Ep. 177 - From Fashion Model to Fission Mission: Isabelle Boemeke’s Nuclear-Powered Future

Nov 1

SHOW NOTES

When you hear the word nuclear, does your mind flash to mushroom clouds, Chernobyl, or maybe the glowing three-eyed fish from The Simpsons? Well, what if nuclear electricity — far from being an environmental villain — is actually one of the safest, cleanest, and most land-efficient energy sources we have?

It turns out that former fashion model Isabelle Boemeke is on a mission to change how we think about nuclear energy. When she and I met a few years ago, in Italy of all places, she was known by many simply as Isodope, her online persona that blends fashion, futurism, and fission to make nuclear cool again. And now, in her new book Rad Future, Isabelle argues that nuclear power isn’t just misunderstood — it’s essential to solving climate change, land preservation, and numerous other important concerns.

In our conversation, Isabelle details:

Why fear of nuclear power stems more from cultural trauma than from science,
Why nuclear electricity is safer and environmentally-friendlier than not just fossil fuels, but also solar and wind,
What’s fact vs. fiction when it comes to the world’s biggest energy disasters,
And why, despite all the excitement about fusion and modular reactors, maybe the smartest thing we can do right now is simply pick a proven fission design — and start building them fast.

I always love when it turns out that the thing we thought was the villain is actually a hero, or at least better than what we thought. If you do too, this is the episode for you, as this episode may challenge your assumptions about what’s truly “green” and is actually safe.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

The 2019 Amazon Rainforest fires and Australian fires that decimated massive amounts of wildlife habitat helped inspire Isabelle to focus on environmental concerns such as climate change.
The 1975 Baquiao dam collapse killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Isabelle recommends checking out www.whatisnuclear.com and the Decouple Podcast.
Commonwealth Fusion recently raised $863 million.
The US military is investing in small, mobile nuclear reactors.
Paul recently read a sci-fi book about nuclear-powered wildlife called The Kaij u Preservation Society.

MORE ABOUT Isabelle Boemeke

With her signature mix of humor, sharp research, and optimistic vision, her debut book, Rad Future, makes the case for nuclear electricity as one of the best tools to solve the climate crisis. Boemeke is also known as Isodope, the irreverent digital persona on a mission to make nuclear cool. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Save Clean Energy and board member of Nature is Nonpartisan and Nuclear Scaling Initiative, where she works at the intersection of policy, culture, and technology to accelerate pragmatic solutions. She delivered a TED Talk that has been viewed nearly 2 million times, led a grassroots campaign that helped delay the closure of California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and is a TIME Magazine “Next Generation Leader.”

TRANSCRIPT

Paul Shapiro:

Hello, friend, and welcome to episode 177 of the Business for Good podcast. Well, first, what nice feedback we got on the last episode with Mickey Agrawal of Hero Diapers. That's H-I-R-O. If you didn't catch it, Mickey is making diapers with plastic-eating microscopic fungi that help break the diaper down after use. Considering that each American baby sends 6,000, that's right, 6,000 diapers to landfills, it's an idea whose time is ready to germinate. I really appreciate all the feedback that we got from listeners.

If you want to offer feedback either on this episode or others, maybe you want to suggest other things you want to hear on this show, hit me up. You can always get in touch via businessforgoodpodcast.com. Now, speaking of ideas that are germinating, I have noticed in recent years a major shift in how environmentally minded folks think about nuclear electricity. And helping to lead that shift is the guest on today's show. When you hear the word nuclear, does your mind flash to mushroom clouds or Chernobyl or maybe the glowing three-eyed fish from The Simpsons? Well, what if nuclear electricity, far from being an environmental villain, is actually one of the safest, cleanest, and most land-efficient energy sources that we actually have? It turns out that former fashion model Isabel Bomecchi is on a mission to change how we think about nuclear energy. When she and I first met in person a few years ago in Italy, of all places, she was known by many then simply as Isodope, her online persona that blends fashion, futurism, and fission to make nuclear cool again. Now she is also known as the author of a new book called Rad Future. In this book, Isabel argues that nuclear power isn't just misunderstood, it's essential to solving climate change, land preservation, and numerous other important concerns. In our conversation, Isabel details why fear of nuclear power stems more from cultural trauma than from actual science. why nuclear electricity is safer and environmentally friendlier than not just fossil fuels, but also than solar and wind energy. What's fact versus fiction when it comes to the world's biggest energy disasters and why despite all the excitement about fusion startups and modular reactors, maybe the smartest thing we can do right now is simply pick a proven fission design and start building them fast. I always love when it turns out that the thing we thought was the villain is actually a hero, or at least was a lot better than what we thought.

If you like that too, then this is the episode for you, as it may challenge your assumptions about what is truly green and actually safe.

Paul Shapiro (00:01)

Isabelle, welcome to the Business for Good podcast.

Isabelle Boemeke (00:04)

Thanks Paul, glad to be here.

Paul Shapiro (00:06)

I am really glad to be talking with you about this. It's one of my favorite topics because it's so counterintuitive for people, which is things that I love, like things that are actually good for the environment that people think are actually bad for the environment. There's a whole long list of these things that people are afraid of, ⁓ whether it's GMOs or other types of ⁓ things in agriculture. But in terms of energy, this is like the one that people are really afraid of, like a third rail. And so

I, you know, when I think about when people hear the word nuclear, they get so, ⁓ almost like their, their hair goes up, right? They think about the Simpsons, ⁓ with the three eyed fish in the beginning of the Simpsons. They think about the Chernobyl docu series that was on HBO. ⁓ but you say that it's actually good. Why? Why is it actually good?

Isabelle Boemeke (00:59)

It's funny to say that when people hear the word nuclear, their brain just conjures a bunch of images and they're usually not positive. And it's something that I grappled with for a very long time. where I finally landed is that it's the bomb. If you think about when nuclear fission, which is the process that occurs inside a nuclear reactor,

When nuclear fission was discovered, was in 1938 in Germany. So for those who are not good at tracking time, this was Nazi Germany. the world was a year away from entering World War II. so governments were very quick, especially the US government was very quick to develop nuclear weapons, which, know, culminated with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So you imagine that the first introduction of nuclear or atomic technologies.

was through the bombs. I think this is, it's hard to understand the emotional scar that that leaves an entire generation. And then we went straight into the Cold War after World War II. And so people were doing duck and drill covers where they would, ⁓ duck and cover drills where they would lunge underneath their desks and try to prepare for a nuclear war, which frankly is not a very good way to protect yourself from nuclear war, but you know.

Again, scarring an entire generation. And if we know anything about humans is that we are emotional creatures. We have an emotional reaction to things and then we use logic to try and explain why we had that emotional reaction. But we mostly react based on fear in any other sorts sort of emotion. so, you know, when you have that such a negative emotion attached to a word, then any little thing that happens that faintly signals that your feeling is correct, just validates your position. So people are already terrified of it. Then one incident in Pennsylvania at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant happens and people go, see, it's confirming my fear. This is why I'm afraid of this. This is dangerous. This is scary. Of course, you we talked about the accidents. There are three accidents that people can point to in over seven years of the technology. So actually that tells us that nuclear is very safe. If you can point to three incidents of a technology that's been around for seven years, mean, that's incredible.

Paul Shapiro (03:30)

Right, I do want to get to the accidents, but I want to ask you just about your own journey here, Isabel, because you are not the most likely person to be writing a book about nuclear electricity, right? So you started out as a model. It's a very well-worn path from being a fashion model to being an author of books about nuclear electricity, I'm sure. ⁓ But what happened for you? Did you ever think about energy or nuclear electricity when you were

doing fashion modeling? Like what happened that you decided you're going from fashion modeling to eventually coming to a place where you're going to be writing a book about nuclear electricity? ⁓

Isabelle Boemeke (04:06)

certainly

a weird pipeline. ⁓ I didn't have a lot of role models to inspire my journey, frankly. It was hard to find people who had done such a wild pivot. Well, I grew up, I'm a millennial, I grew up with the fear of climate change. So climate change has been in the back of my mind for a very long time, like everybody else in my generation.

Um, but it wasn't really something that I felt was that urgent because again, I grew up with it. So it was always this feeling that it was going to be in the future, right? In the future, we were going to have to deal with this big issue. And I remember in 2019, opening my phone and seeing the fires in the Amazon. And it's hard to think about 2019 because 2020 was such a crazy year, but 2019 was a, was a very

jarring year from a wildfire perspective. There were these huge bushfires in Australia, and I'm sure everybody here remembers seeing those images. Same in the Amazon and also in California with the orange skies. And so that was the first year that I truly felt like climate change was here and that we were not doing enough to slow down. And I decided to look into the solutions because I wanted to somehow be a part of

of it and coming across nuclear, which randomly had been in my mind for several years at that point, just out of curiosity. I remember realizing that this was the only clean energy source that had a unique problem, had a bad PR, bad image problem. And as you mentioned, I was working as a fashion model at the time, also building a cosmetics brand. But I figured that my unique skill set, meaning, you know,

knowing how to place a product in the right way and how to sell products could be useful in trying to revert that image ⁓ and, you know, talk about the reality about nuclear because, you know, public perception and the reality are so, so different. And it was really just a lack of communication or effective communication because, you know, the information about nuclear safety is out there in any mainstream.

source of information. However, it wasn't being translated into a language that your average person could understand or even want to learn about. was quite frankly boring.

Paul Shapiro (06:35)

Yeah, that's one of the most interesting parts I found about your book actually is it's written in a way that is designed for lay people, right? Like if you think, this is a book about nuclear electricity, you think it's going to be something that physicists are going to want to read or economists are going to want to read. But it's written for any lay person. And basically, your argument in the book is that not only is nuclear not something for us to be afraid of, in fact, it may be literally the most environmentally friendly source of electricity, even compared to solar and wind.

and geothermal and hydro and so on. And I want to get into that because that's a pretty interesting claim. But you referenced earlier, Isabel, the accidents, right? And so you said there's three accidents. So for those who aren't paying attention, you know, there's Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, right? And I have now because of your book, I've done my own focus grouping with people in my life and I've asked them numerous times now, four times. I've said, what is the worst energy related disaster?

in human history by human death toll. And inevitably, Chernobyl was what all four of them said. When I told them it wasn't Chernobyl, two of them said Three Mile Island, and then the other two said Fukushima. And I said, well, what if you knew that Three Mile Island killed zero people? Literally zero people died from Three Mile Island. And how many do you think died from Chernobyl? And they they ranged anywhere from hundreds of thousands of people to a million. I said, it's actually about 100. About 100 people died.

from Chernobyl and Fukushima more people died from being evacuated than the actual problem from the radiation. And so they said, okay, so then what is it? What is the biggest energy disaster? Now I'll give you the punchline, Isabel, cause I learned this from you. What's the biggest energy related disaster in human history?

Isabelle Boemeke (08:23)

So the biggest energy related disaster in human history was actually a hydropower dam collapse in China in 1979, which ironically was the same year that Three Mile Island happened. Instead, Three Mile Island didn't kill, as you mentioned, didn't kill a single person. And several studies have been done since the accident happened. And the scientific consensus is that it didn't even increase cancer cases.

because the amounts of radiation that were released to the environment were so small. Now, the hydropower collapse, the hydropower dam collapsing China, this was a massive dam that when collapsed ended up collapsing several other dams that were dropped downstream. So entire villages were swept away. And the estimate is that around 200,000 people died. So by death though, this is definitely the biggest energy disaster.

Now, you mentioned, you know, Fukushima, the death toll is around 2000 people, but all of those deaths are because of the evacuation, because people forget that the reason why Fukushima, the Fukushima disaster happened is because there was a massive earthquake and a massive tsunami. So imagine trying to evacuate people in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami. So people, you know, people were...

elderly people who lost their medical needs in the transportation or any other thing that could have happened in an evacuation in the middle of several disasters. Now from radiation, there is one plant worker that later passed away from lung cancer and his family was compensated, but it's impossible to know if his lung cancer was actually caused by radiation from Fukushima, but that's it.

Now in terms of Chernobyl, yes, it's less than 100 confirmed fatalities, which blows people's minds if they've seen the HBO show ⁓ Chernobyl. But there is an estimated of around 4,000 later deaths from cancer, but it doesn't compare to 200,000 from this hydropower dam collapse, right?

Paul Shapiro (10:38)

Right, and that was my main takeaway. I don't know how it's pronounced in Mandarin, but it's called, I think, the Banqiao Dam disaster. B-A-N-Q-I-A-O, Banqiao. And I guarantee you, not one person listening to this has ever heard of the Banqiao Dam disaster, despite the fact that it killed nearly a quarter million people. And there's no race to end hydro energy as a result of this. You don't see Germany shutting down any dams. You don't see...

countries getting rid of their dams or movements or protesters saying we need to get rid of dams. And if they are saying that it's for environmental reasons, not for the human death toll that was caused, right? So I was blown away by this in realizing how few people have ever been killed by nuclear energy compared to hydro. But what also really blew me away in the book, Isabel, was before reading your book, I thought, yes, nuclear is fossil fuel free.

It is emissions. There's very few emissions. And so it's better than oil or coal or gas. What I didn't really realize is how it compared to solar and wind. And I didn't appreciate the difference you were just making in the book between renewables, which I thought was a synonym for clean energy. And I didn't realize that not all renewables are even good, right? But ⁓ how nuclear compared to

energy sources that we think of as clean, like solar and wind, and it really comes down to energy density. And so maybe if you could explain that concept, like what is energy density for people who don't know and why is nuclear better than solar or wind on this score?

Isabelle Boemeke (12:23)

So energy density is very similar to like food density, right? You think about peanut butter, it's an extremely dense food. You eat a tablespoon and you're getting hundreds of calories ⁓ versus if you eat, let's say, a cauliflower, you're gonna get a lot less calories with the same volume of food. And the concept is the same here. And so nuclear is, it's almost mind blowing and hard to explain how energy dense nuclear is. the best way to explain it is you imagine,

a uranium fuel pellet, which is the thing that we use in nuclear power plants as the fuel. And this fuel pellet is about the size of a gummy bear, So a uranium fuel pellet has the same amount of energy as 2,000 pounds of coal.

It's impossible to even visualize that, nuclear is the most dense energy source out there. And that has a cascading effect that's really interesting. nuclear is so energy dense, that also means you have to mine way less to produce the same amount of energy. So if you compare the...

mining intensity of all energy sources, nuclear just has the lowest of every single one of them, including other clean energy sources like solar and wind. But that also means that it takes the least amount of land ⁓ because you can produce more amount of power in a tinier plot of land. And so there are all these cascading effects. And that's why my belief is that from every aspect that you look at nuclear.

It's just better than every other source of energy, including the clean ones. ⁓ And that's not only from a technology standpoint, but also from a people's

Paul Shapiro (14:07)

And just to underscore, sorry to interrupt you, Isabel. Just to underscore this, to be clear, when we talk about land use.

we're talking about solar using between 18 to 27 times more land to make the same amount of electricity as nuclear. So for folks who want to preserve land so that we can have more wildlife, the biggest reason why wildlife are going extinct right now is because we're taking up land from them, not because of climate change. Climate change is part of it, but land use is a bigger part of it. And you're talking to get the same amount of energy from a nuclear power plant

up to 27 times more land to get the same amount from solar panels that you put on the wind. Like that is an amazing fact when you consider that the weed opponents to nuclear tend to be environmental groups, which this is from an environmental perspective, far better than the energy sources that they are championing.

Isabelle Boemeke (15:06)

Yeah, from a land perspective, certainly. you know, it's just... mean, land is just... Obviously, there are several different ways to look at a technology. And I don't like getting into fights about which source of clean energy is better, because at the end of the day, it's better than fossil fuels. Solar is better than fossil fuels. But, you we mentioned you need 27 times the amount of land to get the same energy from solar.

that you would get from nuclear, but at the end of the day, you're not even getting the same amount of energy because of the difference in reliability. ⁓ So solar and wind, they're intermittent sources of energy. We all know this and people will talk about it like, yeah, we know this is a problem, but it's not a big deal. No, it's actually a huge deal because we have built our civilization in such a way where we expect access to electricity whenever we want it.

And so in order to make intermittent sources of energy work around the clock, we have to start doing all these excessive things, for example, backing them up with a ton of batteries, but then we also have to overbuild the amount of solar panels and wind turbines that you put down so that you can charge the batteries.

And so you're getting even more, you're getting, you're going to need even more land than you anticipated. And, know, at the end of the day, people try to do all of these things just to avoid nuclear, which in the past was because people were just terrified of nuclear. and then partly because of that nuclear became extremely expensive. And so now the same people will say, well, we can't use nuclear because it's too expensive. So it's all just an attempt to avoid using nuclear.

Paul Shapiro (17:00)

Yeah, yes, I agree. I want to get into why that may be. But first, I just want to double-click on this point about renewables, because again, I thought renewable meant basically was the synonym for clean. But renewable also means chopping down entire forests and burning the trees in order to make electricity, right? And they say it's renewable because in a few decades, we might be able to regrow all of those trees. I don't think that's what most people think of when they think of renewable energy.

And nuclear is not considered renewable because the uranium is finite. And even though you're looking at an energy source that's vastly cleaner than chopping down whole forests just to burn the trees so that we can power data centers so that we can have a raccoon giving us instructions on Sora on how to ⁓ make a pie, right? The question becomes, what is really worth it to us?

And I was quite surprised that deforestation counted as renewables and nuclear didn't, considering how clean nuclear is and how, of course, horrible deforestation is.

Isabelle Boemeke (18:08)

Yeah, because renewable, as you pointed out, doesn't necessarily mean clean, it just means that it renews itself. And so the wind renews itself, right? The sun, you don't have to... It's not a fuel that you have to mine or anything like that. Same with the water. And with trees, the concept is like you pointed out, you chop them down, but eventually they grow back or you plant more and whatnot. Now, the problem with that obviously is...

one, deforestation, but then also the fact that you're burning trees themselves, which does release particulate matter and CO2. Now, they say it's carbon neutral because, again, the trees grow back, so they supposedly sequester that carbon, so it's carbon neutral. But, you know, some of these trees take decades to grow back. It's not something that happens overnight. So it's not necessarily true that it's...

But then on top of that, as I mentioned, is the problem of particulate matter as well, which, by the way, put climate change aside. Pollution, particulate matter from burning fossil fuels entries already kills at least 4 million people every single year. So this is already a problem for human health. And the idea is that nuclear is not considered renewable because we use fuel. We have to mine that fuel and that...

Fuel is finite on planet Earth. Now another point I try to make is that sure, the sun is renewable and the wind is renewable, but solar panels and wind turbines are not. They also have to be mined. and by the way, they only last for about 25 years and then they have to be fully replaced. Versus with nuclear, some of the nuclear plants are now being licensed to six years and there's no reason to believe they cannot be licensed for 80 years. So they last...

much longer time and yeah it's one of those things where we've just conflated both renewable with clean but it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

Paul Shapiro (20:14)

So let's talk about why this is that these environmental groups, the ones that are Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the ones that are funding the anti-nuclear campaigns, why? Why would it be that the most environmentally friendly source of electricity is public enemy number one for the groups that are designed to protect the environment? How did this come to happen?

Isabelle Boemeke (20:40)

In the case of Greenpeace, which is probably the most anti-nuclear environmental group, Greenpeace was started as an anti-nuclear organization. Their first action was to stop nuclear weapons testing off the coast of Alaska. And, you know, so that was their main issue whenever they started the organization. Then later on, they ended up including other things and also including...

nuclear electricity, which wasn't something that they protested in the beginning. So it's really at the heart of the organization. I don't see how they would change at this point. They still really conflate both electricity with weapons. And by the way, this happens all the time. The other day I was giving an interview and 20 minutes into the interview,

the guy says, well, you say that nuclear is safe, but what about all the stickers in Berkeley that say no nuclear war? And I'm like, my God, you think I'm talking about nuclear weapons?

Paul Shapiro (21:46)

It's like saying ban the electric chair and that means that we don't want electricity on our homes.

Isabelle Boemeke (21:51)

Right, but again, it goes back to the fact that the world was introduced to nuclear technologies through the bomb. And it's very, very hard to disentangle both things in people's minds. But you know, it is entirely possible. There are 31 countries in the world that have nuclear electricity, and only nine of those have nuclear weapons. And by the way, seven of those already had weapons before they developed their electricity program. So...

These are different technologies and it's entirely possible to develop one without necessarily getting the other. And then, you know, the other environmental organizations like the Sierra Club actually has an interesting story because one of its presidents ⁓ was extremely pro-nuclear because he was a nuclear scientist. This was in the sixties. And so the Sierra Club originally was at least not anti-nuclear ⁓ until

Diablo Canyon, which is ⁓ California's current last nuclear power plant. know, back then PG &E was trying to build this reactor at some dunes. And the Sierra Club said, no, you cannot build on the dunes because they're too precious, but you can build in this location, which is near San Luis Obispo in California. And that hold the backhoe, you know,

caused a big stir within the organization. A couple of people left over that and soon after that, the Sierra Club became anti-nuclear. But frankly, the last couple of years, a lot of these organizations have at least dropped their reposition, which is the best we can hope for. They're not out there advocating for nuclear, but at least they stopped opposing projects and opposing nuclear publicly. So think they're seeing the light of day and also their funders.

who again were older people who were very concerned about nuclear weapons and conflated electricity with weapons, are also maybe dying out. So they really are not very interested in funding these sorts of projects anymore.

Paul Shapiro (23:59)

Yeah. All right. So basically, you think that the reason why people are concerned about nuclear is because they think about nuclear bombs, not because they actually believe that nuclear energy is somehow less safe than other forms of energy. Let's go then to what some people may say is a future generation of nuclear. So right now, nuclear energy is created in these large plants where we are ⁓ breaking atoms apart with fission, as you mentioned earlier.

Some people say the next gen is going to be small modular reactors, even small enough that you could put it on the back of a truck, kind of like what you might have in a nuclear powered submarine today. But all the money right now seems to be going to Fusion, right? These Fusion startups where you're not just breaking atoms apart, but where you're forcing them to live together, those are raising billions of dollars right now. Companies like Commonwealth Fusion, despite the fact that they claim they're not going to have any energy feeding into the grid for many, many years,

they're raising at multi-billion dollar valuations while being pre-revenue raising hundreds of millions of dollars per round. Why and what do you think about this?

Isabelle Boemeke (25:08)

So I just want to, you know, just to make a small comment. said, you know, people are concerned about weapons and not electricity. Well, it's more that the reason why they think nuclear is dangerous is because they connected to the weapons in their brains. And so it's almost like I have a bad feeling about this, so this must be dangerous. OK. Which is slightly, you know, is like slightly different than how you said it. But yes, so there are, you know, tons of investment going into fusion.

which as you mentioned, it's smashing atoms together and when they get smashed, that releases energy. So that's what the sun does all day long and the hope is that we can do the same on Earth.

I don't like when people use fusion as an excuse not to pursue fission at this moment. And I hear that a lot. Why do we have to build fission plants if fusion is around the block? Well, we don't know that fusion is around the block. You know, one of the biggest problems with fusion is that you need to put insane amounts of energy in order to smash the atoms together. And so...

Historically, you would have to put more energy into the system to be able to make fusion than you would get out of the system. In the last couple of years, there were news that in a lab somewhere, they were able to get a tiny amount of energy more out of the system. But from that to full-scale commercial viability, we have no idea how long that's going to take. It might be 10 years, but it might be 40. Or it might be never.

We have no idea of knowing at this point. So to use Fusion as an excuse not to pursue Fission bothers me because we can start building Fission plans right now. Now, in terms of investment, I'm okay. People should do whatever they want with their money, you know, and it's cool to invest in science experiments, which is what Fusion is at this point. ⁓ But just it's not a product. So I'm not, I'm interested in what we can do today, not in what we might be able to do a couple of decades from now.

Paul Shapiro (27:19)

Yes, interesting you mentioned that. you know, when I was talking to the CEO of Commonwealth and I asked him when he thought they would be feeding electricity into the grid and he said by 2035. And, you know, that is what a startup says. So maybe it actually 2040, maybe 2045. Who knows? I hope so. I'm rooting hard for them, obviously. I'm extremely enthusiastic about it. But it reminds me a little bit about it reminds me a little bit of the cultivated meat sector where

People keep saying, well, we don't have to worry about this because we're going to be able to grow meat in a lab and ⁓ it's right around the corner. And nobody is more bullish on growing meat without animals than I am. I think it's a fantastic idea and people should invest in it. But it is not right around the corner. Those companies are nowhere near putting products on ⁓ Walmart shelves or being on McDonald's menu. They're hopefully.

By 2030, they may be in some small restaurants or maybe like a small grocery store in your local neighborhood. But the idea they're going to be on big box grocery store shelves anytime soon is fantastical. And so it's really important technology to invest in for the future. But it doesn't solve the problem. And it doesn't solve the problem today. And it won't for many years. And that's how I think of Fusion. It's like, if it works, great. It's a huge jackpot.

But you still have lots of bets that you need to make now. And that's not just on fission, not just on modular reactors, but also geothermal and other types of non-fossil energy sources.

Isabelle Boemeke (28:55)

What would the difference that with the lab cultivated meat, we know it works.

Paul Shapiro (29:00)

Yeah,

thank you for thank you for clarifying that I am not saying that technologically the two are equally difficult. I just mean that in terms of their ability to make a dent in the market, they are still years away.

Isabelle Boemeke (29:12)

Yeah, but it's like fusion is even worse because we still don't even know that it works, that we are able to get a lot more energy out of the system than what we put in, which I'm sure we'll figure out eventually, but it's like, takes a long time to even get there, you know?

Paul Shapiro (29:30)

Well, they certainly have the funding to make it work. So I hope that they can. mean, nobody is more enthusiastic than I am about trying to make it work for fusion and for cultivated meat. look, I've eaten cultivated meat many times. So I can tell you it does work. It tastes good. But you're not going to see it in making a dent in the market in the 2020s, that's for sure. ⁓

Isabelle Boemeke (29:52)

And then,

but you also mentioned, you know, small modular reactors and reactors that fit in the back of trucks and all that sort of stuff. And they fall under the same category in my mind, because there are over 80 nuclear startups claiming that they're going to build smaller reactors that are going to be cheaper and faster to build than the existing reactors that we have.

Not one of them has built a prototype. Not one of them.

Paul Shapiro (30:23)

I did see a story in the news recently where the military was saying they were going to invest in these small modular reactors. Did you see that same story?

Isabelle Boemeke (30:30)

they're going to invest,

none of these companies have built a prototype. And not saying that it's not going to work, the only thing we can get some hints from is history here. And in the 1950s, the US government tried to build a bunch of these reactors, including the military built and operated a microreactor that was portable.

However, it kept breaking down and it had to do maintenance.

Paul Shapiro (31:01)

Isn't that what a nuclear submarine is, a small reactor?

Isabelle Boemeke (31:05)

⁓ yes, but the nuclear submarine is, you know, not portable. Like you have that whole thing there. And also the nuclear submarine has access to special fuel that only the military can get. And also the nuclear submarine, nobody cares what the cost of that electricity is because it's the military. You know, so sure it works for nuclear submarines because they don't care how much money they're paying.

Paul Shapiro (31:32)

Yeah.

Isabelle Boemeke (31:33)

If you're going

go into the electricity market and try to compete with other sources of energy, it has to make financial sense, right?

Paul Shapiro (31:41)

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Okay, ⁓ I do want to ask you about one of the things that you wrote about in your book, which was really surprising to me. So I'm to make the claim, which will sound completely fantastical and completely unbelievable. And then you tell me why it's correct. Nuclear energy predates fire energy.

Isabelle Boemeke (32:03)

Yeah, that's really crazy. It's something that I learned after writing the book as well.

Paul Shapiro (32:08)

So it is in the book. you did, you it's, must've learned it in the process.

Isabelle Boemeke (32:13)

In the process of writing

the book, I learned it in the process of writing the book, ⁓ which was, well, I knew obviously that there were natural nuclear reactors on Earth, but I didn't know that it predated fire.

Paul Shapiro (32:25)

Well, you say it's obvious that you knew that. I didn't know that there are natural nuclear reactors. I just read an interesting novel. It's called the Kaiju Preservation Society. It could be up your alley. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's by guy named John Scalzi. The premise of the book is that they discover these wildlife who are powered not by photosynthesis, but by radio synthesis. They're basically...

nuclear powered animals. They evolved to have small nuclear reactors in them that developed after puberty. this, of course, is not true on Earth, but it's true in this book. And it was the idea that there's natural and nuclear. Now, that seems like fantastical sci-fi as it is in this book, but you're saying that it actually happened long before humans ever existed that the Earth was creating nuclear energy. What do you mean?

Isabelle Boemeke (33:16)

Yeah, this is such a fun story. So in the 70s, there was a French nuclear power plant that was, or nuclear enrichment facility, I guess, that was buying uranium from this region in Gabon in Africa. And know, nuclear materials are highly regulated, so they have to measure everything and make sure it looks proper. In this certain shipment, they noticed that...

the uranium was slightly less radioactive than it should have been. And they were concerned that people were getting radioactive materials. And so the scientists went to this mine in Gabon in Africa and started measuring the uranium rocks in this mine. And they noticed that all the rocks there were slightly less radioactive than they should have been. And they also detected basically nuclear waste.

And so this had already been theorized before, but they were able to prove that in that specific mine, reactions had occurred two billion years ago. And so these were natural nuclear reactors. These were basically like caves with chunky deposits of uranium. And whenever it rained, the water would pool over the rock.

And because of certain geological conditions, you would allow for a chain reaction to happen. So uranium atoms kept splitting and splitting and splitting, generating heat. Now this heat would heat up the water, which would eventually ⁓ boil away until it rained again and the same process happened. So for hundreds of thousands of years, this cave acted as a natural nuclear reactor. And if we were to go back in time and stick, you know, a turbine,

and be able to get steam, we could make electricity. So that is fascinating. Now, why does that predate fire? Because back then there was ⁓ no oxygen and fire needs oxygen to burn. And that's obviously way before humans. mean, if you think about homo sapiens, what we've been around for a hundred thousand years. So nuclear energy predates humans and it predates fire, which...

It's crazy because nuclear sounds so sci-fi and highly advanced technologically.

Paul Shapiro (35:47)

Right, sounds like humans discovered fire long before even Homo sapiens existed, right? Other human species were using fire who were not Homo sapiens. Whereas nuclear energy predates all of us, not just humans, but mammals and even oxygen. So ⁓ that's pretty wild. ⁓ That was pretty wild for sure. I was blown away by that fact when I read the book.

Isabelle Boemeke (36:12)

mean,

obviously the sun is nuclear energy as well. It's nuclear fusion, but it is nuclear energy.

Paul Shapiro (36:17)

Yes, yeah, right. I should say earthbound nuclear energy predates earthbound fire. Certainly fire exists elsewhere. ⁓ Okay. If Isabel, you had a magic wand, you're able to wave it and create any government policy that you would want to create. What would it be? Right? Is it something that somebody is already doing? Is it like France? it like, what is the ⁓ policy in your world that

people should be advocating for in order to more quickly advance nuclear electricity.

Isabelle Boemeke (36:53)

So I'm just going to say quickly, you mentioned France. You know, in the 1970s, there was a first oil shock. And both France and the United States back then decided to be energy independent. The way France did it was they said, well, we don't have fossil fuels. Let's just build a ton of nuclear. And because they have a government-owned utility, they picked one reactor design and they built 57 of them in 15 years.

Now, they weren't concerned about climate, they were just concerned about energy independence, but in 15 years, they were able to reduce the emissions per unit of electricity produced by 79%. The United States also wanted to build nuclear. know, actually, President Nixon had a plan to build a thousand nuclear reactors at one point. And if we did build a thousand nuclear reactors, by the way, we would have...

over 100 % clean electricity, meaning we would be producing even more electricity than we produce today and it would all be clean. However, in the United States, it's a bunch of different utilities and they're privately owned and they each pick the reactor design and they would build like one or two, maybe three, and then they would stop building. And so we never got to the point where we learned how to build these things faster and cheaper. And so if I had a magic wand,

I would say sure, innovation is great, but at one point we have to settle on one or two maybe designs and just build it over and over and over again. The last thing we can do right now is not capitalize on this moment where there is public support, bipartisan political support, private capital. There's also the demand from data centers. And the last thing we should do

is build a bunch of different reactors design and never get to the learning curve that we need to be able to bring the cost down.

Paul Shapiro (38:53)

All right, so your policy prescription is pick one and just build. All right, ⁓ very good. If though you were thinking about companies that you wish would exist to endeavor in some type of innovation, who knows, modular or fusion, something else, if somebody's listening and they're thinking, hey, I'm really into nuclear, I wanna start my own company and try to advance this, what company should they start?

We've had a number of people start companies from listening to guests on this show. If somebody's listening to you right now, what should they do?

Isabelle Boemeke (39:23)

Well, there's definitely a need for ⁓ fuel, so enriched uranium. The United States mostly depends on Russian enriched uranium at this point. there's definitely ⁓ innovation, not really innovation, but there should be more companies trying to make American fuel for nuclear reactors. And I'm going to be a little bit of a bummer here, but we definitely don't need another reactor design. That's the last thing we need right now.

So if you want to get into the nuclear space, I don't know, maybe an AI company that helps make existing nuclear power plants more efficient. Maybe something where you can also help companies navigate the nuclear regulatory commission better. Because that's, you know, the regulations is a big element of this and it's, very burdensome to try to figure out all the things that you have to do and how to apply for licenses and so on.

But please don't start another reactor design.

Paul Shapiro (40:27)

All right, so ⁓ this is a ⁓ helpful tip, not only what to do, but also your suggestion of what not to do. All right, very good. So finally, Isabel, are there resources that you would recommend? So your book, Rad Future, is a very good book. I read it and really enjoyed it. Are there other resources in addition to your book that you think people should check out if they want to learn more about this topic?

Isabelle Boemeke (40:48)

So my favorite resource is a website called whatisnuclear.com and you will find everything, every question you've ever had about nuclear, you're going to find on that website. And then if you're more into podcasts, I would recommend the Decouple Podcasts. And, you know, they've gotten very into the weeds of, you know, nuclear failures and successes and stories, but it's just the best resource for everything nuclear.

Paul Shapiro (41:18)

Great. Okay. Well, we will link to both the Decouple podcast as well as whatisnuclear.com on the show notes for this episode at businessforgoodpodcast.com. Isabel, I want to say thanks so much. It's great to have your book out in the world. I appreciated it and I hope you get a big readership.

Isabelle Boemeke (41:34)

Thank you so much.

Paul Shapiro (41:36)

Isabelle, welcome to the Business for Good podcast.

Isabelle Boemeke (41:38)

Thanks Paul, glad to be here.

Paul Shapiro (41:40)

I am really glad to be talking with you about this. It's one of my favorite topics because it's so counterintuitive for people, which is things that I love, like things that are actually good for the environment that people think are actually bad for the environment. There's a whole long list of these things that people are afraid of, whether it's GMOs or other types of things in agriculture. But in terms of energy, this is like the one that people are really afraid of, like a third rail. And so

I, you know, when I think about when people hear the word nuclear, they get so, almost like their, their hair goes up, right? They think about the Simpsons, with the three eyed fish in the beginning of the Simpsons. They think about the Chernobyl docu series that was on HBO. but you say that it's actually good. Why? Why is it actually good?

Isabelle Boemeke (42:28)

was through the bombs. I think this is, it's hard to understand the emotional scar that that leaves an entire generation. And then we went straight into the Cold War after World War II. And so people were doing duck and drill covers where they would, duck and cover drills where they would lunge underneath their desks and try to prepare for a nuclear war, which frankly is not a very good way to protect yourself from nuclear war, but you know.

faintly signals that your feeling is correct, just validates your position. So people are already terrified of it. Then one incident in Pennsylvania at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant happens and people go, see, it's confirming my fear. This is why I'm afraid of this. This is dangerous. This is scary. Of course, you we talked about the accidents. There are three accidents that people can point to in over seven years of the technology.

So actually that tells us that nuclear is very safe. If you can point to three incidents of a technology that's been around for seven years, mean, that's incredible.

Paul Shapiro (44:52)

Right, I do want to get to the accidents, but I want to ask you just about your own journey here, Isabel, because you are not the most likely person to be writing a book about nuclear electricity, right? So you started out as a model. It's a very well-worn path from being a fashion model to being an author of books about nuclear electricity, I'm sure. But what happened for you? Did you ever think about energy or nuclear electricity when you were

doing fashion modeling? Like what happened that you decided you're going from fashion modeling to eventually coming to a place where you're going to be writing a book about nuclear electricity? ⁓

Isabelle Boemeke (45:26)

certainly

a weird pipeline. I didn't have a lot of role models to inspire my journey, frankly. It was hard to find people who had done such a wild pivot. Well, I grew up, I'm a millennial, I grew up with the fear of climate change. So climate change has been in the back of my mind for a very long time, like everybody else in my generation.

knowing how to place a product in the right way and how to sell products could be useful in trying to revert that image and, you know, talk about the reality about nuclear because, you know, public perception and the reality are so, so different. And it was really just a lack of communication or effective communication because, you know, the information about nuclear safety is out there in any mainstream.

source of information. However, it wasn't being translated into a language that your average person could understand or even want to learn about. was quite frankly boring.

Paul Shapiro (47:48)

Isabelle Boemeke (49:32)

Now in terms of Chernobyl, yes, it's less than 100 confirmed fatalities, which blows people's minds if they've seen the HBO show Chernobyl. But there is an estimated of around 4,000 later deaths from cancer, but it doesn't compare to 200,000 from this hydropower dam collapse, right?

Paul Shapiro (51:43)

Isabelle Boemeke (53:20)

So energy density is very similar to like food density, right? You think about peanut butter, it's an extremely dense food. You eat a tablespoon and you're getting hundreds of calories versus if you eat, let's say, a cauliflower, you're gonna get a lot less calories with the same volume of food. And the concept is the same here. And so nuclear is, it's almost mind blowing and hard to explain how energy dense nuclear is. So the best way to explain it is you imagine,

a uranium fuel pellet, which is the thing that we use in nuclear power plants as the fuel. And this fuel pellet is about the size of a gummy bear, which we're all familiar with. Tiny. So a uranium fuel pellet has the same amount of energy as 2,000 pounds of coal.

It's impossible to even visualize that, right? And so for that reason, nuclear is the most dense energy source out there. And that has a cascading effect that's really interesting. You you talk about the impact on the environment. Well, because nuclear is so energy dense, that also means you have to mine way less to produce the same amount of energy. So if you compare the...

mining intensity of all energy sources, nuclear just has the lowest of every single one of them, including other clean energy sources like solar and wind. But that also means that it takes the least amount of land because you can produce more amount of power in a tinier plot of land. And so there are all these cascading effects. And that's why my belief is that from every aspect that you look at nuclear.

It's just better than every other source of energy, including the clean ones. And that's not only from a technology standpoint, but also from a people's

Paul Shapiro (55:09)

And just to underscore, sorry to interrupt you, Isabel. Just to underscore this, to be clear, when we talk about land use.

Isabelle Boemeke (56:02)

that you would get from nuclear, but at the end of the day, you're not even getting the same amount of energy because of the difference in reliability. So solar and wind, they're intermittent sources of energy. We all know this and people will talk about it like, yeah, we know this is a problem, but it's not a big deal. No, it's actually a huge deal because we have built our civilization in such a way where we expect access to electricity whenever we want it.

Paul Shapiro (57:53)

And nuclear is not considered renewable because the uranium is finite. And even though you're looking at an energy source that's vastly cleaner than chopping down whole forests just to burn the trees so that we can power data centers so that we can have a raccoon giving us instructions on Sora on how to make a pie, right? The question becomes, what is really worth it to us?

And I was quite surprised that deforestation counted as renewables and nuclear didn't, considering how clean nuclear is and how, of course, horrible deforestation is.

Isabelle Boemeke (58:56)

much longer time and yeah it's one of those things where we've just conflated both renewable with clean but it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

Paul Shapiro (1:00:58)

Isabelle Boemeke (1:01:21)

the guy says, well, you say that nuclear is safe, but what about all the stickers in Berkeley that say no nuclear war? And I'm like, my God, you think I'm talking about nuclear weapons?

Paul Shapiro (1:02:21)

It's like saying ban the electric chair and that means that we don't want electricity on our homes.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:02:27)

These are different technologies and it's entirely possible to develop one without necessarily getting the other. And then, you know, the other environmental organizations like the Sierra Club actually has an interesting story because one of its presidents was extremely pro-nuclear because he was a nuclear scientist. This was in the sixties. And so the Sierra Club originally was at least not anti-nuclear until

Diablo Canyon, which is California's current last nuclear power plant. know, back then PG &E was trying to build this reactor at some dunes. And the Sierra Club said, no, you cannot build on the dunes because they're too precious, but you can build in this location, which is near San Luis Obispo in California. And that hold the backhoe, you know,

Paul Shapiro (1:04:24)

Yeah. All right. So basically, you think that the reason why people are concerned about nuclear is because they think about nuclear bombs, not because they actually believe that nuclear energy is somehow less safe than other forms of energy. Let's go then to what some people may say is a future generation of nuclear. So right now, nuclear energy is created in these large plants where we are breaking atoms apart with fission, as you mentioned earlier.

they're raising at multi-billion dollar valuations while being pre-revenue raising hundreds of millions of dollars per round. Why and what do you think about this?

Isabelle Boemeke (1:05:30)

which as you mentioned, it's smashing atoms together and when they get smashed, that releases energy. So that's what the sun does all day long and the hope is that we can do the same on Earth.

We have no idea of knowing at this point. So to use Fusion as an excuse not to pursue Fission bothers me because we can start building Fission plans right now. Now, in terms of investment, I'm okay. People should do whatever they want with their money, you know, and it's cool to invest in science experiments, which is what Fusion is at this point. But just it's not a product. So I'm not, I'm interested in what we can do today, not in what we might be able to do a couple of decades from now.

Paul Shapiro (1:07:30)

People keep saying, well, we don't have to worry about this because we're going to be able to grow meat in a lab and it's right around the corner. And nobody is more bullish on growing meat without animals than I am. I think it's a fantastic idea and people should invest in it. But it is not right around the corner. Those companies are nowhere near putting products on Walmart shelves or being on McDonald's menu. They're hopefully.

But you still have lots of bets that you need to make now. And that's not just on fission, not just on modular reactors, but also geothermal and other types of non-fossil energy sources.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:08:59)

What would the difference that with the lab cultivated meat, we know it works.

Paul Shapiro (1:09:05)

Yeah,

Isabelle Boemeke (1:09:16)

Paul Shapiro (1:09:32)

Isabelle Boemeke (1:09:53)

And then,

Not one of them has built a prototype. Not one of them.

Paul Shapiro (1:10:19)

I did see a story in the news recently where the military was saying they were going to invest in these small modular reactors. Did you see that same story?

Isabelle Boemeke (1:10:26)

they're going to invest,

However, it kept breaking down and it had to do maintenance.

Paul Shapiro (1:10:49)

Isn't that what a nuclear submarine is, a small reactor?

Isabelle Boemeke (1:10:53)

yes, but the nuclear submarine is, you know, not portable. Like you have that whole thing there. And also the nuclear submarine has access to special fuel that only the military can get. And also the nuclear submarine, nobody cares what the cost of that electricity is because it's the military. You know, so sure it works for nuclear submarines because they don't care how much money they're paying.

Paul Shapiro (1:11:18)

Yeah.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:11:19)

If you're going

go into the electricity market and try to compete with other sources of energy, it has to make financial sense, right?

Paul Shapiro (1:11:27)

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Okay, I do want to ask you about one of the things that you wrote about in your book, which was really surprising to me. So I'm to make the claim, which will sound completely fantastical and completely unbelievable. And then you tell me why it's correct. Nuclear energy predates fire energy.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:11:45)

Yeah, that's really crazy. It's something that I learned after writing the book as well.

Paul Shapiro (1:11:49)

So it is in the book. you did, you it's, must've learned it in the process.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:11:54)

In the process of writing

the book, I learned it in the process of writing the book, which was, well, I knew obviously that there were natural nuclear reactors on Earth, but I didn't know that it predated fire.

Paul Shapiro (1:12:05)

Isabelle Boemeke (1:12:55)

And because of certain geological conditions, you would allow for a chain reaction to happen. So uranium atoms kept splitting and splitting and splitting, generating heat. Now this heat would heat up the water, which would eventually boil away until it rained again and the same process happened. So for hundreds of thousands of years, this cave acted as a natural nuclear reactor. And if we were to go back in time and stick, you know, a turbine,

and be able to get steam, we could make electricity. So that is fascinating. Now, why does that predate fire? Because back then there was no oxygen and fire needs oxygen to burn. And that's obviously way before humans. mean, if you think about homo sapiens, what we've been around for a hundred thousand years. So nuclear energy predates humans and it predates fire, which...

It's crazy because nuclear sounds so sci-fi and highly advanced technologically.

Paul Shapiro (1:15:13)

Right, sounds like humans discovered fire long before even Homo sapiens existed, right? Other human species were using fire who were not Homo sapiens. Whereas nuclear energy predates all of us, not just humans, but mammals and even oxygen. So that's pretty wild. That was pretty wild for sure. I was blown away by that fact when I read the book.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:15:33)

mean,

obviously the sun is nuclear energy as well. It's nuclear fusion, but it is nuclear energy.

Paul Shapiro (1:15:38)

Yes, yeah, right. I should say earthbound nuclear energy predates earthbound fire. Certainly fire exists elsewhere. Okay. If Isabel, you had a magic wand, you're able to wave it and create any government policy that you would want to create. What would it be? Right? Is it something that somebody is already doing? Is it like France? it like, what is the policy in your world that

people should be advocating for in order to more quickly advance nuclear electricity.

Isabelle Boemeke (1:16:10)

is build a bunch of different reactors design and never get to the learning curve that we need to be able to bring the cost down.

Paul Shapiro (1:18:08)

All right, so your policy prescription is pick one and just build. All right, very good. If though you were thinking about companies that you wish would exist to endeavor in some type of innovation, who knows, modular or fusion, something else, if somebody's listening and they're thinking, hey, I'm really into nuclear, I wanna start my own company and try to advance this, what company should they start?

We've had a number of people start companies from listening to guests on this show. If somebody's listening to you right now, what should they do?

Isabelle Boemeke (1:18:37)

Well, there's definitely a need for fuel, so enriched uranium. The United States mostly depends on Russian enriched uranium at this point. there's definitely innovation, not really innovation, but there should be more companies trying to make American fuel for nuclear reactors. And I'm going to be a little bit of a bummer here, but we definitely don't need another reactor design. That's the last thing we need right now.

But please don't start another reactor design.

Paul Shapiro (1:19:37)

All right, so this is a helpful tip, not only what to do, but also your suggestion of what not to do. All right, very good. So finally, Isabel, are there resources that you would recommend? So your book, Rad Future, is a very good book. I read it and really enjoyed it. Are there other resources in addition to your book that you think people should check out if they want to learn more about this topic?

Isabelle Boemeke (1:19:58)

Paul Shapiro (1:20:23)

Isabelle Boemeke (1:20:39)

Thank you so much.

Isabelle Boemeke

Paul Shapiro

Ep. 177 - From Fashion Model to Fission Mission: Isabelle Boemeke’s Nuclear-Powered Future

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Ep. 176 - Fungi-Filled Diapers: How Plastic-Eating Fungi May Change Child-Rearing