Simon Goes Nuclear with nuclear energy influencer Isabelle Boemeke

32:49The heat from the nuclear reactor heats water, which drives steam, which moves a turbine, which makes electricity. There you go. Yes. Good. Yeah. So basically. Very old fashioned. That's what I'm going to say. Basically, all energy production is kind of like that. It's pretty old fashioned. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the funny thing about energy production, right? It's whatever is making the thing that makes the turbine go or that heats the water to make the turbine go. That's what we're debating. How to heat the water. So like with hydropower dams, you have the water just from... The water just moves.

33:19Moves the turbines. Right. And then with wind, obviously, is the wind moving the turbines. The wind turns the turbines. Solar is the only one that's very different. Right. But then with coal, with natural gas, with methane gas and nuclear, it's that you heat up water, you create steam that spins a turbine and creates electricity. But with coal and methane gas, you're literally burning it, right? You're lighting it on fire. and that's the heat that's hitting the water. And with nuclear, you're tapping into the energy inside the nucleus of atoms. And how cool is that? It's very science fiction. It's very science fiction.

33:55Okay, so we're going on our little tour of nuclear accidents.

34:01Fukushima. Right, so Fukushima. So Chernobyl, just to like, you know, make a conclude on Chernobyl. Yes, it was bad. Not as bad as people think. right what's also really crazy about chernobyl is now obviously it's like a huge evacuation zone yeah and because people left a lot of wildlife came back so it it became this really weird accidental exercise and rewilding it's the only place in the world with three-headed deer kidding joke joke it's a joke it's a joke uh but really you just have all the species that have just gone back to their you know what was their original right habitat okay so chernobyl happens this is it right this is like nuclear is done it's too dangerous did freak out the world it did freak out the world with reason i was a kid when that happened yeah germany for example i mean yeah germany used to be big into nuclear now they're not they were never huge in terms of the population but after chernobyl they were they were very much done and then obviously Fukushima happens.

35:03So Fukushima was in Japan. It was a huge earthquake. It was like a 9.0 earthquake. And the earthquake itself is not what caused the accident. Some people think, oh, you can't put a reactor in an earthquake prone region. And that's not true because they're designed to withstand earthquakes. Just like the buildings in Japan are designed to withstand earthquakes. Some of them, yeah. But yes, exactly. What happened was then the earthquake caused a massive tsunami. And it would also not have been a problem if the seawall of the Fukushima plant was a little bit higher. But it wasn't. and so the tsunami came in and inundated the diesel generators in the basement and so the reactor shut down as it was supposed to but then it was cut off from electricity from the city and then the diesel generators that were supposed to be cooling the reactor down were not working because they got flooded and so you had meltdowns and again you know another nuclear accident that just confirmed people's beliefs however the japanese government was much quicker they immediately obviously admitted that it was happening evacuated a bunch of people evacuated 3 000 people if i'm not no way more than that evacuated thousands of people and so there were 2 100 fatalities but it was all caused due to evacuation so it's like people who needed medicine or again this was in an area that had suffered a major earthquake and tsunami and you're evacuating all of these people but from a safe from a radiation safety perspective again nobody died and nobody got sick from radiation okay so here's you know this better than i do which is the problem with branding or in this case misbranding bad brand right is um it's emotional yes and even though so the associated with with the nuclear bomb was the introduction to the word nuclear atom or atomic that that's how we're introduced to it which is bombs and wars and mushroom clouds then for whatever reasons you know well we know what the reasons cold war reasons the military holds close hold on that technology we have a couple of accidents, which two of them were human error.

37:30And there was bad politics in both of them, or it was associated with politics, right? Cold War, closed communism, and the other one was just, you know, sort of left wing anti-government sentiment, which fuels this negative brand. And so we fear, and fear is an emotion, nuclear. And that word scares the heck out of people, right? Nuclear power scares the heck out of people, that word. And I applaud that you're calling it nuclear electricity. So facts and figures, and we're saying what actually happened with how many people died, and what the safety precautions are, and the technology works, and all of these things.

