1277: Isabelle Boemeke | The Rad Future of Nuclear Electricity

24:24Coal is by far the worst, right? Yeah, sure. When you burn coal, you get a ton of shit into the atmosphere. Actually, you even get radioactive ash. From burning coal? Yes. There is more radiation in the environment from burning coal than there is from nuclear plants because of the radioactive ash. That's crazy to think about. I did not know that. Okay. And by the way, this is not the reason why coal is bad. The reason why coal is bad is because of the particulate matter. So it emits these tiny particles of pollution that we breathe and get lodged into our lungs and they cause a bunch of problems.

25:00So this is something that people die from. This is already causing at least 4 million premature deaths every single year. Not to go on a tangent, but whenever people say, oh, climate change is not real or it's a hoax or whatever, I always say, OK, even if climate change is not real or a hoax, what about the four million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels? Four million deaths is a lot more than nuclear deaths, considering you just said 59 at Chernobyl. And I don't know how far we have to reach for other nuclear disasters. Yeah, exactly. So like with Chernobyl, 59 confirmed. And then there's like this projected deaths that maybe are caused later because people got exposed to higher levels of radiation.

25:39Sure. And the most credible estimates of that are around 4 ,000 deaths. We have no way of verifying that because it's really hard to track. You know, cancer is very common and it's been increasing for many, many decades. So it's impossible to trace a specific cancer case back to Chernobyl. But there are different ways. And so the estimates are 4 ,000. So let's just say Chernobyl called 4 ,000 deaths or will cause 4 ,000 deaths. he would need like at least 200 Chernobyls happening every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels. Yeah. Wow. That says it all, I suppose, at that point.

26:12At that point, you're building nuclear reactors in your garage. If you want to kill that many people using nuclear, you'd have to try. It's illegal. You wouldn't be able to. But yeah, you'd have to basically try. Challenge accepted. Yeah. But I suppose you'd have to try. But that's great, though, because nuclear is a primary source of energy, but it's essentially clean, right? So is the argument we've outgrown fossil fuels? Because I think I would agree with that generally. Yeah, definitely. And I think that that's the mistake that some people make is that they'll say fossil fuels are evil and we have to ban fossil fuels.

26:42And in reality, I think that's not a great argument because if you look at human civilization, fossil fuels really are the primary source of energy that have enabled all of our progress as a civilization. We have hospitals and better health care and all of these things because we've had access to insane amounts of fossil fuels. But where I think the argument that people who are just super pro fossil fuels make that is wrong is that they'll say, well, it's because of fossil fuels themselves. And in reality, it's just higher access to energy. That's it. Wherever that energy is coming from really doesn't matter.

27:19But as long as we can have access to lots of energy to, you know, keep building our civilization as it is, that's the best argument. And so nuclear is just a better way to make electricity in this case because it's cleaner, because it doesn't put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It also doesn't put particular matter. But from every single aspect that you look at it, nuclear is just superior. You looking for a glow up that doesn't require enriched uranium? Check out our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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29:48That's F-I-T-B-O-D dot M-E slash Jordan. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these authors, thinkers, creators every single week, it's because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. And I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself in our course without any shenanigans over at 6minutenetworking.com. I don't need your credit card number. This is a free thing from us to you. In six minutes a day is all it takes. Dig that well before you get thirsty, folks. Build relationships before you need them. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course.

30:16Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Once again, all free at sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Isabel Boimka. A lot of people are going to say, you said there's no emissions, but I, you know, I've passed a nuclear power plant before. What are those big smokestacks for if they don't have emissions? So those are not smokestacks. The smokestacks are different. They're like thinner stacks. And those are usually in coal plants and they're putting out shit into the environment. But the nuclear power plant, you're not actually seeing smokestacks. You're seeing cooling towers.

30:48And what's the thing that they're putting out is actually just water vapor. So nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors actually get very hot. That's how they make electricity. They use the energy trapped inside of atoms to heat up water, which creates steam. and the steam then spins a turbine that is connected to a generator, and that's how it makes electricity. So nuclear reactors get very hot, and they need to be cooled down. And one of the most popular ways in which they're cooled down is we get water from a large body of water nearby. It can be an ocean or a lake or a river, and you suck that water into a cooling system that goes around a secondary loop in the reactor.

31:29So it's not actually touching the reactor. That's where the radiation would be. but it's coming out. Usually in most nuclear power plants, it also just comes right back out into the lake, river, ocean, just hotter than what it was in the beginning. Okay. So it's not actually becoming radioactive by going through the power plant. No, it's not touching anything that's radioactive. So no. But some power plants actually have cooling towers. Not all of them do, but the cooling towers, they help recycle that water. And so the water comes in from a large body, cools the reactor down, goes to the cooling tower, which then basically just like drops the water really from a really high point and it cools down that water.

32:08And then that water goes back in and helps cool the reactor again. And those big vases that look like smokestacks, it's basically just raining crazy in there with water that was hot and that cools as it goes up and then just rains back down inside that, the giant vase. Yes. And then so the stuff that's coming out is like water vapor. Yeah. So that's, you know, a huge difference, obviously. And that's a light water reactor, right? There's different kinds of reactors, but that's what we use to generate electricity, generally? That's the vast majority of them. I see. There are a couple of different ones in the world, but that's the vast majority of nuclear reactors are what are called light water reactors.

32:43And what that means is just that these types of reactors, they use water as both a moderator and a coolant. And we can get into the details of that if you want, but... That's all right. Probably bigger fish to fry on that. We can maybe come back to it. But tell me the difference then between what are we're using fission, right? What's the one we don't have yet? That's the Holy Grail, right? Is that fusion? That's fusion. And fission is the one we what is the difference between those two things? The easiest way to think about it is both are harnessing energy that was inside of atoms, which is really cool, right?

