The Utterly Moderate Podcast is the official podcast of Connors Institute for Nonpartisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University.
The core mission of the Connors Institute is to disseminate high-quality nonpartisan information to the public.
Utterly Moderate is hosted by Lawrence Eppard, a researcher, university professor, and director of the Connors Institute. On each episode, Eppard is joined by a guest (or two or three!) who helps listeners understand important topics by focusing on just the weight of the empirical evidence and none of the unneeded opinions or political agendas. We are aggressively nonpartisan in our approach.
Be sure to visit us at ConnorsInstitute.org to learn more about all that we do!
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RSS FeedIt is extremely hard for the average citizen to understand what the “state of the science” is on many issues. We can all type our queries about a particular topic into Google but, when we get the flood of results, most of us are not trained to be able to (a) understand the complicated statistical methodologies employed in many research studies, (b) compare studies and evaluate their strength relative to each other, or (c) assess what the preponderance of the evidence is across tens or even hundreds of studies.
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast, we are joined by Dr. Sallie Baxendale to help us think about how we might make such judgements. She also goes into detail about ways in which the scientific process can go wrong, as it has been in some areas of gender-affirming care in recent years, as Joshua Cohen discusses in Forbes:
“In the U.S., a politically partisan divide is shaping up between states that allow for and guarantee access to youth gender-affirming care and states that ban such treatment altogether. Twenty-two states have passed bans on the use of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgery in minors.
In Europe political divisions on this topic aren’t nearly as conspicuous as they are in the U.S. Rather, the debate is much more fact-based. An increasing number of countries have conducted systematic reviews of evidence to determine the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. And the findings from these reviews—that the certainty of benefits is ‘very low’—have informed changes in policy regarding treatment of gender incongruence in minors. . .
All things considered, according to European health authorities and medical experts, there isn’t yet a medical consensus for the use of pharmaceutical and surgical interventions in gender dysphoric minors.
And so authorities are ‘tapping the brakes,’ shifting from care which prioritizes access to pharmaceutical and surgical interventions, to a less medicalized and more conservative approach that addresses possible psychiatric comorbidities. . .
In the U.S., on the other hand, talk of introducing guardrails like the ones being incorporated in Europe is sometimes met with being branded ‘transphobic’ or a ‘science denier.’”
You can read about Dr. Baxendale’s own troubling experiences with this field of research in her recent UnHerd article.
Dr. Sallie Baxendale is a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College of London’s Institute of Neurology. She has over three decades of clinical experience working with people with epilepsy in London and Oxford, is the current chair of the International League Against Epilepsy Diagnostic Methods Commission, and serves on the Board of Governors for the International Neuropsychological Society.
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On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined by Jacob Mackey to discuss two big gender-related stories in the news.
The first story is positive, and we have covered it in the Connors Newsletter—a big new research study shows that we have made great progress combatting sex discrimination in the labor market. This is great news!
Then there is a difficult and troubling story. According to leaked internal files from WPATH, a leading global organization which advocates for transgender health care, WPATH has not been completely forthcoming about their internal concerns about the evidence behind gender affirming care for minors as well as the ethical issues surrounding informed consent for such care.
The first part of this conversation is really positive, while the second half is a difficult subject that we hope we treat fairly and with an appropriate level of concern. Thanks for taking a listen.
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Episode Audio:
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined again by Lisa Selin Davis, a writer who covers issues related to gender and gender affirming care.
Davis joins the program to discuss a recent UnHerd article “Why did three journals reject my puberty-blocker study? Trans children deserve to know the facts,” written by Sallie Baxendale, a clinical neuropsychologist at University College London.
Baxendale details an academic article she wrote about the state of the research on whether puberty blockers are harmful to people’s cognitive function. Baxendale argues that the responses that she got from peer reviewers suggest that ideology is clouding the judgement of the experts responsible for making sure that the best science is available to transgender children and their families when they are making life-altering decisions.
Lisa Selin Davis discusses this article and its broader meaning within the larger conversation about whether some sciences are allowing ideology to get in the way of doing the best research possible.
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On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we discuss recent controversies at and concerns about colleges and universities in the United States—from highly publicized instances of campus unrest to a lack of intellectual diversity among faculty to hypocrisy on free speech.
This episode’s guest is Jacob Mackey, associate professor at Occidental College and coeditor with host Lawrence Eppard of The Poisoning of the American Mind, which is due out later this spring.
Check out the podcast episode and also check out two reports that were recently released from the Connors Institute, the “Connors Institute Media Report Card” and “Place Matters.”
In the media report card Connors researchers take a rigorous look at numerous news and information sources in the U.S. and evaluate their bias and accuracy. Check it out yourself to see which outlets made the grade and which ones missed the mark.
In “Place Matters” Connors researchers examine the impact of neighborhoods and communities on American children’s chances of success. The efforts and choices of the individual children themselves of course matter for their success, as do the efforts and resources of their families. But this research shows that the neighborhoods and communities where children are raised matter a great deal for their success as well—take a look at the report yourself and also take some time to examine your own neighborhood!
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Before we get to today’s episode, check out this article about the Connors Institute in The Sentinel newspaper!
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined by Robert VerBruggen from the Manhattan Institute to discuss a new documentary which claims to disprove that George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, as well as a new research study which claims to disprove that income inequality in the U.S. has been rising since the 1960s.
The documentary in question, The Fall of Minneapolis, was produced by Alpha News, an organization that has a history of low-quality journalism that is often inaccurate, biased, and misleading. Podcast host Lawrence Eppard and guest Robert VerBruggen will discuss the claims in the documentary and why they fall short.
They also discuss a new and important research study which calls into question whether income inequality has really been rising since the 1960s like we have all been led to believe. While this new paper does not completely disprove the argument that inequality has in fact been increasing, it raises serious concerns about how certain we can be about the dominant narrative that inequality has been rising out of control.
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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Connors Institute at Shippensburg University!
Since this Utterly Moderate episode is both our Christmas program and our 100th PODCAST EPISODE, we thought we would try to be as uplifting as possible.
In that spirit, we are being joined by Johan Norberg, author of a number of books including Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future.
In that book, Norberg presents extensive data documenting how the world has gotten much better over the centuries across several measures, including freedom, life expectancy, poverty, violence, hunger, sanitation, the environment, literacy, and more.
The book helps us not only to avoid being so doom and gloom about the state of the world, but to identify the reasons why we have made so much progress in the first place, avoid derailing those efforts, and help us build on them for a better tomorrow.
Enjoy this conversation, and very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
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Episode Audio:
"Air Background Corporate" by REDCVT (Free Music Archive)
"Please Listen Carefully" by Jahzzar (Free Music Archive)
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Jim Swift from The Bulwark joins the Utterly Moderate Podcast to discuss the fraught nature of the immigration debate in the U.S.
Both sides in the immigration debate have important points to bring to the table, and good faith discussions and compromises are badly needed. Unfortunately, such efforts often get sidetracked by misinformation and disinformation about this thorny issue.
Swift discusses a story of his that had a number of important issues—legal immigration, unauthorized immigration, and disinformation—all wrapped into one.
Enjoy the conversation! And don’t forget to subscribe to our FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTER in just one click at ConnorsInstitute.org!
Episode Audio:
"Air Background Corporate" by REDCVT (Free Music Archive)
“Happy Trails (To You)” by the Riders in the Sky (used with artist’s permission)
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Leading American poverty researcher Mark Robert Rank joins the Utterly Moderate Podcast to discuss his Poverty Risk Calculator, the record-low poverty rates that the U.S. saw in 2021, Dr. Rank’s research on the risk Americans face of experiencing poverty throughout their lives, a new book he has coming out on luck, and more!
