Last December, Charles Oppenheimer, Founder of the Oppenheimer Project and grandson of J. Robert Oppenheimer, participated in a virtual event with Science Philanthropy Alliance President France Cordova, Senior Director of Philanthropic Advising Sue Merrilees, and several Alliance Partners and Advisees. Charles was joined by Oppenheimer Project colleagues Theo Kalionzes, Senior Advisor, and Karen Pak Oppenheimer, Co-Executive Director.
Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
France: Welcome everyone, and a special welcome to our speakers, Charles Oppenheimer, Karen Pak Oppenheimer, and Theo Kalionzes from the Oppenheimer Project.
Charles, you captivated everyone at our recent Alliance partner meeting describing your journey from nuclear skeptic to nuclear champion. Could you recount that story?
Charles: I grew up with a lot of ambiguity about nuclear power, like most people who hear that it’s bad, it’s dangerous, it’s affiliated with weapons. But I overcame my bias by reviewing the public information and asking questions like: How many people has nuclear power killed? How dangerous is it? How dangerous is the waste? And can nuclear energy be a solution for climate change?
That last question compelled me to learn more.
With nuclear power, my grandfather witnessed a technology sufficiently powerful to destroy humanity. However, he and others also recognized nuclear science’s potential for collective good – something which would require a new level of international cooperation to address its risks.
But to this day, our national policy treats nuclear science as something to control and win rather than collaborate on. And unfortunately, most climate-focused charitable entities don’t support nuclear energy, as seen from the extremely small percentage of philanthropic funding that goes into supporting nuclear energy research.
That’s why I founded the Oppenheimer Project – to explore whether funding nuclear energy at scale could help solve climate change and energy abundance challenges.
France: Theo, you and Charles were recently in Vienna for a meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency. How big of a topic is nuclear energy among the global science diplomacy community?
Theo: Nuclear energy remains a niche topic, but that is changing. Charles was on a panel in Vienna called “Powering Hope” with the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi. Rafael oversees an agency tasked with the complex challenge of ensuring that nuclear technologies spreading around the world remain peaceful and for civilian purposes as opposed to being transformed into nuclear weapons purposes. Grossi has become a key leader in the resurgence of interest in nuclear power.
Last year at the United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, there was a declaration led by the United States to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. That declaration cites the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s data for the reason to call for an increase in capacity. In other words, the idea is that climate science is why we need to dramatically expand nuclear power.
And this most recent United Nations climate conference in Baku [Azerbaijan] increased the number of countries that have made this ambitious pledge to 31. We’ve also seen a number of recent headlines about the major technology companies betting big on nuclear energy. There has really been a tectonic shift.
But what we don’t see presently is enough investment from philanthropy to support experts who understand nuclear science and policy and climate science and policy.
That’s why we created the Oppenheimer Dialogues, a roundtable series for funders. We bring together existing nuclear funders and potential new ones for non-solicitation, non-attribution conversations about these major forces shifting in nuclear power, climate change, and international security peace and security.
France: Charles, you’ve been an investor in Silicon Valley. Is there much buzz about funding the new science that’s going into producing nuclear energy?
Charles: There is a huge amount of excitement right now. But let me give you a bit of history. In the early 2000s, there was a renaissance where a lot of utilities were interested in building new nuclear plants. Then in 2008, the great financial crisis hit, the cost of natural gas plummeted, and the renaissance ended. Out of 30 planned projects, only one came to fruition.
That failure led to a wave of investment in small modular reactors (SMRs). Over 100 companies developing SMRs now exist, which in my experience and industry understanding is too many. The attention to SMRs has attracted funding, but from a practical standpoint, large reactors have a better track record.
France: We’ve also witnessed a lot of hype about investing in fusion energy. Where do you see things going on that front?
Charles: There’s been a terrific rush of venture money to fusion energy, which fits a venture capitalist funding model of taking a big risk on a new technology.
However, we already know that fission works. It’s tested; it’s real world. We know all the upsides and downsides. With fusion, there can be a little magical thinking, that is, it will solve all our problems. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to invest in researching new forms of energy, but the climate and energy situations we’re currently confronting are too serious to not invest in what we know works.
France: We are faced with so many alternative energies, but some of them just don’t work out because of climate change. I remember when Zambia built a huge dam to create hydroelectric power, and then the river dried up, so no energy.
Charles: Some aspects of the energy economy are counterintuitive. A 100% renewable grid is inefficient and unreliable. The best systems complement renewables with a steady baseload.
Compare the countries of France and Germany. France invested in more than 50 nuclear plants a dozen years ago, while Germany spent almost a trillion dollars investing in renewable energies around the same time. Today, Germany’s grid is both decreasing in its energy outputs and producing a much higher carbon footprint than France’s. It sounds great to be totally clean and green, but it doesn’t always match up to real world economics.
France: As for other countries, I’ve heard that China is building lots of mid-sized nuclear reactors. Is that your understanding?
Charles: Yes. In terms of international movement, I’ll reiterate Theo’s earlier point that there is now a true, unified international consensus that we need to triple nuclear energy, which is groundbreaking. But big questions remain about how to finance it.
Because it was led by the U.S. and our allies, China did not sign the tripling pledge, but they are by far building the most nuclear energy in the world. They also have advanced nuclear projects and have lowered their costs for constructing nuclear plants.
The U.S. is good at the science, but we need to figure out how to fund reactor deployment to both compete and cooperate with China.
Sue: One of philanthropy’s traditional roles has been to de-risk technologies and bring their costs down. Theo, can you comment on the evolution you witnessed through your years at MacArthur and where private investment might currently make a difference?
Theo: I joined the MacArthur Foundation in 2015 and was there until last year. MacArthur launched its big bets model in 2015, meaning fewer investment areas, but more resources devoted to each area. My background is in nonproliferation work, arms control, and nuclear risk reduction, and I joined the foundation to direct the nuclear challenges program, supporting organizations seeking to reduce nuclear risks.
MacArthur also started a program called Climate Solutions at that time, which coincided with the signing of the Paris climate accords. While I was focused on nuclear risk reduction rather than the promise of peaceful nuclear technology, I couldn’t help but ask: What are we doing at MacArthur about nuclear power? The answer was either nothing or supporting organizations and institutions that had spent many years criticizing nuclear power. It was my view that we had an opportunity to support productive investment in the future of nuclear energy by bringing in experts both from climate and the nuclear nonproliferation world.
Now, with the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other major multi-billion-dollar investments in tax credits and incentives from the government, there is momentum around nuclear energy, but there’s still not consensus. It’s important to identify opportunities to bring together funders that share goals about avoiding a climate disaster but may have questions about supporting work on nuclear power.
A balanced assessment is what is needed. We must acknowledge that we built nuclear weapons six years before we had any nuclear energy for civilian purposes, and that nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are fundamentally connected.
Sue: How much is the U.S. regulatory environment an obstacle?
Theo: Regulation is often blamed, and while it adds costs, recent bipartisan efforts have led to reforms. The ADVANCE Act, passed under Biden with near-unanimous support, funds nuclear projects and mandates modernization of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Still, new reactors aren’t being built yet.
Charles: While we need more experts and field building, there are already institutions that focus on the policy. The question is: can philanthropists help catalyze these projects and get reactors built? That’s an unexplored frontier.
France: Charles, I love the role that you and Theo have. I’ve worked at universities and in government administrations on contentious global issues like this, and as a government official, you have to toe the party line on these kinds of issues. You can’t make comments about your own research or experiences. It’s so great that as an outsider, you can call it exactly as you see it. That’s a rare thing.
Charles: Thank you, France. As outsiders, but with the advantage of the Oppenheimer name and thesis, our intention is truly to connect people.
I want to add that as outsiders, it’s important to not just be pure nuclear advocates and downplay the challenges of this conversation. I’m the first one to say that nuclear physics is inextricably connected to the world’s most destructive weapons. But that’s not a reason to ignore its potential for good, in my view.
The dramatic international expansion of nuclear power strengthens the argument for philanthropy to support people that know what they’re talking about, and to support the policy vision and design for a nuclearized world that’s safe and responsibly developed.
Theo: Public perception around safety and risk is an interesting topic. When sharing our work with funders, we often hear, “What about the waste?” or “What about Fukushima?” What’s missing is our society zooming out to consider the risks of failing to decarbonize. The framing and the education is a challenge. And when there is limited philanthropy in this area, the most ideological voices become the loudest and the overall trajectory of the policy debate suffers.
We need to think about these issues as multifaceted, with acknowledgment of the complexity that they deserve. We need to support credible experts thinking about these things from a broad perspective. Nuclear power involves not just energy and the environment, but also technology and society, peace and security, and the future of international governance.
Sue: Public perception of nuclear energy is often shaped by misinformation. Karen, given your background in health, an area in which we see similar issues, could you speak about the importance of combating misinformation?
Karen: I was very involved in outreach during the COVID pandemic. All we talked about was how to help people assess risk. In everything we do, there’s always a risk/benefit question, like “Should I drink water or wine tonight?”
I’m a bit newer to the nuclear space and I’ve observed a lot of the narrative centers around the risks of nuclear power. We need more champions and more diverse voices who help change the public perception of nuclear. For instance, we recently met with a group trying to promote peaceful uses of nuclear beyond power, like in medicine and agriculture. That narrative was familiar to me as I worked in places like India and East Africa trying to deliver health care. But it was at odds with the lens of the nuclear experts, who have been working in nuclear for a long time.
A lot of what I’m trying to do is bring those worlds together. We’ve been calling it nuclear literacy work. How do we get people to understand nuclear and not perceive it only as a bad thing? How do we help people understand nuclear’s risks versus benefits? There are a lot of benefits, which we don’t talk about enough.
Charles: When framing the topic of nuclear energy, many people think first about weapons, and then about power. But if you look at nuclear energy on the scientific level, it has saved so many more people than it has ever killed. I never really considered basic things like X-rays, MRIs, cancer radiation treatment, and food treatment as part of the nuclear legacy. Most people in the nuclear advocacy community don’t even mention that.
On the issue of nuclear waste, we have 70-80 years of running nuclear power plants, and independent of the accidents, the waste has never injured or killed a single person. At that point you look at the risk profile and realize it can’t get that much safer based on our existing operating procedures. Could philanthropy play a role in talking about nuclear waste? It’s an interesting area to explore, and it ties back to countering the misinformation about nuclear energy.
Sue: Charles, you were speaking earlier about your family philosophy, which was that nuclear knowledge had to be shared. To me, that meant you were early proponents of open science, a concept many funders now support. Could you comment a bit about how you see that philosophy squaring with commercial nuclear development?
Charles: To me, that philosophy makes nuclear particularly well suited for philanthropic investment, where you’re not worried about the commercial sector and questions of ownership.
Questions around a scientist’s role in dealing with these issues is something for which Robert Oppenheimer is, and probably always will be, the most recognized symbol. Of course, he had a job during the war of using science to make a weapon, just like a soldier would have a job. But then he expanded on that job, by believing that, as a scientist, he should try to influence policy and advise presidents. And he brought into that job his understanding with Bohr, and Einstein, and many scientists who recognized that there was a fundamental part of science that you can’t own as a state secret.
That’s not an intuitive belief for a president like Truman, who had just inherited a secret bomb project that he had paid billions of dollars for. The government effectively said, “We’ve got the most powerful weapon in the world, and making as many of them as possible is what’s best for the world.”
Robert Oppenheimer was not alone in his disagreement with that sentiment. He was asked to be an advisor to the committee that produced the Atchinson-Lilienthal Report, which came to the conclusion that we could not avoid an arms race unless we formed a joint effort with our potential allies and enemies to monitor nuclear material and ensure it was used only for peaceful purposes.
Unfortunately, the report was sabotaged, and Russia created their own atomic weapon by 1949, and we got into the arms race due to the faulty premise that we could keep nuclear energy a secret and for the U.S. only. That is still our military and industrial policy. That’s what America does, and it’s what China and Russia do. It’s difficult to overcome the mindset that it’s in our best interest to make more weapons faster and “beat” the other side.
The only potential counter to this stand-off is through science diplomacy. It can be an area that’s palatable to potential enemies in the world where nothing else is. For example, we can come together around an agreement to avoid potential catastrophes, like an accidental nuclear war that’s automatically escalated with AI technology. Nobody wants that, not China, not Russia, not the U.S. If you keep the scope of the agreement narrow and you focus on the credibility around the science, you have the most chance of making progress there.
Building on science diplomacy through the work of people like Sieg Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and long-time champion of science diplomacy—and using the Oppenheimer name—is one of my fondest hopes. I’m advocating for discussing with the literal enemies of the U.S. that we should cooperate more.
To quote Christopher Nolan [Director of the 2023 film Oppenheimer], this is the most important thing in the world. If we screw this up, we all die 30 minutes from now.
THEO: Speaking of Sieg, he wrote a book with a sort of poetic title that encapsulates Charles’ point, called Doomed to Cooperate.
I’ll note that another foundation where I worked before the MacArthur Foundation was the Carnegie Corporation. One of the main investments that we made at Carnegie was informal diplomacy between erstwhile enemies. That meant engagement with individuals in China, Russia, the U.S., North Korea and Iran that had influence with government, but may not have been in government at the time. We held somewhat informal discussions between them to surface policy ideas with more flexibility and latitude.
France: My very first job as a physicist immediately out of Graduate School was at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. My principal home is still in Santa Fe, and I travel frequently to Los Alamos to meet friends for hikes and conversation. There are reminders everywhere of the legacy of Los Alamos and Robert Oppenheimer, from Fuller Lodge to Bathtub Road to the Bradbury Museum of Nuclear Science. Charles, do you visit Los Alamos often, and does your family still own the land in the Pecos Mountains where your grandfather roamed on horseback?
Charles: I grew up on the ranch in New Mexico that is still in the family. That ranch is our spiritual homeland, as Robert Oppenheimer started going there in the 1920s. And the reason the Los Alamos site was chosen is because he would ride on horseback from the ranch over to Los Alamos and knew it was there. The ranch was a really cool place to grow up because it’s a cabin with no power. I grew up running around in the mountains playing with animals. It was an amazing experience, and it always shocks people to learn I grew up in a log cabin with no electricity.
I will say that we didn’t feel any connection to Los Alamos itself and the labs. My father, unlike my grandfather, did not work for the labs. I grew up with a very negative attitude about Los Alamos. Basically, it was a bomb factory. It wasn’t until later in my life when I went and met people at the lab with the Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program that I realized there was some amazing work going on at the Department of Energy.
One big take away from that experience is that nuclear energy is going to be a crucial part of any climate solution, and for funders who support basic science, there is an important and impactful role they can play in its advancement.
France: Well, thank you so much, Charles, Theo, and Karen. This has been wonderful conversation, and we appreciate everyone who attended.
Charles: Thanks so much, France.
Theo: And thanks to the Alliance for allowing us to continue the conversation.