33:16We can't even see atoms. And yet we're somehow able to tap into that energy and use it to power our lives. So in the case of fission, you can think of a heavier atomic nuclei. So the nucleus of an atom that's bigger and you shoot it with neutrons and it splits apart. And once it splits apart, you get energy that come out of it. And that is in a form of heat. Now with fusion, it's the opposite. You then imagine two smaller atomic nuclei coming together and smashing with such force that they fuse together. And that process also releases energy. So both are nuclear energy. We've only been able to do fission so far.

33:59So every single nuclear reactor in the world is a fission reactor. Now, fusion, like you said, is the holy grail. This is what the sun does in its core. But if you have noticed, the sun needs a lot of energy to make fusion happen, right? So that's one of the biggest problems here on Earth is how do we actually create the conditions necessary for fusion to happen. And that means it just needs a lot, very, very high temperatures. You just need to recreate the conditions of the sun, basically. So that requires a lot of energy. That's all. Just recreate the sun on Earth without killing everyone. Exactly.

34:33And so maybe take it slow, folks. Well, but the biggest thing is really that it just takes too much energy to get a tiny amount of energy out. And so in the last couple of years, there have been announcements coming out of labs saying we finally got a little bit of energy out, more energy out than we've put into the whole system. But when people say, oh, Fusion is 10 years away, I say, talk to me whenever we have a product that I can buy tomorrow. Right. Or a Fusion power plant somewhere in the world that's actually operating. That's actually competitive. That's actually, you know, because there can be one maybe in 10 years, which I highly doubt, but it's going to cost an insane amount of money.

35:11And I'm not saying that to say we shouldn't pursue Fusion, but it's just to say it's not an existing technology at the moment. So it's not relevant to the discussion. I was just curious because I know like nuclear is unbothered by the weather, solar and wind. They're weather dependent here in California. We always worry about that. Hydropower is clean too, but it seems like there's downsides to that because you have to build a massive dam and then flood a bunch of little villages in China or whatever to make this thing. And it's got to have tons of people working on it and it takes years to complete and you'd screw up all the ecosystems and stuff like that.

35:44And then, And man, I would imagine that a disaster at a hydro plant could be way, way worse than a nuclear disaster. Really. I mean, generally speaking, right? Because you hear what happens if the Three Gorges Dam explodes in this big flood or this storm. And I think I said Three Gorges. I meant Three River Gorge in China. We're talking like six figure or more casualties of human life. And that doesn't count property, right? Just massive, massive destruction. So hydro obviously has downsides, like you mentioned. You have to flood certain areas and there are also some emissions associated with it.

36:21I think it's because, I can't remember exactly, but basically a lot of plant material gets trapped into these giant dams and it dies and it puts off a bunch of CO2. There's something like that with hydro. That's interesting. I have to look that up because that's something I'd never heard. Plant matter getting trapped and then something, something, emissions. There is something like that where hydropower dams specifically lead to higher CO2 emissions because of dead plants. And I can't remember exactly the connection. But, you know, I do think that we tend to get lost a little bit in these discussions because at the end of the day, yes, hydro has some downsides.

36:51It's still way better than fossil fuels just because of what we talked about in terms of the particular matter and the greenhouse gases that are associated with it. So I still think it's a step forward. You know, it's technology that's better. Now, the biggest problem with hydro, really, is that we're very tapped out on hydro. Yeah, there's only so many rivers you can dam up before you run out of the ability to do this. By the way, I looked up why this happens, if you want to hear. Yes, yes. So hydropower plants create emissions primarily because of the decomposition of organic matter in the reservoir.

37:24So when you dam it up and you make that huge lake, all of that flooded vegetation decomposes, and it does so anaerobically. So it produces methane as a byproduct, which is one of the worst, you know, sort of greenhouse gases. And then that just goes into the atmosphere through diffusion or bubbling up from the sediment. Imagine you flood several hundred acres or whatever. All that stuff just turns into one of the worst greenhouse gases and then goes into the environment. You could also argue that making the concrete creates a lot of CO2. I mean, it's just sort of like there's going to be emissions with everything.

37:54It just matters how much emissions it saves in the future. I think that's really the important part, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's how I feel about hydro. You know, we can nitpick every single clean energy source and say, well, you know, it creates emissions if we do this. And of course, because everything we do creates emissions because our civilization is, again, so dependent on fossil fuels and energy in general. But it's still a step forward. But I think the biggest thing is what I mentioned is we're very much tapped out. Hydro is the largest source of clean energy, and most countries have already developed hydro in the best places.

38:28So it gets to a point where, because, you know, it's not just really big bodies of water. You also need some height. You need water that basically goes down, right? You need a difference in elevation. Yeah. So it's hard to find the exact natural circumstances that you can do this. And of course, as the human population grows and we develop more areas, it's going to be less possible to do this, right? Because if you go, oh, we can do this. We just have to flood St. Louis. We're not doing that, right? It's not going to happen. So it's funny you mentioned that it seems like a bigger chance that there will be a disaster with hydropower plants.

39:00And the biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dam collapse in China. And it happened in 1979, the same year that Three Mile Island, the big nuclear disaster happened that didn't kill anybody. This actual disaster went down in China. And the world didn't learn about it for decades because China. But, you know, it was this massive dam that got flooded and collapsed. And as it collapsed, it flooded then dozens of other smaller dams that were downstream from it. So entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200 ,000 people died between just being swept away, but then not having food and dying from contaminated water later on.

39:42And so even when you compare that to nuclear, if you compare the worst nuclear disaster to the worst hydropower disaster, the worst hydropower disaster completely eclipses nuclear. And so it's interesting, right, that we have all these weird fears about nuclear when the facts and the reality just point to it being actually extremely safe. Yeah. You also, in your book, you bring up the idea that nuclear is energy dense. What does that mean? Is that the fuel that's being used? Is that what you mean by that? Yeah. So nuclear fuel is extremely energy dense. It's about a million times more energy dense than fossil fuels.

40:16Let's just say you're getting like a tiny gummy bear. Everybody has seen a gummy bear before, right? Yes. So that has the same amount of energy as 2 ,000 pounds of coal. 2 ,000 pounds of coal. 2 ,000 pounds of coal. You just need a gummy bear worth of uranium and you're good. Yes. Wow. To create the same amount of energy. So it's almost impossible to wrap our minds around. It's incomprehensible and there is no other, I don't think there's anything else on the planet that has the same energy density. So why does that actually matter besides being a very cool fun fact? Yeah. And well, it's because when we talk about nuclear being better in every possible way, it means that we need way less mining because we need to use way less fuel than we would with any other source of energy.

41:02That also means that you need way less space, both to just have a power plant, but then also to store, you know, the fuel and so on. So that's why nuclear takes the least amount of land. And it also requires the least amount of mining out of all energy sources. I see. So if I have a train that's full of coal, I basically need a pocket full of gummy bears to make up the nuclear fuel, that would be a train full of coal. Right. Or maybe two pockets full of gummy bears. Right. But I certainly don't need thousands of trucks or trains worth of nuclear fuel every year. Exactly. And then I'm not creating those emissions either.

41:38So you're not creating those emissions both from transporting, but also from mining. Is uranium in the ground? Is it in big? Because the coal is in like huge chunks in the ground. Right. So I think so. Anyway, if there's chunks of coal in the ground, are there chunks of uranium in the ground or is it like a grain of, okay, because I'm thinking, you know, you don't necessarily need less mining if it's a grain of sand each time you find uranium. But if it's a chunk like a rock, then and that's enough for 2000 pounds of coal. You're right. We need way less mining. Like it's not even close. It's not even close.

42:07And that's why when people, you know, I'll talk about nuclear and they'll say, but what about the emissions associated with mining and transporting and building the reactors? Yeah, Isabel, what about that? What about it? Well, that's good. People do this thing called life cycle analysis. So they look exactly into that. Like, what are the emissions associated with mining, with building, with then fueling, and then even decommissioning these nuclear plants? I see. And again, nuclear has the lowest life cycle emissions out of all energy sources because of what we talked about. And also nuclear plants last for a very long time.

42:42We have no reason to believe why they wouldn't last for 80 years versus something like solar and wind, solar panels and wind turbines. They last for about 25 to 30 years and they have to be fully replaced. And then because also they are more intermittent, you also need a lot more of them to be able to even get close to the same amount of energy. And it's not the same profile because they don't work all the time. Yeah. How does that work? Like how much nuclear would California need? I know I'm putting you on the spot. Feel free to choose a different state or something. How much nuclear would California need if we had nuclear versus wind versus solar?

43:17And of course, and I'm aware that like solar doesn't work in Michigan for most of the year. Right. So we're going to have to almost ignore the fact that it only works for a third of the year and that wind only works on the seaside or wherever there's a lot of wind. But how much space is that going to take up? Do I need a city of L.A. sized nuclear power plant to power the whole state? Because that's not that bad, really. Well, so let's just take a real life example, which is Diablo Canyon, which is California's current only nuclear power plant. And that plant has two reactors. It can power about 4 million people, I believe, is the latest number.

43:53Okay. It's not fully, but it's around 10 % of the state's electricity. So you would need 10 of those. That's so much less than I thought. Right? I thought you were going to say like 50 or 60. That's crazy. No, about 10. If it's 10 % of the state's electricity, right? And then you have to also think that you could potentially build two other reactors at Diablo Canyon. So let's just say you build two more, you get to 20 percent of the state's electricity. So you don't have necessarily have to build one nuclear power plant per reactor. You can have nuclear power plants that have two or four reactors.

44:28Wow. You could save a lot of space as well. So for people who think I'm crazy because I said 50 or 60, there are 1 ,600 power plants in California right now. Let's say that you really do need 10 Diablo Canyons to power the whole state. It's just not even close. It's just orders of magnitude more effective, more efficient, and has less emissions. It's crazy to me that we don't do this. What about the energy needed to mine the nuclear fuel? I know you said there's less mining. Is it more complicated? I'm trying to find a catch here. I'm trying to find a gotcha, Isabel, where this just doesn't work out, right?

45:03Like where the math doesn't hold up. The truth is like the math really holds up there. I mean, it's, you know, like I said, it's less energy. And there are two different ways to mine uranium. One of them is the old way of just shoveling some rocks. Sounds simple enough. Okay. Sounds simple enough. And the new way is something called in situ mining, which is basically like they dig a hole and they get to the uranium reserves and pump some liquid through it that then brings the uranium to the surface. And so it involves no people shoveling and that sort of stuff. But truthfully, you know, in reality, even the normal uranium mining has been done in a very, very safe way in the past few decades.

45:42And one of the biggest producers in the world is Canada. You know, there are all these different countries that have huge uranium reserves. I think the biggest one is Kazakhstan and then Australia, Canada. So in terms of the mining and the energy takes to mine, it's without a doubt, it's just better than anything else, just because of, again, going back to the energy density. Just a fun fact about mining that I don't I don't know if it's even that fun, but to me it is. So there is this big uranium reserve in Africa, in what is now called Gabon in Africa. And some French nuclear power plants were buying uranium from that region.