38:10And all we can point to are these three accidents since the 70s. It's all irrelevant. There was no mass hysteria about sharks before the movie Jaws. but good luck getting people to go into the ocean who are afraid of sharks by giving them statistics about the fact that, and here's a real statistics, more people die from dog attacks every single year than have ever been killed by sharks since we started measuring shark attacks. Right? So, again, facts and figures don't help someone go back into the ocean. Right. So, how do, and by the way, I'll even go so far as to say that, even though i know you you are uh concerned about climate change even for people who aren't for you know get off of it because it's it's a cleaner more efficient better form of of cheaper energy right is that true and that's the thing i'm i came to it from a climate concern as you as you mentioned right lots of people there's an economic don't believe in climate change there's an economic argument to be made here as well not in the united states at the moment okay yes so here's the thing okay so what happens nuclear was economic at one point in the 60s and 70s yeah and then you have changing regulations um you have people turning away you have utilities who once planned on building just to give you an example when through my island happened in 79 before it happened there were 120 reactors ordered after it happened all of the orders were canceled no kidding not only because of it you know nuclear was getting expensive at the time already but that was kind of the nail on the coffin the price is high like flat screen tvs were expensive in the first game of kind of thing is that what you is that the argument well it's a new technology it's expensive for the short term it was kind of the financing mechanisms for nuclear because it's a big upfront investment yeah yeah um uh at the time it was basically impossible to finance this big project what i'm learning right yeah um which is the demands for power in our world right now are so exponentially high not just because we don't turn our lights off which apparently saves very little power i'm i'm learning um but the demands uh on ai AI and crypto and all these things, but AI in particular, are so power intensive.

40:42And plus we have these massive data centers that need cooling and all of this. So what I'm learning is that their private sector, not the energy company, is building their own nuclear reactors to power their own AI technology because it's the only thing they can find that's efficient enough to provide the electricity, to provide the power to power AI and computing for the future. So those people aren't necessarily concerned about the environment at all, but they see nuclear. These are hardcore capitalists who see nuclear as the best solution to power AI. Yeah. So as you pointed out, there was a period of time where we were debating whether we would even grow our energy demand.

41:31Yeah. Okay. sounds crazy in hindsight yeah but it was a period of time where like have we reached peak energy demand yeah obviously as soon as ai came out we started understanding the the the amount of electricity that they these data centers need so just to give you an idea if you ask by the way data centers all those photographs that you take on your phone that you never look at the thousands and thousands of pictures that we all take on our pictures on our phones they go into the cloud have to be saved somewhere that somewhere is a data center right and that's just by the way that was already accounted for right but enter ai and you have this huge data centers that are training on huge sets of data and processing all that data and then obviously being used by all the people, including myself.

42:22And I think anywhere that you go now, you ask everyone who here uses AI, though, everybody will raise their hand. So we have already adopted this technology. We're not going back. Let's just say that. But if I were to make a Google search without AI and have the same search on an AI app, it would use 10 times more electricity. Wow. Yeah, so it's for now. That ship has sailed, yeah. That ship has sailed. We are increasing our electricity demand. Wow. Now there's an argument that obviously it's going to become more efficient, but we know that we just keep developing technologies that use more electricity.

43:03So maybe it'll be eight times or six times. Six times. That's more efficient, but it's still more. And also we don't even know. I mean, before AI, it was cryptocurrency mining. Yeah, yeah. You know, the data centers were using the same amount of electricity as a country in Europe. So hot tip here, top tip for all you Gen Z and Gen Alphas, if you truly, truly, truly care about global warming and climate change and saving the environment, take fewer selfies. I'm sure that's going to land really well. I don't think that's going to go really well. But the funny thing is, it's true. Yeah. It is. Yes.

43:45It's like people telling us to turn off the faucet when we're washing our hands. You know, like turn it on, turn it off when you're washing your hands. So if you take one selfie, two, instead of 87. Right. Per. But you got to make sure you look good. But that's the thing. Like if I give my phone to somebody else and be like, can you take my picture, please? It drives me nuts that they hold the shutter button down and I have to go through 56 pictures. They all look exactly the same. Why is this a thing? Anyway, but I digress. I have a solution for climate change. Hear me out. Yeah, exactly. I've got it all figured out.

