Saving the World From Bad Ideas
Saving the World From Bad Ideas
Podcast Description
a WePlanet podcast.
The world is shaped by ideas—some good, some bad, and some that seemed good at the time.
This is a podcast about rethinking the things we take for granted, challenging sacred cows, and admitting when we’ve been wrong.
With your host, awarded environmental author and activist Mark Lynas, we take a deep dive into the environmental, political, and social debates shaping our future—without the outrage, tribalism, or easy answers.
Help us save the world from bad ideas. Because the future depends on us getting it right.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast delves into various themes including environmental science, political discourse, and societal progress. Notable episodes feature discussions on geoengineering technologies, the myth of global decline as articulated by guests like Steven Pinker and Hannah Ritchie, and the importance of optimistic narratives amidst climate challenges. Topics such as solar geoengineering, media biases on progress, and eco-modernism form the focal points of its exploratory conversations.
a WePlanet podcast.
The world is shaped by ideas—some good, some bad, and some that seemed good at the time.
This is a podcast about rethinking the things we take for granted, challenging sacred cows, and admitting when we’ve been wrong.
With your host, awarded environmental author and activist Mark Lynas, we take a deep dive into the environmental, political, and social debates shaping our future—without the outrage, tribalism, or easy answers.
Help us save the world from bad ideas. Because the future depends on us getting it right.
Is nuclear power too slow, too expensive, or too essential to ignore? In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with Baroness Bryony Worthington — crossbench peer, climate policy architect, and co-host of the Cleaning Up podcast — to take on Bad Idea #34: “Nuclear? No Thanks.”
🧠 Topics Discussed:
● ⚛️ Why nuclear costs haven’t fallen — and why China may change that
● 🇫🇷 What France got right (and wrong) in its Mesmer-era nuclear buildout
● 🇨🇳 China’s nuclear ecosystem: HTRs, molten salts, SMRs, and industrial policy
● 🧱 Why huge gigawatt-scale reactors fail — and when modularity matters
● 🌡️ Heat: the forgotten one-third of global energy that renewables struggle to replace
● 🇺🇸 The growing bipartisan nuclear consensus in the U.S.
● 🔥 Geothermal, CSP, and advanced drilling as zero-carbon heat sources
● 👾 AI and data centres: the quiet driver of surging electricity demand
● 🧪 Thorium, molten salt reactors, and the cult of “better nuclear”
● ♻️ Nuclear waste, fuel recycling, plutonium, and the politics of the NRC
● 🛡️ Risk, radiophobia, and why safety rules became so irrational
● 🌍 Authoritarianism, industrial strategy, and what China’s system gets right (and wrong)
👩🏫 Guest Bio:Baroness Bryony Worthington is a crossbench member of the UK House of Lords and one of Britain’s most respected climate policy thinkers. She was a lead author of the UK’s Climate Change Act, co-founded the children’s environmental charity Sandbag, and serves as co-host of the global energy podcast Cleaning Up with Michael Liebreich. Bryony currently leads work on clean industrial transitions, including repowering coal infrastructure with zero-carbon heat from nuclear, geothermal, and advanced solar technologies.
📚 Recommended Reading & Resources
● Cleaning Up podcast – https://www.cleaningup.live
● BloombergNEF – https://about.bnef.com
● Kairos Power (advanced reactors) – https://kairospower.com
● Oklo (fast microreactors) – https://www.oklo.com
● TerraPower (Natrium reactor) – https://www.terrapower.com
● High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTR info) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_gas-cooled_reactor
● Molten salt reactor background – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
● Tsinghua University Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology – https://www.inet.tsinghua.edu.cn/ineten/
● Repower Initiative – https://www.repower.world/
● Jamie Beard on geothermal – https://www.texasgeo.org
● IAEA on nuclear fuel recycling – https://www.iaea.org/topics/spent-fuel-management
● Waste Not (WePlanet nuclear fuel recycling report) – https://www.weplanet.org/reports/waste-not
● China’s solar overcapacity & exports – https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy
● Our World in Data: electricity mix – https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
💬 Quote Highlights:
“Once you build nuclear, you never regret it — it just quietly produces heat and power for 80 years.”
“China has already built almost everything we were going to tell them to try.”
“Heat is a third of global energy. Batteries can’t solve that. Nuclear can.”
“Radiation is everywhere — from rocks, from the sun, from your partner in bed. We’ve regulated nuclear as if none of this exists.”
“I’m not pro-nuclear everywhere. I’m pro-nuclear where it makes the transition faster.”
“I’m a pro-humanity environmentalist. Nuclear is part of that story.”
🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human well-being. Learn more athttps://weplanet.org
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