Rank has spent his career studying poverty, economic inequality, and social policy in America and teaching about these topics at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has been a faculty member since 1985.
Much of his research has focused on the life course risk of poverty in America. Using data from hundreds of thousands of Americans taken from a longitudinal study that began in the 1960s, Dr. Rank and his research collaborators have been able to estimate the likelihood that the average American will experience poverty at some point in their lives.
This research shows that around 59% of Americans will experience at least one year under the official poverty line at some point in their lives.
While Rank has published his research findings in a number of academic articles and books over the years, it occurred to him that it might be possible to use this body of poverty research in order to develop a tool that would allow individuals to estimate their own risk of poverty.
The idea is similar to a doctor’s ability to predict your risk of heart disease. Using several pieces of information (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.), your doctor can make a reasonable estimate of your chances of having a heart attack in the next decade. These numbers are based on statistical patterns derived from a very large sample of families that make up the Framingham Heart Study, the longitudinal study of cardiovascular health that began in 1948.
Could this be done with poverty data? Working with his colleagues over the course of hundreds of hours of programming and designing, Rank developed the Poverty Risk Calculator. You can try it for yourself.
Using the calculator, individuals enter background information on five dimensions (age, race, gender, education, and marital status), and receive a 5-, 10-, and 15-year probability that they will experience at least one year of poverty during these time periods. Individuals can also calculate their odds of experiencing near-poverty and extreme poverty.
The calculator is designed so that individuals can also easily compare their profile with others’ side-by-side in the same graph to examine how the risk of poverty varies by different characteristics. The impact of each variable is profound, and one can readily see how poverty is affected by, for example, changes to one’s race, education, or marital status. This allows users to observe the impact of key social dimensions on life chances. Try it for yourself and see how even a single change can drastically alter your personal risk of poverty.
By utilizing the calculator you can see that the risk of poverty for many Americans is significant. While the likelihood of poverty may be low during any single year, across multiple years, individuals observe that their risk can rise substantially.
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Episode Audio:
"Air Background Corporate" by REDCVT (Free Music Archive)
“Happy Trails (To You)” by the Riders in the Sky (used with artist’s permission)
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Friend of the Connors Forum and frequent Utterly Moderate guest, Lee McIntyre, has a new book out titled On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy, a “powerful, pocket-sized citizen’s guide on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling American democracy, from the bestselling author of Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier.”
McIntyre argues that there is an effort in this country to destroy facts and make America ungovernable. In the book, he walks through how the war on facts began, how bad actors deny obvious realities and wield disinformation to manipulate American citizens, and ten everyday practical steps that we can take as ordinary citizens to combat disinformation. He also addresses the important steps our government must take to fight what McIntyre calls a “scourge” of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society.
This episode features highlights from a previous conversation we had with both Lee McIntyre and frequent Utterly Moderate guest Tom Nichols, author of the great book The Death of Expertise.
The Connors Forum is an independent entity from the institutions that we partner with. The views expressed in our newsletters and podcasts are those of the individual contributors alone and not of our partner institutions.
Episode Audio:
"Cloudbank" by Podington Bear (Free Music Archive)
"Reading by Lamplight" by Maarten Schellekens (Free Music Archive)
“Algorithms” by Chad Crouch (Free Music Archive)
“Happy Trails (To You)” by the Riders in the Sky (used with artist’s permission)
Mitt Romney January 6th speech (publicly available on YouTube)
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On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we discuss both the pros and cons of nuclear power, especially as it pertains to combatting global climate change.
The international community is attempting to keep the world from warming no more than 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.
While there have been incredible efforts to achieve this—efforts that have likely taken the worst-case warming scenarios off the table—we are still on track for closer to 3.0 degrees warming by 2100 instead of 2.0 degrees.
Some would argue that the expansion of nuclear power would go a long way toward closing that gap.
Friend of this show and frequent guest, The Bulwark’s Mona Charen, has written that:
“The world’s demand for energy is not going to diminish, but only increase in the coming century. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates world energy demand will increase 50% by 2050. . . The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] countries cannot in conscience deny development to the world’s poorer nations. Nor can we delude ourselves that renewables, at the current state of technology, can take up all the slack created by giving up fossil fuels.
Amazingly, there is an existing technology that can produce the energy the world needs without harming the climate. And yet we hesitate.
Nuclear power is the key to limiting climate change and hobbling some of the world’s worst aggressors.
If we’re serious about both problems, we’ll clear the air of superstitions about nuclear power. Nuclear power plants cannot explode like nuclear bombs. They require much less land than solar or wind. Nuclear waste can be safely buried. The U.S. Navy has been powering ships with nuclear reactors since the late 1950s. According to the Naval Post: ‘U.S. Nuclear Powered Warships (NPWs) have safely operated for more than 50 years without experiencing any reactor accident or any release of radioactivity that hurt human health or had an adverse effect on marine life.’
Nothing is perfect. One death from radiation exposure at the Fukushima power plant has been noted by the Japanese government: a worker who died of lung cancer in 2018, seven years after the tsunami and meltdowns. But if we are in a new hard-headed era, we will evaluate trade-offs like adults.
Are we serious about choking off the source of Putin’s power or not? Are we serious about combating climate change without illusions that wind and solar will do the job? Nuclear power can be a major part of the solution to both challenges.”
Our guest on this episode, Robert Zubrin, has written a new book on this topic titled The Case for Nukes. We hope you enjoy this conversation about an important issue facing our world.
And don’t forget to subscribe to our FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTER!
The Connors Forum is an independent entity from the institutions that we partner with. The views expressed in our newsletters and podcasts are those of the individual contributors alone and not of our partner institutions.
Episode Audio:
“Happy Trails (To You)” by the Riders in the Sky (used with artist’s permission)
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
On today's program, we discuss both pros and cons of nuclear power
Speaker A: Utterly moderate is the official podcast of the Connors forum. Visit us at connorsforum.org and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter while you are there. Please listen carefully. Carefully, carefully. Hey.
Speaker B: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the program. This is the utterly moderate podcast. And I'm your host, Lawrence Eppard. On today's program, we are talking about both the pros and the cons of nuclear power, especially when it comes to tackling climate change. So if this isn't something that you pay a lot of attention to and you're not really familiar with what the international agreements are, basically what countries around the world are trying to do is by the end of this century. We are attempting to keep the world from warming no more than 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above where we were before the Industrial Revolution. And it's pretty amazing how much work has been done in the international community to tackle climate change. It's been pretty amazing. And the worst case scenarios, it looks like, are off the table because of international cooperation. But there's still a lot of work to be done. We're still closer to three degrees of warming rather than two degrees of warming, and we really need to close that gap. And there are many who would argue that nuclear power is one really important tool in our arsenal to help us close that gap. Mona Charon, who you probably know is a frequent guest on this show, and a friend of this podcast. She has written the following about nuclear power quote the world's demand for energy is not going to diminish, but only increase in the coming century. The US. Energy Information Administration estimates world energy demand will increase by 50% by 2050. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries cannot in conscience deny development to the world's poorer nations. Nor can we dilute ourselves that renewables at the current state of technology can take up all the slack created by giving up fossil fuels. Amazingly, there is an existing technology that can produce the energy the world needs without harming the environment. And yet we hesitate. Nuclear power is the key to limiting climate change and hobbling some of the world's worst Aggressors. If we're serious about both problems, we'll clear the air of superstitions about nuclear power. Nuclear power plants cannot explode like nuclear bombs. They require much less land than solar or wind. Nuclear waste can be safely buried. The US. Navy has been powering ships with nuclear reactors since the late 1950s. According to the naval Post us Nuclear powered warships have safely operated for more than 50 years without experiencing any reactor accident or any release of radioactivity that hurt human health or had an adverse effect on marine life. Nothing is perfect. One death from radiation exposure at the Fukushima power plant has been noted by the Japanese government, a worker who died of lung cancer in 2018, seven years after the tsunami and meltdowns. But if we are in a new, hard headed era. We will evaluate trade offs like adults. Are we serious about choking off the source of Putin's power or not? Are we serious about combating climate change without illusions that wind or solar will do the job? Nuclear, power can be a major part of the solution to both challenges. End quote.
Robert Zubrin has written a new book on nuclear power
Speaker B: Our guest today, Robert Zubrin, has written a new book on this topic titled The Case for Nukes, where he argues that, quote, the bottom line is this we are going to need to produce a lot more energy, and it will need to be carbon free. The only way to do that is with nuclear power. In my book, I go into great detail about how nuclear power is generated, new technologies coming online, and what all of this will mean for the future of humanity, including space exploration. End quote. Robert Zubrin, we are so happy to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker A: Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker B: No problem.
You have a new book called The Case for Nukes about global warming
Speaker C: So you got a great new book out called The Case for Nukes how We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, open and magnificent Future. So let's start with what's your background? What's your training? What brought you to write this book?
Speaker A: Well, I actually have a doctorate in nuclear engineering. I've only worked, a fraction of my career in the nuclear industry. Mostly I've worked aerospace. But, now we have this whole global warming alarm. There are people who are pushing solutions which are basically reactionary, essentially rigging up fuel prices to, deter people of limited income from using fuel or electricity. That's what it amounts to. And, I think that's unethical. And furthermore, it hasn't worked. We've doubled our carbon emissions in the past 30 years, just as we did in the 30 years between 1960 and 1990. We doubled it. We doubled it between 1930 and 1960, and we doubled it between 1990 and then 2020 because people don't want to be poor. And not using fuel essentially amounts to poverty. and the answer is straightforward. It's nuclear power. And, it's very unfortunate that the groups who are, making the greatest alarm about global warming are fighting against nuclear power.
Speaker C: All right, so you, propose the answer, at least in terms of a bridge technology, until we do something like fusion or whatever in the future, might solve this problem.
One of the disadvantages of nuclear power is it has been made expensive
Speaker C: So let's talk about advantages and disadvantages. Let's start with disadvantages, and you can tell me what you make of it. So, one of the disadvantages is it has been expensive to build. Correct?
Speaker A: It's been made expensive. the first nuclear power plant we built in this country took three years to build. Now, it takes 16. And, this has been the result of hostile regulation. and if you look at the numbers, and I present them in my book, the Cost to Build a nuclear power plant has gone up precisely in proportion to time squared. Okay? Construction time squared is the cost of the nuclear power plant. Anything can be made, prohibitively costly. If the FAA were run like the NRC, there would be no airlines. If a city government banned parking in the city, they would say it was impossible to park. Or they would say you can only park in places where it's $100 an hour to park. And they say, well, gee, parking costs $100 an hour. Well, you can make anything cost, excessive amounts through regulation. And that's what we've had with nuclear power.
Nuclear power is the only power which has such a small amount of waste
Speaker C: Another disadvantage people point to, and I want you to tell me if I'm making too much of it, not enough of it. You give us your take on the problem of nuclear waste. So what's the problem? And do you think it can be overcome?
Speaker A: Well, it's ironic that they single out nuclear waste as a problem because nuclear power is the only power which has such a small amount of waste that you actually can store it. The idea of sequestering and storing the waste from coal fired power would be absurd. And of course, fossil fuel in any kind, it sends its waste right into the atmosphere. and the waste products from making photovoltaics are enormous in the way of, ah, fluorine compounds. It caused massive fish kills and damage to public health in China, where these things are made. nuclear power, on the other hand, the amount of waste is, minuscule, and we could reduce it still more by reprocessing the waste. Ah, but of course, the, anti nukes have been first in line to, prevent that. But there's no technical problem with disposing of nuclear waste. The French reprocess and then store their waste. The US. Military, the nuclear navy, stores its waste in salt caverns in New Mexico. the, anti nukes have had no effect on implementing that solution because the Navy needs nuclear submarines and they're just not willing to have their program sabotaged. So the anti nukes have focused on preventing any storage of civilian nuclear waste. And they claim they're interested in safety. How can that be when they are saying, we would prefer to have nuclear waste stored at nuclear power plants in the suburbs of major cities rather than under a mountain in the middle of the desert? Nevada.
One of the fears about nuclear waste is the possibility of a meltdown
Speaker C: All right, so you say nuclear waste can be solved. You say that, the cost can be brought down with changes to regulation. One of the fears, and I want you to talk about this fear and how we should contextualize it, is, of course, the danger of a meltdown. So tell us, is that a reasonable fear? How should we think about that danger?
Speaker A: Okay, meltdowns are possible. That is, while a pressurized water reactor, which is pretty much all the reactors we have in the United States, cannot, have a runaway chain reaction because it needs the water in order to sustain the chain reaction. And if the water boils too much, the reaction shuts down. There is still waste heat left in the reactor, that is from radioactive, waste particles in the fuel. And they continue to give off heat whether the reactor is running or not. And so if the water is gone, you'll have heat and there's no cooling, the fuel will melt down. And the anti nukes said, well, gee, it will melt down. It'll melt down right through the steel pressure vessel, which is eight inches thick, and then through the concrete containment, vessel, which is 8ft thick. we actually had, ah, a meltdown at Three Mile Island. And what happened was the core did melt down and it hit the steel pressure vessel and it melted its way about one inch into the steel, and then it stopped. It didn't penetrate the steel pressure vessel. It never even reached the containment building, let alone China. So this is, a, greatly, overhyped, situation. it is an engineering concern. The Three Mile Island reactor was lost. It was a loss of investment, but there was no harm to the public.
Speaker C: One of the examples, people point to is Chernobyl. But, that was very different technology and very different, political and leadership context, right?
Speaker A: Correct. Chernobyl was not a pressurized water reactor, as I mentioned. you, see, to make the chain reaction work, you got to slow the neutrons down. It's called moderating the neutrons. They're going too fast. They go right by nuclei without splitting, okay? So you got to slow them down. So we use water to slow down the neutrons. And, the advantage of that is, if the reactor gets too hot, the water turns to steam, it can't slow the neutrons down anymore, and the reaction shuts down. So it's physically impossible to have a runaway chain reaction in a water moderated reactor. Chernobyl was not a water moderated reactor. It was a graphite moderated reactor. And graphite doesn't turn into vapor. it's solid. And so, it didn't have, this negative feedback. And in fact, the reactor operators did a crazy experiment in which they set off, a runway chain reaction. and then furthermore, another thing that Chernobyl reactor didn't have, which all, reactors in the civilized world have, is a containment building, okay? So all it had was an ordinary, building. And so when the reactor had a runaway chain reaction, it blew a hole in itself and a hole in the side of the building. And now you had the hot graphite exposed to air. And, so the graphite caught fire. And so this reactor was not only unstable, it was flammable, which is crazy. so you had the whole reactor literally go up in smoke and scattering, radioactive waste products, all over the landscape. the firefighters that were brought in to put the fire out were exposed directly to this cloud of radioactive material being, turned to radioactive smoke right at the reactor. And so about 80 of them were killed. then the fallout came down over a wide area. There's no documented, fatalities from that fallout. but a large area was evacuated and, has turned into an incredibly, flourishing wildlife reserve. but also, the response the Soviet authorities was completely incompetent. And, more could be said about that. But basically, the people who died at Chernobyl were not victims of nuclear power. They were victims of the Soviet Union.
Speaker C: Now, this is, totally anecdotal. I don't have any data to back this up, but when I speak to environmentalists today, I do see their perspective on nuclear softening a bit. Do you see that happening in the US. Or am I overstating that?
Speaker A: Well, you have a certain faction in the Democratic Party. It even has an organization called the Third Way. say, well, why aren't we going to nuclear? it's clean energy. It's the common sense answer. if you actually believe that global warming is an existential crisis that is, one that threatens the existence of the human race, it should take a lot of convincing to tell you that the hazard from nuclear power no nuclear power plant in the United States or, actually anywhere outside the Soviet Union has ever killed anyone. Not even at Fukushima, where, several nuclear power plants were destroyed by an earthquake and tidal wave. there was still no one, who got a harmful radiological dose outside of the plant gate. So here you have a situation where you've had over a thousand nuclear reactors on land or sea for the past.
Speaker C: 60 years not harming anyone now, beyond the benefits. So, no pollution, no greenhouse gases. you write in your book that also, could help opening the space frontier. So tell us what your argument was there.
Speaker A: Well, I mean, look, here's the thing. All the chemical elements that you need to make anything are on Mars, for example. But as is usually the case on Earth, with some exceptions, they're there in a useless form. In other words, you have iron, but it's in the form of iron oxide, silicon in the form of silicon dioxide and so forth. well, those can all be turned into useful resources if you have energy. Okay, now, what's the energy? Well, they don't have fossil fuels on Mars. You can make them, but it would take energy to do it. There's no waterfalls. the air is too thin for wind power to do much. You can do solar power on Mars, but it's only 40% as strong as it is on Earth. And on Earth, it's not terribly attractive. so it's significantly worse on Mars. So what are you going to do for power? Nuclear power. And if you look at the universe, the vast majority of it is far away from any star. so, the vast majority of the universe is dark. so whether you want to develop Mars or do interstellar travel or anything, you're, in general going to be operating out of range of effective solar power. It will take nuclear power to, develop space.
Robert Zubrin says fusion is a doable thing
Speaker C: Does, Robert Zubrin watch movies? Did you happen to see Oppenheimer by any chance?
Speaker A: Yes, I did. And in fact, I wrote a review of Oppenheimer, favorable, for the, online magazine Quillette. they actually had two reviews, one by another person who focused on the artistic merit of the movie. I focused on, they asked me the question, is it, realistic? And, my answer was fundamentally yes. There's only one significant technical error in the film and that's its obsession over this question of whether people were worried that the first atom bomb would ignite the atmosphere. there was no such concern. I mean, Edward Teller did bring it up that we should do that calculation to make sure that that would not happen. But once the calculation was done, he was quite satisfied. and in fact, there was no chance whatsoever, that that could happen. fission of nitrogen would not release any energy at all. And fusion of nitrogen, occurs so slow that the various loss mechanisms would quench the reaction virtually immediately. what people were worried about at Trinity was whether it would work. Because you got to realize this is an incredibly complex thing and they're testing it for the first time. I ran an R and D company for 27 years and it's pretty rare that something new works the first time, but it did.
Speaker C: before I let you go, the future, is it going to be fusion?
Speaker A: Well, eventually, yes. I, think we will have improved, versions of fission. I think we'll have breeder reactors, I think loth thorium reactors. These things are on the way. but definitely fusion, is a doable thing. and right now, really, as a result of the success of SpaceX demonstrating, entrepreneurial approaches to reusable space launch vehicles, in other words, doing the impossible, so to speak investors have taken a look at advanced vision and fusion and said, maybe the reason why we don't have it is the wrong people are doing it. maybe the problem is institutional. And so you have both advanced fission and fusion entrepreneurial companies getting large amounts of funding from investors and these people are moving ahead on very fast timelines. So while, fission has stagnated, since its initial golden age of the think, we're going to have new kinds of fission reactors and we're going to have fusion as well.
Speaker C: Robert Zubrin. He's got a new book. It's called The Case for Nukes how We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, open and magnificent Future. Robert, thank you so much for joining the program.
Speaker A: You are most welcome.
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