Podcast Episodes

Why the First Nuclear Renaissance Failed: Can America Build Eight AP1000s Now?

Season 30 Episode 6

The first U.S. nuclear renaissance collapsed under the weight of cheap shale gas, lost institutional expertise, and disastrous projects like Vogtle and Summer. Today, America is planning a fleet of e…

Published on 2 days ago

The Real Stakes of a Saudi Nuclear Deal

Season 30 Episode 5

Saudi Arabia burns nearly one million barrels of oil per day to keep its lights on, yet it has cheaper and faster ways to replace this than by building large nuclear reactors. So why is the Kingdom p…

Published on 1 week, 4 days ago

Microreactors: A Mirage of American Nuclear Innovation?

Season 30 Episode 4

In this episode, Chris Keefer speaks with Hadron Energy founder Samuel Gibson, the twenty four year old entrepreneur pursuing a ten megawatt integral pressurized water microreactor through a one poin…

Published on 2 weeks, 4 days ago

The AP1000 Masterclass

Fan favourite, James Krellenstein, returns for a deep dive into the AP1000. We walk through how its conservative nuclear steam supply system is built from proven Westinghouse and Combustion Engineeri…

Published on 3 weeks, 3 days ago

The Great Nuclear Reshoring

Season 31 Episode 2

In late October, amid the choreography of President Trump’s visit to Tokyo, two vast and curiously intertwined announcements were made: an $80 billion strategic partnership between the U.S. governmen…

Published on 1 month ago

Russia’s Maritime Nuclear Fleet: A Glimpse Behind the Curtain

Season 30 Episode 1

This week on Decouple, I sit down with Aleksey Rezvoi, a veteran maritime nuclear engineer who began his career in the Soviet Union designing third- and fourth-generation submarine and icebreaker rea…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

How China Builds Reactors So Fast

Season 29 Episode 1

This week I sit back down with François Morin in his third appearance on the show. François is the World Nuclear Association’s point person on China. He works and travels inside China, speaks fluent …

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

Engineering State v. Lawyerly Society

Season 29 Episode 8

This week on Decouple, I sit down with Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover History Lab and author of "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future." We trace how China became an “engi…

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

Where Is Nature Going?

Season 29 Episode 7

This week, we zoom out to the broader intellectual themes that shaped Decouple’s origins five years ago. I’m joined by Jesse Ausubel, a visionary in sustainability and biodiversity research and the D…

Published on 1 month, 4 weeks ago

Handling the Heat

Season 29 Episode 6

Process heat accounts for two-thirds of industrial emissions. Yet talk of decarbonization often misses the engineering realities that separate viable solutions from expensive dead ends. To understand…

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago