Maria Korsnick and I can’t wait to bring it to you next September in Atlanta, Ga. Stay tuned for more information as we build what’s sure to be the can’t-miss event next year.
New partnerships like this are yet another chapter of the burgeoning nuclear story. Storytelling is an important skill, but as a technically minded group, we tend to extol the virtues of the technology itself but then pay short shrift to the people who birthed it. And it’s the people who really make a good story compelling.
In his new book Nexus, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari posits that the human brain is hardwired to learn through storytelling, and it’s this particular trait that forms the fundamental “basemat” for advanced human civilization. Here’s how I would tell the nuclear story.
Once upon a time, a group of highly gifted individuals of varied backgrounds, including many who fled persecution abroad and some who faced discrimination and exclusion at home—Oppenheimer, Meitner, Teller, to name a few—came together to produce this amazing, war-ending, world-changing suite of technologies we call nuclear. On paper. With slide rules.
Times were good for a while, but perhaps we took those good times for granted. Then TMI happened; nobody got hurt, but it scared a lot of people. What did the nuclear community do? A new generation put their heads down and built a model industry with what they had, turning a large business liability into the safest, most reliable energy source the world has known.
Today is eerily similar to events 80 years ago. There’s war in Europe and the Middle East. U.S. electricity projections are way up, driven by domestic manufacturing demand. Heck, Constellation has even announced its intention to repower TMI-1 and sell the electricity to Microsoft, although I much prefer the new name, the Crane Clean Energy Center.
Pioneers like Chris Crane have gotten us to the door of a nuclear resurgence; we owe them a deep debt of gratitude. The next chapter of the nuclear story, much like the first, rests on the shoulders of a young, diverse group of people who share a deep motivation to make the world a better, safer, cleaner, and more peaceful place. To them I say: Take ample inspiration from the courage and persistence of those who have come before you, then forge your own path. This new chapter is one only you can write.
