This week's Fissionary guest is Lindsey Walter, director of international policy for Third Way’s Climate and Energy program and co-founder of Carbon-Free Europe, an initiative that provides analysis on technology-inclusive policy in the EU and UK. Her work in both the United States and Europe makes her an expert on both sides of the nuclear fence.
Countries like France, Romania, and the Netherlands are pro-nuclear, others like Germany and Austria are against it, and then there’s an emerging set of historically nuclear-opposing countries who find themselves considering a switch like Italy, Belgium, and Sweden.
Mirroring her work in Europe, Lindsey’s own past paints a similar picture. In the episode, she talks about growing up in the traditional environmentalist mindset of southern California, but her passion for climate mitigation ultimately set her on a path to nuclear support.
It began to become clear to me that our chances of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 increased significantly when we include nuclear in the mix. So, that was the beginning of some cracks in my thinking.
Lindsey talks about seeing a similar shift in in the public’s perception of nuclear—including her family in California—and one of the most likely reasons for that shift is the climate crisis.
There’s other environmentalists that are coming around to nuclear for the same reasons that I did.
Nuclear energy can provide reliable power when you need it, for as long as you need it. And nuclear can do it without any carbon emissions. The world is hurtling toward an electrified future, and we need to ensure that the power provided is clean. Nuclear can be that provider.
But it’s not just electricity. Lindsey walks listeners through the importance of a net-zero economy, which comes from decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors that require reliable, high-temperature heat for their industrial processes. You guessed it: nuclear can make it happen.
In addition to the climate motivation, countries are taking another look at nuclear for energy security reasons.
Where nuclear can help here is it is a resource that can be built within your country, it can meet your energy needs, and it can reduce your dependence on energy imports.
Whatever the driving force, more people are changing their mind on nuclear energy. But…it’s complicated. That’s Lindsey’s answer when asked to describe the future of nuclear energy in one word. She explained, “There’s a lot that needs to be done in the nuclear space for nuclear energy to be a part of a clean energy future.” We’re up to the challenge.
This is Fissionary, a show exploring how nuclear powers your world. I’m Mary Carpenter.
Jordan Houghton:
And I’m Jordan Houghton. Let’s jump in. Welcome to today’s episode of Fissionary. We have a really interesting guest today. I think today’s conversation is a little bit wonkier because we really dive into policy around nuclear and not just in the US, but around the world, so it’s a really interesting conversation. Hang with us as we go through it. I think all of our listeners are gonna really enjoy this one. One thing that I think is very interesting about today’s guest is that she wasn’t always pro-nuclear. She didn’t start out that way, but learning about nuclear brought her over to understanding its necessity in fighting climate change and for energy security around the world.
Mary Carpenter:
So, we’ll have a really interesting perspective from our guest today. She’s from California. She herself said that she’s from a pretty hardcore environmental background, so she was influenced to feel one way about nuclear, but when she started to learn more about the necessity that nuclear plays to fight climate change, she changed her opinion. So, you know, I think it’s an important story to tell that as we’re considering climate change and what we need to do to fight it, that nuclear is such an important tool that we have in the toolbox.
Jordan Houghton:
I’m presuming many of our listeners are coming to us not a hundred percent sure how they feel about nuclear either, and I’m hoping that these conversations help educate them and give them resources for learning more and cut through some of the misinformation that’s out there. I think it’s really important for people to have a place to turn, to learn what they need to know. I think there’s been a lot of misconceptions out there, that’s a theme that comes up in a couple of our episodes, and it’s interesting to me how many people will actually sit down with the information, digest it, and realize that nuclear is a solid option for climate change and energy security.
Mary Carpenter:
Right, and this guest is heavily influenced by climate change, but she also talks about that energy security piece that you just brought up, you know, and that might resonate with some listeners. If climate change isn’t the top issue for you, maybe energy security is. And we dive in a little bit in this episode to American innovation and American technology, and how important it is for America to stay competitive in nuclear energy because if we’re not providing the technology, then places like Russia and China will, and our guest gives a really interesting perspective of how these are hundred-year agreements, and If America doesn’t do it, then other countries will create these relationships with Russia and China.
Jordan Houghton:
Mary, I think, bringing up the idea of energy security in the context of national security is a really fascinating angle of this conversation. It gets a little bit deeper than, I think maybe everyone is expecting to hear on this podcast, but it’s really important for everybody to understand the energy security piece of it and how other countries, like Russia and China’s influence over nuclear programs in other parts of the world can impact us here at home in the United States. We’ve been talking about our guest today, but we haven’t formally introduced her. Her name is Lindsey Walter, and she’s the director of international policy for Third Way’s climate and energy program, and she co-founded Carbon-Free Europe, an initiative of Third Way that provides analysis on technology-inclusive climate policy in the EU and UK.
Mary Carpenter:
We are so excited to have Lindsey Walter joining us today. Lindsey is the director of international policy for Third Way’s climate and energy program, and she co-founded Carbon-Free Europe, an initiative of Third Way’s that provides analysis on technology-inclusive climate policy in the EU and UK. Lindsey, thanks so much for joining us.
Lindsey Walter:
Thanks for having me.
Mary Carpenter:
Alright, let’s jump right in with you telling us a bit about you. Where are you from? What’s your background? What you’re doing now?
Lindsey Walter:
Yeah, so I’m from Huntington Beach, California, but I’ve been on the East Coast for maybe over a decade now, and I’ve always been passionate about the environment. I think that comes from growing up in the ocean. I earned my bachelor’s in sustainable development, then I went back to get my master’s in environmental science and policy. So, I come from a pretty hardcore environmental background, and I feel very privileged to work in energy policy now because I think the climate crisis is one of the most, if not the most pressing challenge of our lifetime. You know, as director of international policy at Third Way, I oversee our transatlantic clean energy policy portfolio, and as you mentioned, I co-founded our European initiative, Carbon-Free Europe. We ultimately work to provide analysis and recommendations to policy makers both in the US, EU, and UK to ensure that climate policy can create affordable, clean, reliable energy.
Jordan Houghton:
I’m gonna just interject and ask which coast is your favorite coast?
Lindsey Walter:
Oh, I hate to say it because I’m here with all of my East Coast friends, but I highly prefer the West Coast. The landscape, it’s just so much more beautiful. I’m huge on the mountains and the Rockies and the desert and the ocean landscape. The West Coast has it going on. But, you know, work is on the East Coast, so here we are.
Mary Carpenter:
That’s fair, it is beautiful. But I have to ask, growing up in California, were you always pro nuclear?
Lindsey Walter:
I was not. And this is actually more of a recent transition for me, to be honest. You know, I grew up in a very kind of traditional environmentalist mindset in Southern California. I also did my Fulbright research grant in Germany for a year, which surrounded me with a lot of academic, traditional thinking in Germany around kind of anti-nuclear, and to be honest, it was just kind of a given in that community. You weren’t really challenging assumptions around that a lot, you mostly just knew that it was bad and you talked about other clean energy resources. So, that was the background that I came from. And it’s funny, when I was interviewing for the job at Third Way, like five years ago now, one of the first questions I asked my now-boss Josh was, ‘Do I have to be supportive of nuclear to join the Third Way team?’ Because I love a lot of the work that we do on different clean energy technologies and innovation policy, so I was really passionate about the job, but I knew Third Way also did work on nuclear, so I asked, ‘Do I have to be supportive of nuclear?’ And Josh said, ‘No, we have other people working on that.’ And then slowly, over time—I run our energy systems modeling work, working with partners that evolved energy research, and through that energy systems research that we do for both the US and Europe, it began to become clear to me that our chances of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 increased significantly when we include nuclear in the mix. So, that was the beginning of some cracks in my thinking and openness to learn more about the technology, it was actually through this climate lens, and an understanding of why we might need nuclear to meet our climate goals. And then, you know, from there, I’ve begun to transition into—I say, you know, I’m supportive of nuclear for the climate reasons.
Mary Carpenter:
Do you think that your friends and family and people back in California, or people you worked with in Germany, do you feel like they’re having a similar change in perspective?
Lindsey Walter:
I have seen a shift in thinking around nuclear energy. Both in my personal life, my family is now supportive of nuclear energy, and we’ve seen that a lot in California, they were gonna shut down a nuclear power plant in California, and that became a big conversation where folks in my life from back home suddenly became supportive of that specific nuclear power plant to provide clean energy to California. But I’ve also seen it in a lot of the public opinion polling that we do at Third Way. We actually just did a project that looked at public opinion around nuclear energy in five different countries and there was an overwhelming amount of support, more than 50 percent in each of those countries, including in Germany, which we included as part of the study. And one of the findings that I found most interesting was—we looked at different categories and groups of people, and we looked at an environmentalist category. And actually, there’s overwhelming support for nuclear within that category, which I found really interesting. It made me feel like maybe I’m not so alone, and there’s other environmentalists that are coming around to nuclear for the same reasons that I did.
Jordan Houghton:
When you’re talking about nuclear needing to be a part of the solution to meet decarbonization climate goals, why is that? What is the issue with pathways that don’t include nuclear?
Lindsey Walter:
So, there’s a couple things that nuclear can do to ensure our best chance of reaching our climate goals. The first one is that nuclear can provide firm, dispatchable power, which just means that it can provide energy when you need it, and it can make sure that that energy is stable and reliable. So, this becomes really beneficial in balancing out the intermittency of renewables. Nuclear energy can ensure that even with, you know, 70-plus percent of renewables on the grid, you know, renewables are the workhorse of the transition, but you need to find a way to balance that out so we can turn our lights on when we need to turn the lights on. And that’s where nuclear energy can be a really valuable asset in the grid. And we look at scenarios that say, okay, what would it take to do it with just wind and solar and energy storage, right? Can it be done when you take nuclear out of the equation? And the models always find a way to make it work. That’s what they do. But then when you look at what would need to happen in practicality, it begins to look really unrealistic. You have to build out wind and solar at more than twice the rates that we’ve ever achieved historically. You need to use an incredible amount of land use, of raw materials, of workforce, clean energy supply chains that we don’t currently have and need to scale up rapidly. And you would need to overbuild wind and solar such an incredible amount because of their intermittency issues. Then it becomes very, very expensive. So, for example, the study that we did for the EU—if you take nuclear out of the equation, it would cost 80 billion euros more a year by 2050, versus a scenario that does include nuclear energy. So, the ability to have a balancing resource on the grid is really important. And then, there are other areas of the economy that nuclear can help decarbonize, areas like steelmaking, chemicals, cement, industries that require really high-temperature heat and really dense energy resources where electrification just doesn’t cut it. And you need something like nuclear or another, perhaps hydrogen, that can help provide high-temperature reliable heat for industrial processes, so there’s these kind of—we call them hard-to-abate sectors, which some folks hate, but more challenging sectors of the economy to decarbonize where nuclear can play a very important role.
Mary Carpenter:
I’m so glad you brought that up because we’re seeing so many exciting announcements—you mentioned steel, there was the Dow and X-energy announcement—there’s movement happening in these different industries that need to decarbonize and they’re realizing that nuclear is such a good option for them. What do you see as kind of the most exciting space in industry for that to happen in?
Lindsey Walter:
I actually was visiting a steel facility in Remsheid, Germany, last week, which was super fascinating for me. And right now, they run on natural gas, but they need hydrogen to replace natural gas, to be that clean energy resource to decarbonize their steelmaking. And they provide steel for things like wind turbines, so it’s all part of this broader, kind of clean energy supply chain. And the problem that they’re struggling with is hydrogen currently costs five times the amount of natural gas. So, this is one application that I think is very fascinating for nuclear energy. Maybe you use the nuclear energy directly for decarbonizing an industry, but you could also use the nuclear energy to create hydrogen through a process called high-temperature electrolysis, and then you can use that hydrogen in some of these industries as well. So, that’s one area that I think is a fascinating application for nuclear that right now is lacking with other clean energy.
Jordan Houghton:
So, we’ve talked a little bit about diversifying industries adopting nuclear, getting interested in ways that they can use nuclear through hydrogen and other applications. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about what else you’re seeing in this space.
Lindsey Walter:
Yeah, I talked a lot about where nuclear can contribute to the grid, to industrial processes, to hydrogen production, but there’s one more I wanted to flag, which is it can also help out with district heating. And that’s something we’re seeing, for example, in the Czech Republic, they’re building a pipeline from one of their nuclear power plants to their district heating system to provide heat for the city, that previously was reliant on natural gas. And so, there is wonderful opportunity to increase energy security to ensure affordable heating options, especially in Eastern European countries, where we’re seeing creative solutions around nuclear as well.
Jordan Houghton:
I’m wondering if you can talk about—a little bit about energy security and how nuclear comes into play, and I would start by asking you to just talk a little bit about what energy security is and means for listeners who may not have heard that term before.
Lindsey Walter:
Yeah, we have been relatively privileged the past few decades, especially in the United States with fracking and the availability of natural gas. We haven’t had to worry about energy security for quite some time. And energy security means that you have security of supply, that you know that you have the energy to meet your demand to turn on your lights, to heat your boilers, to run your factories. It also means that you don’t have volatile pricing. So, you have steady, reliable, predictable energy prices that don’t run up your electricity bill or your heating bill in any given month. And with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it put a spotlight on how vulnerable Europe was to volatile fossil fuel prices with—they had a huge reliability on Russian fossil fuels, in particular, Russian natural gas. And so now they’re going through this process of getting off of Russian natural gas, with a combination of diversifying their gas resources—so, the United States increased our exports of liquid natural gas to the EU to help them survive last winter, but also building out as much clean energy as they can within the EU to replace those fossil fuels in general. So, this conversation around energy security has become really important because we have seen the impact on households, on communities, when you don’t have a reliable supply of energy with reliable partners. So, where nuclear can help here is it is a resource that can be built within your country, it can meet your energy needs, and it can reduce your dependence on energy imports. And we’re seeing this become especially important in Eastern Europe, in countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, countries that are kind of on the front lines there, that were previously dependent on Russian fossil fuel imports now needing alternatives. They do not have incredible, high-quality wind and solar. They have some and they’re working to maximize what they can get out of their wind and solar resources, but they’re more limited than, say, Spain, that has incredible solar energy resources. So, they need another option that they can build that can meet their energy needs and that can reduce their dependence on imports. And that is where nuclear energy becomes a really interesting option to increase energy security.
Jordan Houghton:
So, Lindsey, when we’re talking about Europe, and not just Europe, but globally, there’s a lot of influence from Russia and China. I mean, we’re talking about wanting to reduce dependence on Russian fuel, for example, but it doesn’t just stop there because we’re seeing influence in their technology globally. And I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and how that impacts the US, how that impacts, really, the whole world as that progresses.
Lindsey Walter:
Yeah, I’m happy too because this is a huge consideration for US nuclear energy. Russia and China are more than happy to export reactors to countries all over the world. They will build it, they’ll own it, they’ll operate it, they provide comprehensive fueling packages, and they are happy to use it as a geopolitical tool. So, for the United States, sometimes it’s not a question of if nuclear should happen, should nuclear happen; it is happening, because Russia and China are moving ahead with it. And, you know, Russia has agreements with over 45 different countries. China has agreements with at least 13, and actually, Russian exports of nuclear increased after their invasion of Ukraine. So, the US can be a player in this international market for nuclear technologies. Or else, countries will keep turning to Russia and China to build reactors because they need energy, they need electricity, and they are more than happy to have it be paid for by Russia or China. So, nuclear is happening internationally, this is a huge concern that the US and US policy makers need to be aware of and need to consider.
Jordan Houghton:
We have international policy experts here who will talk about, when you see Russian and Chinese influence on countries, that it is generational. So, once they have gone into a country and invested in nuclear, that country doesn’t have the ability to pivot immediately to US technology. They end up invested in it, and I think—I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about that, that it’s not something that we can go in and reverse immediately once it’s been done.
Lindsey Walter:
Yeah, I mean, these are one hundred-year agreements. You have everything leading up to before you build the reactor with, you know, regulatory processes, you have the construction, the operation, and then the decommissioning. So, once these reactors are built in countries, they are establishing a hundred-year relationship with Russia and China. And you can’t just go in and swap out the technology at that point. So, it’s incredibly important that the United States is engaging with countries and providing reactors as an option. The other thing here is, we used to take it for a given that the US was the leader in standards around nonproliferation or on security. But the fact of the matter is, whoever is exporting the technology is the one controlling and dominating the security, the non-pro standards. So, I care a lot about us addressing the safeguard security and nonproliferation risk of nuclear for us to be able to do that, we need to be competitors in the global market. And so, you know, I talk a lot with the nonproliferation community, and there are some real genuine concerns there. But we can’t control what Russia and China are gonna do. They are, and have proven that they are, more than happy to continue to export their reactors. So, if we wanna help influence and control these standards, especially with our, you know, our technology, which has some of the highest standards of safety and nonproliferation in the world. Then we need to be a player. And if we’re not, then the world will continue to buy Russian and Chinese reactors.
Mary Carpenter:
How can the government help? The US government?
Lindsey Walter:
I think this ties back to what I said around export finance and a comprehensive strategy from senior leadership in the US government. We need tangible export finance options for our partners, and they are asking us for those options as well. The US government has accomplished incredible technological feats. So, this is something that we can do, it’s a matter of prioritizing it and owning our leadership in this space.
Mary Carpenter:
So, we’ve talked a lot about benefits of nuclear. And over the last year or so, we’ve seen huge federal and state support for nuclear. What do you think needs to happen next policy-wise in the US?
Lindsey Walter:
Nuclear is one of the policy issue areas in the US that actually has really strong bipartisan support. I think that people come at it from different perspectives. You see a lot of Democrats supporting nuclear because it can provide clean energy, because it can help us meet our climate goals, and because it can create jobs in their state. And you also see gRepublicans being supportive of nuclear because a lot of the job, economic opportunity that comes around nuclear as well. So, for example, the nuclear power plant being built in Wyoming with Terra Power is replacing a coal power plant. And that is creating jobs in a community that otherwise would have lost those jobs with the coal plant shutting down. So, in DC, there is a surprising amount of bipartisan support for nuclear energy. And that’s not to say that all the work has been done. There’s a few things that still need to happen for these reactors, the next generation of reactors, to become a reality. Namely, we need to secure the fuel supply chain. We were previously planning on using fuel from Russia, which now seems like a very bad option, so we need to create our own domestic fuel supply. We have some, but we need to ramp that up, and we can work with our European partners to do so. We need to accelerate the licensing of different reactor types in order to deploy those technologies quickly, and we also need to figure out a more strategic export strategy and export finance strategy. So, those are maybe the three big priorities, I would say need to happen at the US federal level.
Jordan Houghton:
What about in Europe?
Lindsey Walter:
In Europe, it really depends on the member state. So, there are member states like Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, that are not pursuing new nuclear technology and don’t want it to be part of the conversation. But then you have some member states like Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, you could have Bulgaria, France, that are looking at building new nuclear, and a lot of the hurdles there are very similar. They need to make sure that there are reactors that they can build in—a right time frame at the right cost. And that’s where international partners like the US could be very supportive. Ultimately, they need these projects to be on time and on budget.
Mary Carpenter:
Speaking of Europe, I wanna hear a bit more about your Carbon-Free Europe initiative.
Lindsey Walter:
We launched Carbon-Free Europe around two years ago now, and we provide research and analysis to policy makers, so we do a lot of that energy systems analysis that I was describing in order to show what policies are necessary to facilitate the transition, what technologies are necessary, how much of those technologies do you need to deploy and win? What is the investment level needed to support them? So, we do a lot of analysis and research to support both member states and EU-level policy. And then we also do advocacy around tech inclusive climate policy. So, it’s a big priority of ours to ensure that the EU is investing in the innovation and deployment of a diversity of clean energy technologies to maximize the chances of succeeding in climate goals. So, we do a lot of work supporting wind, solar, energy storage, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, nuclear energy; we very much look at where different technologies can help in different countries, in different areas of the economy, and work to ensure there’s the policies to make sure that can get done.
Jordan Houghton:
In the short term, what do you see as next for you? Via Third Way, via Carbon-Free Europe, what are your immediate goals?
Lindsey Walter:
So, our immediate goals on the US front—we’re in a big stage of implementation. We had some incredible policy passed. With the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science, and the bipartisan infrastructure law, a huge amount of money, of investment in clean energy technologies that can be deployed across the country to spread out the economic and job benefits of creating a clean energy economy. So, we’re doing a lot of work right now, making sure that that funding is getting out the door, that those programs are being implemented, that the money is getting to the right communities and the right types of projects, and it’s a very exciting stage of implementation. There’s also, as I mentioned, some work that we’re still doing to try and get not just nuclear, but other technologies, the additional policy changes that are necessary for them to be deployed. And then on the European front, it’s very much engaging they’re working right now on something called their Green Deal Industrial Plan, which is their response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. After the US passed IRA, our international partners took a step back and said we need to find a way to also be competitive in the clean energy market. And so we’re doing a lot of work right now in Europe, helping advise on the Green Deal Industrial Plan and the different components of that. And then next year, there will be a huge election in Europe, so there’s some shifting landscape that will happen in 2024, new political parties, a new mix in the EU Parliament, and that will also be an opportunity to find ways to engage in climate and clean energy policy, with a new Parliament, with a new kind of EU landscape. So, those are some of the main areas.
Mary Carpenter:
Well, for anyone interested in learning more about the work you’re doing at Carbon-Free Europe, or what’s going on at Third Way, where should they go?
Lindsey Walter:
They can visit either of our websites at thirdway.org or carbonfreeeurope.org, and they should also feel free to reach out. Email me or my staff, we’re always happy to engage and continue the conversation. Please check us out on our website, we also are on Twitter, LinkedIn, all the typical social media, so we should be relatively easy to find.
Jordan Houghton:
We like to end by asking for you to say what you think the future of nuclear is in one word?
Lindsey Walter:
Maybe I’ll use this as an opportunity to say I’m definitely pro-nuclear in the sense that I think we need it for climate, but there are real hurdles to making nuclear a reality. And I think as we move forward in finding solutions to things like waste, to security, to non-pro, to financing issues, to creating new fueling that is reliable with reliable partners, there’s a lot that needs to be done in the nuclear space for nuclear energy to be a part of a clean energy future. I believe these are hurdles that we can overcome, but we need to be really smart and intelligent about them. So, that’s how I feel about nuclear, it’s complicated, and you’ll hear me talk about both the pros and the cons and where it fits in the energy system. I don’t think it’s just a simple answer, and I sometimes fall somewhere in between. So, I’ll say complicated.
Jordan Houghton:
That’s fair. I mean, I think it’s important to have conversations like this to put it all out there and understand what’s on the table so we can find a path forward.
Mary Carpenter:
Thank you so much, Lindsey, for chatting with us today, we covered so many important topics.
Jordan Houghton:
If you want to learn more about Third Way or Carbon-Free Europe, you can visit their website or find them on social media.
Mary Carpenter:
And thanks to all of you for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave your feedback to the podcast on whatever platform you’re listening on. See you next time.
The next episode airs on Thursday, October 5—make sure you tune in, Fissionaries!
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