"Age of Miracles‪"‬ Packy McCormick

There’s this joke that fusion is always 30 years away. 50 years ago, it was 30 years away. 20 years ago, it was still thirty years away. Today, though… we might be within a decade. 
We spent the first half of the season on nuclear fission, and the last episode on many of the other energy sources that will play a role in meeting humanity’s growing energy demands and building an Age of Miracles. All of them will be critical. 
But there’s a growing chorus of people who believe that if we’re going to meet the demand for 3-5x the amount of energy we use today, and do it with clean energy, we’re going to need clean energy. And that as we climb the Kardashev Scale – the framework for measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can use – fusion is going to be our ladder. 
In today's episode, we’ll cover the basics of fusion energy – what it is, how it works, why it matters, how progress is measured, and what the main approaches are. 

Thank you to this episode’s guests: Clay Dumas, Andrew Côté, Sehila Gonzalez, Ian Hogarth, and Ryan Umstattd.

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force
Range Fund Holdings

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00) The fusion race
(06:55) How does fusion work?
(16:02) Fusion reactor designs
(20:24) History of fusion
(25:02) The three approaches to plasma confinement
(30:50) The tokamak
(35:24) Iter
(41:54) Recap
(49:01) Revisiting why fusion matters

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 
Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Packy and Julia have spent the first five episodes of Age of Miracles diving into the past and present of nuclear fission—before jumping from the yin to the yang and covering nuclear fusion in the second half of this season, today we wanted to take a step back and talk about all the non-nuclear energy sources out there.
We ask this icebreaker question to every guest we bring onto the show: "What does the pie chart of energy sources look like in the US in the year 2050?" From advocating for the widely accused fossil fuels like oil and gas, to the widely celebrated renewables like geothermal, solar, and wind, each guest brings a new perspective to the mix. In this episode, Packy and Julia hear out their cases, and afterwards, answer the infamous question themselves.
Thank you to this episode’s guests: Meredith Angwin, Mark Hinaman, Alex Epstein, Casey Handmer, Noah Smith, Angelica Oung, and Eli Dourado.

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Energy in 2050
(00:08:29) Fossil fuels
(00:28:41) Geothermal
(00:36:53) Wind
(00:56:54) Understanding the grid
(01:03:30) Solar
(01:25:02) Batteries
(01:36:06) Episode Recap

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 
Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

This week, Packy and Julia take a break from our regularly scheduled narrative programming to look back on the past five episodes we've published focused on nuclear fission—and address news stories, feedback, and listener questions collected through this season so far.

We cover:

Illinois pushing back on the nuclear moratorium, Nuscale's cancelled contracts, COP 28

Why QA makes building new nuclear so difficult, solar cost curves, and more listener feedback on episodes 1-5

Investing in nuclear, nuclear waste recycling, how to create more political support for the AP1000, and more listener questions


Thank you to this episode’s guests: Jim Hopf, Robert Bryce, Brett Rampal, Heather Hoff, and Paris Ortiz-Wines.

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00) Nuclear news: Illinois, Nuscale, COP 28
(8:27) Nuclear-specific QA standards
(15:52) Comparing and contrasting other countries' nuclear programs
(20:55) The truth about solar
(23:50) What sectors win with nuclear?
(24:55) Investing in nuclear
(29:18) Does being "eco friendly" matter if we get energy right?
(33:24) Nuclear waste recycling
(36:03) Leading investors in nuclear
(38:19) Policy playbook to shift investments to nuclear
(41:07) Arguments for nuclear waste at dinner tables
(42:20) How to get more political support for the AP1000
(45:25) Deeper dive into developing nuclear projects
(48:46) How to get involved in nuclear

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 
Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Let's dive into the world of advanced nuclear startups—where founders are playing entrepreneurship on hard-mode, and navigating how to build new reactor designs, sell to new markets, and forge new regulatory pathways.

This episode is the second focused on nuclear fission startup founders—while last week Packy and Julia spoke with entrepreneurs who laser-focused on the problem of manufacturing ready-made designs at scale, this new crop of founders featured are tackling a seemingly even more difficult task of creating new forms of nuclear reactors from scratch.

