{"podcast":{"title":"Interchange Recharged","slug":"interchange-recharged-1117793","podcast_index_feed_id":1117793,"rss_url":"https://rss.art19.com/the-interchange","website_url":"https://www.woodmac.com/market-insights/types/podcasts/the-interchange/","image_url":"https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/images/b6/56/1c/53/b6561c53-206c-4247-a10b-24ba827509b0/c2860f4a864766abfde003250fb48d283b0bd02e55fd77f8d26e983ada7d82f5ccf8d280d42ff7eadf18b30e0ac0b9005c949c6efcc5f5c4f73f1d69c44a3e15.jpeg","author":"Wood Mackenzie","episode_count":354,"summary":"Clean tech, green finance and energy innovation are the three lanes on the road to a successful global energy transition. At the intersection of these lanes is a place where ideas on finance, technology and policy are shared and debated. That intersection is Interchange Recharged. Your host is Sylvia Leyva Martinez, principal analyst and research director at Wood Mackenzie. When Sylvia isn't tracking the technologies and markets driving the build-out of renewable power, she's speaking with visionaries, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and energy analysts to explore the newest developments in renewable technology, explain the ideas on global energy policy that could accelerate the energy transition, and identify new funding and financial models that could solve the biggest challenges we face on the way to net zero. Sylvia and her guests bring you data and forecasts on clean technology, climate science, and offer predictions on the build out of utility-scale projects and the future of green finance. What does the surge in data-centre demand mean for the grid, and who pays for it? What's happening in global EV adoption and development? What's the forecast for solar, one of the major succ…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-16T02:19:58.805362+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793"},"episode":{"title":"Thorium’s nuclear pitch: Can molten salt reactors cut cost, use waste, and scale faster than conventional designs?","slug":"thorium-s-nuclear-pitch-can-molten-salt-reactors-cut-cost-use-waste-and-scale-faster-than-conventional-designs","published_at":"2026-08-25T11:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793/thorium-s-nuclear-pitch-can-molten-salt-reactors-cut-cost-use-waste-and-scale-faster-than-conventional-designs","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793","url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/rss.art19.com/episodes/b88ed4c1-27e0-4c7a-a41b-f6f170e2872a.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/rss.art19.com/episodes/b88ed4c1-27e0-4c7a-a41b-f6f170e2872a.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0","summary":"Electricity demand is rising, capital is tightening, and nuclear is back in the conversation as utilities, governments, and large power users look for firm low-carbon supply. But the central question is not whether advanced nuclear can attract interest. It is whether any new design can get far enough ahead on cost, manufacturability, and fuel strategy to break from the economics that have constrained conventional nuclear for decades. Host Sylvia Leyva Martinez is joined by Thomas Jam Pedersen, co-founder and CEO of Copenhagen Atomics, to examine one of the more unconventional answers now being put forward: thorium molten salt reactors built around low-pressure operation, standardized manufacturing, and a fuel strategy that could use spent nuclear fuel alongside thorium. Their core argument is that most of the nuclear sector is still trying to improve on a legacy light-water model that may remain too expensive, too complex, and too slow to scale against the pace of future energy demand. A large part of the discussion focuses on what that alternative looks like in practice. Pedersen argues that operating at atmospheric pressure changes the cost and engineering profile of the reactor itself, making smaller units easier to manufacture and potentially easier to deploy repeatedly. He also lays out why Copenhagen Atomics sees spent fuel not only as a waste problem but as a potential input, provided it can be recycled economically and paired with thorium to achieve higher fuel efficiency. The commercial model follows the same logic: standardize the reactor unit, let customers source the rest of the plant locally, and avoid the bespoke, first-of-a-kind economics that have burdened much of the sector. The episode also looks ahead to the harder constraints that will determine whe…","meta_description":"Electricity demand is rising, capital is tightening, and nuclear is back in the conversation as utilities, governments, and large power users look for fir…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2366,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/interchange-recharged-1117793/episodes/thorium-s-nuclear-pitch-can-molten-salt-reactors-cut-cost-use-waste-and-scale-faster-than-conventional-designs/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793/thorium-s-nuclear-pitch-can-molten-salt-reactors-cut-cost-use-waste-and-scale-faster-than-conventional-designs.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}