Women, Nuclear and Climate on the Main Stage for NY Climate Week

By Valerie Gardner, Managing Partner
September 18, 2026

As the woman founder of Nucleation Capital, the first-ever venture fund to be overtly focused on investing into next generation nuclear, I know something about firsts.

Which is why I am so excited to see that Dr. Rachel Slaybaugh and Tori Shivanandan—two very talented women working in nuclear energy and firsts in their own rights—are converging on the Main Stage at the Jacob Javits Center to talk about nuclear's role solving climate during the upcoming New York Climate Week.

It has taken quite a long time to get to this point but this is—from a climate action perspective—an historic first both because climate used to not be willing to include nuclear energy and because those discussing it are both women! I will be there in the audience to witness, applaud and document for those who aren't there watching this pivotal moment.

Dr. Rachel Slaybaugh left a respected and tenured faculty position at UC Berkeley along with appointments at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and ARPA-e—where she had been successfully inspiring and guiding nuclear engineering students towards entrepreneurship—to follow her dream of becoming a venture investor as a General Partner with DCVC. Tori Shivanandan, now President and COO of Radiant Nuclear, has demonstrated the talent, wisdom and experience to find herself leading Radiant Nuclear in partnership with Doug Bernauer, the founder, which is one of the most accomplished of the advanced nuclear ventures vying for primacy in the next era of energy. DCVC has been an investor into Radiant Nuclear almost as long as Nucleation Capital has been. But Rachel sits on the Radiant board, so the two have been working together closely since 2022.

Their session, hosted by The Nest Campus, is titled "The era of new nuclear energy expansion" and it will occur on Wednesday September 23rd in the Javitz Center starting at 2:05 pm. Their conversation about nuclear's future—versions of which I have been having with investors for most of the last eight years—will last less than 30 minutes. Far too little time for such a critical conversation. But I suspect that the impact on the thousands of climate-concerned attendees at the Javitz Center, seeing these two brilliant women discussing how important nuclear is for humanity's and our planet's future, will be transformational.

Women investors, philanthropists and climate activists have long had the lowest level of support for nuclear power, despite having so many women having historically played or currently playing a role in the development of nuclear power. Across the 100+ investors in Nucleation Capital's Fund I, only 20% are women. This despite the fact that women disproportionately comprise those who care the most about protecting the environment and our future for our children from the ravages of climate change on all species and ecosystems.

But I get it. There are real, psychological obstacles to embracing the miracle of fission—a natural phenomena—and making the connection between that and the nuclear industry's ability to safely provide clean, zero emission, reliable and low ecologic-footprint power that can solve climate change today. These stem from long-standing cultural taboos built up over decades from media hyped and wildly exaggerated claims of the dangers of nuclear (including from some presumably reputable NGOs that are just doggedly antinuclear), leading to nearly instinctive fears and mistrust of nuclear power. The only way to overcome these feelings is either to dig deeply into the actual data about nuclear, as I did starting back in the 2010-2020 time frame, which led me to want to invest into the companies innovating to improve this technology . . . of which Radiant Nuclear was my second investment. (We've seen its growth grow by impressive multiples since then.)

Or possibly to see two women on the Main Stage at the Javitz Center chatting about their optimism for nuclear's potential to secure our future. Hopefully, this helps many more people see the blue light and wipe away irrational fears.

I'll be attending nearly all of the many nuclear-related events scheduled for NY Climate Week and immediately after for the Guggenheim Nuclear conference. If you are there are interested in learning how Nucleation Capital can help you gain affordable investment access to the premier ventures building our clean energy future, please reach out.

Hope to see you there!

August 13, 2026

Air Pollution’s Impacts on Health: Ten Million Deaths a Year

News of out-of-control wildfires in Spain, France, Greece, the western U.S., and across Canada—fires worsened by drought and extreme heat—have been rampant for weeks. These forest fires are hotter and larger than we've ever seen and are now so prevalent and damaging that few doubt that they are new form of "extreme weather" that climate change has been making them worse. At the same time, these fires last longer and produce more smoke, contributing to many more days of unhealthy air quality and difficulty moving around. But these fires don't just cause stinging in the eyes or an acrid smell in the nose, they are a direct contributor to death and disease. Just as with the already high levels of fossil fuel derived air pollution in many areas, breathing in this wildfire smoke is a known factor contributing to a wide range of serious diseases, shortened lifespans and mortality rates.

