Gates’ TerraPower Advances the Natrium

Bill Gates' TerraPower has "broken ground" at the future site of the Natrium Power Plant, what will be an advanced nuclear power plant. This follows the acceptance of TerraPower's Construction Permit Application for review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May, 2024.

Bill Gates wrote about this ground-breaking in Kemmerer, Wyoming on his GatesNotes blog and he provided further background on his interest in advanced nuclear, which started as far back as 2008. It just so happened that when he fell in love with the density, inherent safety and superior performance of advanced nuclear power, he was able to afford to hire a team and launch TerraPower on his own. It also didn't hurt that he happened to be buddies with Warren Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the company that owns PacifiCorp, which owns a lot of struggling coal plants, so he was able to score a site on the property of a retiring coal plant, on which to plan to build his demonstration reactor.

In fact, advanced nuclear holds tremendous prospects for resurrecting the value of these ill-fated plants and the economic vitality of those regions suffering from the closures of coal, most of which are closing as a result of competition form cheap natural gas that is also better suited for being "dispatched," at a minute's notice, if, let's say, the wind stops blowing. As many as 80% of these plants could, according to a study done by the DOE, be converted to advanced nuclear plants cost-effectively, because they are reuse turbines, generators and even transmission lines that are already there. Taking what are currently brownfield sites with very little value because of the toxicity, health and carbon-impacts of coal and converting them to clean power plants that use advanced fission to generate both power and heat, is starting to look like a very lucrative endeavor.

No wonder Bill Gates has already invested over a billion dollars and has committed to putting billions more of his own funds into this venture. Being the sixth wealthiest person in the world gives him this option. And, if you think that, because you read a lot and you've had exeptional success with a software company, that you have what it takes to create the best advanced nuclear technology and believe that it will be rapidly adopted and deployed around the world and possibly put the remainder of the world's coal plants out of business, investing your billions into that makes total sense.

For the rest of us, however, investing into a venture fund like Nucleation Capital, which is dedicated to building a diversified pool of advanced nuclear ventures with various alternative designs, more than a few of which could find real traction within differing niches of the energy markets which also need power but may prefer a different configuration or set of features, may make more sense and pose considerably less risk. Especially when the fund provides low-cost participation, so that those of us not in the top ten wealthiest humans list, can access that fund without breaking the bank but nevertheless have a meaningful chance of participating in the growth of nuclear around the world.

Read Bill's GatesNotes announcement here: "We just broke ground on America’s first next-gen nuclear facility: Kemmerer, Wyoming will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world" Bill Gates, June 10, 2024.

Bloomberg, Bill Gates Says He’s Ready to Put Billions Into Nuclear Power, by Caleb Mutua, June 16, 2024.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Construction costs, Energy transition, Future of Energy, Government support, History Timeline, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

December 13, 2023

A First-Ever Construction Permit Received by Kairos Power

Kairos Power is the recipient of the first ever Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved Construction Permit Application (CPA) for a Gen IV (non-light water) Reactor Design. Kairos is now able to commence building the Hermes molten salt-cooled demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first advanced nuclear design approved for construction in the US in more than 50 years.

According to World Nuclear News, Kairos has been in pre-application engagement with the NRC since 2018 and submitted the CPA in late 2021 and had it accepted by the NRC in November 2021. In October, the NRC held a mandatory hearing for the CPA, with senior Kairos officials in attendance (in a publicly available meeting that any interested party can attend via Zoom) which received unanimous support from the Commissioners, not least because, under Dr. Per Peterson, the company has done an amazing job of planning a series of iterative builds, which sequentially and increasingly de-risk the design.

The NRC in action at Kairos' mandatory meeting. Image courtesy of Nucleation Capital.

Kairos in attendance at the NRC meeting. Image courtsey of Nucleation Capital

According to World Nuclear News, Kairos has been in pre-application engagement with the NRC since 2018 and submitted the CPA in late 2021 and had it accepted by the NRC in November 2021. In October, the NRC held a mandatory hearing for the CPA, with senior Kairos officials in attendance (in a publicly available meeting that any interested party can attend via Zoom) which received unanimous support from the Commissioners, not least because, under Dr. Per Peterson, the company has done an amazing job of planning a series of iterative builds, which sequentially and increasingly de-risk the design.

Hermes is the first step in this graduated process and is anticipated to be a 35 MW (thermal) non-power iteration of the future fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactor, the KP-HFR. Kairos also have a CPA pending for its next iteration, called Hermes 2, which is expected to be a 2-unit demonstration plant that, after learnings have been incorporated, would replicate the complete architecture of the future commercial plants, which the company expects to start building in the early 2030s.

According to Katy Huff, the US Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, the NRC's approval is a "huge milestone" for the energy sector and, we'll add, for our ability to address climate change. If nothing else, the NRC is showing that it is serious about providing a path forward for Gen IV reactors.

Read more at the World Nuclear News in "NRC approves Hermes construction permit," December 13, 2023.

Learn more about Kairos Power at the company's website and at Atomic Insights, our companion blog and podcast series, where Rod Adams interviews Per Peterson, the Chief Nuclear Officer of Kairos in Atomic Show #288 – Per Peterson, CNO, Kairos Power.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Government support, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

October 21, 2023

Grace Stanke

Grace Stanke, as the reigning Miss America, has literally changed the face of nuclear power. As a 21-year old nuclear engineering student, she is much more than a pretty face, and is studying to become a nuclear fuels engineer. In her spare time, however, she entered the Miss America contest, was crowned Miss Wisconsin and then, in 2022, won the Miss America pageant. Having the brains to study nuclear engineering is not what distinguishes Miss Stanke, as she serve her year as an ambassador of the Miss America contest. It's that she's chosen to use her platform to promote and elevate the nuclear industry and the benefits of nuclear power for addressing climate change.

Much of the press that she has garnered in her travels this past year, has remarked on the changing trends that Miss Stanke's efforts have aided. Nearly 60% of Americans favor nuclear power plants and believe that the US should protect existing nuclear power and boost nuclear capacity. This represents a big increase from being clocked in at just 43% support as recently as 2020.

Miss Stanke, as Miss America, has an extraordinary platform and she hasn't been shy about using it to support and extoll the virtues of nuclear energy. She's bringing nuclear to entirely new constituents at the same time that nuclear power is gaining traction with governments around the world trying to decarbonize, with filmmakers like Oliver Stone, whose documentary "Nuclear Now," laid the groundwork for more Americans to get educated about the benefits of nuclear power, and with billionaire entrepreneurs and business leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, all of whom have been consistently touting the benefits of atomic energy but probably not reaching too many young women.

As the reigning Miss America and soon-to-be nuclear fuels engineer, Miss Stanke's year-long campaign to promote nuclear power in over 20 states was probably seen by millions of young women students, who now see her as a role model, both highly educated and very elegant and poised, bringing them information that might have been impossible to convey in almost any other way.

Now, combined with the efforts of nuclear social media influencers like Isabelle Boemeke and widely-regarded documentaries, Ms. Stanke is probably sweeping along an entire generation of young women in her wake who may be primed to consider careers in nuclear, where they had previously probably never thought much about nuclear power at all. Now a growing percentage will recognize that nuclear power attracts women like Grace Stanke both for a career but also for its instrumental role in combating climate change and achieving both net-zero goals and sustainable development goals.

Miss Stanke will graduate next year and still has the majority of her professional career ahead of her. But, having accepted a position with Constellation Energy after her graduation, she is sure to continue to have a big impact on the industry.

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Sources:

Daily Mail: The Glamorous new face of Nuclear power: Miss America, by Alice Wright, Oct. 7, 2023
MENAFN: Miss America Powers Up the Nuclear Debate, 10/11/23

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

August 10, 2022

Thorium Molten Salt prospects are good

Chinese teams have designed and built and are now commissioning an experimental thorium-powered molten salt reactor. This is exciting news for those who have long advocated for thorium-based energy. It is also a sad and poignant moment for the US's atomic energy legacy, that China is smart enough to do what we will not.

