slowing down the moderators is that they are just much more difficult to manage so there are reasons to think it would have been harder with sodium called fast reactors those are incidentally the kinds of reactors you need if you want to reuse the so called waste so to some extent it's a problem of just experience and lock-in and to some extent inherant physical problem so if you had a choice between these two strategies one is that you try to convince the public that what we already have is good enough or you convince them that there's a new technology that solves all the psychological problems they had before meaning that the new reactors could eat nuclear waste instead of creating it in

[43:05]

nuclear waste instead of creating it in some cases and that it would be far safer if built correctly then from from a meltdown because if you lost your power you wouldn't have a meltdown necessarily as I understand it which of those two do you think you could get you to the end zone do you think you can after all of the hard psychological you know barriers that people have in their minds and in the public about existing nuclear technology do you do you optimistic Leith Inc that can be solved versus maybe taking even a greater risk and a greater cost to move to generation for a little early so that the public can say oh that's a different thing now I don't I'm not worried about the waste transport and I'm not worried about the meltdown as much it's going from something I worried about a lot even irrationally I'm not saying that they're rational but now they they have a new story that that problem has been fixed which of those do you think could

[44:06]

fixed which of those do you think could get you to the the end zone the others like it's it's less interesting kind of what I think and more what the market is choosing and the market is choosing the the plain-jane old-fashioned water-cooled designs if you're a hold on but yeah but the market wants those but the public is such a resistance has such a resistance that presumably the government has to follow the public to some degree there isn't it sort of impossible to go big with the current technology because of the public resistance even if the market meaning the energy companies etc have all agreed that this is the way to go this is the public gonna stop this not really I mean I think when the public I mean around the world when when public's and governments and and people are deciding what kind of reactors to get they want to get they want to get nuclear plants that we have experience building and operating safely for many decades they don't want to make big risks if they did then they would be buying the Russian sodium-cooled reactor rather than the

[45:08]

sodium-cooled reactor rather than the water-cooled reactor I mean if I were a policymaker having to make a decision of how to spend ten or twenty billion dollars I'm gonna go with the kind of plant that we know how to run now with some radically experimental design so the way people process risk if you gave me these two options look I'll give you a traditional nuclear which is really really well defined and there's never been even in the worst case scenario there's never been you know a horrific accident and in fact the evacuations have killed more than the the actual accident itself so you've told me this is the risk but but I see have in my mind that in the worst-case scenario which has never happened that there could be something catastrophic that could take out you know a county or or you know half a city so that's what my mind says is the risk and there's literally nothing you could do to talk me out of that would you first of all would you agree that's how the average person is thinking right now no I don't

[46:09]

person is thinking right now no I don't actually I mean you have what you I mean basically what you have is you have a minority of people that that are adamantly anti-nuclear and that think it poses a catastrophic risk you have a majority of people that kind of go yeah there's good and bad parts of it and given that we need to deal with other problems like air pollution and climate change um it's worth it so I don't think you can generalize to a majority of people in the world the fears of a minority of a nuclear people let me let me I did a bad job than explaining it and so your your correction was accurate let me say it differently nobody wants it in their neighborhood so won't that stop it almost entirely I mean if but it's not true that nobody wants it in their neighborhood in fact what we find is that support for nuclear power is higher in the communities that have nuclear plants near them so there's a lot of benefits to having nuclear plants nearby well but in order to stop something what does it take ten percent

[47:11]

something what does it take ten percent of the public to be deeply invested I mean it doesn't take much in terms of a percentage to stop a project because they're they're more active what what do you think is the sort of the tipping point you know if you if you said let's put a nuclear reactor in your backyard and your public was ninety percent in favor of it would that be enough well obviously for a lot of countries that are building nuclear plants it is and for a lot of the places that are not building nuclear plants it's not so I mean you have situations where people are comfortable with the risk they tend to be places where that are developing economies they tend to be places with you know very significant levels of air pollution and the places that don't want in our places that tend to be rich that have abundant energy and don't think they need it so obviously people have to think they need nuclear in order for us to be building a lot of nuclear and I think when people you realize it's a technology that people they think it's something that it's not I mean even your language where you say there's a catastrophic risk it's kind of like well

[48:13]

catastrophic risk it's kind of like well what is the what is the most catastrophic outcome if the most catastrophic outcome is Chernobyl then you're talking about incredibly small numbers of deaths nobody but nobody is saying that people are saying that there's a potential that's worse than Chernobyl that's that's either true or not true but we don't really know do we I think we do actually I mean you have Chernobyl as like as a reactor that had no containment and was on fire that's just not a accident that we can have anymore given the state of the technology and you got to remember I mean like 7 million people die every year from air pollution so you're talking about you know 250 people I think something like 250 people died last year you know getting hit by cars while looking at their smartphones well that's about the total number of people who will die from Chernobyl over 80 years clearly people are have a fear of the technology because they think it's like a weapon or like a bomb and so I think we have to we have to do more to help

