Environment & climate
Nuclear power's second act
11 min
Once left for dead, nuclear energy is being reconsidered as a climate solution even as some countries shut it down. Weigh the honest case for and against — safety, waste, cost, and carbon — behind the whiplash in policy.
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Show notes
Nuclear energy causes ninety-nine percent fewer deaths than coal and ninety-seven percent fewer deaths than gas.
Tech giants like Google and Amazon are now directly funding small modular reactor development and nuclear restarts.
Microsoft and Constellation Energy are restarting Three Mile Island Unit One to power artificial intelligence data centers.
Finland is addressing long-term waste by building the Onkalo repository fifteen hundred feet underground in bedrock.
Solar and wind costs dropped nearly ninety percent in a decade while nuclear projects faced negative learning curves.
Over sixty new reactors are currently under construction as nations pledge to triple nuclear capacity by twenty-fifty.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Great Reversal2 min
- 3The Safety Paradox3 min
- 4The Economic Wall3 min
- 5Waste and the AI Demand Shock3 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
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