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- [00:00]
Lucy Jane Santos
Foreign.
- [00:03]
Cole Smead
You're listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who fear stock market failure. You can learn more@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor. Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast we speak to great authors about their writings the late, great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis. We analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. In this episode we will discuss some of the history of the element table, mining, energy and ultimately uranium. Lucy Jane Santos is joining us to discuss her recently released book chain, the Hopeful History of Uranium. To teach our audience a little bit about Lucy, she is a freelance historian. She is a founder of the Art Deco Society UK and co founder of the Cosmetic History and Makeup Studies network as well. Ms. Santos work has been featured in history today, BBC history revealed, the New York Post, and Vogue Magazine. She received her BA in Egyptian Archaeology and her MA in Museum and Heritage Management. Lucy, thanks for joining me today.
- [01:30]
Lucy Jane Santos
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:33]
Cole Smead
Let's see, I, I, we talked about this a little bit before, but I just like the first question is like you have a very eclectic background. I'm terribly intrigued by it. I think it's interesting. But you know, I guess like with all the work you've done, what caused you to do this work on uranium?
- [01:53]
Lucy Jane Santos
I mean this, the work on uranium stems out of a previous book that I wrote which was the history of the element radium. And that came out in, in the UK in 2020 and the US in 2021. And I did a lot of research for that. It was a sort of around about 10 years worth of research. And I had so much material that I couldn't place in that book because I was talking about radium. And the history of radium for me sort of ended in the late 1950s. That's what I was writing about. It was a fairly UK based book. So all of that stuff that I couldn't get in, I just, you know, when you have a thought that just won't go away, you just have to finish that to the end of that thought. So I just thought, right, well I'm, I'm gonna have to carry on, I'm gonna have to write another one. So it's just about being fascinated. And this, this is a really fascinating topic Agree.
- [02:47]
Cole Smead
And it's, I mean, it's very timely. I, I think a lot about, you know, some of the periods you go over in your book, how that looked pretty similar to some of the discussions we had 50 years prior, back in, say, 2022. So let's just kind of start at the origin. Let's talk about Peck blend. The Germans used this word and, and, and what was the substance?
- [03:08]
Lucy Jane Santos
So it's more. We, we. Well, certainly in Britain we'd more use the word pitch blend, but it comes from Petchblend or Pesh blend or various Germanic variations of it. There was a Besh blend at some point and it's basically a mineral, it's an ore, it's a combination. We, as scientists went on, they found out that it was a combination of up to 30 different substances, one of which was uranium. So it was just, it's just this really interesting substance that had fascinated scientists for quite a long time. And the discoveries that they were, all the various scientists who were using it and experimenting came up with different discoveries. And most famously, this is what Marie Curie was investigating when she discovered the elements radium and polonium.
- [04:05]
Cole Smead
So George Bauer was kind of your early academic on this subject. What did he bring to the town of Joachimsthal?
- [04:13]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yes, and that is a word that I really, really struggled to say. It's modern day Yakimov, which is, which is now in the Czech Republic. So, yeah, so this is a place. St. Jockersmouth was a place in what was Bohemia, but now is in modern day Czech Republic. And it's a mining town. It'd been a mining town since the 16th century. What they were looking for was silver, they were looking for precious metals. And this is where pitchblende comes in. Because in mining terms, pitch blend is also known as the bad luck mineral, because you find pitchblende when all the good stuff has been tapped out. So when all the silver's gone, you're going to find pitch blend. It's a, as I said, it's, it's, it's, it's present in so many mining places because it's got so much impurities, it's made up of so many different substances. So we have this town, we have this vast search for silver, for precious minerals, and we have vast amounts of pitch blend as it sort of gets tapped out. And as I said, that's really a sign that the miners should move on. So we have the mining town of Yakimov. And what we have here is also reports of these miners who start falling Ill under mysterious circumstances. And no one really knows what's going on. No one really knows what it is. They know it's associated with. With the mines, with their work. So there's this idea that there's essentially that these miners are being punished by underground trolls for going into their world. And we start then seeing the search for what's wrong with these miners, the search to help them, because so many of them are dying. And this is where we get George Bauer. He comes in, does lots of research into mining, lots of research into the health of these laborers. What can be done to protect them, what can be implemented to really improve their health. But there's no understanding about why they're suffering. They just know it's something to do with their work.
- [06:23]
Cole Smead
Sure, yeah. Because Bauer walks away, I think, talking about how the ventilation and other things needs to be much better. And you point out that though he does the work, he's right. It's never really adopted. Because Bauer, I think, dies and no one continues his work. I love the gnomes. Here's why. When people, like in the investment business, let's say you own something and you come in someday and something's going on, People say, oh, the hedge funds, and I call them the gnomes of Zurich. It's like it was a British term, actually, that was used to the effect that someone was having in the gilt market. And the British politicians said, well, the gnomes of Zurich are doing that. As though there was someone in Zurich doing this. And for the miners, like, why did things go wrong? Why did people get sick? It was the gnomes. They were ruining their lives. And so the miners are no different than investors in a lot of cases. And made me kind of chuckle at that part of your story. So Klaproth, he finds a new element. What? I'll say almost. Why does he almost find a new element? And why does he not exactly find one?
- [07:28]
Lucy Jane Santos
So he is a analytical chemist, Often known as the sort of father of analytical chemistry. And he is really quite obsessed with investigating minerals. So he investigates hundreds and hundreds of minerals. He's analyzed, analyzing this. This pitch blend. And does all sorts of sciency things. He dissolves it in nitric acid. Now he finds a substance within this pitch blend that he says is chemically indivisible. So he can't separate anything else from it. So this is 1789. He says, well, I found a new element. I can't separate anything else from it. That's the smallest elemental thing we can get. So he says he's found a new element. He suggests that it should be known as uranium. And that's because he's honoring one of his colleagues, a fellow German, Sir William Herschel, who a few years ago had discovered the planet Uranus. So that's where uranium comes from. There's also an argument that Klaproth doesn't want to name it after himself. The tradition is really the elements get named after their discoverers. He doesn't want to do that, so he sort of sidetracks. But however, more analysis is done on this substance, and it's found in about in 1841 that Klaproth hasn't actually found a pure element. He's found a compound. So it's a mixture of uranium and oxygen. So he's found uranium oxide, not pure elemental uranium. So he was the first person to really discover that something else was going on in this pitch blend, but he hadn't quite found the actual purest version of it. So we have someone called Pelago in 1841 who discovers that it's uranium oxide and then discovers the pure element as well.
- [09:24]
Cole Smead
Sure, but uranium, you know, to you, you jump into the. But it's been around for longer than that because you also have a discussion in, you know, archeological digs where we have found uranium oxide being used in glassware in the Roman Empire.
- [09:40]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yes, well, there's only a small amount of evidence. In fact, there was one mural that they found, one mosaic that they found that had uranium glass in it. So it's this lovely mosaic of a dove on a blue background with plants all around it. And the green glass there is, has. Was shown to be uranium. Uranium glass. It's pretty much the earliest uranium glass that's been found and also the only uranium glass that was found from that Roman period. So again, there's this discussion. Did somebody come up with this technique specifically for this mosaic? Was it popular? But we just haven't found any other examples of it. Or was this just a one off? Was the. This, was the glass sort of contaminated with uranium? Because there's one thing to say is uranium is all over the place. It's. It's in the earth. It's everywhere.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Lucy Jane Santos
So we don't really know why it was done, but it did form this beautiful mosaic which unfortunately has been lost. It was the samples of it taken to Oxford University and they were lost in the Second World War. So we don't even have that really. We've got the archaeological dig notes, we've got images of it, illustrations of it, but the Actual mosaic sort of had been lost to time. But it's an intriguing prospect, isn't it, that there's more to be discovered?
- [11:07]
Cole Smead
Well, yeah. And it was like, to your point, was it intentional, was it unintentional? And maybe we just haven't found it being used again because of the rarity of it. Christian Gemellon found the harmful issues with the element. He started doing effectively testing on this. I think it was with dogs, if I remember correctly from your book. And you know, as I was reading this portion of the book, I was kind of asking myself, okay, is this a foreshadow or is this a precursor? Because ultimately he's, I think he's giving this to these dogs and it's making them sick from fatally. And so as you were studying this, did you think about this as a precursor to the later stages of uranium or was this just the natural, let's test the health benefits. And he's kind of going through this. How do you look at that in your own mind as the author?
- [11:59]
Lucy Jane Santos
I mean, every time something is discovered, there's obviously this drive to. Every time a new technology or a new science thing, an element or whatever it is, is discovered, there's always this drive to find out how it could be useful. And medicine is often the case. Now the reason uranium starts being useful in medicine is not because of its radioactivity, but because it's a toxic, it's a metal.
- [12:27]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [12:28]
Lucy Jane Santos
So the idea that metals are useful in medicine has been around centuries by this point. So it's not, not much of a leap to suddenly go, well, let's, let's see how this uranium is going to help people. This is a search for, there's always the search for cures, isn't there? And for me as an author, this point is, is quite personal because the, the disease that they are looking for a cure for or looking to help is diabetes. Type 1 diabetes. I'm a type 1 diabetic. So it's actually very emotional for me to, to read about the search for a cure for this. Obviously I've benefited from, from the discovery of insulin. I've just, you know, obviously I'd be dead without it. So listening, reading these testimonies because although he was using these, this toxic uranium substance on animals, they did do human tests as well. And there was a doctor in London called Samuel west who did quite, quite a lot of testing on human subjects, human diabetics. And the thing is that they were going to die. There was nothing for them. They were trying to control their symptoms by eating. But these are all people really with no hope, no future. So it's actually very emotional to read about their treatments. Some of them reported that this being, however they received uranium. So people were being injected, there was things, there was possibility of tablets, there was all sorts of these different ways of getting the uranium into the body. And the idea is that it, it would help the diabetes. It would help. This is all the idea that a little bit of what's bad for you is going to help you. So this is mimicking some of the, the effects of uranium diabetes on the body.
- [14:24]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [14:25]
Lucy Jane Santos
And, and helping those symptoms. So yeah, I get very emotional about that. But I think this is the point of these books that I've been trying to write. These are real people searching for answers, searching for cures. There's so much medicine in these books. There's so much real, real people doing real things.
- [14:46]
Cole Smead
The natural use at this time though was color. And that's kind of a common theme of uranium use throughout your book. And this eventually comes to photos. Can you explain, you know, how we kind of went from colors, what were its use to, to using for photography?
- [15:03]
Lucy Jane Santos
So the, the original, we talked about glass and Roman glass. So we start seeing around about 1830 uranium salts being added to the glass mix before they're being, to being blown or you know, however the glass is being made. So we see that. So uranium mixed, mixed with, with glass forms all different colors depending on the concentration that you're using, depending on what else. It's, it's, it's included in your mix. So we start seeing also again this idea that we're going to find a use for uranium. So it gets used in photography. Now this is in the form of metal salts and this is about helping with toning of the photography, a process I'm not really that familiar with. But we, we know that they were patenting various processes of adding uranium salt to photographic prints to help tone them, to help also to, to uranium was found, the uranium salts was found that it would actually help the photos last longer. You know, actually sort of stick rather than fade. So there was a huge problem with fading of photographs at this point as well. So this is around about the 1840s, 50s and 60s. So this is really helping the fading process, which was a huge problem. However, uranium doesn't really last in terms of being used for the photographic process and it's, it's replaced with other different salts and, and those things, like I said, it's not a process that I'm really That familiar with, although I should be because my dad was a photographer and a, and a printer and I did used to go into his darkroom and watch him process all the photographs when I was younger. So I should be more familiar with it.
- [16:51]
Cole Smead
That's funny. You talk about how Crooks, he found electrons, which was. He could see there was a difference in the atomic weight and it wasn't all already explained. So he does that work. Roentgen finds the X ray. What we know is the X ray today and the technology behind it. In their work. How similar was their work? Because when I was looking at Crooks seemed like they followed a very similar process but they were looking for different things. And I think that's another commonality that you find where people, I mean, I think later we will look at like the, the neon tube and there's certain ways that the elect, the electrodes are, you know, interacting with the, with the substance that are similar. But two people are looking for two different things in those process. So kind of teach us about Crooks work and Rotkin's work with the X ray.
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Lucy Jane Santos
This is all about the search for invisible rays at this point. There's so many different scientists working on so many different projects that this is all about the understanding that there are rays that are invisible to the human eye. They can be either generated by using scientific machinery or later they understand that some substances, radioactive substances, actually generate these naturally. So there's this idea right about from the 1860s and earlier as well. This is all tied up in so many different types of science from the idea of static electricity to electricity itself to these other types of invisible rays. So Crookes is looking for rays. He's looking for cathode rays. We have the Crookes tubes. This then all goes into television. We wouldn't have television without the search for these invisible rays. Cathode rays, Cathode tubes were used originally in televisions and then Runtgen. So Runtgen is building on Crookes work, finding these invisible rays and basically finds different type of ray that cannot be explained by modern science. So he carries, he does investigations. He finds that these rays that he's generating from this electrical machine can go blocked by various substances. He works out that you can actually view the bones of your own body. This is X rays. You know, this is a technology that, that we are so familiar with now. Yeah, but you can imagine, I mean the idea that you could see inside of the human body is a huge, huge leap forward in science and also so very practical as well. I mean which immediately suggests medical benefits of all sorts of benefits as well, doesn't it? So, so we start seeing that there. Then we see X ray mania. I mean, this is, this is one of the things that I wanted to pick out in the book and I both books actually, and I do on several occasions, is this idea that a scientific technology, a scientific development can turn into a mania, can turn into a cultural phenomenon that spreads out of the laboratory, spreads out of academic journals, it comes into the newspapers, it comes into people's everyday lives. Lives.
- [20:05]
Cole Smead
Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager here at Smead Capital Management and host of this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out smeedcap.com at our firm. We are stock market investors. We advise investors who fear stock market failure with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our funds@smeedcap.com past performance is not indicative of future future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services llc. Not affiliated to your point on spreading out, where would this be showing up in daily life? You know, so it gets out of the laboratory, it leaks out. And how are people using this in the, in the culture or talking about it or trying to use the technology as soon as they can?
- [21:03]
Lucy Jane Santos
Well, specifically with X rays. I mean, X rays are a fascinating one. Rontgen discovers X rays in, I think it's late November 1895, by the following January, it's out there in the press, is being talked about, it's being discussed. And the people like Thomas Edison, for instance, are making their own X ray machines. Sure, they're using that technology there. And Thomas Edison, if we know anything about Thomas Edison, is that he's going to market whatever these technological discoveries are. So we start seeing very. In January 1896, Thomas Edison partnering with a manufacturing firm to come up with this thing that he called the Edison fluoroscope, which is just another form of X ray technology. Again, the idea that you can see inside the human body. He then, in the tradition of science showman, he takes his fluoroscope on the road. He goes to hotels, he goes to conference centers, he goes to these massive places and he charges people to go into a room and look at their own hands through his fluoroscope. It's, it's a machinery with a, with a sort of viewing cone. At the top and you put your hand underneath it. The X rays are being beamed onto your hand and you can see through that viewing scope the inside of your. You can see your bones. So he's charging people to do that. People are absolutely obsessed. They are coming to see it. They are paying whatever they, you know, whatever's being charged. Because, again, this is the first time that you can see inside your own body. Unless you've had a horrific accident.
- [22:47]
Cole Smead
Sure.
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Lucy Jane Santos
So, yeah. And then we start seeing it culturally as well. We see. I mean, there's. There's silly things like, I mean, X ray specs being sold or they're not really X ray specs, but you see adverts for X ray specs. You also then see a corresponding concern about technology. And again, this is something that comes out many, many times and we all know it from our lives as well. Whenever there's a big technology that people don't necessarily understand how it works, there's a fear around it. There's a fear about what that means for your life. There's a fear in terms of X rays. There was a moral fear, there was a fear that people would be able to really buy X ray specs and wear them down the street and see through people's clothes, especially women's clothes. So then we get this whole moral fear around women being vulnerable to the. To the X rays. And so then we start seeing the idea that you might have to clamp down on the use of X rays to protect women's modesty. It's, it's, it's a. It's a really fascinating thing.
- [24:00]
Cole Smead
Well, I mean, just to think we've gone all the way from there to Onlyfans is quite a bizarre thought in the history of the world. So let's. So you then also talk about how Rutherford, he focused on the unique rays. What we now know is like alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays. How did he do that? I mean, because again, you're. You're literally taking the radiation and deciding what rays they represent.
- [24:24]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yes. I mean, again, this is a. It's hard to. One of the things I didn't want to do in this book was to really, really spell out every single scientific experiment that was going into it. There's a real balance to be made.
- [24:40]
Cole Smead
Yeah. I would say your book is kind of a Uranium for Dummies. You know what I mean? Like, give you enough, but not give you a PhD is, I think, a good way of thinking about this.
- [24:50]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah. And again, it's something that when I talk to People afterwards, again, it's that there are so many wonderful people who have written really technical, brilliant books on the science behind these things. You know, also, let's find out about who the people are that are actually doing it and what it means, what it means to people. But, yeah, Rutherford is instrumental here. He's largely at the beginning of the story, he's working at the Cavendish Laboratory. Sorry, he's at the University of Manchester. He's at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge as well. And he is really instrumental in not only working at the rays, but also they're looking at the atom as well at this point, what. What the atom is made up of. So there's huge amounts of. I mean, an untechnical answer is they're literally just bombarding elements for different rays. They're trying anything to work out what it is. This is a real chase to find out the answers to one of the biggest questions, which is, you know, what is in an atom? What are we all made up of?
- [26:04]
Cole Smead
Sure. And to your point, the element they're primarily using at this time is radium. It's not, you know, like modern, you know, uranium 235, 238. But this then kicks off back to the pop culture is like radium as a marketing ploy. And like the Radium Palace Hotel, which I like, was a, you know, a central idea behind this. Could you just slap radium onto anything? And everyone would be like, oh, that's the new cool thing. Is that the way to think about it?
- [26:33]
Lucy Jane Santos
Pretty much. I mean, radium is. Is discovered by Marie Curie in 1898. It was not a known substance before she'd experimented with pitchblende. Well, she. She was experimenting with uranium and she. She found two new substances to do what. It turned out to be elements that were giving off radioactive. Radioactive rays. Radium and palladium. Radium was the one that became really. There was. People became so excited about it. So there was things that were happening in the scientific labs that. Things like, for instance, the idea that radium glows in the dark. So if you have some radium salts, they glow this beautiful bluey, greeny light. Marie Curie called them her fairy lights. And they would put them up in their labs, little radium salt jars all over the labs. They would show them to friends. Let's go outside and look at my glowing radium. So there's an excitement in the site, in the scientific world, which then spills over into. Into more popular culture. So it's really the idea that radium glows in the Dark. So we start seeing it in theaters. The idea that radio would make Glow in the Dark costumes for theatrical productions, that's one of the first ways that it sort of slips out of the lab and into public life. You would go to. You'd go to see a show on Broadway in 1904. You could go and see a show called PIF, Puff Puff. And there was the Radium Dance. Glow in the Dark costumes. They turned off all the lights. These girls, they're called the pony. Ballet dancers would do their little. The little routines on stage just pinpointed by Glow in the Dark costumes. Absolutely wonderful. This is exciting stuff. Then we start seeing it just being used in other things because there is an understanding that it has medical benefits. And just like uranium, it's trial and error. And really, at this point, it's much more error than anything else. Sure. But then there's also, with radium, the idea that it's. It's found naturally, as I said, uranium is everywhere. Radium is part of the uranium decay process.
- [28:47]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [28:47]
Lucy Jane Santos
So we find radium in water. We find it primarily in water, so it becomes Spartans. Then say, oh, my water's radium. So we've got radioactive water. This has health benefits. Come and experience our radium water.
- [29:03]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [29:04]
Lucy Jane Santos
So then it just. It just explodes from there and ends up being used in so many different products from cosmetics, toothpaste, all sorts of things. It's. It's. It's a wild ride.
- [29:15]
Cole Smead
So another. Another theme, and I might put this under what you just said, trial and error. I live in the state of Arizona here in the United States, where we have very large Navajo reservations to this day. Where were the mine sites in the US in the early 20th century?
- [29:36]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yes. This is always the point with. When you're talking about uranium and radium is how it gets. Gets from the ground to the lab to popular culture. And it does have a really. A really tragic history. We already touched on Yakimov and the miners there who were, it's now known, suffering from radon exposure. Those mines were chock full of radon and there was no protection. There was no ventilation. So they were suffering badly after that. Again, we see in the US it is Colorado, Arizona, around there. That's a lot of the uranium mining that takes place, especially in the 1950s when there's the search for a huge amount of uranium for the atomic bomb project. And then obviously atomic testing and bombs in general after that as well.
- [30:41]
Cole Smead
Livingston created the cyclotron. Okay. And what I was trying to figure out is like you explain it. And I was trying to totally understand, I understood that the cyclotron causes particles to speed up and bounce off each other. But I'm trying to think of like, how big is this thing? Is it the size of a room? Is it size of a box? Do you have any feel for that?
- [31:01]
Lucy Jane Santos
It's. Well, when they first started with these particle accelerators, they were quite small. Then they got more powerful and bigger and bigger. And I think by the time it was sort of the Manhattan Manhattan project in the 40s, I think they're, you know, a big size, room type size. These are massive particle accelerators with a huge amount of power.
- [31:22]
Cole Smead
Okay, so then you also discuss Han, like Nazi Germany, because we're going through the research of uranium. You're, we're really getting down to what we consider almost refined uranium today at this point, you know, in the 1930s, let's call it. And then you discuss how Nazi Germany in many ways had some of the foremost researchers in uranium, and yet they obviously weren't going to end up in Germany for very long because they were Jewish.
- [31:50]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah, yeah, we do see that. So there are several centers of uranium research at this point. It's Britain, Manchester or Cambridge, depending on the point. Really, Paris is a huge place, but we also have Berlin as well. And this is the early 30s when so much experimentation is being done on, on, on particles in general, on the atoms and, and uranium and radioactivity in general. At the beginning, there is so much linkage between all of the different researchers there. There's, they're publishing in journals. I mean, actually, I should also say we have Italy as well, Rome as well. I shouldn't, shouldn't leave those out. But yeah, there's people working together. They're sharing information. And then we start seeing the rise of Nazi Germany and we see the, the reduction in openness and sharing. And we then see the, the impact of, of scientists being at first intimidated, then legislated against, and then basically forced to leave Germany. Often they go to the US So we see lots of people starting from the early 1930s, sort of seeing which way the world, which way the country is going, moving across. We have Einstein, for instance, coming across and we see that power center of scientific research leaving Europe and going over to the US and then from that point, there's a change in the power structure. And then ultimately when war is declared, we see Germany just being completely isolated. Sure, there's no sharing of information. Of course, there's no sharing of information anymore, but there's also this fear of the two different sides, two different scientific teams. They don't know what each other is doing anymore. And there's certainly a fear about what Germany is doing and whether they are closer than anyone else to come up with an atomic bomb. So we see that search for an atomic bomb, but also the fear the other side is, is more progressed when.
- [34:03]
Cole Smead
And ironically, as we talked about earlier, you know, they, Nazi Germany contained, you know, the large deposits of uranium in Czechoslovakia. So it's ironic that the research goes away, but the actual underlying mineral is prevalent. Frisch discovers fission. I think he talked the analogy that he put to fission was like shooting like a 15 inch bullet against a piece of paper. And it comes back to you, which obviously no one would expect to see. But and I think what your book really helped me understand fission as obviously you're splitting atoms, but it's the difference in the weight of the two atoms that come out of that. And what's lost in weight is what causes ultimately friction. Right? The particles that are released are friction. And that's what causes what we know as a chain reaction in fission. And again, you're trying to contextualize this. It's like the chronological snobbery would say these people were neophytes compared to us. But the reality is this was just in novel research. These are incredibly educated people, not only from a western thought perspective, but all the way out to the sciences as they are. How, how did this affect their uranium types? Because obviously there's two uranium types. There's 235 and 238. And how did this help determine that 235 would be used for fission?
- [35:31]
Lucy Jane Santos
Well, yeah, so there's, it was already known that in nature uranium existed as two different isotopes. So these are isotopes. One is 235, 238, and this had, they'd been separated from uranium as well. So if we had a big old chunk of uranium, they already could separate out the U235 and the U238. Now the problem is that it is only U235 that can go through that fission process. But the problem is, is that 99% of naturally occurring uranium is actually the other one, the U238. So this was a real problem. When we then the scientists were trying to work out, you know, what to do with uranium, they knew that the fission process was the most useful aspect of uranium, especially in the search for an atomic bomb, the search for energy in general. So we then really have to, we See this massive investment as part of the Manhattan Project to work out how to enrich uranium, how to make uranium have more of the fissionable type of isotope than the non fissionable one. So this is a huge part of the Manhattan Project and a huge part of scientific development during this period. So really from sort of we get the idea that uranium is fissionable. That sort of is all set and done and dusted by 1938. We've got the idea of a chain reaction. We've got chain reactions actually being created and maintained by 1941, 42. But now at this point we've really got to, well, if we're going to use that technology, if we're going to use that, we need more uranium. Not only do we need to physically get more uranium, so we need to mine more, we need to get more out of the ground. And at this point, as you said, they've lost the source from, from, from Europe, they've lost Czechoslovakia, they've lost all of that beautiful uranium. So they need to find their own uranium in, in the US largely. But once they've got that, they need to have these, these processes on a huge industrial scale to enrich the uranium.
- [37:49]
Cole Smead
We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at SMEAD Capital Management. At smead, we believe in discipline investing, which is why the SMEAD funds have a proven track record of long term outperformance. If you're an investor who fears stock market failure like I do and want to invest in wonderful companies, companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit smeedcap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services llc. Not affiliated. So the MOD committee determined that a super bomb could be made, but they didn't know what fission would cause. Exactly. And I think that's the other interesting part. They're on the edge of technology, but they know that what the effects it could have, but they don't know the effects that it will have is how. I think a lot about this part of the book. If I go to the movie Oppenheimer as an example, their concern was they knew it caused a chain reaction, but we frankly did not know at scale if that chain reaction would never stop. In other words, like what if you do fission and a super bomb and the atmosphere has a chain reaction and you blow up the world. Because that was a genuine concern at scale, that fission would cause mass problems. And so, you know, in reading your book, it's like the unintended consequences of testing theories.
- [39:28]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there had been sustained chain reactions done very safely in controlled settings. But of course, testing a bomb, testing an atomic bomb, is definitely not a controlled setting. Even though you've got the best minds working on it. There is a knowledge about what could happen, but there are always unknowns and there's always concerns as well. Scientists knew that they were changing the world with this. With this technology. You know, of course, be cautious with it, but, you know, there was also the real understanding of what the implications were if they were successful, as well as what the implications were if they were unsuccessful, too. I have to confess, I haven't seen the film Oppenheimer.
- [40:17]
Cole Smead
It's a good movie. I really enjoyed it. And also, I was trying to think about. That's a small subset. There's a small part of your book that has on that, obviously yours is a much larger history. The Manhattan Project, you know, worked on two paths. One was plutonium breeding and the other was uranium enrichment. If I remember correctly, Oak Ridge was the center for the uranium enrichment. And then Hanford, which continues to be this place where, you know, nuclear has a prevalent history. In full disclosure, I'm from Washington originally, Hanford. It was about an hour away from where I went to college. And, you know, that still to this day is federal land. It's very guarded. You know, it has nuclear reactors, it has nuclear waste. It's close to the Columbia river for the prevalence of water, which is needed in nuclear cooling. So I know a lot about the geograph, the geography of that. Why did plutonium breeding just not work versus why was the uranium enrichment successful?
- [41:16]
Lucy Jane Santos
Well, I mean, plutonium breeding not working is not quite the way that I would characterize it. So we do have. We have two successful. We have two bombs. So if we're still thinking about the Manhattan Project and atomic bombs in general, we end up with two bombs. One is a uranium bomb and one is a plutonium bomb. And the plutonium is bred in reactors. So they do do that. They get enough of it. It's not enough to. It's not enough as they wanted, and it's not enough as they thought they needed at the time. So we have those two bombs. It's hard to say. They were obviously successfully deployed and they both worked. That's so awful way of putting it. But if we're just thinking cold, hard science, we have those bombs. They exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. They do the job. They kill a lot of people. They cause a lot of destruction.
- [42:20]
Cole Smead
Yeah, the testing in Los Alamos, again, you know, we're in the subject of what are the known effects and what are the unknown effects. Obviously this is going on again, you're right near reservation land that this testing's going on in New Mexico. New Mexico is another big, you know, there's a lot of reservations in New Mexico, like Arizona. They knew it was going to cause destruction and devastation, but they didn't know, like, the after effects, what kind of after effects were seen that the scientists, you know, didn't even focus on. A lot of your book is like, what did people not look at? You know, what, what would the fallout be from testing there in Los Alamos?
- [42:58]
Lucy Jane Santos
I think, I mean, there was always an understanding. And you can see that in the, in the discussions when the idea that uranium was fissionable and that fissionable nature of it could be used and could be harnessed to make a bomb. We can see right from the beginning that there is an understanding that this is, this is more than just a bomb. There's something going to happen. There's more than just the initial destruction. Sure, there is going to be radioactive exposure. The scientists understood that. The government understood that. There's two things going on. They didn't really know how much. They didn't really know or understand how much weather would, would, would cause the spread of radioactivity or not. Sure, there was a certain understanding. A lot of those bombs that were tested, especially, you know, outside of Vegas, they would do early in the morning specifically because there was not much wind. So they would try not. They knew that if there wasn't a lot of wind, the radioactive particles that were released would not be spread across wide swaths of, of the countryside. So they did know. They didn't quite know and obviously didn't really understand the full implications of it. There's also an idea here around the greater good, like, and also who's affected. So when they chose the, the national testing site in Vegas, they very. Or just outside of Vegas, it was very, very much around. Well, it's 65 miles away from Vegas. It's a couple hundred miles away from Los Angeles. So we'll make sure those people are protected. You know, they're not gonna. So they didn't necessarily care so much about the people who lived in between those spaces. Yeah, so there's, there's Very much. There's so many different things going on. Going on there.
- [44:47]
Cole Smead
Sure. When in. Because in Vegas, it was Camp Desert Rock that you talk about in your book. They built a full town in Camp Desert Rock. And you talk about how they use mannequins to, you know, use life situations to study the harmful effects of radiation. And I mean, these are just, you know, made. Made. You know, they're effectively crash test dummies in a town. And they're understanding this. But that's what's going on in the situation. Obviously, that's not being fully talked about. The government's not gonna go and say, hey, everybody, guess how bad this is. But in Vegas, it's completely different. Vegas is thinking, oh, my gosh, this is wonderful. We can kind of use the atomic phenomena to spark up marketing. And you can watch the cloud plume from Vegas. And I mean, this becomes a marketing boom with the exception of maybe some broken windows from time to time from the effects of this. Is that fair?
- [45:42]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah. I mean, the atomic bomb, or the testing of the atomic bomb really changes Vegas from being a relatively small town into the Vegas that we know today. Really, it boosts tourism so much, it also helps. There's an idea here that the tourist industry in general sort of leapt on, is that by allowing. Even though they didn't have a choice, of course, by allowing these bombs to be tested so close to their. Their, their, their town, they were contributing to American national security. They were being part of. Of, again, the idea of the greater good. And that was kind of used to deflect attention away from some of the more seedier elements of Vegas history. The connection with mobsters, all of those things. So, you know, they're saying, right, well, that's, that's the past. We've. We've got that reputation. Obviously, it didn't change too much. But now we are, we, we, you know, we are supporting national security. This town is doing something bigger than just gambling and marriages and divorces and things. You know, we're doing something else. So they leap on it. There's advertising. There's all the casinos. All the hotels really get involved in the atomic testing program. They offer special packages for tourists to come to their hotel to view the tests. There's cocktails, there's fashion as well. There's the atomic hairstyle that's offered by the Flamingo Hotel. You can pay $75 and get your hair booth wanted. Like an atomic bomb explosion with silver glittery bits in it as well. So much going on. You can stand at the top of. Top on the top of hotel roofs and watch the atomic bombs. Or you can be at the, the Desert Inn and you can stand in there in their cocktail lounge with a viewing platform to watch the atomic bomb go off. It's. It's fascinating. It's. So I find it really, I've studied it so much, I, I find it so bizarre still.
- [47:59]
Cole Smead
Well, and I also, you know, if someone told me one of the main swimwears of the last, you know, 50 years actually emanated from nuclear testing in the South Pacific, I would have laughed at you out of the room. I would thought, how do they have any connection? And then you explained the connection, which was that obviously the, what we now know as bikini was new then and the way they figured out to call it bikini, because atomic was exciting, it was fun, it was new. And I think you explained the triangles on the top of a bikini is what they liken to the, like the nuclear, the nuclear testing. And that's what caused the bikini to become the bikini and has held ever since that.
- [48:45]
Lucy Jane Santos
I mean, this is the aspect of, again, this thing that really fascinates me about, is about culture and how these things happen. But yes, so there's several layers to this story. There's the idea that the bikini is small, that is as small as an atom. So we've got this idea that bikini is very small. It's atomic. It was also known as the atom swimwear at some point as well. So we've got this idea that it's really small, smallest thing in the world. So you've got that. We've also got the atomic testing in the Pacific, specifically in the Bikini Islands. So again, we've got that reference there. So the word bikinis is referencing where the tests are going off. It's actually an awful story, isn't it? You know, a piece of swimwear is being celebrated by referencing the destruction of people's homes and lives. That's awful. But it is actually very fascinating as well. And as you said, fascinating that we still call it a bikini. It's still culturally important to us.
- [49:50]
Cole Smead
Yeah, well. And yeah, I mean, you know, some, depending on how small, it could be radioactive, as some would say. So another, again, perturbing Kix cereal. You talk about what Kix cereal was handing out. I think you took the box top like you normally used to do, and you could send it in. And what did Kick cereal send you back on this atomic marketing idea?
- [50:13]
Lucy Jane Santos
This is a ring, so this is a present for children. So they would send you back I can't even remember how many box tops it was. I think it was maybe like five box tops and 15 cents or something like that. And you would get back an atomic ring. And the idea is that a kid would, would use it. It's wear it, it's. Oh gosh. I mean, it's, it's all to do with ideas around atomic in general, but also bombs very, very specifically. So it is shaped like a bomb. You've got this little plastic at the end, like tail fins of the bomb as well. You've got little secret messages and you can look through it. Oh, it's just scary. And also it does touch on something else, which is the amount of uranium and radioactivity toys and activities in general that were being marketed to kids at the time. So we have like uranium science sets being marketed to kids that would come with pieces of actual uranium. And you were, you were encouraged to experiment with your own little samples of radioactive material. It can. Terrifying.
- [51:28]
Cole Smead
Yeah. It's crazy to think that they would send out a ring to kids with bomb ideas or uranium. But again, to your point, this was all new. Explain how bush pilots, because again, I think of like, you know, now we have all this GIS technology and we can use various seismic data and heat map data to understand where certain deposits are or things of that nature. But back then we didn't, we didn't have the satellite work that we do today. So how would a bush pilot help us find uranium deposits? As they flew over, say, the western United States, for example, they're looking for radioactivity.
- [52:07]
Lucy Jane Santos
So they would have, whether it's from, from the air or people walking around various parts of the desert, they would have scintillators, they would have Geiger counters. I mean, the, the bush pilots, they would fly over, over these vast, vast desert spaces, of course, and they'd have like a scintillator hanging from it. So scintillator is simply looking for radioactive rays. It's detecting radioactivity. And they would fly over bits where they got the strongest signal. They'd either drop something or tell, you know, the, the, the geographic marker of where it is and then would go. And people in the ground would then go and investigate. So this is, this is the search for you uranium across vast amounts of American deserts. Because there was an understanding that in this area was uranium. It's just they didn't know where it was and they needed to find the one that was the bit that had the strongest uranium as well. So uranium varies in strength in general.
- [53:15]
Cole Smead
Sure. You talk about the Steen family. They were kind of an outlier in your story for finding uranium. The husband and wife, I think he ends up referring to as Charlie Steen. He refers to himself, or they refer to him as the king of uranium. And I think you talk about how they built up, like, $180 million fortune finding uranium, but they were really an outlier. That was not very common. That was very rare. There were a lot more hucksters. I mean, as I'm watching this, like, uranium craze play out, you know, Post World War II, I'm thinking like, well, this sounds like, like a cryptocurrency world where it's like, many play, few will win. Do you ever think about that analogously, you know, like. Like what we see today?
- [53:54]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah, I think. I think it's like anything the uranium rush at the time was compared to the gold rush before or any rush in general. And again, there's this idea that there's uranium in the ground. It needs to be found. The US Government are providing bonuses. They are encouraging normal people to go out into the desert.
- [54:17]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [54:17]
Lucy Jane Santos
And search for uranium. It's, it's, it's again, a wild time. These people are called weekend prospectors. The idea that you'd go spend your weekend in the desert digging around with you've got your Geiger counter, you find somewhere hopeful, and then you go start digging, it's wild. But so many people were doing it, and people were, again, going absolutely wild for it. There's so many stories of people selling their houses, selling their businesses, and going into the desert and living in a tent, essentially to try and become a uranium air. There was even a term for it, a uranium air. So there's this, this idea that you could find uranium and become a millionaire. So many people did it. So many people's lives were destroyed because there was a lot out of there. But there was an awful lot of people looking for it, and it relied on luck. And also with the, with any of these things like cryptocurrency, it does rely on being the first person on the scene. And we do start seeing more and more people cottoning onto it after a few years, going out to the desert, spending all their money, giving up all their savings to try and become rich. But the area has just already been tapped out. We also, again, see an industry rising up around that. So people are selling Geiger counters, they're selling books, they're selling all sorts of clothing as well, to help these weekend prospectors become uranium heirs. So we see Lots of businesses around this as well, around this popularity. They're making a lot of money. There's a lot of exploitation, of course, around anything, anything that becomes a craze that you can become rich on.
- [56:03]
Cole Smead
Yeah, people went to your point. Wall street tends to be good at selling things that are popular because they're easily marketable. We're going to show a slide here that's out of the pictures of your book, in the middle part of the book. But so you say that Salt Lake City becomes the Wall street of uranium. And so I loved this because it's, you know, I always think of most of good investing is figuring out how to not do stupid things. Okay, these are some of the stock certificates you have from these uranium companies. I can't remember which ones we're looking at here. Like the Acme uranium mines, for example. In this time, I think you explained that, you know, people are raising money. This is happening in Salt Lake. These are publicly traded uranium stocks in Salt Lake City. And I know this is crazy for like a Gen Alpha or Millennial to think about this, but there used to be many stock exchanges around the United States of America, but just so happened that obviously this would be centered in Salt Lake because the deposits were close by, or at least the marketed ideas were close by. And this would be over the counter penny stocks, not dissimilar to some of these crypto things we're talking about. I mean, would, would people actually move from Wall street to do this? Or was this kind of just a lot of hucksters?
- [57:26]
Lucy Jane Santos
This, I don't know. It starts, it starts organically in Salt Lake City. There's, there's a group of people who realize there's money to be made by getting investors investing, putting people in touch, selling these, these stocks, whether. And it really explodes. I mean, actually it's a very good point and it's not something I'd actually considered. So that's a really interesting point about where these people come from to start making all of these.
- [57:54]
Cole Smead
Well, because, yeah, I mean, because, yeah, at that time, I mean, I assumed Utah was mostly Mormon, which it had been for a lot of its history. So I mean, here, this like highly speculative scam, ish, almost activity going on, I thought, wow, this is, I mean, Utah of all places, that that would be crazy. Then, you know, and so I was trying to think about like, where, where do these people come from? Is it just, you know, to your point, is there just a gold rush atmosphere and fever that causes a bunch of, you know, grifters to come about in that place.
- [58:26]
Lucy Jane Santos
That's a really interesting point. I mean we certainly do see, as I said, a lot of people moving to these various areas to find uranium. It does make a lot of sense that you're getting people moving to these areas for other reasons as well because they, they've identified. There's a lot of desperate people amongst these people that are searching for uranium in the desert. There are also people who, as I said, have sold their houses. Maybe they are looking for a shortcut, not finding their own uranium but investing in someone else. Because also these, these uranium companies often sell themselves that they've got better equipment.
- [59:04]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [59:05]
Lucy Jane Santos
You know, they've got proper, proper machinery, proper access to proper processing facilities as well. So again, yeah, I can absolutely see that.
- [59:13]
Cole Smead
I think of. So, you know, the term, you know, uttered nowadays in Reddit boards is like the idea of yolo, you only live once or you know, you got to do this because now and it's like the mid century yolo. Right. Oh, we're, we're going, we're going into this. The other thing too that I love, again, this perturbing cultural history. Can you explain what a sitting house was and why it ducked regulation? Because again, this is just bizarre. But it's just what went on.
- [59:40]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah. So a sitting house is exactly as it sounds. It's a place to sit. Now this is all around uranium being of medical benefit. So we've got the idea that radium before and then uranium, especially in the 50s, the idea that there's a little bit of toxicity in it, there's exposure to it, is going to make you feel better for various, various aspects of health. So again, it could be any sort of aspect. Rheumatism is one that is often mentioned as being benefited by exposure to radium or uranium. So we have sitting houses and they are, they're either the greatest of city. Sitting houses are actually usually associated with a mine in general. So we've got people who have mined for uranium and not being very successful at it, they found some uranium but it's not been very pure, it's not been very strong. So it's not worth anything. So we see people thinking, okay, what else can we do with it? We have that and the idea here, or we see people, them actually selling their uranium or to people who want to set up their own sitting house or set up their own spa in general. So we see people selling their uranium ore. And the idea here is that you would just go into these spaces and you would benefit from the exposure to radium, so. Or uranium or whatever radioactive substance they're actually selling. A city house specifically is. Well, they call them sitting houses, but they could also be lying houses as well because people would lie there and they would be covered with, with you, with, or covered with sand, covered with these, with these radioactive substances. Or you could sit there and have your leg put in a, in a, in a, in a pot of sand or your arm or any of these things. There's photographs of them. It's, it's again a wild story. And we also see so many people coming to these, some of these hitting houses. They're not just random peoples with random sheds. They're making a lot of money out of this. There's places with elevators, with vending machines, with all sorts of air conditioning and all the mod cons associated with them. These are big spaces where hundreds of people a day will go for a treatment for a cure.
- [62:15]
Cole Smead
Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you are searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smead funds a look. Or better yet, reach out@smeecap.com and don't forget to mention that you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services llc, not affiliated. And you talked a lot about in this later part of the book how the government was heavily involved with finding uranium because obviously they had an interest in ultimately either the bombs themselves or the nuclear activity from a power generation. You talk about how you know, there it was more likely to be a government owned nuclear reactor at that time. But you also point out something that was true then, that nuclear was not very cost competitive compared to a coal fired electricity plant. You know, and I think so. It's interesting to think about the government's investing in something that can't be competitive. And then I think at one point, you know, the AC really backs off of the uranium mines and what happens is uranium production falls to the floor because ultimately if it wasn't subsidized it wasn't going to exist. Do you think about those parallels as we think about wind and solar, which have been really heavily subsidized energy sources, and yet if the government's not there, are we going to be producing the same amount of those energy sources not dissimilar to nuclear at an earlier time?
- [64:16]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah, I do think about this a lot, actually, because one aspect of it is new technology will always take government subsidy to really kick it off. Private industry is not as willing to put a lot of money in sometimes. We also see with coal, for instance. Coal has had a long history. It's had a lot of subsidy in the past. It's got a lot of history, a lot of investment in it already. So at this point, nuclear is the new technology. It needs investment, it needs understanding, it needs regulation. It's really difficult for those new technologies to compete against something that's already been in place for, let's say, 100 years. So we can absolutely see that. It's not fair to make that comparison, is it? It's not fair as sounds like a little childish thing, but yeah, it's not fair that these new industries are competing on the same playing fields as these older ones that have had that investment that are already, you know, settled technologies. So we, it's, it's, it's really difficult because you're always. Cole's always going to win in that aspect, isn't it? It's already there. It doesn't.
- [65:26]
Cole Smead
Let me, let me quote. I got a quote from your book because I, again, I was just, I was trying to think about, you know, again, you're just looking back at history as though you're God and asking, you know, what's transpired over time. So I love this quote. This is great. In your book, you have in 1920, Sir Oliver Lodge said, quote, the time will come when atomic energy will take the place of coal as a source of power. End quote. And now at that time, in 1920, coal was the largest source of power in the world, full stop. Okay? So he wasn't really saying to take the place of coal, but really take the primary source of energy in the world would have been his point. At that time, we are 105 years later. Okay? It's kind of fun to say we are 105 years later and nuclear hasn't even taken the position of coal, even though coal is not the dominant energy source. And I just was thinking out of your book, I thought, oh, my gosh, coal is unstoppable relative to atomic, even 100 years later today. So I started thinking about what's the trajectory of histories, right? You kind of think of S curves and the adoption of technology and all these things. And I thought, well, maybe in a hundred years atomic will finally cross coal, but how long will it take to cross other forms of energy? And therefore, if that's the paradigm of atomic, what should it teach us about the S curves of other newer forms of energy? I guess my question to you is, do you think about the time it's taken for some of these?
- [66:56]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yes, but I also think about. Actually I did a talk this week about the history of cars, for instance, and I did it through the lens of talking about electric cars. Electric cars. In the 1890s, I guess about 90% of taxis in New York City were electric. Electricity, electric generating cars, cars powered by electricity were, were the most popular type of cars as we go into the 20th century. Yet here we are 100 and whatever years later, and we're still talking about electric car cars and having that breakthrough. And, you know, we're still talking about better batteries, we're still talking about charging times, we're still talking about all of those things around it. Electric cars are great. They were great in 1890, relatively speaking. It's always difficult with technology. It's difficult to know which is the one that's going to work. It's often the one that is the easiest. And combustion engines were easier.
- [67:59]
Cole Smead
I try to think about, like, what's a framework to study. So for example, to your point, let's just use, like, let's just use gasoline against, you know, say to your point, electricity. Can they both power things? No question about that. You know, you can talk about how they're derived and where that comes from, all that kind of stuff. But one distinct advantage I keep coming back to, and we've been talking about this paradigm here, is the mobility of carbon fuels is something that's very unique to it. So for example, as most people know, framework argument for our listeners, power creates energy, energy builds energy, it moves energy. Those paradigms are all true. So for example, if I have a gasoline tanker, I'm using energy to move it to somewhere, but it's highly mobile versus, as you know, in the modern parlance, you hear of this, like small nuclear reactor sites and we can do all that. But again, is that as mobile as moving an oil tanker or, you know, you know, sending out gasoline to a site because you need, you know, localized energy source like that. Is that as easy as moving natural gas across a grid? And I think you know, I always wonder to your point how much the mobility issue is really the framework and paradigm for understanding energy sources. Like I can't take a wind turbine and put it on rollers and just move it to a new area. Could actually that be the biggest limiting factor of its use in the long run, much like it's been a problem for nuclear?
