TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Sarah Howorth [00:00:59] Welcome back to another episode of the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. Today, I'm here with Nick O'Hara, who's the podcast producer for Gridlocked, which is a podcast that is based on why the 21st century is broken and how we should go about fixing it. Nick, welcome. It's so great to have you on.

Nick O'Hara [00:01:18] Thank you for having me on the show. I'm actually a big fan of Titans. So, congratulations to everyone involved in the production. And yeah, it's a pleasure to be with you.

Sarah Howorth [00:01:29] Pleasure to have you here. Let's just start off by talking a little bit about your background, but also focusing on how you originally sparked your interest in nu clear. Give us some information on your early learnings of the subject.

Nick O'Hara [00:01:45] Well, my first interaction with nuclear was back in the late 1980s. That was during a school trip to the Fawley Power Station in Hampshire, and that's on the south coast of England where I grew up. But that didn't really spark my interest in it. Science didn't interest me at all, in fact, if I'm honest. We have to really fast forward 32 years to a point where I met a guy called Jacopo Buongiorno, who's Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. And he wanted to talk about some of the new technologies in nuclear, which I'm sure we'll come on to talk about in the show. But it was really the interactions with him and then going away and doing some homework on nuclear power that really sparked my interest. That was two years ago now.

Sarah Howorth [00:02:41] Awesome. And did you have any original hesitation about nuclear at all? During your trip to Fawley, did you just think, "Oh wow, what a grand structure. I want to learn more about it. This is amazing."

Nick O'Hara [00:02:54] Well, I'd love to say that was... Fawley, that was an interesting school trip. It was a day out at the station. My memories of it... I mean, don't forget, I'm going back to that in 1989. But I have memories of this really immaculately clean, pristine facility, which was safety. I think we were wearing overalls and hard hats. But yeah, this really safe and secure place and various people talking at me and my classmates and me not taking it all in, if I'm honest.

Nick O'Hara [00:03:37] I was ignorant about nuclear. I have to be completely upfront about that. I think like most people, I had a lot of misperceptions about radiation exposure risk, about security, about nuclear waste. And I'm talking now as the adult me three decades on. And so I thought, without really turning my attention, that nuclear was bad, renewables were good, and that my support for renewables therefore made me a climate conscious citizen.

Nick O'Hara [00:04:11] But then, sparked and aided by Jacopo, I started to do some homework on the subject. And I got talking to some people like Joshua Goldstein, who you've had on Titans Podcast. In fact, you've had him on twice, I believe. You've just had him on with Oliver Stone because he co-wrote the film Nuclear Now with Oliver, which is out in US cinemas. So, I guess my story really is one that I think is something that's familiar with so many people, certainly that I speak to.

Nick O'Hara [00:04:50] In fact, Joshua himself, if you ask him, he will tell you as he told me on Gridlocked... He talks about being a 1970s sort of environmentalist hippie. And like me, "Nuclear is bad," and grew up with all these these negative perceptions of nuclear. But then also like me, he started looking into the subject and realized that pretty much everything that he knew and everything that I knew about nuclear simply wasn't true. And frankly, we've kind of been brainwashed our entire lives about nuclear.

Sarah Howorth [00:05:26] Yeah, I think it's incredibly interesting that a lot of our current nuclear advocates and champions and even some Titans have had to overcome these misconceptions that are so popular in the public media. I'm curious, aside from sort of the mentorship aspect of it with Jacopo, with Joshua, and talking to them, are there any resources that you either read or consumed about nuclear that really just opened your eyes to what you think about it now?

Nick O'Hara [00:05:58] Oh, that's a good question. Well, I don't want to turn this show into a complete plug for Joshua Goldstein, but I would have to say... So aside from the academic papers and the great presentations... I mean, if anyone gets an opportunity to see anything that Jacopo and MIT are doing, they have some great learning materials. But I'd have to say, Joshua's book that he co-wrote with Staffan Qvist, who's a Swedish engineer... I think he's a nuclear engineer, in fact. It called... Now, the title escaped me, but it's basically how we solve climate change. It's a wonderful book. I think it came out probably around 2017, but it's still very current now.

Nick O'Hara [00:06:46] And in fact, I know that the film Nuclear Now really has its origins in that book. So, anyone who is kind of where I was two years ago and you're interested about issues around energy and climate change and how we decarbonize and how we move forward and meet the climate emergency challenges we face as societies, I would highly recommend that book as a good starting point. And finally, Joshua Goldstein, If you listening, you could send my check in the post, please, because I keep plugging in your projects.

Sarah Howorth [00:07:32] Perfect, and you're not the only one. I've heard that from multiple people at this point as it is such an amazing resource to learn. And that book, for those of you who want to go and check it out, it's called A Bright Future and it's definitely a good one to look through to develop your understanding of nuclear.

Nick O'Hara [00:07:49] I could tell this. I read it on the beach, on Miami Beach. And if that's not an image that maybe I want to leave listeners with, but it's so well-read, it's so accessible. It's covering technical detail, and as a communications professional I think this is so important. How do you convey technical and scientific content in non-technical ways to an uninitiated audience of people like me? I'm not an engineer, I'm not a scientist. But I devoured that book in two afternoons on Miami Beach, frankly.

Sarah Howorth [00:08:28] Yeah, that's amazing. Books are a great way to communicate that technical information in a really understandable way. And I would argue that podcasts also do the same thing, and we'll definitely get to talking about that a little more later as well. But before we get into that and before we talk about Gridlocked, which is what I know people want to hear about, give us a bit of a brief overview of your current work with Renovata. Tell us about that and what it's all about.

Nick O'Hara [00:08:59] Well, as grandiose as it may sound, Sarah, I want to see a more equitable world which operates sustainably, and I want to ensure that future generations can inherit viable societies in a livable planet. And so, that was, in a sense, the seed of Renovata. I established Renovata and brought in my business partner, Mark Havenner, about 18 months ago now so we could focus precisely on that and play our own small part. And increasingly, the work I do at Renovata has had more of an energy focus, more broadly, and nuclear in particular.

Nick O'Hara [00:09:47] I mean, I'm a public policy communications strategist by trade, by background. I could see that the external communications and media landscape that we operate in today is not the same as it was at the turn of the century. How we consume, how we produce content has changed almost beyond recognition just in the past decade or so alone. And to comms professionals listening, that distinction between paid media and marketing and advertising on the one hand and earned media, PR, public affairs on the other is so blurred now in this era of digital communications and social media. And as you just mentioned, it'd be great to talk about podcasting in the show.

Nick O'Hara [00:10:37] But that distinction, it's almost irrelevant now. And the name of the game is to produce relevant content on the right platforms such as thought leadership and podcasting and great blogs and essays and all the rest of it so people can find information at precisely the moment they need it. And I think the most effective way that we do that is to tell audiences stories that connect to their goals and their challenges and try and engage with them and demonstrate how we can solve those challenges and help them achieve their aspirations. And it's something I have to say, I think to be frank, I think a lot of PR agencies don't really understand the new landscape, and as a result, they don't deliver great results for their clients.

Nick O'Hara [00:11:27] So, Renovata was an attempt to try and address that and do things differently. And I think a lot of SME, small, medium-sized enterprises in particular, they may feel a bit trapped because they know that effective communications are more important to their business than ever before. So they're paying these handsome fees in monthly retainers to PR agencies, but they're not always getting a great deal by way of results. So instead, I would say to those people... I'm not saying all PR agencies are bad or a waste of money, but I think particularly, smaller companies should really look at how do they create an audience built on shared values and then generate that and engage them in two-way conversation. So, build a community around... And it could be a thought leadership piece; I think that's a great strategy right now.

Nick O'Hara [00:12:23] And really that leads on to Gridlocked, because Gridlocked is a discursive thought leadership platform centered around a podcast. But we're doing a lot of work that flows from the podcast, if that makes sense. Gridlocked is probably the most visible example of Renovata's approach and my approach to doing strategic communications in the 21st century.

Sarah Howorth [00:12:55] Absolutely. That's really well said. And I think going back to the beginning of your comments, I think your visions of equity and energy tie so well together because I think the driving factor for a lot of people in the energy sector, at least some, is public energy access and that being an equitable human right. So I think that's really well said and it's a great driving force to have as you move forward in your career and you produce and release more episodes of Gridlocked.

Nick O'Hara [00:13:25] Well, I hope so. We hope so. Mark and I and our colleague Rolake, who hosts the show with us, that's certainly what we're seeking to do moving forward.

Sarah Howorth [00:13:38] Yeah, so let's talk more about Gridlocked. How did the idea for the podcast come about and what motivated you to bring it from just an idea to now being an actual podcast?

Nick O'Hara [00:13:50] It was a team effort. I mentioned the relationship I had with Jacopo Buongiorno at MIT. And so, I brought Mark Havenner, my business partner in on a thought leadership project that we were doing with Jacopo and an MIT research affiliate called Rob Freda, and they're based in Boston. So Mark's in Los Angeles and I'm just outside London. I had a preexisting relationship with, actually, all of them, but I brought them together. And we wanted to create, as I said just now, that discursive platform. We wanted to take issues on energy and advanced production to a wider audience outside of the public policy and academic realm. It was actually Mark who suggested that a podcast could be the ideal platform because he's been immersed in podcasting for some years now, whereas the rest of us were quite new to it. And as I said before, we thought, "Let's create this podcast. We can build a lot of great engagement activity around that." So, it went from there, really.

Nick O'Hara [00:15:00] But in those early conversations, it became clear to all of us that whichever way you looked at the challenges we face in terms of climate change and the energy crisis, whether you looked at it from an economic, from an environmental, from a geopolitical perspective, particularly against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the one obstacle underpinning so many of the challenges that we face was the question of energy. So, that's how we decided that season one of Gridlocked would be on energy. But we really wanted to place it in a broader context of the more wide-ranging issues that are causing or holding societies back today. So it came to me that the term gridlock seemed to sum up the state we're in. And a lot of the messaging for the show came from that.

Nick O'Hara [00:16:02] We were talking about Joshua's book earlier. I started to think... And it's kind of how my brain works, but I thought about book covers, particularly those of popular economics or behavioral science books that you get, especially published in the US. And then the show strapline came to me, "Why the 21st century's broken and how to fix it." And the rest kind of fell into place from there.

Sarah Howorth [00:16:30] Yeah, it's incredibly catchy. I didn't even have to look at my notes in remembering the tagline. It's definitely something that sticks with you, and that's something that a lot of people are thinking about now. So, who can listeners look forward to hearing from who they might not have heard from already on the podcast? The first episode has been released, and we've talked about some of the voices that they're going to hear, but tell us a little bit about some of the others.

Nick O'Hara [00:16:57] We've released the intro episode only, not what I would call the substantive episodes where we really get into the different topics that we cover on this series on energy. So, what's available now? If Titans listeners can lend us their ears and go to gridlockedpodcast.com, they will hear the intro show which is Rolake, Mark, and I talking about Gridlocked more broadly. Many of the things I'm saying now, but also giving a preview of the energy season.

Nick O'Hara [00:17:37] I think we're at a point in history where a lot of us feel a sense despair and that things are broken, hence the tagline, but we don't know how to fix them. Or, those who do aren't getting the airtime that their ideas deserve. That actually really guided us in terms of the experts with the solutions that we wanted to get on the show. So, we've got a real mix of people. And as I said before, and forgive the shameless plug, but all one word, gridlockedpodcast.com. You'll see information on all of our contributors.

Nick O'Hara [00:18:14] We've got the most prominent living architect on the planet, I think I can safely say, Norman Foster. We've got Kerry Emanuel, who is a leading atmospheric and climate scientist. We've got Guillermo Trotti. When we sat down with him, as with other guests, we asked people, "Just briefly introduce yourself." And Guillermo's a lovely man, as all of our guests are, certainly others. And he says, "I'm Guillermo Trotti, I'm a space architect." And I just thought, "Well, that's got to be the coolest job title I've ever had in my life."

Sarah Howorth [00:18:51] Absolutely.

Nick O'Hara [00:18:52] So yeah, he's a design architect. He's worked on the International Space Station. We've got Dava Newman, who is Director of MIT Media Lab. Dava is wonderful, but all of our guests are wonderful, so I'm a bit cautious about describing each one in case it implies one is less wonderful. That's not the case. But Dava was appointed by President Obama to be the Deputy Administrator of NASA prior to her position now, heading up the Media Lab at MIT.

Nick O'Hara [00:19:25] And as I mentioned before, we've got two alumni of the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. We got Jacopo Buongiorno, MIT Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Joshua Goldstein, he's Professor Emeritus at American University. So Joshua, he keeps being described as a scientist, which I take issue with. Like me, his background is international relations. But he's on the show. Joshua was great. As I said before, he's got the film out, Nuclear Now, which is doing all of its opening sessions. In fact, he's doing what looks to me like a really grueling tour with Oliver Stone, doing all of these special showings followed by Q&A discussions.

Nick O'Hara [00:20:15] My goodness, we've got a lot of people. I'll mention some of them later, maybe, in our conversation. But if you go to gridlockedpodcast.com, you will be able to see all of our guests as well as some of the blogs I've written and some other information on the show. And I should just add, we might have one or two surprises up our sleeves in terms of unannounced guests. So, watch this space.

Sarah Howorth [00:20:41] Yeah, that's awesome to hear. I'll definitely keep an eye out for that and our listeners should as well. And then according to the experts, those in other fields like architecture, not necessarily with nuclear backgrounds, what did they think the present day nuclear industry should look like or be focusing on? What are just, in general, some of the most thought provoking things that you heard about the nuclear industry that you maybe didn't know already or what sort of opened your eyes to new ideas?

Nick O'Hara [00:21:13] That's a really good question. The season's on energy and nuclear is part of that conversation. But in a sense, our starting point isn't, "Let's talk about nuclear." It's, "Let's talk about the challenges we face." Really, if you think in terms of the climate emergency and against the backdrop of increasing global demand for energy, that kind of frames everything. And so, there is a logic there. You talk about decarbonization, then you get on to clean ways of producing energy.

Nick O'Hara [00:21:50] And I should also add that not everyone on the show would necessarily describe themselves as an advocate for nuclear energy. I do; I'm very upfront about that. But Gridlocked isn't about lobbying for a particular public policy outcome. So, it isn't a big exercise in advocating for one course of action or another, because we really want to have that conversation and that discussion based on facts and evidence. But ultimately, we want listeners to feel better informed and to make their own decisions on these issues. But yeah, there are lots of us on the show who are clearly... How could I say it? We're the crossover audience for Titans, really.

Nick O'Hara [00:22:41] But to your question, if I could talk personally, it strikes me that the nuclear industry has made great strides, particularly in recent times, I think, in communicating the benefits that clean, reliable, concentrated nuclear energy can provide for societies, especially the vital role that nuclear can play in our global efforts to combat climate change. If I think about the industry... Because I'm not in the industry, but I think about it from a communications or from more of a public policy perspective, and nuclear has got to continue to tell its positive story. And I think that the wider nuclear industry should get better at speaking with one coherent voice and advocate for nuclear as a whole, as well as for the specific different types, including large-scale reactors, small modular reactors, SMRs, micro reactors, nuclear batteries. Advocate for the whole piece because it's good for everyone, I think, inside the industry, but more importantly for society and for the planet.

Nick O'Hara [00:23:59] If I was advising the nuclear industry, I'd say, "Let's better coalesce around an agreed narrative, core messages from all parts of the sector." Because let's do the comparison. If you look at the fossil fuel industry and the wider renewables industries, they're streets ahead of nuclear when it comes to issues, advocacy, and lobbying. In fact, they seem to have formed a rather kind of unholy alliance, if I could put it that way. But they're better organized. They've effectively mobilized their supporters, their advocates.

Nick O'Hara [00:24:34] So nuclear, I think, is doing well, but it needs to up its game. And I'm really trying to play my small part in that as a concerned global citizen, really. But yeah, get better at telling the story. And particularly, I think, through the lives and the lived experience of real people. So for example, those who work in the nuclear sector and those folks in communities who live in the vicinity of nuclear power plants. And you know this, Sarah, all this connects with real human narratives, so let's start telling those human stories.

Nick O'Hara [00:25:11] And then, if I could just finish off maybe from a public policy perspective, because this is really important. The nuclear industry has to demonstrate to citizens like you and me and listeners of the show, but also key stakeholders in industrial sectors, national governments, regional intergovernmental organizations... Nuclear has to demonstrate how it can realize these public policy and these political climate targets and ambitions. For example, for net zero and the reduction or even the eradication of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear really has to... That would always be my starting point.

Nick O'Hara [00:25:52] And by the way, that's why I'm passionate about nuclear. You know, I don't fully understand the technology. I'm not a nuclear scientist, obviously. I don't need to be. Just as much as I don't need to understand how the technology in my cell phone, my mobile phone works. I just need to know that it enables me through apps. I can do so many things and I can use my Duolingo to practice my Spanish and I can book rail tickets and I can even make phone calls, amazingly. But the point is that the reason why I'm excited about nuclear is not only do I think it can save the planet, or rather, humanity, but it's that new future and the possibilities that nuclear can enable that new, clean, low-carbon future. And I really think that there's a great story to tell. And I think people are working hard and doing well in telling that story, but I think there's a lot more that can be done.

Sarah Howorth [00:26:54] Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people, once again, would agree with you there. And one podcast producer to another, how can specifically podcasts and interviews, storytelling, communications, be important specifically to the nuclear industry?

Nick O'Hara [00:27:13] That's a good question. In fact before, if I may, there is another point here. I don't want to be guilty of doing the thing that I'm advising we stop doing, but if I could just say this to everyone in the nuclear industry or who cares about saving the planet. All the time that you spend trying to disprove a negative is time you're spending not winning an argument. And it's something that, for example, US presidential candidates have understood that for decades. So, if I could just put a plea out there, let's stop getting drawn into these specious arguments on safety and the disinformation about incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. They're not the cautionary tales that the opponents of nuclear want us to think that they are. They know what they're doing; they're just bogging us down on a defensive, and we can't tell that positive story.

Nick O'Hara [00:28:10] But to talk about those two examples that I've just mentioned, it's a bit like talking about road safety using a 1950s Ford motor car as our example. Just as today's cars have seat belts, they have airbags, they've anti-roll bars, they have anti-locking brakes systems, so too has nuclear technology moved on. And you don't hear airlines talking publicly about accidents that took place 40 years ago. They don't, and neither should the nuclear industry. These are not the cautionary tales that...

Nick O'Hara [00:28:45] I talked at the top of the show about my misperceptions. I don't want to get drawn into it, but people can go and just do a quick internet search and check the facts, the comparative safety records of nuclear against other forms, and you will see that nuclear is level pegging with wind and solar. So if nuclear's bad, then so are they. But then, your question was about podcasting, wasn't it?

Sarah Howorth [00:29:15] Yeah, but that was a great point, so thanks for sharing that.

Nick O'Hara [00:29:19] It's so important because... And you see it. And we will just spend... Let me give another piece of advice, if I may be so bold, to the nuclear industry. We cannot be here in five years time, ten years time, still on the back foot, talking about all these false narratives and false cautionary tales like the two I mentioned. I don't want to say too much because I'm not downplaying they were serious, but these were really important lessons learned. And nuclear has an incredible safety record. And partly, it has an incredible safety record because it's regulated to the hilt way beyond anything else.

Nick O'Hara [00:30:03] And if you look at coal, not only in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 emissions, which we're cramming more and more carbon, incredibly, which is causing all these issues. But just directly in terms of air quality, the particulates in the air that we breathe... The measures vary a bit, but it's around a million people are being killed every year from coal. We've got to stop it now. And nuclear is clean and we should be less defensive.

Nick O'Hara [00:30:36] But yeah, podcasting. I mean, look, I think podcasting is a great way of engaging with people. I think we respond to different mediums and there are different techniques. Sorry, I've lost my thread. Could you repeat the question? I've ruined your question, Sarah, by ranting about the nuclear safety record.

Sarah Howorth [00:31:10] No problem, no problem. You can't ruin a question with a good rant, so no worries there. But I was just asking how interviews, storytelling, and podcasts can really be important to the nuclear industry as we're sort of pushing this positive narrative forward?

Nick O'Hara [00:31:27] I think like we are today, because I think technical content, as I was saying before, scientific content... How do you convey that in a way that's engaging, that can resonate with people? And I think that having more, for want of a better description, these more human conversations, I think that's a great way of doing it. As I was saying before, we don't all need to understand the technology, but I think if we can understand how in this case, nuclear, how it can really transform our lives and build the kinds of societies of the future that we want, I think podcasting is a great way of getting that message out more widely.

Sarah Howorth [00:32:17] I certainly agree. Do you have any final thoughts about Gridlocked, thoughts about what you've learned recently that you want to share with listeners before we wrap up?

Nick O'Hara [00:32:32] That's a very good question. I'd encourage people to tune into the show because I think we've got a great show. I hope that we are really going to cover these issues. We're getting above the noise and the polarization that I think we face. Because we want to talk about these issues but not get into the sort of political divisions. It's so important because I think this climate emergency, it doesn't stop at borders, it doesn't stop at national jurisdictions, and it is pressing. We've got to act with urgency and we don't have time to waste. And frankly, we need solutions that are going to work now, which is why nuclear is so important. Let's get this show out and then maybe you can have me back on and we can talk about what you thought of it, and then we could look ahead to future seasons.

Sarah Howorth [00:33:46] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great note to end it on. Definitely go and listen to Gridlocked. New episodes are coming out soon. We hope you enjoyed this podcast in addition to the other podcasts that you're going to be listening to about nuclear in the future. Thank you so much, Nick, for coming on the show.

Nick O'Hara [00:34:03] Pleasure to be with you. Thanks, Sarah.

Gethin Jenkins [00:00:07] Hello, welcome. My name is Gethin Jenkins and this is the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. Today, we have Emma McDaid with us. She's the Head of Project Management at Magnox in the UK. Really good to have you here. I'm really interested in what you've got to say. So, maybe we'll kick off with you introducing yourself and telling us a bit about how you've ended up in the role you're in today.

Emma McDaid [00:00:34] Hi, Gethin. Nice to see you. And thanks very much for inviting me. What an honor. I feel very privileged to have made it to the Titans Podcast. So yeah, I'm Emma McDaid. I'm the Head of Project Management at Magnox. I've been in the role about two and a half years. Before that, I was at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in the southwest of England, and before that I was with Atkins as an engineering and project management consultant.

Emma McDaid [00:01:06] I ended up in the role at Magnox, really, because I wanted to combine my experience as a project leader with a desire to sort of really bring out the best in people. I really believe that people are fundamental to how successful projects are. And so, I really wanted to bring that out, focus on the development of people under our project managers to achieve success, basically. So, that's the direction I thought I'd take for this stage in my career. But where it goes next, who knows?

Gethin Jenkins [00:01:51] No, that's good. Before we go into a bit more about who's influenced you and your experiences in your career, could you tell us a bit about the your experience on the Hinkley Project? I mean, I've been following it with interest. There's lots of great imagery of all the cranes in the site. Is it as fascinating as it looks from the outside? It just looks like a great project to be involved in.

Emma McDaid [00:02:15] Hinkley Point C, and I've no doubt that Sizewell C will be the same, but they're absolutely awesome projects. I remember meeting one of our apprentices and he described coming on to the site for the first time as like stepping into Jurassic Park or Jurassic World. Jurassic Park shows my age a little bit, doesn't it? But, Jurassic World. And he was very quick to point out it wasn't about the dinosaurs element, but really just how absolutely epic and massive everything is. It's just super-scaled. I think it's really seen particularly with the use of that enormous land crane, Big Carl, the biggest land crane, I think in Europe and maybe the world. I'm not sure, but it's really, really big. Standing next to that, just the cab is like a three story building just to have the one person who's operating the crane. So, it gives you the scale and the enormity of that kind of project.

Emma McDaid [00:03:25] I feel very privileged to have been a part of it. And I'm sure that anybody who is involved will feel the same way. It's not easy, it's not easy. A big project like that is extremely complex. The logistical challenges on their own are absolutely just mind blowing, to be honest with you. But I was lucky to be involved right from the sort of site licensing and the things, the early planning stages, the early kind of putting the management arrangements together part.

Emma McDaid [00:04:00] And when I actually was employed by EDF to join them, the site was still a set of greenfields. We were put in... there were a couple of barns there. There was plenty of wildlife. It was a very different thing from what it looks like today. And when you watch the program and see the pictures about it today, it just still blows your mind about how they're putting that together. It's such a constrained environment. It's absolutely epic to be part of that. But it's not easy. It's not easy to be involved in it either. And yeah, it is challenging. It's very tiring. It requires a lot of dedication and commitment.

Gethin Jenkins [00:04:54] As we go through the rest of the podcast and discussion, I'll be really keen to hear your thoughts on large projects, large-scale infrastructure projects like that, and some of the lessons that could be learned for some of the smaller projects that are coming online. There was the announcement from UK Government this week about a focus on small modular reactors in the UK, and I'm sure there are some really good lessons learned from projects like that. We'll hopefully touch on that as the discussion goes forward.

Gethin Jenkins [00:05:24] I'd like to pick up on your career progression and how you've got to where you are today. I'd like to understand about some of the influences that you came across, some of the people that you worked with who were maybe influential in helping you in your career. But also some of the challenges and maybe how you overcame them to get to being in this fairly significant and important role you've got in Magnox.

Emma McDaid [00:05:52] Yes, so gosh, where to start? I suppose we'll talk about some people that maybe have influenced me along the way. I'd probably particularly pick up on my time when I was Atkins. I was really lucky, actually, to join Atkins when I did. which was back in the 2000s now, so don't judge me, but quite a long time ago. And we were a very, very young office. We felt pretty invincible about how we could pretty much take anything on. A really bright bunch of people who could really just... We just thought that we could do anything we wanted, really. And so, we did. I think there was a real freedom in the way that we approached our work and who we got in touch with in terms of clients and the different markets that we tried to be involved with.

Emma McDaid [00:06:56] One of the main influences or one of the people who has influenced me and still does today is Caroline Brown of Atkins. And she's still there. The work that she's been doing recently with Emily Hutchinson and the book that they've written together about strengths-based organizations and the work they've done there is absolutely awesome. What she taught me, actually, was that it was okay to be yourself. And I think, particularly as a woman in STEM subjects and engineering and science backgrounds, I think I probably was on the sort of the line that I had to be. I had to fit in with the lads, and I was one of the lads. And she taught me that you didn't have to be that way. Not that I've ever been much of a girly girl, I have to confess. But she really taught me that you can just be who you want to be, and you're perfectly acceptable as you were, kind of thing.

Gethin Jenkins [00:08:08] A very important and powerful lesson to carry. Yeah, I think that's great.

Emma McDaid [00:08:16] Definitely. We did a lot of work together when I was at Atkins and I carried that through into Hinkley Point C's work on the sort of diversity and inclusion and gender balance, particularly. She taught me quite a lot about how to challenge the status quo, how to talk to people who may have said something or done something that was not necessarily okay, actually, and how to address that in a way that helped them to learn that lesson rather than sort of perpetuate barriers and irritate people, frankly. Many of the things that happen that are still sort of affecting gender balance are not from a place of malice. And actually, if you assume somebody gets defensive, they're not going to learn that lesson. So, Caroline taught me ways of working and talking to people without completely just annoying them, I suppose, which is quite important.

Gethin Jenkins [00:09:24] Yeah. And actually picking up on the diversity and gender balance, I think historically the STEM topics and the nuclear industry itself is very male dominated just due to the historical topics that were selected in schools and universities. What's your view on the current status of it in the nuclear industry? Do you think things have improved somewhat? Do you think we've still got some ways to go? I was quite interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Emma McDaid [00:10:00] When I started out as an engineer, I studied at Sheffield University as a mechanical engineer. There maybe were about 10% girls, 10% women I should say, at that stage. I think that the intake for graduate engineers now is pretty good; it's pretty robust. Maybe 30 or 40% retaining those women. Through their career life, though, is still problematic. We still see quite a drop off of female representation through more senior roles, and then, obviously, into exec roles and board roles. So yes, I think there's always going to be... To be honest, I think there'll be work to do for many, many years to come in that respect. I think those of us who are women in senior roles have to recognize that we are role models and people are looking and listening to what we have to say. I think if we sort of back off from that then we're sort of doing them a disservice, essentially. And we need to continue to ask questions of ourselves and others about what is maybe preventing people from progressing.

Emma McDaid [00:11:20] Unconscious bias is still definitely there. Even for me, if I'm recruiting, it doesn't stop me from recruiting in my own image. I have to challenge myself "Am I actually recruiting somebody who's like me?" Maybe who doesn't look like me, but who thinks like me. So, we should always be challenging ourselves about what it is that we actually need. And actually, having a team around you that doesn't all think the same way, hasn't got the same background, has a completely different set of perspectives, that's really where you get the most benefit out of that team, because you'll hear all the voices and they can all contribute to what is going on. And you may have clashes and tension, but actually, tension breeds that creativity, the innovation, the sort of optimized ways forward. So, it's really, really important that you do that.

Emma McDaid [00:12:20] When I was working at Hinkley C and on a construction site, clearly in construction particularly, there's a long way to go still in terms of gender balance. The nuclear industry itself is probably further advanced in terms of numbers, the stock numbers on the paper. That's not been helped by historical influences from like the unions and the like as well. They sort of didn't let women into trades for most of the 20th century. And they're much different now. They've turned their sort of voices around now, which is fantastic. But there's a lot of damage done there and a lot of societal norms that have to be broken to progress.

Emma McDaid [00:13:08] Working for Magnox is actually a very different experience. Actually, our gender pay gaps probably one of the lowest of the nuclear industry. And myself included, there are a number of women in senior roles, obviously, including our CEO, Gwen Parry-Jones. So in that respect, it actually feels a much more balanced workforce in that respect. I feel quite privileged. It's quite unusual for me to feel that way, having spent really probably the past sort of 25 to 30 years predominantly in sort of studying and work environments that are male-dominated. Not that that particularly bothers me; I quite like working with men. It's not a big problem in that respect, but it's notable, I think, to see more women in more senior roles and different types of roles as well.

Gethin Jenkins [00:14:03] Yeah, that's good. That's interesting. I think Magnox also pushing the boundaries and challenging in a way that it's demonstrably making changes is a good sign for the industry.

Gethin Jenkins [00:14:20] Just picking up on your current role with Magnox in the decommissioning... We've got very complicated, we've got very challenging projects in the UK. I'd be quite keen to hear your thoughts on the skill sets and the approaches that are used as part of those projects that might be of value to the new build arena. What are your thoughts on are there transferable skills across? There's a very limited resource pool looking at new nuclear in the UK. I, for one, have worked in both types of projects and I'm just keen to hear your thoughts on the skill sets for decommissioning and how valuable are they for any new build arena or new build nuclear.

Emma McDaid [00:15:05] It's a good question, Gethin. I think it's something that's useful to reflect on for the industry as a whole and wider. There are lots of synergies, particularly between decommissioning and new build. Because largely, we're talking about construction environments and construction-type activity. There's a lot of conventional build work, whether that's actual build or demolition or refit in both enterprises. So, there's a lot of similarity there. It's really probably the operational period of the power stations that is sort of more starkly different.

Emma McDaid [00:15:46] I feel really lucky that I've had the opportunity to work in all the areas of the nuclear lifecycle. And as a project manager and somebody who sort of supports the project management industry, there are a lot of synergies between the nuclear industry and oil and gas and other construction, sort of more highly-regulated construction arenas. I think the industry needs to make sure that it doesn't preclude people who maybe don't have nuclear experience from being involved in a lot of the work that we do, particularly at either end of the lifecycle in the new build and on the decommissioning end.

Emma McDaid [00:16:41] Obviously, there are aspects of the work that we do that require that sort of real attention around nuclear-regulated work. But there's a lot of conventional construction work that's associated with those and a lot of opportunity, really, to move between those ends, particularly. It's been quite interesting for me, both from a new build and from a decommissioning perspective, that I have been involved in teams where there have been represented people who are very experienced in generation and then either decommissioning or construction. And there can be quite a culture clash between those things because they're quite different environments in which people are working.

Emma McDaid [00:17:34] And it's not that one's right or one's wrong, it's just what the requirements of that particular part of the lifecycle are asking of you at that point. Obviously, when you're in an operational environment, there's extremely strictly controlled, absolutely understandably, a lot of repetitive, careful work. And that doesn't necessarily translate that well into decommissioning and into new build.

Gethin Jenkins [00:18:11] There's a gap in the middle. So, there's the decommissioning approach to problem solving, project management, construction activities or deconstruction, and then the phase in the middle of the operations where the skill sets are very different. From new build nuclear, the skill sets are more linked to the decommissioning skills, really.

Emma McDaid [00:18:32] Yeah, yeah. It's not to say that there's no skills in the generation part that are applicable to anyone else; that's not the case. But there's definitely more synergy, I would say, between decommissioning and new build than maybe people are aware of. Because people think with decommissioning, it must just mean that you're demolishing the building. But actually, we're quite often building stores or waste handling facilities, those sorts of things. There's quite a lot of new build within decommissioning or refitting or modification as part of the decommissioning cycle. And there's a lot of synergy there, definitely, between those.

Gethin Jenkins [00:19:17] And how have you found bringing in people from outside the nuclear... I'm a massive advocate of bringing people in from outside the nuclear industry. I think it brings a fresh pair of eyes and fresh thinking and ideas that we need to push the nuclear agenda forward in the UK. So, how have you found bringing people in from outside the industry? Has it been successful? Any challenges or anything that people need to be aware of?

Emma McDaid [00:19:43] I think it does bring challenges because of the culture clash that I mentioned. There is a way of working and then a very different way of working, and you're bringing those two things together. But I absolutely think that it's ideal to have both. And for reasons that we discussed a bit earlier around the sort of gender balance and recruiting kind of thing, it's about having the different perspectives and different viewpoints and challenging the status quo. We talk a lot in the nuclear industry about nuclear safety and the challenging, questioning attitude. And actually, people from outside can help to bring that view because they can say, "But why are we still doing that? Do we really need to do that? Because it's actually adding a lot of time." It's not always easy. And the answer is sometimes, "Yes." There can be very good reasons for why we're doing something the way that we're doing it. But I always like a bit of a churn and a bit of a mix on the whole thing because I think it brings the different voices into account.

Gethin Jenkins [00:20:57] No, that's good. I am very interested in your current role, the Head of Project Management for Magnox and in trying to get my head around what the day to day means in that role, what are the levels, what are the responsibilities and skill sets you need so maybe people listening can maybe work on skills development to go towards a role like that. Could you just explain a little bit about your current role and how it applies... Or the new way of thinking or the advances in project management, maybe, and how you're taking things forward?

Emma McDaid [00:21:34] I'll give it a go. In terms of my current role, really I kind of shaped my role since coming into Magnox. After a couple of years, I kind of pinned it down, as you do. So, I split into three areas. It is a functional role. We've got a Program Delivery Director who is responsible for actually delivering all the project and program work itself, which is understandably a large portfolio of work across the sites, multiple sites across the UK. So, I work very closely with him. I see myself as sort of the cheerleading support act to all our programs and project managers.

Emma McDaid [00:22:22] So, I split it into three. One is the people. We'll look after things like have we got the right training provision, what are the career pathways? And we've introduced mentoring, both internally and an ECITB-supported scheme that has now become open. If you look on LinkedIn, it's open to...

Gethin Jenkins [00:22:42] What scheme is that? Sorry.

Emma McDaid [00:22:44] ECITB PM Mentoring Scheme. So, we have that. And so, we'll also look after what the job profiles look like, what's the capability and how we're growing people and trying to recruit people and that kind of thing. So, very much a sort of people element. Since I started, we've also started to bring in project management, project controls graduates. And this year, we're starting to bring in project management apprentices as well into Magnox. So, really excited about that because it's really generating the project managers and project controls teams of the future. So, we do a lot of that around the people side.

Emma McDaid [00:23:34] And then I have what I call the tool set, which is like the processes, the systems that we use, the templates, any of the reporting systems, those kinds of things. So, there's the tool set. And then, last but not least, is what I call expertise. And that's where we do assurance work on the projects that are going through project gates, but also support projects with just the expertise and wisdom and scars, the scars that we've gotten over the years, to try and help shape and set projects up for success. So, those are sort of the three areas there.

Emma McDaid [00:24:19] You asked about project management as the field as well, I think. Before I do that, did you ask me how did I get into it?

Gethin Jenkins [00:24:36] Yeah, I'm interested to see how you've taken your skills and your experiences throughout your your time in Atkins and at Hinkley and how you're applying those in your role now. So, almost like a skills development because I'm very mindful of some project manager roles. There's no go-to king of course, book, kind of guidance that says "This is what you must do to be a good project manager." And I think I'm trying to sort of tease out what makes a good project manager. What are the skill sets that need to be put in place to take it forward? And also, some of the challenges, some of the things that maybe we haven't quite got right and things that we need to maybe improve going forward.

Emma McDaid [00:25:21] As you know, Gethin, I'm doing a Master's at the moment in Major Program Management. But project management is a social science. And I think that we've historically treated project management probably more as a science, tried to really sort of rigidly control it and tried to pull it through the wringer, essentially.

Gethin Jenkins [00:25:46] That's interesting, yeah.

Emma McDaid [00:25:46] But actually, the social part of it is equally, if not more important as the science part. I think that's what sort of has always drawn me into it, because it is both. It's so people-oriented. Relationships, stakeholders, working with sponsors, understanding users, needs and stuff. You don't get that by just drawing some of that upon pieces of paper. You get that from having conversations and developing those relationships.

Emma McDaid [00:26:26] And for me personally, that's why I got into it, I suppose. I found that I was better at organizing stuff and coordinating resources and getting from here to there through the people who were involved in that team. And I found that I had a natural sort of ability in that more than I did, actually, in engineering. I was an alright engineer, but I was really a good project manager, so that's the direction that I took.

Emma McDaid [00:26:57] To get where I am in terms of being the Head of Project Management now, I think my motivation through my career has been about gathering experiences and being able to, as well, demonstrate my credibility to others that I do know what I'm talking about and I've had these experiences. And project management is so much about experience. Yes, there's training and yes, there are qualifications that you can get and they will give you something to put on your CV, but it's the experience that you get and the variety of that and the breadth of thought that actually contributes to your knowledge bank and makes you more and more resilient and more and more capable as a project leader to take on bigger and bigger and more interesting stuff. I think though, that when I reflect back on where I started as a project manager and where it is now, I think the role of the project manager is changing and changing rapidly.

Gethin Jenkins [00:28:07] Yeah. That might be interesting to see. Especially on the projects you've worked on, some of the high hazard, largest projects in the UK, what's your view on this sort of change in the role of the project manager? Any developments or advances in how things are working?

Emma McDaid [00:28:32] Certainly a lot of the projects I worked on in my earlier days would have been sort of more discrete projects. You sort of got something that needed to be managed through the stages. And I think project management is now changing to be much more systemic in its viewpoint. It's almost like project management and project managers and project teams come in at a point through the system's cycle and give it nudge, give it like a rugby pass on to the next stage of its life. But understanding that's an ongoing game is actually now something we have to contend with.

Emma McDaid [00:29:18] Whereas, I think when we used to talk about project management capability in the past, you'd have all your core suite of documents, you'd have your weekly team meetings, you're starting on date "X" and you need to finish by date "Y." It's going "X", how many pounds, whatever, and that's your bundle that you need to deliver. I think now project managers have to think, "What else is going on in the world? What do we want to do that is innovative and creative? To demonstrate some sustainability, how do we make sure that we're using materials and that when this thing reaches the end of its life, we can decommission it and demolish it without it leaving a huge legacy to future generations.".

Emma McDaid [00:30:13] And also, I need to think about how we're developing people, how we're bringing others on. When do talks to senior project managers or am helping to develop others, we'll talk about all the things you need to juggle. And I just think that list is growing all the time about what you need to juggle and what you need to be thinking about. But at the same time, I see project managers being less empowered than they used to be. Project managers 20 years ago were sort of like gods when they decided... It's interesting seeing that happen.

Gethin Jenkins [00:30:55] Why do you think that's happened then? What's the main reason behind that? Is it more of an administrative role now or is it roles and responsibilities being moved around? What are your thoughts?

Emma McDaid [00:31:07] I'm not sure I can call it, Gethin, to be honest. I think it's a variety of reasons. I think, potentially, because of the nature of project delivery and the fact that, in terms of success rates... They're not incredible, kind of being generous. Reputationally, I'm not sure. The field has kind of taken quite a knock from business leaders and financiers, investors. They've lost confidence a little bit in the project management. I think as well, though, there's a temptation when things do go a bit wrong to put more and more control in. And usually that actually has the adverse effect of enabling delivery to be successful. Yeah, I think there is a variety of reasons. It's not easy to just say, "It's this one thing."

Gethin Jenkins [00:32:10] Yeah. Picking up on... You mentioned the success of projects. Those of us who work in the industry know this, that projects aren't always successful. Some are inherent with delays and overruns, but others go really, really well and on schedule to budget. I'm interested in seizing out what you think... I know there's no sort of simple answer to what makes a good project, but with a view that all the new nuclear in the UK is kicking off and there's going to be answers from GBN in the week, there must be some lessons we can learn from the decommissioning projects that would allow for the roll out and achieving net zero quicker and more efficiently than we're currently looking at. So, any thoughts on that?

Emma McDaid [00:32:54] Actually, I don't want to sort of go into the decommissioning project so much, but there are lessons to be learned through wider industry. And a lot of those are to do with, again, they come back to relationships. Actually, especially for larger and more complex projects, how we set up our commercial relationships and our supply chain engagement. I'd say there's still quite a traditional view of how that should be done. That's still very much the status quo. There are pockets where that's moving and changing. Actually, at Sellafield with its partnership arrangements that are set up there, you can see this; you can see a different model. And the MEH Alliance at Hinkley Point C, same sort of thing. We're starting to see partnerships, alliances much more.

Emma McDaid [00:33:59] If you think about how supply chain and how contracts are set up in the first instance, the traditional route is, "We'll try and work it all out and design it or throw it over the fence," and then, "What do you mean you can't build it for that?" And, you know the rest of it. We're we've got different contracting models is where supply chain partners haven't got to commit so early in the delivery lifecycle. The incentives are all around delivery of outcomes, collective delivery of outcomes. I think we're seeing, in those programs and projects, an improvement in terms of delivery success.

Gethin Jenkins [00:34:52] So, the collective delivery of outcomes, that sounds like very much a collaborative or working towards... Could you maybe just explain that in a bit more detail?

Emma McDaid [00:35:03] There are commercial vehicles that are available where, basically, we can work up the plan and the costs and stuff together. But then in terms of how the financing, the payments work, the incentivization comes from achieving the specific outcomes and the costs are just paid. So, if you know that you're working on a program where your cost is going to get paid, you're not going to lose money on that, but you'll only get your bonuses if, actually, you're all successful together. That's a whole different set of supply chain relationships than that traditional model where you're kind just hoping, you're praying that you make a profit, and at least making sure you don't make any terrible losses.

Emma McDaid [00:35:59] I think there's a way to go for just industry as a whole. I don't think that's anything particularly to do with nuclear. I'm not involved in the GBN and the SMRs program, but I would definitely recommend that they make sure that they have a good look at how we set up our commercial relationships and leverage the supply chain. Definitely.

Gethin Jenkins [00:36:25] Yeah. No, that's fascinating. Going back to the women in the workplace and the gender and diversity balance, I was going ask you if there were any words of advice or guidance that you would offer anyone thinking of entering into the nuclear industry? Personally, I think it's a fascinating industry to be in. Again, if you were advising somebody coming through university at this stage or through college, what would your main advice be to them?

Emma McDaid [00:36:59] Really, we didn't touch on my Atkins career very much, but I will touch on it now. Obviously, I said that we were a very young office and we did whatever we liked, but for me that meant that...

Gethin Jenkins [00:37:10] It sounds like great fun. Sounds like great fun.

Emma McDaid [00:37:12] It was awesome. They were very happy days. Very happy days. But it meant that I worked on projects in defense, in rail, in medical engineering. I did a lot of work in aerospace, and of course, nuclear. And it's funny, it always gives me a bit of a wry smile because when I set and I graduated, I was like, "Oh, I'm never going to work in defense and nuclear. I'm not going to do it." Sort of high morals and all this kind of stuff. "And it will be dirty and gray and horrible and stuff." And nuclear is where I just gravitated back to.

Emma McDaid [00:37:57] And the reason for it is that, personally, I'm really attracted to variety and interest. Every day has to be different for me. I couldn't bear to have a job where I could pretty much guarantee what's going to happen every day. It would be absolutely "blah." And that translates through to the industry that I work. There is nothing that is ever the same in nuclear. Wherever you are in the lifecycle, whoever you're working with, it's all unique. It's all fascinating. It's all like some sort of bespoke challenge. There are always unique qualities to it and things that we're trying to work through. I don't think any other industry gives you that degree of variety.

Emma McDaid [00:38:46] And so, I think if that is the sort of thing that excites you... If you want to have those challenges... If you're sort of activated by problem solving, working in teams and... I don't know, you get a kick out of a real challenge and the achievement you get at the other end of that, then it's a great industry to be a part of. And now, of course, it's got a massively bright future. You know, the introduction of the SMRs, the direction of travel with fusion and the STEP program... I mean, that is just really, really exciting. What we're doing in decommissioning is still, I think, one of the biggest programs of work in the UK, if not the biggest. And we might be kind of quiet about it, but there's some fascinating work going on across the estate on that.

Gethin Jenkins [00:39:45] Do you think we should shout about it more? I mean, I think I would want to agree with you that there's so much good work being done, but we don't shout about it as much. It sort of stays within the industry.

Emma McDaid [00:39:58] Yeah. I don't know why. I think it probably isn't seen quite as sexy as SMRs, you know, decommissioning old power stations. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe, of course, there's an element of the legacy that we're managing, and of course, having to be respectful about that. But I think we should shout about it more. I think there are loads of really cool stuff that we do. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it on Guy Martin's programs about the energy mix. And Spot the dog seems to have been everywhere in the UK. He's very busy; he's like on tour or something. You know, stuff like that. There's so much robotics, there's all this sort of remote-operated bespoke equipment that has to be developed. Why wouldn't you want to be part of that? Fascinating.

Gethin Jenkins [00:40:53] Well, hopefully listeners will tap into that. Before we bring it to a close, I would just like to ask you if there's anything else you want to pick up. Anything else you want to bring up or discuss that we may not have had a chance to go over?

Emma McDaid [00:41:12] No, I think I'm going to put a bit of a shout out around the master's degree that I'm doing. And actually, the focus of that, which is the major program side of things. We have a fantastic professor, Professor Daniel Armanios. Absolutely brilliant guy. Lovely to listen to. I really recommend you sort of finding him on YouTube and just seeing what he's up to. But some really interesting moves in the industry of major programs across the globe, really. And a lot of people say... When I say I'm doing a Master's in Major Program Management, they sort of go "What's that?"

Gethin Jenkins [00:41:57] Where is that? Sorry, where is that? And could you say the name of the professor again, just to make sure we get it right if people do want to look him up.

Emma McDaid [00:42:05] It's at Saïd Business school in Oxford University, and it's Professor Daniel Armanios. When we think about major programs in our industry, things like Hinkley Point C are really obvious. Like, massive infrastructure projects. Massive bridge building schemes or sort of transformations of different environments and stuff. But there are other types of major programs and there are things like higher education systems, the vaccination rollout. But there's also now sort of a move towards more decentralized sort of schemes as well. And I think the SMRs are a good example of that, where we're moving from a great big scheme to something that is more repeatable and that we can like learn the lessons from and stuff. So, more modular, more repeatable, more able to learn lessons, sort of almost the sort of simpler kind of approach rather than these enormous, complex end-delivery models. So yeah, I just sort of encourage people to have look at some of the world's major programs. Things like The Line in Saudi Arabia may be controversial, but I mean, it's just like mind blowing.

Gethin Jenkins [00:43:31] It's crazy. Yeah, yeah.

Emma McDaid [00:43:33] Big rail schemes in Mexico, and that was sort of like, what do they have to deal with? We heard from a lady who was managing that scheme over in Mexico and she was talking about how the President of Mexico is her primary client. And he comes to visit the site every few weeks. He rings her every few weeks and they have to train up the army in the running of the scheme because they're the ones who are going to be running the scheme. And you just think, "Oh." It sort of takes the delivery of projects to a whole different level. And it's really exciting. Just look, just look. Google it all and look what's out there.

Gethin Jenkins [00:44:25] Okay. Brilliant. Emma, I'd just like to thank you again for taking your time out to share some of your experience with us. It's been really interesting to talk to you. So yeah, many thanks and all the best.

Emma McDaid [00:44:41] Many thanks, Gethin. It's lovely to catch up with you again after all these years.

Gethin Jenkins [00:44:44] Yeah, yeah. Nice to speak. Cheers, bye.

Hana Chabinsky [00:00:59] Hi, I'm Hana Chabinsky, and you're listening to another episode of the Titans of Nuclear Podcast. Today, I'm here with Ryan Pickering, an energy policy researcher and nuclear energy advocate. Ryan, welcome. It's great to have you on the show.

Ryan Pickering [00:01:14] Thank you, Hana. Good to be here.

Hana Chabinsky [00:01:16] Yeah, awesome. So before we talk about all the cool stuff you're doing now in the nuclear space, I would love to dive into your background a little bit, just start with the basic questions. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What type of interests did you have as a kid, as a student? Who are you?

Ryan Pickering [00:01:36] My name is Ryan Pickering. I'm here in Berkeley, California. And I was actually born in the state of New York on the Hudson River, right upriver from Indian Point Energy Center. I followed my father's career around and moved to Colorado and North Carolina. And then when I was seven, we moved to Silicon Valley. My father is a technologists with semiconductors, and my mom is just down for the ride. So, I moved around a lot when I was a kid, but I've been in California since I was seven years old.

Ryan Pickering [00:02:18] I went to university in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount. I studied political science and renewable engineering. I got a fabulous education there. And then in 2009, graduated into the... What was it known as, the recession at the time?

Hana Chabinsky [00:02:39] Like, the worst recession, yeah, something like that.

Ryan Pickering [00:02:42] But I immediately got into the solar industry. And so starting in 2009, I started building rooftop solar power systems in Los Angeles. And that led to a 13 year career in solar. And it even brought me back to the Bay Area to where I am today, building some batteries for SunPower Corporation, and some other rooftop systems and software.

Ryan Pickering [00:03:05] And then two years ago, I just caught that nuclear bug. I changed my mind about nuclear two years ago. I was really against it, and here I am today, still in Berkeley, working on nuclear advocacy and some other entrepreneurial concepts.

Hana Chabinsky [00:03:23] Amazing. So, it sounds like your dad had some influence on you. Was there any other influence before you went to school that sparked that interest with the energy sector, specifically? Or is it mostly your dad giving you a push and you thought what he was doing was really cool?

Ryan Pickering [00:03:41] My father always was interested in energy. We built motorcycles growing up. I did my science fair in seventh grade on wind turbines in California. I did my eighth grade science fair on gasoline engines. So, I've always been interested in energy. And from an early age, I always linked energy to politics.

Ryan Pickering [00:04:10] When I was advocating for wind energy in junior high, I talked to some local officials, and it really connected to me that even these elected officials who are not engineers are dictating, in some ways, the future of local energy, American energy, global energy. And studying political science in college and renewable engineering at the same time, those two have always been in tandem in my mind.

Hana Chabinsky [00:04:41] Yeah, that's very cool that you made that link so early. What did you think you were going to do, when you decided on those two degrees together? It makes sense now how those work together, but take me back to when you were 18. What did you think? Did you think you were going to be more on the legislative and policy side of things? What was on your mind then?

Ryan Pickering [00:05:04] I really wanted to be a college professor. I love academia and I just loved being on campus and eating in the cafeteria and being a nerd. And I wrote my thesis. I studied abroad in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. They have quite a bit of energy issues there as well. I studied Eskom, the state-run energy agency there. I wrote my thesis on transition justice in South Africa, moving from apartheid. And my thesis advisor, when I graduated, took me out to breakfast and he said, "Ryan, you just don't have what it takes to be a college professor. And I've just got to tell you that."

Hana Chabinsky [00:05:50] What didn't you have? What were the qualities he thought you were missing? I feel like you'd be a great college professor.

Ryan Pickering [00:05:56] Thanks. I do teach a club at UC Berkeley, and so I get to live that out. But he was actually saying that he thought I had a lot of charisma and thought I could make a difference in the business world. And that we need folks beyond academia. We need people making an impact. And he said he wishes someone had told him this and he wishes he would have followed a more entrepreneurial path. He talked about the politics of academia and how tiresome it is.

Ryan Pickering [00:06:30] I'm very... I'm a contrarian and I don't really like to get in line. And he's like, "You're not going to have a good time here." So maybe it wasn't that I didn't have what it takes, it's that I had a different skill set and he thought I should explore that. So, that really rocked me, and I immediately made a pivot to designing solar power systems. It's amazing when you get engaged by something, how quickly you can change. And that's happened multiple times in my life.

Hana Chabinsky [00:07:06] Well, I'm glad he ultimately gave you that advice. Who knows where you'd be now if not? I'm glad you're on the grounds and advocating and having that entrepreneurial spirit.

Hana Chabinsky [00:07:17] So, let's go back to... Okay, so you've gotten these degrees. You've had this political science with renewables and then you're into the solar industry. How did you get that little nuclear bug we were talking about earlier? When did that come and how did it come?

Ryan Pickering [00:07:42] I arrived at nuclear through my dedication to 100% renewable energy. I really dedicated myself to that outlook. I took some classes at Stanford University where a lot of these ideas are emanating from and learned about this wind, water, solar storage concept to power everything. And I really ran with that for a decade. I ran an Instagram account called SunPower Everything, and really felt that as long as we could solve the long duration energy storage issue, we could pull it off.

Ryan Pickering [00:08:24] And as I deepened my understanding of energy as a whole, and as I saw a lot of the challenges of rolling out industrial scale renewables and storage, that idea just started to unravel. And I didn't like that it required less energy. I like energy efficiency to an extent, but I didn't like some of the philosophies that were coming out of it about the depowering societies. And while I think the aesthetic of that is really strong... As a Californian, we don't like to see industry. We like bucolic, pastoral landscapes and we like to import our industry.

Ryan Pickering [00:09:15] But also in my work with social justice, I did a lot of organizing on the far left and was involved in the Sunrise Movement, Green New Deal, Extinction Rebellion, Democratic Socialists of America, some eco-anarchy groups. Because there was this feeling that we were just careening out of control into the future and we really had to dial it back and return to this much more simple lifestyle.

Ryan Pickering [00:09:54] When I get into something, I'm about it. I want to live it because I don't like proscribing things to other people's lives that I don't live myself. During this time, I moved to a yurt that I built outside of Los Angeles. So, I was living off the grid in a yurt with solar panels and batteries and farming in my backyard, experimenting with composting and graywater systems, and really trying to live this sustainability thing. And it just became very clear to me that that lifestyle is not available to working class people, to most people. And the only reason I was able to do it was because it was just me and I had a good job and I could live out this aesthetic, but it wasn't something that could scale, nor was it something that I could really prescribe to other people. And so, all of these things started creating fissures in my worldview, and I just couldn't...

Ryan Pickering [00:11:07] It started to not make sense. I moved to Berkeley, got more plugged in with a lot more ideas. And I was sitting in this chair, got a San Francisco Chronicle article about closing Diablo, and it really was that moment. I just read this article and they were talking about how much energy it generates. It's more than all rooftop solar in California combined. And the article pointed out that it had 40 years left on its useful life. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Ryan Pickering [00:11:47] So, I got involved in the Save Diablo movement and have really been amazed by the whole nuclear advocacy community. At some point, I got so distracted by it that I had to quit my job in solar and just start working on nuclear full time.

Hana Chabinsky [00:12:04] Wow, I feel like I could pull so many strands and threads out of that story. Did you feel like most of the fissures that you were talking about were self-prescribed, like you came to that on your own? Or, did you ever feel any sort of outside pressure like, "Hey, this world you're living in," or "No, I don't think solar can be the 100% answer to this problem." Did anybody from outside come in and challenge your view, or did it mostly feel like you were doing that work on your own?"

Ryan Pickering [00:12:37] I definitely was challenged by being a part of Democratic Socialists of America and really centering on disadvantaged voices and labor. And what's interesting about the far left is that they're generally anti-nuclear. I think that's changing. And they're very pro-renewable. But I started seeing this disconnect because as I focused on labor and renters' rights... You know, I wasn't building solar for renters, I was building solar and storage for rich people.

Ryan Pickering [00:13:15] I think it really did come to a head with this debate about net metering in California, solar net metering. In the past, we've really subsidized solar. Not just from a financial standpoint, but also the ability to send energy to the grid and get credits for that. And really, only middle class to wealthy people were getting that advantage. And we did see some evidence that everyone else who was a renter or just couldn't get solar for one reason or another... You know, most homes can't get solar because of the architecture or the trees around it. I was like... this seems like a regressive tax against working-class people.

Ryan Pickering [00:13:59] And so, nuclear fit in really nicely to that because it works a couple of hundred miles away and everyone gets clean energy and you don't have to modify your home at all. And so, that was one of the primary factors that really made nuclear make sense to me and made me overcome my anti-nuclear bias, which I did have, growing up in California. I really just didn't even think about nuclear. It was never... It was always viewed as this ancient technology that we didn't need anymore because we had something better and easier and cooler and more feel-good.

Hana Chabinsky [00:14:37] Yeah, I don't think you're alone in that at all. I don't remember studying nuclear in school. None of my friends really did. It just wasn't touched on much. It wasn't talked about. I think there's a lot of people with you there.

Hana Chabinsky [00:14:50] So yeah, any type of career leap can be scary. What convinced you? What was the ultimate thing that convinced you that you had to take this leap in your career from solar to nuclear? Was it you were getting so distracted you didn't have time to even worry about solar anymore? Was it hard to make that leap after dedicating 13 years to the solar industry?

Ryan Pickering [00:15:15] No, it wasn't hard. I'm so ideologically motivated that I have to be working on what I'm interested in. Thankfully, I had worked tremendously hard and saved really aggressively. Like, living in a yurt is pretty affordable. And so, I had saved a lot of money and I was ready. I had always been envisioning something else. I had been saving aggressively for that, so obviously, that takes some pressure off.

Ryan Pickering [00:15:45] As soon as I started looking into nuclear, though I am an advocate and public servant, I'm also very entrepreneurial and I see so many business opportunities. Not just to design new reactors, but all the ancillary services that come along with nuclear, both existing and new, and just energy in general. I had the support of my family. I have these great entrepreneurial concepts that I'm still exploring.

Ryan Pickering [00:16:08] And I think also from a social standpoint, the pro-nuclear movement is this totally cool upstart thing with all these great characters who are looking for community. And so, that made it easy as well, because leaving an idea might be easy, but leaving the community is harder. Leaving all the people I knew in solar was really challenging. Thankfully, a lot of the folks in solar are now coming over to nuclear. I didn't burn bridges or anything, but I was also complimented by all these incredible nuclear advocates around the world who I've loved meeting over the last two years.

Hana Chabinsky [00:16:48] Nice. Can you talk about that exact transition? Where did you get started to even find that community that you're talking about embraced you pretty quickly? What was your first step? Like, if there's somebody listening and wanting to do the same thing, where should they start to find that community?

Ryan Pickering [00:17:08] The podcasts. Titans of Nuclear. It's funny, just two years ago I was on this road trip just listening to like 40 Titans of Nuclear episodes and just starting to piece it all together. I love to see... I love the patchwork quilt of any movement.

Ryan Pickering [00:17:27] And then, LinkedIn. I really started clicking around on LinkedIn and networking with people. And thankfully, I got connected with the folks at Stand Up for Nuclear, a Berkeley-based advocacy group. And they were like, "Hey, you should fly to Brussels next week. We're going to do a stand up event to save the Belgian nuclear reactors." I was like, "Okay, I'm freshly unemployed. Let's go."

Ryan Pickering [00:18:00] And so, I flew out to Belgium, met a lot of nuclear advocates from around the world. I reflect now, it's incredible. I mean, these are some of the global nuclear advocates and we're just a bunch of random people throwing this tiny rally right outside the train station in Brussels. And while I was there, everyone loved that I was from solar and had this conversion story. And they're like, "Come to Berlin in a couple of months. We're going to do a Berlin rally." And I was like, "Okay."

Ryan Pickering [00:18:30] So I went to Berlin, met more people. Really networked with a lot of Germans. I met some people who are really my friends now, at a deep level. They got me up on stage. They were like, "Hey, talk about California nuclear and saving Diablo." This was November, 2021. I'm up on stage. And in all this experience in throwing rallies to save nuclear reactors, behind the scenes, we were working to save Diablo.

Ryan Pickering [00:19:00] I got involved with Mothers for Nuclear, which is an amazing nonprofit based in California. Save Clean Energy, Isabelle Boemeke's group. Generation Atomic... And all of these groups came and converged and they're like, "We're going to throw a rally in San Luis Obispo, California to save Diablo in December, 2021." So, I was fresh off these other rallies and we came and really nailed it, I think.

Hana Chabinsky [00:19:33] Yeah, that was the biggest pro-nuclear rally in the US. And you were coming off all the hype from Germany and Belgium. Like, what an amazing few months. How did you take lessons from one rally to another rally to another rally? What were lessons you learned and how did you improve?

Ryan Pickering [00:19:57] Well, I learned a lot from organizing on the far left, and I've done many rallies against banks and fossil fuels and stuff. And so, one thing I've learned is that you've got to be excited. You can't just be like sitting in the crowd. You've got to yell out like, "Yeah!" when someone says something on the mic, and be smiling and nodding along. Body language really impacts... Like, if people are feeling it... Like, you go to a show and everything's lame, then... It's electric; you can create that. So, I like to be a hype man and just be so supportive of folks. So, that was one thing.

Ryan Pickering [00:20:41] And also, like packing, getting people close to the stage instead of... Everyone always wants to stay way on the perimeter, but that's not how you do it. You've got to get in there. You've got to get this crowd energy going, and that draws more people in.

Ryan Pickering [00:20:55] But also, doing the work and planning and making splashy things that the press can photograph and pick up on. Because sure, it's about the couple hundred people who are at the rally, but it's also about the tens of thousands of people who are going to see the press about it. And you've got to be mindful of that. And it's got to create a narrative that people can sign onto. And so, making something that's palatable and can move the needle, I think is really important.

Ryan Pickering [00:21:27] And credit to Isabelle Boemeke. She really had this vision for this rally and created the scene to make this thing pop. She had some props and, obviously, she blew up this huge blimp. It had just enough gravitas to make it "wow." And so, there's that aspect.

Ryan Pickering [00:21:50] And then, there's also the aspect of tying into the community. And I think this is something that advocates struggle with because we get so into creating this event. But I think some of the important things are to find out the elected officials in the area, get them invited. At Diablo, we stood outside of Diablo Canyon Power Plant for a week leading up to it giving out fliers to every employee in their car. As they were driving away, getting of work, we were like, "Come to this rally. Come to this rally." And making sure that your target audience feels addressed.

Ryan Pickering [00:22:26] As many people know, people who work in nuclear are not very good advocates for nuclear because a lot of their employers don't want them talking to the media unless they have media training, which is ridiculous. Who does that? And so, you see a lot of hesitancy, but you still have to give folks the opportunity to stand up. You know, connecting with local officials. We had a very prominent local elected official named Dawn Ortiz-Legg speak at the rally. And I thought that really tied it into the community. So, it wasn't just like a bunch of Californians trying to co-opt, but it was tied into the community.

Ryan Pickering [00:23:09] And finally, I think my most important contribution to this movement was connecting with the local Indigenous tribe in San Luis Obispo. Just doing a little research, I remember having this thought like, "I wonder who lived here before Westerners arrived. What's their opinion on all this?" And I just found them on the internet and they were immediately receptive. I found an email box, sent them something saying, "Hey, I'm part of this movement to save Diablo. I would love to get your thoughts."

Ryan Pickering [00:23:48] I came pretty humble. I said, "I'm sure that you have a long history here and I'm not aware of it, and I'd like to learn." And that's how I met yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini, Northern Chumash tribe. They've lived in the area for over 10,000 years. They go by ytt for short. They're very deep in the community. They're not a federally recognized tribe, but they have a lot of state recognition. They have a bunch of dormitories at the local university named after them. They have their own language. They're well documented at the Smithsonian. And I learned that ytt people helped build Diablo Canyon, 45 years ago. I learned that ytt people work at the plant today. And I learned, most importantly, that ytt people were seeking to get the land back around Diablo Canyon and had been doing this for decades, and that this is part of a much larger narrative for the tribe.

Ryan Pickering [00:24:56] Credit to the pro-nuclear community. We met with the tribe early on and have been mindful of them and learning their perspective. And there's a lot of nuance, just listening and learning and not trying to prescribe something to them, not trying to make them pro-nuclear or anything, just listening. And I have been nothing but impressed by the collective effort of the Save Diablo movement to be open. Instead of taking some vindictive tone, instead just being like, "Tell me more," and just being curious and optimistic.

Ryan Pickering [00:25:36] And so, I wish ytt people the best of luck in their effort to reclaim their ancestral homelands. They've met with the governor of California, and they actually met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last night before a local NRC meeting. So, it's great to see our state government and our federal government listening to the agency of Indigenous people in the United States. And I think it will change history, ultimately.

