Lucy Santos - Chain Reactions

31:17These are massive particle accelerators with a huge amount of power. Okay. So then you also discuss Han, like Nazi Germany, because we're going through the research of uranium. We're really getting down to what we consider almost refined uranium today at this point, you know, in the 1930s, let's call it. And then you discuss how Nazi Germany, in many ways, had some of the foremost researchers in uranium. And yet they obviously weren't going to end up in Germany for very long because they were Jewish. Yeah. Yeah, we do see that. So there are several centers of uranium research. It's at this point, it's Britain, Manchester or Cambridge, depending on the point, really.

32:02Paris is a huge, huge place, but we also have Berlin as well. And this is the early 30s when so much experimentation is being done on particles in general, on the atoms and uranium and radioactivity in general. At the beginning, there is so much linkage between all of the different researchers. There's the publishing in journals. Actually, I should also say we have Italy as well, Rome as well. I shouldn't leave those out. But yeah, there's people working together, they're sharing information. And then we start seeing the rise of Nazi Germany and we see the reduction in openness and sharing. And we then see the impact of scientists being at first intimidated, then legislated against, and then basically forced to leave Germany.

33:01Often they go to the US. So we see lots of people starting from the early 1930s, sort of seeing which way the country is going, moving across the US. So we have Einstein, for instance, coming across. And we see that power centre of scientific research leaving Europe and going over to the US. And then from that point, yeah, there's a change in the power structure. And then ultimately, when war is declared, we see Germany just being completely isolated. There's no sharing of information. Of course, there's no sharing of information anymore. But there's also this fear of the two different sides, two different scientific teams.

33:47They don't know what each other is doing anymore. And there's certainly a fear about what Germany's doing and whether they are closer than anyone else to come up with an atomic bomb. So we see that search for an atomic bomb, but also the fear that the other side is more progressed. Well, and ironically, as we talked about earlier, you know, Nazi Germany contained, you know, the large deposits of uranium in Czechoslovakia. So it's ironic that the research goes away, but the actual underlying mineral is prevalent. Frisch discovers fission. I think he talked, the analogy that he put to fission was like shooting like a 15-inch bullet against a piece of paper and it comes back to you, which obviously no one would expect to see.

34:33But, you know, and I think what, you know, your book really helped me understand fission as obviously you're splitting atoms, but it's the difference in the weight of the two atoms that come out of that. And what's lost in weight is what causes ultimately friction, right? The particles that are released are friction, and that's what causes what we know as a chain reaction in fission. And again, you're trying to contextualize this, you know, it's like the chronological snobbery would say these people were neophytes compared to us. But the reality is this was just in novel research, These are incredibly educated people, not only from a Western thought perspective, but all the way out to the sciences as they are.

35:17How did this affect their uranium types? Because obviously there's two uranium types. There's 235 and 238. And how did this help determine that 235 would be used for fission? Well, yeah. So it was already known that in nature uranium existed as two different isotopes. So these are isotopes. One is 235, 238. And they'd been separated from uranium as well. So if we had a big old chunk of uranium, they already could separate out the U235 and the U238. Now the problem is that it is only U235 that can go through that fission process. But the problem is that 99 % of naturally occurring uranium is actually the other one, the U238.

36:06So this was a real problem when the scientists were trying to work out what to do with uranium. They knew that the fission process was the most useful aspect of uranium, especially in the search for an atomic bomb, the search for energy in general. So we then really have to, we see this massive investment as part of the Manhattan Project to work out how to enrich uranium, how to make uranium have more of the fissionable type of isotope than the non-fissionable one. So this is a huge part of the Manhattan Project and a huge part of scientific development during this period. So really from sort of, we get the idea that uranium is fissionable, that sort of is all set and done and dusted by 1938.

36:58We've got the idea of a chain reaction. We've got chain reactions actually being created and maintained by 1941-42. But now at this point, we've really got to, well, if we're going to use that technology, if we're going to use that, we need more uranium. Not only do we need to physically get more uranium, so we need to mine more, we need to get more out of the ground. And at this point, as you said, they've lost the source from Europe. They've lost Czechoslovakia. They've lost all of that beautiful uranium. So they need to find their own uranium in the US largely. But once they've got that, they need to have these processes on a huge industrial scale to enrich the uranium.