[49:13]

we have to we have to do more to help people to see what the technology is and what it isn't you know that would be an interesting framing because I've never seen anybody try to sell a nuclear plant by saying we're going to build a plant the most people who have ever died for nuclear is X this will save a million people per year or something you know the way it was that's the way it's been that's actually the way the new I mean the first nuclear plant at Shippingport Pennsylvania was precisely sold as a clean energy alternative to the heavy coal plant pollution that was contaminating Pennsylvania at the time in fact most nuclear companies throughout most of the history have sold nuclear as as the clean energy source of electricity that it is so the pollution benefits of nuclear are really front and center I mean if you ever go to I mean we live in the in California right so our air is pretty clean but when you go to really polluted places deli you know India Beijing China what you experience is really toxic levels of air pollution and when people understand

[50:14]

pollution and when people understand that nuclear plants don't produce that air pollution they're much more excited about it so going back to a point you made originally it does seem like this amazing irony that the thing that will make nuclear and by the way I think it's there's no question that far more nuclear is in our future and there's no question about that is there well I mean it's been coming back a bit I mean we had a you know the the share of electricity from nuclear globally has declined from 18 percent to 10 percent since the mid 80s so we have had a decline in share of electricity now it's it also had a net decline over the last ten years some of that was due to Fukushima it's been coming back a little bit since Fukushima the Chinese and Russians are building what but but what's demand is much lower than then then what wait any of us would like it to be well but you say at this point that Congress is both sides my understanding is there is

[51:15]

both sides my understanding is there is bipartisan support for nuclear energy that's true isn't it there's bipartisan support for nuclear research and development as there has always been what we find is that Democrats progressives liberals tend to be more anti-nuclear and right now there's efforts to shut down nuclear plants all across the United States and replace them with fossil fuels and renewables those efforts are mostly led by Democrats and it tends to be Republicans who are the ones defending nuclear so but doesn't it seem that if if nothing surprises us in other words if the variables that we see in the world today are largely the same variables that are still here in a few years which seems probable isn't it likely that the fear of climate change will guarantee a switch in the public mood toward nuclear because there's just no question which which of the risks is bigger come you

[52:15]

which of the risks is bigger come you know if you're gonna be pro science the people who are worried about climate change are they balk they literally mock the people who don't believe it's like you got to be pro science or you're a
so therefore believe in climate change risk but you have to to be consistent you also have to say and the scientists don't know any way to solve this except nuclear plus whatever else we can make work is that is that fair to say yeah I mean I think that the big change that makes me optimistic is the fact that Millennials grew up more afraid of climate change than they did of nuclear war and so what we see is that when I talk to like I'm Generation X but I talk to Generation X or baby boomers it's very hard to get over their associations with nuclear whereas Millennials just don't have those associations they're much more pragmatic much more open to nuclear so yeah I basically agree with your point I think it will look her over time I just think it's going to take a

[53:16]

time I just think it's going to take a while you know I wonder I spent a lot of time thinking about the persuasion aspect of this and my great hope was the generation 4 was a way to change people's minds even if the technology ended up not that different and you know even if that's a marketing term in the end but I'm also wondering if the the climate risks just opens up the box to just say there's there's only one way to solve it and if you're if you want to be consistent about being Pro science there's only one way to do it would you say that you if you're anti-nuclear that you're I know this is more of a political statement but wouldn't you have to be pretty anti science to be against nuclear energy well I think yeah I mean yes in a sense I think that you know people people use and abuse science and they try to

[54:17]

and abuse science and they try to justify their views on that but I mean I wrote a column for Forbes called the real reason they hate nuclear is because it means we don't need to use renewables I think that the desire for renewables preceded in many ways the fear of nuclear and the problem with nuclear's of course if you're like France and you just get all your electricity from nuclear you don't need solar and wind in fact if you add solar and wind you just increase the the air pollution you the same doesn't work in Reverse there are no major economies that can run on solar and wind if there were Germany wouldn't you know be producing 10 times more carbon emissions than France so I think that the desire to harmonize with the natural world is behind a lot of the love of renewables there's all sorts of political motivations as well but I think it's not just the denial of science I think its desire for it to kind of shape society in a particular way isn't it almost a lifestyle choice which people are bastardizing to you

[55:18]

which people are bastardizing to you know to make it a you know a policy for the world you know it's like like
blogger at Fox named Dave Roberts he's their environment blogger and he just tweeted post agricultural human civilization was a mistake I mean just contemplate the irony of somebody on Twitter condemning industrial civilization I responded life expectancy in pre-industrial civilization was under 40 I mean are we really having an argument about whether or not we should have industrial civilization or is he's sort of engaging and is this just a kind of like fantasy I mean if you can't tell yeah it wouldn't matter I wouldn't care if it wasn't part of an effort to shut down our best and largest source of clean energy yeah all right I want to wind down here and I want to thank you very much this was amazingly useful I think the I could tell from the comments the the the viewers were getting as much out

[56:20]

the the viewers were getting as much out of it as I was this this helps a tremendous deal we'll keep working on the what is the best way to persuade in that direction because it seems inevitable in the sooner we get there the better so thank you much very much and by the way give it give a thought to being on my app interface by one hub where anybody can call and talk to an expert and you set your own price yours could be zero if you just want to make the world a better place and then in if you do Mark Snyder's on there so will we'd have at least two people who are pro know clear who experts and journalists could contact and they can schedule their time so you don't have to be live the whole time but anyway consider that you don't have to answer it right now and I hope this helped the world a little bit and thank you very much Michael thanks for having me on Scott I take care