Hana Chabinsky [00:26:07] Yeah, that's incredible. Can you talk more about the next steps for Diablo? Or, maybe we should go back a little bit and talk about how we got to Diablo in the first place and why it was going offline in the first place. It's such an amazing plant and it fuels so many communities. Why was it going offline? What's the short answer or long answer to that?

Ryan Pickering [00:26:33] Yeah, it's a tremendous history. I encourage you to look up a YouTube video I published on this, a lecture that I made at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo about the history of Diablo Canyon all the way from Indigenous times to today. California nuclear is fascinating because in the '60s, there was a plan to power all of California on nuclear. And that shocks people to even hear. It's a history that we've quickly forgotten. There were 16 sites planned, and we were going to be exporting power. And this was supported by the Sierra Club at the time.

Ryan Pickering [00:27:14] And it all centered around Diablo. All of those projects were canceled except for San Onofre and Laguna Seca, or whatever that one in Sacramento was called. But you know, that dream fell apart, but Diablo has stayed as this symbol. And it was so heavily protested when we were building it 40 years ago... I mean, the anti-nuclear movement probably started in New York to a certain extent, but really became real in California as an aesthetic, as a movement. And the people who were protesting Diablo when it was starting are still protesting it today. They're in their '80s. Groups like Mothers for Peace and the NRDC and The Friends of Earth, which spun out of the The Sierra Club because of a disagreement over Diablo Canyon. So this history is living today.

Ryan Pickering [00:28:17] Saving Diablo is more than just that plant. It's kind of like saving this nuclear dream. But in a very real way, we are short on energy in California. And unfortunately, that's what has made the difference. The governor, smart people at the CPU, the California Public Utilities Commission, and even at the California Energy Commission, which is like an anti-nuclear agency of the California government, they're all like, "Hey, Governor Newsom, we will have power outages if you don't extend this plant."

Hana Chabinsky [00:28:53] And there were. There were rolling blackouts all throughout California, for sure.

Ryan Pickering [00:28:59] Yes. Energy has always been a big deal in California. We impeached the governor in the late '90s over energy shortages and Enron. And that moved the needle, but it also is all happening during this nuclear enlightenment that's happening. And like, "Should we look at nuclear again?" And it immediately transitioned to this Legalize Nuclear campaign in California, which we can talk about.

Ryan Pickering [00:29:25] But the fight for Diablo is ongoing. Advocates and I called into an NRC meeting last night and many people showed up in person. The NRC meeting was in San Luis Obispo, right across the street from the courthouse where we held the rally. And we ran out of time. There were so many people trying to make comments. We couldn't even make time. But it was more than 2 to 1 in favor of extending Diablo. But decisions to close nuclear power plants are difficult to undo. It's not just one person's call. It's multiple agencies, federal and state, working together. And you've got to show up.

Ryan Pickering [00:30:07] That, to credit our movement, is what we've done best. Show up to every single relevant meeting, whether it's the National Resources meeting or all those other agencies that I mentioned, it's calling in and providing a counter-narrative to the handful of anti-nuclear people who call in and make it seem like the whole California sentiment is against nuclear, when in reality, it's very split. And both sides deserve to be heard, and our side is winning because we have a younger, more optimistic tone that's more inclusive and centered on social justice. Because the cost of energy impacts the cost of everything. And Diablo Canyon has been documented as the cheapest energy source in California. It's also our largest energy source.

Ryan Pickering [00:30:56] So, blackouts are a social justice issue. Obviously, it hurts disadvantaged communities most. But also, raising the cost of energy. We have the most expensive electricity in the continental United States in California. Shutting down Diablo will obviously hurt that. And so, we have this cost of living crisis. We just have a lot going for us, and we're trying to amalgamate all of those things together into this optimistic movement that includes nuclear in our future.

Hana Chabinsky [00:31:28] Yeah, definitely. And I would love to touch on... You have this beautiful story of saving Diablo, but not every plant is so lucky. I do want to touch on Indian Point as well and what happened there. It was powering a quarter of New York City for 59 years and then it goes offline. I can't fathom why this happens. I think you touched a lot on it before, but when you don't save these plans, what lessons are learned from those experiences too?

Ryan Pickering [00:32:01] Yeah, Indian Point Energy Center was a real wakeup call to the pro-nuclear community. I don't think the movement really existed. I would say that the closure of Indian Point really instigated the pro-nuclear movement because it was like, "Wow, we can lose these resources if a handful of anti-nuclears just show up. Especially if they're funded by a couple NGOs so that they're paid to show up." It was clear to the beginning that it was like assassinated. And that was really scary.

Ryan Pickering [00:32:47] I think it was the impetus for something bigger. It's hard to talk about. It's so deeply tragic, as you said. And it feels similar to what's going on in Germany and all these other closure movements around the world. It's so deeply misguided. You've got to show up. And people did not show up for Indian Point. And credit to the anti-nuclears, they really did.

Ryan Pickering [00:33:12] The Indian Point saga still continues. The anti-nuclear folks are trying to delay the decommissioning over like a thimble full of tritiated water that they want to release into the river. And hundreds of people show up with t-shirts saying, "Over my dead body will you dump nuclear waste in the Hudson River." And I'm like, "Well, that is effective messaging, but it's just not right." And we need to counter that and we need to show up.

Ryan Pickering [00:33:43] And like I said, the nuclear industry has not done a good job advocating for itself. I'm very critical of the nuclear industry. I used to blame everything on anti-nuclears and fossil fuels and the NRC. But also, there's plenty of critique for the nuclear industry itself for not painting a narrative that more people could sign up for. And coming from the solar industry, I know what that looks like. We painted a beautiful narrative and now the whole world wants it. And now we're trying to walk it back and be like, "Well, we weren't trying to power all of society. We were just... This kind of off-grid aesthetic." Anyway, we have to be cooler, we have to be more organized, we have to tell a better story and back it up by holding nuclear companies accountable to do just a phenomenal job. In many ways they have done a good job, but they have to do better, and advocates will hold them to that.

Hana Chabinsky [00:34:43] Yeah, definitely. I think that makes sense. And so, what strategies have you found to effectively communicate that pro-nuclear message and dispel misconceptions in a productive way? Obviously, when you're talking to somebody who's so anti-nuclear, it's hard to get through. But when you're talking to somebody who is just a little uneducated, like their aunt, their mom, their dad have this somewhat anti-nuclear sentiment, they're of course going to adopt that without doing much research. I'm talking about that stakeholder, that person. How do you dispel those misconceptions?

Ryan Pickering [00:35:25] I think there's a reason why some of the most powerful advocates were formerly anti-nuclear. Because we're coming from a place of empathy. And I tell people, I've been anti-nuclear most of my life, and I recently changed my mind on nuclear. And I begin with compassion. I try to listen to where they're at. I think a lot of nuclear advocates have all these canned responses and they just launch at people and say, "Oh, here are all these facts." And it doesn't land. And so, I just say, "Oh, I used to be anti-nuclear too. Where are you coming from?"

Ryan Pickering [00:36:10] This nuclear narrative is so complex and far reaching. And what I find is people have just these very specific experiences that are influencing their feelings, or they just have this general paranoia. But at least they'll let you know what their objection is. Is it nuclear waste? Is it nuclear weapons? Is it some of the incidents in the past? Is it feelings of cancer or feelings that we've gone too far as a society and we need to go back to the earth? Like, where are you coming from? And then whatever they're saying, I've got empathy for it, because I've felt all of those things in my life. And I still feel them. Being pro-nuclear... Sometimes I wake up and I'm like, "Am I into this? Like, this is so against the grain. Can I really hold on?" And so, I think starting with compassion.

Ryan Pickering [00:37:03] And then, providing great information. Not some anecdotal baloney, like real information. There's now so much good stuff out there that we can point them to. And then, make it feel like it's their choice. Like, I'm not going to push you to it. We all share the energy grid. We all need to contribute in this.

Ryan Pickering [00:37:30] And talking about energy blindness, which is a concept that I'm really interested in. Energy blindness, this idea that we enjoy this super high-energy lifestyle. We can barely perceive all the energy that's brought this world together for us. We're slowly becoming enlightened to these energy systems. And we can learn it together. And it's not too complicated for you to understand. We're dictating the future now. Let's build something really cool together. And I find that strategy to be very effective.

Hana Chabinsky [00:38:12] Cool. So it sounds like you don't really have an elevator pitch when it comes to it. It's listen first, hear what they have to say, and then tailor your message accordingly. I feel like when I'm talking to people, waste is the number one thing that comes out when I'm like, "Why are you anti-nuclear?" So if you're talking to somebody and you're doing your listening first approach and they're saying, "Waste seems like an issue." Okay, what are the facts? What's the really good information you're giving them there?

Ryan Pickering [00:38:41] I say, "That is a critical issue and something that I've been really interested in. I've done quite a quite a bit of research about it. I'd love to share it with you." At the end of the day, I was surprised to learn that nuclear waste is not this glowing goo, it's actually a metal and ceramic pellet that used to be in the reactor. And then they take it out once it's no longer making energy for that reactor. They store that pellet in a giant metal cylinder that is sealed until the federal government is ready to reprocess it in some way.

Ryan Pickering [00:39:18] And I was really surprised when I saw what nuclear waste actually was. It made me feel a lot more comfortable. And I'm very critical of the federal government because they have not provided a clear path for our citizens or a clear explanation of what's happening with this waste. But I am excited to see that the federal government is now performing something called a consent-based siting program in which different communities can volunteer to store this spent nuclear fuel, as many call it, until the federal government is ready to reprocess it. And my family actually applied for a consent-based siting at their farm in California. So, we have an application in with the federal government to store some of America's spent nuclear fuel out behind our plum orchard.

Hana Chabinsky [00:40:07] And then, I would say, "Whoa, that's so cool. I never knew that. And now I'm pro-nuclear." I love that answer. That was great. Thanks for taking me through that. I might have to use a little bit of that for next time when I get that question.

Ryan Pickering [00:40:20] Well, you can always apply to store nuclear waste at your home. It's available to you. I don't think you'll win the tender.

Hana Chabinsky [00:40:28] I'm a renter right now, so maybe in the future. Maybe I can tell my parents to look into it.

Ryan Pickering [00:40:34] The program does not require land ownership, at least on the first application. But yeah, I try not to be flippant about it. Sometimes I say, "Literally put it in my garage. You could pay me $60 a month or something like that." And people are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." And sometimes I am tempted to be flippant about a lot of these things because a lot of these objections we've heard before and we're like, "It's so irrelevant." So, I try to push back against that and be earnest in my responses when I can.

Hana Chabinsky [00:41:06] Yeah, that's interesting since I feel like the "not in my backyard" sentiment is so strong. You're like, "No, literally put it in my backyard. I would love that. That sounds great."

Ryan Pickering [00:41:15] I say it frequently and it's not very well-received. People think I'm not being serious. But I am. I'm like, "Put in a beautiful cask."

Hana Chabinsky [00:41:26] Plant some flowers around there, it would be good. Good to go.

Ryan Pickering [00:41:29] I've seen multiple instances of the areas where they stored spent fuel. The one at Diablo. I've also been to Indian Point in New York and seen those casks. And they said the only issue is that like things like to nest near them because they're slightly warm. They have to clear out bird nests and squirrel nests because they're a nice place to be.

Hana Chabinsky [00:42:00] I mean, they're squirrel and bird approved. It's like a warm, beautiful place to live.

Ryan Pickering [00:42:02] There you go.

Hana Chabinsky [00:42:03] Very cool. So, I'm really intrigued by the title Nuclear Advocate, such a strong, powerful job title almost. So, if that was a job role posted online, what sorts of responsibilities and objectives or character traits would be listed in that description?

Ryan Pickering [00:42:26] Well, that's an interesting question because it's an unpaid position.

Hana Chabinsky [00:42:32] Okay, internship. Unpaid internship. I'm interested. What else is in there?

Ryan Pickering [00:42:37] Yeah, I would say it's the ability to keep up with WhatsApp groups because most nuclear advocacy just a bunch of WhatsApp groups with volunteers working on different aspects of nuclear advocacy. And sometimes it's very overwhelming. The Save Diablo Group has like 100 messages a day, every day, always.

Ryan Pickering [00:43:06] Being able to contribute to that soberly and understanding what's important today and having respect for other people's time. We've had to chastise people who are too active in the chat because it's like, "Hey, we've got to keep this place for critical communications. If you want to talk about that, you should go create another group." So we have like a catch all group, like a wonks group for people to just nerd out. But it's all volunteers. And so, I think that's one thing.

Ryan Pickering [00:43:47] And then, the ability to understand data. The ability to write. I think nuclear advocacy has a bunch of great writers. And everyone's writing in different places. Obviously, we're very active on Twitter. I can't do Twitter. I'm just not quippy enough. I'm not pithy enough. So I publish on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn group where we brainstorm about ways to talk about nuclear to the business community. I think it's been very effective. I think it's probably why I'm on this podcast right now. That has been the platform for me to communicate my transition from solar to nuclear.

Ryan Pickering [00:44:28] So I think writing, reading, listening to podcasts, and speaking soberly and in an informed way, both privately and in public. There's a public speaking dynamic where we have to call in to these meetings and represent this movement and not sound unhinged, but instead sound informed and concerned.

Hana Chabinsky [00:44:56] Yeah, definitely. And going off of that, what are some nuclear advocates our listeners could follow on social media that you love or organizations? What are your favorite resources? I'm thinking of a person listening here who just wants to get started. They're inspired by your story and a little bit overwhelmed where to start, or maybe there's not a great place to start. Do you have any advice, any insight there?

Ryan Pickering [00:45:19] I would say nuclear advocacy is a choose your own adventure game. You should do the research and patch it together for yourself and make those connections that happen naturally. If we're all saying the same thing and all showing up at the same place, that's not effective. A movement needs many different groups saying similar things and showing up in different places. And so, I would say just get in how you fit in. But, shout out Mothers for Nuclear, who have just provided a lot of leadership to our group. Maybe leadership is not the right word. It's been more of like an example and just living it.

Hana Chabinsky [00:46:12] A real case study.

Ryan Pickering [00:46:13] Yeah. And just the way they talk about... They're so disciplined to keeping the message positive. Because it gets negative a lot. It's very frustrating to be a pro-nuclear advocate because of all of the things we've discussed. But they really do a good job. And even they catch themselves. They're like, "Hey, that was too negative of a take. I was frustrated. Here's how I'm feeling now." There's a lot of grace involved in nuclear and we've all said some stupid stuff and had some foot and mouth moments. And so, grace and forgiveness is also important. And just knowing that we're all trying to row the same direction.

Ryan Pickering [00:46:54] But Mothers for Nuclear, follow them. Stand Up for Nuclear here in Berkeley and around the world, very powerful organization. Generation Atomic has done a great job. Save Clean Energy is doing some specific work around Diablo. But also, Isabelle's doing a lot of work with Isodope. She was involved in the Nuclear Now film, which we're hoping is really going to move the needle. There are other lobbyist groups like Fission Transition and Californians for Green Nuclear Power. These are wonkier groups that are reviewing legislation and equipping lobbyists with what they need to make a difference in capital buildings.

Ryan Pickering [00:47:37] Americans for Nuclear, Phil Ord. Definitely follow Phil. He takes like a pretty hard line on nuclear energy. It's just one of the many voices that we have in our group kind of rowing in a similar direction. And then, a new group like Fire2Fission, which is a lot of fossil fuel people who are getting into nuclear. What does that look like for a just transition of fossil fuels to nuclear? So, I would just start clicking around and see what you can find.

Hana Chabinsky [00:48:14] Cool. That's great advice. We're getting toward the end, but I just want to ask you what is your vision for the future of nuclear energy in the US and abroad? What are your thoughts on the recent trajectory of nuclear? Let's be a little bit forward looking here. What's the best case scenario?

Ryan Pickering [00:48:36] I think the best case scenario is that young people get involved and see this opportunity and we push back against this nihilism that's happening. I spent my whole 20s thinking that the world was and is ending. And that is a very heavy place to operate from. And I see a lot of young people operating from that today. We deserve to have filled, meaningful lives. The planet will survive. Climate change is certainly real and we will adapt to it, but we have the power to dictate the future. And I hope to see more leaders arise and get into places of power and advocate for this.

Ryan Pickering [00:49:24] Based on my research, if humanity is going to survive and thrive, I think that most of the planet will be powered by nuclear fission a hundred years from now. Operating with that confidence and knowing it's all going in this direction, it's like how cool can we make it? How smooth and how abundant how affordable and how inclusive and how thoughtful can we make this transition to fission? So I try to wake up and embody that and have that confidence. And I see it so much in podcasters like Nuclear Barbarians and Decouple and Titans for Nuclear. So many people operating with this confidence and seeing this long-term vision.

Ryan Pickering [00:50:14] I find that zooming out and having a long-term vision gives me a lot of solace. And when I get really focused on some of the challenges of today, that's when I get all bent out of shape. So, I hope that young people can find optimism and meaning in this nuclear powered future. And not necessarily even working in nuclear, but working on a planet that has abundant clean energy for everyone, not just Americans, but all the developing world. I just find that future to be irresistible, and hope that we can illustrate that to the world. Because these ideas are floating around, abundance and this beautiful future, but we just haven't quite connected the dots to back to nuclear fission. And I look forward to doing that with patience, and I hope other people find that path as well.

Hana Chabinsky [00:51:18] Yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing that. And if you would, could you give us any sort of peek into any projects or initiatives you will be part of in the near future? Are there any technologies you're particularly passionate about that are intriguing you right now? Just anything you can share with us.

Ryan Pickering [00:51:39] Well, I am an entrepreneur and I look forward to launching that company in about nine months from now. I've got to keep it in the garage for now. I'm raising capital from investors and trying to get that all figured out. And that's been a beautiful journey for me and a lot of self-growth through that. So, maybe a year from now you can have me back on.

Hana Chabinsky [00:52:00] Definitely. I'll take you up on that.

Ryan Pickering [00:52:03] Thank you. But as far as advocacy goes, I'm addicted to it. And I'm sure my investors don't want to hear that, but I'll always be rooted in advocacy because it gives me insight. And it's part of all of our jobs to stand up for this stuff. And so, we are working on a repeal of the nuclear moratorium in California. And while this is so outrageous to people, we don't even care if it's successful because we know that California has an influence on the world. The world needs to see that Californians see this opportunity. And whether we win or lose, it's our responsibility to show up in that way.

Ryan Pickering [00:52:43] I mentioned I work for a club at UC Berkeley called NICE Club, Nuclear Is Clean Energy. We had our last meeting of the semester before summer break last night. My associate, colleague, fellow volunteer Brendan Pittman presented his plan to repeal the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act of 1986. The people of Berkeley voted to basically outlaw all nuclear sciences in a paranoia of nuclear weapons, which I can really get down with. So, we're taking a modernized approach and we're saying like, "Yeah, we don't like nuclear weapons. And here's how we're going to use nuclear sciences to defeat nuclear weapons." And so, we're going to try to get that on the ballot in 2024, and really focus on the grassroots.

Ryan Pickering [00:53:44] Are we going to build nuclear reactors in Berkeley? Maybe someday. Is this going to get a bunch of nuclear reactors built around the world? I don't know. But it is important to get these little wins and to show up at every level. I think that's how grassroots works. So, we need 4,000 signatures from Berkeley residents. If anyone's in Berkeley, we would love to get that signed. Our petition is going to come out in two months. And so, we'll work at that and then hopefully that can lead to other legalized movements in California and around the world.

Hana Chabinsky [00:54:20] Nice. Anyone listening from Berkeley, you are now absolutely required to be signing. Okay, well, thank you so much. And it must be so inspiring to see those students in NICE Club there showing up and being the next generation of pro-nuclear advocates. That's super exciting. Are there any other final messages that you'd like to share before before we sign off?

Ryan Pickering [00:54:49] This movement needs to continue to grow. And right now we are just a handful of people and we're really not at these conversations. We feel like they're happening. And they are, and I'm not going to de-legitimize that. But we're not in the zeitgeist yet. We're not even close. And we need to move to critical mass. And so, if you're hearing this, in your own way, we need to figure out how to grow this movement. And we need to operate with confidence and elevate our effort. We've just been a bunch of nerds for so long, but it's got to be more than that. And so, I challenge everyone when we're talking about nuclear publicly, hold yourself accountable because this is a world changing idea. We can have fun with it, but we also need to be really inclusive because this movement is going to grow.

Ryan Pickering [00:55:49] We don't want to be like those people who liked that band before it got big and then the band gets big and we're like, "We don't even like them anymore." No, we have to be like, "Yeah, this band is for everyone and we're so happy to have you on board." And be respectful in the WhatsApp groups.

Hana Chabinsky [00:56:11] Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. It was a pleasure talking to you. I feel like I learned a lot. I'm so excited to be connected with you and your journey and just good luck on everything you're doing.

Ryan Pickering [00:56:23] Thank you for this platform, Hana. Thank you to Titans of Nuclear for compiling all of this information for advocates around the world to tap into.

Ryan Howell [00:00:58] Welcome everybody, again to another episode of Titans of Nuclear. I'm Ryan Howell, I'll be hosting today. And we have with us Nolan Hertel, a professor from Georgia Tech. So, thanks for joining us, Nolan.

Nolan Hertel [00:01:11] You're welcome.

Ryan Howell [00:01:13] Just to kick us off, why don't you tell us a little bit about your past, where you grew up and what got you into nuclear?

Nolan Hertel [00:01:19] Okay, I grew up in a relatively small town in Texas called Kerrville, Texas, in the Texas Hill Country. Then I guess in high school, I was interested in physics and did well with math. And so, I went to Texas A&M, got a bachelor's and master's degree there, pretty much in traditional nuclear engineering. And then, I went to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I got my PhD there. I worked with guys who mainly did neutrons. It was a great experience there.

Nolan Hertel [00:01:56] And I'd say my current interest went strongly towards neutron dosimetry radiation. Dosimetry radiation protection was kind of... I spent some time at Pacific Northwest National Lab in the late '80s, and that kind of set me on a direction to do computational dose stuff. So I have background there and in shielding. I don't do reactor physics. I can understand what they're talking about, but that was my choice not to do those things.

