[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm your other co host, Jaronous.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today we're continuing our wrong direction mini series by talking about nuclear energy with some special guests from Riverkeeper, an organization based in New York that works to protect and restore the Hudson river. But before we get to that, Jaron, what is our mission?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Thank you for that. So, nuclear energy is a controversial topic for a lot of folks in the climate and environmental space, but for we act, it lands pretty squarely in the wrong direction. Bucket. We can share a few reasons why it's here in just a second, but let's make sure we're all on the same page with what nuclear energy actually is. Jaron, I think you are best suited to walk us through what nuclear energy actually is, because I think most people think of a few things when they think of nuclear energy. Homer Simpson's job being one of them.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. That's the first thing that I think of when I think of nuclear power plant is Homer Simpson and Donuts and.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Chernobyl being the second one.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I prefer Homer Simpson. It's a little bit more of a pleasant thought in my mind, but, yes, you're right. Nuclear energy is a inherently technical topic, and we're going to do our best to try to unpack it.
Pretty much all the information I'm going to share is from this really great article that I found from NRDC, and I'll include a link in the show notes. But just in a nutshell, nuclear energy comes from the core of an atom. So if you think back to chemistry or science class, an atom, really tiny particles that make up basically everything. And for each atom, you have electrons that make up the outer layers. And there's the nucleus, which is the tightly packed core that holds protons and neutrons together. And that bond that holds the protons and neutrons together is known as the strong nuclear force, or nuclear. There we go. We finally got in. But when a neutron, part of that nucleus in the center, when a neutron touches the nucleus of certain atoms, uranium, for example, you may have heard of, that atomic center can break into pieces in a process called nuclear fission. That's probably a science you've probably heard thrown around nuclear fission. So, essentially, when a neutron touches the nucleus of another atom and it breaks apart and releases an enormous amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation. That's where all the energy actually comes from, is that contact between a neutron and a nucleus of another atom. So most nuclear power plants use what's called enriched uranium as their fuel to produce electricity. And that's because the atoms in enriched uranium are more easily split apart in nuclear reactors. So they're just a material that's just naturally really good for this process.
And in that process of nuclear fission, that fueled. So that enriched uranium is placed in a nuclear reactor core, and the atoms making up that fuel are broken into pieces and release all that energy. So basically, these particles are kind of bumping into each other and breaking apart and releasing a bunch of that nuclear energy as a part of the process. And during that process, the neutrons that are released by one reaction go on to trigger that process with another atom. So basically, it's a chain reaction that continues to produce heat and radiation, such as energy, creating more energy, creating more energy.
During that process, the energy that's actually released from this fission of uranium atoms, it heats water in the process of the energy that's released is used to heat water, which, as we all know, produces steam. And that's actually how we get the electricity out of it. It's just from the steam that's created and goes through a turbine and we get electricity out of it. It's a lot of moving parts, but really just that colliding of those nucleus particles, that energy that's released and then that's used to heat up water and move a turbine to create electricity. So it's why it's so popular. It's a low carbon energy source that produced almost no greenhouse gas emissions in the process. That's part of why it's a very popular source of energy for folks when they're talking about how do we address climate change? Right. But that doesn't come without some other unintended effects and complications. Right?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah. It seems to be kind of the theme with some of the technologies that we've been exploring so far is that on the surface it seems good, right? Like there's something there that's just like this kind of cool. This doesn't really give much as far as greenhouse gas emissions. So why would we consider this the wrong direction? And there's a few reasons why. One of the main reasons is the local impacts of storing the nuclear waste itself. So nuclear energy industry has historically imposed inequitable burdens on low income communities and people of color, particularly indigenous communities. So those are the kind of like that impact there. It's just like the sighting of it, again, in an environmental justice community or in a community that has a lot of marginalized folks is a theme here. And this is another piece that it's no different for nuclear as well.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Just because there's no carbon emissions that are emitted, a part of the process, doesn't mean that there aren't potential exposures for people living in the community nearby. Yep. But, yeah. And one of the last pieces that we'll touch on here with why nuclear energy kind of falls in this wrong direction bucket is that in addition to some of these environmental justice concerns, nuclear power plants also make less economic sense than solar and wind, for example. And existing nuclear power plants have a relatively low operation, maintenance and fuel costs compared to a lot of fossil fuel plants, which is why they exist, which is why they were investments for some folks. But the world nuclear industry status report that also include a link in the show notes estimates that the cost of generating nuclear energy in 2021 ranged between $112 and $189 per megawatt hour unit of energy, while solar power costs between $36 and $44. An onshore wind power comes in at. So quite a big difference, half or a third of the cost, potentially. And that's why some nuclear power plants throughout the country are actually closing before their licenses expire, because it ends up being less economic, less cost effective than solar and wind.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I'm all about those opportunity costs. You know, what are we spending our money on and what should we be spending our money on?
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: So I feel like that's plenty of context for folks to really understand what's kind of going on. First of all, how nuclear energy works. Hopefully, my explanation helps someone, and if not, the article in the show notes, will do probably a much better job. But with that, yeah, we cover some really interesting points with Riverkeeper about the nuance and challenge around decommissioning a nuclear power plant, a nuclear power plant specifically, which, if you're going to build it, you got a plan for it to come down eventually. So that's what we'll get into. So, alani, what do you say? I think we can go ahead and jump into that interview.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get into it.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: All right.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Well, thank you both for joining us. Before we get too far into the interview, I'd love to have each of you just do a brief introduction of yourself and just share a little bit about the background around your work on indian point and nuclear energy, the decommissioning. Whoever wants to start, feel free.
[00:08:52] Speaker D: I can start. Hi, I'm Victoria Lehring. I'm a staff attorney at Riverkeeper.
I've been at Riverkeeper for a little over five years, and Indian Point was one of the first issues I got started on right away. So my experience with nuclear power really started with the. My involvement with this indian point campaign that Riverkeeper has, and other sort of work that I do at Riverkeeper includes stormwater work, working on safe and clean drinking water, working on protecting the Hudson water site, and.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Richard Webster. I'm an attorney. I used to work for Riverkeeper as the legal director. I now work as an outside counsel for Riverkeeper. I've been involved in nuclear parishes. Actually, before I was involved in Union Point, I was doing some legal work on a reactor called Oyster Creek in New Jersey, where ultimately we challenged the relicensing, and ultimately that one closed. And then I was involved in the challenge of the relicensing of Indian Point, where I was actually doing some work for Clearwater. On that. We actually did an environmental justice contention on that, mainly focused on evacuation issues. And then when I joined Riverkeeper, we were focusing primarily on the closure, what that would mean, and then the decommissioning. And now we're focused on the decommissioning and how to do that in a way that works reasonably well for all concerned, and obviously safe, effective, and so forth. So we've gone all the way from, you know, the reactor operating and people saying we'll never close to react to closing, to react to decommissioning. So it's been quite a journey.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: I appreciate both those introductions. And you already touched on two important keywords. You know, environmental justice and drinking water. Two things that are hot topics for a lot of people and something that especially folks living in environmental justice communities love to hear. We're starting this interview off, so great. So thank you for that question.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess we can go ahead and dive in, because we're talking to the right people here. So Jerry and I already kind of gave a little bit of an overview of what's going on in Sarda. State of the nuclear. State of nuclear, kind of in New York state overall. But can you guys talk a little bit more specifically about indian point? Kind of walk us through a quick timeline and what Riverkeeper's involvement has been.
[00:11:16] Speaker D: So indian point has been around for a while. Indian point unit one started generating power in the sixties, unit two and three followed in the seventies, and they were a large part of New York City's electrical power up until they closed in 2020 and 2021. That was when unit three ceased operations, and that was the end of indian point in terms of how we got there in between.
Riverkeeper, from what I know, primarily got involved in Indian Point post 911. I think there was a lot of public concern after 911 about the safety of having a nuclear power plant so close to a major city with so many people in close concentration. And Riverkeepers started looking into all these concerns of community members, and we realized that there were major water quality and ecological impacts of indian point. So how indian point works is that it had an open cycle cooling system where they pulled water in from the Hudson river, used that to cool down the system, and then they would release that boiling hot water back out into the river, so that heat up waters that damage the ecology of the river itself. But also in the process of sucking up all that water, they would kill around a billion fish and fish larvae a year, which is a big impact.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: So I described the advocacy efforts to close indian point. It's kind of like a snowball. You know, there were gradually issues layered on and layered on and layered on and depending on who you were, depending on which issue was your most important. So there was the fish.
The effects on the river ecosystem was one problem. Evacuation was another major problem. There was something called the Wit report, which was commissioned by the state to see was the evacuation plan feasible? And basically that came out in the. Around 2002 and said that the evacuation plan was not feasible. And the evacuation plan was sort of a. More of a paper exercise than a real exercise. Obviously, 911 had a huge impact in terms of people being worried about proximity to the city and potential releases, in particular from the spent fuel pool, which was not well protected against air attack and contained a massive inventory of rodonuclides. And then, you know, to go back to the environmental justice point, you may or may not know that within 10 miles of indian point, there's a prison called sing sing.
Unfortunately, that prison has a high proportion of people of color.
And it turned out there was no real mechanism or evacuating that prison. There were other issues. There were issues with the fatigue of various parts within the plant. Basically. Entergy kept reassuring us, the operator kept reassuring us that, you know, fatigue was under control, then they would measure it, and it turned out it wasn't under control.
They would say that various other problems were under control. Then they would recur. It turns out they weren't under control. So I would say there was a. Overall, there was a. A creeping loss of credibility on behalf of the reactor operator, and there was more and more calls for the closure. Another issue I should mention was there were actually high pressure gas pipelines going underneath the plant.
And you might not think that's a great idea, but the government then decided to add more pipeline capacity next to the plant, which obviously made people extremely worried. And they got more worried when it turned out that the risk assessment that had been done was basically wrong, had been gerrymandered to say everything was okay when it wasn't necessarily so. You know, there was a whole series of events that led, I would say, to the loss of credibility of both the regulator, the nuclear regulatory commission, and of the operator. And so ultimately, the governor Cuomo, decided to negotiate with Entergy and agreed. Entergy agreed to close the plant.
And then we moved on to the next phase, which is decommissioning, which is just as tricky. It turns out. Even though there's no longer an operating reactor, the NRC regulations allow up to 60 years or decommissioning.
We didn't want to take 60 years. So ultimately, we negotiated a deal with this company called Holtec. They promised to come in and do it a lot more quickly. And that company has had some issues, some major issues. It turns out they've done some things well and they've done some things badly, but we're still trying to work with them to get the plant in a state where we can reasonably say that we're happy with what's happening so far. We have the fuel out of the spent fuel pool. That's a very good thing. It's in these dry casks, which is better than. Much better than being in the fuel pool. Of course, nothing is perfect, but we've had issues with Holtec, the current decommissioning entity, delaying unnecessarily and discharging radionuclides to the river when they don't need to, and also failing to fully account for what they're doing, basically refusing to tell us what they're doing.
So it's a glass, I would say it's a glass half full situation, and we're always having to work the process. Which is? The process can be limited. We're happy that we have fairly vigorous state oversight. Holtec is suing the state about a law preventing radioactive discharge into the river. The state is suing altech or potential violations of that law. So we're happy that we were able to work with the state to get pretty good state oversight, because in the nuclear field, the nuclear regulatory commission has very strong what's called preemption, which basically means that states have limited amount, a limited ability to regulate nuclear plants.
And so we've had to work hard and try to find opportunities for the state to do that regulation.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: That's helpful.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Well, I just had one quick thought. I mean, a reaction was the 60 years to decommission sounds insane. I mean, we'll get a little bit more to decommission if you guys can talk about that. But I did kind of want to step back in and ask the question of it seems like a lot of the reason to close indian point kind of came a lot from advocacy and the work that you guys were doing and also communities there. Can you talk a little bit about that? And was that the kind of thing, the decision that led, that moved Cuomo to close Indian Point?
[00:18:30] Speaker D: I think advocacy played a really large role. I mean, public opinion and the pressure that puts on public officials can get a lot done. So, Riverkeeper, we had attacked the issue from multiple angles. We had a really strong advocacy push. We worked with community members, but we also had a legal approach where we had challenged their water permit, their discharge permit when the reactors were in session. We challenged the renewal of the license when it came up in 2007.
And we also, when Entergy was transferring the site to Holtec for decommissioning, we also challenge that on a legal front and advocacy front. We worked on gathering community members, mobilizing, educating them, getting petitions, but also filing in court. So which is really that our challenge in court against the license transfer was what opened the door for us to be part of the negotiations with whole tech and the state and getting some stronger protections and stronger state oversight during the decommissioning process and getting the decommissioning oversight board as part of that, so that community members have a forum to advocate and be educated about the issue.
So really big, I would say the state, the Hudson Bill that Richard was talking about, this was like one of our most recent wins where we stopped the release of the radioactive wastewater.
That was primarily due to a really strong advocacy push, which drove it, made public officials aware of this huge issue and how just, like, how many people cared about it. And that, I think, is ultimately what brought it across the finish line where Hoco signed it into law.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I think I would enforce that.
In these kind of fights, you have to have. You have to be firing all cylinders, right? It's rhythm and blues you know, it's like, you know, you have to be doing legal work, but you also have to be doing advocacy work. And the two have to mesh together tightly so that you generally, with good legal work, you can understand how to push in terms of advocacy so you can push for things that the state can actually deliver. We basically gave up on advocating before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because it is so insulated and it is so entrenched. You know, I would say if the industry ran its reactors as well as it ran its lobbying, then I wouldnt be so worried. They really had that locked up. And so we have to decide to play on a playing field where we can match them.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: I appreciate you bringing that point about just elaborating on this relationship between advocacy and the legal part of any kind of campaign when you're working to address some kind of environmental issue or what have you, because I think that sometimes people see it as a one or the other. Like either we're going to do the legal battle or we're going to do the advocacy. The answer is both. You have to attack them on all fronts, especially for something as large as a nuclear power plant or any kind of facility that's really embedded in the system of producing energy for a big portion of the state. A lot of people that were getting energy from that facility. Right. So not like a small thing that you're pushing back against. So going back to what you were saying earlier about some of the little things that led to this loss of faith in this facility, I feel like that rings true to so many of the stories that we've heard about other facilities, that other things are impacting environmental justice communities around the US, including just throughout New York state. Different things that lead to distrust from community members, lack of transparency, or just not doing what you're supposed to do and really keeping up with your maintaining something properly, it really just erodes that trust and leads to kind of a common sense approach of like, yeah, this thing that doesn't, isn't serving us anymore, you know? So I appreciate you kind of touching on some of the components of that, but you kind of let us naturally to this next point, which is the decommissioning process. And I think something that a lot of folks maybe struggle with more is what does that decommissioning process look like? I think there's that concern that people understand of dumping radioactive material into the Hudson River. I think that's where a lot of people started paying attention to what was going on with indian point as a part of the decommissioning, but I want to maybe unpack that a little bit more. You mentioned the. The dry. The casks part of the. Just helping us unpack that a little bit more and helping kind of the average person understand, like, what goes into the decommissioning of a facility like indian point? And what are some of those immediate, you know, environmental impacts that it might have on the surrounding community?
[00:23:34] Speaker C: I mean, let me. Let me do the spent fuel storage, and then I'll pass over Victoria to do the community impacts more specifically. You know, so the first thing to do when you. When you finish operating a nuclear reactor is take the fuel out of the. Out of the reactor core. So, you know, it moves out of the reactor core into the spent fuel pool. It's very. It's extremely reactive. It has to be moved underwater. And, you know, you have to be very careful not to get very close to it. This is some of the deadliest waste, you know, on earth that we. This is some of the deadliest waste that we produce. So you have to manage it very carefully. As you probably know, there's no endpoint disposal for this wasteland. Right. There's nowhere to take it to say, okay, this is where it rests forever.
So it basically is going to end up sitting on the reactor site for the foreseeable future. The way it's done is that basically you put the fuel assembly. So the fuel comes in rods, right?
And then the rods are sort of bound together in these assemblies. And then you put the assemblies into a cask, which goes in the middle. It's kind of like a russian doll, right? The cask goes in the middle. Then there's some concrete and some steel, and then there's some more steel on the outside. And so you build this big cask. And Victoria and I have been out there and looked at these casks, and they are massive. And the idea of those is that they're protective. I mean, first of all, they're passive. With a spent fuel pool, you have to actively cool the water. And if you lose cooling, then the water can boil, and then you can start to lose water. Or if you get a hole in the spent fuel pool, then you've got a problem. Whereas with these casts, they're. They're passive. So there's no. You know, the air comes in at the bottom and goes up out the top, and that cools the fuel. And then the fuel is basically then divided up into different little compartments. So each cast contains a certain. A few. A few assemblies. And so even if you had one cast failure, that would be really bad. Right? But it wouldn't be nearly as bad as a spent fuel pull fire. And this is the thing I'm always trying to get across to people, is decommissioning a nuclear power plant is not about making it perfect. It's about the least bad solution that we can come up with. And so that's what has happened in the first three years, I think, is they've got all the fuel from the spent fuel pools into dry car storage.
And there's some issues with that. You know, as always, nothing is ever perfect, but it's better than it was. But there's still plenty of issues to go. Victoria, do you want to pick up on community impacts and what are the potential impacts and how we've been dealing with those?
[00:26:14] Speaker D: Yeah, sure. So, as Richard said, a large part of decommissioning is dealing with the spent fuel. What he had mentioned is that the spent fuel stays on the site. So what other communities can look forward to? It's unknown. This big question, what do we do with spent fuel but separate from the spent fuel, they also have to take down the buildings that are on the site.
And some of that is not very contaminated with radioactive.
It doesn't have much radioactive contamination.
Some of that. So the internals in the reactor that would have been exposed to the fuel on the fuel rods, those are highly radioactive. So they have to do this very carefully, take them apart, ship them off site. A lot of times at indian point, a lot of the waste is shipped off site. The very, very high level contaminated components, those are actually going to be placed within those same task that Richard was mentioning for the spent fuel and just kept on site until the Department of Energy comes up with some solution to deal with it. For the community members on site, they are very worried about a lot of contamination due to this construction and demolition that's happening on site. So there's a school nearby in Yuenpui. They're very concerned about Dustin coming from this construction aid because that dust can carry that radioactive contamination and lead to exposure of the children that are nearby. The nearby families and community members that live near Indian Point, those are all. They're potentially at risk if there is an issue with dust. In addition, Richard mentioned there's that high pressured gas pipeline that runs near the site. So I'm concerned about if there's an issue with the decommissioning process, something goes wrong, there's a big fire. How's that going to impact the pipeline? They're also moving a lot of like, very heavy equipment over and they actually have to cross over part of the pipeline. So that was something that community members had raised. We had brought that up at the decommissioning oversight board, went back and forth to the agencies to make sure that Washington all secure and the risks were managed as best they can, which really, ideally we wouldn't have to deal with this at all. But since the pipeline is already there, all we can do, as Richard said, is we manage. We try to get the best possible solution that we can, but nothing is perfect. In addition, Riverkeeper hasn't been quite as involved, but obviously, the closure of indian point was the closure of a big employer in the area and a big taxpayer. So there's a big issue that the community faces regarding funding and their tax revenue. So it's not within Riverkeepers direct expertise to advocate on economic issues. But we are in full support of trying to get a just transition for the community members. I know the state has done a number of, like, employment counseling for a lot of the displaced workers in the area, placing them in other sites or helping them with retirement. In addition, we have a lot of community members are concerned about what happens in the future. This is a pretty nice sized piece of land. That's prime waterfront property. So, Riverkeeper, at this point, we don't have a particular solution in mind for what the land will look like, what the site will look like when decommissioning is done. We're really focused on getting the site clean at this moment. However, we would like it to. We'd like to enable the community to figure out what works for them. And obviously, we'll be watching out for any proposals to use the site for something that is going to be bad for the environment and bad for the community if they put something that's very highly polluting.
We've had community members come to us with concerns about building a new type of nuclear reactor, putting a different type of nuclear reactor on the site. Those are concerns that we've heard and we are monitoring very closely. But like I said, I think it's going to be a little further in the future in terms of that. And also, of course, drinking water, the tritium. This is something that we community members came to us. They brought up their concern. We had been monitoring it for a while, and we did this big advocacy push which got the law passed, which theoretically should have stopped all discharges of this radiated wastewater.
However, we found out recently that there were still some releases while the law was in effect. Well, the law is still in effect now. The law is being challenged, and that's something we're monitoring really closely. We aren't a part of that lawsuit, but where we can, from the advocacy side, we are in full support of the Save the Hudson law.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Thank you for that. I think a lot of folks would appreciate that. So I think we're near the end of our time together, so I want to kind of help us start to get some closing thoughts. And I think one of our last questions for you both is, what is Riverkeeper's vision for the future, both around indian point specifically and just in general? And how do you feel like people can get involved in any advocacy efforts around creating that vision?
[00:32:15] Speaker D: So start. So I think one of the big, one of the most obvious ways to get involved is for community members to continue going, showing up to those decommissioned oversight board meetings. I know sometimes they're very long and boring, and they can be extremely frustrating because hold tech, the company that is the commission, indian point, is very difficult to work with. They don't respond to a lot of the concerns that community members are bringing. But there is almost always a public comment. I think now there is always a private comment opportunity so people can get their concerns, they can get their questions out there, they can learn about what's happening. I think that's a big first step. And a lot of times when there are opportunities for perfect comment on permitting processes, different federal NRC rulemakings, those are also mentioned during the meeting so that community members are aware. So I think that's the first step.
Richard?
[00:33:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, just on the vision side, I think, you know, what we'd like to see is clean groundwater. The site cleaned up to a level that's reasonably safe for people to visit, do recreational activities. I think there are certain areas of the site where they haven't been used for a long time. We'd like to see those preserved. And we are very cognizant of the need for New York state to transition to renewable energy and low carbon fuels. And that's sort of part of the overall vision, is to do that effectively without having major impacts on environmental justice or other communities. And I think that's a real challenge, but I think it's something that we have to take seriously.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Fantastic.
Any other last thoughts or comments unrelated to the vision and getting involved, things that you wanted to share that you didn't have a chance to share so far that you think are important?
[00:34:13] Speaker D: Yes. One thing to emphasize, which Richard mentioned, I think in terms of next steps, we really would like to see some work done on the groundwater contamination because there is radioactive groundwater under the site that is moving towards the Hudson river and hasn't been dealt with in like, decades. So we would like to tackle that sooner rather than later.
[00:34:42] Speaker C: Right. And I guess the thing I'd like to emphasize is to go back to one of the tools. If you're looking at a nuclear reactor, one of the tools, which I think Victoria mentioned in passing, is the Clean Water act permit. Very often, the Clean Water act permit is delegated to the state. And so it's one of the few areas where the state has some leverage over nuclear power plants, and that leverage can be used to get changes in the way the plant is operated. I mean, that worked at Oyster Creek, and it also works at indian point. Those proceedings can be extremely. What's the right word? They can be very slow and very tedious. And, you know, that's why we go to law school, is to sort of develop our tolerance for slow and tedious things. But if you hang on in there, you can get some good results.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: And thanks for that. This has been great. Really do appreciate you guys coming on and talking about this, because it can be kind of technical and very complicated for a lot of people to think about. And I do appreciate Riverkeeper's involvement in this decommissioning process because it sounds like it's really important to have these grassroots efforts in these groups kind of being the watchdogs, because our own government doesn't seem to be doing well with the oversight aspect of it or relating some of these things to the community or really advocating for the communities that are impacted and also all the ecological aspects to it as well. So I definitely appreciate this, and I learned so much. And I'm someone who's always fascinated by nuclear. And it's this whole concept and kind of comes in and out of fashion, it seems, over time. And, you know, there has been kind of a lot more global called, as we talk, a lot more about decarbonization and climate and things like that. There's just been like this ricochet of, like, people bringing up nuclear. Like I talk, I hear about nuclear so much more than I did before. So that's why we kind of really wanted to make sure we fit this in, into our series.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: Well, we appreciate it. It was really, really fun to be on. So thanks very much.
[00:36:47] Speaker D: Yeah, it was great talking to both of you. Thank you.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out the next episode in the wrong direction mini series coming out on September 9. If you liked this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and
[email protected].
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Dot check out we act on Facebook at weact four, EJ. That's w e a C t f o R e J. Also on Instagram, X and YouTube acts for EJ. That's weact no number four, EJ. And check out our website, weact.org, for more information about environmental justice. Until next time.
