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Hoover Podcast: The Future of Nuclear Power
Over at the Hoover Institution, we’ve recently launched a new essay series on the role that nuclear power can play in the future of American energy production.
In this special podcast to accompany that series, I sit down with William J. Madia, Chairman of the Board of Overseers and Vice President for the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, and Regis Matzie, a consultant to the international nuclear industry and the former Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Westinghouse Electric Company, to talk specifically about one piece of technology that they believe could change the way the U.S. does nuclear: small modular reactors (SMRs). Listen in below to hear how SMRs could potentially address energy, environmental, and national security concerns in a groundbreaking fashion:
For all the arguments between liberals and conservatives on economic issues, most boil down to one core point of contention: conservatives realize that government doesn’t do a lot of things very well. One of those things government is not very good at, compared to the private sector and free individuals, is learning hard lessons. Case in point: bubbles.
At a recent annual shareholders meeting, Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s longtime Chairman and CEO, did something very unusual for a business executive: he
Technology is great — we all know that. It has given us longer and far more comfortable lives, and enormous increases in wealth of all kinds. Nevertheless, we often make arguments about geopolitics as if we were in a technological stasis field. This is a mistake, because, of course, technological changes lead to unintended consequences that can change everything.
The energy boom has been great for the United States. But in other parts of the world? Not so much. In this final installment of the Strategika series on the international implications of new energy development, I talk with the Hoover Institution’s Kori Schake about the fallout for nations that have traditionally relied on energy resources to prop up their governments. Are places like Venezuela and Russia heading for dramatic upheavals thanks to changes in global markets? Should growing American energy production cause us to rethink our role in the Middle East? Are natural resources just as much a curse as a blessing? You can hear the answers below or by 
In the new series of Strategika podcasts from the Hoover Institution, we’re looking at what the revolution in American energy production means for the US’s economic and strategic future. In this first installment, I talk with Williamson Murray, the Ambassador Anthony D. Marshall Chair of Strategic Studies at The Marine Corps University, about what the implications are for our relationships with Russia, Iran, and other countries in the Middle East. Listen in below or 
When histories of the Obama Era are written — please, God, only two years more! — two great ironies will be noted: that the most progressive president since Johnson, and the most academically cloistered since Wilson, presided over a period of tremendous booms in domestic fossil fuel production and a continued restoration of Americans’ full Second Amendment rights, both of which the president and his allies opposed.
Many commentators have expressed the belief that Russia is more dangerous now that their economy has collapsed because Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has his back against the wall and may react unpredictably. Perhaps. But I have one question for these prognosticators: with what soldiers will he react?
