Nuclear’s Second Act

Keith Zakheim 0:02

Welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast. I am your host, Keith Zakheim. Today, as we do with every podcast, we're going to ask our guest one question and one question only. What is your Age of Climate Adoption story? A little bit about the Age of Adoption we live in an era where enterprises of every shape and size, regardless of industry, must rapidly transform to become more sustainable, climate sensitive. And just my day job is CEO of the marketing public relations firm Antenna Group. Our agency works exclusively with conscious brands. What is a conscious brand? It is a brand that is conscious of its responsibility to be on the right side of history. Like most businesses, our clients are experiencing a transition from an age of innovation, an era in which technologists, entrepreneurs and investors focused on innovating climate and sustainable solutions, to this age of adoption which characterizes the world today. So if you the Age of Adoption hypothesis, then there's really only one salient question to be asked. What is your Age of Adoption story? Judy Rader thought joining ComEd in 2005 would be sleepy and boring. She couldn't have been more wrong. What began as a communications role at a Chicago utility became a 20 year journey to the front lines of America's nuclear energy renaissance. As chief Communications Officer at Constellation Russian Energy, the nation's largest producer of clean, carbon free energy, operating 21 nuclear reactors represent 25% of all U.S. nuclear capacity. Judy has witnessed nuclear power go from an industry keeping its head down to one that's literally restarting the most notorious nuclear plant in American history. That moment came on September 20, 2024, when Constellation announced it would restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 to power Microsoft's data centers. Judy's recommendation? Don't hide from the name, lean into it. Contrary to common wisdom, Judy took a contrarian stance that Three Mile island isn't the worst site to announce a restart of nuclear. It's actually the best one because it represents the ultimate turnaround story for an industry that learned from its failures and became the safest form of energy production in the world today. Thanks in part to Constellations Come Clean About Nuclear Go to market strategy, 60% of Americans support nuclear energy, the highest level in more than a decade. Today on the Age of Adoption podcast, Judy shares why eating a banana delivers more radiation than living next to a nuclear power plant for a year. How Constellation is partnering with hyperscalers and governments to build new reactors. How and why? Her colleague was right to worry that joining the spin off was risky, but Judy went anyway because she was motivated. But what seemed like a generational challenge rehabbing the nuclear brand back with Judy faster than you can generate 24.7zero emission baseload power at scale.

Keith Zakheim 3:19

Judy, welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast.

Judy Rader 3:22

Great to be here and thank you for having me.

Keith Zakheim 3:25

And specifically, Judy, you really have an interesting purview when it comes to our Age of Adoption theme. Having been in the industry for 20 plus years now, like myself, you've seen the fits and the starts, the ups and the downs, but most importantly, you've experienced really this incredible progress and evolution that the industry has experienced over the last 20 years. So first, would love for you to share with our listeners that career journey, which I know started in the agency side and then for the last 20 years has been on the utility side. And what I of course am excited about today as well is like me, you're a comms person. So you're coming at Energy and sustainability from a comms perspective, which is always a treat for our listeners.

Judy Rader 4:08

Well, thank you for asking. And yes, it's been about 30 years. My career started about 30 years ago and I did start in the PR agency space working with a number of blue chip clients like Kraft and Boeing and, and Allstate. And then it was 2005, 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to apply for a job at ComEd, which is the electric utility that serves about 4 million customers in the Chicago area and it's owned by parent company Exelon. And I, I thought, okay, energy utilities, it's going to be pretty sleepy and boring. I could not have been more wrong.

Keith Zakheim 4:46

Little did you know, as you can.

Judy Rader 4:49

Attest, it has I haven't had a boring day in my 20 your career in the energy and climate space. And it's been great. And so at Exelon, I was really fortunate. I learned about the utility business, the transmission and delivery. The utility business involves delivering the power to homes and businesses and geographical areas and then sending customers a bill for that energy. But because Exelon was a big holding company, I also had the opportunity to work in the corporate center doing corporate communications. I also had the opportunity to work in the generation business where we operated the nation's largest fleet of nuclear power plants and do the communications for that part of the business as well as our commercial business, which sells energy contracts to both residential and commercial customers. So I really got a great introduction to all facets of the electricity industry. And at that time, Exelon was really a leading voice on climate. And in fact, our CEO John Rowe at that time was one of the first in the industry to testify before Congress on climate change. We knew that climate change was real. We believed in climate policy, we advocated for climate policy. And so that was really my first exposure to energy sustainability and climate change. And I would say the most important element of that for me on my journey was I learned about nuclear power. And I learned that nuclear power is the only 24, 70 emission form of energy available to us at scale. And it really is going to be key to solving the climate crisis. And as I learn more about nuclear, the jobs it creates, the economic benefits it provides for communities, the affordability that it provides for customers, and the climate benefits, I became a strong advocate for nuclear energy. And that's why when in 2022, Exelon decided to spin off the generation part of the business, including the nuclear power plants, into a new company called Constellation. And I raised my hand and said, please, please, I want to go with the spinoff company. And I'll tell you a quick story about that. One of my colleagues at Exelon said, why do you want to go with the spin off company? At that time, the generation business and the nuclear power business was, was very risky. It was precarious. And she said, it would be safer for you to stay here at Exelon. And I said, I want to save nuclear power plants. I think it's important for our climate. I need to go save some nuclear power plants. And she said, okay, then you must go. And so I was very fortunate to get that opportunity to. To be the chief communications officer at Constellation.

Keith Zakheim 7:36

Yeah, I mean, what. It's also, I guess from a comms. Professional perspective. Right? Like there's nothing more misunderstood than nuclear energy and nuclear power and nuclear power plants. And how does one counter disinformation, misinformation, lack of understanding is through storytelling. So I can imagine thinking about that job especially, you know, now it's a lot easier, candidly, in terms of there's tailwinds. For so long, there's been headwinds and in your seat, you know, you'd have to figure out strategically and tactically how to tell that story. In a way, even in the face of headwinds, I imagine that that was a gratifying professional challenge, especially now where you seem to be on the other side of it.

Judy Rader 8:18

I completely agree. When I started working in this business, the nuclear industry as a whole's philosophy was to keep its head down and avoid publicity. And over time, there became a shift. In fact, when I first joined the nuclear business, one of the executives there told me, oh, we don't, we don't use the word safe because we don't want people to think we're unsafe. I said we're the safest form of energy production out there. Let's be loud and proud about it. And I really challenged them on that thinking and others were challenging them at the time too, to be more forward about the benefits of nuclear energy. So, and one of the things that, you know, we've come a long way because today, according to both Pew and Gallup research, about 60% of Americans do support nuclear energy. And, and in fact, we, we've established a new advertising campaign that encourages people to come clean about it.

Keith Zakheim 9:16

Oh, I like that. And since my mom is a dedicated listener to this podcast, and I don't think I've ever actually called her out on this podcast, but she deserves it. So she worked for Department of Energy in the late 70s, early 80s. And I grew up in Washington, DC. I saw you went to University of Maryland. So I grew up about 20, 20 minutes from college Park. And anyway, she would, my mom is very opinionated and we'd always discuss, either on Friday nights at our Sabbath dinners or during the week, different public policy issues and politics and issues of the day. And she would always start to go on a rant, I mean, this was a monthly thing about how people don't understand nuclear and how it's ridiculous environmentalists should be embracing nuclear and it's not, you know, it's safe and the hysterics. And she would go on and on and on. And now you fast forward 30, 35 years and as usual, my mother was right. So, mom, if you're listening to this, you were right again, pretty good. So anyway, now that we have my mom's endorsement for this episode, we can proceed. And just a couple of stats I want to throw out. And Judy, you can of course, correct me if I'm wrong. So Constellation, it's a nation's largest producer of clean carbon free energy. And what I've seen, it's 10% of all clean power in the US which is something like 33,000 megawatts generating capacity, 90% of which is carbon free, 21 active nuclear reactors, which is ultimately 25% of all US nuclear power plants and 67% of total generating capacity. Does that sound about right?

Judy Rader 10:51

Well, first of all, shout out to your mom for being the OG nuclear advocate. And yes, all your facts are correct.

Keith Zakheim 10:59

Yeah, thank you, thank you. She deserves a lot of credit, first of all, for having to raise me for, I guess, my first 18 years. But so I guess the point of all that is one can't think about nuclear energy today without thinking about Constellation. And you just articulated a little bit about that journey, how you got here and how Constellation got here. But I think that sets me up perfectly for the question that I will ask you as I ask all of our guests. So take a deep breath, because that question is coming right about now. Judy, what is your age of adoption story?

Judy Rader 11:37

Thank you for asking. And my age of adoption story, as you might imagine, is all about nuclear energy. And I want to tell a little bit. I want to go back a little bit in time to 2016, when nuclear plants were shutting down for economic reasons. Power prices were low. And the costs of operating a nuclear power plant are not insignificant. Each nuclear unit or each nuclear plant employs about 700 people. That's not an insignificant amount of cost, in addition to the cost of the fuel and all of the safety measures. So the cost of operating the plants had started to exceed the revenues we could collect in the market. And plants were shutting down, including Three Mile island and Oyster Creek, which were two of the plants we operated. But there were two plants in Illinois that we were desperately trying to save, Quad Cities and Clinton. And in 2016, I was down in Springfield, Illinois, with our government affairs team, with our senior leaders on the very last day, in the very last hour of session, passing the Future Energy Jobs act that provided some support to keep those two plants operating for the next 10 years. And it was so exhilarating because we were saving thousands of jobs, my co workers jobs. We were saving millions and millions of metric tons of carbon emissions from being emitted, and we were saving $1.2 billion in economic benefits for the communities we serve. So it was such a great moment. And I have to tell you that afterward we went to this gritty local bar in Springfield and had a drink to celebrate. And it really wasn't sufficient because we had just we because of the magnitude of what we had just done. And then we did it again in 2020, one more plants were at risk. And we passed the Clean Energy Jobs act in Illinois that saved three more Illinois nuclear plants. So this is the setup for going into 2022, when we spun off Constellation, which, you know, as you mentioned, is the largest operator of nuclear power plants. And really there was a lot of concern that was why it was perceived to be risky, was that all these plants were going to be shutting down. And then the Inflation Reduction act passed in 2022, and that exponentially created a floor to keep nuclear plants economic and operating through Federal policy. And that essentially saved the fleet from being at risk of shutdown due to economic reasons. So that was a huge, huge step in nuclear's journey. But I want to quickly move to sort of where I think the real inflection point comes. And so it's September 20, 2024, and we're about to announce that we're going to restart Three Mile Island. And Three Mile Island, I think many people will recognize the name. It is the most notorious nuclear plant in the United States. There's two units at Three Mile Island. Unit one, we operated successfully and effectively until 2019. Unit two had an accident in 1979. This accident did not cause any injuries or deaths, but it is well known as the nation's worst nuclear accident. So we're thinking about restarting this plant. And the question comes from all sides. And Microsoft was going to buy the output of the plant or. I'm sorry, yeah, the energy that the plant produces. So the questions are coming from all sides. And you can imagine the hand wringing. How are we going to get America to embrace the restart of Three Mile Island? So we gave this some thought, and the communications team came with a recommendation and we said, don't hide from it. Don't veer away from it. Let's lean into it. Let's in fact, embrace it and leverage it. Because Three Mile island is hallowed ground for the nuclear industry. Yes, it's the place where the industry had its worst failure. It's also where the place where we learned and got better and established an industry group called IMPO that now has the industry operating the safest and most reliable fleet fleet in the world. And so we really sort of turned it on its head and said, you know, this isn't. This isn't the worst. This isn't the worst site to announce a restart. It's the best one because it's the best turnaround story. And so we really just leaned into that message. And that was sort of an inflection point in my age of adoption, I think in nuclear's age of adoption. And the press coverage really was beyond our expectations.

Keith Zakheim 16:16

Yeah. And you, I guess you referred before you flagged before Pew polls and other, other surveys that are showing that in terms of where Americans are right now and their willingness to embrace nuclear power as part of the mix is, I guess, higher now than it's been, I assume, for sure, since Three Mile Island. It was late 1970s or what have you. And I was curious. So I think in your case, a. Because you're a comms person, but B, because I think the challenge to the industry has been a comms one is the age of adoption story so much around brand evolution and public awareness and public education. Can you reflect on that a little bit as well? And, you know, I don't know if there was polling that you had, you know, when you started in 2005 or 2010, what have you, that you could kind of benchmark today's numbers against then. But when you reflect on that journey from a comms perspective, like what? And I understand that September 2024 was, I guess, the inflection point, but there was a whole journey, you know, over those 20 years. What kind of insights and reflections do you have on that?

Judy Rader 17:23

Well, thanks for asking. And yes, I mean, if you look at the Pew and Gallup research that I mentioned, there's also a group called Visconti that regularly takes a pulse on nuclear support. We're at the highest levels of support for nuclear energy that we've been in a decade, and it has been a real upward trajectory, and it hasn't. I would say the restart of Three Mile island was an inflection point. But as I mentioned, we had really been building up to this for many years. The support for nuclear had been building, it had been growing. A lot of the research pointed to the fact that the more people know about nuclear energy, the more educated they are on it, the more they understand it, the more they support it. So that was a part of the Come Clean campaign that I mentioned, which we actually launched in 2023, was an effort in collaboration with some of these. We worked together with some nuclear advocacy groups. And by the way, that's something new, too. I would say. In 2005, we didn't have any nuclear advocacy groups. There were no groups out there seeking to keep nuclear plants open and operating. Today, we. We have dozens of them. And I would say some of the top ones are Mothers for Nuclear Generation, Atomic, Nuclear Matters. These are all groups that formed organically and are grassroots organizations that are advocating on behalf of nuclear energy. We didn't see that in 2005. That's a relatively new phenomenon, I would say, in the last five to 10 years. And we partnered with them on this campaign where, you know, we work. We all got together. We reached out to some ad agencies and said, hey, if you're trying to change the general population's views on nuclear, and here's all the research we have on how to do that, you know, the two big issues are safety and waste. Those have always been the two big Issues, but also the more people know about nuclear, the more they support it. And they looked at the data and they said, you know, the majority of Americans already support nuclear. Why don't we just ask people to come clean about it, be loud about it. And so we created a whole campaign around that which I think has been really effective. And it just shares facts in a very human, consumer friendly way. It's not trying to, you know, tell you how a fission reaction works. That's not the point. The point is to tell people things like eating one banana is more radiation than living next to a nuclear power plant for a year. Some facts like that really put it in perspective and help people understand that nuclear is the safest, most reliable, cleanest form of energy. It operates around the clock. We're not going to solve climate without it.

Keith Zakheim 20:00

Yeah, that banana metaphor actually is a great one. I, there was a book that came out in the last year or something called Going Nuclear which is, is written by some nuclear physicist from Cambridge or something. But it's actually, it's very readable in terms of understanding the science behind nuclear. And then he demystifies nuclear and also kind of defangs some of this misperceptions around safety and waste and those types of things. And he uses the banana metaphors. That must be a famous one in the industry, but a really good one. I happen not to love bananas, but I'm not concerned about the radioactivity from that. But others I know Kim loves her banana, so now she doesn't. Well, we love to talk to Kim during these podcasts even though she can't respond. So it's, it's one of my favorite activities.

Judy Rader 20:43

Okay. To keep eating bananas. It's fine. It just delivers more radiation than living next to a nuclear power plant.

Keith Zakheim 20:49

Exactly. But yes, by the way, the banana lobby may something to say about that would be a great face off. Banana lobby in nuclear lobby. Judy, I have one more question for you. So if we zoom out a little bit and look at kind of the macroeconomic challenges here. Right. So, so on the one side, the demand side is enormous because of data centers, electrification, peak demand growth, et cetera. So we're looking at something like demand increases. The estimate is, I don't know, 5x in terms of what the data center demand is going to be by 2035. Incredible peak demand growth. And the Trump administration has talked about quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050, which, not a mathematician, but what I've read in the media is that something like 200 plus new reactors that would have to get built which again maybe it could happen. It seems that that's not particularly plausible. But regardless, right. We need a lot more nuclear reactors. And you take that and then you juxt and the cost inherent which you addressed before and what the cost projected to be to build nuclear reactor, all the issues around permitting and land use, construction, how long it takes, et cetera. Then you look across at China and China seems to be building these overnight modular new modular technology as well, which you know, we've been, we've been benefiting as a comms agency from a lot of this nuclear boom, working with other companies in the more the innovation side of nuclear. So we know a lot of this stuff is there and being innovated. But China seems to be taking this, this leap forward. So I guess it's a long way of asking you the following question. What how's Constellation looking at that in terms of what needs to be done to continue to build and scale and in general from an industry perspective, what can be done in this country to get to a place where number one we can ultimately have supply match demand. But also from a geopolitical perspective and the future of this country, we need to be able to compete with China on these things because ultimately energy and electricity power the economy. So what's your, what's your take on that?

Judy Rader 23:00

Well, I completely agree. And there are no large scale nuclear reactors being built in this country right now. There's a few being restarted, Three Mile island being one of them. But the last two that were built were the Vogel plants in Georgia and they were far over budget and took far longer than anticipated. So we need to figure out as an industry a way to get more nuclear built, whether it's large scale AP1000 size plants or the small modular reactors that you're referring to. And I think we're going to need all of the above. Constellation is looking at that. In fact, just last week we announced in Maryland that we're looking at adding some new nuclear at our Calvert Cliff site in Maryland. We've also, we also are looking at adding new nuclear in New York and Maryland where we and in Illinois where we also operate plants.

Keith Zakheim 23:53

We are, I'm sorry, when you say new nuclear, so you mean expanding the capacity of existing plants. Is that what you mean when you say new nuclear or it's going to be additional plants in that area or both?

Judy Rader 24:06

Both. I mean the cheapest and fastest thing to do is expand the output of the existing plants. It's something called up rates and we are doing that Everywhere we can, if we can make it economic, we're going to get as much energy out of the existing fleet as we can. So that is the low hanging fruit. New nuclear, as you pointed out, is more challenging. And whether it's a small modular reactor or a large scale reactor, we need support. We need support from the government and we need support from customers. And for example, the Trump administration just announced a deal with Westinghouse to spend $80 billion on nuclear reactors. That is a huge step forward for nuclear energy. That kind of government support and investment is going to be needed. In addition, you know, we have customers, we work with Meta and Microsoft. We, we also have relationships with many other customers and in technology and beyond who are saying we want to help, we want to help create new sources of clean energy because of the data economy, because of the demands of AI. And so if we could get an agreement with a customer that said, hey, we're willing to, to partner with you to support you to build a new reactor at one of your existing sites because we do think new reactors, there is an advantage to building new reactors at existing sites where there's already the land, the water, the rail and the existing community support. We are, we are open to that. We are looking at that. And I am very hopeful that, you know, that one of those deals will come to fruition in the next year or so.

Keith Zakheim 25:43

Yeah, I mean, we're hearing that from our clients. That you kind of have this perfect storm right now where you have the hyperscaler who are the off takers and now you have government aligned in order to make that investment. And then you do that along with, you know, if it all pencils out from economic perspective, you get private sector investment, etc. Now at least the infrastructure is there to go and build. So, Judy, I think that is a wrap. I'll give you an opportunity for the last word and then we'll call it a day.

Judy Rader 26:09

Keith, I appreciate you having me. This was a pleasure of a conversation and I'm always happy to talk about nuclear energy, so, so thank you again.

Keith Zakheim 26:17

My pleasure. And Judy, we met at Page, so I hope to see you at another event soon or one of my trips to Chicago or the next time you come to New York. We'd love to catch up in person and talk nuclear and all other things.

Judy Rader 26:29

I guess that sounds great. We can share a banana.

Keith Zakheim 26:33

The Age of adoption podcast features CEOs, investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers sharing their climate and sustainability business. Business Transformation Stories episodes can be found on your favorite podcast apps including itunes and Spotify the Age of Adoption podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group. Antenna is the home of conscious brands. We partner with companies that don't wait for change to happen. These brands shape the future, are awake and already moving. Unsure if you are a conscious brand brand or even if you are one, whether you are positioned as one, please visit our website at www.antennagroup.com and take the Conscious Compass Assessment, a groundbreaking tool that enables enterprises to assess their brand against the eight traits of brand consciousness. At Antenna, we partner with companies big and small, from growth stage to Fortune 100 to their climate and sustainability stories. So once again, if you're interested in joining the conscious brand movement and learning more about Antenna Group, please check out our website at www.antennagroup.com. ping us on LinkedIn and make sure to visit the Conscious Compass.

‍