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On our very first episode, Host Andrea talks with Katie Mummah, aka Nuclear Katie, about challenging the perceptions of nuclear power and why net-zero needs nuclear.
Meet the people from Ontario and beyond who have made it their mission to combat climate change. From energy production to emerging technologies, listen in on conversations about what the path to net-zero looks like here in Canada, and abroad.
OPG The Climate Challengers | Episode 1 Transcript
Andrea:
Hello and welcome to the very first Climate Challengers podcast episode. I’m Andrea Bain and it’s a pleasure to be here with you as we talk about climate change and the energy sector. Each episode will cover different aspects and perspectives on clean energy, and how it all works together to help us combat climate change. Each of our amazing guests bring their own unique experiences to the table, giving us a look at things in a whole new light, and I’m so excited to introduce you to them.
So, you may be asking, why a podcast, and why now? Last year, in 2020, OPG made a commitment that they would be a net-zero company by 2040 and be a catalyst for helping achieve a net-zero economy by 2050 -- but they know fighting climate change is going to take all available technologies and solutions working together in an “All hands on deck” approach. Now, through engaging and informative episodes, we hope to cover many topics that maybe you don’t know much about, or shed new light on topics you might think you know, like nuclear power, all in the hopes that we can all better understand a post-carbon future. And this is a learning experience for me as well. Like, did you know that in Ontario approximately 60 percent of our electricity is generated by nuclear power–helping make the province one of the cleanest energy sectors in the entire world? But not everyone understands the benefits of nuclear power and the potential expanded role this technology can play in decarbonizing the world. Or how it can work in partnership with other clean forms of electricity to make a net-zero future a reality. And that leads me to our first guest on our very first episode… Welcome Katie Mummah, aka Nuclear Katie.
Alright, Katie before we get into this very interesting conversation, I’ve got to know how did you get this amazing nickname, Nuclear Katie? Talk to me about that first.
Katie:
Wow, I wish I had a super exciting, fun story for you but the reality is just that my name is Katie and I’m not creative enough to think of a nickname besides the fact that I am a nuclear engineer named Katie. Now, I did use to use Radioactive Kate, which was a holdover from being highschool and trying to figure out what nickname i wanted to use. But, I had to misspell that to get that Twitter name and everyone always misspelled–or spelled it correctly and didn’t tag me. So I just said, you know what? Nuclear Katie. I’m a nuclear engineer named Katie. And it really stuck. Now people just respond and think of me as Nuclear Katie. So I’m actually kind of surprised at how well it hung on.
Andrea:
No, it's a brilliant name. I love the re-branding. Very, very smart young lady. Alight, so I want to find out, so how did this journey start for you? Um, on this journey for the proponent of nuclear and wanting to use your platform to speak about it. Talk to me about that.
Katie:
Ya, so I decided to become a nuclear engineer on the advice or meeting two female nuclear engineers when I was in high school, just about to apply to college. Now, I had recently decided that I didn’t want to become an astrophysicist after getting to be an intern in astrophysics and so I really latched on when I met these two women who said, ‘Hey, if you’re interested in something like mechanical engineering but if you really want to tackle hard problems and work on something that can help change the world, I mean, this is a great way to do it. Plus, your class sizes will be much smaller than mechanical engineering.’ And as an 18-year old that sounded great. And honestly, it just stuck from there. From day one in college nuclear engineering was just exciting, challenging and really gave me the opportunity toward a larger goal of working towards reducing emissions, of helping to stop the worst of climate change. And the reason I got into communication is simply because right away, 18-year old freshman in college, that if you are a nuclear engineer you have to communicate because every single person you ever meet who learns your nuclear engineer immediately launches into questions: what about the waste? What about Chernobyl? Can you tell me about this? Do I live near a nuclear power plant? And even if you’ve never taken a nuclear physics class, you have to start answering those questions right away. And so I said to myself, ‘hey, if I’m going to have to do this I might as well get good at it. I might as well practice it.’ And so I really just dove in out of necessity and similar to how I just drove into nuclear it just clicked. And I found that I really loved talking about it and just answering people’s because so few of us really get formal experience in nuclear science, nuclear engineering. So I want to fill in that gap with as many people as I can. [5:17]
Andrea:
Listen Katie, I love your energy and your passion, right off the top. I know that you really know what you’re talking about and you really have your heart into it but here’s the big question: why do you think people are so resistant to nuclear energy?
Katie:
I mean, I really think that there are a lot of different factors and sometimes we try to boil it down to just one thing and I really think that’s oversimplifying the issue. I do think that for many people pop culture is their only understanding and so they do connect it with The Simpsons or just, you know, glowing green goo. Others have only really heard about the accidents so that’s really only touchpoint with this energy coupled with as least in the United States, nuclear power has been really quiet from a marketing standpoint, public visibility standpoint, which happened really in response to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the rise of the anti-nuclear movement that there was this sort of belief that if the nuclear energy sector just got really quiet and just like did their jobs safely and effectively, then the anti-nuclear movement and the public at large would forget about these negative perceptions. And in the reality, the public forgot and the anti-nuclear activists really never forgot. So, now we’ve just sort of atrophied to the point where it’s not in the conversation. It’s not in our classrooms. It’s only in our pop culture. And so I think that a lot of different things combined but the reality is that not a lot people know about it and people that do know about it, there is room to have disagreements about what the best path forward is and because it’s so technical, I find that even people who do know something about energy feel kind of afraid to step out and talk about nuclear because they feel like you have to be an expert to talk about nuclear power at all.
Andrea:
Well, it’s interesting that you say some people are afraid because I want to know what you think is the biggest roadblock to getting people to understand the positives about nuclear energy?
Katie:
Ya, this is a tough one because I also think that there, you know, there are no magic answers. I wish I could just say, you know, if nuclear came out with a really great marketing campaign that would wake everybody up to this great energy source but I think that changing people’s sentiment is something that is going to have to happen on almost a community basis if we’re talking about the whole public. I think if we’re talking about policy makers, legislators, that conversation looks different. That’s sort of framed in the sense of jobs, long-term infrastructure, and long term benefits to lower our carbon emissions. But when we’re talking about individual communities, and communities that may be engaging with the nuclear fuel cycle, I think it has to be small conversations about what nuclear power can do for you and your community. And the reality is places that have nuclear power do see a lot of benefits. Now the benefits are lowered and risks are highered in other parts of the fuel cycle so that’s a different conversation but when we have nuclear reactors, the sentiment around those communities is generally quite positive but it’s hard to replicate that kind of engagement on the national level. So I wish I had an answer for you there that was just one quick trick to change the whole world’s opinion about nuclear power. [8:56]
Andrea:
No, it’s an amazing answer and you do make a really good point about it’s a community that really has to get onboard but I also understand that your focus is mainly on the younger generation. Now obviously, you're a young person so it makes sense but talk to me about why you’ve decided to focus on the younger generation and educating them on nuclear energy.
Katie:
Um ya, I agree I am young. I’m in graduate school. But also I find that people in the millennial or gen-z age group, we’re mostly starting from the point of we care about climate change. We want to do something about climate change. That’s our base value set. And in fact, many of us are choosing majors going to college saying ‘I want to make the world a better place.’ before we ask the question of what is this major going to get me job-wise? We’re sort of looking out at the larger world and saying ‘how can I make the world a better place?’ And so, I just have a great time engaging with these people because we’re starting from the same point of ‘hey, you care about this planet. I care about this planet. Let me tell you why I think that nuclear energy is part of the way we can save this planet.’ So, I just can connect with these people on a similar value set which we know from the science of communicating science is so critical to building trust, to finding that shared identity. And the shared identity about our planet, the environment, climate change, just makes it so easy for me to connect with these people. You know I may not be the right face, the right kind of person to be connecting with older generations. Our value sets, we might be starting at not exactly the right place. [10:36]
Andrea:
Interesting. Alright, so I want to know, what are some of the biggest developments in nuclear energy?
Katie:
It is an exciting time right now to be in nuclear engineering. So, when I started college, we were just starting to talk about the future of nuclear reactors and even the idea of major innovation in nuclear reactors was, like, brand new. And now, you know, nine years later or so, there is a thriving startup culture in nuclear power and that is so exciting because a decade ago we did not have that. The enthusiasm for advanced reactors a decade ago was almost fully in the hypothetical. Of these technologies are theoretically possible, and maybe someone will pick them up and work on them - and now, basically every reactor you could imagine - not quite, but almost - someone has built a company and is around the US, around the world, fundraising to say “I want to build this now.”
And not only do we have this thriving culture of startup companies working on new reactors, but the ones at the start of that race are not quite over the line, but we’re getting much closer to building new designs of nuclear reactors, which for the US especially is something that we have struggled with.
We’ve built almost no reactors in my lifetime, and we certainly haven’t built any reactors that look fundamentally different from the 100 or so we have operating right now. And now we’re looking that in the next five, eight, ten years to have several types of reactors that look very different from the current ones, operating in demonstration plants and, maybe looking out to a decade here, operating commercially which is just so exciting and so necessary if we really want to make a dent in this climate problem, we’ve got to get our act together and get rolling. [12:40]
Andrea:
Alright, let’s also talk about SMRs. Talking about Small Modular Reactors. Has there been any significant developments that you can tell us about?
Katie:
Ya, so we’ve got both a small and micro reactor that are near the front of the pack in our advanced reactor startups in the US. The major development there is in the name, modularity. In the US, all of our existing reactors were essentially one of a kind. They may have come from one basic design but the actual plant set up is essentially unique and as it turns out, it’s really hard to build 100 slightly different nuclear reactors. The idea with small modular reactors is no, we’re going to design this technology, it’s going to be built in a factory, it’s going to roll off the line and then it’s much easier to do the construction which is where so much of the cost of nuclear reactors is - it’s all upfront.
And then, I also don’t want to forget to mention the micro nuclear reactors. So these are going to be special purpose reactors. They’re probably going to be a little bit more expensive because they’re tiny BUT they can reach markets that right now nuclear power cannot dream of. So I mentioned this before with places that are totally off the grid but also places that have electricity but it’s completely from diesel generators. This is really common in tiny towns up north both in Alaska but also in Northern Canada, there are many communities that rely on diesel generators and that can be replaced with a couple of these small reactors. Islands as well, where there is a relatively small land area and they need to be really efficient with their electricity generating space but they only need a couple megawatts of power. [14:36]
Andrea:
Let’s break here to get an inside look at nuclear energy with one of our OPG Climate Challengers. We’ll be right back.
Throughout OPG’s history, serving the public and their quality of life with reliable power has always been at the forefront for what they do. We’ve entered a new era of power generation, with a serious eye on combating climate change, so let’s hear from the people making it all possible from the inside.
Matthew:
Hey, I’m Matthew Mairinger, technical nuclear engineer at OPG, and here’s two-minutes on how I got here and my role in reaching net-zero…
So how did I get here? Splitting uranium atoms to make electricity sounded pretty impressive but there’s more to it than that. Energy demands were going up, and the more I researched the more I realised how nuclear energy helped society.
Which leads into what I do:
So many people from the public only hear about nuclear from pop culture and therefore there are quite a few misconceptions. One of my favourite parts of what I do is spreading awareness and education about nuclear.
I’ve gone to schools to read nuclear children’s books, I’ve advocated for nuclear at the United Nations climate conference and Clean Energy Ministerial, I’ve rallied on the streets of Toronto, and met with politicians in Queens Park and Parliament Hill.
Here are some facts I like to tell people:
Nuclear takes up hundreds of times less land than other renewables for the same amount of energy production. It also uses the least amount of natural resources for the energy it produces, which means less waste. And in terms of net-zero goals, the countries that have decarbonized the fastest (such as Sweden, France, and Belgium), have all used nuclear in their strategy.
If I may “geek out” for just a minute, I am especially excited for the new small modular reactors expected to be built in the Durham region by 2028. SMRs, as they’re called, are a new opportunity for nuclear power to help decarbonize transportation and isolated communities, as well as remote industrial sites, like mines, which rely heavily on fossil fuels such as diesel to generate electricity, just to name a few.
So, as you can see nuclear has a wide range of ways in which it can help us meet net-zero goals. Now back to the show. [16:42]
Andrea:
Alright, so I want to know - do you think… is net-zero even possible without nuclear?
Katie:
Ya, I always say that I’m not an energy systems engineer so I never want to step too far outside my bounds but my understanding from the scientists who are is that it may be theoretically possible, it may not, depending on who you ask. I think the general sentiment is if we’re talking about things in the realm of possibility, yes but, then that’s immediately followed up with it’s harder, it’s slower, it’s more expensive, it’s sort of intentionally hampering ourselves by cutting out one clean energy technology. And so that’s the position that I’m putting forward that if we care about decarbonizing as effectively as possible - effectively with our time, effectively with our global financial resources then the science does bare out that keeping our existing plants open is very important and opening new plants is also quite important in that discussion. [17:44]
Andrea:
I love again from the very beginning you’ve shown so much passion about nuclear energy and we’ve talked about what you’re hoping for and the changes that you’re hoping to see in the near future especially with the Biden administration now also being onboard, but I want to get a sense of what are your hopes for the future of nuclear and clean energy overall?
Katie:
Ya, so I really want to see global movement on this. One of the other reasons nuclear energy has always been interesting to me is that it’s among these hopes that there’s a lot of the world that is still in energy poverty and I want to see all clean energy technologies going into every country and every community that is lacking them. I mean, right now, for countries that are turning the lights on for people who have never had electricity are mostly doing so with coal - which is the worst of the energy sources from a CO2 perspective and from an air pollution perspective. And so, one of the things that is most important to me is making sure that this discussion of the future of nuclear power includes the work that needs to be done to make these technologies available to the countries who are not only decarbonizing as well, but they’re actually bringing people into the electric grid for the first time ever. And so that is something that is really important in the next ten or fifteen years as well.
There’s a relatively small handful of countries that design nuclear reactors and we need to be working with every country in the world that expresses interest in this technology. Not all of them will and that’s okay, that’s totally fine. I’m not here to say we should shove nuclear technology down people’s throat, but the countries that are here to say, ‘hey, this can be a part of our electricity mix,’ we’ve got to be working with them. We’ve got to be supporting them with our technology and doing everything we can to make that available. Which is really a core part of a sort of idea of Atoms for Peace is that this technology there are a handful of small countries, the US, France, China, Russia, South Korea, who design this technology and it should not be kept to these places alone. So it’s not a new idea to say that we need to fulfill this mission to make sure that nuclear energy is part of the electrification of the world. [20:07]
Andrea:
Ya, absolutely you make such a good point. It has to be something that is global,everybody has to be onboard. And those are great words but it’s also how do we do that? So, I know it's a big question but do you have any ideas of how we make sure every country around the globe has access?
Katie:
Ya, this is where we start to step outside of the technology and we really start to step into international relations and sort of, political science because you know there are sensitive aspects with exporting nuclear technology but oftentimes these agreements are not just made between a reactor designer and a utility in another country. These are usually agreements made by countries, in fact the United States has to sign a specific agreement before they allow US-based companies to export technology associated with nuclear reactors. And so, this is an area where we absolutely do need the political infrastructure to be involved and interested in doing this. You know Westinghouse cannot just show up in some other country and build a reactor there without getting approval from both governments. And so that’s an area that’s really important in signing memorandum of understanding, signing agreements but also just working with countries to develop the infrastructure that they’ll need to even begin a nuclear power journey. You know, they have to build a regulator i f they don’t already regulate radioactive materials and nuclear technology. They will eventually need specialists with nuclear engineering experience. Countries that don’t have nuclear power generally don’y have nuclear engineering degrees with very few exceptions and that’s a conversation that has to start well before you start turning up dirt to start pouring your nuclear island. These are the things that we have to be thinking about now if we want t o be building reactors in ten or fifteen years in other places. This is actually an area where I think the United States can step up because Chinaand Russia have been doing this. They have been showing up and talking to other countries and saying, ‘hey, if you want to build nuclear reactors we’re going to be your partner. We’re going to help train you. WE’re going to help construct this reactor. We’re going to provide the fuel and maybe even take back the used nuclear fuel afterwards.’ And the US has been slow to have those conversations but I think we need to be getting on that now if we want to have this potential down the road to be a global partner. [22:37]
Andrea:
Great stuff. Alright, so as we start to wrap things up I really want to get your answer to this next question. Is there one thing that we should all be doing, no matter our expertise, right now in the fight against climate change? Whether we’re millennial, gen-z, doesn’t matter. What is the one thing we should all be doing, Katie?
Katie:
I think we should all be engaging with our political system. I think that’s where all o f our voices can come together the most effectively. As much as I want to say you should compost and use less plastic - you should do those things- but I wouldn’t call those things the number one thing because so many of the things I’ve talked about with nuclear, but also exactly the same for wind and solar and geothermal and hydro, we are going to need our governments to be a partner and to be a leader on decarbonizing our world and if we want that to happen, we need to vote. We also need to engage year round with our political system. This may mean writing into your congressperson. This may mean getting to know your state legislature, state senator, state rep which for many of us may not even be someone that we know. And so I think that if more of us took an active effort in making sure that we work with our legislatures, and vote in people who have the same close passion for their world, that’s how we can all come together and use our voice as individuals to affect climate change. [24:04]
Andrea:
And I think you forgot one other point which is we need Katie leading the charge here. Because you have done such a great job! No, your passion and your in informing yourself and others is key, I think, in moving forward the conversation. And it's great that you’re, you know, focusing on the younger generation because you’re right there, the future but I’m older than you obviously and it’s like this conversation has opened my eyes so much. So it’s like, please speak to everybody you meet because it’s so important to hear your voice.
So the name of our podcast is Climate Challengers so I would like to know, Katie, would you feel okay as to referring to yourself as a Climate Challenger?
Katie:
Ya, I think that’s a really interesting name. I think it has some intrigue because oftentimes, like, I could also imagine someone using that word as in challenging the science of climate but this is saying, “no, I’m challenging climate change. I am standing up and working towards a world with fewer CO2 emissions in a world where we limit the worst effects of climate change.” So it’s sort of reclaiming that kind of verbiage of challenging climate. We’re not challenging the science of climate change, we’re challenging the molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere. And we’re challenging ourselves to do better about producing fewer of those molecules in working towards a better world. So ya, I would call myself a Climate Challenger, for sure. [25:31]
Andrea:
Well, you heard it folks. We are Katie approved. Thank you very much Katie, that was awesome. Now I can sleep, I’m like okay Katie’s good with the Climate Challengers that’s what it is. Alright Katie, you’re awesome. Thank you so much again for your time. Once again folks that is Katie Mummah aka Nuclear Katie. Thanks so much for your time Katie, you were awesome.
So that’s episode one of Climate Challengers. What do we hope you take away from it? Well hopefully it’s that the portrayals of nuclear energy that you see out there in the world aren’t always exactly accurate and that it plays an important role in our reaching net-zero. Want to know more about nuclear, clean energy and our guest? Visit ClimateChallengers.com. The Climate Challengers is a Podium Podcast Production [https://www.podiumpodcastco.com/].