The very first prototype molten-salt reactor (MSR) was developed and tested by the United States in the 1960s and 70s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories under the direction of Alvin Weinberg. The design tested the use of a thorium-fluoride salt liquid which used Thorium 232 as the fertile material and Uranium 233 as the fissile fuel. This prototype experiment was known as the MSRE (Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment) and it operated successfully for almost five years before it was discontinued for a range of mostly political reasons.

According to the Thorium Energy Alliance, a non-profit educational group working to preserve the history of molten-salt development in the US and to lay the foundation for the use of thorium energy in the future, Interest in thorium has remained strong. The reason is simple: Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) holds significant technical, economic and safety advantages over traditional nuclear power plants.

By dissolving the uranium and thorium into salts of lithium and beryllium kept hot enough to stay liquid, you do not need to produce fuel rods or pellets, which saves considerable costs. Plus, the liquid salts are so chemically stable, they are virtually imperious to damage from the high temperature, neutrons or radiation, that they will not corrode the vessels that contain them. Although thorium is 4 times more abundant than uranium, one ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium or the equivalent of 3.5 million tons of coal. This means that with greater energy potential and fewer production costs, a LFTR could be developed at a fraction of the cost of a traditional nuclear reactor, while also being significantly safer.

Unfortunately, under the current NRC regulator (which has only ever licensed light water reactors), U.S. developers have been unable to license even prototypes of next-generation LFTRs, so now, the lead in this very promising technology has moved to China. According to WNN, construction of an experimental 2 MW thermal Molten-Salt Reactor began in September 2018 in Wuwei City, in the Gansu province of China and was reportedly completed in August 2021. That would mean this experimental plant took just three years to build. It has now been reviewed and approved for commissioning by the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

[Aside: China clearly has a much better understanding of the critical role that nuclear power plays in protecting the environment than the US does, because it has new nuclear reactors approved by its "Ministry of Ecology and Environment." If the US were to rename the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the Commission on Regulation of Energy and Ecology, it might actually do its job better.]

UPDATE: The US NRC accepted a construction permit application from Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build a molten salt research reactor (MSRR) on Nov. 18, 2022. In a letter dated Dec. 16, 2022, the NRC estimates that the date that the permit review will be complete is in May 2024.

Read more at World Nuclear News: Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up, published August 9, 2022. To learn more about thorium, please visit the Thorium Energy Alliance website where you ca browse their extensive Media Library.

May 3, 2022

Harriet Brooks

Harriet Brooks was a physicist whose experiments helped to solve the question of what particles were emitted during radiation. As a young researcher in 1901, working in a newly established physics laboratory at McGill Univeristy, Brooks showed that radioactivity involved the creation of an entirely new atomic element. Working along with Ernest Rutherford, her mentor, she identified the element that was later named radon. Unfortunately, over time, Rutherford was deemed the "father of nuclear physics" for work done by Brooks, as her career in physics was cut permaturely short, because of her marriage.

Born in Exeter, Canada in 1876, Brooks was the first Canadian nuclear physicist and the first woman to earn a master's degree from McGill University. SHe became Rutherford's first graduate student assistant at McGill.

In her short tenure in her career, she resolved one of the most perplexing problems of early 20^th century chemistry when she discovered that radioactive heavy elements release an entirely different element as they decay. Specifically, by analyzing emissions from the radioactive element thorium she determined that it wasnot just thorium in vapor form, but rather a new element, that we now call radon. This discovery demonstrated that radioactive elements transform to other elements, a fact that is core to the modern conception of radioactivity. Brooks’ contributions stand at the foundation of contemporary nuclear science.

Although Brooks authored research papers by herself and together with Rutherford, who vividly cited her work and gave her credit in his publications and lectures, Brooks' contributions went largely unnotices and the discovery of radon attributed to Rutherford alone. It took 70 years after her death, for her contributions to be formally acknowledged and for her to be inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, which did not occur until 2002. Still, in 2010, the American Physical Society honored Rutherford and Frederick Soddy, another collaborator for hteir work on radioactivity but Brooks' contributions went unmentioned.