According to Andrew Dessler of The Climate Brink, starting around 2016, air quality which had been getting better up to then, began to decline again largely due to the growing smoke contribution from forest fires. Today, there are between 5 and 10 more days of smoke per year than there was in the early 2000s. Not only is wildfire smoke a growing public climate impact and concern, there is more scrutiny on what the economic and health impacts are from the blend of air pollution that people are breathing in, as fires get worse and the pollution they deliver is more defined. It draws our attention back to another aspect of the pollution in our air, which is there even when wildfire smoke isn't: the toxic daily pollution from burning fossil fuels.

For all of the impacts and damage that burning fossil fuels has on climate change, which is certainly contributing to making wildfires far worse than they ever were, we have been largely ignoring the current health impacts of our addiction to fossil fuels. The toxic air pollution from burning coal, oil and gas is now estimated to kill 10 million people each year. To better understand why even this impact alone should motivate us to transition away from fossil fuels, it is worth reading David Wallace-Wells article in the London Review of Books, "Ten Million a Year: David Wallace-Wells on polluted air," from December 2021. Wallace-Wells provides greater context on the comparisons between the damage to humanity from the impacts of air pollution—which is already off the charts and killing millions of humans every day—especially in deeply polluted places India, Pakistan and China, that there is literally no threat to humanity that compares with the threat to human health and lifespan that is posed by the polluted air that we breath.

For example, the world panicked when the coronavirus emerged and killed 2714 people in a month. Yet around 800,000 people died from air pollution that same month. Air pollution kills 10 times more people every year than the flu but we hear less about it than about getting the flu shot. Air pollution kills about twenty times as many people as all annual deaths from war, murder and terrorism combined. And here's the statistic that will shock so many people: on an average day, air pollution deaths from burning fossil fuels are greater than all of the deaths caused by every meltdown or nuclear accident in the 70-year history of nuclear power combined including Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island and every other nuclear event.

We need to transition away from fossil fuels not just for the benefits to future generations that want to be able to inhabit a world that isn't reeling from climate change but because fossil fuels are already causing a hundred million premature deaths every decade, greater than any other threat to our health from any other cause. If nothing else were wrong with burning fossil fuels—remedying this health impact would be a huge benefit to humanity and should motivate us to transition to clean energy in and of itself.

Continue reading at London Review of Books, Ten Million a Year: David Wallace-Wells on polluted air, by David Wallace-Wells, December 2, 2021.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Air pollution, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate mayhem, Climate policy, Energy transition, Extreme weather, Fossil fuel mortality, Fossil fuels, Future of Energy, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

August 4, 2026

Planetary is boosting the ocean’s carbon storage capacity

Planetary Technologies, a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based portfolio company, is working to boost the ocean's carbon-storage capacity.

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Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate policy, NEWS, Portfolio Venture, Solving climate

June 23, 2026

Vital Climate Science Resource Re-emerges As Non-Profit

Climate.us launches independent website for trusted climate information

For more than a decade, NOAA’s Climate.gov website was among the U.S. government’s most important platforms for climate information for the public. At the start of 2025, if someone in the U.S. googled “climate,” Climate.gov was the top result. It served 15+ million visitors in 2024 and had more than half a million social media followers and its reach was growing every year.

In the first half of 2025, Trump administration officials at NOAA terminated Climate.gov’s full-time federal and contractor staff, ordered removal of content, and redirected the home page to a page under more direct control of political appointees. With little fanfare, Climate.gov found itself unable to continue its operations which would deprive the public of a highly trusted source of climate information. Finding themselves unable to permit this loss, former Climate.gov staff decided to take matters into their own hands to continue the site's mission. In June, 2026, they launched Climate.us, as a new online platform that will carry on the legacy of Climate.gov and even expand its scope.

A new home outside the federal domain allows the team to rescue Climate.gov and other federal assets, including the Fifth National Climate Assessment, bringing key climate information together under one roof. The Climate.gov team, which has long excelled at delivering elegant content through which the public, journalists, educators, and students could easilylearn about climate, will now build a next-generation platform expanded to serve new audiences—climate service providers, community planners, app developers, etc.—seeking data and tools for analysis and decision-making.

Climate.us is now run by an independent nonprofit entity hosted and managed by Multiplier, a 501(c)(3) organization. An advisory panel with members representing target audiences and stakeholders will guide the site’s scope of contents and utility; science and data experts will help content teams ensure information is based on the best available science. We are thrilled by the heroic actions of the Climate.gov staff and their bold, forward-thinking strategy to safeguard public access to vital, trusted climate data and services. We have provided a donation in support of this effort and hope you will too. Please visit the Climate.us fundraising site and consider providing support in any amount.

