Acclaimed Physicist And His Daughter Are Burying Tiny Nuclear Reactors A Mile Underground

About this episode

Liz Muller and her father Richard A. Muller discuss their innovative approach to nuclear energy and the journey that led them to entrepreneurship.

Liz Muller convinced her dad Richard to forego retirement and become an entrepreneur. The result is a revolutionary approach to making atomic energy cheaper and safer. For more than a decade, Elizabeth Muller and her father have taken a three-mile hike, usually twice a week, through the hills of Berkeley, California, stopping for coffee and brainstorming on the way. “I would have an idea and she would have an idea,” says Richard A. Muller, who devised the modern carbon dating method used to determine the age of ancient plant and animal remains before he was 33 and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award at 38. Now, after 40 years of teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, the 82-year-old physicist is on the verge of having his greatest commercial impact, thanks to his business-minded daughter and those long walks. “Nuclear brings out big emotions on all sides,” says Liz, 47. “As a kid growing up in Berkeley, all my teachers and friends were anti-nuclear, and the city became a nuclear-free zone.” She too leaned anti-nuke, even though her father’s mentor, Nobel Prize winner Luis Alvarez—who worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the first atomic bomb—was “like a…

People in this episode

Host: Steve Forbes

Guests: Liz Muller, Richard A. Muller

Topics covered

• nuclear energy
• entrepreneurship
• family collaboration
• clean energy
• scientific innovation

Keywords

• nuclear reactors
• atomic energy
• entrepreneur
• clean energy
• Berkeley
• Richard A. Muller
• Liz Muller
• innovation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of California at Berkeley, MacArthur Foundation, ESCP Business School

Places: Berkeley, Paris, California

More episodes of Steve Forbes: What's Ahead

• Warsh Must Forcibly Challenge The Deadly Consensus That No Interest Rate Cut Will Happen In 2026 · June 12, 2026 · 7 min
• Democrats Must Be Stopped Once And For All From Trying To Pack The Supreme Court · June 3, 2026 · 5 min
• Will A Desperate Putin Expand The Ukraine War To Other European Countries? · May 28, 2026 · 6 min
• Warning To Trump: This Is Why Negotiating With Iran Is A Fool's Errand · May 27, 2026 · 6 min
• Bonds Have Been Wobbling Worldwide—Here's Why · May 21, 2026 · 6 min
• Do Not Forget: Europe Remains Critical For Our Defense And Indeed For Securing The Free World · May 20, 2026 · 6 min