46:20And, you know, because uranium is highly regulated and so on, they have to measure everything and make sure everything looks good when they receive shipments of uranium. And they noticed that this uranium was slightly less radioactive than it should have been. It's a very simple way of putting it. And they were concerned that somewhere along the way, people had stolen uranium. So a bunch of scientists went to this uranium deposit in Gabon in Africa and started analyzing the uranium chunks and the rocks. And they started realizing that all the uranium from that mine was, quote unquote, less radioactive than it should have been.

46:57And then they started detecting so-called fission products, which is basically what you find in nuclear waste. And that's how they realized that those uranium deposits, 2 billion years ago, had actually been natural nuclear reactors. Just the conditions of the place were such that whenever it rained and the water pooled in the cave, it allowed for chain reactions to happen. That water would get hot and would then evaporate and it would stop until it rained again. So for hundreds of thousands of years, these caves served as natural nuclear reactors. If we were to go back in time and stick a steam generator in a turbine, we could have actually made electricity with them.

47:42So that's so cool. That is really cool. I don't know if I'm just nerding out on this kind of thing, but I find that to be completely fascinating. It's also a little scary, I think, because some people are going to go, oh, yeah, that's really cool. Fun fact, kids. But doesn't that mean that nuclear waste lasts for hundreds of thousands of years and we can't really get rid of it? That's sort of a counter argument to that kind of thing, right? I mean, like, yes, this is great. We have free energy, but also like it's free energy that you can't turn off if you want to. So what about nuclear waste? What do we do with that stuff when it's not as radioactive as it should be?

48:16So we have to get rid of it, but it's still radioactive. You know, what happens to the fuel? Yeah, so definitely nuclear waste is one of the biggest concerns that people have. And I totally get it. That was the thing for me that I came into it thinking, is this really worth it because we're creating this radioactive waste? And it's true. While there are no emissions, there are no carbon emissions, there are no particulate matter emissions. it is creating radioactive waste that lasts forever, hundreds of thousands of years, which in human lifespan is practically forever, right? So what do we do that?

48:49Is it worth it? And the way I slowly started understanding and seeing it differently was, first of all, again, going back to the energy density and the quantity. So because of the density of this fuel, the amount of nuclear waste that we leave behind is actually very small. So if I were to get my whole life's energy from nuclear, the amount of spent fuel, which is the waste that people talk about when they say this waste is radioactive forever, the amount of that waste would fit inside of a soda can. Oh, OK. So we start with that. It's a small amount. But still, if you're powering the entire world with nuclear, it's still a significant amount.

49:26Then I learned that actually 95 % of the waste, the spent fuel that is now being taken care of around the world is recyclable. 95 % of it is still uranium. Yeah, that was my next question. Can it be recycled? Because it seems like anything that's still hot for another 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 years, you could do something with that, right? Exactly. Yeah. And exactly to your point, because there's different types of radiation. And usually the stuff that is extremely dangerous and extremely radioactive also tends to go away fairly easily because it's shooting off so much of its energy, right? It's like a fire burning really hot.

50:03Yeah. It's like a fire burning really hot. But the stuff that lasts for a really long time, that is way less radioactive. And that's the stuff that we can, you know, 95 % of it is still uranium that we can just use again for energy. Now, that's a whole other conversation that then, you know, we have to talk about proliferation concerns and we have to talk about ways to deal with that waste and so on. But it's 95 % of it is still uranium. So if at any point we want to recycle it, we can. And then the last part was truly understanding that when you look around us every single day, especially if you live like in New York City and you walk on the street and you just stare at a sheer amount of waste that we create as a civilization every single day.

50:47And then you think, you know, yes, most of this waste, whatever, breaks down in a couple decades, maybe in a couple of hundred years. Debatable because there's a ton of plastic waste that we're just now, you know, learning takes way longer than we anticipated. And in the process of breaking down, it's actually going to the environment and being eaten by fish, which goes into our bodies. And all of a sudden, every single man that has been tested has plastic in their testicles. But anyway, you know, yeah, you're welcome. You might, you might be the exception. I don't think so. But, you know, I guess what I'm saying is we create waste, a ton of waste, some of it toxic, some of it already causing health impacts, like plastic waste.

51:33And yet nuclear waste, because it has the potential to be so dangerous, we've had to develop all of these very sophisticated systems to separate it and isolate it from people and the environment. Yeah. And for that reason, nuclear waste as it stands has never hurt a single person. Nuclear doesn't care if it's sunny, cloudy, windy, or if mercury is in retrograde. It just works. You know what else just works? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Hexclad. We recently did something we should have done years ago. We tossed our old cookware and upgraded everything to Hexclad.

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53:49They're all searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find that code. That code's not working for you. You email me personally. We are happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Isabel Blumka. If it's that small and you just need so little of it, you can put it in a bulletproof, earthquake-proof, flood-proof barrel and bury it in the ground with armed guards around it 24-7 and it's a thousand years worth of fuel in this area, right?

54:23spent fuel because it's small. It's not like a landfill. Imagine saying you need to secure all the landfills in America with high security. This is not going to happen. Right. But if you if you just need a few acres of it's like a military base, you just need to secure this thing and put it don't put it on a fault line and make sure that the stuff is being inspected so that it doesn't have a crack in it. And like, yeah, it just seems like a simpler process, a more secure process. Well, it's actually a simpler process. And then it also makes me think that this is how we should be approaching the waste that we create as a society.

54:53Not that we bury everything and secure with armed guards, but at least in thinking about all the possible things that can happen 100 years from now, 1 ,000 years from now. Because the people who think about long-term nuclear waste disposal, they're thinking about every single possibility, including what would happen if human civilization loses the ability to communicate in English and collapses. And how do we warn this future to humans that this is nuclear waste? I hope they're not spending too much time on that because if human civilization collapses, there's probably gonna be a reason for it.

55:29And just, I don't know, you just paint the barrel and make it look really scary. And the people who dig it up 5 ,000 years from now are gonna be like, you know, maybe just like a don't smash this with a rock kind of thing. And, you know, I'm gonna file that firmly in the not my problem, not our problem bucket. What happens if aliens land and they dig up our nuclear waste and then they decide to open? Like, you know what? Not worrying about that right now. Got bigger fish to fry. That's what people worry about, literally. When people say that, when people say we don't know what to do with nuclear waste, that's what they're saying.

55:59They're saying we don't know what's going to happen a thousand years from now. And, you know, because of stuff like Oklo, which is that natural nuclear reactor that I talked about in Gabon, Africa, We actually learned a lot about how nuclear waste moves. They thought it was going to be spread over a much larger area, and it just didn't move that much. Yeah, interesting. And mind you that there were no engineer barriers. You know, this was just... Just a cave, just a hole in the ground. Just literally a rock. That's crazy. Again, I'm putting you on the spot with the math. But if I lived my entire life just using nuclear power for everything, no coal, no oil, no gas, how much waste would I create as just a solitary human?

56:38Do you have any idea? So spent fuel, I always focus on spent fuel because there are three different types of waste. There's what's called low radioactive waste. So this is stuff like the gloves that somebody who worked at a nuclear power plant created. But that stuff is not going to be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. It's just slightly radioactive. I just mean spent fuel because otherwise I don't know how you calculate this, right? Exactly. How much spent fuel? What is it? Is it a truckload? I have no idea. So if you were to use energy for your entire life's needs, you would leave behind a soda can worth of spent fuel.

57:12So per person, one soda can for my whole life. That's actually really hard to... Wrap our minds around. Wow, yeah. My whole life fitting in a soda can. Man, that's really... And then the gotcha would be like, oh, how much mining? But we already covered that, right? I mean, you can really get a lot of this. And, you know, it's one of those things that, like, if it was all condensed in one tiny block instead of like fuel pellets. And then also you have to account for the way nuclear waste is kept now. It's put inside of big dry casks. So these are like giant Pringles cans that are made of concrete because concrete is very good at blocking radiation.

57:48So they would say, well, but what about the concrete and blah, blah, blah. So we're oversimplifying, but it still gets the point across, you know. It just doesn't bear out when you compare it to other sources of energy. Yeah, when you compare it to absolutely nothing, okay, fine. It comes in slightly behind not being born ever. But if you compare it to actual real energy sources, it comes out way ahead. What about Fukushima? This is what people are saying, like, oh, yeah, what about Fukushima? That was in Japan, modern society, earthquake, unforeseen circumstances. Now we have all this radioactive tritium.

58:16You know, let's tackle that one. Because I remember that was also like just a— Isn't that why Germany shut down their nuclear reactors? They were worried about Fukushima. Yeah, exactly. So Fukushima was one of those, much like the hydropower dam collapse in China, was one of those unforeseen, you know, nature things. This was a huge earthquake that then caused a massive tsunami. And Fukushima was caught in both, right? So it went through the earthquake. And it was actually fine going through the earthquake. The system shut down as they were supposed to. The problem happened when the tsunami came.

58:53And the tsunami made it through the power plant's seawall and inundated the basement level, which is where all the diesel generators were. Now, because nuclear reactors get really hot, they need to be cooled like we talked about. They also need to be cooled after they shut down for a period of time to avoid an accident because there is still some heat that's being put out. And so when the diesel generators were inundated and there was no electricity to the power plant, the reactor couldn't cool itself. And so that's what caused the Fukushima accident. It was the inundation of the diesel generators in the basement.

59:28And this was a lot less radiation went into the environment, precisely because it was more a modern reactor design. And people were evacuated really quickly, which was the opposite of Chernobyl. imagine an evacuation process dealing with the aftermath of a huge earthquake and a huge tsunami and a nuclear accident. And so something like 2 ,300 people died from Fukushima, but it was all because of the evacuation process. So it was people who needed medical care and couldn't get it. It was people who, you know, for one reason or another, died because of the evacuation process. Not because of the radiation.

1:00:09Not because of the radiation. Then now from radiation exposure, there's one plant worker who died from lung cancer many years later down the road and his family got compensated. It's kind of like impossible to know that his cancer was caused by the accident. But because they were really quick to evacuate a bunch of people and because there was a lot less radiation that went into the environment, scientists don't predict any cancers to come out. What about all the tritium in the water? China made a huge deal about Fukushima releasing the water and you can't buy the fish from Japan. I mean, it was clearly like kind of propaganda, you know, Japan bad nonsense because China has tons of nuclear power plants.

1:00:51But they made a humongous deal about that water being toxic. So then what happened? You have the accident. And so afterwards, TEPCO, which is the company that runs the Fukushima plant, had to pump a lot of water to cool down the reactor cores. It was more than one. And that water did come in touch with radioactivity. So it did get radioactive, you know, it got contaminated. And so they had to store all of this contaminated water in huge gallons in the property at Fukushima, the Fukushima Daiichi plant. They started to make tanks, yeah? They started to make these tanks and they were, you know, storing this contaminated water, thinking about something, they were going to do something in the future.

1:01:32So they finally actually developed an entire technology that filtrates the water. And so they can pass all of the contaminated water to this filtration system that gets rid of every single radioactive isotope except for tritium. Because tritium is actually a radioactive form of hydrogen. And as you know, water has hydrogen. So it's like, it's basically water. It's like in the water. It's in the water. Exactly. So it's really hard. You could extract, but you would have to develop a crazy technology and it doesn't really make sense. So actually the best way to dispose of that tritiated water is to just dissolve it when you just add more water and you just make the concentration of tritiated water.

1:02:13Dilute it. Dilute it, yeah. So basically dump it into the ocean and it spreads out so thin it doesn't do anything. Just do that slowly over time. At first they are diluting the water itself so they're adding more water to the tritiated water and then, like you said, releasing it into the ocean at a very slow pace so that it gets diluted into the ocean. Now, the reason why I'm not too nervous about that is because the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is this international organization that is in charge of promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear while stopping the proliferation of weapons, is overseeing this whole dumping the water system.

1:02:50And so there are monitors. You can go on the International Atomic Energy Agency's website and you can see exactly how much radiation there is coming out of the pipe and then how much radiation is being detected right down 10 meters away or whatever it is. And so you see that water being diluted in real time. Now, this is what's interesting. You mentioned China making a big deal out of this. The amount of tritium that's being disposed from the Fukushima accident is actually lower than what is permitted in regular operations for Chinese nuclear power plants. I see. In other words, the Chinese nuclear power plants are putting more tritiated water into the environment in a normal operation than the water from Fukushima that's being put into the ocean.

1:03:34Because of a disaster. Because of a disaster. So there's a bit of a, you know, an interesting dynamic happening here. That's kind of typical of these governments. And I mean, any government when they have a mess like this and they can use it against their enemy for sure. How much of this tridiated water would I need to drink to suffer adverse effects? So, I mean, you would need to drink basically a whole swimming pool worth of tridiated water. OK. You know, and you would have to be all in one sitting kind of thing. Oh, really? OK, so it's basically impossible. Got it. All right. Yeah, it's basically impossible.

1:04:06And here's the thing. There is no evidence as well. And I know that doesn't mean that it's never happened. But we have no evidence of somebody dying from being exposed to tritium. Tritium has actually a very short biological half-life, meaning it stays in our system for like 10 to 12 days. So that's why you would have to drink a ton of this tritium water all in one go to actually get sick from it. But I say all these things with always the understanding that I don't want to minimize. the accident. Ideally, this would not have happened. Let's just be clear, right? This sucks. Yeah, it's not ideal.

1:04:42But all the scary stuff seems to be massively overblown, which is kind of my point. I mean, Germany, as I mentioned before, shut down their nuclear programs because of Fukushima. Now they have thousands of deaths from coal just by virtue of using coal. And they're reliant on Russian oil. So, you know, great job, guys, listening to fear instead of logic. And now you're in this pickle with Russia. This is probably nonsense, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can you catch radiation poisoning from being near someone? You remember the woman in Chernobyl who goes and she's like goes beyond the plastic sheets and her boyfriend is the fireman and he's all they're like, don't go near him.

1:05:16And she goes near him and the baby absorbs the radiation. Is that bullshit? From my understanding and the several people that I talked to about this who are nuclear engineers and understand the dangers. The biggest danger was somebody who, let's say, somebody who was at the Chernobyl reactor when it exploded, is something called alpha emitters, which is the specific type of radiation. And the biggest danger there is actually touching them. So if this woman was to come into the room and the person who was contaminated hadn't showered, hadn't taken their clothes off, and she touched them, then yes, she could get the radiation.

1:05:52I see. But you know, had this person showered and the woman doesn't touch them specifically, She can sit right next to them and totally fine. Now, here's the other thing in the Chernobyl show. You know, this woman is pregnant and she's like the fetus absorbs the radiation somehow. Why would a baby specifically absorb radiation instead of your own body? I don't I don't get it. Fiction. But but but, you know, this is another really crazy thing about Chernobyl is it's very sad, actually, that a lot of women ended up ending wanted pregnancies. You know, the women would say they were forced. Some women would say they were forced to abort babies that they really wanted because of exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.

1:06:31And when the accident happened, there were a bunch of scientists that were sent there, including some really top American scientists. And they saw the babies that were born to mothers that were exposed to radiation from Chernobyl. And at the time, they were already able to tell that none of them were born with any issues. And then now we have, you know, over 30 years of data on people who either were, you know, fetus when Chernobyl happened or people who are exposed to the radiation. And it's clear that there were no genetic changes from people who are exposed to it. So, again, one of those unexpected things.

1:07:07With the war in Ukraine and the it seems like, well, the obvious conclusion that many of us had, aside from certain European leaders, that we can't rely on fossil fuels from despotic regimes. Do we see this sparking renewed interest in nuclear? Because, I mean, the EU is probably really kicking themselves, having dismantled a lot of their nuclear reactors as a result of having access to easy Russian oil. What could go wrong? Yeah, what's so crazy about Germany, too, you just brought this up, but, you know, Germany, to your point, shut down or decided to phase out of nuclear whenever Fukushima happened.

1:07:39And this was Angela Merkel, who, by the way, is a physicist, so she should know better. But Germany was super anti-nuclear. She's also a politician. She is a politician and Germany is a super anti-nuclear country. You know, she had to make the tough choice of doing whatever her population wanted. But later, Germany ended up shutting down their nuclear plants. But Germany's former chancellor is on the board of three Russian gas companies. Germany was dependent on Russian gas, as you mentioned in the beginning. I mean, so much so that they were effectively funding the war in Ukraine, at least in the beginning.

1:08:15So to clarify for people what that means when you're on the board of a company as a politician or somebody, for example, I'm on a few company boards. What I get is essentially an annual salary that is kind of more or less a bribe to get access to things that I can provide. So people I know influence it. Maybe I mentioned them on the show, things like that. Right. If you're a politician and you have that, it's worse. Right. Why is the chancellor of Germany on the board of three companies in Russia? What could a politician in an EU country offer them? Well, since those are largely affiliated with the state, I'll let you guess what a politician who has influence in a democratic country could offer a Russian company or industry.

1:08:55I mean, it's basically a bribe to allow them to change rules or make policy that benefits that company. It's absolutely insane or it's to lobby to do so anyways. It's absolutely insane and should not be allowed. But here we are. Well, to be fair, he was probably not on the board when he was chancellor. But, you know. Right. He's lobbying and has the connections and the influence of the party. I mean, that's why they pay. They're not paying the guy multiple six figures for each board position or millions potentially for nothing. He was making a million dollars a year, basically, from being on this board.

1:09:25Yeah, not for nothing. Exactly. So it's just political influence, access and all of those good things. So it just gets worse and worse the more you learn about it. And Germany is just hell bent on being consistently in the wrong side of history for some weird reason. They've done it before. It's a different podcast. So, look, I lived in Germany. I love Germans. It's not their fault. Well, not all of them anyway. Who lobbies against nuclear power? Oil and gas companies, I assume. I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about with these board positions. It seems like, you know, Rosneft or whatever is like very anti-nuclear.

1:09:58We're so worried about the safety. Also, buy all of our natural gas to power your country unless we decide to turn it off to get leverage over you. Yeah, it's fascinating. Definitely, you know, fossil fuel industry has not been very stoked about nuclear. And one of my favorite ads is actually an ad from the 70s. And it's about this nuclear power plant that's being built in Long Island. And so it says Lilco, which is the utility company, is trying to build a nuclear plant in your backyard. And then it says it has a little sun in the center and it says solar, not nuclear. And it was paid for by the Oil Heat Institute.

1:10:35And they created this whole grassroots campaign to stop this nuclear power plant from being built. And actually, this power plant is the Shoreham power plant. And this is a power plant that was completed and then never got the license to operate because of the anti-nuclear movement. The anti-nuclear movement was so strong back then. I know that the weapons scared people, right? So you end up with Greenpeace and things like that, these anti-nuclear protesters, environmentalists. I can't help but notice that as much as these people romanticize poverty, it's never them who has to live like that, right?

1:11:07It's always the other people who get to live without the clean source of energy that they're protesting, the degrowth that they want. Yeah, it's the most frustrating argument that I have. When I actually just came out a conference where I had this exact argument with somebody, you know, he said, we have crossed all of these boundaries, planetary boundaries. The only way we can stop the destruction is degrowth. And then, you know, these people have very sophisticated philosophies as to why degrowth is the answer. But then when you ask them, okay, what is the plan? They can't tell you. It's just a vibe, right?

1:11:43It's like, we should use less energy. Okay, show me the plan. Who's we? How much is less? Are you talking about you and your family? Are you talking about you and your country, your continent? And what is less? 10 % less, 20 % less? And then how do you enforce that? Do you give quotas? Do you give energy quotas to people? And then what happens if somebody uses more energy if they buy a diesel generator? Do you arrest them? Do you kill them? Yeah, I mean, if you really get these people, if you put a couple of whiskeys in them, It turns into authoritarian communist type stuff. I'm not talking about everyday environmentalists, by the way.

1:12:17Like, I, too, am concerned about global warming and things like that. I don't like litter. I like recycling when it makes sense and when it's not just a scam. People know that about me. I'm very much an environmentalist in many ways. It's just that they are wrong on nuclear energy. And yeah, if you get down to the energy use thing, the whole we should use less energy, it does pretty much always boil down to, well, all these people are going to have to use less. OK, what happens when China wants to do AI, but we've outlawed it here because of energy use? Well, we just have to get them to cooperate.

1:12:49OK, I also want to learn how to fly by growing wings. So how are we going to manage that, too? Right. And it kind of does come down to, yeah, we're just going to have to kill all the people that use too much energy or put them in prison or force them to not use as much energy. And, oh, the countries that don't opt in. Well, we just have to link arms with them. and sing Kumbaya and then they'll finally understand. It's just, it's nonsense. It doesn't work until you turn the whole planet into some sort of authoritarian nightmare. I mean, that's the solution. Or here's the easiest one. And actually what ends up happening in practicality, we just don't let the poor countries develop.

1:13:22Yeah, that's where we are now. We just don't let the poor countries develop. Yeah, that's literally where we are now. And as somebody who grew up in a poor country, I have a problem with that. Yeah, I thought you might. I have a real problem with people being like, well, I'm sorry, we already used too much energy. you can't get your air conditioning. And so I have a real issue with that. And I think it always, always comes from people who grew up in rich countries. You'll never hear somebody from a poor country saying, we should just use less energy. And it's like very privileged people who don't understand the privilege they have in having been born and grown up in a place where they had access to energy abundance.

1:14:02Yep. That's a really good point. The people who walk every day to go get water are not campaigning for us to use less energy, right? It's the person sitting in their air conditioned studio with their lights overhead so that they look good and they got their filter effect on their computer, right? Present company specifically included that are, you know, we're the people like me that are complaining that we use too much energy, right? As I make my, look up my searches using AI during this conversation, which by the way, that reminds me, if we're going to go all in on AI, we are going to need a ton more energy.