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38:26Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. So the mod committee determined that a super bomb could be made, but they didn't know what vision would cause exactly. And I think that's the other interesting part. They're on the edge of technology, but they know that what the effects it could have, but they don't know the effects that it will have is how I think a lot about this part of the book. If I go to the movie Oppenheimer as an example, their concern was they knew it caused a chain reaction, but we frankly did not know at scale if that chain reaction would never stop.

39:06In other words, what if you do fission and a super bomb and the atmosphere has a chain reaction and you blow up the world? because that was a genuine concern at scale that fission would cause mass problems. And so, you know, in reading your book, it's like the unintended consequences of testing theories. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there had been sustained chain reactions done very safely in controlled settings. But of course, testing a bomb, testing an atomic bomb is definitely not a controlled setting, even though you've got the best minds working on it. There is a knowledge about what could happen, but there are always unknowns.

39:53And there's always concerns as well. Scientists knew that they were changing the world with this technology. you know of course be cautious with it but you know there was also the real understanding of what the implications were if they were successful as well as what the implications were if they were unsuccessful too um i have to confess i haven't seen the phil oppenheimer that's a good movie i yeah i really enjoyed it and also i was trying to think about you know that's a small subset there's a small part of your book that has on that obviously yours is a much larger history the Manhattan Project you know worked on two paths one was plutonium breeding and the other was uranium enrichment if I remember correctly Oak Ridge was the center for the uranium enrichment and then Hanford which continues to be this place where you know nuclear has a prevalent history in full disclosure I'm from Washington originally Hanford it was about an hour away from where I went to college.

40:52And, you know, that's still to this day is federal land. It's very guarded. You know, it has nuclear reactors. It has nuclear waste. It's close to the Columbia River for the prevalence of water, which is needed in nuclear cooling. So I know a lot about the geography of that. Why did plutonium breeding just not work versus why was the uranium enrichment successful? Well, I mean, plutonium breeding not working is not quite the way that I would characterize it. So we do have, we have two successful, we have two bombs. So if we're still thinking about the Manhattan Project and atomic bombs in general, we end up with two bombs.

41:36One is a uranium bomb and one is a plutonium bomb. And the plutonium is bred in reactors. so they do do that, they get enough of it it's not enough to it's not enough as they wanted and it's not enough as they thought they needed at the time so we have those two bombs it's hard to say they were obviously successfully deployed and they both worked that's an awful way of putting it but if we're just thinking cold hard science we have those bombs they exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. They do the job. They kill a lot of people. They cause a lot of destruction. Yeah. The testing in Los Alamos, again, you're, you know, we're in the subject of what are the known effects and what are the unknown effects?

42:28Obviously, this is going on again. You're right near reservation land that this testing is going on in New Mexico. New Mexico is another big, you know, there's a lot of reservations in New Mexico, like Arizona. they knew it was going to cause destruction and devastation but they didn't know like the after effects what kind of after effects were seen that the scientists you know didn't even focus on it a lot of your book is like what did people not look at you know what would the fallout be from testing there in Los Alamos I think I mean there was always an understanding and you can see that in the discussions when the idea that uranium was fissionable and that fissionable nature of it could be used and could be harnessed to make a bomb we can see right from the beginning that there is an understanding that this is this is more than just a bomb there's something going to happen there's more than just the initial destruction sure there is going to be radioactive exposure the scientists understood that.

43:30The government understood that. There's two things going on. They didn't really know how much. They didn't really know or understand how much weather would cause the spread of radioactivity or not. There was a certain understanding. A lot of those bombs that were tested, especially outside of Vegas, they would do early in the morning specifically because there was not much wind. So they knew that if there wasn't a lot of wind, the radioactive particles that were released would not be spread across wide swaths of the countryside. So they did know, they didn't quite know, and obviously didn't really understand the full implications of it.

