Note: This transcript is the raw transcript of this podcast. Minimal edits have been made only for clarity purposes.

Jessica Lovering (0:11):

We’re not asking for anything special just for nuclear to be valued for the carbon free electricity that it provides the way that renewables are. 

Narrator (0:19): 

Did you know that there are half a million metric tons of nuclear waste temporarily stored at hundreds of sites worldwide? In the U.S. alone, one in three people live within 50 miles of a storage site. No country has yet successfully disposed of commercial spent nuclear fuel, but it’s not for lack of a solution. So what’s the delay? The answers are complex and controversial. In this series, we explore the nuclear waste issue with people representing various pieces of this complicated puzzle. We hope this podcast will give you a clearer picture of Nuclear Waste: The Whole Story. 

We believe that listening is an important element of a successful nuclear waste disposal program. A core company value is to seek and listen to different perspectives. Opinions expressed by the interviewers and their subjects are not necessarily representative of the company. If there’s a topic discussed in the podcast that is unfamiliar to you, or you’d like to more closely review what was said, please see the show notes at deepisolation.com/podcasts.

Kari Hulac (1:39):

Hello, I’m Kari Hulac, Deep Isolation’s Communication Manager. Today I’m talking to one of the founders of Good Energy Collective. The Good Energy Collective is a policy research organization that says it’s building the progressive case for nuclear energy as an essential part of the broader climate change agenda. Jessica Lovering has a doctorate in engineering and public policy and has expertise in advanced nuclear technologies and nuclear innovation policy. Welcome Jessica. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jessica Lovering (2:12):

Yeah. Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kari Hulac (2:15):

Great. Great. So you recently co-founded the Good Energy Collective in August of 2020, so fairly recently. What led you to create a nuclear policy organization?

Jessica Lovering (2:27):

We were really motivated by this movement we were seeing around big climate legislation, particularly things like the Green New Deal, and that they were coming from a new source, really these young, progressive climate groups. A lot of new groups popping up with a lot of energy and activism and just this feeling of momentum that, that things were changing. And you know, they were getting politicians to start thinking more seriously about climate change. And we were really excited about that, but we were noticing that nuclear was really missing from that conversation. And we wanted to see, you know, why that was and, and, and is there a way to get nuclear in there? And one of the challenges is that progressives have been historically not very supportive of nuclear. But with these younger groups you know, they don’t have a lot of the, the baggage and the perceptions that are sort of biased against nuclear. So we saw an opening there, but it really needed to come from a group that had sort of genuine groundings in progressives. So, you know, personally me and my co-founder Suzy and our board chair, Rachel Slaybaugh, agree with progressive values and consider ourselves progressive. So we wanted to start a new organization that could really do sort of the research around policies that would actually get nuclear to align with this progressive climate agenda.

Kari Hulac (4:05):

So talk a little bit about your goals for what the organization could do. Kind of following up on what you just said on researching policies and, and finding solutions to move forward.

Jessica Lovering (4:16):

Yeah, so we really want to see advanced nuclear in particular move forward you know, get some, some demonstrations and some commercial reactors built and, and to do that, that’s the goal, but to do that, we really need to get nuclear integrated into this climate policy agenda. So rather than have, you know, separate nuclear policies or nuclear legislation, that’s just supporting nuclear, it really needs to be integrated to get that broader support for sort of these big investments. And we have all these exciting innovations in advanced nuclear, you know, over 60 companies in the U.S, working to commercialize designs. And there really is a lot of policy work that needs to be done. Answering questions around, you know, how they’ll be built, how they’ll be financed, where does the fuel come from? What happens to the waste?

Jessica Lovering (5:08):

And so we wanted to start a new organization and kind of help flesh out that policy agenda. And then the other thing that is unique about our organization is we’re really focused on bringing in social science into nuclear policy. You know, there’s wonderful work being done on the technical side at the Department of Energy. There’s all this funding for R&D that’s led to some amazing technological innovations, but we need a lot of innovations on the social science side about business models, of financing models you know, how to get, do community engagement in a different way. What can, you know, the literature studies that have been done tell us about risk perception and things like that. So we’re coming at it from, from a few different angles but that sort of our main drive.

Kari Hulac (5:58):

And what inspired you personally, Jessica, to be an advocate for nuclear energy? Do you count yourself among that younger, progressive group that has a little less baggage around the, anything with the word nuclear in it?

Jessica Lovering (6:14):

Well, I, I can’t really remember being anti-nuclear ever myself, but I definitely came from a more of a, I don’t know, hippie environmental background. I was living in Colorado when I first got interested in nuclear. I was studying for a master’s degree in environmental studies and environmental policy. And you know, I was really interested in renewables. I was, you know, gardening and making my own yogurt and these sorts of things that just sort of go with that lifestyle. And I got interested in energy because of climate change and some classes around, you know, what it really takes to decarbonize. And studying more on the energy side, I did this exercise in one class where we were all assigned a country and we had to make a plan of how they would fully decarbonize, I think 80% reduction in emissions by 2050.

Jessica Lovering (7:12):

And I had Poland and it was so hard to do because they have so much coal. And even if you do it with nuclear, it’s still really hard, but if you do it with wind and solar, it’s just crazy. And that’s what originally got me interested in nuclear. And then I spent the rest of my master’s degree kind of, you know, doing term papers and assignments on nuclear, wherever I could. And then sort of built up that sort of the, I was like the nuclear person in my program where everyone else was very renewables focused. So, yeah, and then I got hired by the Breakthrough Institute to really flesh out their nuclear policy program.

Kari Hulac (7:53):

So advanced nuclear is described as more efficient, safer, and more flexible in terms of how it’s deployed. It looks way different than the nuclear that my generation grew up with. So what are you most excited about regarding this new technology?

Jessica Lovering (8:07):

I think there’s a lot of things wrapped up in there, but the, the thing I’m most excited about is factory fabrication and whether the whole reactor is factory fabricated or, you know, major components. I think that’s a big game changer in terms of costs, and there’s a lot of reasons that advanced reactors are able to be more modularly produced than the past reactors. So for one, they tend to be much smaller in capacity, but also these advanced designs, you know, these different coolants, different fuels allow the reactor to be much simpler from an engineering perspective. You know, they don’t have as many redundant safety systems. They rely more on physics for their safety and that makes it easier to manufacture a commercial product. So I think that’s the most exciting thing because for me, or for what I see the biggest obstacle for nuclear is really the cost and the time to build. So factory fabrication could really help with that.

Kari Hulac (9:11):

Right, so that was kind of going to be my next question is, you know, people claim that they’re too expensive and too unproven to make a meaningful impact in the fight against climate change. So it sounds like from what you’ve described as your studies, you know, back in Colorado and what you see are, you know, are the benefits of the technology you feel like it could combat those concerns about it or, or kind of counterbalance the objections.

Jessica Lovering (9:37):

Yeah. I mean, nuclear definitely is expensive, but it also provides a lot of value that’s hard to get from other energy sources. And so it’s just important to remember that, you know, solar started out like 300 times more expensive than it is today. And it was good smart policy and investment from the government that brought that cost down and that’s what’s needed for a nuclear, you know, we’re not asking for anything special. Just for nuclear to be valued for the carbon free electricity that it provides the way that renewables are. And you know, nuclear has a lot of unique challenges, but I don’t think it’s impossible to make it you know, cheap and fast.

Kari Hulac (10:16):

Speak to some of those challenges a little bit more whether, you know, in the U.S. or abroad and then maybe what, what you’re recommending to mitigate some of those.

Jessica Lovering (10:26):

Yeah. So it’s just hard to build big things. In particular in the U S and Western Europe, actually all of Europe. So large construction projects, large infrastructure projects you know, not just nuclear, but lots of different things in the U.S. are much more expensive than they are in other countries, take much longer, a lot more delays and, and going over budget. And this is really seen quite dramatically in the recent nuclear builds, particularly the plant in Georgia and the one in South Carolina that was canceled. And these plans are huge. You know, they take a lot of bespoke components or at least these first ones are sort of first of a kind. So that’s really challenging and also estimating costs for the first reactors. You know, nuclear gets a lot of flack for always being more expensive and it’s not that the projects get more expensive, it’s that we didn’t have good projections of what they were going to cost at the start. And so I think for technologies that are much simpler, it might be a little easier to contain the costs. And also if you’re doing more of the fabrication in a factory rather than onsite and you remove a lot of the, the human element to that construction process, that could reduce costs a lot.

Kari Hulac (11:59):

Great. Thank you. So you very briefly mentioned waste as a concern, and obviously that’s one of our focuses at our company. And many people oppose nuclear energy due to their fears about the waste, because it hasn’t been solved yet. It hasn’t been permanently disposed of yet. And I understand one of your objectives is to see the U.S. update the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to reflect a need for multiple pathways for storage and spent fuel management and ultimate disposition. So could, could you share a little bit more about that?

Jessica Lovering (12:30):

Something that I mentioned around, you know, we’ve had a lot of innovation in reactors and we definitely need to see more innovation, you know, like what Deep Isolation is doing around the waste, but also the whole fuel cycle really. And we’re just starting to see that coming, but there needs to be more of a sort of objective or mission from, from the Department of Energy or from the nuclear industry of what they need. But I think right now, since we don’t, we don’t have a solution for nuclear waste. We don’t know what we’re doing with it. I think more options, the better, more diversity of options and not just thinking about, okay, we moved these dry casks to a different place but different ways that we can utilize spent fuel. I think, you know, just for me personally, I think it’s such a waste that all that energy is still in there.

Jessica Lovering (13:25):

If there was a better way to use it, ways to recycle it you know, there’s a lot of challenges on, on reprocessing as well, but it seems to me like, you know, it would be so great if we could utilize it. That being said, of course, no matter what we do, even if advanced reactors, you know, use fuel more efficiently or use spent fuel in some capacity, we’re still going to have something leftover. Even if it’s a smaller amount, even if it’s less long lived or it’s shorter lived, so we still need a place to put it and we still need innovations around how we place it and where we put it. And that’s really both a technical problem and a social problem, getting you know, the social license to put waste in places. So it’s a really thorny problem. But I think there needs to be sort of leadership on it and I’m kind of hopeful that we can maybe make progress in the next administration.

Kari Hulac (14:23):

Speaking of leadership the Good Energy Collective released a policy report, “Our Progressive Policy Agenda for Advanced Nuclear Energy”. I took a look at that. Can you summarize your goals for putting the report out and maybe share some of the recommendations that you’re hopeful about or that are kind of close to your heart? 

Jessica Lovering (14:42):

Yeah, we have, it’s a very broad agenda. We have recommendations for you know, the executive branch of the government, for Congress, and for industry. But it’s really all towards getting nuclear deployed as a means to help reduce emissions. But in a way that’s very responsible and gets true social license from the communities that are hosting these facilities. And so some of the early things we asked for and, and some of them, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen little bits of, but establishing a climate office in the White House, sort of prioritizing climate from the executive branch. We’ve already seen really good exciting stuff there. On the legislative side, you know, we’d love to see a really big increase in funding for the Office of Nuclear Energy and particularly for more sort of mission oriented R&D.

Jessica Lovering (15:40):

So bringing the cost down for nuclear is a big one. But the big thing we want to see from, from Congress and from bills is this thing I mentioned earlier of integrating nuclear into climate bills. So we’ve had a lot of really exciting legislation passed in the last five years around advanced nuclear, but it’s been very nuclear specific. So seeing a broader climate package maybe with some, some compromises between renewables and nuclear and efficiency and electric vehicles and all that going into one thing I think would be really powerful. For the social license side, you know, that’s, that’s tricky, but we’d love to see some, some funding from the government to do pilot programs on more community focused processes for siting these advanced reactors. So more, so more investment going into, you know, not just, okay, how do we fund the construction of the first demonstrations, but how do we fund genuine engagement process early with these potential host communities to really get them to buy into the project to be really supportive.

Jessica Lovering (16:55):

Some of the things that we’ve asked of the nuclear industry are really to, to work with climate groups and try to build bridges you know, don’t, don’t be harping on renewables. Talk more about how nuclear can work with renewables to decarbonize and just be supportive of renewable policies. You can see that in sort of how the industry, you know, releases press statements on potential legislation. It’s a small thing, but it can make a big difference in sort of showing that like we’re all in this together. And also you know, the thing policy-wise, nuclear has a lot of legacy issues you know, from the weapons complex from uranium mining and you know, sometimes there’s this feeling of like, wow, that was a long time ago, that was weapons.

Jessica Lovering (17:46):

That was, you know, not having a civilian nuclear industry, but I think from whether it comes from the Department of Energy or from legislation, we would really love to see accelerated cleanup of a lot of these sites, more investment in mitigation of harms from these legacy sites. More consideration of, of where uranium is mined. There’s a, you know, a push right now to get more domestic uranium production. But we have to be very careful about how that’s done. And so more of a sort of acknowledgement of these injustices of the past, but actual policy to help alleviate them faster and accelerate those, those cleanups and, and other sort of remediations.

Kari Hulac (18:38):

So just recently the U.S. Department of Energy announced 30 million in funding for one of its new advanced reactor demonstration programs. And I guess it’s expected to contribute more than 600 million in the coming years. What are your reactions to this and what do you think it means?

Jessica Lovering (18:56):

I’m really excited about it, particularly the diversity of projects they’ve been funding. It’s not just, okay, we’re all going all in on this one design. They’re really trying to build out this kind of diverse ecosystem of potential reactors and, you know, there’s very different designs. So I think that’s, that’s what I’m excited about. It’s gonna probably take, you know, more money to get these actually demonstrated, but it definitely signals to the private sector that this is an exciting space that’s moving forward. And so hopefully this will bring in a lot more private investment to get some of these projects built.

Kari Hulac (19:35):

So finally, looking forward, I know you gave a keynote speech for the American Nuclear Society titled “What’s In Store for Nuclear in a Biden Administration”. And here we are with one. So, can you give some examples of how the changes made by the new administration might impact advanced nuclear reactor companies and the landscape in general that you’ve been working on with your Good Energy Collective?

Jessica Lovering (19:59):

Yeah, so, so we’ve seen some really positive signs in what the Biden campaign had been pushing around their climate plan. And now seeing, you know, what the, the transition and, and what President Elect Biden has done since he was elected is also really promising. So just some of the things that he’s done already are, you know, appoint people to high-level positions in the White House that are focused on climate. Those were some of the first announcements that were made. So that’s really signaling where his priorities were going to be. Now, obviously there’s this big crisis of coronavirus and the economic downturn that’s been associated with that, but he’s really tying recovery to climate in a very, you know, novel way of saying, you know, we can do green recovery, build back better.

Jessica Lovering (20:55):

So I think there’s going to be some sort of push to have you know stimulus or recovery that’s tied to environmental goals and that’s, that’s really exciting. You know, there’s a lot of jobs in nuclear, so that could be something very promising in some sort of package, but on his climate plan side, there’s a couple of really positive things. So one is that you know, right when Biden won the primary you know, his main competitor in the end was Bernie Sanders who’s, who’s quite anti-nuclear historically, but they, Biden and Sanders did this series of unity task forces to kind of bridge the different factions within the democratic party. And their recommendations on climate change were really interesting because they actually mentioned advanced nuclear several times. And just to have something with, you know, Sanders, AOC’s name on it, that talks about needing advanced nuclear, it was very exciting.

Jessica Lovering (21:51):

And they have some in Biden’s climate plan. He has some language around SMRs and specific things like he wants to make an ARPA for climate. So an “ARPA-C” and one of the first suggestions that he has for what that could do would be a program to reduce the cost of SMRs by 50%. So that’s like a very clear target that, you know, has really been lacking in sort of the federal government’s response or policy on nuclear so far. So those are some very positive hints that not just that Biden is taking climate seriously, but that he understands that it’s really about building things you know, building a lot of renewables, building a lot of nuclear, building a lot of transmission lines. And so that, that focus on, on infrastructure and jobs with respect to climate, I think is really positive. And it is going to get a lot broader of a coalition to come together around potential legislation.

Kari Hulac (22:55):

Well, great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and best of luck too, with your work. 

Jessica Lovering (23:01):

Thank you. Have a great day.

Note: This transcript is the raw transcript of this podcast. Minimal edits have been made only for clarity purposes.

John Lindberg (0:10):

We need to make sure that in the climate change conversation that nuclear isn’t just in a peripheral role, but rather, how do we place nuclear energy center stage given the everything that nuclear can do in terms of fighting climate change?

Narrator (0:26): 

Did you know that there are half a million metric tons of nuclear waste temporarily stored at hundreds of sites worldwide? In the U.S. alone, one in three people live within 50 miles of a storage site. No country has yet successfully disposed of commercial spent nuclear fuel, but it’s not for lack of a solution. So what’s the delay? The answers are complex and controversial. In this series, we explore the nuclear waste issue with people representing various pieces of this complicated puzzle. We hope this podcast will give you a clearer picture of Nuclear Waste: The Whole Story. We believe that listening is an important element of a successful nuclear waste disposal program. A core company value is to seek and listen to different perspectives. 

Opinions expressed by the interviewers and their subjects are not necessarily representative of the company. If there’s a topic discussed in the podcast that is unfamiliar to you, or you’d like to more closely review what was said, please see the show notes at deepisolation.com/podcasts.

Kari Hulac (1:46):

Today, we’re talking to John Linberg, Public Affairs Manager at the World Nuclear Association. John is a radiation and nuclear power communications expert who focuses on the impacts of radiophobia and the public’s perception of nuclear energy, which is also the subject of his doctoral studies at King’s College London and Imperial College. Thank you for joining us today, John.

John Lindberg (2:11):

Ah, pleasure is all mine. Greetings from a very wet and gloomy London.

Kari Hulac (2:16):

Great, well stay warm and dry there. First off, I know you’re interested in how pop culture shapes the public’s opinion of anything with the word “nuclear” in it and how their fear has helped coin the term “radiophobia”. Please define that term and share a bit about its history.

John Lindberg (2:35):

Radiophobia is essentially the very clear disconnect that exists between what people perceive radiation to be and what radiation science tells us that it actually is. So most people would think that radiation is something that is uniquely dangerous, something that poses a threat, not only to ourselves but also threats to future generations. Whereas science tells us that of the many sorts of environmental threats that we face, radiation really isn’t something to get too concerned about. And radiophobia is really that, it isn’t a phobia in the clinical sense. And pop culture has to say, has played a major role in this. You know, all of us, most of us, have watched the Simpsons where we’re all thinking about Homer Simpson sitting and eating nuclear waste out of a, of a big barrel with a warning sign on it, or, or indeed HBO’s Chernobyl service that came out not that long ago.

John Lindberg (3:36):

And pop culture essentially helps us to put images to something that we cannot see because after all radiation is invisible to all our senses. We can’t smell it, we can’t hear it, we can’t taste it. So the only way for us to really make sense of radiation is to use images that’s given to us by pop culture or be it something that we were reading or even the history. And when it comes to radiation, if you look at the history of radiation, we started off thinking that it is the coolest thing on the planet. We would use radiation for everything, anything from painting your watches to, if you wanted to get it started nicer skin complexion, you could use slightly radioactive skin creams. It’s only then really after the second world war, that radiation starts to become something quite different, something more ominous we started connected with cancer.

John Lindberg (4:34):

And then obviously, the bomb and the bomb starts to play a really, really big role in the way that we start to make sense of radiation. And really at that point, making the connection from the nuclear bomb to a nuclear reactor and they both are radioactive, all the sudden we start to see these sort of bridges being built, “Oh, God, radiation is everywhere.” Which means a nuclear reactor is probably something quite close to a nuclear bomb, and that’s really why the history of radiation and the way that radiophobia impacts our lives today is so important to understand. And indeed, how pop culture played a major role in that.

Kari Hulac (5:17):

Have you seen people’s perceptions changing at all? I can completely understand the fears of the past. You know, and, and, and you deal with people worldwide. You’re educating people worldwide. Do you see differences in attitudes by countries, say, you know, where you are in the United Kingdom or Japan, US? 

John Lindberg (5:37):

Yeah. I mean, you can definitely see that there is a difference in attitudes. But let’s just say on a, on a country basis, I come back to that in a second. It’s also a lot to do with when were you born? So for instance, my generation, so I’m going after the end of the cold war, my generation, we never grew up with this sort of visceral fear of nuclear war. For me, nuclear war is an abstract concept that doesn’t really mean anything on an emotional level, whereas my parents and my grandparents, for them nuclear war and the impact of the war, was very, very real. Conversely, the history and memory of Chernobyl is nothing that I remember. But my grandma still remembers to this day, how she feared the clouds and because the clouds are carrying radiation from Chernobyl.

John Lindberg (6:34):

So whenever we talk nuclear at home, she automatically starts thinking about these clouds. And on a country-to-country basis. You also see a major difference. So here in the UK, people have a much more relaxed relationship with nuclear power. It hasn’t really been any major incidents or, or anything that’s really given rise to that level of fear. In America, you would find that a lot was connected to the nuclear bomb and to fall out from the weapons. And Chernobyl didn’t really play a role in America, full stop. Whereas in Japan, you have this sort of unique perception challenge where you have the nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the sort of cultural trauma that that brought. But also you have the accidents at Fukushima Daiichi not even 10 years ago. So in Japan, you find that this sort of radiophobia is, is much more present in people’s minds. And it doesn’t take much for that to manifest, be that in increasing anxiety, social stigma, or any of the other well-known side effects of radiophobia.

Kari Hulac (7:51):

So tell me a little bit about your organization. The World Nuclear Association is an international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports companies that are part of that industry. So what are your most pressing goals and challenges in your role there at the moment?

John Lindberg (8:07):

So, as you say, the World Nuclear Association represents all parts of the nuclear industry from uranium mining to reactor vendors, operators, to waste management companies. So for us, we really spread the important message of why nuclear energy matters. And there’s a couple of really big challenges that we’re facing, I suppose, as an industry, and by extension, WNA faces some as well. Climate change is clearly one of them. We need to make sure that in the climate change conversation that nuclear isn’t just in a peripheral, but rather how do we place nuclear energy center stage given the everything that nuclear can do in terms of fighting climate change? We have the challenges and the opportunities presented by the UN sustainable development goals. Clearly clean, affordable, and reliable energy is crucial to everything that we do.

John Lindberg (9:12):

Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about food production, education, women’s empowerment, you name it, energy will be there, and energy will be crucial. And it is a tragic matter of fact, that we still see just under 1 billion people around the world, not having access to electricity, let alone any sort of clean electricity and nuclear can play a crucial role, both building large reactors, and, and small reactors. So we are engaging with national governments and international bodies, UN, the International Energy Agency, so on and so forth. Making sure that nuclear is represented at all levels of conversation. And thirdly, I suppose more pertinent today, is the issue around nuclear waste and the European Union’s whole work around the taxonomy where nuclear, as things currently stand, would be excluded from sustainable financing initiatives because of this perception of nuclear isn’t sustainable, whereas far less sustainable energy sources such as natural gas is included. So we are spending a lot of time engaging with stakeholders around the world, highlighting just how sustainable nuclear is and just how important nuclear is to building a truly sustainable future.

Kari Hulac (10:40):

So the key thing about moving forward with nuclear energy is that there’s the problem of the waste that hasn’t been permanently disposed of. What do you see the conversation around nuclear waste changing, given the value of nuclear energy as a carbon-neutral energy source? How does that play into your work? And do you hear that raised as an objection to supporting nuclear energy?

John Lindberg (11:05):

I mean, absolutely. Nuclear waste surfaces in more or less any conversation that we are having around nuclear’s role in, in fighting climate change. The challenge here is really that it is a perception issue as much as anything else. It is perceived that we haven’t resolved the question or the problem of nuclear waste, but the thing is, ever since the civil nuclear industry emerged, we have been looking after the waste in a very responsible fashion. Civil waste has never harmed anyone and we know how to handle it. Yes, there is the question of final disposal. But it’s also, if we’re comparing nuclear with other energy sources, nuclear waste is very small in quantity. And in terms of handling it, it’s, it’s relatively simple, especially if you compare to a gas, gas, or coal-fired power plant, it’s pretty hard to, to, to handle the CO2 or the ash that comes out of the, of the, of the chimneys. Whereas nuclear waste is ceramic or metallic. In some cases, it’s easy enough, you stick it into a pond and then you have it on-site, but yes.

Kari Hulac (12:26):

Right. I bet most people may not even realize it’s just a little pellets, correct.

John Lindberg (12:29):

Oh yeah, totally. I mean, I feel that they’re about that size and you, and you get an absolutely incredible amount of energy out of it. And that’s the key because there’s so much energy and so little raw material, the amount of waste that comes out it’s teeny tiny. Yes, we, we need to make more progress on, on establishing if you like repositories or recycling, because at the end of the day, what comes out of the reactor, most of that is still uranium. And we can, there’s plenty of energy in that. There’s plutonium, which we can use for electricity generation and the other elements as well. So it’s getting policymakers, I think, to, to, to realize that we resolved the question that the technical questions around nuclear waste management decades ago, it’s really a political one. They need to decide. Do you want to recycle some of it? Do you want to recycle all of it, or do you want to just use it once and dispose of it in repositories or cohorts? So it’s a political question, not a technical one.

Kari Hulac (13:38):

Now you’re studying for a doctorate in philosophy focused on risk, communication, and radiation, and you’re completing a master’s degree in medical radiation sciences. So in your spare time, you seem like you’re probably pretty busy there, but tell me, what are you learning in the course of your studies? Are there some facts you can share to help the public understand the risks of radiation associated with nuclear waste?

John Lindberg (14:01):

Yeah, so, I think the one thing that becomes abundantly clear when you start to, to, to really study and research questions around radiation is that we as a community, be it with the radiation community or the community, we learned to talk about radiation risks in isolation from other risks. We don’t put it into context and we don’t put it into perspective, and that’s a huge problem. You know, we don’t talk about any other risks that way. So why would we do that by radiation? You know, nothing in life is without risk. And I, I don’t cycle in London because the risk of being run over by a bus is pretty high. It was perceived as high. Whereas living in London in itself is probably even worse because of air pollution.  

John Lindberg (14:49): 

And that’s something that, especially in my Ph.D., has spent a lot of time looking into the way that we, we make sense of the world if you like. Cause at the end of the day, we are all emotional bias creatures. Most of the way that we make sense of the world is really gut feeling and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what’s important is to understand that because we often, especially in the nuclear community, we make this sort of flawed argument that we’re all rational. So, and given that we’re all rational, we just need to give people facts about nuclear power or radiation, or nuclear waste. So it comes down to that, you know, we need to change the way that we talk about ourselves, and in doing so, we need to, if you like become more human. I think that’s really what, what I’ve found, which is so important to get out to people in, in, in the nuclear community.

Kari Hulac (15:44):

You know you make me think about just the generational thing again, in terms of how people will change. You know, I see a lot of millennials really passionate about nuclear energy in the context of climate change. And maybe, do you think there’s a possibility that just the growing understanding of climate change will kind of lead to more acceptance of the fact that nuclear energy could be a solution, could be part of the solution to that, and maybe coming to terms with, yes, there is radioactive waste, but we can deal with it safely and responsibly with a really low risk, then maybe nuclear energy can be part of the mix.

John Lindberg (16:25):

Yeah. I mean, that’s a brilliant question. And in many ways that strikes right to the heart of many of the conversations that we’re having. Nuclear power and climate change is a tricky conversation to have. Some evidence points towards what’s called reluctant acceptance, that people understand that we might need nuclear for a while, but then as soon as we find something better, we can ditch nuclear for whatever that solution is. So it’s a double-edged sword. So on the one hand I think that the bigger challenge really is to get people to get comfortable with nuclear. And we can do that in a number of different ways. Climate change is really scary. You know, I remember when I started to really understand climate change, it scared the living daylights out of me. And for a long time, I was just too afraid to engage with it.

John Lindberg (17:20):

I disconnected and a lot of people have done that. So talking about nuclear in the climate change context is it can be helpful, but I think we’ve really need to be having a much broader conversation about what makes nuclear power such a valuable power source, be that fighting poverty, be that addressing energy poverty, be it creating artificial fuels, be it powering a more equitable society. I think that that’s really where we can build coalitions for nuclear, but it’s going to be positive. Cause I think that’s what we need to do. We need to build a positive momentum around nuclear. That will then start to get into the conversations around climate change because if we put all of our bets into the climate change basket, we’ll struggle because if we look at how the energy arena is being perceived, solar and wind are having very, very high favorability ratings.

John Lindberg (18:28):

People think about these energy sources and they get feelings of hope that this is something that’s going to bring, literally in the case of solar, a brighter future. The problem is obviously that we can’t do it with just solar and wind, there just isn’t a way, and the only way to do it in a low carbon way is with nuclear. And that’s why I think we need to bring the conversation around nuclear to, in a much broader arena again, and talk about all the things that nuclear can do rather than focusing on that tiny, tiny sliver that’s climate change. And that, and that’s a challenge. And I don’t think the industry has gotten that balance right, just yet, but we will live and we learn right.

Kari Hulac (19:17):

What does the World Nuclear Association do in terms of educating people about the waste? Like, do you have, I mean, do you have favorite solutions that you support? I mean, I know in, you know, closer to where you are, Finland and Sweden have had some success moving forward with their permanent disposal solutions. You know, what, what have you learned about those countries or other alternative sources of disposal?

John Lindberg (19:45):

So the World Nuclear Association is completely agnostic when it comes to waste management solutions. We recognize that certain countries have certain historical or legislative histories that make certain solutions seem more favorable than others. Some countries will want to recycle some of it. We see that for instance, in France and in Russia, but Germany has also been recycling parts of its waste. Some countries want to recycle all of it. Again, Russia is very much leading the way and a lot of that sort of R&D work, but in the United States, you see a lot of very exciting startups looking at reactor concepts that essentially can recycle theoretically up until about 97% of all the waste. Equally some countries like the ones you mentioned, Sweden, Finland, they have gone down for a different philosophy, which is that you use the fuel in the reactor, and you do that once, and then you send it off to, to a final repository.

John Lindberg (20:50):

And it’s really up to governments to decide what suits them the best. And again building repositories has for a long time been seen as the only solution. And I would obviously take, take issue with that. For instance, some countries might find it that it is too expensive to build a repository, especially for smaller countries. They might only have one, two reactors. Building a full site, a proper repository might just be too expensive. So some companies look then upon steps like international repositories, where you send waste from different countries into a central repository. And then we have other solutions like deep boreholes solutions. And really as far as we’re concerned, you know, off you go in terms of, find as many exciting solutions as possible, we are happy to write about them. We got some really, really, really good information papers cause you spoke earlier about education.

John Lindberg (21:55):

And, and for me, I think it’s really exciting that Finland has made such good headway on its repository. And when Onkalo opens up for the first waste or spent fuel to be shipped off and placed in the repository, I think at that point, we will be able to say to anyone that challenges the nuclear industry, by saying, well, look guys, you don’t have a solution to waste because well, yes we do, we have the repository of which is open and we have all of these other exciting solutions that we are currently developing. And I think that’s really going to be a game-changer. And it’s going to make it easier for the nuclear industry, I think to bring its case as well. On the climate change arena, given the waste keeps cropping up time and time again.

Kari Hulac (22:45):

Thank you so much John I’ve learned a lot talking with you today and I look forward to learning more from your organization. 

John Lindberg (22:55)

Thank you so much.