1:14:34Speaking of using less, We're going to need a lot more. And wouldn't it be great if it was green energy or at least clean-ish energy? What would it take to get to net zero carbon? Do you know how much nuclear would we need at that point? Again, once again, I'm putting you on the spot with the math. Yeah, with the math. Well, net zero carbon is kind of like a weird term. Is that even the right term? You can correct. We can use a different one. I'm just throwing out the buzzwords. Yeah, let's just say like, what would it take for the United States to be 100 % clean electricity? Yeah. And we'll go back to what we actually know, which is nuclear is 20 percent of the United States electricity.

1:15:09And let's just say we want to switch all of that. Then we get, what, five times the amount of nuclear. So we're talking about 100 reactors, more or less, for 20 percent. So we're talking about 500 reactors. I mean, that's a lot. But also there's 1600 power plants in California alone. So maybe it's not a lot. Is there a way to turn a coal power plant into a nuclear power plant? Because the plant's already there. The infrastructure is already there. Can we repurpose these things or is that ridiculous? You're not going to repurpose the plant itself, right? Like the reactor core. You're not just going to go into the coal boiler.

1:15:43But what's cool about it is that a lot of the same infrastructure that is needed for a coal plant is also needed for a nuclear plant. So like cooling towers, roads, admin buildings. Wires and stuff. Yeah. Electrical infrastructure. All of those things you can just go in and you just basically build a reactor right next to the existing boiler. One of the interesting things, and it's something that I've only learned recently, is that the hardest part of converting a coal plant into a nuclear plant is that there would have to be a lot of cleanup because the coal power plant sites are so dirty. Okay.

1:16:16Including from radioactive contamination from the coal ash. I see. That's how ironic is that? Doesn't it also have to be near a source of water to cool down the reactor? Yeah, but all coal plants are also, because they're also thermal plants. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so coal and gas plants are very similar in that they heat water to create steam, spin a turbine, blah, blah, blah. So you also need cooling, constant cooling. The difference, obviously, is that coal burns coal to do all of that and nuclear just taps into atoms. How interesting. So you already have these things mostly in the right place.

1:16:47Exactly. With a bunch of the infrastructure you just need to build, in air quotes, just need to merely build nuclear reactors there. But you're still saving a ton of the work and expense because that infrastructure is already in place. And there's way more of them than we need, right? If we only need 500 and there's 1 ,600 in California alone, you don't need to repurpose every coal power plant. You just need to repurpose the largest ones or the ones that are located in the area where you need it or the safest ones or the ones that are going to do the best job, right? You don't have to repurpose all of them.

1:17:14It's actually pretty promising when you put it that way. And here's the thing that's the most exciting, in my opinion, as we go into a world where people will lose their jobs because of AI and we don't know what the numbers are. but you can actually retrain all of the people who used to work at the coal plant to work at the nuclear plant. And so the boost that that gives to the economy of these towns that in many cases are devastated by this coal plant shutting down, it's quite amazing. So it's also a creator of jobs and a net contributor to the whole community. Amazing. Well, I know we're running out of time.

1:17:47Thank you for coming on the show today. I'm a huge proponent of nuclear power. I know we sort of mess with China, as I often do on this show, but they're really leading the way with this. So I hope they don't cut corners and end up with another accident that sets us way back, because nuclear really does seem like the only way out of the mess that we're in right now, at least until we get fission. But I still would count that as nuclear, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming on the show today. Yeah, that was awesome. Good job. Thank you. Thank you so much. What if the next 20 years bring more change than the last 200?

1:18:19and we're not remotely ready for it. Jamie Metzl joins me to unpack the mind-blowing collision of AI, biotech, and genetics that's already reshaping what it means to be human. If you look at all of the scientific progress of the last 100 years, and you compare that to the 100 years before that, and 100 years before that, we see this rapid acceleration. Because these systems are so complex, We need a language. And understanding the language of biology, which already exists, for us to understand it, we need these capabilities. And AI, with all these other technologies, will be that. And as we as humans and as our machines learn more about how to learn, more learning becomes possible.

1:19:08Acceleration begets acceleration. If we think this is a conversation about technology, we're going to get lost. This is a conversation about humanity, and it's a conversation about values. It's about who are we as we guide these revolutions. But humans have co-evolved with our technologies for thousands of years and more likely tens of thousands of years. So it's not us versus our technology. Our technology is us. And the question is, what's the best way for us to co-evolve in a healthy, sustainable way? But we need to know what we're trying to achieve. Every single person has a role in deciding how these technologies are used or not used as individuals and as a community.

1:19:52And that needs to guide us going forward. This is about all of our future. To hear more about the breakthroughs coming faster than we can comprehend and why we urgently need to figure out how to steer the ship, check out episode 1014 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. Great conversation. And look, hey, I've said it before. I'm a huge proponent of nuclear. It is clean. It is safe. It is reliable. And honestly, kind of the only shot we have at powering a world that wants AI, electric, everything, cars, everything, desalination of water everywhere in the desert, fertilizer, cities that don't look like Mordor.

1:20:25China's building nuclear faster than anyone. I hope they don't cut any corners because another big accident sets everybody back 30 years. We need this. The future needs this. Big thanks to Isabel for coming on the show. All things Isabel in the show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. Also on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Speaking of that, our newsletter is fun. I love writing it. You love reading it. It's out every Wednesday. It's a read that's under two minutes long, and it's something practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, psychology, and or relationships.

1:20:59Come check it out. jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

1:21:30If you know somebody who's really interested in science, nuclear energy, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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