44:10There's also an idea here around the greater good, like, and also who's affected. So when they chose the national testing site in Vegas, they very, or just outside of Vegas, it was very, very much around, well, it's 65 miles away from Vegas. It's a couple of hundred miles away from Los Angeles. So we'll make sure those people are protected. You know, they're not going to, they didn't necessarily care so much about the people who lived in between those spaces. And so there's, there's very much, there's so many different things going on, going on there. Sure. When, uh, cause in Vegas it was Camp Desert Rock that you talk about in your book.

44:51they built a full town in Camp Desert Rock. And you talk about how they use mannequins to use life situations to study the harmful effects of radiation. And I mean, these are just made, they're effectively crash test dummies in a town. And they're understanding this, but that's what's going on in the situation. Obviously, that's not being fully talked about. The government's not going to go and say, hey, everybody, guess how bad this is. But in Vegas, it's completely different. Vegas is thinking, oh my gosh, this is wonderful. We can kind of use the atomic phenomena to spark up marketing and you can watch the cloud plume from Vegas.

45:33And I mean, this becomes a marketing boom with the exception of maybe some broken windows from time to time from the effects of this. Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, the atomic bomb or the testing of the atomic bomb really changes Vegas from being a relatively small town into the Vegas that we know today, really. It boosts tourism so much. It also helps. There's an idea here that the tourist industry in general sort of leapt on is that by allowing, even though they didn't have a choice, of course, by allowing these bombs to be tested so close to their town, they were contributing to American national security.

46:22They were being part of, again, the idea of the greater good. And that was kind of used to deflect attention away from some of the more seedier elements of Vegas history, the connection with mobsters, all of those things. So, you know, they're saying, right, well, that's the past. We've got that reputation. Obviously, it didn't change too much, but now we We are supporting national security. This town is doing something bigger than just gambling and marriages and divorces and things. We're doing something else. So they leap on it. There's advertising. There's all the casinos, all the hotels really get involved in the atomic testing program.

47:08They offer special packages for tourists to come to their hotel to view the tests. There's cocktails, there's fashion as well. There's the atomic hairstyle that's offered by the Flamingo Hotel. You can pay$75 and get your hair bouffanted like an atomic bomb explosion with silver glittery bits in it as well. So much going on. You can stand on the top of hotel roofs and watch the atomic bombs, or you can be at the Desert Inn and you can stand in their cocktail lounge with a viewing platform to watch the atomic bomb go off. And it's, it's fascinating. It's so, I find it really, I've studied it so much.

47:57I find it so bizarre still. Well, and I also, you know, if someone told me one of the main swimwares of the last, you know, 50 years actually emanated from nuclear testing in the South Pacific, I would have laughed at you out of the room. I would have thought, how do they have any connection. And then you explain the connection, which was that, uh, obviously the, what we now know as bikini was new then. And the way they figured out to call it bikini because atomic was exciting. It was fun. It was new. And I think you explained the triangles on the top of a bikini is what they likened to the, like the nuclear, the nuclear, uh, testing.

48:37And that's what caused the bikini to become the bikini and has held ever since that. I mean, this is the aspect of, again, this thing that really fascinates me is about culture and how these things happen. But yes, so there's several layers to this story. There's the idea that the bikini is small, i.e. as small as an atom. So we've got this idea that the bikini is very small. It's atomic. It was also known as the atom swimwear at some point as well. So we've got this idea that it's really small, smallest thing in the world. So you've got that. We've also got the atomic testing in the Pacific, specifically in the Bikini Islands.

49:22So again, we've got that reference there. So the word bikini is referencing where the tests are going off. It's actually an awful story, isn't it? You know, a piece of swimwear is being celebrated by referencing the destruction of people's homes and lives. That's awful, but it is actually very fascinating as well. And as you said, fascinating that we still call it a bikini. It's still culturally important to us. Yeah. Well, and yeah, I mean, you know, depending on how small it could be radioactive, as some would say. So another, again, perturbing, kick cereal. You talk about what kick cereal was handing out?

50:04I think you took the box top like you normally used to do and you could send it in. And what did kick cereal send you back on this atomic marketing idea? This is a ring. So this is a present for children. So they would send you back. I can't even remember how many box tops it was. I think it was maybe like five box tops and 15 cents or something like that. And you would get back an atomic ring. And the idea is that a kid would use it, wear it. It's, oh gosh, I mean, it's all to do with ideas around atomic in general, but also bombs very, very specifically. So it is shaped like a bomb. You've got this little plastic at the end, like tail fins of the bomb as well.

50:52They've got little secret messages and you can look through it. Oh, it's just scary. And also it does touch on something else, which is the amount of uranium and radioactivity toys and activities in general that were being marketed to kids at the time. So we have like uranium science sets being marketed to kids that would come with pieces of actual uranium. And you were encouraged to experiment with your little samples of radioactive material. Again, it's terrifying. Yeah, it's crazy to think that they would send out a ring to kids with bomb ideas or uranium. But again, to your point, this was all new.

51:37Explain how bush pilots, because again, I think of like, you know, now we have all this GIS technology and we can use various seismic data and heat map data to understand where certain deposits are or things of that nature. But back then we didn't have the satellite work that we do today. So how would a bush pilot help us find uranium deposits as they flew over, say, the Western United States, for example? They're looking for radioactivity. So they would have, whether it's from the air or people walking around various parts of the desert, they would have scintillators, they would have Geiger counters.

52:19I mean, the bush pilots, they would fly over these vast, vast desert spaces, of course, and they'd have like a scintillator hanging from it. So scintillators simply looking for radioactive rays, it's detecting radioactivity. And they would fly over bits where they got the strongest signal. They'd either drop something or tell the geographic marker of where it is and then people on the ground would then go and investigate. So this is the search for uranium across vast amounts of American deserts because there was an understanding that in this area was uranium. It's just they didn't know where it was and they needed to find the one that was the bit that had the strongest uranium as well.

53:10So uranium varies in strength in general. Sure. You talk about the Steen family. They were kind of an outlier in your story for finding uranium. um the husband and wife i think he ends up referring to charlie steen he refers to himself there they refer to him as the king of uranium and i think you talk about how they built up like 180 million dollar fortune finding uranium but they were really an outlier that was not very common that was very rare there were a lot more hucksters i mean as i'm watching this like uranium craze play out you know post world war ii i'm thinking like well this sounds like a like a cryptocurrency world where it's like many play, few will win.

53:49Do you ever think about that analogously, you know, like, like what we see today? Yeah, I think, I think it's like anything. The uranium rush at the time was compared to the gold rush before, or any rush in general. And again, there's this idea that there's uranium in the ground, it needs to be found. The US government are providing bonuses. They are encouraging normal people to go out into the desert and search for uranium. It's again, a wild time. These people are called weekend prospectors. The idea that you'd go spend your weekend in the desert, digging around with, you've got your Geiger counter, you find somewhere hopeful, and then you go start digging.

54:34It's wild, but so many people were doing it. And people were, again, going absolutely wild for it. There's so many stories of people selling their houses, selling their businesses and going into the desert and living in a tent essentially to try and become a uranium heir. There was even a term for it, a uranium heir. So there's this idea that you could find uranium and become a millionaire. So many people did it, so many people's lives were destroyed because there was a lot out of there, but there was an awful lot of people looking for it and it relied on luck. And also with any of these things like cryptocurrency, it does rely on being the first person on the scene.

55:18And we do start seeing more and more people cottoning onto it after a few years, going out to the desert, spending all their money, giving up all their savings to try and become rich, but the area has just already been tapped out. We also, again, see an industry rising up around that. So people are selling Geiger counters, they're selling books, they're selling all sorts of clothing as well to help these weekend prospectors become Uranium airs. So we see lots of businesses around this as well, around this popularity. They're making a lot of money. There's a lot of exploitation, of course, around anything, anything that becomes a craze that you can become rich on.

56:02Yeah. People lose their minds. Went to your point. Wall Street tends to be good at selling things that are popular because they're easily marketable. We're going to show a slide here that's out of the pictures of your book in the middle part of the book. But so you say that Salt Lake City becomes the Wall Street of uranium. And so I love this because it's, you know, I always think of most of good investing is figuring out how to not do stupid things. Okay. These are some of the stock certificates you have from these uranium companies. I can't remember which ones we're looking at here. Like the Acme uranium mines, for example.

56:45In this time, I think you explained that, you know, people are raising money. This is happening in Salt Lake. These are publicly traded uranium stocks in Salt Lake City. And I know this is crazy for like a Gen Alpha or a millennial to think about this, but there used to be many stock exchanges around the United States of America. But just so happened that obviously this would be centered in Salt Lake because the deposits were close by or at least the marketed ideas were close by. And this would be over-the-counter penny stocks, not dissimilar to some of these crypto things we're talking about.

57:18I mean, would people actually move from Wall Street to do this? Or was this kind of just a lot of hucksters? This, I don't know. It starts organically in Salt Lake City. There's a group of people who realize there's money to be made by getting investors investing, putting people in touch, selling these stocks. And it really explains. I mean, actually, it's a very good point and it's not something I'd actually considered. So that's a really interesting point about where these people come from to start making all of these. Well, because, yeah, I mean, because at that time, I mean, I assumed Utah was mostly Mormon, which it had been for a lot of its history.

58:00So, I mean, here this like highly speculative, scammish, almost activity going on. I thought, wow, this is, I mean, Utah of all places. That would be crazy then, you know, and so I was trying to think about like, where do these people come from? Is it just, you know, to your point, is there just a gold rush atmosphere and fever that causes a bunch of, you know, grifters to come about in that place? That's a really interesting point. I mean, we certainly do see, as I said, a lot of people moving to these various areas to find uranium. It does make a lot of sense that you're getting people moving to these areas for other reasons as well, because they've identified there's a lot of desperate people.

58:44amongst these people that are searching for uranium in the desert, there are also people who, as I said, have sold their houses. Maybe they are looking for a shortcut, not finding their own uranium, but investing in someone else. Because also these uranium companies often sell themselves that they've got better equipment. They've got proper machinery, proper access to proper processing facilities as well. So again, yeah, I can absolutely see that. I think of, so, you know, the term, you know, uttered nowadays in Reddit boards is like the idea of YOLO, you only live once or, you know, you got to do this because now.

59:21And it's like the mid-century YOLO, right? Oh, we're going into this. The other thing, too, that I love, again, this perturbing cultural history. Can you explain what a sitting house was and why it ducked regulation? Because, again, this is just bizarre, but it's just what went on. Yeah. Yeah. So a sitting house is exactly as it sounds. It's a place to sit. This is all around uranium being of medical benefit. So we've got the idea that radium before and then uranium, especially in the fifties, the idea that there's a little bit of toxicity in it, there's exposure to it is going to make you feel better for various aspects of health.

1:00:09So So again, it could be any sort of aspect. Rheumatism is one that is often mentioned as being benefited by exposure to radium or uranium. So we have sitting houses and they are either the greatest of sitting houses are actually usually associated with a mine in general. So we've got people who have mined for uranium and not been very successful at it. They found some uranium, but it's not been very pure. It's not been very strong. So it's not worth anything. So we see people thinking, okay, what else can we do with it? And we have that. And the idea here, or we see them actually selling their uranium ore to people who want to set up their own sitting house or set up their own spa in general.

1:01:01So we see people selling their uranium ore. And the idea here is that you would just go into these spaces and you would benefit from the exposure to radium or uranium or whatever radioactive substance they're actually selling. A sitting house specifically is, well, they call them sitting houses, but they could also be lying houses as well because people would lie there and they would be covered with ore, covered with sand, covered with these radioactive substances. Or you could sit there and have your leg put in a pot of sand or your arm or any of these things. There's photographs of them.

1:01:46It's, again, a wild story. And we also see so many people coming to these. Some of these hitting houses, they're not just random peoples with random sheds. They're making a lot of money out of this. There's places with elevators, with vending machines, with all sorts of air conditioning and all the mod cons associated with them. These are big spaces where hundreds of people a day will go for a treatment for a cure. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts, and even number one in the business category in several countries.

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1:03:00Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. You talked a lot about in this later part of the book how the government was heavily involved with finding uranium because obviously they had an interest in ultimately either the bombs themselves or the nuclear activity from a power generation. you talk about how it was more likely to be a government-owned nuclear reactor at that time. But you also point out something that was true then, that nuclear was not very cost competitive compared to a coal-fired electricity plant.

1:03:43So it's interesting to think about the government's investing in something that can't be competitive. and then I think at one point, you know, the AC really backs off of the uranium mines and what happens is uranium production falls to the floor because ultimately if it wasn't subsidized, it wasn't going to exist. Do you think about those parallels as we think about wind and solar which have been really heavily subsidized energy sources and yet if the government's not there, are we going to be producing the same amount of those energy sources not dissimilar to nuclear at an earlier time? Yeah, I do think about this a lot, actually, because one aspect of it is new technology will always take government subsidy to really kick it off.

1:04:25Private industry is not as willing to put a lot of money in sometimes. And we also see with coal, for instance, coal has had a long history. It's had a lot of subsidy in the past. It's got a lot of history, a lot of investment in it already. So at this point, nuclear is the new technology. It needs investment. It needs understanding. It needs regulation. It's really difficult for those new technologies to compete against something that's already been in place for, let's say, a hundred years. So we can absolutely see that. It's not fair to make that comparison is it's not fair as anything as sounds like a little childish thing but yeah it's not fair that these new industries are competing on the same playing fields as these older ones have had that investment that are already um you know settled technologies uh so we yeah it's it's it's really difficult because you're always coal's always going to win in that aspect isn't it it's it's already there it doesn't let me let me quote i got a quote from your book because i again i was I was trying to think about, again, you're just looking back at history as though you're God and asking what's transpired over time.

1:05:36So I love this quote. This is great. In your book, you have in 1920, Sir Oliver Lodge said, quote, The time will come when atomic energy will take the place of coal as a source of power, end quote. And now at that time in 1920, coal was the largest source of power in the world, full stop. So he wasn't really saying to take the place of coal, but really take the primary source of energy in the world would have been his point at that time. We are 105 years later. It's kind of fun to say. We're 105 years later. And nuclear hasn't even taken the position of coal, even though coal is not the dominant energy source.

1:06:17and I just was thinking out of your book, I thought, oh my gosh, coal is unstoppable relative to atomic even 100 years later today. So I started thinking about what's the trajectory of histories, right? You kind of think of S-curves and the adoption of technology and all these things and I thought, well, maybe in 100 years, atomic will finally cross coal but how long will it take to cross other forms of energy? And therefore, if that's the paradigm of atomic, what should it teach us about the S-curves of other newer forms of energy. I guess my question to you is, do you think about the time it's taken for some of these?

1:06:56Yes, but I also think about, actually, I did a talk this week about the history of cars, for instance, and I did it through the lens of talking about electric cars, electric cars in the 1890s. I guess about 90 % of taxis in New York City were electric. electricity, electric generating cars, cars powered by electricity, were the most popular type of cars as we go into the 20th century. Yet here we are a hundred and whatever years later, and we're still talking about electric cars and having that breakthrough. And, you know, we're still talking about better batteries. We're still talking about charging times.

1:07:38We're still talking about all of those things around it. Electric cars are great. They were great in 1890, relatively speaking. It's always difficult with technology. It's difficult to know which is the one that's going to work. It's often the one that is the easiest and combustion engines were easier. I try to think about like, what's a framework to study? So for example, to your point, let's just use like, let's just use gasoline against, you know, say to your point, electricity. can they both power things no question about that you know you can talk about how they're derived and where that comes from all that kind of stuff but one distinct advantage I keep coming back to and we've been talking about this paradigm here is the mobility of carbon fuels is something that's very unique to it so for example you know as most people know framework argument for our listeners is power creates energy, energy builds energy, it moves energy.

1:08:43Those paradigms are all true. So for example, if I have a gasoline tanker, I'm using energy to move it to somewhere, but it's highly mobile versus as, you know, in the modern parlance, you hear of this like small nuclear reactor sites and we can do all that. But again, is that as mobile as moving an oil tanker or sending out gasoline to a site because you need localized energy source like that. Is that as easy as moving natural gas across a grid? And I think I always wonder, to your point, how much the mobility issue is really the framework and paradigm for understanding energy sources. Like I can't take a wind turbine and put it on rollers and just move it to a new area.

1:09:27could actually that be the biggest limiting factor of its use in the long run, much like it's been a problem for nuclear. It's a good point. There is also, as you said, so much emphasis on those small modular reactors. And if not being mobile, but being nimble, being quicker to build, being, well, I mean, there are the modular aspect of it. It's quicker to build, but also quicker to expand as well. I think there is a real point around that. I also think there is a real point around

1:10:05people with interests in preventing new technology taking off. And that's something I didn't want to get into too much in terms of the book. But again, any of those technologies do have a resistance. a lot of the resistance that I see with nuclear is fear, but it's also this question of who's stoking those fears as well. Well, and also those fears can change. I mean, you do a wonderful job of talking about how the Sierra Club, for example, here in the US was originally very pro-nuclear and ended up turning away to be anti-nuclear. And also we've seen that recently here in the last five years. I mean, there's parts of Europe that was very anti-nuclear, has become very pro-nuclear, at least in dialogue and debate.

1:10:50You talk about how Japan went from 57 reactors, nuclear, down to, I think, three or four post-Fukushima. What they do, they greatly increase coal production in comparison. And to your point, it's always like what the culture does on the margin. So you talk about Three Mile Island. a movie with Jane Fonda called The China Syndrome came out I think three weeks before Three Mile Island took place also right after Three Mile Island you talk about the SNL skit which has Dan Aykroyd playing Jimmy Carter it's a very funny skit it's buried because of racial reasons I think on the internet but Garrett Morris is a great comedian he is there with Dan Aykroyd and they end up becoming these super giant King Kongs And it's very funny, but it really was a funny way of demonizing nuclear in the end, wasn't it?

1:11:49Yeah. I mean, Three Mile Island, 1979, we can see so much. I think we can see so much in the reaction to what happened in Three Mile Island, which was a nuclear accident that was largely contained as using a containment structure that did its job. But what we see around it is media in particular stoking fears that are already present about radioactivity. We see the media descending on the town. We see the media telling stories about things that could never actually happen because they make good copy. They make good headlines. We see lots of headlines about hydrogen bubbles that are going to explode.

1:12:39There's also the point with the China Syndrome film is, yes, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda famously an environmentalist. These are anti-nuclear people doing these. Jack Lemmon was no fan. Jack Lemmon is my favorite actor. No fan of nuclear. They're doing this film that demonizes nuclear energy. And also non-scientifically, the China syndrome whole thing is that if a nuclear reactor explodes, the molten core of it can melt all the way down to China and destroy the world. You know, this is not scientifically accurate. But a couple of weeks later, when an actual nuclear accident happens on US mainland, it all just ties into it and it makes excellent copy.

1:13:31you know the three mile island accident is actually sort of been being touted as as advertising for this film it's it's getting audiences to you know bums on seats it helps this film become a massive massive film but we also see it going the other way we see those unwarranted fears that are that are in the film scientifically it makes no sense but we see these fears sort of being pulled into popular culture. It's fun, the SNL skit. Again, it makes good copy for the press. It makes great skits for comedy shows. It's just funny. I mean, it's again, more modern than that, like The Simpsons, for instance.

1:14:15The whole idea that you've got the lazy Homer Simpson working in Springfield nuclear power plant and he could press a button or he could do this or do that and destroy the whole town. Again, never going to happen. Quite funny, actually, isn't it? Yeah, no question. You point out something in kind of your parting chapter that I've never heard anybody say, and I think it's kind of brilliant. So I want to tip my cap to you, but you discuss how dam failures have actually been far more devastating to human life. To your point, Three Mile Island did not fail. It had issues, but never failed. The safety of it, you know, maintained, but we've had multiple dam failures that have caused far more human loss of life.

1:15:01And I don't see anybody running around saying dams are super devastating to humanity. I actually find this, I find nuclear is discussed in a way that no other energy generating technology is discussed. Anything that happens with nuclear is always, I mean, there could be a fire on a site, a nuclear power plant's a massive site. There could be a fire that someone had dropped a cigarette on a bunch of leaves in the security office at the front gate. And it would be reported on by the press as nuclear accident. Almost, you know, we almost lost it all, guys. Yeah. It's anything to do with nuclear. Yet we have oil refinery fires all the time.

1:15:46We have dams destroying people's lives, people's land. I think you said in China there was like 200 ,000 people that died from a dam failure. And nobody, I mean, it's not like we're sitting saying we'll never build dams again. Yeah. But anything to do with it. Fukushima is another good example. I mean, the whole area, the Fukushima district or prefect was destroyed not by radioactivity, obviously destroyed by the tsunami at first, but also we have an economical devastation caused by the fears around a small amount of radioactivity being leaked from the Fukushima power plant. But even today, countries won't buy products that are from that area.

1:16:47There is very, there's no reason for it apart from this sort of unfounded terror that we have that anything could be contaminated. I have a little party trick that I have, that I have some, some alcohol. I was going to say you have atomic sake? Well, I have that from Fukushima, but I also have some white spirits. I don't know if it's even got a name from Chernobyl. So it's grown by scientists who work in Chernobyl. There's pears, trees and apple trees, and they make the spirit that they sell. It's very, very strong, very, very delicious. but it's interesting to know to see when I when I bring it out at parties come that type of fun girl is that who will drink it people don't want to drink it it is safe it's very very safe as I said it's also delicious but people are genuinely scared to drink it there's even if they do drink it it's kind of like daring themselves to do it yeah I was gonna say you could tell them in advance will all be glowing and see what the reaction is.

1:17:52Yeah. So Lucy, I want to ask you, where can our listeners follow you going forward? Obviously, you're going to be writing more, you know, your work between technology and science and really how that shapes popular culture, I think is kind of, that is your foreground. So where can people follow your work? I have a website, LucyJaneSantos.com. I'm on Blue Sky as well. Lucy Jane Santos there too. they're the only places I'm around at the moment, but I do have a newsletter where I share my new research. I should also say that I do have another book coming out, which I'm struggling to try and work out what the link is, but it's a history of the movie Some Like It Hot, the actual making of the movie Some Like It Hot, which does star Jack Lemmon, which China Syndrome did as well.

1:18:41So there's a link there, but also I think primarily it's Some Like It Hot was filmed in the late 1950s. It references the 1929s and the Valentine's Day Massacre. So there's this idea of nostalgia for a different time. So it's all surrounding these ideas of late 1950s, people being scared of fallout, being scared of the Cold War, being scared of the Russians, and looking back to an earlier time when all you had to worry about was Al Capone shooting you. So there is a link in my own mind there, but that's what I'm working on at the moment. Well, when you mentioned Jack Lemmon, I think one of his last movies was Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Men 2, and obviously him, he's incredibly funny in that movie.

1:19:23So Lucy, thank you for your time and your work in this book. Ms. Santos' book teaches you the immense progress we've made in science. While we have made very little, as she pointed out, in the human mind, the only thing that limits our future may just be us, but I also want to say just the social history that I think she brings out in this will teach you a lot about how our cultures interact and deal with fear or deal with excitement. Go out and buy a copy, whether you're excited on nuclear or not, to understand the trajectory of this technology, really looking back over the last as much as 500 years.

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