Nuclear engineer and Miss America 2023 Grace Stanke shares why we need a lot more nuclear energy

Grace Stanke spent her reign last year as Miss America promoting nuclear energy. And she knows what she's talking about - in December she graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in nuclear engineering! She joined us for Episode 90 to talk about why nuclear is safer and less expensive than you might think, and why there are even bigger things on the horizon with Small Modular Reactors and, one day, nuclear fusion!

Some highlights:

4:00 - how Grace chose nuclear engineering
19:00 - the nuclear power generation business is safer for its workers than grocery or fast food!
22:30 - nuclear energy is clean energy!
24:20 - we need 70% of our power to be reliable baseload, and Grace thinks 30% to 40% ought to be nuclear

It's well worth your time to check out the whole thing! Grace shares other experiences too, like when she played an AC/DC song on her violin for the talent portion of an earlier pageant, and how she recorded with us just before she jetted off to Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro!

This episode aired originally on YouTube on February 13, 2024.