In the 24th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous open with a summer catch-up: Goran’s solo Tesla trek from Dundas to Ottawa, complete with full-self-driving lane changes and meditative highway moments, and Michael’s impending family hop to Cancún. A light detour into European favourites follows, where Vienna’s café culture, London’s imperial streetscapes, and France’s sun-drenched south square off against under-whelming Greek ruins and the question of whether ancient monuments should be fully rebuilt or left as evocative rubble. The episode then pivots to another segment of Good Science vs. Bad Science target, a Frontiers in Environmental Economics paper that labels nuclear “an impediment to climate mitigation.” Point by point, the hosts dismantle claims that reactors are uninsurable, uneconomic and fundamentally incompatible with renewables, citing real-world capacity factors, lifetime-extension data and grid-price comparisons between France and Germany. Along the way they spotlight how cherry-picked construction timelines, hand-waved system-costs and “so-called” digs at small modular reactors slip past peer review, and why bad scholarship can still sway policymakers and AI training data alike. A brisk reminder that evidence, not ideology, should guide the energy transition and that sometimes the worst papers make the best teaching moments.

In the 23rd installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous begin by wading into the unexpected torrent of criticism on their recent Conversation article, examining everything from disclosure-doubts to misread safety statistics, and reflecting on when and how to engage with online pushback. They then turn to Ontario’s summer heat wave, where demand has surged to within two gigawatts of the province’s all-time peak, wind is running below 20 percent of capacity and solar covers barely one percent, forcing gas plants into four-times-their-forecast output. What would it really take to replace those peakers with storage or faster nuclear builds? Finally, they probe a SemiAnalysis warning that AI training data centres are drawing full-reactor-scale power and flipping from full load to near zero in milliseconds, threatening grid synchronization unless hardware and software fixes arrive. Tune in for a candid conversation on criticism, capacity and the next frontier of power-grid risk.

In the 22nd installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous open with a surprising PSA: radon gas is the deadliest radiation risk most people face, linked to roughly 21 000 lung-cancer deaths a year in North America, yet few homeowners even test for it. From cheap basement monitors to Canada’s uranium-rich soils, they lay out what listeners can do today. The conversation then shifts underground (literally) to deep-geological repositories. Finland’s Onkalo vault may soon become the world’s first “forever” dump, but Goran argues its tidy economics hinge on having just two nearby plants, nothing like the sprawl of ninety U.S. reactors. Michael counters that America’s stalled Yucca Mountain project shows one national site is politically impossible, while hauling fuel across state lines or Indigenous lands would likely push costs from today’s US $0.1–2 per MWh (on-site dry casks) to four-plus cents. Together they ask: if decades of safe, cheap on-site storage already exist, are DGRs solving a real safety gap or simply buying expensive peace of mind? Tune in for a brisk, number-driven debate that challenges nuclear orthodoxy and reminds us sometimes the safest place for waste is right where it sits.