Decouple

The Race to Build the World's Next Great Uranium Mine w/ Leigh R. Curyer

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, when much of the world was turning away from nuclear energy, Leigh Curyer made a contrarian bet on uranium. He founded NexGen

Can South Korea Rescue America's Nuclear Renaissance? w/ Dr. Eunjung Lim

South Korea emerged from the devastation of the Korean War as one of the world's poorest countries. Within a generation, it had become an industrial powerhouse, mastering

How America Gave Away Its Industrial Superpower w/ Stefan Link

By 1927, the United States had more than 22 million motor vehicles on its roads, compared with just 18,000 in the Soviet Union. This staggering disparity reflected one of

The Story of the Israeli Bomb w/ Avner Cohen

How did a tiny, impoverished country whose principal exports included Jaffa oranges become the world's sixth nuclear power? Nuclear historian Avner Cohen, author of Israe

The Canada-US Trade War: A Bridge Too Far? w/ Jesse Huebsch

The Canada-US trade war is escalating, threatening to unravel decades of economic integration between two of the world's closest allies. Chris Keefer is joined by returni

Megaprojects: Some Assembly Required w/ Ian MacGregor

Canada is once again attempting to build nuclear megaprojects after a long pause, making the experience of people who have actually delivered recent large industrial proj

The State of Fusion Energy w/ Gerrit Bruhaug

Fusion has spent nearly a century as the energy source of the future. In this episode, I’m joined by fusion scientist Gerrit Bruhaug to ask what has actually been achieve

Sunk Costs & Diminishing Returns of Iran's Nuclear Program w/ Farzan Sabet

Iran’s nuclear program is now more than seven decades old, stretching from the Shah’s ambitious Atoms for Peace-era plans to the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of enrichment,

Biomass Masterclass w/ Mark Nelson

For almost the whole of human history, wood was the main act. It was the fuel that cooked food and smelted iron, the material that framed every house and hull, and the fi

Ernie Moniz: Reflections on the JCPOA

Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz joins Decouple to examine the history of Iran’s nuclear program and the negotiations that produced the 2015 Joint Comprehensi

Fission Impossible? Financing New Nuclear w/ Michael Seely

Why are nuclear power plants so difficult to finance, and who ultimately pays when megaprojects run late or over budget? Chris Keefer is joined by returning guest Michael

CANDU: The Truly Modular Reactor w/ Navid Badie

In this reactor deep dive, Chris Keefer is joined by Navid Badie, Chief Nuclear Engineer at Candu Energy Inc, to explain the inner workings of the distinctive CANDU react

The Birth of America’s Nuclear Power Industry

James Krellenstein returns to take apart one of the most persistent myths in energy discourse: the idea that there was a golden age when nuclear power was cheaper than co

Limits to Growth of LLMs w/ David Helmer

AI hype has bled deep into the nuclear sector, and in this episode, Chris Keefer sits down with returning guest David Helmer, an engineer and AI advisory consultant with

The Gas Turbine: The Final Revelation in Humanity’s Pantheon of Prime Movers (w/ David Helmer)

David Helmer spent years working on cooling systems for GE jet turbines before moving to Boston Consulting Group, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and West Point. He joins

Understanding the World's Most Unusual Commodity Cycle

Grant Isaac, President and COO of Cameco, joins Decouple to explain why uranium behaves unlike any other commodity. With essentially zero fundamental in-year demand, a sp

The Absolute Best Water Reactor: What Happened to the World’s Fastest Constructed Reactor?

Nuclear construction once hit timelines that today sound implausible. First of a kind reactors completed in under four years, delivered at lower cost than mature designs,

Nuclear Reprocessing: Promise vs Reality

In this episode of Decouple, Chris Keefer is joined once again by Michael Seely of the Atomic Blender to explore nuclear fuel reprocessing and the promise of unlocking va

Greenwashing with Chinese Characteristics

In this episode we are joined by Seaver Wang to discuss the physical foundations of China’s industrial dominance in solar, batteries, electric vehicles, semiconductors, r

The Luxury Beliefs That Broke Europe’s Energy System | Doomberg

Europe once treated energy as the foundation of civilization. After the oil shocks of the 1970s, it built nuclear at scale, opened the North Sea, and secured long term pi