As a16z American Dynamism partner Katherine Boyle says, "to build a successful energy startup, you have to excel at math, deep technology, storytelling, recruiting, and regulatory." Tune in as Packy and Julia spotlight five founders taking radically different paths to bringing more nuclear online—from radioisotopes on the literal moon to the novel production of hydrocarbons.

Thank you to this episode’s guests: Katherine Boyle, Albert Wenger, Jake DeWitte, Isaiah Taylor, Matt Loszak, Tyler Bernstein, Jordan Bramble, Josh Wolfe, and David Ulevitch.

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00) What are advanced reactors?
(11:58) Introducing the startup founders
(14:01) Oklo
(17:55) Valar Atomics
(25:27) Aalo
(26:41) Zeno Power
(30:07) Antares
(37:18) Why we need a new playbook for nuclear
(48:53) Selling to new markets and customers
(1:07:00) On regulation
(1:30:18) Nuclear startup operations
(1:46:40) The importance of design
(1:52:24) The advanced nuclear startup playbook

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 
Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

What if we treated building nuclear more like a manufacturing challenge than a construction challenge? How could nuclear benefit from the tried-and-true methodologies of other large industrial industries like ship-building and oil and gas to make nuclear as cheap as solar and wind to produce?

In this episode – the first of two with leading nuclear fission startup founders – Packy and Julia talk to a new crop of nuclear entrepreneurs who are focused on manufacturing small modular reactors at scale. Drawing on best practices from very different industries like building reactors in shipyards or adapting the methods of offshore oil and gas rigs, these founders are taking a radically different approach from the incumbents in nuclear power plant construction. They’re focused on bringing the experience curves for building nuclear way down

But how will it actually work in practice? How do they balance pleasing regulators with innovating on new designs for more efficiency and manufacturability? How do they finance these businesses? What is the plan for connecting these power sources to the grid – or finding other “behind the meter” use cases? Tune in to go deep with the people turning theories about nuclear manufacturing into reality.

Thank you to this episode’s guests: Matt Slotkin, Nick Touran, Bret Kugelmass, Katherine Boyle, Josh Wolfe, and Jake DeWitte 

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00) Building a shipyard to manufacture nuclear reactors
(06:22) The experience curve
(11:00) Which industries can we steal ideas from?
(19:40) Blue Energy with Matt Slotkin
(25:10) Last Energy with Bret Kugelmass
(31:40) Good strategy, bad strategy
(38:41) Financing nuclear companies
(44:00) Oklo going public
(51:30) Recap

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 

Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

If we just tried to implement and scale the technology we have today for large scale nuclear reactors, with no innovation on reactor designs or business models, could we do it? How hard (or expensive) could it really be?

Turns out, this question gets to the heart of the paradox of nuclear power in America: this incredible energy source, which has the potential to be the cheapest and cleanest of all, is currently the most expensive to build by orders of magnitude. To get more nuclear power on the grid as fast as possible, we need to dramatically change the economics of new reactors. The complex economics stem from three main intertwined issues: construction, financing, and regulation. 

In this episode, Packy and Julia dig into the nitty gritty of these issues and look at what it actually takes to build a plant in America (and around the globe). They point out some opportunities to improve key problem areas like financing and workforce deployment. And they talk with nuclear experts, government financing officials, investors, and entrepreneurs who are all trying to figure out: how do we fix the economics of building large scale nuclear reactors?

Some of the answers include innovations in financing and possible regulatory changes – and some get more creative, like floating shipyards and repurposing old coal plants. Tune in to go deep on the economics of nuclear power plants. 

Thank you to this episode’s guests:, Bret Kugelmass, Mark Nelson, Josh Wolfe, James Krellenstein, Emmet Penney, Julie Kozeracki, and David Ulevitch.

Huge thank you to our sponsors:
Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy
Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy
Clean Air Task Force

For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/ 

Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/

Follow our hosts:
Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn
Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn

Timestamps:
(00:00) Why is building new nuclear in the U.S. so expensive?
(07:40) How nuclear fission and nuclear plants work
(16:50) Nuclear power plant economics
(29:05) So, how do we fix the economics of building nuclear power plants?
(41:45) What's actually holding industry executives back from ordering more projects?
(48:12) Serialized construction and developer models
(58:50) Why is nobody talking about regulation?
(1:08:30) Acceleration through federal and popular support
(1:16:32) Recap

This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more. 

Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg.