Welcoming Nuclear Policy Expert Jessica Lovering to Substack
Team Trump's initial steps on nuclear are a muddled mix of promising and contradictory and not yet concretized - which makes guides like Lovering more important than ever.
I’m still on the run in Greece (we had a remarkable moment yesterday visiting an abandoned U.S. cold war communication site; see below).
But I can’t avoid posting when there’s time. I’ve been impressed with
’s analysis of nuclear energy policy since she obtained her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2020 with this dissertation: Evaluating Changing Paradigms Across the Nuclear Industry. Given the whiplash-like changes in this transition from the Biden presidency to Trump’s second term, her insights are more important than ever. So I hope you’ll subscribe to her new Substack newsletter. In her first post she encourages the curious to avoid reading the dissertation itself, saying:Instead, read the three papers that were assembled Frankenstein-style into my thesis:
Expert assessments of strategies to enhance global nuclear security (2020) in Energy Policy
Chasing Cheap Nuclear: Economic Trade-Offs for Small Modular Reactors (2020) in NAE’s The Bridge
A Techno-Economic Evaluation of Microreactors for Off-Grid and Microgrid Applications (2023) in Sustainable Cities and Society
Sign up!
I’ve hosted her on Sustain What twice, first in 2021 as the Indian Point nuclear plant near my then-home in the Hudson Valley was shut down.
That show also featured Columbia climate-law professor Michael Gerrard and filmmaker Robert Stone, whose documentary “Pandora’s Promise” tried to break through the many myths surrounding this energy source.
Lovering came back on with Mekala Krishnan of McKinsey to explore the challenges and opportunities facing anyone pursuing a global transformation to clean climate-safe energy choices:
An Energy Transition Reality Check with McKinsey’s Mekala Krishnan
There’s so much chatter and buzz around the phrase “energy transition” - only blunted slightly by the newer phrase “net zero” - that I thought it well worth doing a live Sustain What “Watchwords” conversation with a top expert about the energy transition concept and realities. I use the term watchwords to highlight terms or phrases that too often confus…
As I posted a few days ago, also be sure to subscribe to
for clarity on nuclear, geothermal and other energy policy and technology developments or setbacks.Parting shot
Here’s the weird scene at the highest point on the Greek island Lefkada, where the U.S. built a hub for NATO communications that is now hauntingly bare and graffiti-covered. See Atlas Obscura for more.
