Energy arguments, tested against reality.
Decouple treats energy arguments as engineering problems with political consequences. Its episodes move briskly from CANDU reactors and nuclear fuel to LNG shocks, Chinese supply chains, European hydrocarbon dependence, and the practical limits of popular climate claims.
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Decouple is a technically serious energy show organized around interviews, argument, and practical constraint. Its center of gravity is nuclear power. That does not make it narrow. Recent episodes move from CANDU strategy to nuclear fuel fabrication, from French-style reprocessing to European energy fragility, and from China’s industrial supply chains to shocks in the LNG market. The show’s best moments come when a large public claim gets walked back through physics, infrastructure, and money. Reprocessing is not treated as magic recycling. It becomes a discussion of Purex, plutonium-239, plutonium-240, thermal reactors, fast reactors, and why real-world fuel use falls far short of the most romantic version of the idea. Nuclear fuel gets the same treatment. Ceramic uranium dioxide, burnup, fluorination, defluorination, TRISO, metallic fuel, and quality control are presented as industrial problems with consequences, not as trivia for insiders. CANDU episodes lean into Canada’s nuclear position, export interest, construction capability, and the role of large capital project experience. Uprates get attention because they are boring in the useful sense: existing plants, known fleets, and additional gigawatts that may arrive faster than flashier options. The show also keeps a sharp eye on energy security. LNG episodes treat Qatar, force majeure, Ras Lafin, and global supply shares as immediate questions for importing countries. Conversations about China connect solar cells, batteries, rare earth magnets, chips, metals, chemical processing, gas production, and the enormous electricity demands behind clean-tech manufacturing. Europe’s energy system is discussed less as a morality play than as a case study in import dependence, shale limits, North Sea production, taxation, and leadership failure. The tone can be blunt. It is also careful with definitions. Decouple works for listeners who can handle a dense chain of reasoning and prefer an energy conversation that keeps asking what can actually be built, fueled, financed, operated, and defended.
Made for: Decouple is for listeners who follow nuclear power, climate policy, energy security, and industrial strategy closely enough to want the technical layer. It suits people who prefer numbers, mechanisms, and tradeoffs over broad green-versus-fossil framing.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by connecting reactor physics, fuel manufacturing, commodity supply chains, and geopolitics in the same conversation. It is comfortable spending time on the unglamorous details that decide whether an energy idea can actually scale.
There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview world experts to uncover hope in this time of planetary crisis.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Decouple tests energy ambitions against engineering limits, industrial capacity, and the record of systems already built.
Decouple takes big energy claims apart by asking what the physics, engineering, and industrial record will actually permit. The host works through technical questions with guests, moving from reactor design and spent-fuel reprocessing to nuclear shipping, Chinese manufacturing,…
Nuclear recycling meets plutonium-240, and you get the part the neat diagram leaves out.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful look at reprocessing that keeps running into the physics of plutonium buildup.
The episode cuts through the romance around nuclear reprocessing, with Michael Seeley laying out Purex, pyro, and the hard physics behind what spent fuel can become again.
China's industrial edge is traced from chemical plants to drones, one supply chain at a time.
The episode connects China's electrotech stack across solar cells, batteries, rare earth permanent magnets, chips, and metals, then asks what links them.
Europe's energy crisis, reduced to numbers that actually explain it.
The episode turns Europe's energy anxiety into a plain accounting problem: 38 exajoules of consumption, six of production, and a continent still leaning hard on imported hydrocarbons while oil sits around 95 WTI and 110 Brent.
A grounded look at Canadian nuclear delivery and the argument for rebuilding its industrial base.
Decouple frames Ken Petrunek's experience as a way into Canada's nuclear story: how the country built real capability, let some of it drift, and now faces the question of whether it can rebuild.
A reactor built to satisfy every demand becomes big, expensive, and hard to license.
Decouple treats the EPR as a reactor trying to satisfy every demand at once, and the house metaphor does much of the work: add two laundry rooms, two garages, a metal roof, home automation, and more, and the result becomes a very complex house and a very complex reactor.
A sharp look at why shipboard reactors keep returning to water, and why that still leaves nuclear shipping niche.
Decouple spends the episode on a stubborn idea: shipboard reactors keep circling back to pressurized water because the marine environment is complicated, space is tight, maintenance is harder, and water solves several of those constraints at once.
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Decouple host and guest Jesse Huebsch map the escalating 2025-26 Canada-US trade war, including alcohol bans, possible exclusion from US federal procurement, and steel, aluminum and auto tariffs.
An interview discussing the realities of nuclear reprocessing, its limited efficiency compared to romanticized views, and the technical and proliferation challenges involved.
Sivir Wang discusses how China's dominance in clean energy supply chains is rooted in its massive, electricity-intensive chemical processing plants.
Doomberg argues that March 20 energy markets look strangely calm even after Venezuela, Cuba, the Strait of Hormuz, tanker attacks, and LNG plant damage.
An interview with Joe St.
A podcast episode discussing the impact of a drone attack on Qatar's LNG facility, which disrupted 20% of global supply and affected energy markets.
A deep dive into advanced nuclear fuels like Triso and metallic fuel, comparing their manufacturing challenges and costs to conventional uranium dioxide fuel.
Michael Seeley discusses the history and success of the nuclear industry's initiative to eliminate fuel failures in light water reactors.
Experts discuss how upgrading existing nuclear reactors could unlock 6-10 gigawatts of capacity faster and cheaper than new builds or gas turbines.
Kyle Chan discusses China's pragmatic approach to AI focusing on smart infrastructure versus the US's pursuit of artificial superintelligence.
Decouple host Chris interviews Ken Petrunek, the project manager who delivered the last two CANDU-6 units at Qinshan, China—under budget and with Unit 2 finishing six months ahead of schedule—making him one of very few people in the Western world to have led a successful nuclear megaproject new-build in the past 30 years.
Host Chris and returning guest Michael Seeley (the Atomic Blender) trace the EPR's origins as a 1980s collaboration between French and German nuclear programs, each bringing their own safety philosophy—the French N4 plants' double-wall containment and the Germans' convoy-fleet four-safety-train design—resulting in a reactor that said yes to every demand from both parties.
Decouple host talks with returning guest Nick, of the What Is Nuclear website, about the history of maritime nuclear power, from military submarines and aircraft carriers to civilian ships like the NS Savannah, the West German Otto Hahn, and the Japanese Mutsu.
Nick Turan discusses the history and economics of high temperature gas cooled reactors, using Peach Bottom as a case study.