This Is The Case For Investing In Nuclear Power

Joe Weisenthal (0:05)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:12)

So Tracy, we recently did an episode with Matt Klein, and we talked about essentially what a disaster German energy policy has been over the last several decades, winding up in this position where its energy usage is not only heavily reliant on Russian gas, it's also really not clean. And so even if your vision is low carbon, they haven't achieved that either.

Tracy Alloway (0:39)

Yeah, the worst of all worlds, I would say years of under investment in energy capacity, moving away from nuclear after Fukushima, increased reliance on Russian gas, which clearly is problematic now, and not actually reducing any of their carbon emissions all at the same time.

Joe Weisenthal (0:57)

Yeah, kind of an extraordinarily bad combination. But you mentioned nuclear and of course, Germany has been moving away from it for some time, but it does feel that even prior to the recent energy price spike, or even prior to this sort of heightened awareness on the German energy situation specifically, there does seem to be a sort of, I don't know, rethinking or some sort of turn in people sort of reconsidering how much nuclear has been shut down over the last several years, how little new nuclear has been built, and whether that's been wise.

Tracy Alloway (1:33)

Yeah, it's definitely been an ongoing debate, but I have to admit, this is something, I mean, I was aware that nuclear had fallen out of favor, but I cannot remember when that moment actually happened and what exactly the process was. So obviously, Fukushima happened in Japan, and there's a lot of concerns around that.

But I'm very, very interested in how nuclear sort of lost the public debate, if that makes sense.

Joe Weisenthal (1:59)

Yeah, me too. And I think obviously, look, you have a handful of well-known either disasters or near disasters.

But it is interesting that at a time when there's so much interest in reducing carbon emissions, so much has been focused on wind, solar, maybe hydropower, very little about how nuclear could be part of the solution.

Tracy Alloway (2:22)

Right. And at the same time, we have in recent years really seen some of the weaknesses or the downsides in certain renewables. So, you know, days when there isn't enough wind, we just don't have energy in some parts of the world, days when there isn't enough sun.

We've seen that in places like the UK and also in Texas.

Joe Weisenthal (2:41)

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so obviously wind and solar can at times produce incredibly cheap electricity, but it's intermittent and we don't have the battery technology to store it when it's really sunny. As you mentioned, I think it was in November or December. There are all these days in Europe when it's like the wind just wasn't blowing. And so the energy prices soar because what can you do? And so whether it's in the US where we've had a number of energy grid blackouts, we saw that in Texas last year, whether it's Europe where the price of electricity is soaring, a rethink of nuclear.

So I'm very excited about our guest. We're going to get the case for nuclear investment today. I'm super excited about our guest. We're going to be speaking with Meredith Angwin. She is the author of the book, Shorting The Grid, The Hidden Fragility Of Our Electric Grid.

Absolutely fascinating book. Basically talking about grid policy and somehow it's incredibly readable. It's actually a page turner, even though the topic is very dense and arcane. Meredith has a gift for taking what is highly technical and making it extremely compelling. She is also a pro-nuclear activist in some way. I think it is the solution to many of our energy questions prior to writing the book. She has been for several years a researcher, worker in the utility industry on our power problem.

Meredith, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Meredith Angwin (4:10)

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so happy to be talking to you and to Tracy.

Joe Weisenthal (4:15)

Meredith, I loved your book. Like I said, and other people on Twitter said the same thing. How is a book that is on such a technical topic, regulatory policies of the grid, so readable? I mean, it is a page-turner somehow, but why don't you just give us a little bit of your background prior to writing the book? What is your experience within the utility and energy industry?

Meredith Angwin (4:39)

Well, I was always very interested in chemistry. I became a chemist and I was also interested in geology.