44:25I invited Ryan Bartlett, the founder of our sponsor, True Classic, to sit down for a conversation. We call this an ad with authenticity. The reason the product works so well is because what people can't see is that you have a culture that does the exact same... thing without the t-shirt. Yeah. The culture is a hard one, as you know. To build and ramp up over time and to get A players that are just crushing it and have the right DNA and buy into the system, it takes a long time to get it great. It's taken us five years. Early on, it was just much of a ragtag entrepreneur throwing stuff together, making things work and being scrappy.

45:07But now, when I interview somebody, I'm usually the last interview. They've already made it by the time they get to me, by the way, because I'm not really part of it anymore. I'm like the last guy. They're like, what a team. This is incredibly impressive. And I'm like, listen, it's not me. They're just great in their own right. I'm lucky to have them. They really are fantastic. I mean, I sit in these rooms with these executives, and I'm just like, who am I? I'm just this broke musician from the Midwest, sitting amongst these Ivy League killers. How did I end up here? I have a lot of those moments where I feel very like, I don't even deserve to be in this room, honestly.

45:45These people are so much smarter than me. I'll pay you another compliment. Based on the story of the hiring, I know of another company and another famous business owner. I'll leave the name out because people know who this person is. There was a true story. It was either an intern or entry level. Somebody very, very junior was applying for a job. And they think they had something like seven or 11 interviews, like a preposterous number of interviews. And the final interview was with the CEO. And everybody said yes, yes, yes, yes. This kid was amazing. Everybody loved this kid. The CEO meets them.

46:20The answer is no. Kid doesn't get a job. What's the point of having all those interviews when one person undermines the authority of everybody in the value chain? It's worth noting that this company was plagued with office politics. And despite what the CEO may say publicly about how great business was and what kind of leader they were or thought they were, I know for a fact that this company was plagued with office politics. And office politics are people attempting to assert control wherever they can because they don't feel like they have any control. That's what office politics are. And the fact that you have somebody interfering for a job at your company and they get all the way up to you and you view yourself as simply a rubber stamp, that you just trust your team, that if your team likes this person, then you're just happy to meet them.

47:07And it's proof of how you're leading your company and the culture you've built. It's proof. Okay, but here's a point I like to make. A lot of people say that, you know, we can't rely on technological solutions for climate change. That the only true way to solve this problem is to use way less energy. And I got mad at that argument because it's always people who grew up in an energy-rich society and they don't understand the huge privilege that it is to grow up with air conditioning, a laundry machine, a dishwasher, heating, and just in general in a society that has access to large amounts of energy.

47:52You have better hospitals, better roads, better infrastructure in general. Right. And one of the arguments that I also hate, you know, one of the reasons why I also hate this argument is that who gets to decide what's a good use for energy, right? So some people love traveling, like their life is traveling and going to a different country and visiting different cultures. So who is going to decide how much energy everybody can use for what? Your austerity is not the best. But by the way, I know this sounds crazy. This is a serious proposal that a lot of people have as a solution to climate change.

48:33And a lot of young people have fallen into that. So I think... Sir, your argument is not necessarily use less, although we could all stand to be a little more efficient. But your argument is not to significantly use less to solve the problem, which that ship seems to have sailed anyway. Like, we've known about this forever, and we're all idiots and don't do it, right? It's like when we're bad at saving money too. We're just bad long-term planners. And once we adopt the technology, it's very hard to go back. Or unless you have nothing. Like if you live in the developing world and you have less, you have to use less because otherwise you'll, like you just don't have it.

49:07But to your point, which is, you know, the wealthy nations are the guiltiest of wasting the most. But to your point, which is instead of austerity, have more available that's cheaper, that's efficient, that doesn't do damage to the environment. And so you can actually have your cake and eat it too. You can have all the electricity you want without doing any harm to the environment. Well, and that's the thing that I came out with nuclear is that it's the true definition of progress, right? When you think about progress in a technological sense, it's you're enabling people's lives, you're making people's lives better while also reducing the impact on humans and the environment.

49:52And that is literally what nuclear does. Because it gives you all the electricity without the emissions and uses the least amount of materials out of all energy sources. When you have to mine for things. Of course, because you don't have to mine. Well, you have to mine way less. What do you have to mine? You have to mine the fuel, the uranium fuel. Yes. But it's because the energy density of nuclear is so high, it's a million times more dense than fossil fuels. Got it, got it. So I talk... A lot less mining. So you have a lot less mining. A lot less mining. When you build a nuclear power plant, it lasts 80 years.

50:26And so you don't have to replace one every so often. There's some people that say they could last even longer than that. How long does a coal plant last? Like 60. Okay. Could last, but coal uses a lot more fuel for the fuel. Right. Because one uranium pellet, which is the fuel using nuclear reactors, roughly the size of a gummy bear, has as much energy as 2 ,000 pounds of coal. Wow. Yes. It's crazy. It doesn't compare. So gummy bear versus a ton. Yes. One gummy bear has enough. This is like science fiction stuff. Yes. One gummy bear. Has as much energy. One gummy bear of uranium has the same amount of energy as a ton of coal.

51:10A ton of coal. Wow. A ton in the literal sense of a ton. Right, literally, like the actual ton. Here's another thing that I think people don't realize. It's a military example, unfortunately, but it is what it is, which is the United States' fleet of aircraft carriers and submarines are all powered by nuclear reactors. They do not have like guys shoveling coals into a furnace in the bowels of an aircraft carrier. But they do have nuclear reactors that can power these aircraft carriers and submarines. And the amazing thing is indefinitely. The only thing that restricts how long a nuclear powered submarine can stay under the ocean is how much food they can carry.

51:52Because you have unlimited electricity, unlimited power, unlimited oxygen, because they make their own oxygen from the water, and unlimited drinking water because they desalinate. Right. The only thing, so the point is it's limitless electricity. Yes. You don't have to fill up the coal, I mean, you don't have to fill up the fuel if it's a diesel-powered submarine. I think people don't realize that the military has been using nuclear-powered engines and propulsion for decades. Decades. Without incidents. And has never, ever, ever, ever had an accident. Never had an accident. And not only that, to your point, the new submarine designs, they don't need to be refueled for their entire life.

52:36They don't need to go anywhere and put more fuel in. Yeah. To your point. And they don't have to come to the surface to let off exhaust because there is no exhaust. Yes. So I just want people to realize that the military has already adopted this for the efficiency, for the extendability, over the course of time it's way cheaper, and the fact that it's emission-free. It's amazing. It is really incredible. So, yeah, it's already been done, right? This is not science fiction that you're promoting here. I'm not trying to promote something that, oh, it's something that's going to come along in five years.

53:13We already do that. In the military, France already mostly decarbonized, meaning mostly got off fossil fuels for their electricity in the 70s because they went all in on nuclear. Is France the most nuclear-powered nation in the world? Well, not in terms of percentage, just because the United States is much bigger. Right. Sorry, in terms of percentage, yes. Per capita. Yeah, so France's electricity is around 70 % nuclear. That's amazing. The United States is around 18%. Right. But we do have a lot more reactors, but we also have more energy demand. So we make more physical electricity than... We make more physical electricity, but France's...

53:49But they're 70 % clean. 70 % clean, yes. The electricity. Electricity. Not all energy, but... Right, right, right, right. But electricity. And this all happened in the 70s. During the first oil crisis, the French were like, we cannot depend on these countries. so why aren't we like i applaud you for having isa dope which is your your do you still do her it's a it's a softer version it's a i had way more time during covet that was yeah i used to love your videos they were fun yeah you went all in on production all in i know yes that was very it was just me with a green screen i mean covet was a thing yeah but no but you must have had fun on amazon with the costumes that you ordered i never i don't think i ever saw you wear the same costume twice no yeah i did i had like some props you know like i was good with the with like the makeup and everything i mean covid was a lockdown was a thing i didn't get into making sourdough so let's right you didn't go exactly instead of making sourdough you became an influencer the the is there hope definitely do you think we'll ever have nuclear reactors at home many nuclear reactors to power our homes because i've got solar panels on my house how do they work for you you know they get less efficient when they get dirty which is all the time so like i have to spray them clean every now and then but uh i live in california so we get a lot of sun which is great but i'm i my electricity bill every three months is like 30 bucks i think i pay connection fees that's great so i pay i pay zero i'm ostensibly zero i'm basically i have an electric car that i charge during the day so i don't even pay for fuel for my car.

55:27So yeah, I'm pretty much running on solar. That's awesome. Well, California makes a lot of sense. Mainly because I just wanted to stick it to the man. No, I'm serious. You would have been anti-nuclear in the 70s. Because when I bought it, I got some tax rebates, but the amount of money that I'm saving on electricity bills and the amount of money I had to pay to install it, it's going to take a long time to get that money back. But I love sticking it to the monopoly. I just can't help it. I just can't help it. It just, when there's a monopoly and it just, I'm sticking it to the man. But why would you not want that, right?

55:59If you can get electricity from the sun that's hitting your roof every day. People go to the gas station and pay for fuel. And I charge my car during the day and it costs me zero to run my car. Do you have batteries as well? I do. How many? Three. But you're still not fully, could you be off grid or not? I could be off grid if I allowed my batteries to run all the way down at night. but I don't let them go below I think 70 % for longevity no no for emergencies for emergencies because we do have blackouts in California in Southern California and so if we lose power I can run my house normally all night until the batteries recharge the next day with the sun that's really incredible but if I were allow if I turn that function off and allow the batteries to drain every night i could be off the grid i think that's a perfect example of locally grown energy is what i like to talk about yeah and one of the really stupid things that happened with the whole anti-nuclear movement is that suddenly this idea of 100 renewables came about yeah and it was like we have to power the entire world with 100 renewables and that means solar wind hydro geothermal batteries i think those are the main ones they don't even like hydro that much and so in a place like california it makes a lot of sense to go all out on solar because we have sun because i have a ton of sun yeah in a place like germany it makes no sense there's also no hydro potential basically the only thing you could build in germany is wind and nuclear but they went anti-nuclear um so you asked earlier is there going to be a day where I'm going to have a tiny reactor in my home.

57:46Depends where. It depends where, exactly. It depends where. There might be a day. For the United States in general, small reactors don't make a lot of sense because we have a big grid that requires a lot of electricity. And you can have things like solar and batteries everywhere. So I see the United States going more towards the big reactors that can feed the grid. Why are you laughing? I just love you nerding out on this stuff. Oh, I am such a... We can go 10 layers deeper here. I know. But, you know, right now, the whole conversation is about small reactors. Yeah, yeah. Tiny reactors, small reactors.

58:24Here's one thing that a lot of people don't know. We tried all of those in the 50s, in the heyday of nuclear, after, like, a Round Manhattan project. These people were experimenting with everything. Right. Like molten salt reactors that we started talking, you know, we started this whole conversation with. Breeder reactors, which is another exotic type of reactor. The army had micro reactors powering remote bases that could be carried in the back of a truck. Wow. What happened? They were all way technically complicated. So ended up being too expensive. So they couldn't compete with a diesel generator, basically.

59:07so now when i hear people saying oh we're gonna build all of these tiny reactors they've done it they've tried it all well i'm excited and you know hey there could be some major technological advances that nobody foresaw however i'm afraid to put all my hopes in that basket because we have tried yeah and we have gotten to a technology that works that works incredibly well so why don't we is it just bad branding or is it the electricity is it the power is it the power companies is it the the coal and and is it the coal uh mining lobbies that just don't want to why can't they just reinvest in nuclear well so there was a there was a lot of that all of that yeah and all of that caused nuclear projects to go way over budget including over regulation and so it got really expensive and so now the anti-nuclear people say well you know i'm not anti-nuclear but it's it's too expensive when they made it expensive in the Do you want to know another thing where government, where private sector lobbying was a stupid decision?

1:00:11I don't remember the exact numbers, but the IRS or the Treasury, sorry, the Treasury had determined that if we the average lifespan of a dollar bill is one year and the average lifespan of a coin is 30 years. And so they determined that if we abandoned dollar bills and went to a dollar coin instead, we would save billions of dollars a year in printing and paper and ink costs, right? Billions. Just by going to a dollar coin. But the paper and ink lobby would hear none of it. And so we still have dollar bills. Are you kidding me? I'm being deadly serious. So when you talk about business getting in the way of progress and saving money, when we talk about, you know, all this desire for efficiency and saving money.

1:00:56Nope. It's the paper and ink lobby is the reason we have dollar bills and not dollar coins. Because the government recommends dollar coins. That's baffling. Yeah. It makes me so angry. But it's the same argument. Because it's the American people paying for this waste. It's the American people paying for their dollars. Literally. Literally. So, yeah. And it's pure waste. just by going to, and look, you look at the rest of the world, low denomination, like in the UK, there's no pound note. It's a pound coin. They've even started using alternatives. They've started using plastic for some of their money because it lasts decades as opposed to a year.

1:01:35That is mind-blowing. Well, think about it. If you're running a paper and ink business and you do printing money, you would love to reprint that amount of dollar bills every single year. Of course. It's purely, so you go back, it's the same argument that lobbying doesn't have the interest of economics. Right. Forget about the environment. It doesn't even have economic interest. It has self-interest. Totally. And so I think, so the question I go back to then is, I mean, I know you're hopeful, but, you know, do you think the brand is better? Are we less afraid of nuclear electricity now? Absolutely.

1:02:13um it's kind of crazy because when i started posting my videos online five years ago i had no idea i was like it's all because of isotope it's literally because of ice no but but you know i was like is this gonna do anything i didn't know if it was going to do anything i had no hope i was playing an infinite game yeah you know i was like thank you nice plug nice plug but you know i was like i have to do this i have to do this otherwise i'm gonna be so depressed with my life this is what i have to spend my time on no hopes now five years later everything has changed so just to give you a data point back then only 49 of americans were positive towards nuclear or wanted more nuclear now is 61 in five years and it's cross-political right yeah well Well, usually conservatives tend to lean more favorably towards nuclear because of the connection to the military.

1:03:13Oh, interesting. And liberals still are anti-nuclear. Because of the connection to the military? Well, yes, the entire history, but also the connection to the military. I mean, I want to go back to that. To me, it blew my mind. And you, by the way, your work completely converted me. I mean, I was open-minded to nuclear, but now I'm all in because of your work. No, I'm deadly serious. Thanks. And when I, because I didn't understand the brand and I'm going to, we started at the beginning of this episode, we talked about it. And I think to double click it on at the end, it blows my mind that we discovered fission, nuclear fission, the ability to split the atomic, uh, the, an atom to create electricity, to create power.

1:03:52It was discovered in 1938, Germany. It's. And then, as you said, Einstein sent a letter to the president, to Roosevelt and said, the Germans have figured this out. if you don't figure this out and get on this, they're going to make a nuclear bomb before you. And thus is born the pursuit of nuclear power. Totally. It is just, and that's why the brand is the brand. That's why. It's the beginning of why, right? Because planes crash, even by human error. And there's explosions at coal plants, whether it's bad design or human error, and people die when there's explosions there. Heck, I live in California.

1:04:32The frickin' power company is constantly accidentally lighting fires that destroy thousands of homes. You know, the number of things that are tied back to the power companies because of negligence. And yet we're like, oh, yeah, power company, you know? And the point is, of course, accidents are going to happen, you know? Of course. But fundamentally, I'm just blown away how the whole resistance to nuclear has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with branding. Totally. And to your point, it started with the bombs and the mushroom clouds and so on. And then you have the first accident, the second accident, and it's just confirming.

1:05:08Confirming the fear. Confirming the fear. They were 10 years apart from each other. Yes, totally. And then we got to where we are. But the hope that I have is young people do not have that emotional reaction towards. because they didn't grow up with the Cold War. Yeah. With the drills. People during the Cold War were doing drills. They were afraid of nuclear war. It's called nuclear war. Yes. Nuclear bombs. The only time, like, as you said, it's bad branding. It's just bad branding. These people would hide under their desks. It's so amazing to me. Isabel, thanks so much for stopping by. Thank you.

1:05:44So much fun. Thanks for having me. That was fun. A Bit of Optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius and Devin Johnson. If I was able to give you any kind of insight or some inspiration or made you smile, please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more. And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work or want to advance a dream, maybe I can help. Simply go to simonsynic.com. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.