Symbols save time

Civilisation is a complex thing. There are 8 billion people out there, and almost everything we do involves at least one other person. We work in teams, we negotiate with clients, we move in crowds.

Imagine if every time you wanted to collaborate with someone, you had to explain what you wanted them to do from first principles. Take driving: what if every time you came to a T-junction, someone had to be there to tell you to stop?

That would be ridiculous. Instead, we use symbols.

Nuclear Startups

John Ahlberg launched a 100% nuclear electricity startup in August 2019 with co-founder Christian Sjolander. Growing almost entirely by word-of-mouth, they are now Sweden’s fastest organically growing utility, with plans to expand to other countries. Ahlberg tells me how they did it, and I search for lessons for the broader nuclear industry.

Marty Neumeier is a legend in Silicon Valley. He cut his teeth helping companies like Apple, Netscape, HP, Adobe, and Google build their brands, and now runs his own design firm. The best thing about him is he shares his secrets and encourages you to steal his ideas.

To help visualise how controversial ideas are adopted, Neumeier talks about the Four stages of…

Just when you thought you had seen everything, here’s four semi-naked New Zealanders on a beach singing the benefits of nuclear power to the tune of reality TV’s tearjerker staple, Hallelujah.

The song’s authors Rangi & the Totos describe themselves as “New Zealand’s most iconic topical pop group”, and have put out other YouTube videos in recent months, including one mocking ticket sales company Viagogo. You might say they’re the 2020 inheritors to the comic geniuses that were Bret and Jemaine in The Flight of the Conchords.

HalleNuclear is four minutes of surrealist farce, with the band members often wearing nothing but a leaf or a carefully-placed guitar. Despite the light-hearted tone, the song does a good job of portraying how society’s opposition to nuclear power is holding us back in the fight against climate change. …

This past 11th of March 2020 was the 9th anniversary of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Fears of radiation from the triple meltdown led to the long-term relocation of over 100,000 people. In a landmark study completed in late 2017, a group of UK scientists set out to find the truth about the risk of nuclear. They showed that not only was the scale of this relocation far too large, but that the evacuation itself led to thousands of unnecessary deaths from mental and physical exhaustion.

Despite initial interest from UK and US authorities, little has changed in the way governments plan to deal with future nuclear accidents. In this deep-dive interview with the group’s lead author, I look at why, almost a decade on, governments, regulators and the nuclear industry are so resistant to change, and whether this means we might be sleepwalking into another nuclear public health disaster. …

This 30th June 2020, Fessenheim 2 will finally fall quiet. Connected to the grid in 1977, by the end of 2019 Unit 2 alone had supplied 217,035 GWh of clean energy. Assuming the reactor prevented France adopting coal power like its neighbour Germany, Fessenheim 2 saved the same amount of carbon as taking almost 38 million cars off the road for the year.

If this feels like déjà-vu, it’s because Unit 1 faced the same fate only a few months ago. The combined loss of Unit 1 and 2 is staggering. …

I love a good fire. Who doesn’t?

The dancing flames, the crackling wood, the heady woodsmoke. Fireside stories with old friends. Toasted marshmallows (usually charred to a crisp). Curling up with a book. Simpler times.

There’s a lot of talk of a “Green Revolution” for the post COVID-19 world. What does this mean?

With the UK economy likely entering an historic recession, there’s a search for ideas to kickstart the country. A green recovery is one driven by investments in clean energy to tackle carbon emissions, lower air pollution and restore nature. A noble goal.

So then, it’s “all systems go”, solar panels in every field, a wind turbine on every hill, right?

It’s what renewables advocates have been telling us we should do for years. But this week something weird happened. …

We’re right to feel guilty about climate change. For years we had the evidence it was taking place but did nothing. When you look at the scale of what we need to do to reduce our carbon emissions, we’re effectively still doing nothing. We are not moving anywhere near fast enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming.