Decouple

James Krellenstein returns to take apart one of the most persistent myths in energy discourse: the idea that there was a golden age when nuclear power was cheaper than coal. The plants people point to, Oyster Creek, Dresden, Point Beach, Quad Cities, were cheap to the utilities that bought them, but they were not cheap to build. General Electric and Westinghouse sold them as fixed-price turnkey projects at a deliberate loss, eating roughly 1 billion in 1960s dollars, more than 10 billion adjusted for inflation, across about a dozen plants. This loss leader strategy paid off. Between 1962 and 1976 the US nuclear fleet doubled its capacity roughly every 2 years, a stretch of sustained growth that rivals anything in American industrial history and still constitutes the largest nuclear fleet on earth in 2026.The conversation traces how turnkey era prices distorted every nuclear cost comparison that followed, why the utilities themselves pushed to abandon turnkey contracts, and how regulatory change, slowing load growth, and across-the-board cost inflation turned the boom into a wave of cancellations. Krellenstein closes on the fundamental question for the present moment: if we want to set off another ordering cycle, someone has to absorb first-of-a-kind risk with a balance sheet large enough to guarantee a firm fixed price, and it is not obvious who that is. Back then GE and Westinghouse could swallow the losses because they were two of the largest industrial conglomerates on earth and commercial reactors were a single-digit percentage of their business. No comparable actor today has shown any willingness to take that risk on, which explains both how the world's largest nuclear fleet got built and why nobody has been willing to repeat the trick since.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rssWebsite: https://www.decouple.media

In this special episode of Decouple, Chris Keefer speaks with Ken Petrunik, one of the few leaders in the Western nuclear industry who has taken large reactors from first concrete to operation under budget and ahead of schedule. Petrunik’s career spans Canada’s nuclear golden age and its export era, with senior roles in Romania, Argentina, and China, including leading the Qinshan Phase III CANDU reactors, delivered ahead of schedule and under budget under a fixed price engineering, procurement, and construction contract. The conversation traces how Canada once built nuclear plants at scale and how that environment shaped project managers capable of carrying real responsibility.We deep dive how nuclear projects are actually delivered, including construction sequencing, labor productivity, schedule control, and on site authority. Petrunik recounts moments when projects nearly failed and explains how early decisions and transparent coordination allowed recovery before delays became irreversible. The episode also examines what was lost as Canada’s build capability faded and what today’s nuclear programs can still learn from the people who led projects when reactors were routinely built.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rssWebsite: https://www.decouple.media

Why have we built nuclear ships before, proven they can operate, and still not made them commonplace? Nick Touran breaks down the history of maritime nuclear power, from the Nuclear Ship Savannah and Otto Hahn to Japan’s Mutsu and Russia’s Sevmorput, then pivots to floating nuclear power concepts such as the MH 1A Sturgis and the Offshore Power Systems program. We explore what worked, what failed, and what keeps blocking adoption, including port access rules, indemnity and international agreements, staffing costs, containerization economics, shielding and public reaction, and the unique operational demands of running reactors at sea.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rssWebsite: https://www.decouple.media

The first U.S. nuclear renaissance collapsed under the weight of cheap shale gas, lost institutional expertise, and disastrous projects like Vogtle and Summer. Today, America is planning a fleet of eight AP1000 reactors, backed by unprecedented federal incentives. But can the country actually build large nuclear again?In this video, we break down what really killed the 2000s revival, why Fukushima wasn’t the turning point, and how AP1000 and ESBWR passive safety performed in station-blackout analyses. Most importantly, we explore why nuclear success depends not on reactor design, but on rebuilding the developer organizations needed to execute these megaprojects.If the United States can rebuild those institutions, a real nuclear comeback is possible. If not, history risks repeating itself.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rssWebsite: https://www.decouple.media

In this episode, Chris Keefer speaks with Hadron Energy founder Samuel Gibson, the twenty four year old entrepreneur pursuing a ten megawatt integral pressurized water microreactor through a one point two billion dollar business combination with GigCapital7. Gibson outlines why he believes light water is the fastest licensing path, how he assembled a veteran nuclear team, and why Hadron shifted from a one megawatt concept to a ten megawatt design built around LEU plus fuel, modular plant layouts, and air cooled decay heat removal. Keefer presses on the harder questions: whether factory fabrication can overcome the fixed civil works and regulatory burdens that have crippled previous SMR efforts like NuScale and mPower, what off the shelf really means in a hollowed out US supply chain, and how long refueling cycles, fuel qualification, and decommissioning challenges scale at microreactor size. The conversation becomes a broader test case for whether startup optimism can meaningfully confront the industrial, economic, and physics grounded constraints that define real world nuclear deployment.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss

In late October, amid the choreography of President Trump’s visit to Tokyo, two vast and curiously intertwined announcements were made: an $80 billion strategic partnership between the U.S. government and Westinghouse Electric Company, and a $550 billion investment framework between the United States and Japan.This episode of Decouple, hosted by AJ Camacho of Politico and E&E News, brought together Michael Seely, Yuri Humber and Chris Keefer this time in the guest seat to discuss the implications of this deal for the United States, Japan and Canada. Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rssWebsite: https://www.decouple.media

This week I sit back down with François Morin in his third appearance on the show. François is the World Nuclear Association’s point person on China. He works and travels inside China, speaks fluent Mandarin, and spends time at the conventional and advanced reactor sites that the rest of us argue about on Twitter. We cover how quickly China is really building nuclear power compared to the heyday of the French Mesmer plan, how that compares to Chinese coal and gas deployment, why Chinese nuclear is still mostly coastal, and the use case, build times and performance of the so-called “advanced reactors” that China is operating while Western startups are still in the powerpoint phase pitching to investors.Watch the full conversation on YouTube.Listen to Decouple on:• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4 • Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple • Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44 • RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss Website: https://www.decouple.media