References:

Climate.gov, no longer providing climate data according to this notice:

UPDATED: June 24, 2025. In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (“Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities”), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program”), 15 USC § 2934 (“National Global Change Research Plan”), and 33 USC § 893a (“NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs”), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed under Climate.gov will be available at NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.

Climate.us, rising from the ashes of Climate.gov.

GiveButter Climate.us Launches New Independent Website for Trusted Climate Informtion by the climate.us team.

YouTube Video, “Climate.us: independent, nonprofit, and immune to politics”, May 2025.

The Guardian, Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump, by Eric Holthaus, Aug 30, 2025.

New York Times, Former NOAA Employees Revive Climate Site Shut by Trump Administration, by Quinn Glabicki, June 23, 2026.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Air pollution, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate mayhem, Climate policy, Department of Energy, Energy transition, Extreme weather, Future of Energy, Global emissions, LINKS, Rainforest protection, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Scientific debate, Solving climate, US technological leadership

March 14, 2026

China, Brazil, Italy, and Belgium Join Global Nuclear Capacity Tripling Effort ()

Four new countries—China, Brazil, Italy, and Belgium—have endorsed the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050, totaling 38 existing formal signatories in pursuing low-carbon, reliable, and scalable nuclear power. The move emphasizes advanced reactor technologies, including small modular reactors and fourth-generation designs.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Capital reallocation, Climate Costs, Electrification, Energy transition, Fission, Government, Government support, International Collaboration, International support for nuclear, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Politicians supporting nuclear, Solving climate

January 22, 2026

Dr. James Hansen: Why I must speak out about Climate Change

Published by Nucleation Capital in Air pollution, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate mayhem, Energy transition, VIDEO

December 11, 2025

Why SMRs Are Gaining Momentum in Developing Economies ()

A new op-ed outlines why many emerging economies are turning to SMRs to expand reliable, dispatchable power — arguing that SMRs offer industrial development, grid stability, and economic uplift in ways intermittent renewables cannot...

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Climate Costs, Energy transition, LINKS, Nuclear financing, Nuclear R&D, Politicians supporting nuclear, Solving climate

December 5, 2025

Rockefeller Foundation on Nuclear Power in Emerging Economies ()

A Rockefeller Foundation study suggests that nuclear technologies, including SMRs, could supply up to 30% of electricity in several high-growth economies by 2050, while easing system costs and reliability pressures...

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, African electrification, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Electrification, Energy transition, International support for nuclear, Nuclear R&D, Philanthropic support for nuclear, REPORTS, Solving climate, Transmission, Zero emission energy

September 14, 2025

US Taxpayers to Shoulder Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Under “Big Beautiful Bill” ()

A new report finds the Trump administration has added nearly $40 billion in federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025 — locking in $4 billion more per year for the next decade, on top of existing support for fossil fuels.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate mayhem, Climate policy, Fossil fuels, LINKS, Trump Administration

August 22, 2025

Planetary Joins Launch of Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Coalition

Planetary-mCDR

Planetary Technologies, a Nucleation portfolio company, is among the founding members of the new Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) Coalition, a first-of-its-kind forum to support responsible growth of ocean-based carbon removal.

The coalition, co-chaired by the Carbon Business Council and the World Ocean Council, brings together innovators, scientists, and policy leaders to accelerate research, support evidence-based policy, and build collaboration across the marine CDR ecosystem. Founding members include Planetary, Banyu Carbon, Captura, Capture6, Ebb Carbon, Equatic, Isometric, Limenet, Puro.earth, SeaO2, Vesta, and Vycarb, with additional observers such as Carbon180, Ocean Visions, and the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Marine carbon dioxide removal is increasingly recognized as a critical tool to complement emissions reductions and contribute to climate goals. The ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and holds immense potential to help achieve net zero when approached with scientific rigor, community engagement, and environmental safeguards. The launch of this coalition provides the mCDR field with a dedicated forum for knowledge-sharing, international coordination, and responsible development.

Planetary has already emerged as a global leader in this space, recently winning an XPRIZE Carbon Removal Award for its ocean alkalinity enhancement approach. By joining the coalition, Planetary and its peers aim to ensure that marine CDR methods advance in a way that is credible, collaborative, and environmentally responsible.

Read the full announcement from the Carbon Business Council here.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Climate change, Climate Costs, Climate policy, NEWS, Portfolio Venture, Solving climate, Venture capital support for nuclear