Ryan Howell [00:02:28] All right. So what kind of stuff were you doing at PNNL then?

Nolan Hertel [00:02:31] At PNNL I worked with the Dosimetry Group and we were looking at... At that time, the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements had come out with new quantities to use for instruments. And so we were delving through those and modeling sources they calibrated with to see what they should be reading to simulate those responses. I did a lot of Monte Carlo work in that setup.

Ryan Howell [00:03:01] That transitioned you into the modeling side, then?

Nolan Hertel [00:03:05] Yeah, that's when I got into doing a lot of the modeling side. And that's carried through. If you use American National Standard 6.1.1 to convert from neutral intensity to dose, you're using numbers that I helped calculate as well as I was on the group that formed that standard. Also just recently, about two years ago, ICRU released its new operational quantity recommendations. I co-chaired that, and so a lot of my numbers are in there. If I really wanted to brag, I'd say probably if you convert from neutron or gamma ray field strength to dose, you probably use numbers that either helped generate or helped select.

Ryan Howell [00:03:57] Very neat.

Nolan Hertel [00:03:58] But that's a rather small audience.

Ryan Howell [00:04:02] Yes, yes. No, that sounds like a lot of fun. Any other passion projects throughout your career?

Nolan Hertel [00:04:10] Well, it's interesting and I like to tell young people this. Sometimes things that you think are negatives in your life turn out to be something you can actually use. And in a technical sense, I was made the Director of the Georgia Tech Research Reactor on the same day that the president told me at Georgia Tech... He told me, "I sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission saying we're going to decommission it." So jokingly, I said, "I've never been there when the reactor on light was lit.

Nolan Hertel [00:04:43] And so as a result of that, if you follow decommissioning, I like to jokingly say there's only maybe 100 people who do actual decommissioning and they're always working for a different company the next time you bump into them. But as a result of what we did there, I've done a fair amount of consulting over the last 20 years, looking at calculating radioactivity levels in the parts as they tear it apart. In fact, I'm involved in three such things right now.

Nolan Hertel [00:05:14] The idea is we know that we haven't calculated the absolute truth, but we're giving them an engineering estimate of what should be, say, in the stainless steel. And then they can say, "Here's how we're going to box that up to minimize waste cost and what we may have to be careful of when we go start cutting and chopping things out." So, that kind of a default has become a passion. But my biggest passion, really, was measuring neutrons over the entire 40-something years of my career.

Ryan Howell [00:05:49] Yeah, that's fantastic. Is that something you're continuing on? I know you're partnering with Oak Ridge National Lab. Can you tell us a little bit about that work?

Nolan Hertel [00:05:59] Yeah, I just came back from there. Well, in 2013 I became what we call a Joint Faculty Appointment. Oak Ridge National Lab has seven university partners, and each of those have a streamlined approach to have faculty members appointed jointly, which can mean they can pay you zero and don't expect anything from you, or they can get up to a significant amount of your time. And so, I did computational dosimetry there until about two years ago. And then, we've been doing some neutron measurements to basically better calibrate their dosimeters.

Nolan Hertel [00:06:36] So what we'll do is we'll make a measurement with a system that will give us a crude neutron spectrum, convert it to dose, and then they'll put their dosimeters on a slab phantom to replicate the backscatter from the body. And then, we'll see how those are. And usually if you have a really good measurement of the actual neutron dose, the dosimeters overrespond. And so, you can reduce your dose of record.

Nolan Hertel [00:07:04] And that was a big thing. We did that at a couple of power plants too, which is giving students who want an opportunity to go into containment at a PWR during power. They should have let me go in because, what the oldest person should take dose, right? However, they were so excited and they would only let four of us in, so I got to sit in the waiting room while they had all the fun. But those are things that people have done to better calibrate their dosimeters for use in the actual fields that they work in. You know, we have laboratory sources, but those may have different energy dependence, which could lead to an overestimate of the dose that we read on these dosimeters.

Ryan Howell [00:07:48] So, what facilities are you using then, up at Oak Ridge? What do you work with most?

Nolan Hertel [00:07:53] Well, we've gone to several facilities like the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center, where people handle things that may give you neutrons from alpha reactions with oxygen. So it's like, if you have a solution with curium in it or something. So we've done a few measurements there where they've put together californium, extracted californium. We've done some stuff there. Somebody had a DT neutron generator, so we went to that facility and made some measurements.

Nolan Hertel [00:08:24] We also made some measurements placing neutron source, where suddenly you look and say, "Oh, there's a little seam in the concrete. Oh, well, neutrons are actually coming through." There are many seems in the concrete, but there's actually some low dose coming through. So, principally we've done that and then calibrated the system with their calibration facilities with some known sources.

Nolan Hertel [00:08:44] So I have a few more. May 31st is my last day of work at Georgia Tech. June 1st is my first day of retirement. I have to say it correctly for them. And starting after 30 days, I can work part-time again for Georgia Tech. So, there are still a few places to make neutron measurements that they wanted to look at. So probably in July, I'll dust off the equipment if I can find it and go back up there for a couple of weeks.

Ryan Howell [00:09:21] That's fantastic. Congratulations on the retirement and it's great to hear that you're still going to be playing in retirement.

Nolan Hertel [00:09:30] Well, I say I am not a strategic planner. And so, when people say, "What are you going to do?" I say, "Well, I'm going to move back to Texas, eventually." That may be four months. It might be a year. My wife has plans to move back sooner, so it will probably be more like four months.

Ryan Howell [00:09:49] Yes, yes. Very good. Any plans to get hooked back up with Texas A&M when you're out there?

Nolan Hertel [00:09:54] I don't know. I think I have several opportunities here still doing shielding with people. And most of that can be done now virtually. They send me the plans and stuff; I can do that. Although it is good, sometimes, to look face to face with people. I'm not really crazy about teaching more courses, okay? If there are short courses some place, I'm happy to do that. But I'm probably not going to go back into a classroom setting, I don't think, at this time.

Ryan Howell [00:10:29] Sure, sure. So, tell us a little bit about something people might not know about the role nuclear energy and, specifically, some of your work in shielding and neutron calculations. How is that going to play a role in the energy transition?

Nolan Hertel [00:10:44] Well, I think with some of the small modular reactors, things are changing some. When you look at the molten salt concept... And I asked this question once to a group of students and got no answer. But I mean, things like delayed neutrons, right? So now you're pumping the salt around, whereas before... Say you have a uranium oxide fuel. Well, all that's trapped in the fuel, right? So, delayed neutrons are in the core. Well, now you're pumping that around. I said, "Have you worried about are you going to see neutrons in other areas of the plant that you normally only saw gamma rays?" So, I think there are interesting things.

Nolan Hertel [00:11:22] And then, I saw one design where it looked like people may actually go on the deck of the reactor while it's operating, which probably means a bigger neutron dose. I mean, currently at PWRs, you might go into containment. At a BWR, you never do while it's operating. PWR, but you don't ever take a direct look down at the pressure vessel. So, there are neutron fields there. So, I think that remains to be seen.

Nolan Hertel [00:11:49] Some of the things like portable reactors, or mobile... We should probably call them mobile, right? They can be moved. Like some of these three... And I don't know the terms. They call them micro reactors, right? Three, five megawatt electric. Say if you're going to move that, you're going to have to now think about, "Did I contaminate the soil? Did I activate the soil? If it was on a concrete pad, can I just load it up and move or do I need to take some care in what was left behind?" So, I think those are big things.

Nolan Hertel [00:12:29] The other thing, recently I've been doing shielding on electron beam machines, you know when you make Bremsstrahlung. So one of the companies here is a nondestructive testing company, and people are using 6, 10 megavolt machines, which I think is quite different than using 250, 450 kilavolt X-rays. So, more worried about putting them in shielded rooms. I've been doing some of that.

Nolan Hertel [00:12:58] And then, also the local company who does food irradiation. They have some unique problems. They actually have a food irradiator now operating in Mission, Texas and approved. And so, there are things like that which are a little bit... Some of the things are new to me. Not new to the world of physics, but I mean, the actual shielding of those facilities because they looked a lot different, say, than a typical accelerator setup where you have a gigantic shielded room and the beam comes in. And so, that's a kind of growth area, maybe, for me, if I keep doing something.

Ryan Howell [00:13:36] Yeah, sure. Let's dive into that a little bit, because I know you're a past President of the Council on Ionizing Radiation Measurements and Standards. And that's certainly for me, getting involved with that group was a broadening of my viewpoint and just how much the nuclear industry touches everything that we're doing as humans across health care, industrial sterilization, like you just mentioned, and everything we're doing with nuclear power.

Nolan Hertel [00:14:02] Right. I think that's a thing that we probably in nuclear engineering education don't count on our undergraduates enough. That, "Hey, accelerators are widely used for a variety of things." I like to point out to them, and I think this is still true... I can mention a brand name, can't I? They used to say that the ink was cured on the Eggo packages by electron beam. Then if you look at Georgia, in the paper industry, actually I think they use radioactive gas. I don't know whether it was xenon, I don't remember, quite... But I mean, to gauge the thickness of the paper as it rolls along. And so, there are all kinds of uses.

Nolan Hertel [00:14:45] Now, there are hundreds of jobs for bachelor's level nuclear engineers, but they need somebody who understands radiation interactions. So I always try to tell them, "You have the fundamental tools to do more things than reactors, you just haven't thought about them." And so, we used to teach a course here called Nuclear Sources and Applications where we tried to say, "Here's a brief look at accelerators. Here's what people use neutrons for other than to make fission in reactors. Here's what people use photon beams for." A lot of things like that.

Nolan Hertel [00:15:20] But curves really opens it up. If you see that, you're amazed at all the industrial uses because you're going like, "Oh, these guys are hiding away someplace where the rest of the nuclear engineering community rarely sees them, right?" But they work very strongly on a lot of industrial processes. One of the things a local company told me here is that they've been making X-ray cabinets, suddenly in big demand in California for sterilizing cannabis. Have you imagined that?

Ryan Howell [00:15:55] Extending shelf life of all things.

Nolan Hertel [00:15:59] There you go. So I mean, it's interesting as you meet people who don't quite fit into the power plant picture, the things that are being done that, say, the average nuclear engineer never thinks about it, I think.

Ryan Howell [00:16:12] Yeah, very innovative and novel ways of using radiation. So in your opinion, what's been the most significant discovery or breakthrough in nuclear technology over the course of your career? What is that and how do you think that's impacted the industry?

Nolan Hertel [00:16:33] Well, that's a hard one.

Ryan Howell [00:16:36] Lots of neat things have been going on.

Nolan Hertel [00:16:38] Yeah, there's nothing new under the sun though. But I guess in applications, I think particularly... And I've had some interactions with people, medical physicists. I think if you look at how things have progressed from an old medical physics, radiotherapy treatment to what they do now is incredibly fancy using microbeams shooting different directions. And then moving to proton machines and ultimately to carbon ions and things like that. I think that's kind of interesting.

Nolan Hertel [00:17:13] In fact, that's how I kind of got my start with my master's degree. I worked with a guy at Texas A&M who was treating for MD Anderson cancer patients in the Texas A&M cyclotron with high energy neutrons. That kind of died over the years, but now with these higher-LET radiations like protons and carbon-14 have some of their impacts. And I think a lot of this stuff like monoclonal antibodies, where we've tagged things that go to specific locations with alpha emitters, all of this is pretty exciting.

Nolan Hertel [00:17:50] I guess in nuclear engineering... I'm trying to think. Like, power reactors. Well, we eliminated the number of pumps, but that sounds kind of mundane. I think in general, the generic things we do have pretty much stayed the same. And it's kind of like, all of a sudden people are interested in molten salt reactors, but a lot of the first reactors were molten salt, the experimental setup. So, it's kind of like you go back to that.

Nolan Hertel [00:18:19] The other thing I find interesting, sometimes, is... There's this old journal called Nucleonics, written in the '50s. And if you go back in there and you look, you say, "This guy had a great idea, but they just didn't have micro and nanoscale electronics. They didn't have all the technology we do to interface that." And you say like, "Hey, that idea would now work." And you see, occasionally, somebody will pull one of those out and you'll say... And I'm thinking more about detection, radiation detection, that there were a lot of concepts back then.

Nolan Hertel [00:18:49] So the biggest thing... One of the biggest things is maybe more political. Suddenly, people like us. I lived through all those decades, you know, of Chernobyl. I started at the University of Texas, and I was there like a year or so and then there was Chernobyl. And so, we actually did a lot of public relations stuff where we would go to even elementary schools and talk about how reactors work and things like that. And then, we kind of went through a cycle where everybody was against nuclear power. Now they see it as one of the major solutions to climate change. I know that's not a technical change, but that's an amazing change in attitude among the average citizen.

Ryan Howell [00:19:44] Yeah, that's definitely been a great shift for everybody. I certainly feel that nuclear is going to be helping us get to net zero and beyond, so that's fantastic. Has that impacted your work at all? Did you ever see any public perception or pushback with trying to find funding throughout your career or anything like that?

Nolan Hertel [00:20:03] Well, yeah, there were lean years, I think. When I was at the University of Texas, I was there for 14 years before I came to Georgia Tech. I probably should've have left 10 years earlier than I did, but I won't go into that discussion. It was a rather small group of faculty. But I worked on the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority. So I got some insight into waste disposal. Not high-level waste, but low-level waste. And I think in the lean years, I kept that going and then did some things.

Nolan Hertel [00:20:41] After 9/11, suddenly we became interested in "Can we scan people who might be contaminated and decide this person is going to get a big dose, so let's do something? This person can go home, take a shower, and probably be okay even though they have some internal contamination." So, we got a fair amount of work done for about 10 years with the CDC on how do you have people walk through portal monitors, stand in them for a minute, and determine whether they're contaminated or not and back calculate some numbers. Those were kind of the lean years.

Nolan Hertel [00:21:20] And then what you do is you find yourself old, suddenly, right? You don't know this is happening when you're a university professor because I hung around with kids who were only in their '20s for four years, right?

Ryan Howell [00:21:31] Time flies when you're having fun.

Nolan Hertel [00:21:34] And then you go like, "Oh, well." At the later stages of your career, they're going like, "Well, we need to give young people funding." So there's always this challenge. Particularly in the area I'm in, it's not like overwhelming. Had I been, maybe, a more a mainstream reactor physicist, the last 10 years would have probably looked a lot better. I mean, it doesn't look bad. I did a lot of good things that I enjoyed and got paid to do them. So, it was fine in that sense.

Ryan Howell [00:22:03] Yeah. You talk a lot about looking at decommissioning and you worked a little bit in the low-level waste disposal. What do you think the outlook is for decommissioning, especially if we're entering into this next phase and putting a lot of new small reactors online? What do you think is going to happen there?

Nolan Hertel [00:22:23] Well, I assume most of the existing power plants... And I guess what we've seen is if there's more than one unit at a power station, it's economically viable. I think we've lost some, like Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant, because it's one unit. And I think you can economically operate if you have more than one unit because you can double-use the crews, I guess. So, I don't know. But I guess Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, Holtec seems to be saying, "Hey, let's get that loan from DOE and restart." The governor of Michigan seems to stand behind it. So, I think the big ones will still be there unless they are just totally outdated.

Nolan Hertel [00:23:09] I think probably what can happen with small modular reactors is... Say, 30 years ago we built a reactor, or more. We didn't really do a chemical analysis of the steel, like how much cobalt-59 is in the steel, which actually drives a lot of the dose rate you're going to get when it's over. And I think now we have the opportunity as we build these things to say, "Let's characterize really well what we put in and then the modeling that people can do will be much more accurate." So, we'll have a better idea, although I guess the old pros who've done a lot of this for the companies have some idea in their minds what the rate is going to be. I think that's an opportunity there.

Nolan Hertel [00:23:58] I know a lot of these things, the refueling on some of them last a lot longer than typical. So, I think everything's different in that dynamic. But I guess I don't see the nuclear waste ultimately going away. I do think we'll see kind of different, maybe, time sequence of when we get rid of things and how we get rid of them. You know, we're still waiting for that fusion reactor to come online. And I always get upset when people say, "Well, we don't make radioactive waste." Yeah, you do. It's just a different kind.

Ryan Howell [00:24:38] Yes, yes.

Nolan Hertel [00:24:40] I'll tell you an anecdote here. There's a guy I know who got his PhD in 1956 at the University of Texas at Austin. And I shouldn't say this; this will make fusion guys mad. And he actually did nuclear powered aircraft shielding. And he told me in about 1988, he said, "You know, when I graduated from the University of Texas in 1956 there was only one constant in fusion. And that is that in 50 years we'll have a fusion reactor that generates electricity. And that stayed constant the whole time through my career." And I'm going like, "Okay." But I think we're close. We're closer, I guess we should say.

Ryan Howell [00:25:23] Going to remain hopeful on that front. Hopefully these SMRs can take us through.

Nolan Hertel [00:25:28] Gives us something to shoot for, right? The energy of the sun, right? So, we're good.

Ryan Howell [00:25:33] Yeah. No, I'm at least excited. SMRs getting us through. I've heard the new fast reactors can actually take spent nuclear fuel and burn a little bit more out of it so we could potentially fuel the new generation of reactors with some of the older fuels. And hopefully, that'll be an extra stopgap to get us to the next level of fusion.

Nolan Hertel [00:25:55] Right. No, I think we'll ultimately get there. The question is will it look like anything like we're thinking of right at this moment? Maybe, maybe not. So, we'll see.

Ryan Howell [00:26:04] Yeah. Well, you said you work with a lot of students, so I'm sure you get this question a lot. But what advice can you give to someone starting out in the nuclear industry based on your experience and perspectives? What would you tell someone?

Nolan Hertel [00:26:21] Well, the current generation may not stay in a job as long as I did, okay? And people in my generation, okay? And they may move around a lot. But at the same time, I like to tell them, "You've got this starting place." And they say, "I'm not sure whether I should take this." I say, "Look, you go there, you work two or three years. If you don't like it, you've got like 40 years left to work. And you'll learn something that'll help you." So, I think one thing is to recognize the first train ticket may not be where you wind up, and to learn what you can there.

Nolan Hertel [00:27:00] There's another local company that did dry storage containers, and people would say, "Well should I work there?" I said, "Well, yeah, if you go there, you're going to do criticality. You're going to do shielding. You're going to do stuff like center of gravity calculations for the containers. There's no other place where you can do all these things. And then, you can move on, somebody wants you." But I think the real thing is to look at, "If I don't like it, I'm still young."

Nolan Hertel [00:27:33] And I get the same thing for people who go like, "Well, I'm thinking about joining the Navy, the nuclear Navy." And so what, that's a six year commitment. I say, "Okay, so you're 28. You've got a lot of things going for you and you've got some things going for you that the guys who graduated with you don't. You've been commanding people. You've been managing people, and that's an asset."

Nolan Hertel [00:27:55] So I think... Not to lock in like "what I do next," not to get too anxious about "what I do next is going to be what I do forever." And particularly, I think if you go on to graduate school, you're going to say, "Is my thesis going to be the only thing I ever do?" Well, hopefully not. Hopefully, you get way beyond that. So, I think that's a piece of advice so they don't get so anxious about choosing between three or four options.

Ryan Howell [00:28:27] Sure. That's fantastic. And certainly, that's been my feeling being in the nuclear industry. I think the last time you and I ran into each other was at a conference in South Africa. So I always tell people nuclear can take you all around the world. Yeah, yeah.

Nolan Hertel [00:28:42] Well, and this goes back to my upbringing. I never dreamed I would... I went to Mexico when I was in high school, once. And probably, I've been to innumerable countries. I've been to two of the secret cities in Russia because I was in the Department of Energy Russian Health Studies Program. Now, we were highly monitored. They wouldn't let us spend the night in town. We stayed in Tomsk at some sort of resort outside of Ozersk. But I met a lot of people. And I think that's one thing. You go around the world, you meet people and they're interesting and we all get along on the personal level, regardless of how our governments are standing off and doing things to each other. So, I think it's opportunities, yeah.

Nolan Hertel [00:29:32] I guess the other thing to tell them is nuclear power is a global industry. I used to work with a guy at the University of Texas. At that time, besides the US, France was where all the real... France and Japan were where the big actions were in nuclear power. And he'd tell them, "You should learn French." I think there's a certain amount of truth that I should be looking around the world to see how we fit in. And that's a unique thing, I think, about this compared to some of the other industries.

Ryan Howell [00:30:09] Sure, definitely. Well, yeah, you've had quite a long career; you've been a lot of places. Can you tell us a few of your favorite stories or some of the crazier things that you've been a part of that have been fun and interesting?

Nolan Hertel [00:30:26] This again from a small town boy's background. I tell my wife, "If I write my memoirs, I'm going to entitle it, I Fell Down On Three Different Continents." Because I fell down in China, I fell down in France, in Poland, of course, in the US. Not that I fall down a lot, it's just like I look back on those. So, those are kind of interesting.

Nolan Hertel [00:30:56] I don't know about weird things. I guess some of the interesting experiences when we went to Ozersk. It's like the 007 movies where you see the two fences and dogs between the fences. And we'd drive up there and they'd come on board, take all our passports and look at them, and they're armed. But it wasn't what it was, say, 20 years before, because the dogs are kind of sleeping under the trees and stuff like that. And so, it was kind of a total different thing to be watched.

Nolan Hertel [00:31:29] I don't know, just going places. And I think for me, one of the big things is the Europeans are much more interested in measuring dose as closely as they can because they've set their dose limits much lower. And so, I feel like it's weird that I probably had more contacts in Europe that know what I do than people in the US, a rather a small group.

Nolan Hertel [00:31:59] But as President of the Health Physics Society, in 2018, I went to China for 11 days. I was able to bring my wife and they paid for her once I got her a ticket. And we went there and did some sightseeing, and that was really interesting. But I fell down there. And this kind of funny. We had a hostess who was taking us around. There was some sort of wedding band playing outside because there had just been a wedding at the hotel. And so, I was going to go out and I said, "You two wait here. I'll go out and take a picture of the band playing."

Nolan Hertel [00:32:37] So I went out there, and when I went out there was a lot of dust on a marble slab and I fell down and hit knee first. So, it took me a long time to come back in, and the woman who was with my wife was just really worried that something happened really bad, like I was abducted or something. I don't know what it was, but that was a challenge. I should be able to come up with better stories than that, but anyway, that's kind of it.

Ryan Howell [00:33:10] No, no, that's been great. Getting around the world, getting to meet people. Like you said, you meet a lot of interesting people. But I love that, like you said, everybody is kind of... Geopolitics aside, we're all interested in the science and can really communicate on that level and connect on that level. That's fantastic.

Nolan Hertel [00:33:33] Well, one other thing that comes to mind is I've been to Hiroshima maybe five or six times. My father, it actually turned out that he went into Hiroshima 30 days after they dropped the bomb. I mean, he was just a Chief Petty Officer, so it wasn't anything nuclear. But he never told me that. So, I read his diary after he left and he said he went into town and he bought stamps at the post office. And I'm going like, "Well, surely they sold US personnel stamps."

Nolan Hertel [00:34:05] And then I realized when I walked around the town where they show you where the post office was at, the post office shut down for one day and reopened the next day after the bomb was dropped. Windows were blown out. You're standing there and saying, "Hey, 75 years ago, my father stood at this very location, but he never told me." Then I understand that he bought the stamps as a souvenir. And so, it's interesting going around the world. Things happen; you bump into people that you never thought you would meet. And sometimes they have a strong connection to a similar background, so that's been the exciting part, I think, of my career.

Ryan Howell [00:34:49] What else do you think we can do to further the nuclear industry? What steps can we take to spread the word? I know there's a lot of excitement right now and a lot of energy need, especially in Europe. But what things can we do to spread the word?

Nolan Hertel [00:35:03] We've always said this, but I think if we could just speed up the process of building plants. And maybe that happens with things maybe being manufactured in a factory with SMRs. But I mean, just like Plant Vogtle. Three is now online, I think Four is getting ready to go online. But, what?A bunch of years after we... It was a long time period that was scheduled, and it's even longer now. And in a sense, the Southeast is in great shape, I think, because of its dependence on nuclear energy.

Nolan Hertel [00:35:37] But I think if somehow we could... Well, lower costs, obviously. But I mean, if we can go to a much shorter time period where people don't say, "Oh, yeah, we're getting hit big time by the Public Utility Commission to pay for the interest on this plant." So, I think there's a financial side that comes with this that we have to... And I guess with standardized manufactured designs, that should help in that regard.

Nolan Hertel [00:36:13] I think to, we probably need to preach a little bit more about actual radioactive releases from nuclear power plants of all types. Years ago there was an old study that coal-fired power plants spit more radioactive material up the stack than a nuclear power plant did. I think that's something that people don't know.

Nolan Hertel [00:36:43] And high-level waste, right? We've seen that diagram. Well, here's a football field. We'll take all the high-level waste and encapsulate it, how small an area it takes up. And let them know that we have good engineered systems to take care of it. So those, I think, are biggies from my perspective. There was one other, but hey, I'm old enough. It slipped my mind, so it doesn't matter.

Ryan Howell [00:37:17] No, that's good. It was very good. So, definitely want to spread the word and get people excited about it. And certainly speed of implementation, I think, would help for sure.

Ryan Howell [00:37:27] Well, we're coming close to our time. I don't know if you want to add anything else. We certainly like to end with casting a vision for nuclear energy to the future. So, what do you think energy around the world will look like in the short-term and far-term?

Nolan Hertel [00:37:47] Well, it seems to me like small modular reactors and especially things that are maybe sub-200 megawatt electric, that there are now remote locations... And I think, Alan Walter, in one of his books did an analysis on health care versus salary. And it's all tied to energy production. So a lot of the remote places in the world where we don't want to run gigantic transmission lines, right? And we already have a transmission line problem in certain parts of our country. It makes sense to have small reactors. So, we go out there, and then maybe they don't have to be tended to for 15, 20 years. And I see that developing.

Nolan Hertel [00:38:30] And I know that particularly in Canada, they think about Indigenous people up closer to the Arctic Circle. Well, let's go drop a 20 megawatt, 30 megawatt electric, basically, closed system there, and then we only have to run local lines and stuff like that. So, I was surprised a couple of years ago when I was on a review team for endowed professorship in Canada that they were really thinking strongly in that direction, that SMRs were really good for those remote regions where you don't want to run transmission lines.

Nolan Hertel [00:39:08] I think the whole system can change somewhat. And then I guess the other thing we see in the US that's kind of interesting is we can shut down the coal-fired power plant and we can relocate multiple modules and use already existing cooling water, I assume transmission lines. They may need some upgrading. But I think that's a distributed source.

Nolan Hertel [00:39:30] Years ago, one guy kind of got on me about this. This is like about 35 years ago. He said, "Well, you know the problem with nuclear power is it's all centralized. It should be distributed." And so, we now live in an era where, hey, it can be distributed. I also, tongue-in-cheek say, "You want electric charging stations along the tens of thousands of miles of interstate highway? There you go. Drop a micro reactor every 200 miles or something like that." I mean, there are all kinds of concepts, I think, that are now open for how we can distribute and get things in locations that before was a major task with getting the electricity there afterwards.

Ryan Howell [00:40:16] Yeah, very, very interesting. So, actually dropping power plants in remote locations to bring power and empower those local communities. I love that.

Nolan Hertel [00:40:27] Yeah, and there are places you can think of where we now no longer need massive transmission line setups. I mean, we probably don't want thousands of reactors in the country, but I mean, there are locations you can easily think of that would work pretty well that we could drop a small system in there.

Ryan Howell [00:40:50] Fantastic. Well, anything else you want to add?

Nolan Hertel [00:40:54] No, thanks for this, and sorry it took so long for me to connect.

Ryan Howell [00:41:01] No, no, it's been certainly great to have you, Nolan. It's been great to catch up with you, great to hear everything that you've done. Thank you for the many years of service in the nuclear industry, and we certainly look forward to seeing you around in your retirement.

Nolan Hertel [00:41:15] Okay, well, it's been fun. You know, when you go to a retirement party for faculty members, and we had one... They don't say, "You're retiring." They say, "Well, what are you going to do for the next stage in your career?" I hadn't thought of it like that. But I hope I don't immediately ride off into the sunset. But I mean, it'll be a slow ride.

Ryan Howell [00:41:37] Yes. If I know anything about nuclear, once you're in, you're in. And it certainly sounds like it's been a passion of yours. So, I'm sure we'll see you around.

Nolan Hertel [00:41:46] All right. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Howell [00:41:47] Thank you very much for your time, Nolan.

Sarah Howorth [00:00:59] Welcome back to another episode of Titans of Nuclear. Today, I am in person at the Georgia Institute of Technology sitting down with Dr. Dan Kotlyar, and he is a newish-Associate Professor, I've heard. And he is working in the Computational Reactor Engineering Laboratory, also known as CORE. Dan, welcome.

Dan Kotlyar [00:01:22] Hi.

Sarah Howorth [00:01:24] It's so nice to have you on. I'm excited to chat with you today. So before we delve into your current work, let's just go ahead and talk a little bit about your background. Where are you from?

Dan Kotlyar [00:01:34] Oh, that's a tough question. So I'm from Israel, originally. Well, born in the Soviet Union, immigrated to Israel. I did my PhD there, and then had a journey to being postdoc at University of Cambridge, in England. And then, I was offered this position at Georgia Tech, and now I'm here.

Sarah Howorth [00:01:56] That's awesome. And so, did you do your schooling at all of those places, or is that where you worked in other professor jobs?

Dan Kotlyar [00:02:06] Well, I did my undergraduate, masters, and PhD in slightly different topics, but most of them were in nuclear engineering. My undergraduate was partially with electrical engineering as well. But I decided that nuclear was much more fun, I would say. Much more exciting. And so, that's where I've done my schooling. I actually became a part time lecturer, even during my PhD. I found that to be extremely interesting. So, I developed a passion for teaching. I've been doing this at Ben-Gurion University. That's the university in Beersheva in the south of Israel. I applied for multiple places, and one of the places where I really wanted to live was in Europe. Cambridge sounded like a great place to be at that time, and so I went and did my postdoc. No schooling, just research work. And I was mentoring students at Cambridge University, but also doing my research there.

Dan Kotlyar [00:03:16] Since I came here, what I do as an Assistant Professor, and recently, as an Associate Professor, is to teach students. Mainly, I teach reactor physics courses and reactor engineering courses. And recently, I started doing an experimental lab, which is even better. All that theoretical stuff is a bit boring sometimes. And I guess, my lab is doing the research with me on topics associated to reactor physics and reactor engineering.

Sarah Howorth [00:03:49] So, let's take it back a bit. What led you to the decision to pursue nuclear?

Dan Kotlyar [00:03:55] Oh, it's an interesting question. I'm not sure I have an easy answer.

Sarah Howorth [00:04:02] That's okay.

Dan Kotlyar [00:04:02] When I was 18 years old, you know, we go to the army first, and then we graduate with the army and then we go to university. I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to become an engineer. I was sort of good in math and physics in my high school, and I decided to pursue a path, an engineering path. But what type of engineering, whether mechanical or electrical, I didn't really know. I think that's what pushed me towards this. It was not dual, but it was nuclear engineering with a major in electrical engineering, which is a bit odd, I think, right now as I'm saying this. Most of my courses were actually electrical engineering, and I started doing research in my junior year, and that's what I actually promote here at Georgia Tech, as well.

Dan Kotlyar [00:04:50] I try to encourage our undergraduate students to do research with any faculty in Georgia Tech. And so, I started doing my research in nuclear engineering. It was energy-related fuel cycle analysis of typical light-water reactors commonly used in our industry. You know, I fell in love in, I guess, with nuclear for energy, I would say. And so, I've sort of abandoned the electrical field, although some of the subject helped me later on as a professor, even.

Sarah Howorth [00:05:26] Awesome. And so, what are you specifically teaching here at Georgia Tech now?

Dan Kotlyar [00:05:30] Well, I teach reactor physics and reactor theory, which are, I guess, a continuation of courses, like the fundamental of reactor physics. Students are supposed to understand the basic mathematical models to link between the theory that sort of describes how a reactor would behave, what the reactor would look like, and why we design the systems in such a way. And then, we dive into more practical applications and the the mathematical level would increase in depth, but also their understanding of how the systems actually operate. Either this in sort of like a nominal operation or off-nominal, for instance, accident scenarios or something along those lines. It doesn't have to be an accident; it could be some type of off-nominal perturbation, I would say. And the students would gain that understanding during my classes.

Dan Kotlyar [00:06:32] Another course that I've taught for two years now is the graduate reactor engineering course. And this is sort of like a broad but in-depth overview of the specifics of light-water reactor systems. Most of our reactors are pressurized water reactors or boiling water reactors, so we typically focus on those. We do have advanced systems, as well, that we teach. But if you sort of understand how the light-water reactor operates, it gives you enough tools to understand other systems, as well.

Dan Kotlyar [00:07:03] And so, they dive into systems of how would you do fuel management, for instance, in the system? Why would you do this in such a way from an efficiency point of view? But they also understand things like how would the fluid flow, in this case, water flow, inside the light-water reactor? And they would try to understand the thermodynamic efficiency and why we design systems in such a way. And that is taught in the reactor engineering course.

Dan Kotlyar [00:07:33] And recently, I was asked to teach an experimental reactor physics lab, which I found to be even more entertaining for myself as a professor. Maybe not necessarily for the students as much; they have to do a lot of work there. But it's sort of going to the lab and trying to link the theoretical model that we teach during the reactor physics classes to actual applications in the lab itself.

Sarah Howorth [00:08:04] Let's narrow in and focus on that a little bit. Would you say that's your favorite area to teach?

Dan Kotlyar [00:08:11] The experimental reactor physics?

Sarah Howorth [00:08:12] Yeah.

Dan Kotlyar [00:08:12] I mean, recently it became my favorite area because my background is reactor physics, really, and eventually all my students would have to apply that knowledge during the research, I would say. Reactor physics, the core reactor physics, the hard core reactor physics, where they need to understand different computational methods because those methods would allow them to sort of design a better system, I would say, with less assumptions, maybe, and better safety margins, for instance. So, that's why reactor physics is still my favorite course.

Sarah Howorth [00:08:50] That's awesome. And I also hear that you're very interested in space. So, let's talk a little bit about nuclear thermal propulsion and rockets and all of that good stuff.

Dan Kotlyar [00:09:03] Yeah, we can. Is there any specific that you want to talk about? Because I can start now and probably, that would be our last discussion point here.

Sarah Howorth [00:09:13] Let's start delving into that a little bit, and just go ahead and start the beginning with what interests you the most. It's probably tough to zero in on that, because there's so much to talk about.

Dan Kotlyar [00:09:27] Let me just just comment on my background again and provide like a background story before I start with, specifically, the space propulsion system. So my background in general is either designing advanced systems, fission systems... I'm focused on fission systems, mainly. And those would be different Generation IV reactors, for instance, or even our own in-house developed systems that we are trying to develop here. They can either provide a benefit to an existing light-water reactor system, or even we can focus on a light-water reactor system and develop a better fuel cycle that may improve the fuel utilization, for instance. Meaning that the cost of your fuel would be cheaper, essentially. The cost of the fuel cycle would be essentially cheaper.

Dan Kotlyar [00:10:22] That is something that we do with companies that we work with. So for instance, my group works with Framatome to develop and push industry interests in developing a better fuel cycle. I guess up until four and a half years ago, I honestly never heard of nuclear thermal propulsion before. And so as I said, I encourage my students to pursue their research goals and get some research experience during their junior and senior year as undergraduate students. And if they like it, they can either pursue through their masters or PhDs, or they develop... The worst scenario, they simply have some research experience and they go to the industry or to the National Labs with some tools. I guess it's a win-win situation for everybody.

Dan Kotlyar [00:11:16] And I guess five years ago, a year and a half after I started at Georgia Tech, a group of undergraduate students after one of my reactor physics classes came to me and said, "Well, have you heard about the nuclear thermal propulsion concept? And would you be willing to mentor that project?" And I said, "Well, I know nothing about that. But yeah, most definitely. Let's do this." And so, they came up with all the literature review. They taught me most of the stuff that I know today, I guess. And of course, it evolved since then. But I've discovered a very interesting reactor concept. But even more than that, it's not really a reactor concept because, in reality, there were 20 systems, nuclear thermal propulsion systems that were built and tested, ground tested.

Dan Kotlyar [00:12:08] This is sort of known as... And this now brings me to that topic... Nuclear thermal propulsion had golden years from 1955 until 1973 under what is known to be the Rover Program. The Rover Program, I believe, was initiated at Los Alamos and it was sponsored by the US Air Force and the Nuclear Atomic Commission. And the main idea was to develop a program, or advanced nuclear thermal propulsion program, for ballistic missiles. But soon, they realized that they can use the same technology to send crewed missions to Mars. So, that's sort of like the background here.

Dan Kotlyar [00:13:03] And what happened after that is, I guess, the Rover Program had multiple sub programs. One of those was known as the NERVA program. So a lot of the times, Rover/NERVA... NERVA is, let's see, the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application. The objective of the Rover Program was to demonstrate the feasibility of a nuclear thermal propulsion engine. They had multiple sub-programs. As I said, they built 20 systems. They ground tested those systems as well. And I will just mention a couple of those, because those are sort of the milestones for today's programs that we have in the United States, mainly the United States.

Dan Kotlyar [00:14:09] So some of those programs, the first one was... They were all exotic fruits; I'm not entirely sure why. So, the first was Kiwi. The second one was Phoebus. And the third one that I will mention would be the Pewee. And again, as I said, most of today's systems sort of borrow some characteristics from those previous ones.

Dan Kotlyar [00:14:35] So the Kiwi 1, for instance, was the first series of reactors, nuclear thermal propulsion reactors. Again, nothing was tested in space; everything was ground tested. The Kiwi started with developing the first set of reactors. Kiwi-A, I believe, was tested in 1959. A while back, and it operated only for 5 minutes. It was operated at a power level of 70 megawatts. So we'll just give you a context, a typical light-water reactor, for instance, operates at anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts thermal, and this system operated at 70 megawatts. This is a much smaller system and only for 5 minutes, although a light-water reactor, for instance, would operate for years under the same fuel. So here, we are looking at almost like a pulse type of operation, because we don't need to operate that system for a long period of time.

Dan Kotlyar [00:15:44] It operated for 5 minutes, and they did a post-analysis of the fuel and they discovered that the fuel was correct, that fuel reacted with the hot hydrogen. I'll explain why we used the hot hydrogen in a bit. And some of the fuel was lost. It moved through the fuel elements and was lost. Obviously, that's something that you wouldn't want to have. And so, as I said, there was this first series. The second series, Phoebus, was meant to improve some of those lessons. And so, they used coated particles, for instance. And again, those are very high temperature applications.

Dan Kotlyar [00:16:23] I'm probably jumping from subject to subject. I'll finish with this and I'll give you some context of why we need to have high temperature, as well. So Phoebus, for instance, operated for 10 minutes now. And it meant to operate at much higher power, because the idea was to demonstrate the feasibility of a nuclear thermal propulsion system. Instead of the 70 megawatts, it operated at 1,000 megawatts. A much higher power rate. And at that time, it set a record of having a propellant temperature reaching slightly less than 2,300 Kelvin. That's a very elevated temperature. And the fuel peak temperature, I believe, was slightly less than or around 2,400 Kelvin, which again, is enormous, in my opinion.

Dan Kotlyar [00:17:18] And this the third series which was an improvement to both was tested with the Pewee series of systems. And a lot of today's systems are actually based on that series. Pewee was the smaller scale of Phoebus. It was designed at 500 megawatts, and it set a record of 2,550 Kelvins in propellant temperature and 2,750 Kelvins in terms of the fuel peak temperature, which is again, extremely high. We don't typically operate reactors or our light-water reactors under such high operational conditions. So, why do we need to operate these systems? I guess I would have to explain a couple of terms here.

Dan Kotlyar [00:18:15] The metrics to define a propulsion system would be trust what we know, thrust and specific impulse. Thrust is we essentially have a certain propellant. We want to accelerate that propellant and then expel that propellant from a nozzle. That's what creates the thrust. And with nuclear thermal propulsion, you create the thrust by hitting a light propellant. In our case, that would be a hydrogen propellant, the lightest you can go. And it turns out that the lighter propellants have a much better efficiency in utilizing that propellant. So, thrust is one.

Dan Kotlyar [00:19:02] The second metric would be the specific impulse. But I'll first of all explain what is an impulse. Impulse is simply you take the thrust, and you sort of integrate this over time. So, it's the total thrust. The total thrust from the ignition of the engine until through its operation. That would be the impulse. The specific impulse is when you take this total thrust, the impulse, and you divide by the amount of propellant needed. And this metric provides you how efficiently you are utilizing your propellant.

Dan Kotlyar [00:19:35] And it turns out that the specific impulse behaves... It has two main contributors to how the specific impulse would behave. The molecular mass of the propellant itself, and the exit temperature or what we call the chamber temperature of the propellant when it exits the reactor. So the higher the exit temperature is, the better is the specific or the higher is the specific impulse, so the better is the utilization of the propellant. And the lower the molecular mass, again, a better propellant utilization.

Dan Kotlyar [00:20:16] So in principle, just to summarize, what you really want to do is you want to use light propellant, such as hydrogen, and to heat it to extremely high temperatures. Typically, we want to heat the propellant to a temperature of around 2,700 Kelvin.

Sarah Howorth [00:20:40] Wow.

Dan Kotlyar [00:20:41] Right. It's very high.

Sarah Howorth [00:20:42] Yes, yeah.

Dan Kotlyar [00:20:44] Which implies that most of your structural materials would sort of exhibit even a higher temperature, which poses a design challenge, I would say. Part of what my group does is develop computational methods to analyze such systems. Because nuclear thermal propulsion is a unique reactor, and for a unique system, you need a set of specific tools to be able to model those. And that's exactly what my lab is trying to do. We actually work with BWX Technology, and I can tell you more about that later on.

Dan Kotlyar [00:21:18] So this is again, the background of why, basically, we want to get the high temperature. And if I compare the nuclear thermal propulsion to other means of technologies that exist... So, you have the traditional chemical rockets that rely on combustion, but it turns out that nuclear thermal propulsion can provide comparable thrust levels. However, that specific impulse, that efficiency metric could be doubled, which means that you can have your traveling time to Mars.

Dan Kotlyar [00:21:56] That's why nuclear thermal propulsion is sort of looked at, at least now, as a promising technology. Because the distance from Earth to Mars is around... Well, it ranges between 50 and 400 million kilometers. It depends on the cyclic period, which changes every 26 months, I believe. But the idea is you have a large distance to cover, and so it poses a challenge, and a dose, a specific dose for the crew. So if you now want to send a crewed mission, ideally, you would want to minimize their exposure. And so nuclear thermal propulsion, as I said, can provide the same, thrust levels as chemical, but get you to Mars and back much quicker. That's just some background.

Sarah Howorth [00:22:59] Yeah, that's incredible. And you mentioned the design challenge of having those really high temperatures. Are there some current approaches to solving that challenge or is that still kind of an unknown area?

Dan Kotlyar [00:23:18] First of all, there are multiple players that are looking on advancing this technology. As I said, this technology was developed by the Rover Program. It was a slightly different fuel, but they did look on different fuel forms. So, they looked on ceramic fuels, and recently, the industry was looking into using ceramic metallic material, which allows you to reach those high temperatures. This is typically associated with a couple of, I guess, different considerations. One would be the properties of the materials. I don't know how deep I should go there, but you want to have...

Dan Kotlyar [00:24:09] First of all, a nuclear thermal propulsion system, it's really different from a light-water reactor. You need to satisfy different objectives. In the light-water reactor, you want to provide constant power for a year and a half between reloads, for instance, of the fuel. Ideally, you would want to increase the power because you can basically improve the fuel cycle costs, but not to make it too complicated to understand, the idea is that you work way below the... I'll try to rephrase myself here.

Dan Kotlyar [00:25:04] The idea is that you want to load the fuel, and the fuel provides you the energy. So, you don't want the fuel to be depleted too quickly because you would have to reload the fuel more frequently. And you want to operate for, let's say, a year and a half or maybe 24 months, for two years. Here, the operation is slightly different. You have different missions, but those missions typically have different maneuvers where the nuclear thermal propulsion would sort of satisfy those. In principle, you would have, for the outbound journey, two trans-Mars injection maneuvers, and then a Mars insertion maneuver where you would actually operate the engine. At all other times, you would have coasting of your vehicle, sort of speaking. You don't operate, so you don't have to turn on the vehicle or the engine.

Dan Kotlyar [00:25:58] And the last maneuver is the trans-Earth injection. So you have, basically, four maneuvers, and the system really operates for about 2 hours; that's it. So, you don't have that concern of sort of depleting the fuel. Because depleting the fuel is associated to how long you would be able to operate that.

Dan Kotlyar [00:26:19] Here, the objective is to satisfy that very high-temperature application. So it's completely different from a standard light-water reactor application where you want the fuel to be spent in the core for about a year and a half or two years. Here, you want that to operate for two years, and you want to squeeze as much power as you can to get to those very high temperatures. Make sense so far, right? So what was your question?

Sarah Howorth [00:26:50] It was just about how the design challenge of this really high heat is being approached.

Dan Kotlyar [00:26:58] Right, right. So here, what you want to do is you want to have a material that has a high loading of uranium, what we call the heavy metal loading. But you also want to use a material that has very good thermal properties. So with high conductivity, for instance, would be one of them. Because you almost don't want to create... Because as I said, the propellant temperature eventually would reach a temperature of 2,700 Kelvin, which means that the fuel would be hotter. If the conductivity of the fuel is very low, then you can breach and violate the safety of your fuel. You can melt it, for instance.

Dan Kotlyar [00:27:46] NASA is leading that or was leading that, and has multiple industry partners like BWX Technology who are looking on manufacturing the fuel and testing this fuel in different facilities in the United States. One of them would be the Transient Facility in Idaho National Lab. They've already manufactured the fuel. They're in, basically, two main forms of fuel that they are investigating. One is a ceramic material. And again, they're probably multiple variations. I will just tell you what I know at this point. Those are uranium nitride particles coated with zirconium carbide put in a zirconium carbide matrix. This is what I call the ceramic-ceramic. And you also have a refractory matrix, which is typically a tungsten matrix that holds those particles. And those are really the options that are being investigated right now. Uranium nitrate has this high uranium loading into the system. So, you load a load of that fissile material, essentially, and that's the first benefit. And second of all, the properties, the thermal properties are also enhanced when you compare them to a traditional uranium dioxide fuel, for instance.

Dan Kotlyar [00:29:10] I do want to say that during the Rover/NERVA program, they were using highly-enriched uranium fuel for their designs. And yes, we are borrowing a lot of the characteristics from the previous systems, but one of the main changes that was made was the choice of fuel. The choice of fuel now, with the discussion of proliferation, but also with the economic benefits of manufacturing multiple engines, eventually, led us to adopt the high-assay, low-enriched uranium. In less complicated words, enrichment of below 20% rather than enrichment that was previously used of above 90%. And this leads to a major modification to the previous series of reactors, like Pewee, for instance. Now we have to change the design itself to accommodate for the fact that we load less fissile material, if that makes sense. And we still need to operate for those two or maybe slightly more hours of operation.

Sarah Howorth [00:30:24] Awesome. And so looking into the future now, when do you see this technology coming to fruition and how will it impact the rest of the industry as a whole?

Dan Kotlyar [00:30:35] It's an excellent question. Obviously I don't build them myself, so I'm not entirely sure when. NASA was involved in this since when I came to Georgia Tech and I started doing this research with my undergraduate students, and after that, with a lot of my graduate students. I think that at Georgia Tech, I had more than 20 students involved in this project in the last six years, which is very impressive, in my opinion. Undergraduate students and graduate students. Apparently, a flying nuclear reactor makes students come to my lab.

Sarah Howorth [00:31:09] That's awesome.

Dan Kotlyar [00:31:09] Yeah. NASA had a big project to develop this technology and to revive that technology, I guess. And recently, there was an announcement made that NASA and DARPA joined forces to develop and deploy this technology, a prototype technology, by 2027. So coming back to my previous story, when those students came, I only looked at this as something that interested me from the research point of view. How would you analyze those systems? What would be the benefit of those systems? But now, I mean, it seems like there is a real chance that the United States will build its first flying nuclear system by 2027. And that system, from what I understand, would not really be used for Mars applications, but only be used as a flight demonstrated vehicle.

Sarah Howorth [00:32:18] Well, I think those visions for the future are a great note to end on, unless you have anything more to add that we haven't covered yet.

Dan Kotlyar [00:32:26] I think we've covered a lot.

Sarah Howorth [00:32:28] I agree, and that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure to have you.

Dan Kotlyar [00:32:35] Thank you very much for hosting me.

Ryan Howell [00:00:58] Welcome back, everybody. This is another episode of Titans of Nuclear. My name is Ryan Howell, and I have the privilege today of speaking with Dr. Sharmistha, and I'm going to let you pronounce your last name so I don't mess it up.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:01:09] Mukhopadhyay.

Ryan Howell [00:01:11] Mukhopadhyay, yes. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:01:13] Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Ryan Howell [00:01:15] So, our listeners always like to hear where you've come from and what your background is, so tell us a little bit about where you grew up and talk to us about that journey of getting towards nuclear.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:01:24] Okay. So, I grew up in India in a city called Calcutta. Now, it's called Kolkata. That's where the British had their capital.

Ryan Howell [00:01:32] That's the north of India, right?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:01:33] It's east of India. It's east of India. It's east of India, you know that's where the East India Company was made with the British, and so that's the history of the place. I grew up there, I did my master's from Calcutta and then I moved to US due to family reasons. My husband moved and somehow I came to the University of Kentucky when my husband was doing a post-doc.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:01:57] And in between, after my master's and before I came to the US, I was teaching high school in India, which is one of the most exciting jobs I've had, although I'm talking about 25 years back because teaching physics in high school in India is a big challenge. That's where you solve most of the problems and teaching those to 17-year-old kids was not a very easy job. To make the problems look simpler and to get it across to them, that was a big challenge I felt.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:02:29] So after that, I came to Kentucky and I wanted to be a schoolteacher, a high school teacher. But then I realized in the US, to become a high school teacher is a challenge. You have to get a lot of certifications, there's that, and I didn't have the patience for that. Rather, everybody at the university was telling me, "Why don't you join the Ph.D. degree?" which I didn't want, because I always felt that was more difficult and it's time consuming. But that was the easier thing to do, so I just went into that.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:03:02] I started my Ph.D. My daughter was a one-year-old, so I started doing my Ph.D. with her. And and it looked easy because, of course, it was the course work and everything went on pretty smoothly. It was more or less repetition of what I did in my master's. Then I saw almost everybody's struggling because of the lot of mathematics that you need, which I already had, so that made my life easy.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:03:27] And then, I had to choose my project, my Ph.D. project. I didn't have many options. Sad to hear, but I'm talking about 2005, quite sometime back, and most of the faculty refused to take me because I already had a child. So without an option, I spoke with my supervisor, Dr. Steve Yates, at Kentucky, and he was happy to accept me in the nuclear field. And we had an accelerator, the University of Kentucky Accelerator Laboratory. We have a Van de Graaff generator. We do most of the experiments there, the measurements there, but most of the experiments are long run. 24 hours for 30 days we run, but we have shifts. It's a challenging thing, but he was happy to include me in the group, and that is how I started my journey into nuclear physics.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:04:24] I was mainly doing inelastic neutron scattering and looking into gamma rays and studying the structure of the nucleus, which is very different than what type of work I do here. But after that, I moved to the industry. And so after completing my Ph.D. for four and a half years... Because I was lucky that all of my projects were on campus, so I didn't have to wait for any beam time or running around. And some of the projects were challenging, but we got to understand the physics, what we wanted to know, for the time being. But then physics changed later. But so, then I moved to industry.

Ryan Howell [00:05:02] Right. And that's what landed you at Sun Nuclear?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:05:04] No, that's what landed me in Boston. So from 2008 to 2011, I was in the scintillator company called Radiation Monitoring Devices.

Ryan Howell [00:05:13] And what was your role there?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:05:14] I was, of course, a scientist. That was one of the very exciting things I was doing. Right now, it's a big... You have the detector off the shelf, but that was the time I was developing the prototype neutron-gamma scintillator, which nobody had heard of before. And that's now in the ElpasoLight scintillators, which are very much now in the market. CLLB, cesium, lithium, lanthanum bromide; cesium, lithium, lanthanum chloride, and huge families. But I was the first one, almost the first one, to test and make detectors out of one millimeter scintillator, which now has grown to one inch or even two inches. So, I was among the first few to work with those prototype scintillators.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:05:58] And that was the first scintillator which did that neutron-gamma discrimination, plus we had the thermal neutron gamma equivalent in energy peak around three MeV, which made a marvelous detector to detect thermal neutrons, even if you didn't want to do an n-gamma, pulse shape discrimination and all those complicated things. So, you can make it work simple and you can also get it to work in a more realistic way. So, that was my one of the projects apart from other garnets and scintillators that I worked on.

Ryan Howell [00:06:34] Very good. And what changes when you go from one millimeter out to an inch?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:06:38] Oh, my God, it's huge. Of course, I was doing the detection part, and I was not the real person to do the scintillator. With all the challenge, I'm sure they must have had sleepless nights. It's basically the light collection.

Ryan Howell [00:06:51] So it makes it more sensitive?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:06:52] As you grow, it's very difficult. Your lights get trapped within the scintillator. All you want from the scintillator is a big light output. That's the thing, because as light output goes, noise increases. You don't get to see what you want to see. And that's a big challenge so that the light reflects out in one surface and doesn't get lost from that. So, that's one of the biggest challenges.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:07:14] So the way we used to do it is when I would do the testing and the measurement, we would talk with the detector developer and they would see what's happening and then they'll go back, grow another scintillator and come back. And this is how we would talk. And of course, the recipes are secret.

Ryan Howell [00:07:30] Sure, sure. But that's the process.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:07:32] That's the process.

Ryan Howell [00:07:33] So maybe for our listeners who don't know what a scintillator is, can you talk a little bit about what that exact technology is and how that works?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:07:39] Yeah, that's very simple. It's simple. A scintillator, something scintillates, gives out light. If there is an interaction, whatever may be the interaction... For us, the interaction is all the ionizing radiation that we were looking into, mainly the neutrons and the Gammas, those are the radiation. The scintillator was mainly to detect those radiation, but there are scintillators for other radiation. So when this radiation is incident on the sample... We call it a scintillator.

Ryan Howell [00:08:12] The material.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:08:12] Yeah, the material. Some chemistry happens; it's complicated. There is some jumping of electrons here and there which gives out some light. And the amount of light we get is directly proportional to the energy of the incident radiation that was falling onto the simulator.

Ryan Howell [00:08:33] And that's what the electronics can then interpret as the spectrum of the radiation.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:08:38] Of the radiation, yes. But then again, there are other things happening, but this is just a simple way to explain what the scintillator is. And so, the main objective is to get as much light as you want to collect out of the scintillator, but again, that is not the end. That light has to fall into some of the electronics, which is usually a photo multiplier to another solid state electronic tube, called a solid state photo multiplier tube, to get the electrons out and then try to extrapolate what we got and what was incidental on the main detector. So, that's how a scintillator works in a nutshell.

Ryan Howell [00:09:23] That's great. So that was your work up in Massachusetts. How did you end up in Florida?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:09:28] Oh, no. Then in between there was a long story. I'm moving around all over the world. Okay, so after that, I had some family things, so I moved back to India. There, I was a professor and I was the head of the department of an engineering college. And I was basically designing courses, teaching students and administrating. I was in charge of about 40 faculties who were working under me, and there were 500 students. I knew 50% of the students by name because I used to interact quite a lot with them to understand their background and things.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:10:03] So that was four years, and then I realized, within a couple of years, within the four years that I'm going away from research every day. And I couldn't get any interesting projects out there, and that made me come back to the US, back to Kentucky. And then, I was working with some interesting... A neutronless beta decay project, more physics oriented. And luckily, good work happened and then I moved to Florida. So, it's a long...

Ryan Howell [00:10:37] Roundabout. Well, it's good that you're back in the States. You worked for Sun Nuclear for a little while.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:10:41] Yes.

Ryan Howell [00:10:42] And that was still in the detector side?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:10:45] Sun Nuclear is a medical physics company. Now, Mirion has bought it, after I left. And so, they have these different detectors to basically analyze the beam from the clinic. Back then, it was mainly clinic, but the instrument that was there to detect... So, my project was mainly to see how much radiation damage it's getting from the measurement. So, it was not directly building up a detector, but again, working on some type of instrument which has radiation falling on it and seeing the...

Ryan Howell [00:11:26] That's radiation monitoring, right?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:11:27] More like radiation monitoring, yes.

Ryan Howell [00:11:29] Can you talk a little bit about the role of radiation monitoring in these advanced nuclear technologies?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:11:37] Those detectors, especially the water phantom or the other detectors, that is mainly for detecting the photons and the X-rays and other reaction channels that opens in high energy. There are some motors and electronics which are driving things around. Some of the theoretical work and experiments were to find out how much dose those areas were getting, and which will not damage. So that once we make an instrument and we put it out in the market, it should be there for 15 years or 20 years without any radiation damage.

Ryan Howell [00:12:19] Okay, so you were working on the service life of the detector.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:12:22] Yes, more on the service life of the detector, which is very different.

Ryan Howell [00:12:25] So radiation damage to materials. Had you had much background in materials before?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:12:29] No, no. But it's a big collaboration, right? Like, it's not me, so there was another person who would run a lot of simulation, and then I would go to the lab and do the measurement of how much radiation we are getting, and then extrapolate to some other... We would not do all the experiment, but just to see what we were getting and what we do expect to get from a year out, or 10 years or 20 years down the line. So, that's different.

Ryan Howell [00:13:01] No, that's great. So, how did you land here at Georgia Tech? Was there anything in between Sun Nuclear and here?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:13:07] No, no, no. Georgia Tech, this is very fine. This is almost like my dream job, because if you look into my history, I like industry. And R&D in industry, I really like. It's very upbeat and you get to see things which nobody has seen before, and you're working on that before it comes out to the market, and it's your child.

Ryan Howell [00:13:33] Right. And you also seem to have a passion for students.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:13:35] I have a passion for students. I think more for R&D. I definitely like to develop something. I am the one who is seeing or my team is the one who is seeing. So, that's true. And not too much doing the academic job. I like teaching, but not so much bookkeeping, which is now... So, that's the thing. But then, I felt this job was almost a balance between... Like, I have an academic environment around me, with hopefully, some industrial overlap. And for my industrial background, I can always bring things here, so that's always open. And of course, my favorite neutrons are here too, so I can work with them. I work with neutrons and with different projects.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:14:22] I work with some of the academic projects, which are again, in industry. That's missing, because in industry, they have a goal and they are focused on that. Academics, you have variety of projects. And also, those are pretty much the first time. Although the real R&D, the real research and development, again, starts from years. So, that was the reason I felt that this job is pretty much a balance. And I can teach if I want to a little bit and interact with students, because young minds keep you always ready.

Ryan Howell [00:14:56] That's great. Yeah, industry definitely takes your broad and makes you very focused and narrow and you get to come the other way where you've got industry experience and get to expand that to all the students.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:15:06] Yes.

Ryan Howell [00:15:07] That's fantastic.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:15:09] And I also have students... because I've seen the other side a little bit more than...

Ryan Howell [00:15:15] You can talk from the real world side.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:15:17] Yes, real world. But fortunately, the industries where I've worked and the people I have worked with, they have given me a lot of freedom to do a lot more research than just, "Okay, just do this." So, I had a little bit of freedom to go a little bit out of the way and explore some other things, even if it was not focused just on the proposal.

Ryan Howell [00:15:36] Yeah, that's great. So, talk to us about your fascination with neutrons and what you like to do with them here.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:15:43] Okay, so the neutrons... The interaction of neutrons is very interesting because unlike other radiation, of course, photons are also charged and as neutrons, they do not have charge. But the way they interact with the material doesn't only depend on the density. Of course, it doesn't depend on a different type of scattering or, finally, the inelastic of... Some of the material, the way it interacts is different. And then, thermal interacts and fast neutrons, so there's a whole range of things.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:16:20] Really, I'm fascinated with detection, like how to detect neutrons. And that's what I've done on some of the development, but those are mainly for thermal neutrons. But at Georgia Tech you have the enormous number of instruments to do not only the thermal neutrons, but also the other neutrons, thermal and the fast neutrons. And we have different neutron generators, we have neutron sources. Pick up a range, that neutron is available, which is absolutely fascinating.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:16:50] So, most of my work goes in doing the instrumentation part, because some of these detectors are very old. You won't believe it, when we call these people to say that we need a servicing, they do not believe that they had made those instruments. They're like 30 years old, but they work fabulously because the neutron characters have not changed.

Ryan Howell [00:17:15] That company didn't, but the company that they bought, that they bought did.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:17:18] Exactly, exactly.

Ryan Howell [00:17:20] I've been there before buying parts off of eBay to try and keep stuff going.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:17:23] Yes. And even the label... On the label they have the phone number and you will see that there have already been three changes since the time they have sold you that detector. The interesting part here is there are many detectors and most of the time, my work goes in getting the field characterized. The neutron source for those it's getting at what distance and what dose we would have gotten if human tissue was there and how can we mimic some of the situation.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:17:59] Like, for example, when you're going to space, there's a lot of radiation around. Now, do we go up and do all the measurements there? That's not possible. So we do some simulations. And then with our sources, we try to reproduce that type of an environment to get a similar dose rate, and then we bring our detectors and other instruments just to check whether we are getting it and then expose our interest in the material we are interested in to see the effect of dose. That's something which I have not, again, worked in before. So, to characterize the neutron field, which is I think very, very fascinating.

Ryan Howell [00:18:40] Are there any long-going studies that you guys have partnerships with that you can talk about?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:18:43] So, we have this facility called the Radiological Science and Engineering Lab at Georgia Tech.

Ryan Howell [00:18:56] Which you're the manager for.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:18:56] Which I'm the manager for. That's basically... You cannot keep sources right everywhere. So, this is mostly the place where all the sources are kept or we have access to all the sources. And this is where I work with different people all around Georgia, like other departments as Georgia Tech who are developing different detectors. We have projects with Emory with trying to understand the effect of these radiations on DNA. So, that's an ongoing project, and I'm sure that will be a pretty long project. And we are going step by step to understand what's the effect of this radiation.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:19:39] First, we understand what the radiation is, we try to characterize the field, and then we make it incident to some of the cells. We have done Phase Zero work and the results are out. But we have some other ideas in mind. And we are working, mainly, with Emory for this cell project. And there are the different projects. Most of my projects are overlapping in testing new scintillators and new detectors that students are developing to see the response.

Ryan Howell [00:20:11] So, is this like marrying the sciences and the humanities together?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:20:15] Yeah. Yes, all these things, we have to bring all together, right? Because the biology, I think that was always the thing that they didn't have access to this type of radiation and the sources. And now with the medical physics system, like with the clinic and the flash theory and things coming up, high radiation things, now these are getting more marched together. And we have the capability to produce those fields somewhere here at Georgia Tech, so we are trying to mimic those in the radiation environment and see what the experimental results come out to be.

Ryan Howell [00:20:49] Yeah, that's great.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:20:50] Apart from in the simulation, which is there already.

Ryan Howell [00:20:53] Yes, yes. So what new projects or future projects are you going to be working on soon that you're excited about.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:21:02] Future projects, of course, the moment we get a new instrument... One of the projects, there's a new detector out there called ADVACAM Pix. It's a hybrid semi-conductor detector, and we should be getting one field module very soon just to check it out. I'm excited about that instrument because that can do a lot of those measurements, linear energy transfer, and all the things that we are doing with different detectors. First, to understand how the detector works and to check all our measurements that we have done, and then to go from there and beyond, like bringing them into the class laboratories. I'm really interested to get these new detectors which are there in the market, to bring it into the lab course. Already, we have some fascinating new digitizers and everything in the lab modules, but incorporate them into the curriculum.

Ryan Howell [00:22:00] Yeah, so as we bring all these detector technologies into the 21st century where we're going all digital, we're going from these analog things where it was a lot of hardware that is actually physically changing dials and knobs and you can see things on the scale, and now we're going to digital. Have you seen any pushback from the industry or from the radiation protection side on trusting those technologies that are now just codes and software analyzing these?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:22:26] I have not worked exactly on that part, but I personally do a double-check no matter. Because the good thing about digitizers... They are fascinating and lab class is excellent, but sometimes when we are doing some detailed work... Just to understand, because the digitizers are programmed by someone and they have the limitations which we do not know. Only the company knows. I knew the detectors I developed because I had also done those things, but then when we go and sell it, we do not tell all the things. You know, there's no point in telling that information. So whatever we do, we definitely take a signal and put it to the oscilloscope. Maybe I do it because I'm from the old school. And I don't know how long people will continue to do that.

Ryan Howell [00:23:14] You have to pass that along, yes.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:23:15] Yes, and of course, every digitizer does have its waveform that you can see, which I really do not know how they do it. There is some signal processing they do even before you get to see, though, the waveform on the digitizer. So, the first step is still the analog part and looking into the scope trays, and if you are happy then I do the rest of the processing. And sometimes we do a comparison and do it with some analog electronics. With the new modules, I just try to get to... Because I'm used to it. And then go move to digital using digitizers. Let's see, when we get these new instruments, how do the results match with all the old detectors and systems we have. So, that's something probably...

Ryan Howell [00:24:03] Yeah, that's very interesting. And so, as the nuclear industry seems to be booming right now, and we're talking about thousands of new reactor types and thousands of different plants coming on line, how do you see these instruments and detectors marrying in with that and being baked into the solution?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:24:22] In a good way, these are small detectors so it's easy to keep them anywhere, but we have to check how much radiation damage will be done. But I think it's very portable and convenient. You can take all the data outside so you can always constantly monitor compared to, probably, the old ones that were there. They were bulky and you had to always have those long cables and all the data doesn't get recorded. But I think with this, it will definitely help to monitor the doses for places where maybe it was not easy to access. Because these are very small; it's a 1.5 centimeter by 1.5 centimeter, that's the sensor. So it's easy, but we have to check how much in a wave will go to the saturation, and that's where we're looking forward to test these instruments.

Ryan Howell [00:25:20] It sounds like you guys are getting a new reactor here. Will you get to play a part in taking measurements over there?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:25:28] Well, when we've got all the instruments, anything I get a green signal for, I'll be happy to go and start them in our work. And that's why it's good to do something with characterization, with systems we already know. And then, of course, an unknown, it's easy to...

Ryan Howell [00:25:43] Yeah, then you have something to compare it to in baseline.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:25:45] Yes, compare it to the baseline. And we are confident of what we have here, and the students are working hard on those projects.

Ryan Howell [00:25:52] Very good. Well yeah, is there anything that we've missed that you'd like to talk about? Any projects that you're particularly fond of along your career path?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:26:03] Of course, the most interesting project was the scintillator that was developed at Radiation Monitoring Devices. Of course, it's on the shelf now, but getting a scintillator that gives a very good gamma spectra. It also measures the neutron and gives a thermal neutron peak around three MeV, which is far away from the rest of them, most of the gamma backgrounds that we see. Getting to make the thing work into a detector system with different types of charge integration and other things to make this detector work, that was very, very fascinating. And to understand how better we can get rejection ratio resolution and make it user friendly to the customers. So, that was good, yeah.

Ryan Howell [00:27:02] And that was on the radiation protection side and working with health physicists, right? Do you see that being the future for technology, just continue the push there?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:27:14] Yes, of course. Because we need a smaller system and a more flexible system; that's important. And like for example, the detector of that, we can fix that in the market; one device capable of doing many things. So, that's important because it's not only one radiation, right? All the radiations around. So, understanding the dose from everything, that is a good step forward. Yes, absolutely.

Ryan Howell [00:27:43] Well, we always like to end our podcasts with something hopeful for the future. So can you talk a little bit about where you hope things go here within the Department at Georgia Tech or within the nuclear community abroad?

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:27:58] Finally the nuclear community, of course, has woken up, which is a good thing. Nuclear power almost got a little bit pushed under the carpet, so people are aware that this is a solution. And I'm sure that in the nuclear community, always felt that this was the right solution, but now we have the support from the rest of the world and the rest of the people here. So that give you a double advantage of speaking out loud. And this is where we are going, and this should be the right direction. Use less electricity, understand where we need and how we can solve, and that's where the nuclear power plant will help us to reach.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:28:39] And everyone is working for the best way to get it in a safe way so that it reaches to the people without taxing them for the money. And making them safe; the people who are working them, they are not getting radiation. So, we are thinking about every aspect. It's not that, "Okay, there's a nuclear power plant. We get a lot of energy and that's all." There are different aspects that we all are working on to make our life better and the next generation's life better.

Ryan Howell [00:29:11] Very good. Well, Dr. Sharmistha, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Sharmistha Mukhopadhyay [00:29:17] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Howell [00:01:00] Welcome, everybody. This is another episode of Titans of Nuclear. My name is Ryan Howell, and I'm here on the campus of Georgia Tech with Professor Anna Erickson. So, welcome.

Anna Erickson [00:01:10] Thank you, Ryan. Thank you for having me on the podcast.

Ryan Howell [00:01:14] We always like to hear where your background was, where you grew up, and what you did in your childhood. So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Anna Erickson [00:01:22] Well, great question. So I guess we're going back to the dark times. Well, first of all, this is Titans of Nuclear, and I'm so honored to be here on this podcast. Tremendous program, so I'm really appreciative to be able to participate. So what makes nuclear different from other energy sources? We often hear that from our students as they come visit the program. Well, this is the question that really got me into nuclear. When we think about nuclear energy, there's really nothing that's comparable to it in terms of energy density. I remember I was five years old picking up newspaper clippings about Chernobyl to read to my baby sister. Ultimately horrifying my mother, but that's when my journey in nuclear began.

Ryan Howell [00:02:11] Where were you living at the time?.

Anna Erickson [00:02:12] I was in Russia at that time, the other side of Russia. As far from Chernobyl as you can be, in fact, very close to Japan. But obviously, that accident resonated throughout the entire world and everybody was reading about it at the time, a few years post accident. So, I actually collected information about Chernobyl for a while as a kid, and then I proceeded majoring in nuclear physics throughout my high school. And then I came to America. In 2001, I was basically visiting my mother who lived here at the time, and I wanted to catch up on English because I wasn't speaking English very well. We actually learned Japanese back where I grew up instead of English. And she said, "Well, why don't you stay here and take some classes in English?" So, a sort of immersive experience.

Anna Erickson [00:03:03] And the next thing I know, after going to community college for a couple of years, I ended up at Oregon State, basically visiting the campus with a friend of mine. And as we were driving through campus, I saw a building called Radiation Center. And my friend, who knew that I had a fascination with nuclear energy, he said, "Do you want to stop and see?" I said, "Well, sure." So we stopped and I asked somebody at the reception if we could tour the reactor. And luckily, Professor Todd Palmer was in attendance at that time, and he gave me this most memorable tour of the TRIGA reactor. And I said, "Wow, I just want to be here." So I went to Oregon State for the graduate degree. And man, never do I regret that. I think that was one of the best life experiences.

Ryan Howell [00:03:53] Yeah, that's great. So then you went to school there, and then how did you get involved with the National Labs?

Anna Erickson [00:03:59] Well, I was at Oregon State, and one of the things that I wanted to do is to see what's the future for advanced reactors. I was obsessed with anything that's non light-water at that time, in particular, liquid metal cooled reactors. One of the things that actually was very helpful is interacting with faculty through both coursework as well as the American Nuclear Society. I was actually Co-President or Vice President, I can't remember anymore. And a faculty member suggested to contact a colleague of his at Argonne National Lab who was working at the time on a liquid lead cooled reactor called SSTAR, Small, Secure, Transportable Autonomous Reactor. And I said, "Wow, that's a dream internship.".

Anna Erickson [00:04:52] So, I went to Argonne. This was past my junior year. I went there again that winter, and then I went for the third time the next summer between undergraduate and graduate schools. This was a fascinating experience. I carried it throughout grad school. I actually had internships at Lawrence Livermore Lab as a grad student, and now I run a consortium, a consortium that actually works with 12 National Labs. We have a lot of contact with National Labs, and I try to visit at least one lab about monthly.

Ryan Howell [00:05:32] That's great. Yeah, tell us more about the consortium and technology. How does that work?

Anna Erickson [00:05:36] So, National Nuclear Security Administration runs, at this point, four different consortia. They just awarded the newest one. We decided to compete for a consortium back in 2018. It's a five year commitment, $25 million investment by the National Nuclear Security Administration with a goal to create a pipeline of students to pass them from universities to National Labs. So, to convince them to go to the National Labs to work. And we're now in the fourth year of that. So part of the consortium, we have 12 universities and 12 National Laboratories, and our students get to spend their summers.

Ryan Howell [00:06:19] So they kind of bounce around to different places, or?

Anna Erickson [00:06:22] Not necessarily bouncing around, but they choose a lab that is very closely aligned to their research interests.

Ryan Howell [00:06:29] So it's more a focus of which one they want to partner with.

Anna Erickson [00:06:30] And a lot of times what we see is that projects that the students work on during the summer turn into lifelong relationships. They end up going to that lab for their postdoc and then later become staff scientists there. It's a very good experience for our students.

Ryan Howell [00:06:43] Sure. That's great and that's great for them to be able to get involved and dig in a little deeper before they just go out into industry and don't know exactly what they want to do. I'm a big fan of the co-op program and getting involved in what you think you want to work on. It's a good way to decide early. So how did that transition into now, you're leading this Laboratory for Advanced Nonproliferation and Safety?

Anna Erickson [00:07:06] Yes. This has a little bit of a back story to when I tried to find my voice as a faculty member. I interviewed at Georgia Tech in 2011. I was still a grad student at MIT at that time. And I was getting ready to graduate when Georgia Tech contacted me to come and interview. And I said, "Hmm, the South. That's so different from New England and Massachusetts." And I talked to a friend of mine who actually went to Georgia Tech, and then we were at MIT together for a while and then he was back to Atlanta. And he said, "Well, what are you going to lose? Come interview and see Atlanta for yourself." And it was in February. So, if you've been to New England in February, you know that there's usually horrific weather with winds and snow storms.

Ryan Howell [00:07:58] Cold and lots of snow.

Anna Erickson [00:07:59] Just wonderful, wonderful winter. Especially if you park your car at the curbside and you have to dig a new space for yourself every time. So here I was in February, landing at the airport in my down coat and suitcase full of sweaters. And Atlanta greeted me with 70 degree weather. And I interviewed for a couple of days here at Georgia Tech. And I said, "Wow, there is life in the winter after all." So I made a point of communicating to Georgia Tech, saying that, "I think there's a good opportunity for me to fit in this program here," which was very focused on either reactor engineering or medical health physics. But there was nothing, really, on nonproliferation or bridging the two communities.

Anna Erickson [00:08:46] One of the initiatives that I have undertaken when I started at Georgia Tech is to really make these two groups talk to each other. So hence, it's Laboratory for Advanced Nuclear Nonproliferation and Safety, issues spanning the entire fuel cycle from the reactor design and the safety aspects of it to nonproliferation, materials control, forensics, etc. And interestingly in the beginning, I was told, "Well, you're trying to do too much. You will not get your tenure unless you have a very narrow focus." And I said, "Well, I'll take my chances. And if I don't get the tenure, at least I will try."

Ryan Howell [00:09:26] Have a little fun on the way, sure.

Anna Erickson [00:09:27] Exactly. Well, this turned into a very good opportunity for our students. They actually loved the fact that, regardless of what you do, whether you're computational or lab, you get to experience multiple aspects of research. Even the students that are computational in my lab, I make them do lab work. So that way, they graduate with knowing how detectors work or why they make certain decisions when it comes to setting up an experiment. So, this laboratory actually turned into a nice pipeline of students to the National Labs. We've graduated 11 PhDs in the past decade, and I want to say about more than half of them are at National Labs and three of them now at the university, so faculty members all like that.

Ryan Howell [00:10:16] That's great. So what are you currently teaching?

Anna Erickson [00:10:20] This is a great question. About three years ago, we decided to explore something new for our graduate students. I partnered with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs here at Georgia Tech, and as the name suggests, it's named after Senator Nunn. And we actually ended up working with Senator Nunn on this new program. In fact, I hear a rumor he's going to be at our class on Monday.

Ryan Howell [00:10:46] All right.

Anna Erickson [00:10:46] We actually hosted him quite a few times, mostly virtual, in our courses. So what we created is something unique. It's a new graduate certificate that blends together nuclear engineering and technology and the policy and international affairs aspect of it. Let me give you an example. What's happening in the world right now? We all understand that as far as nuclear weapon countries, we're down to three very big ones. It used to be two; it used to be a bipolar world, Russia versus the United States, or I should say, Soviet Union, during the Cold War. But now China is emerging as another leader in nuclear as a nuclear empire in terms of producing massive amounts of warheads and weapons. So how do we deal with this world? What type of agreements are needed?

Anna Erickson [00:11:47] And what we need to understand is that this is not just a technology issue, it's also policy and implementation, so diplomacy, etc. We are down to the last agreement between Russia and the United States, the New START treaty. It's actually set to expire in 2026. But as we've heard recently, Vladimir Putin decided that he may pull out of this agreement.

Anna Erickson [00:12:14] Why was New START important for Russia-US relations? Well, number one, it limited the number of strategic weapons that are deployed around the world or around Russia for decades. The second, it allowed the inspectors or people that are affiliated with nuclear weapons inspection to enter the facilities and actually conduct verification. Well, we haven't done that since 2020, so we really don't have any insight as to what's going on.

Anna Erickson [00:12:43] Now, there are a few limitations to that agreement. In particular, it covers nothing about what we've all heard on the news, so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons. Some people refer to them as tactical, which I stand by is probably not the correct way to look at it. There's no such thing as tactical, really. Everything is more or less strategic, right? But those weapons, they do not get covered under any agreements.

Anna Erickson [00:13:12] So what do we do with China? We have nothing between the US and China right now. So, we have this big problem on our hands. And the next generation of scientists, diplomats, and policymakers need to be aware of the global problem of the technology, nuclear modernization efforts, and the policy and the implementation of that. So, we launched this new certificate to address this gap, the limitation that we currently see in the education system. The certificate caters to both nuclear engineering students, as well as Sam Nunn policy students. The certificate is in its third year, so we had a lot of success and good feedback from the students.

Ryan Howell [00:13:56] That's fantastic news, to be training people that are knowledgeable on nuclear and have an interest in policy. We need those kinds of people in the world to be able to speak coherently about some of these issues and go out and tackle those. So, that's fantastic. Are you currently publicizing anything or publishing any new reports, journal articles, anything like that?

Anna Erickson [00:14:21] Well, always, right? I mean, this is part of the job, comes with the job, publishing things. I think our latest publication that we're trying to tackle is really related to this emerging technology and policy. So one of the things that we would like to tackle within this lab is analyzing the technology gap as far as both the verification and detection of nuclear activities and how we can put it in perspective. If we were to look at the next generation treaties and agreements, what technologies would we want to implement, whether it's the new hypersensitive sensors. Is it redundancy within our sensing? What part of the fuel cycle needs to be safeguarded most? Where are the limitations, especially when it comes to the novel reactors, right? There's a lot of hype right now around molten salt reactors, the ones that have fuel dissolved in them, and trying to understand how we can safeguard those reactors better in the near future. Because they possess characteristics of both reactors and, also, reprocessing facilities. So, what is the next generation technology and policy that will be needed for us to make the world safer?

Ryan Howell [00:15:40] Yeah, that'd be great if you could talk a little bit more about that. We've got a lot of companies here in the US that are working on new small modular reactors and the next generation of reactor designs. But from a nonproliferation standpoint, can you talk about... Obviously we're trying to ramp up and see reactors powering everything around the world to get us to net zero, but what does that look like from a nonproliferation standpoint?

Anna Erickson [00:16:05] It's challenging, to say the least. One of the challenges is that everybody is looking at the technology from different perspectives. And as we know, nuclear reactors have very unique characteristics that would affect how we safeguard those facilities, how we safeguard the reactors themselves. There's of course, a unifying factor that is safety related that we can rely on, to some extent. But most of the nonproliferation by design safeguards, by design aspects, have really depended on the system itself.

Anna Erickson [00:16:37] And as I mentioned, some of the more interesting designs involve dissolution of fuel within the coolant, which may lead to increased fuel utilization and other safety aspects related parameters that are beneficial. But how would that impact nonproliferation? How would that impact our ability to safeguard? This is still pretty open as far as the question. But we're working on it with the perspective that, at some point, we'll have to answer this, and it's better if we study it now as opposed to post-design completion.

Anna Erickson [00:17:10] So, Georgia Tech is part of the big effort towards deployment of the next generation reactor. We are participating on a consortium of four universities. Three of them are in Texas and one in Georgia, Georgia Tech, to design research-sized molten salt reactor with an idea to study it in depth in a much smaller footprint and format, provide valuable data to the community, but also understand how we can commercialize that in the near future.

Ryan Howell [00:17:48] You guys will be training the next set of nuclear engineers.

Anna Erickson [00:17:51] Precisely.

Ryan Howell [00:17:51] Besides working with this, they'll have real world, hands on experience with that. That's fantastic.

Anna Erickson [00:17:56] Well, one of the things that affected my, I guess, background on nuclear... Remember how I said that I was obsessed with all reactor types and especially molten metal. But as I've done a number of designs during my undergraduate as well as my master's degree, one of the things that I really have to think hard about is are we going to move past this paper reactor stage? We can continue to design systems, but when are we building something with our hands?

Anna Erickson [00:18:26] So for my PhD, I took that 180 degree turn and I went from the reactor design into experimental detection. I got to build detectors. I got to do plumbing and electrical. I can actually plumb things in my house now, which was a great experience. So I built my own systems there, and that was very satisfying to see something going from an idea, a concept on paper, to completion in real life. This is critical for our students.

Anna Erickson [00:18:56] I argued that in 2016 when we discussed what the next generation reactor deployment might look like, when we had a workshop on advanced reactor technology. And I said, "One of the things that we need to address is not just the technology itself, it's also the workforce." We do not want to discourage our students from going on to nuclear. We don't want to be perceived as a stagnation field, right? We want to be the most innovative field. We want to attract students and turn our passion towards them and see if they can continue.

Ryan Howell [00:19:32] No, that's actually a big problem in the nuclear industry. We've got a lot of the guys that were originally in the nuclear power industry that are all retiring out and there's definitely a gap there. So yeah, excited to hear you guys are training the next generation of reactor operators and designers. That's fantastic.

Anna Erickson [00:19:50] Yes, indeed.

Ryan Howell [00:19:53] Can you paint us a picture for the future? Where do you hope things go?

Anna Erickson [00:19:57] Well, let me start with Georgia Tech, because this is close to home and then maybe I'll talk about the bigger picture. One thing that, as a message to our students, as a message to our faculty that I often try to convey is we cannot be the followers, we have to lead. We have to be the leaders. When it comes to the technology or policy, talking on Capitol Hill, making sure our voices are heard, we have to lead and lead with confidence. And this is critical because if we don't view ourselves as the leaders, it's really difficult to influence the field and others.

Anna Erickson [00:20:39] So, this is what we see with nuclear. I think for many years we buckled down under the pressure of, "Hey, how does this society pursue nuclear?" It's difficult because a lot of times people are afraid of nuclear, people don't understand it.

Ryan Howell [00:20:58] We didn't do ourselves any favors there, yeah.

Anna Erickson [00:20:59] Right. And the idea is that we cannot give into pressure of historical opinions. Let's put it mildly, right?

Ryan Howell [00:21:09] Nice, yes.

Anna Erickson [00:21:11] But we need to lead into a better future. And I think the American Nuclear Society and our society in general, we have found our voice. We know how to communicate with the broader community. Instead of being overly technical, almost condescending, we want to tell them the future of nuclear is bright. It is NIF bright. It is nuclear power bright. And take it beyond, saying that, "There is no medicine without nuclear." You cannot have diagnostics or treatment of cancers without X-rays.

Ryan Howell [00:21:48] Right.

Anna Erickson [00:21:49] There is no such thing as oil exploration without nuclear. Not that we want more oil, but I'm saying that they utilize neutron sources to find it. We can give numerous examples where nuclear influences the society, but we don't emphasize it. And I think what we're doing now with the reactors being the integral part of the next generation solution for the climate, we hit it very close to home for the young people. They want to see a better planet. They're not afraid of the consequences, as we've seen with the previous generations. They want to learn and they're hungry.

Ryan Howell [00:22:32] Yeah. Hungry to fix those challenges head on. That's fantastic. So, what can we do to continue educating the public? I think that's a big thing. Does ANS, American Nuclear Society, do any public outreach or is there some other forum for that?

Anna Erickson [00:22:48] Yes. That's a great question. I think you're sort of answering your own question through this podcast, right?

Ryan Howell [00:22:53] Trying to, yes.

Anna Erickson [00:22:53] Yes. One of the things that I think our community, nuclear engineering, medical physics, health, physics communities should do more is communication. Whether through podcasts, general education, talking to your colleagues, talking to your families, basically being able to highlight the benefits of the nuclear without shying away from the problems. Every industry has a problem. I mean, nuclear's record is stellar compared to some industries, yet we are more afraid of things we cannot see or touch or feel. So one of the things that we've been doing really well through the American Nuclear Society is this communication. The leadership of the American Nuclear Society did a tremendous job of turning away from overly technical seminar type presentations.

Ryan Howell [00:23:54] And very private to the nuclear industry.

Anna Erickson [00:23:55] Very private, behind the paywall. And now, "Hey, let's talk to high schoolers. Let's talk to colleges. Let's make sure that people at four year colleges without nuclear engineering degrees still have an idea of what we do, and maybe we can convince them to go to grad school." In fact, we've done a number of outreaches like that here through the ETI Consortium as well as the NRE program of talking to colleges here in Atlanta, HBCU and MSI colleges. The students at those colleges don't traditionally experience graduate education like our undergrad. In my lab alone, I have six undergrads in a given semester just working with grad students. And what's the rate of those undergrads going to grad school? It's close to 100% because they love it; they love research.

Anna Erickson [00:24:45] So when we talk about four year colleges, we're talking about a lot of potential that we can tap into and bring those students to become grad students, to become the next generation researchers. So, communication is critical at every level, not just general podcast, which by the way, is very effective, I've got to say, but also communicating through high school, four year colleges, and general public.

Ryan Howell [00:25:16] Yeah, that's great. Well, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us that we haven't touched on?

Anna Erickson [00:25:22] Well, I mean, we can talk for another three or four hours easily, because nuclear is a fascinating topic. But I want to express the gratitude to our community in general, our nuclear engineering community, that stepped in and really realized that we can turn things around for nuclear. And once we believe in this, we have our government believing in this now. There are a number of initiatives that are ongoing, and I think it will only increase. So I want to thank everybody who listens to this podcast, but also all of our amazing researchers and scientists who contribute every day in growing this next generation workforce.

Ryan Howell [00:26:06] That's fantastic. Well, thank you, Professor Erickson, for joining us today on Titans of Nuclear. We really appreciate your time.

Anna Erickson [00:26:15] Thank you for having me. Appreciate the work you do.