Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #10 "Everyone hates nuclear" with Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

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Bad Idea #10 "Everyone hates nuclear" with Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
I was particularly influenced by James Hansen because I knew he
0:03
was kind of a climate hero. I heard that he had become a a
0:07
very strong vocal proponent for nuclear.
0:11
And that caught my attention because I thought, if we're
0:15
listening to him about how serious climate change is, then
0:18
should we also be listening to him about the solution?
0:21
So the bad boys are Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger.
0:26
In 2004, they published this essay called The Death of
0:30
Environmentalism that made a big splash.
0:33
At the time, it didn't mention nuclear at all.
0:36
In fact, they hadn't really started to think about nuclear
0:39
at that point, as far as I understand.
0:41
But it did present a different way of thinking about
0:45
environmental problems. Welcome to saving the world from
0:50
bad ideas. I'm Mark Linus and I've had a
0:52
few bad ideas in my time. I used to go out in the night
0:56
time to destroy GMO crops and I also posed nuclear power.
0:59
But then when I looked at the science, I found I got it wrong.
1:02
Boobs. I've learned the hard way that
1:04
none of us are right all the time.
1:05
So now I'm here to challenge the assumptions that we all too
1:08
often take for granted because the future depends on us getting
1:11
it right. I guess.
1:12
Today, as someone who writes with the kind of clarity that
1:15
makes you wonder if you've ever really understood an issue
1:18
before, she explained it. Rebecca, too, who's Dubrow is a
1:21
journalist and essayist whose works appeared in New York Times
1:24
Magazine, The Nation, The New Yorker, amongst many others.
1:28
And she's got a real gift for diving into the cultural
1:31
undercurrents of our time, from things like the anxieties of
1:33
parenthood to the surprising rise, in this case, of pro
1:37
nuclear environmentalism. And she comes up with these
1:40
incredible stories, which are as thoughtful as they are
1:42
unsettling. And in her new book, Atomic
1:45
Dreams, the New Nuclear Evangelists and the Fight for
1:48
the Future of Energy, There We are, she looks into the new
1:52
generation of climate conscious pro nuclear campaigners.
1:57
Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.
2:01
So we tend to do this in the format of bad ideas.
2:05
So it's called, you know, saving the world from bad ideas.
2:09
And we thought that the bad idea you could be saving the world
2:12
from with this new book is that everyone hates nuclear.
2:16
Because I think there was sort of a general sense out there
2:20
that nuclear is unpopular. It's historically been thought
2:23
of as as dirty. The environmental movement's
2:25
always been against it. There's people, you know, who
2:28
certainly of the boomer generation who cut their teeth
2:31
in anti nuclear activism, protesting, shutting down
2:34
plants, stopping them being built and so on.
2:36
And that's the story that you tell in this book actually,
2:38
because you start quite early on with with a nuclear power plant
2:42
called Diablo Canyon in the Californian coast, which I think
2:45
was built in the 7th, early 70s, was it?
2:49
Construction began in 1968, and in part because of all the
2:52
protests, it didn't actually get completed until the mid 80s.
2:58
Right. So I mean, this is a fascinating
3:00
story. It's one I've tried to tell
3:01
myself some sometimes and I'm a very small character in your
3:04
book as a pro nuclear activist over over some previous years.
3:09
But tell tell us the story of the book.
3:12
I mean, I saw it started life perhaps as a New Yorker article.
3:15
So you know what? What gave you the idea and what
3:17
made you think this was a book that needed to be written?
3:19
I have been obsessed with climate change for quite a long
3:24
time. Starting in high school, I
3:26
learned about it and and was very disturbed and I kind of
3:31
assumed that renewables were the answer.
3:34
I was a pretty hardcore environmentalist and I didn't
3:39
have particularly strong views on nuclear.
3:42
I think it just didn't come up so much when I was growing up in
3:46
the 90s. But I had vaguely negative
3:50
associations, and then in the 2000 and 10s I started to hear
3:56
more about the argument that nuclear needed to be part of the
3:59
solution. I was particularly influenced by
4:02
James Hansen because I knew he was kind of a climate hero.
4:06
He was the scientist, the NASA scientist who, whose testimony
4:09
to the Senate and what was it, 1988?
4:10
Yeah, was the first. Really wasn't.
4:12
It during the heat wave in the summer of 1988 he testified and
4:16
before Congress and said that the greenhouse effect as it was
4:20
called then had been detected and it was changing our climate
4:23
now and it received front page coverage throughout the country
4:27
maybe the world. He's credited with bringing the
4:29
issue to public attention widespread public attention for
4:33
the first time. So I knew about him kind of
4:36
through my parents were also hardcore environmentalists.
4:40
And I heard that he had become a a very strong vocal proponent
4:46
for nuclear. And that caught my attention
4:49
because I thought, if we're listening to him about how
4:53
serious climate change is, then should we also be listening to
4:56
him about the solution? Tell us a bit more about the
5:00
main characters in the book so you know what?
5:02
Where does it start and who do you?
5:04
Whose stories do you pick up and why did you choose them?
5:07
Yeah. So I started looking into it and
5:12
toward the beginning of 2019 and I came across a couple of small
5:19
groups just on in my online research.
5:23
One was called Generation Atomic and it was founded by this young
5:27
man Eric Meyer. And he was kind of trying to
5:31
make nuclear fun and spread pro nuclear means on Twitter.
5:35
And the other group was Mothers for Nuclear.
5:38
And the name, of course, just caught my attention because it
5:42
sounded so counterintuitive. And once I started talking to
5:47
them, I learned, you know, they were, they worked at Diablo
5:50
Canyon actually, the women who had founded this group, Mothers
5:53
for Nuclear. And they were also kind of
5:57
classic environmentalists, hippies.
5:59
So just to the the kind of contradiction or the perceived
6:03
contradiction that people like that would be very strongly pro
6:07
nuclear, that interested me. So my New Yorker article focused
6:13
largely on them, but also put them in the context of of this
6:17
larger but still quite small pro nuclear movement that was
6:20
emerging at the time. Then there's the bad boys.
6:23
I think you give a whole chapter to them, tell us who they are
6:26
and when they come into the story.
6:28
You know all of these people too, So and as you said, you are
6:32
a character, a minor character in the book.
6:34
But so the bad boys are Ted Nordhaus and Michael
6:40
Schellenberger. And I start their story in 2004
6:46
or leading up to 2004. In 2004, they published this
6:50
essay called The Death of Environmentalism that made a big
6:54
splash at the time, and it didn't mention nuclear at all.
6:59
In fact, they hadn't really started to think about nuclear
7:02
at that point, as far as I understand.
7:04
But it did present a different way of thinking about
7:08
environmental problems rather than the sort of traditional
7:13
Sierra Club approach of, you know, reducing energy use,
7:18
reducing even population, just trying to minimize human impact
7:25
in every way. And seeing, I think it's fair to
7:27
say the Sierra Club and and that generation environmentalists saw
7:31
a human impact as essentially bad.
7:34
So what Nordhaus and Shellenberger were trying to
7:37
advance, and it wasn't even I don't it wasn't entirely their
7:43
idea. It was, it grew out of this
7:45
project called the new Apollo Project or the new or the Apollo
7:49
Alliance that proposed that a new way of tackling climate
7:54
change would be rather than a carbon tax would be to build
7:58
out, you know, clean energy infrastructure and as a way of
8:03
reviving the manufacturing base and and the economy and creating
8:07
millions of good jobs, you know, a huge build out of renewable
8:10
energy. So it was kind of a
8:12
philosophical departure. It was, you know, more of a can
8:17
do spirit and rather than sort of telling people what they
8:23
can't have or what, you know, what we have to sacrifice, it
8:26
was putting a new spin on creating, clean building and
8:30
creating. I think everyone has a kind of
8:33
conversion story in this, in this narrative, don't they?
8:36
I mean, I know I've got one at Jim Hanson, I think.
8:38
Doesn't he date his conversion to reading Tom Bliss's book
8:42
Prescription for the Planet? I mean, you spoke to Tom Bliss,
8:44
right? What did you think of him?
8:46
He was was an interesting character, like like many of the
8:50
characters in this book. And he basically was trying to
8:55
write a novel about a fictional obviously president, this guy
9:00
who sort of ends up becoming president.
9:03
And he wanted to write something about his energy policy and he
9:07
heard something on the radio about a nuclear reactor that
9:11
could consume waste. And he started looking into it.
9:16
And it turned out that it was this project that was developed
9:22
at Idaho National Lab and and argon and the integral fast
9:27
reactor, which has become this sort of mythical project among
9:31
pro nuclear people to some extent.
9:33
But anyway, he basically became convinced that this was the
9:38
project was killed by the Clinton administration and
9:40
Democrats in 1994. And Tom Bleese basically became
9:45
convinced that it could have been this panacea.
9:47
I mean, just to this is a story that's important to me too,
9:51
because I think Tom reading Tom Bleese's book was my initial
9:54
conversion story as well. And you know, he he he and I
9:57
spoke a lot about the integral fast reactor and I think it was
10:00
Gee, Hitachi. We had had a modernized version
10:02
that they were trying to sell. But you know what, what really
10:04
blew my mind was that there, if you, if you look at the, if you
10:09
look at how fast reactors work, there's no inherent limit to the
10:12
amount of energy you can produce essentially.
10:14
And in fact, I reran the figures for, for the UK yesterday just
10:18
just for something else. And so if you look at all of the
10:21
spent fuel that we've got stacked up, I think it's about
10:24
20,000 tons or something. But if you, if you think of the
10:28
energy that's there, if you run into a fast reactor cycle, we
10:31
could run the whole of the UK at current electricity consumption
10:34
rates for about 2 1/2 thousand years.
10:36
So the idea that there's like this fundamental limitation of
10:39
energy and we all have to sort of reduce, uh, reduce what we
10:42
consume. And, and you know, it's a, it's
10:44
a completely different paradigm to what, uh, to what
10:47
environmentalism started with. And it just kind of blew my
10:49
mind. And I think the same happened to
10:52
pretty much whether or not the reactors are sort of a sort of
10:56
economically, you know, realistic prospect.
10:58
Isn't, isn't, isn't it really it's just about the fundamental
11:01
physics. I just didn't know that.
11:03
And Tom is this, I think, very curious person.
11:06
And he had dropped out of College in 1971 and just started
11:10
traveling and all over the world and hitchhiking and riding
11:15
freight trains and sky hitching, which is something he told me
11:21
about that I had had not previously heard about.
11:23
I'm not sure if anyone else has ever managed to do it.
11:26
But when he would just show up at airports where private planes
11:31
were taking off and just sort of asked if he could tag along and
11:35
they would often say yes. And so he would just, you know,
11:39
hitch a ride on a on a private plane and eventually he ended up
11:42
working in Alaska for several months a year, fishing and then
11:48
making enough money that he could spend the rest of the year
11:51
just traveling with his family. So, you know, kind of
11:54
unconventional guy and and became, I think just really
11:58
obsessed with when he learned about this reactor and what it
12:02
could do, which, as you're suggesting, sounded almost
12:05
certain magical. He wrote a book after he setting
12:08
aside the novel. He he wrote this book
12:12
prescription for the planet that and that I think almost no one
12:15
has heard of. It was self published, but it
12:17
was actually incredibly influential sort of behind the
12:21
scenes because it did end up having a big impact on James
12:25
Hansen. Tom emailed Hanson just before
12:28
it was about to come out. And he said, you're always
12:30
talking about climate change and how terrible it is, but you
12:33
never say what we should do about it.
12:36
And kind of amazingly, Hanson replied.
12:39
And he was like, OK, send me your book.
12:41
And he did and thought he'd never heard hear from him again.
12:46
But a few weeks later, according to Tom, James Hansen calls him
12:50
on the phone. And he's really excited that
12:52
he's he's learned about, he's read his book and learned about
12:56
this reactor. So I did manage to have an
13:00
e-mail correspondence with Hanson and he remembered it a
13:03
little bit differently. I'm not sure he would say that
13:07
he would give Tom Blees all the credit.
13:09
But he said his interest in nuclear had grown gradually over
13:12
time. And he had been increasingly
13:15
pessimistic that renewables, at least at that time, you know,
13:18
could, could meet the demands. And he was talking to people
13:22
from utilities. So when he read this book, it
13:25
was kind of like, wow, this this could really be the answer when
13:29
he learned about this new kind of reactor.
13:31
So he plugged the book repeatedly on Charlie Rose in it
13:36
in his his own book and to his e-mail list.
13:39
So, yeah, I think the fact just that it had such a big influence
13:43
on Hansen, who in turn had a huge influence on a lot of other
13:47
people, including me, shows, you know, the the impact that Tom
13:52
Blees has had. Yeah, I mean, I, I remember, I,
13:54
I think, I think my conversion was like in 2000 and seven,
13:57
2006, I can't remember the exact time, but I was, I was writing
14:01
columns for the for the New Statesman in the UK.
14:05
And I'd just been at an energy conference and there was a lady
14:10
from the nuclear industry actually, and she mentioned that
14:12
at the time that 20% of of the UK's power was produced without
14:18
carbon emissions from nuclear. And actually, actually, I had no
14:21
idea. It's so embarrassing that I just
14:23
didn't know this, but I was just like, Oh, well, why would you
14:27
want to that down? If climate change is your top
14:30
priority, maybe why not even build more of it?
14:32
So I kind of hazarded a few thoughts and my next column
14:36
about this and got huge pushback.
14:38
People are emailing me from, you know, activist friends of mine
14:42
who, you know, I've been up trees with like stopping Rd.
14:45
projects and stuff like that. And so I realized straight away
14:48
how I mean, as if I shouldn't, I should have known how kind of
14:51
tribal this was and how deep seated people's opinions are on
14:54
this. And so like energy tribalism is
14:56
a, is a kind of recurring theme, isn't it, when you talk to, you
14:58
know, in your book as well. I think for people who, and I
15:03
think it is certainly generational to some extent and
15:07
for people who grew up thinking that, you know, with these very
15:11
strong associations with weapons and with atmospheric weapons
15:14
testing and the fear of accidents, I think it is really
15:18
hard to see it any other way other than just very dangerous
15:23
and dirty. And yeah, I think there was kind
15:25
of a new tribalism that not entirely knew there was a lot of
15:29
strong pro nuclear sentiment in the post war era too.
15:33
But but this more recent iteration of of the pro nuclear
15:37
movement can also be tribal. And you sort of come across the
15:41
same, the same beliefs, the same lingo, the same studies that are
15:47
referenced when you, when you talk to people in that world.
15:49
Although it is also there are sort of different factions
15:54
within within the pro nuclear movement too which which you may
15:58
know about. Well, describe, describe these
16:00
factions. There are a couple of different
16:02
lines, like there are the people who are really into advanced
16:07
reactors and even like thorium. They think thorium is going to
16:10
be the answer. And then there are others who
16:15
actually think that. And this is like Michael
16:17
Shellenberger and and also, you know, mothers for nuclear who
16:22
really want to defend the existing fleet.
16:24
And and they think that if we get too excited about these
16:28
advanced reactors that don't exist yet, it's kind of
16:30
tarnishing the reputation of the existing fleet, which they think
16:33
is great. So that's one kind of dividing
16:35
line. Also, I think there are some who
16:38
are really strongly prone nuclear like and and really kind
16:43
of anti renewable, whereas there are other groups like this group
16:47
good energy collective that I see as more, I mean, they
16:51
they're explicitly trying to kind of build alliances with,
16:54
with others on the left and with with the environmental movement.
16:57
And so they see, I don't, I don't think they see nuclear as
17:03
a panacea. They see it as as one of a
17:06
number of viable options that can all work together.
17:09
And their tone is somewhat different.
17:11
And there's also the climate, the attitude towards climate
17:16
change. And I thought of you because I
17:19
know you were an author of the Eco Modernist manifesto, but I
17:24
know you also are more like me, I think more alarmed about
17:29
climate change than some of the other eco modernists who frame
17:35
it a little bit differently. So I think that's another
17:39
divide. Like there are probably there
17:40
are different grounds for the different views, but but like
17:42
part of it is just a different way of looking at it.
17:45
And I mean, of course, you can correct me about my
17:49
characterization of, of your views.
17:50
But I know, like some of I think your most recent book, I know
17:54
you've written, you've written more than one book about, you
17:57
know, what we can expect if temperatures continue to rise
18:01
and, and how terrifying it is. Whereas some of the other eco
18:05
modernists really push back against what what they see as
18:09
climate alarmism or catastrophism, like Ted Nordhaus
18:12
has written a fair and and others at the Breakthrough
18:14
Institute have have written a fair amount about that lately.
18:18
Yeah. I mean, I, I talked with Ted
18:20
about this and we don't see eye to eye.
18:22
I think he's a bit more lukewarmest, I think that's the
18:25
term than I am. I mean, I do accept that.
18:28
And this is different from most conventional environmental
18:31
framing that fossil fuels aren't just bad and evil, right?
18:34
It's like, you know, people can compare them with slavery and
18:37
they say we're addicted to them and we just have to get off
18:39
fossil fuels straight away. And of course, fossil fuels are
18:42
the, you know, energetic basis of the entirety of modern
18:45
civilization. They're still comprised of like
18:47
80% of primary engine that's barely shifted, shifted about 5
18:50
or 10% in like the last several decades.
18:53
So you can't just get a fossil fuels unless you want to kill
18:56
billions of people and we want to, you know, totally transform
19:00
our societies in a very, very negative way.
19:02
So I accept all of that. But at the same time, I do think
19:05
that the impacts of climate change as we're currently seeing
19:08
are increasingly catastrophic and very worrying indeed,
19:11
particularly in the in the planet's ecology.
19:13
I mean, I spend a lot of time looking at coral reefs.
19:16
Was at a conference in the Maldives, the hardship posting
19:19
of course, in in January. And you know, the corals there
19:22
have just emerged from their fifth major bleaching event
19:25
across all of the Indian Ocean, in fact, all of the global
19:28
oceans. So this is a Biome which has
19:30
been pushed, you know, towards extinction and, and that's, you
19:35
know, 1.5 to 2° of warming and we're going to be a lot higher
19:39
than that even at the most optimistic projections for the
19:43
clean energy transition. So for me, that's why I'm pro
19:46
nuclear. It doesn't make that much sense
19:48
to be pro nuclear and not too worried about climate change
19:51
other than just to troll the greens or because you like
19:53
reactors or something like that. So the kind of climate Hawk Pro
19:57
nuclear thing is sort of fundamental to me, and that was
19:59
why I changed my mind to start with.
20:01
Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, I mean, that's why I got
20:04
interested in it. And I was a little confused at
20:07
first when I realized that some of the same people who were
20:12
promoting nuclear were sort of climate, I don't know if they
20:17
were climate skeptics, but advancing, I guess a more what
20:21
they would see as a more moderate view.
20:22
But I think there is, as I say in the book, I, I came to
20:27
understand get a little better eventually.
20:29
Like there is some coherence to the position.
20:31
Like, I mean, they think that climate alarmism is kind of
20:36
analogous or similar to, to nuclear, like to overstated
20:41
fears of nuclear and that it all goes back to sort of this
20:46
misguided notion that that nature is something sacred not
20:51
to be tampered with. And so I, I kind of came to
20:54
understand it better, but I still, I'm still very alarmed
20:59
about climate change. And I think we can see, you
21:02
know, the the damage that's already occurring and, and I
21:05
wouldn't, you know, downplay that.
21:07
Yeah, I mean, I'm quite happy to see nature as sacra as well,
21:10
actually. I don't think we should mine in
21:12
Antarctica. I think we should protect the
21:14
high seas from exploitation. I don't think that all of the
21:17
natural world should be exploited for human, human
21:20
benefits. I'm probe rewilding and I want
21:22
to see a return of, of the wilderness and, and the, you
21:26
know, the naturally flourishing planet with more, more, you
21:32
know, effective ecosystems and biodiversity and all of that.
21:37
For me, that's fundamental actually.
21:39
So it's yeah. So it's and I but I don't see
21:42
nuclear fission as somehow the opposite of that either.
21:45
Like, you know, there's been, as I think you mentioned in the
21:48
book, there's been a natural nuclear reactor.
21:51
Wasn't there a couple of billion years ago in in West Africa just
21:53
because there was a lot of uranium 235 in the rocks?
21:56
So, yeah, So this idea that it's somehow completely unnatural
22:00
playing, tampering with nature, playing God, all those kinds of
22:03
things, which also behind the fears of GMOs.
22:05
Actually, I think maybe that's ebbed away.
22:08
And you talk about this in your book a bit in terms of how the
22:10
how opinions changed on this issue.
22:12
Is that what you saw as well? Yeah, I think definitely climate
22:16
has been part of it. My my book is pretty US focused,
22:20
so I can mainly speak about that.
22:22
But historically, Republicans, conservatives didn't really have
22:27
a problem with nuclear. They weren't necessarily, you
22:30
know, passionately pro nuclear, but they didn't have a problem
22:32
with it. It was the counterculture, the
22:35
new left that turned very strongly against nuclear.
22:38
So in recent years, though, it's been the left or, you know,
22:44
Democrats, liberals that have become increasingly open to
22:48
nuclear because of climate concerns and because of learning
22:51
that that it's, you know, low carbon and could play a role.
22:55
So I think there's that. I think there's also just that
22:58
it's not new anymore. I think it was really shocking
23:03
to people, especially because of, you know, the way most
23:06
people first learned about atomic science was after the
23:09
bombs fell in Japan. And just learning about, you
23:14
know, this phenomenon that did sounds very unnatural or very
23:20
new anyway. And, you know, actually
23:23
splitting atoms apart. I think it was disturbing to
23:26
people. And I think what always happens,
23:29
though, is that now it's, you know, there's so much else
23:32
that's newer. And, you know, the new
23:34
technologies may be disturbing in the same way, but nuclear
23:38
power is not. It's lost to that, that
23:41
strangeness, and I think that's actually a big part of it.
23:45
Yeah. So did you find yourself
23:47
changing your mind when you were talking to these people?
23:49
I mean, some of them are pretty persuasive.
23:51
I know this from from personal experience.
23:54
And they they believe in their 'cause as passionately as anyone
23:58
believes in any cause. So did they?
23:59
Did they change your mind? You mean pro nuclear people?
24:02
Yeah, yeah, Pro nuclear people. I know you spent you talk a bit
24:05
about anti nuclear people as well, but the pro nuclear is
24:07
sort of the centerpiece. So yeah.
24:09
Did they? Did they change your mind?
24:11
Well, I think by the time I started researching it, I was
24:15
pretty open to it. And yeah, I mean, at times I
24:21
would say my views evolved and kind of fluctuated.
24:24
And at times, you know, I was talking to a bunch of pro
24:31
nuclear people, reading a lot of pro nuclear literature and I was
24:36
pretty on board. Then I also, you know, talk to
24:39
anti nuclear people. And I guess in the end my views
24:44
were sort of somewhere in between or.
24:47
Well, let me let me cut in there and just ask you what anti
24:50
nuclear arguments did you find most persuasive that we should
24:53
take that we should take most seriously?
24:54
Because as a pro nuclear, I'm always dismissing them and
24:57
saying how stupid and wrong they are.
24:59
But tell me what the anti nuclear peoples have said which
25:02
which you think? OK, that's actually a really
25:04
serious point. I mean, I think one obvious one
25:07
is, is that it's really expensive to build.
25:10
That's undeniable. Then there are the arguments
25:13
that like if you, if you take into if you take the whole
25:16
picture into account, it's actually cheaper to have have
25:20
clean firm power to balance renewables.
25:23
But what's most persuasive to me is not economics because I just
25:27
don't tend to know as much about that or think as much about
25:30
that, but but just the still the scary aspect of it.
25:35
And I think I talked to a bunch of I know what pronuclear people
25:41
say about radiation and that like linear no thresholds is
25:46
totally off base probably need. To you probably need to explain
25:48
what that. Is the idea that radiation, any
25:53
amount of radiation can be harmful or is harmful?
25:57
There's no threshold below which exposure is benign.
26:01
And that is that sort of a major tenet of radiation science going
26:08
back to to post war era or maybe maybe earlier.
26:12
But then I would talk to, I don't know.
26:15
I would talk to actual radiation scientists.
26:18
Oh, there there's also a theory called hormesis that low levels
26:22
of radiation can can actually be beneficial.
26:25
It's it's there in like in some Hot Springs, isn't it?
26:27
They're a bit radioactive and people feel they get a health
26:30
effect from a health benefit from it.
26:32
Right. Yeah, yeah, that, that is
26:33
probably true. When I talked to, and that's
26:36
been advanced by this guy Edward Calabrese at UMass Amherst.
26:42
But he's his background is not in radiation science.
26:45
And I talked to, I was totally open to all of these theories.
26:49
But then when I talked to radiation experts, it seemed to
26:53
me that it was actually still very contentious and it was
26:57
there's still a fair amount that we don't know for sure,
26:59
especially about low level exposures.
27:02
So I guess, I mean, I think I was basically convinced.
27:06
I was convinced that nuclear should be on the table, that it
27:09
should be part of the solution. But I still think these other
27:13
energy sources have a lot of advantages as well.
27:16
Or nuclear does have, does have problems, does have, you know,
27:20
significant challenges that can sometimes be downplayed in pro
27:24
nuclear circles. Yeah, yeah.
27:25
I mean, obviously I've spent a lot of time blowing up nuclear
27:29
power stations, having been to Chernobyl, doing a film Channel
27:33
4 like back a long time ago and well, then afterwards going with
27:38
Robert Stone filming Pandora's Promise to to Fukushima.
27:42
And that's I think Robert Stone's a fairly significant
27:45
character. And you do talk about Pandora's
27:47
Promise and some of the characters in that, including,
27:50
well, obviously Michael Schoenberger and Stuart Brown
27:52
too. Tell us how you know what was
27:56
going on there. Was it a big deal or was it just
27:58
Turkey? No, that's one thing I learned
28:01
in my reporting, that it was a bigger deal than I had realized
28:04
when I was reporting The New Yorker article.
28:06
I learned about Pandora's Promise.
28:08
I hadn't seen it when it came out in, I think, 2013.
28:11
So I learned about it and my the characters, Heather Hoff and
28:17
Kristen Zates, the Mothers for Nuclear, they had seen it when
28:20
it come came out and it was influential for them because it
28:23
kind of validated what they had already started to think when
28:27
they were working at Diablo Canyon and and starting to think
28:30
that maybe it actually their jobs coincided with aligned with
28:35
their environmentalist values. So I think seeing Pandora's
28:39
promise was a big deal for them. And you told me that it was sort
28:43
of significant in that you spent time with these other advocates
28:47
promoting the movie. And so I think, you know, that
28:50
kind of community started to coalesce.
28:53
Yeah, we all went to the Sundance Film Festival, got
28:56
drunk loads, had an absolute blast.
28:58
Yeah. But what Ted Nordhaus told me
29:01
that was really interesting was that it was also really pivotal
29:06
in other ways, like especially in terms of funding, because
29:09
with Pandora's Promise, you know, Robert Stone, he's the
29:12
director, he had to raise money for the movie.
29:15
So through the process of doing that, he got some mainly like
29:20
Silicon Valley donors, the Pritzker family, Rachel and
29:25
Roland Pritzker, they're sort of left-leaning philanthropists.
29:29
They also put some money up for the film.
29:31
And and then as part of that sort of deal, they, I don't know
29:37
if deal is the right word, but you know, along with putting up
29:40
money for the film, some of these funders also donated to
29:46
the Breakthrough Institute specifically for a report on, I
29:50
think it was called how to Make Nuclear Cheap.
29:52
So just by having this film, that was it was it was kind of
29:59
like a rallying point, a way to get people's attention get but
30:04
also get people's people to start donating money behind the
30:08
scenes. So it was important in that way.
30:10
Yeah. Another thing about Pandora's
30:12
promise that may have been pivotal is, and I need to choose
30:16
my words carefully here, but the way that it persuaded Michael
30:20
that he was going to be a very important person in some way or
30:25
other. I don't want him to sue me, but
30:27
so I'm not going to say he turned more narcissistic or
30:30
something, but certainly he enjoyed the limelight.
30:32
Is this something you saw as well?
30:34
Well, yeah, that's what I heard from from Ted and and from Alex
30:39
Trembath, who is now deputy Director of the Breakthrough
30:43
Institute. And she told me that because
30:47
there was a split at the Breakthrough Institute, I should
30:49
probably go back and explain that.
30:51
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, after they wrote
30:53
this kind of explosive essay that got lots of attention, the
30:57
death of environmentalism, they founded a think tank called the
31:01
Breakthrough Institute that has been really central in this
31:04
whole crude nuclear movement. And they had a falling out, I
31:08
guess, in 2015, I think it was. And I was asking Alex Trembath
31:15
and you know, he, he came to the Breakthrough Institute as a very
31:18
young man, right right after college at Berkeley.
31:22
And he was also someone who had been more of a traditional
31:26
environmentalist and was kind of gradually convinced by the
31:32
different approach of the Breakthrough Institute.
31:34
And he, he had a lot of very kind things to say about, about
31:39
Michael actually, that he saw him as a really great mentor who
31:44
was, you know, generous with his time and, and great to work with
31:48
and, you know, brilliant. But I'm paraphrasing all of
31:52
this, but but he did say that he dated the tension between
31:58
Michael and Ted back to Pandora's Promise because he
32:02
thought Michael, you know, with with the attention of being sort
32:07
of a movie star and that he started to focus more on his
32:11
personal brands at that time. And that made things difficult,
32:15
you know, working together at the Breakthrough Institute.
32:17
Yeah, I mean, Michael's almost like our kind of fallen Angel.
32:21
I've never met anyone who was as charismatic or as, in effect, as
32:25
effective an organizer as he was for that, for our issues.
32:29
And yet he's gone in a very strange direction.
32:33
He's now more or less a kind of full MAGA supporter, as far as I
32:37
can tell from the odd bits that pop up on social media.
32:40
And you have this strange kind of final chat with him in the
32:43
book where you're both recording each other surreptitiously, I
32:46
think. So there's obviously not much
32:47
trust there by that stage. Like what?
32:49
What was happening then? I mean, I just went to interview
32:52
him and at a certain point in the interview, I mean I asked if
32:56
I could record as I as I always do and he asked if we could chat
33:01
on background first. I said sure.
33:03
Then after a few minutes of talking on backgrounds, I did
33:07
start recording. About halfway through the
33:09
interview, he got a notification on his phone.
33:12
And before it went black again, I saw this sort of familiar blue
33:19
color. And I had been using this
33:22
recording app a lot because I've been doing a lot of interviews
33:24
and I and it was the same blue as my recording app.
33:28
So I just asked, oh, are you recording this too?
33:32
He was and he, I think I can only assume, been recording the
33:36
whole time, even when we were, you know, before I had started
33:40
recording. And to be fair, you know, I
33:42
understand wanting to record your conversations with a
33:46
journalist. There are good reasons to want
33:48
to do that. As he said later, you know, that
33:51
he should have told me. So it was a bit jarring.
33:54
It's actually one of my sort of fears in life is to be
33:57
servediciously recorded. So I mean, just to finish up on
34:00
this, what, what do you think where he's ended up now?
34:03
I haven't been following it that closely, but, yeah, as, as far
34:07
as I understand, he's become a Trump supporter and I think it's
34:11
interesting. And, and he's sort of, I also am
34:15
trying to choose my words carefully.
34:17
You can tell. But you know that I, I mean, I
34:21
say in the book like, like, I mean, I think he's touted what
34:25
can be characterized as conspiracy theories.
34:28
I also think, I think he became, he purported to become a free
34:33
speech advocate. And as I said, I haven't been
34:36
following that closely like he was, he was really fighting
34:39
against disinformation. He was fighting against the
34:42
people who were fighting misinformation because he
34:45
thought it was not. Quite the same thing.
34:47
Well, moving on to one or two of the other characters, there's
34:51
Stewart Brand who was pretty significant for me.
34:53
His book holder Discipline, which I think was 2011, was a
34:57
real. 2009. Oh gosh, was it?
35:00
Oh, gosh, right. Thanks for the correction.
35:02
No, so that, but that was a real bombshell.
35:04
I mean, he's, he's, he's been a really critical person, hasn't
35:07
he? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
35:09
Yeah. And, and just to sort of as a
35:11
segue between maybe Shellenberger and Stewart Brand,
35:15
I don't know, I think there is something, I mean, I asked you
35:18
once, what do you think it is that characterizes pro nuclear
35:24
advocates or, you know, people who are willing, especially
35:27
early pro nuclear advocates were willing to take this very
35:31
unpopular stance. And you said, you know, you
35:33
don't like consensus. And I think there is this sort
35:37
of continuum. You have to be willing to
35:40
question conventional wisdom and that's really important.
35:43
But but then there can also be like, you can take that too far.
35:48
It can become because it's conventional wisdom, you know,
35:52
you have to defy it. Sometimes conventional wisdom is
35:56
actually correct. So there's there's that.
35:58
Well. Particularly if it's
35:59
particularly if it's scientific conventional wisdom.
36:01
Yeah, I think that's that's the difference really is rather than
36:04
sort of political movements, which may have things entirely
36:08
wrong. I mean, this is this is pertains
36:09
to the theme of the podcast of, you know, saving the world from
36:12
bad ideas. The bad ideas if they're not
36:15
science based, they can still be universally held.
36:17
But so for me, that's the kind of lodestar is what what does
36:20
the, what's the majority scientific opinion on something
36:23
on nuclear or on GMOs or indeed on climate change, which is why
36:26
I'm in the kind of climate alarmist camp, because I think
36:29
that's where that's really where the majority of science is too.
36:32
So I think that's true for a lot of the pro nuclear advocates.
36:37
It was both recognizing what they saw as an under appreciated
36:42
scientific consensus, also being willing to go against the more
36:48
cultural conventional wisdom. But yeah, so Stewart Brand, he
36:55
for those who don't know if he, I mean, he was a 60s icon, He
36:58
founded this publication called the Whole Earth Catalog that was
37:03
catering to all of these communes, to these these
37:07
youngsters who were going back to the land in the 60s.
37:10
And he also was an early figure in, in kind of the Internet,
37:15
like and promoting the Internet and, and seeing it as this kind
37:19
of liberating phenomenon. So in 2009, yeah, he he wrote
37:24
this book Whole Earth Discipline that kind of reconsidered some
37:29
of his earlier work, like the Whole Earth Catalog and all of
37:37
the back to the land stuff was kind of about like personal
37:40
liberation and having, you know, maybe having a solar panel under
37:45
commune so you could generate your own energy and be
37:48
independent and, you know, be independent from consumer
37:51
society. And but motivated largely by
37:55
climate, he started to reconsider nuclear and sort of
38:01
this bigger philosophical reconsideration.
38:04
I think like maybe what's natural isn't necessarily good.
38:10
So, you know, back in the 60s, living on the land and small
38:17
distributed energy was seen as more harmonious with nature.
38:22
And he was starting to think that maybe he was also
38:26
reconsidering GM OS, which he had, I think, previously
38:29
opposed. And he was thinking that, you
38:33
know, the these approaches that seem to sort of violate nature
38:37
could actually be the tools we needed to save the planet.
38:41
Yeah. And then there's newer people
38:43
come in that tell us the story of Isabel, otherwise known as
38:46
Isotope. She grew up in Brazil in I
38:50
guess, I think she's, she's probably in her 30s now.
38:54
So her name, her name's Isabel Beaumeke.
38:56
And she was growing up in Brazil and she was she was leaving her
39:02
high school one day and was stopped by someone asking her if
39:07
she was a model because she was very beautiful.
39:10
And she said no. But it turned out there was a
39:14
contest happening the next day that she entered.
39:17
And she won this modeling contest and ended up leaving
39:20
Brazil and coming to the US. So she was also interested in
39:26
science and she she followed some scientists on Twitter and
39:31
started hearing a bit about nuclear there.
39:34
And again, because of climate, climate concerns, started to
39:38
think maybe this could be important.
39:40
So she ended up becoming what she called a nuclear influencer.
39:45
And she would make these kind of snappy videos where she would
39:49
start off with like a makeup tutorial and then pivot to a
39:53
lesson about about the virtues of nuclear.
39:56
She's also and she was so I think when she kind of arrived
40:02
on the scene and arrived on Twitter in about 2020, the rest
40:06
of the pro nuclear community with was like pretty excited
40:11
about that. Like she was very glamorous and
40:14
sort of had this, had this celebrity aspect that no one
40:19
else really had, so. Yeah, she, she also did some, I
40:24
mean, she's, she's very wealthy. She's married or not married,
40:27
but I think her, her partner is a founder of Airbnb.
40:31
And so yeah, I mean, she, she had lots of connections and was
40:37
able to, I think be pretty influential.
40:40
She was focusing in particular around Diablo Canyon and managed
40:44
to be pretty influential in that.
40:46
Right. Even with so with Grimes, right?
40:49
And then even Elon Musk, who in those days was still a good guy,
40:52
right? Right.
40:54
It's so funny how quickly, like, my book isn't even out yet, and
40:58
I feel like parts of it feel dated because so much has
41:02
changed so quickly. And part of it is, yes, I
41:05
mentioned at one point that she was friends with Elon Musk,
41:09
which is going to read really differently now than than it did
41:13
when I wrote it. Well, I mean, he's been on the
41:15
journey as well. I guess there's going to be
41:19
books written about what Elon Musk has done, too.
41:23
I'm sure you could advance some theories.
41:25
Yeah. And he also became pro nuclear
41:28
over time. Yeah.
41:29
Well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think we want him
41:32
on our side in a very way right now.
41:34
But there perhaps a part of the story that's left out is the
41:38
international dimension. I mean, we plan it, which who's
41:42
hosting this podcast? You know, we we have well, we
41:45
were sort of founded by pro nuclear groups and everywhere
41:48
from France to Poland to Finland, Sweden, there were
41:51
often eco modernist groups, but you know, being pro nuclear was
41:54
part of their, you know, founding DNA, if you like.
41:57
And that's just Europe. I mean, there's been a lot going
41:59
on elsewhere from Taiwan, Japan. So tell us what you what you
42:04
understanding is of kind of the international dimension of pro
42:07
nuclear activism. Yeah, I didn't, as you said, I
42:10
didn't really focus on that. I didn't know about Replanted
42:13
and was very intrigued by your group and I thought I would be
42:17
able to fit it in. One thing I learned writing a
42:19
book, like when I started, I thought, oh, I'll just be able
42:23
to fit everything in because it's a book.
42:24
But it turns out that that's not the case.
42:27
So unfortunately I had to leave that out.
42:30
But yeah, I think I know that Mothers for nuclear, they have
42:35
very small, I think chapters in different countries and
42:38
connections throughout the world.
42:39
Well, there's the stand up for nuclear.
42:41
I think that's perhaps more in Europe as well.
42:43
Yeah. And I think stand up for nuclear
42:46
was, I mean, I think it was originally part of Michael
42:50
Schellenberger's group Environmental Progress and.
42:54
Mike Wallaban, I have to ask our podcast producer Rob, who's
42:58
muted so as unable to contribute, but he was involved
43:01
in Belgium as well. So, yeah, a lot of us, a lot of
43:06
us have have have some fairly deep, deep roots in this, in
43:09
this movement. So a woman, a young woman in
43:12
Paris, Ortiz Wines, who was an employee at Environmental
43:17
Progress, she left and and continued that project and, and
43:21
I think she still runs that project as far as I know.
43:25
Right. But to the extent that there's
43:27
been a nuclear renaissance, it's not been in the USI mean, you
43:31
might have saved one, I mean you personally, but the movement
43:34
might have helped save some nuclear stations from being shut
43:38
down prematurely. But where there's been new
43:40
builds, there's been one or two in Europe which have been very
43:43
over over budget and have taken a long time.
43:46
But China's probably where the center of action is the Middle
43:49
East. I mean other places, which I
43:51
mean to what extent does kind of political pro nuclear activism
43:55
come into that equation? That's a good question.
43:59
I don't really know. I would be surprised if that's a
44:02
major factor in China, for example.
44:05
It has a lot more to do with just the nature of the
44:09
government. The government in China, if it
44:11
wants to build nuclear plants, it'll just build nuclear plants.
44:14
It's a lot harder in the US because for a lot of reasons and
44:19
including, you know, our whole regulatory structure.
44:22
So yeah, you're right. I mean, but there's been,
44:26
there's been a lot going on in the US in recent years.
44:30
It just hasn't quite yet resulted in any new plants
44:33
actually running. But I mean, there's been a ton
44:37
happening that I think people hope will lead to that.
44:40
But I mean, there are, you know, dozens of startups, there has
44:45
been this whole series of bipartisan legislation by of
44:50
laws that passed over starting during Obama's administration,
44:55
or at least Obama took a really important executive action.
44:58
And then I think the laws mainly passed after his tenure.
45:02
But But yeah, just a really strong bipartisan consensus at
45:06
the level of of elected officials.
45:08
I want to dig into that a bit more because it's it's like it's
45:11
almost like nucleus, you know, say saving grace is that
45:15
everyone should be able to agree on it.
45:17
I mean, it's it's the only climate technology that
45:19
Republicans still support, right?
45:21
They say you mask from everyone's pro nuclear the
45:23
Democrats to why can't I mean is this beginning to translate to
45:27
serious action now? I think you could argue that.
45:32
So it's it's not really it's just been taking a long time to
45:36
actually get plants up and running.
45:39
And I think you could argue about whether that's inherent to
45:43
nuclear power or whether it's because of regulatory hurdles.
45:48
I think it's probably a bit of both.
45:51
But certainly in terms of, you know, the money going into it
45:54
and the political support. And I visited Idaho National Lab
45:58
where there's just a lot of a lot of research going on, but
46:02
not only that, they're directly working with a lot of these
46:06
startups now. So yeah, I think people hope
46:11
that in the next few years, or at least where are we 20, at
46:14
least by 20-30, you know, that we'll start to see.
46:18
And and of course the hope is that once you get first of a
46:21
kind plants built, then after that it will become a lot
46:25
quicker. But I think it still remains to
46:28
be seen. Well, I mean, it hasn't been
46:30
sucked into the culture wars, unlike renewables and even EVs
46:34
to some extent. And I think it's just, you know,
46:38
people on the right have always been in favor of big projects,
46:41
you know, hard science, don't worry too much about mining and,
46:45
you know, environmental impacts and so on.
46:46
And that's the side of the argument.
46:47
The nuclear has always been on. And now suddenly you get people,
46:50
well, like me and you know, you and many people listening and
46:53
people involved we planet who have, I suppose historically
46:57
emerged more from the liberal left who are also like, yeah, we
47:00
we need nuclear because we because we care about climate
47:03
change. And so there's this weird kind
47:05
of convergence. And I mean is that, is that your
47:07
reading of the politics of this too, or is it a bit different?
47:11
Yeah, absolutely. And one other dimension is in
47:16
the US, we hear a lot lately about how Republicans have lost
47:21
trust completely and institutions and expertise and
47:26
liberals, Democrats have gained it, you know, dating back to the
47:31
60s and 70s, it was the left that had no, no trust, no faith
47:36
in institutions. And but now especially, I mean,
47:40
I think COVID is the best example of this.
47:42
It was the opposite. It was it was liberals who were
47:46
deferring to the experts and institutions like The Who.
47:51
And it was Republicans who just had hated them and didn't trust
47:55
them at all. So I think that's a really
47:58
important factor in why liberals have become more open to
48:02
nuclear. And yeah, I've, I've thought
48:03
about how in the US the dynamic is so often if liberals like it,
48:09
then conservatives hate it. And that hasn't has not happened
48:13
yet. I don't see any signs that it's
48:15
going to happen. I don't.
48:17
I mean, maybe if progressives start to get like really
48:22
unanimously vocally pro nuclear, maybe, maybe something like.
48:26
That I mean it's really interesting with RFK Junior that
48:31
the, the health, you know, healthy eating, organic farming,
48:34
pesticides, GMOs, even these have now become right wing
48:38
opposition and they very much as on the left.
48:40
So it it might crossover, I don't know.
48:43
Yeah, it's fascinating. Everything is just very
48:45
scrambled right now. And, and I think the the left is
48:50
of course losing trust in institutions now partly, I mean
48:55
mostly because of who has taken over institutions and there's
49:00
good reason to lose trust in those institutions.
49:03
So yeah, I just, it's hard to say.
49:05
Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't trust RFK junior to run the
49:08
nation's vaccine policy. I mean, you guys have fully paid
49:11
up anti vaxxers. So but that was sort of the
49:12
point that Trump's trolling the entire machinery of government.
49:15
And yes, you say it just scrambles everything.
49:19
You you bookend the the book with the story, the narrative
49:24
with Diablo Canyon. So this sort of iconic nuclear
49:27
power station on the West Coast of California, which is about to
49:32
be shut down. And that's where you start.
49:34
Then the pro nuclear gets involved.
49:35
Sorry, the pro nuclear movement then gets involved and the
49:39
political dynamics change somewhat.
49:41
And also interestingly, you involve the, the Native American
49:44
perspective on this too. They want the land back.
49:46
And there's a tribe that you talk to.
49:48
So what? Just before we finish, what was
49:50
their what was their take on the nuclear issue?
49:52
Yeah, it was. It was interesting because I
49:54
don't know if you know, but at least in the US, Native
49:57
Americans, well, they've had a lot of bad experiences with
50:02
nuclear and. Which you've any mining on that?
50:07
Which was carried out in a very irresponsible way and, and they
50:10
were exposed kind of unnecessarily to a lot of a lot
50:14
of toxins and suffered cancer as a result.
50:18
So this tribe, the YTT Northern Chumash tribe in Central
50:22
California, they had an interesting relationship with
50:26
Diablo Canyon because it was on their ancestral land.
50:32
So at first, well, I mainly talked to this one guy, Scott
50:37
Lathrop, who's a tribe member and leader.
50:40
And when he was born and raised in San Luis Obispo, which is
50:46
right near where the plant is located.
50:48
And when it was being built and there was a lot of controversy
50:51
around it. He didn't really have a strong
50:54
opinion, kind of knew it was on his tribe to ancestral land, but
50:58
didn't know that much about it. But a couple of his relatives
51:01
actually worked there and helped to build the plant.
51:03
So it was, you know, providing jobs.
51:06
It was a source of economic development in in the region.
51:10
So he welcomes that. And then basically because of a
51:14
couple of state laws and efforts to make amends to Indigenous
51:20
people, they actually the opportunity sort of arose to
51:25
maybe try to get the land back when the plant closed.
51:29
Long story short, they last, last I've heard, like I think
51:34
they're not really the plans to get the land back have stalls
51:39
and and it's not at all imminent.
51:41
And with politics these days, who knows if and when anything,
51:45
any progress will actually be made.
51:47
But yeah, they, they actually, Scott actually came to be pretty
51:51
strongly pro nuclear and he sees the plant as, you know, a really
51:58
important resource and it's there.
52:00
So he says, you know what I do? I wish, would I have wanted it
52:04
to be built in the 1st place? Maybe not.
52:06
But it's there. And I think we should, you know,
52:10
maximize the use of this resource and even when it's
52:13
retired, build advanced nuclear on the site.
52:16
But they also want the rest of the land there.
52:20
There's Diablo Canyon is located on the coast in this, in this
52:23
gorgeous area. And I'm trying to remember the
52:28
the exact size of it, but it's I think like 17 miles of
52:32
coastland. So and it's been untouched
52:37
essentially because PG&E bought all of it.
52:40
That's the utility company. Right, Yeah, The utility bought
52:43
all this land and they developed a small part of it where where
52:47
they built the nuclear plant. But the rest of the land is
52:51
still pretty pristine. And so the tribe wants to get
52:55
the land back and conserve it. And they they're working with a
52:59
couple of partners and they would so that that's kind of
53:03
their vision is to get the land back.
53:05
But Scott, at least speaking personally, they'd like to, you
53:08
know, lease the land to PG&E or, you know, to recoup some of this
53:13
value. But what was interesting was
53:16
that they have kind of a nuanced view and they're not anti
53:19
nuclear. So finish the story of Dablo
53:21
Canning. What happened in the end?
53:23
So in the end, well, in 2022, after I guess I didn't really
53:27
tell the whole story about what happened in 20, they were going
53:31
to shut it down. In 2016, they'd reached this
53:35
deal with labor, environmental groups.
53:37
They were going to transition to a California that was all wind
53:41
and solar and water. Then the prudent pronuclear
53:45
groups stepped in to protest. That was not necessarily the
53:49
main reason, but they eventually did reverse that decision.
53:52
The conventional wisdom is that it was largely because of
53:55
reliability issues, because there had been rolling
53:58
blackouts. And so in the in the summer of
54:02
2022, Gavin Newsom, Governor Newsom really pressured the
54:08
legislature to reverse that decision to open the door to
54:12
keeping the plants open for for at least five years longer.
54:15
So I have to admit, I actually, I don't know if there have been
54:19
any very recent developments. I guess I should, I should
54:22
definitely look into this. But I think the current plan is
54:26
when they passed that legislation in 2022, the plan
54:29
was to extend the life from 2025 to 2030.
54:35
So it was, you know, just a five year extension doesn't really
54:40
sound like that big a deal. Maybe.
54:41
But I think it was a symbol and people, activists on both sides
54:48
saw it as a symbol. You know, it was Diablo Canyon,
54:51
this controversial plant that people have been fighting over
54:56
for half a century. And the pro nuclear people saw
55:00
it as if we can keep Diablo Canyon open, then it could sort
55:05
of herald the new nuclear age in California and throughout the
55:09
country and the world. And the anti nuclear people also
55:13
had always seen it as a symbol. And so to them, it was kind of,
55:17
you know, a tragedy that it was. They thought it was going to
55:20
close and then it wasn't going to close.
55:22
So victory to the pro nuclear movement?
55:24
Yeah, the book is called Atomic Dreams.
55:29
Here it is again. And when is it out already?
55:31
Or is it coming out soon? It comes out April 8th, which is
55:34
next week. Oh, OK, well, thanks to your
55:38
publisher for sending me a preview copy of my case, I'm
55:40
sure. Yeah, I'll send you this if you
55:43
like. I am pretty sure there's some
55:46
Nuke Bros out there who'll want to get their, their sweaty hands
55:50
on this. So we'll send a, we'll send a
55:54
text to the WhatsApp group, which I'm on and make sure
55:57
everyone, everyone knows about it.
55:58
But I'm sure listeners to the podcast will also really want to
56:01
have a look. Thanks again for Rebecca for
56:04
coming on the show and for showing everything you've
56:06
learned about this very strange, strange creature of the pro
56:09
nuclear movement with us. It's, it's been fascinating to
56:12
see, to hear about something that one's been a bit involved
56:14
in from the perspective of an outsider and a really a stellar
56:19
journalist like you. So thanks, thanks for all the
56:20
work that you've done and and for coming and sharing your
56:23
experience with us. Thank you, Mark.
56:28
Thanks so much for listening to Saving the World from Bad Ideas,
56:31
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56:33
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