Dr. Adam Stein, The Breakthrough Institute

Today’s episode of Gener8 aims to understand how numerous challenges affecting the future of nuclear energy fit together and whether one or another rises above the rest. Dr. Adam Stein, Director of Nuclear Energy Innovation at The Breakthrough Institute (BTI), joined us to share his thoughts and research around these challenges.

To begin our conversation with Adam, we started with a topic that seems to be at the center of a lot of the work Adam and others have authored at BTI and that is the role of and the need for reform with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Adam shared some perspectives on just what the challenges at the NRC look like and how they affect current as well as future deployment plans. Our conversation on the NRC also examined how it compares to other challenges facing nuclear deployments, where and how we could or should see change at the NRC, as well as how to recognize that any such change is occurring. We then turned to what brought Adam into this space as well as BTI’s focus before having Adam share insights around recent work he has published with regards to the cancellation of the Carbon Free Power Project. Our conversation with Adam closed out by looking at the coal-to-nuclear transition opportunity as well as Adam sharing some thoughts on the broad nuclear opportunity and takeaways from his recent trip to Japan to visit Fukushima Daiichi.

We hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation as much as we did.