Decouple Dr. Chris Keefer

Historian of science Professor Alex Wellerstein joins me to talk about the sword haunting the ploughshare of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
00:00:00 - The Manhattan Project: A Secret Industry | The Birth of the Atomic Bomb

00:02:16 - Why Study Nuclear Weapons? A Historian's Perspective | Alex Wellerstein's Path to Nuclear History

00:04:32 - Nuclear Fear Across Generations | From the Berlin Wall to 9/11

00:08:21 - First Discoveries of Fission: Bomb or Reactor? | Early Thoughts on Nuclear Technology

00:13:19 - The Manhattan Project: A Crash Course in Nuclear Industry | Building an Atomic Bomb in Two Years

00:22:31 - The Infrastructure of the Manhattan Project: From Dinner Table to Industrial Scale | Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Los Alamos

00:32:36 - Was the Manhattan Project Bigger than the Space Race? | Speed, Secrecy, and the Legacy of a Crash Program

00:35:50 - Why Were the Atomic Bombs Dropped? | Exploring the Motives and Justifications

00:43:04 - How Many Bombs Did the US Have in 1945? | Production Rates and the Threat of More Bombs

00:50:52 - US Atomic Hegemony and the Prevention of World War III | Early Cold War Nuclear Diplomacy

00:59:35 - Fear of the Bomb: Radiation and the Psychological Impact | From Hiroshima to Godzilla

01:06:04 - Understanding Nuclear Fallout: Airbursts, Groundbursts, and the Threat of Radiation | Local and Global Fallout Explained

Marcel Boiteux, a shy economist who escaped occupied France to fight the Nazis before working out the theory of electricity pricing for newly-nationalized Electricite de France, rose to become the greatest builder of nuclear power the world has ever seen.

Mark Nelson, founder of Radiant Energy Group, explains what forces shaped his mind, his role in the fateful "War of the Nuclear Systems," how he prepared for the oil crisis that triggered the "all nuclear" Messmer plan, and how he survived an ecoterrorist attack to construct the famous nuclear fleet that now lies underused and underappreciated.

Can France rediscover its greatest engineering hero, who died last year at the age of 101, in time to rescue itself and indeed all of Europe from its energy death spiral?

While the west struggles to deliver nuclear plants and dreams about novel reactor technologies China is deploying it all: large LWR, SMR and MSR/HTGR. World Nuclear Association China lead Francois Morin joins me to catch us up on recent developments and trends.

In the early days of nuclear power uranium was thought to be a critically rare mineral. Nuclear engineers sought to solve this problem with a special type of reactor that produced more fissile material than they consume. Nick Touran joins me to discuss and explore the long term sustainability of nuclear power.

The Grand Finale is here. We wrestle with the question of whether nuclear can find its groove and the positive learning rates that have eluded it so frequently. Vogtle unit 4 came in 40% cheaper than unit 3. Can those gains continue downwards? Is Vogtle 5 more likely to follow this cost reduction curve compared to a new AP1000 elsewhere?

Emmet Penney joins me to shoot the breeze and catch up on the whirlwind developments of the last few months.