The Indiana Century Podcast

The Reactor in a Box | Indiana Century S1E14

What if a nuclear reactor could fit in a shipping container? What if it could be built in a factory, shipped by truck or rail, and assembled on site like a giant battery? That is not science fiction. That is the small modular reactor, and it is happening now. In December 2025, the Department of Energy awarded the Tennessee Valley Authority 400 million dollars to build a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 at the Clinch River site in Tennessee. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the construction permit application in July 2025. Construction is scheduled for 2026 with operation expected by 2033. Indiana Michigan Power is part of the TVA coalition, and the Rockport Plant in Spencer County is a potential deployment site. In this episode, host Kory breaks down everything you need to know about SMRs. He explains why traditional nuclear power failed. Custom built, site built, one of a kind projects with no learning curve and no economies of scale. He then shows how SMRs fix that problem. Factory fabrication, modular construction, standardized design. The same industrial revolution that made solar panels cheap and cars reliable can make nuclear power affordable. Kory also covers safety. SMRs use passive safety, meaning the physics of the reactor shuts it down without pumps, generators, or operator action. No meltdown scenario. No evacuation zone. He addresses the global competition. China has 26 reactors under construction and is building SMRs today. Russia has a floating SMR that has been operating since 2019. America is catching up, and Indiana can lead. The episode also features FANCO's EAGL-1, a lead bismuth cooled fast reactor that can consume spent nuclear fuel as fuel. The company is headquartered in Indianapolis. Kory explains how fast reactors turn a 300,000 year waste problem into a 300 year manageable project. The featured book is "The New Map" by Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who shows how energy is power and how the map is being redrawn without America while we debate. Indiana Century link: IndianaCentury.carrd.co [https://indianacentury.carrd.co/] Subscribe wherever you get podcasts. IndianaCentury.org

From Tennessee Valley to Indiana Century | Indiana Century S1E13

Before the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Valley was one of the poorest regions in America. Only three percent of farms had electricity. Floods destroyed crops every spring. Malaria was rampant. The people who lived there had been left behind. Then, in 1933, the federal government did something remarkable. It created the TVA. A public corporation. A state-owned utility at a regional scale. The TVA built dams. It generated electricity. It controlled floods. It manufactured fertilizer. It brought the first lights to a million homes. The TVA didn't just build infrastructure. It built a region. It proved that ordinary people, organized at scale, could lift themselves out of poverty. It proved that public ownership could work. But the TVA wasn't perfect. It displaced thousands of families. It damaged the environment. It centralized power in ways that excluded local voices. Its nuclear program had safety issues, including the Browns Ferry fire in 1975. We learn from those failures so we don't repeat them. The TVA isn't history. In December 2025, the Department of Energy selected TVA to receive $400 million to deploy a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River site in Tennessee. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the construction permit application in July 2025. TVA expects initial site work as early as 2026, with operation by 2033. Indiana is in the room. Indiana Michigan Power is part of the TVA-led coalition exploring deployment at the Rockport Plant in Spencer County. The same technology TVA is building could come to our state. And just last week, Governor Braun and Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks signed a letter of intent to collaborate on nuclear energy solutions in Indiana. SMRs. Advanced nuclear. Feasibility studies. Site screening. Workforce development. The Indiana Century Project is not a fantasy. It's the leading edge of what's already happening. Featured book: This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. Klein argues that climate change is a crisis of extraction. The fossil fuel industry takes, profits, and leaves. We need public investment and public ownership to solve it. The TVA was built to solve the crises of its time. The Indiana Century Project is built to solve the crises of ours. IndianaCentury.org

Sovereignty's Defense System | Indiana Century S1E12

We've spent eleven episodes building something. Reactors that pay counties ten million dollars a year. Rail lines that turn a region into a neighborhood. Fiber that connects every Hoosier. A bank that keeps our money here. A corps that trains people who were written off to become builders. Once you build something valuable, someone will try to take it. Not with violence. With legislation. With lobbyists. With a quiet change to the law when no one's paying attention. This episode is about defense. Institutional defense. The systems we put in place to make sure what we build stays built. Constitutional locks. Revolving door bans. Transparency portals. Citizen enforcement. The things that keep the foxes out of the henhouse. We walk through the four constitutional amendments. Amendment 1 (Infrastructure Corridors) protects property owners while making project development predictable. Amendment 2 (Public Asset Lock) requires 60% voter approval to sell any state owned infrastructure asset. Amendment 3 (Revenue Lock) requires 60% voter approval to change revenue allocations from truck tolls, cannabis, and Host Community Fees. Amendment 4 (Public Banking Authorization) puts the Bank of Indiana in the constitution where a simple majority can't undo it. Each amendment requires a long, difficult process to pass. Two differently constituted General Assemblies must approve the same language. Then voters decide. That's the point. These locks are meant to be hard to remove. We also cover the revolving door ban. Indiana already has a one year ban for state officers and, as of 2025, a three year ban for legislators. The Indiana Century Project proposes a five year ban for everyone working on the project, with citizen enforcement and real penalties. The transparency portal would be a public website. Every meeting, every document, every revenue stream. Searchable. Real time. Sunlight as disinfectant. Citizen standing is written into the amendments. Any Hoosier can sue to enforce them. You don't need to prove you were personally harmed. If you win, the state pays your legal fees. Indiana has done this before. The property tax caps amendment passed in 2008-2010 with over 70 percent voter approval. The 1851 constitution added a debt prohibition that has protected taxpayers for 175 years. We know how to build locks. We just need to build them again. Featured book: How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Democracies don't fail in a day. They fail slowly, through a thousand small erosions. The same is true of public assets. IndianaCentury.org

Pets, People, & Public Health | Indiana Century S1E11

Special: In today's episode, I discuss the animals my family adopted and what they mean to us! Animal welfare isn't separate from human welfare. It's the same thing. Stray dogs spread rabies. Feral cats spread disease. Overcrowded shelters become breeding grounds for infection. When we protect animals, we protect people too. This is called One Health, and it's the foundation for everything in this episode. In Episode 11, we talk about the Pet Product Stewardship Fee. One percent on non-essential pet items. The fancy toys, the boutique treats, the stuff you don't really need but buy anyway. That one percent funds low-cost spay and neuter, veterinary care for families who can't afford it, and the Animal Stewardship Corps. We cover real Indiana examples. In February 2026, an Indianapolis shelter was at 104% capacity. The director said they were "at a breaking point." In 2025, Indiana lost 8.6 million birds to avian flu. That's an agricultural disaster and a public health warning. And across the state, vet deserts leave communities with no access to spay and neuter services. The Animal Stewardship Corps is part of the ICC's Resilience Corps track. Corps members provide mobile clinics, shelter support, and emergency response. They go into vet deserts, bringing care to parking lots and fairgrounds. They help families who can't afford veterinary care. They reduce stray populations before they become a crisis. Featured book: The Bond by Wayne Pacelle. The deep, ancient connection between people and animals. And the responsibility that comes with it. This episode also includes personal stories about the rescued cats and dogs who inspired this work. IndianaCentury.org

The Host Community Fee | Indiana Century S1E10

There's a nuclear plant in Illinois, just across the state line from Indiana. It's been running for decades. Every year, it generates billions of dollars in value. Clean power. Good jobs. Tax revenue. None of that money comes to Indiana. The jobs are in Illinois. The tax revenue stays in Illinois. The economic activity happens across the river. Indiana has power plants too. Coal plants, mostly. Some are closing. Some have closed. When they close, the jobs leave. The tax revenue leaves. The towns that grew up around them are left with empty buildings and a tax base that can't support the schools they built. The company walks away. The community is stuck with the cleanup, the empty buildings, the lost revenue. That's the extractive model. The company builds. The company operates. The company takes the profit. The community gets the plant during its life and the liability after it's gone. The Host Community Fee flips that. Four to five dollars per megawatt hour. Every reactor pays it directly to the county where it sits. For a typical small modular reactor, that's ten to twelve million dollars a year. Every year. For forty years. For eighty years. Forty percent for property tax relief. Thirty percent for schools. Twenty percent for rural health clinics. Ten percent for animal welfare. That's what sovereignty looks like at the county level. Not an abstraction. A check. We also talk about the Trump administration forcing Indiana to keep old coal plants open. And we break down how a reactor actually makes money: building it, selling the power to manufacturers, steel mills, college campuses, and hospitals, then sharing the revenue with host counties. The fee is locked by constitutional amendment. Amendment 3, the Revenue Lock. Sixty percent voter approval required to change the allocation. That money belongs to the county. Permanently. Featured book: The Fight for the Four Freedoms by Harvey J. Kaye. FDR's vision of freedom from want and freedom from fear. The Host Community Fee is how we keep that promise in Indiana. IndianaCentury.org