Brooks managed to overcome many obstacles over the course of her career. Her lack of wealth was addressed by earning fellowships. When she was dismissed from a teaching position at Barnard College as a result of her engagement, she found employment as a full-time researcher at the Curie-led Radium Institute in Paris, and later secured an appointment at the University of Manchester that allowed her to continue her work. It was only her marriage to a man who wanted her to settle down with him in Montreal, away from universities and research laboratories, that effectively ended her scientific career.

Awards & Honors

Inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2002, 70 years after her death.

Source:

Slate: Women have been disappearing from science for as long as they've been allowed to study science,by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Hossein Taheri, May, 2, 2022

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

April 1, 2022

Rosalyn Yalow

Rosalyn Yalomw was a nuclear physicist. She developed radioimmunoassay (RIA) together with doctor Solomon Berson. RIA is used to measure small concentrations of substances in the body, such as hormones in the blood. Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson tracked insulin by injecting radioactive iodine into patients' blood. Because the method is so precise, they were able to prove that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use of insulin. Previously it was thought that the disease was caused by a lack of insulin.

Dr. Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977 together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally. In response to this, Dr. Yalow wrote a biographical essay about her life, influences, work experience and partnerships with other researchers. It is a very beautifully-written and impressive and moving history and it was published on the Nobel Prize website. She describes for example, "hanging from the rafters in Room 301 of Pupin Laboratories (a physics lecture room at Columbia University) when Enrico Fermi gave a colloquium in January 1939 on the newly discovered nuclear fission."

In another phase of her life, while being newly married and taking two background undergraduate classes, three graduate courses in physics, serving as a half-time assistant teacher, as well as being an observer of another instructor so as to improve her own teaching skill, she received straight As in two of her classes and an A- in one. In response, the Chairman of the Physics development told her "That A- confirms that women do not do well as laboratory work."

Awards & Honors

Awarded the title of Distinguished Service Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award
A. Cressy Morrison Award in Natural Sciences of the N.Y. Academy of Sciences
Scientific Achievement Award of the American Medical Association
Koch Award of the Endocrine Society
Gairdner Foundation International Award
American College of Physicians Award for distinguished contributions in science as related to medicine
Eli Lilly Award of the American Diabetes Association
First William S. Middleton Medical Research Award of the VA and five honorary doctorates
Nobel Prize winner 1977

Source:

Nobel Prize Organization: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977 — Rosalyn Yalow Biographical

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 28, 2022

Rumina Velshi

Rumina Velshi was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the CNSC in August 2018.

Ms. Velshi has had a long association with the CNSC, having been a Commission member from 2011 until her appointment as President and CEO.

Ms. Velshi has extensive technical, regulatory and adjudication expertise in the energy industry. Throughout her career, she has worked in various capacities at Ontario Hydro and Ontario Power Generation, the electrical utilities in the province. Ms. Velshi also previously served as a part-time Board member of the Ontario Energy Board, the economic regulator of the province’s electricity and natural gas sectors.

In February 2020, Ms. Velshi was appointed Chairperson of the Commission on Safety Standards (CSS), established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for a four-year term.

Ms. Velshi very actively promotes careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), especially for young women. Since joining the CNSC as President and CEO, she has launched a women-in-STEM initiative to consider ways to support women in STEM careers at the CNSC and elsewhere, and to further STEM education by working with interested partners. She has also delivered several international keynote addresses about breaking down barriers for women in STEM.

Ms. Velshi was one of the founding members of Canada's Women in Science and Engineering and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Institute for Women in Engineering and Science (CIWES), an institute that advances education in the STEM fields worldwide through an international network of organizations, foundations and experts.

She has served as Vice-Chair on the Board of Directors of Scientists in School, a non-profit organization that offers STEM-focused workshops to more than 700,000 students each year. Ms. Velshi is one of 150 Canadian women whose stories are compiled in Your Turn, a book published to mark Canada's 150th anniversary and inspire the next generation of women leaders.

Ms. Velshi holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in civil engineering, a Master of Engineering degree in chemical engineering and a Master of Business Administration, all from the University of Toronto.

Source:

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission: President

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 28, 2022

Kristine Svinicki

Kristine Svinicki was first appointed to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) in 2008 by President Obama. She was then re-appointed to that role by three successive United States presidents. She was designated Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Donald J. Trump on January 23, 2017. By the time Svinicki stepped down as Chairman of the NRC in early 2021, she had become the longest-serving member in the agency’s history. Hallmarks of her distinguished tenure include growing a culture of “swing for the fences” transformative thinking in agency processes and advancing the use of previously untapped technologies to surmount the challenges of the COVID-19 public health emergency and deliver sustained assurance of nuclear safety and security to the American public.

Prior to her appointment to the U.S. NRC, Svinicki served as an expert and policy advisor for over a decade to members of the United States Senate on topics ranging from energy to national security. She previously managed nuclear research and development programs at the U.S. Department of Energy and worked as an energy analyst for the State of Wisconsin.

Sviniki is an internationally recognized policy expert and innovator with over 30 years of public service at the state and federal levels and in both the legislative and executive branches. Before joining the NRC, Svinicki spent over a decade as a staff member in the United States Senate advancing a wide range of policies and initiatives related to national security, science and technology, and energy and the environment. She also served as a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee where she was responsible for the Committee's portfolio of defense science and technology programs and policies, and for the atomic energy defense activities of the U.S. Department of Energy, including nuclear weapons, nuclear security, and environmental programs.

Previously, Svinicki worked as a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Department of Energy's Washington, D.C. Offices of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, and of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, as well as its Idaho Operations Office, in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Before that, she was an energy engineer with the State of Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Public Service Commission in Madison, Wisconsin.

Born and raised in Michigan, Svinicki earned a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in 1988. She is a longstanding member of the American Nuclear Society and the Society has twice honored her with its Presidential Citation in recognition of her contributions to the nuclear energy policies of the United States. Chairman Svinicki was named Woman of the Year by the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment in 2013. She was selected as a Stennis Congressional Fellow of the 108th Congress and as a Brookings Institution Legis Congressional Fellow in 1997. She has been honored by the University of Michigan College of Engineering as its 2009 Alumni Merit Award recipient for Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and, in 2017, was awarded the College's Alumni Medal.

She was selected as a Brookings Institution Fellow in 1997 and as a John C. Stennis Congressional Fellow of the 108th U.S. Congress.

Svinicki is currently an Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiologic Sciences at the University of Michigan and sits on the boards of TerraPower and Southern Company.

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Sources:

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Chairman Kristine Svinicki
TerraPower: Kristine Svinicki
Southern Company: Kristine L. Svinicki

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 24, 2022

(More Soon!)

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear

April 4, 2020

Isabelle Boemeke

Isabelle Boemeke is a social media influencer who has chosen to use her star power as a fashion model to create educational videos and messages for her followers to advocate for nuclear power as a solution to climate change. Tweeting and posting at Twitter, Instagram and TikTok under the name "Isodope," Isabelle speaks knowledgeably about energy and, in particular, about the benefits of nuclear energy, to a social media-savvy community that is not usually engaged in discussion of energy technology, science, industry or even climate change. This has required both great courage, talent and commitment, and has revealed the power of Isabelle's creativity and resourcefulness. Isabelle has been so successful in doing these things, she was invited to present a TED Talk, which was also well received.

Examples of Isodope Social Media Videos (At Twitter: @Isodope, at Instagram (@I_sodope), at TikTok (@Isodope)

https://youtube.com/shorts/jh24kJ96qos?si=yP9zAAz_LT3kT23dhttps://www.tiktok.com/@isodope/video/6902456563613617413
Screenshot 2023-09-30 at 12.39.32 PM

These efforts have had an enormous impact. In 2020, the haute-fashion media outlet, Highsnobiety, ran a cover-story interview with Isabelle which candidly raises the topic of the horrors of the most dangerous energy on earth: fossil fuels.

“Let’s talk about the most dangerous energy source on earth. The World Health Organization blames it for 29 percent of all lung cancers, 24 percent of strokes, a quarter of all heart disease, and 43 percent of chronic lung infections — all of which could be prevented. [It] produces invisible particles that fill up the sky like a bucket, trapping the sun’s heat and choking rivers, plants, and animals like us. The worst of all . . . the companies who burn it are not required to take care of their waste.”

Then, she counters that with a discussion of “what might be the safest power source we have, by many countable metrics,” which, of course, is nuclear energy. Speaking for herself, she claims:

“I think it’s the coolest form of energy. Everything else sucks in comparison. Fossil fuels are obviously bad. It’s just burning stuff like coal, oil, or gas. Solar and wind are fine, but they’re intermittent and very granola. Nuclear is like a technology from the future.”

As impactful as her social media presence has been, Isabelle’s efforts have not been limited to interviews, TikTok videos or even TED Talks. Working with a team under the auspices of the "Save Clean Energy" name, she was the mastermind and powerhouse behind an organized rally that was held in San Luis Obispo in support of saving Diablo Canyon. This rally drew hundreds of people, local politicians and experts, and resulted in a flurry of articles and opinion pieces expressing public support for nuclear energy in California, a place where such views have been in rtreat for decades.

Isabelle Boemeke (holding the sign) is flanked by Save Clean Energy's organizational partners, Heather Hoff and Kristen Zaitz from Mothers for Nuclear (on the left side), and members of other pronuclear groups.

Then, on February 1, 2022, shortly after that public and well-received rally, Isabelle help organize a group of 79 experts to write and send a letter to Governor Newsom urging him to save Diablo Canyon for the sake of not reversing our climate progress. For the many nuclear professionals and energy experts dispairing about the prospects of saving the state's sole remaining nuclear power plant, this was an opportunity to address the Governor as scientific and academic experts in energy and climate action.

What happened next is the stuff of actist legend: Governor Newsom listened! He started to consult his own experts and apparently his own team of energy experts at the CEC, CAISO and elsewhere agreed that shuttering Diablo Canyon would almost certainly cause unnecessarily more severe power outages and likely result in the loss of life. Governor Newsom then began to take the necessary political steps to bring the California legislature around to his point of view.

There were a series of CEC-hosted hearings on Diablo Canyon which invited the public to weigh in. California's pronuclear community attended these sessions in droves. Newsom himself went out publicly to visit Diablo Canyon and explore the truth about the safety of the plant and wrote articles about it, that got published widely in major newspapers. He then sought out support from PG&E executives and the DOE's Civilian Nuclear Credit program for the funding to help the plant restart its licensing work. Fortunately, the DOE had just secured $5 billion in funding for the CNC to help "at risk" nuclear power plants through Biden's Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act. There Newsom found a very receptive response, so he was able to avoid having the bulk of the cost of this reversal imposed on the ratepayers. This helped sway the California Legislature to do the right thing. Combined, these actions resulted in the passage of S.B. 468, that laid the authority to save Diablo Canyon.

It seems very clear that the Diablo Canyon rally and the letter from scientists, both of which were organized by Isabelle, provided positive press coverage for the Governor to make his very public about-face on nuclear power. Of course, the fact that two other Democratic Governors, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Governor Gretchen Witmer of Michigan, both had previously come out in support of their state's nuclear power and still maintained their political support, gave Newsom the confidence to do the same in California, which probably helped greatly with his political calculus.

Nevetheless, Newsom's ability to listen and decide to support Diablo Canyon and nuclear power in general, was an historic political shift for the most overtly progressive and antinuclear state in the union. In doing so, California took the advice of its scientists, distancing itself from Germany, whose politicians were unable to muster the political backbone required to listen to its experts and overrule the antinuclear ideologues (and so shuttered its last nuclear power and now is now sadly razing villages and forests to dig up and burn lignite coal to keep the power on).

Which shows that a single, motivated and talented woman can make a major difference in the fight against emissions.

Brava, Isabelle!

Sources:

Highsnobiety: Isabelle Boemeke Is the Nuclear Influencer the World Needs, April 2021
The San Luis Obispo Tribune: Diablo Canyon supporters rally in SLO to keep nuclear power plant open, by Kaytlyn Leslie and Laura Dickinson, Dec. 4, 2022
The Atlantic, The West's Nuclear Mistake, by David Frum, Dec. 4, 2022
More about the letter to Governor Newsom at Climate Coalition: Sign the letter to Governor Newsom to Save Diablo Canyon

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, NEWS, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID