Ep. 195 - Did America Forget How to Build Nuclear Energy?
SHOW NOTES
If you’ve been listening to this show for some time, you likely already know how critical nuclear energy is if we’re serious about weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. Well, no one’s followed the nuclear journey as closely as Dr. Ed Friedman.
For more than half a century, Ed’s been studying, writing about, and hoping for a nuclear renaissance. He’s had a front-row seat to the entire modern nuclear story: the early optimism, the rise of civilian reactors, the accidents, the backlash, the long stagnation, and now what he argues may be an emerging renaissance.
But Ed’s warning isn’t merely that America needs more nuclear energy. It’s that we may have forgotten how to build it. While countries like China and Russia have spent recent decades gaining experience constructing reactors, the U.S. has built very few—leaving us with plenty of scientific know-how, but far less of what Ed calls the “production savvy” needed to actually get reactors built.
Now Ed’s also the author of the new book Nuclear Energy: Boom, Bust, and Emerging Renaissance, which is a sweeping history of how nuclear energy went from symbolizing the future, to becoming one of the most feared technologies on Earth, to now being widely reconsidered as a major climate solution. He also runs the Nuclear Tomorrow newsletter, where he tracks new developments in nuclear energy each month.
And of course, the stakes here are enormous. If we’re serious about averting the worst of climate change, we need to produce far more energy with far fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Solar and wind are essential, but they’re intermittent. Batteries are improving, but still limited. And many parts of the economy—especially heavy industry, data centers, and the grid itself—need reliable, always-available power. That’s why nuclear remains so important: not as a silver bullet, but as one of the few scalable, low-carbon energy sources that can run around the clock.
What I appreciated about this conversation is that Ed is not just making the familiar argument that nuclear energy is cleaner than coal, or that people should stop being afraid of it. He’s making a more specific argument: that newer Generation IV nuclear technologies have been quietly developing for a quarter-century, and that the next few years may reveal whether those designs can finally move from promise to reality.
And if that promise does become reality, the question may not be whether nuclear energy has a future. It may be whether America will help build that future—or end up buying it from countries that kept building while we stopped.
I’ll let Ed make the case to you.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Ed’s Substack Nuclear Tomorrow and his new book Nuclear Energy: Boom, Bust, and Emerging Renaissance.
Our past episodes on nuclear with author Isabelle Bomeke and two-time guest Liz Muller (Deep Fission and Deep Isolation).
TerraPower’s sodium cooled reactors are moving forward.
The Gen IV Nuclear Forum.
The Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris.
get to know ed friedman, phd
Edward began his career at Stevens in 1963 as a physics professor and oversaw undergraduate education as Dean of the College from 1973-86. His career included the development of a computer-intensive educational environment at Stevens, which in 1982 became the first college in the United States to require all students to own a computer. He received the Stevens Research Award in 1970, and that same year played a key role in a U.S. government program that developed the College of Engineering at Kabul University in Afghanistan.
In 1992, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to collaborate with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences on the role of computers in education and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Mathematics from Sofia University in 2000. In 2017, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American University of Bulgaria, where he contributed to the Educational Policy Committee.
He has published articles and developed courses dealing with nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear terrorism and nuclear energy. He is a Board Member of the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning where he remains active in promoting innovative approaches to K-12 science and mathematics education.
TRANSCRIPT
Ed Friedman 00:00
Most people don't realize that that's been happening, and it's moving along on target. And the target date back in 2000 was to be 2030 and it looks like that timeline is going to be met.
Paul Shapiro 00:15
Welcome to the Business for Good podcast, where we spotlight people making money by solving some of the world's most pressing problems. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, author of a nationally best-selling book on food sustainability, and CEO of a company in the same space. On this show, I speak with founders, investors, and thought leaders who prove that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. The biggest challenges facing humanity are solvable and are often profitable too. My hope is that this podcast informs, inspires, and maybe even helps repel you to build a business that makes the world a better place. I'm glad you're here. Hello, friend, and welcome to episode 195 of the Business for Good podcast. All right, here is your wild random fact of the episode. Could you imagine if large corporations today had their own armies? It's hard to believe, but the British East India Company in the 19th century had exactly that. What began as a business trading tea and spices and textiles eventually conquered large parts of India, collecting taxes even and maintaining an army of roughly a quarter million soldiers, larger than Britain's own army at that time, which it used not just to protect its ports and ships, but to actually conquer territory and enforce its rule-wild fact indeed. Okay, now onto this episode. When you think about clean energy, do you think about nuclear? If not, you should, because nuclear is one of the cleanest, greenest, and yes, safest ways to power our civilization. In episodes in the past, I have talked with young nuclear entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Moeller and young nuclear influencers like Isabel Bomecki. Yes, there are nuclear influencers, but in this episode, I'll be chatting with someone who's had a front row seat to the entire modern nuclear story for more than half a century. Ed Freeman is a nuclear historian who studied nuclear's early optimism, the rise of civilian reactors, the accidents, the backlash, the long stagnation, and now what he argues may be an emerging renaissance. Ed's also the author of the new Oxford University Press book, Nuclear Energy Boom, Bust, and Emerging Renaissance, which is a sweeping history of how nuclear energy went from symbolizing the future to becoming one of the most feared technologies on Earth to now being reconsidered as a major climate solution. Ed also runs the Nuclear Tomorrow newsletter over on Substack, where he tracks new developments in nuclear energy every month. And of course, the stakes here are enormous. If we're serious about averting the worst of climate change, we need to produce far more energy with far fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Solar and wind are essential, but they're intermittent. Batteries are improving, yes, but they're still very limited, and many parts of the economy, especially heavy industry, data centers, and the grid, need reliable, always available power. That's why nuclear remains so important-not as a silver bullet, but as one of the few scalable, low-carbon energy sources that can run around the clock. All right, as always, here are your three key takeaways from this episode. One, nuclear's comeback is not sudden; it may be 25 years in the making. Ed argues that the Generation Four nuclear technologies have been quietly developing since 2000, with 2030 always envisioned as the moment they'd start becoming real. Takeaway two: the nuclear debate may not be mainly about electricity in the future. Ed makes the case that advanced reactors could help solve one of climate's harder problems, which is producing the extreme heat needed for steel, cement, aluminum, hydrogen, and petrochemical production. The nuclear race finally is also a geopolitical race. While the U.S. has struggled to build new nuclear reactors, China and Russia have been moving much faster, raising the possibility that the next era of nuclear power may be led from abroad outside of the United States. All right, I'll let Ed tell you the rest of the story. Ed, welcome to the Business for Good podcast.
Speaker 1 03:50
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Shapiro 03:51
Hey, really great to be with you. Congratulations on your new book. So, you your core argument, Ed. It seems to me it's basically you're saying that nuclear power was overthought early. There were real accidents that damaged it. There's psychological fear, but now it's different. There's renewed consideration because new designs could address some of the safety and cost concerns that crippled earlier nuclear expansion. So, is that an accurate assessment of of where you stand on this so far?
Speaker 1 04:20
More or less, I believe that there's been development of new nuclear energy for 25 years, and most people don't realize that that's been happening, and it's moving along on target. And the target date back in 2000 was to be 2030, and it looks like that timeline is going to be met.
Paul Shapiro 04:48
Okay, well, fingers crossed. So, as anybody who has listened to this show knows, I certainly am an advocate for utilizing nuclear electricity, especially because. I view it as an important climate solution. Is that what is driving you? Like you're essentially a historian of nuclear, but has it always been the case for you that you viewed this as important for the climate, or like what has interested you in this so much? Why are you Why are you such an advocate for it?
Ed Friedman 05:14
I believe that nuclear is an important energy source, and since I was a graduate student at Columbia back in 1961. I've been speaking out publicly about nuclear energy, and with the advent of global warming, it's become an urgent matter.
Paul Shapiro 05:35
Okay, yeah, I mean, if you read your book as I have, it is clear that you know you are hopeful that this renaissance that you talk about will take place, and that you're optimistic that it will, and that you think it is a good idea for climate change to help to switch. At least, even if you don't argue that it is necessarily superior to solar and wind, you think it's a good augmentation to it.
Ed Friedman 05:57
I believe that we need solar, we need wind, and we need nuclear. We need all that we can get that is not contributing to the greenhouse gasses. So I am eclectic. I do believe that people don't understand what the issues are with nuclear and how they have evolved over these last 20-five years.
Paul Shapiro 06:33
So let's talk about that, Ed. You say that people don't understand it, right? A lot of the times you mention nuclear to people, they think about Hiroshima, they think about Nagasaki, the thing about Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island. What are they misunderstanding?
Speaker 1 06:45
The misunderstand. There are several misunderstandings. One is that the explosions were not nuclear explosions; they were water explosions. The Chernobyl accident was a steam explosion that blew up the reactor, and the Fukushima was overheated water that generated hydrogen, and hydrogen caused the explosions at Fukushima, and at Three Mile Island, it was also a hydrogen explosion, and it's also not understood that no one died from the explosions at Three Mile Island and at Fukushima.
Paul Shapiro 07:37
So let's talk about that. You know, you mentioned zero deaths at Three Mile Island, zero deaths from the nuclear part of Fukushima. Though some people died in the in the evacuation, but either way, let me just make the argument of of the critics of nuclear here, and presume that you're right. You're saying, well, the the problem is, well, it was water, not a nuclear explosion. That's fine, but half a century later, people aren't still allowed to even live there because of the radioactivity, and they don't really care whether it was water that exploded or or a fission of an atom that exploded. The fact is that it's a radiation zone where humans aren't allowed to live anymore. If you're right that 10s of 1000s of people died there, and you're saying, well, it's due to the what you call criminal or negligent or incompetent behavior of the Russians who were operating it back then, but humans are fallible, right? So I'm going to make the counter argument here: humans are fallible. Why should we give them such a godlike technology that has the potential in the hands of the wrong folks to create such a disaster like Chernobyl?
Speaker 1 08:37
Following the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear development. development stopped. No one produced nuclear reactors except finishing up those that were already in progress, and there was basically a hiatus for about 10 years. And following that, there was a group that organized under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy, people from a dozen countries got together in Washington, and they set out on a program called the Generation Four International Forum, which was a collaborative effort to plan for safe nuclear reactors that would be economical and attractive, and what has developed back in 2000 was the collaborative design of four basic designs that do not use water to cool and which are fail-safe. This is something that people don't understand. That all the new nuclear reactors that are being developed now. Will not rely on human behavior or technology to to avoid an accident, but they will rely on the laws of nature. Reactor overheats; the fluids involved will expand, or plugs will melt, and the reactors will will become will shut down on their own accord.
Paul Shapiro 10:32
So let me let me ask you about that, Ed. I imagine that you know when some people hear what you know is referred to as like new nuclear, or what you're calling Gen Four reactors, you know we don't need to get into the the technical details of how they work, but basically we're talking about like sodium cooling, lead cooling, molten salt cooling, helium cooling, and so on. So the problem the problem these are all trying to solve is to be what you call fail safe. For the critic who says, "Hey, listen, this is this new nuclear sounds a lot like clean coal, right? It sounds like a bunch of PR nonsense. Why are they wrong? Why is new nuclear actually better than the type of fission reactor that the Soviets were using at Chernobyl?
Speaker 1 11:11
Because they had reactors that depended upon human for the Chernobyl depended on human performance and technology, and it didn't work. But the new designs of fail safe react have been tested. They have taken a sodium cooled reactor and shut down all the safety systems and all the cooling systems and the reactor shut down by itself. And these these safeguards are based on the laws of physics. And if if somebody doesn't believe in the laws of physics, I I I don't think that they're engaged in a proper conversation.
Paul Shapiro 12:07
All right, all right, fair enough. I I don't know what they would say. I haven't spoken to the critics of nuclear about this. My guess is they would say that they do believe in the laws of physics, but they question whether we have really the most firm understanding on all of these laws and the risks are high. But let me ask you about these risks because, as you know, we had Isabel Bomecki, the author of Rad Future, on a previous episode, and she argued that the real reason that people fear nuclear electricity is because the world was introduced to nuclear power not in the form of electricity, but in the form of bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and she says that if the world had been introduced to it by electricity for civilian uses, that people would feel very different. You say though that that may be part of it, but it's not just that nuclear as weapon was the issue, but also the radiation issue. And you use Godzilla to illustrate this, which was very interesting and novel information for me. So, what does Godzilla have to do with nuclear energy at all here?
Speaker 1 13:06
Well, in 1954, the United States was conducting bomb tests in the Pacific, and they miscalculated. They exploded a bomb that was much more powerful than they anticipated, and it caused radioactive fallout throughout the region. But in particular, what was very dramatic was that the radioactive fallout landed on a fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon, which was not so lucky, and the fishermen all got radiation sickness, and that had a tremendous. It was a Japanese fishing boat, and that had a tremendous impact in Japan. And as a result, the Japanese decided to dramatize the dangers of radiation and created the fictitious monster Godzilla, which was supposedly created at the bottom of the sea by radiation. And since 1954, there have been 40 motion pictures about Godzilla, and just last year there was a Godzilla film that won the Academy Award for special effects. There have been computer games and all kinds of paraphernalia related to Godzilla. Godzilla has captured the imagination of the public, and it has created a myth about the exaggerated. Impact of radiation. the The fact is that aside from the accidents, no one no one has died from radiation from nuclear reactors, and all of the radioactive waste that has ever been created since the first reactors in the 1950s, all of the radioactive waste could be stored in a building 30 feet high on the football field. If you compare that with the tons and tons of waste from coal plants and other industrial waste, it's minuscule. So that exaggerated response to radiation has had an inordinate impact on society and value judgments that have been made.
Paul Shapiro 15:59
Yeah, I'm always shocked when you use an example like that about how little radioactive waste there actually is. It is surprisingly small, given how many hundreds of nuclear reactors exist on Earth. So let's talk about China, though. You know, since 2000 China has connected 50-five new nuclear reactors to the grid in the U.S. From what I can tell, that number is only three. So three in the U.S. 50-five in China. Russia has 30-six reactors that it's built in other countries, and currently has 40-one reactors that are either being built or under contract in 11 different countries. They've also been successfully pursuing the nuclear market in Africa as well. You have written that you fear that in the early 2030 s, when climate change reaches crisis levels in the United States, we may find ourselves buying nuclear actors from China. Now we already buy a huge amount of our energy technology from Asia, right? So we're getting our solar panels from Asia. We're getting our wind turbines from Asia. Our semiconductor chips are coming from from Asia. You though think that maybe we're going to be getting an entire power plants or power plant technology from Asia? Why do you think that might happen?
Speaker 1 17:13
We have not been able to gear up to build large nuclear reactors. The small modular nuclear reactors, which are under development for Generation Four designs, are moving ahead expeditiously in the United States. There are about 30 examples, and I think that with those small modular nuclear reactors, we're going to be successful in the United States, but the big power plants, which are generally three times the size of the small nuclear reactors, have not been produced in the United States in a long time, and China has learned how to produce them more quickly and more appropriately. The there's a very interesting anecdote which I'd like to share, which is that 30 years ago, France was developing a lot of nuclear reactors, and today France has a higher percentage of its energy coming from nuclear than any country in the world. And at that time, 30 years ago, the Chinese were just beginning to develop. nuclear energy, and they made an arrangement to have 100 young engineers visit France to be mentored in the development of that technology. This past December, an agreement was signed between France and China, whereas France has fallen off in its development of nuclear energy and has been trying to reestablish itself, and they've made an agreement to send engineers to China to become mentored.
Paul Shapiro 19:26
Yeah. So let me ask you then, Ed. On a previous episode, we had on Liz Mower, who is the CEO of Deep Isolation, and her innovation is basically putting a nuclear reactor very deep underground, which the pressure that is so that is so high down there prevents you from having to have a lot of what you need for what you refer to as these really big old school nuclear power plants, and she claims that it could reduce the cost by about 80% What do you think about? Her idea: Should we be putting nuclear reactors on the surface of the Earth or deep underneath ground?
Speaker 1 20:06
I think she has a good plan, and it remains to be demonstrated. But I wish her well. I think there are probably limited opportunities to use that that model, but I think it's workable, and I applaud what's going on there. What what I do think is very promising is that among the developers of fourth generation nuclear. nuclear reactors in a leadership position is Bill Gates, and Bill Gates currently has a company called TerraPower, and they're producing sodium-cooled reactors, and the they have broken ground for the development of a sodium-cooled reactor in Wyoming. They're building it now, and they expect to have it in operation in a couple of years. And the beauty of Bill Gates' plan is that that reactor in Wyoming is going to replace a coal-powered plant, and it's designed to be of exactly the same size and power level as the existing coal plant in Wyoming. So they'll be removing a coal plant and plugging in a nuclear plant. There are 200 such coal-powered plants in the United States, and so a model for reduction of global warming and the reduction of the use of coal is the Bill Gates approach, and he already is signing contracts for sodium plants that will be developed after he completes the Wyoming plant.
Paul Shapiro 22:13
All right, so that raises the question because you know you're saying, well, you know, we're just on the cusp of all these great things happening, right? Whether it's small modular nuclear reactors or sodium cooling or helium cooling, like there are lots of folks who are vying to be what you refer to as Generation Four to be the winner, right? Yet, on there are some advocates for nuclear, including past guests on the show like Isabel Lemeka, who say, "Listen, we just got to pick one and do it, right? These are all good. Even the old fission ones are good, and they're so much better than coal and oil that we have to get off of fossil fuels rapidly. And we should just pick one and start printing them. Right? You seem to be a little bit more agnostic on what the technology may be, and and you think that the market is going to solve this, so why do you disagree? Like you know, Isabel would say, just start building even the old school fission reactors. You think Gen Four is the way to go?
Speaker 1 23:10
Well, I I believe in technology, and I believe that technology is constantly improving. I
Paul Shapiro 23:20
think I think her argument is that because technology is constantly improving, it's an excuse to never lock in one new one because these take so long and so much money to build each one that she would say you just got to start. We got to start building these things. We got to be putting up dozens of them a year. What do you think? Do you think she's wrong?
Speaker 1 23:37
I think we should be putting up dozens a year, but I think that there are four designs that are out there now: sodium cooled, liquid lead cooled, molten salt cooled, and helium gas cooled. And they all have advantages, and we should be exploring the advantages of all of them, but there's a need for so many nuclear reactors that we could go fast with each of these four. I would be happy to see one design of each of the four move ahead expeditiously, and I should point out that the helium-cooled reactors and the Chinese have just developed the first operational helium-gas-cooled reactor. That the helium-gas-cooled reactors can reach high temperatures of 1000 degrees centigrade, and no other heating system can reach 1000 degrees centigrade. And the it's essential that the helium cooled. Model be developed, and the Chinese are building on their initial success with operational reactors for the petrochemical industry. the petrochemicals produce about 7% of all greenhouse gasses, and it's never going to be eliminated.
Paul Shapiro 25:34
Okay, so if you were investing, let's say, public dollars, it sounds like you would be spreading the bet between all four of the Gen Four technologies that you're referring to. You wouldn't place a bet on any one of them, including helium, to be the one. You you you support a more of an all of the above approach to these new gen nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1 25:53
I support all of them. I'm a little nervous about sodium because sodium when sodium interacts with water, there are devastating fires that are possible. So I see some danger with sodium, but the liquid salt reactors, which there's a liquid salt reactor, molten salt reactor, rather, which is being developed now at Oak Ridge, and I see that as very safe and very desirable.
Paul Shapiro 26:32
Okay, so maybe just like the human body, less sodium is better than right. So you know, I actually think, for what it's worth, that sodium is going to become an increasing public health villain as as we learn more and more about the the risk of high blood pressure. So maybe there's something similar with with nuclear reactors and sodium here. So Ed, the the new book is is quite good. I just want you to talk about the brief we when you talk about the boom and the bust, and now the renaissance. When do you think this renaissance will occur? Right. So we know when the boom was. Right. You you mentioned this back when you started writing about this more than half a century ago. The bust obviously has come about as well. There hasn't been a nuclear reactor. You know, the number of nuclear reactors built in America is very low, as you point out. And now you say we're on the cusp of a renaissance. So, if you're looking forward, what does the renaissance look like? Let's say we're talking five years from now, so it's going to be 2031. What does that renaissance in America look like for nuclear?
Speaker 1 27:39
Well, I think you can look to China and Russia. You introduced this program by commenting on how many reactors have been built in China and Russia in the last decade. 90-4% of all the reactors in the world were produced in China combined. with with Russia, so the Renaissance is really a Western Renaissance of Europe and and America. It's already taking place in China, and the Generation four reactors are operating in in China and in Russia. In Russia, there are liquid sodium cooled reactors and there are liquid lead cooled reactors. In China, there is now the success with the helium-cooled reactors, so these Generation Four reactors are coming online now, but they're coming online first in China and Russia, and they will evolve in the United States and Europe over the next several years. And the the Bill Gates Wyoming reactor is due to come online before 2030, but I would say 2028 if if they have a good schedule.
Paul Shapiro 29:14
This reminds me, you know, we haven't gotten to fusion yet, but when I I was talking with the CEO of Commonwealth, one of the bigger fusion startups, and I asked him this question. This is a couple years back. I said, "When will you be feeding energy into the grid? Right? Not not when will you produce more energy than you expend, but rather when will you actually be feeding energy into the grid from a fusion nuclear reactor? And he said he thought it would be by the mid 2030s Is is that still your thinking, or you think it'll be sooner than that?
Speaker 1 29:47
You're talking about fusion.
Paul Shapiro 29:49
I am. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1 29:50
Let me tell you a story about fusion. When I received my PhD at Columbia in 1960 Three, I received several job offers. One of them was to work work with the first lasers that had been produced, and it was to work on a contract for fusion, developing fusion energy. So I'm familiar with fusion energy from the very beginning. I didn't take that job, and the reason I didn't take that job was that I thought the company that was offering me the position was appealing to my altruistic instincts to have a wonderful energy source, whereas their real desire was to make hydrogen bombs. I didn't want to have anything to do with that, but I've been very skeptical about the development of fusion energy. I believe we will eventually have fusion energy that's operational, but my guess is that it'll be more like 2050.
Paul Shapiro 31:11
Okay, right. So, so I was wrong. I was thinking you were going to be more optimistic, but you're more pessimistic than the at least than the CEO of Commonwealth is, and so you have these fusion nuclear startups that are obviously still pre-revenue with multi-billion-dollar valuations right now, and you're arguing that that may not be justifiable and that they may not have any energy.
Speaker 1 31:32
They have a case.
Paul Shapiro 31:34
Yeah. Okay. All right. So Ed, you've seen a lot. You are a preeminent historian of nuclear energy. You have been involved in this space for so long. What are some resources that you would recommend if people want to learn more? Obviously, they should read your book, which again is called Nuclear Energy: Boom, Bust, and Emerging Renaissance. But in addition to reading your book, what else should they check out, Ed?
Speaker 1 31:59
Well, I'd also like to point out that when I finished my book before I could turn in the manuscript, I had a hard time stopping production of that manuscript because things are happening all the time, and so simultaneous with turning in the manuscript, I started a substack, and my substack is called Nuclear Tomorrow. And what I do is every month I summarize about 15 developments that have taken place during that month, and I summarize and link to news articles about those 15 developments. So my Substack has gotten some following. I have 850 people now who subscribe, and the numbers grow every day. But there are a couple of sources of information about the nuclear world that don't receive much attention that should be more in the public eye. One is the Generation Four Nuclear Forum, which I keep mentioning. That started in 2000 It it continues as an organization and the secretariat for that organization is at the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, and the Nuclear Energy Agency is part of the OECD, the Organization of Economic and Economic Cooperation. cooperation and development (OECD) and the Nuclear Energy Agency is a wonderful source of information. They have, if you go to their website, they have a annual summary of all the Generation Four modular reactors.
Paul Shapiro 34:29
Great. Well, we will link to both of those in the show notes for this episode@businessforgoodpodcast.com Both to Gen Four Nuclear Forum and the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. And Ed, finally, are there companies that you wish existed that don't yet exist. If somebody is inspired and they're listening to you, and maybe they're like you, they're coming out of university. Maybe they got a PhD in physics, or they have some passion and expertise in this area, and they were thinking about starting their own company. What should they do?
Speaker 1 34:54
Well, I I think that there are there are about 30 companies. That are producing new nuclear energy in the United States today. I think that that that market is pretty saturated. However, I I mean we're we're talking today when people are recovering or starting to recover from the greatest heat wave that Europe has ever experienced, so that I believe that the crisis in global warming is going to accelerate, and we're going to need crash programs to ameliorate that global warming, and there will be a need for production of large numbers of nuclear reactors, and there is there aren't enough people around to be able to do this work. So I see a need for education programs and training programs of technicians and support staff for the nuclear development industry, and I think there are a number of companies and organizations out there doing this, but not enough. And I would urge people to consider putting an oar in to help move that along.
Paul Shapiro 36:24
Very good. Well, I hope that people take your call to heed and that they do put their oar in the water to help. As you pointed out, we're in the midst of a record heat wave in Europe, and a past guest on the show, Mike Grunwald, the author of "We Are Eating the Earth, had a very interesting post on social media that I took note of this week, where he said, "There's a record heat wave in Europe. There's a mega drought in the American West, and there will be horrible wildfires all summer. And all of this is being made worse by climate change, which cares about you, even if you don't care about it. And that certainly seems a fitting way to end this episode on the need to address this threat that does care about us quite a lot. One way to do that is by embracing and accelerating the development of nuclear energy in the United States and around the world. So, Ed, I'm grateful to you for all that you're doing to help in that cause, and I wish you the best with your new book.
Ed Friedman 37:21
Thank you, Paul. I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts with you.
Paul Shapiro 37:26
Thanks for listening to the Business for Good podcast. To explore more conversations like this one, visit businessforgoodpodcast.com and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of Founders, Investors, Thought Leaders, and more turning global problems into powerful opportunities. And if this episode resonated with you? Please share it with your network. You never know who you might inspire to be in the business of doing good.