- [69:35]
Lucy Jane Santos
It's a good point. And there is also, as you said, so much emphasis on those, those small modular reactors. And it's not being mobile, but being nimble, being quicker to build, being. Well, I mean there are. The modular aspect of it is quicker to build but also quicker to expand as well. I think there is a real point, a real point around that. I also think there is a real point around people with interests in preventing new technology taking off. And that's something I didn't want to get into too much in terms of the book. But again, any of those technologies do have a resistance. A lot of the resistance that I see with nuclear is fear. But it's also those questions of who's stoking those fears as well.
- [70:29]
Cole Smead
Well, and also those fears can change. I mean, you do a wonderful job of talking about how the Sierra Club, for example, here in the US was originally very pro nuclear, ended up turning away to be anti nuclear. And also we've seen that recently here in the last five years. I mean, there's parts of Europe that was very anti nuclear, has become very pro nuclear, at least in dialogue and debate. You talk about how Japan went from, you know, 57 reactors nuclear to down to I think three or four post Fukushima. What'd they do? They greatly increase coal production in comparison. And you know, to your point, it's always like what the culture does on the margin. Right. So you talk about Three Mile Island. A movie with Jane Fonda called the China Syndrome came out, I think three weeks before Three Mile island took place. Also right after Three Mile island, you talk about the SNL skit which has Dan Aykroyd playing Jimmy Carter. It's a very funny skit. It's buried because of racial reasons, I think on the Internet. But Garrett Morris is a great comedian. He is there with Dan Aykroyd and they end up becoming these super giant King Kongs. And it's very funny, but it really was a funny way of demonizing nuclear in the end, wasn't it?
- [71:50]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah, I mean, Three Mile Island, 1979. We can see so much, I think we can see so much in the reaction to what happened happened in Three Mile Island. Which was a nuclear accident that was largely contained as using a containment structure that did its job. But what we see around it is media in particular stoking fears that are already present about radioactivity. We see the media descending on, on. On the town. We see the media telling stories about things that could never possibly never actually happen because they make good copy, they make good headlines. We see lots of headlines about hydrogen bubbles that are going to explode. There's also the point with the China Syndrome film is yes, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda famously an environmentalist. These are anti nuclear people doing these. Jack Lemmon was no fun. Jack Lemmon is my favorite actor. No fan of. Of nuclear. They're doing this film that demonizes nuclear energy it and also non scientifically they. The China Syndrome whole thing is that if a nuclear reactor explodes, the molten core of it can melt all the way down to China and destroy the world. You know, this is not, this is not scientifically accurate. But a couple of weeks later when an actual nuclear accident happens on US mainland it all just ties into it and it makes excellent copy. You know, the Three Mile island accident has actually sort of been been touted as advertising for this film. It's. It's getting audiences to you know, bums on seats. It helps this film become a massive, massive film. But we also see it going the other way. We see those unwarranted fears that are. That are in the film. Scientifically it makes no sense but we see these fears sort of being pulled into popular culture. It's. It's fun. The SNL skit. It's. They're this again make it makes good copy for the press. It makes great skits for comedy shows. It's just funny. I mean it's again more modern than that. Like the Simpsons for instance. The whole idea that you've got the lazy Homer Simpson working in a nuclear in Springfield nuclear power plant and you know he could press a button or he could do this or do that and destroy the whole town. Again, never going to happen. Quite funny actually, isn't it?
- [74:31]
Cole Smead
Yeah. No question. You point out something in kind of your parting chapter that I've never heard anybody say and I think it's kind of brilliant. So I want to tip my cap to you. But you discuss how dam failures have actually been far more devastating to human life. To your point, Three Mile island did not fail. It had issues but never failed. The safety of it maintained. But we've had multiple dam failures that have caused far more human loss of Life. And I don't see anybody running around saying dams are super devastating to humanity.
- [75:07]
Lucy Jane Santos
I actually find this, I find nuclear is discussed in a way that no other energy generating technology is discussed. Anything that happens with nuclear is always. I mean, there could be a fire on a site and nuclear power plants are massive sites. There could be a fire that someone had dropped a cigarette on a bunch of leaves in the security office at the front gate. And it would be reported on by the press as nuclear accident. Almost, you know, we almost lost our guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's anything to do with nuclear yet. We have oil refinery fires all the time. We have dams being dams destroying people's lives, people's land here.
- [75:57]
Cole Smead
I think you said in China there was, there was like 200,000 people that died from a dam failure and nobody, I mean, it's not like we're sitting saying we'll never build dams again.
- [76:06]
Lucy Jane Santos
Yeah. But anything to do with Fukushima is another good example. I mean, the whole, the whole area, the Fukushima district or prefect was, was destroyed not by the radioactive, not by radioactivity. Obviously it was destroyed by the tsunami at first. But, but also we have an economic, economical devastation caused by the fears around a small amount of radioactivity being leaked from, from the Fukushima power plant. But even today, countries won't buy products that are from that area. There is very, there's no reason for it apart from this sort of unfounded terror that we have that anything could be contaminated. And I have a little party trick that I have that I have some, some alcohol.
- [77:03]
Cole Smead
I was gonna say you have atomic sake.
- [77:05]
Lucy Jane Santos
Well, I have that from Fukushima, but I also have some, some white spirits. I don't know if it's even got a name from Chernobyl. So it's grown by scientists to work in the, in Chernobyl. There's pears trees and apple trees and they make the spirit that they sell. It's very, very strong, very, very delicious. But it's interesting to know, to see when I, when I bring it out at parties, because I'm that type of fun girl, is that who will drink it. People don't want to drink it. It is safe. It's very, very safe. As I said, it's also delicious, but people are genuinely scared to drink it. There's. Even if they do drink it, it's kind of like daring themselves to do it.
- [77:48]
Cole Smead
Yeah, well, I was gonna say you could tell them in advance, we'll all be glowing and see what the reaction is. Yeah. So, Lucy, I want to ask you, where can our listeners follow you going forward? Obviously, you're going to be writing more. You know, your, your work between technology and science and really how that shapes popular culture, I think is kind of, that is your, that is your foreground. So where can people follow your work?
- [78:12]
Lucy Jane Santos
I have a website, lucyjanesantos.com I'm on Blue sky as well. Lucy Jane Santos there too. They're the only places I'm, I'm around at the moment, but I do have a newsletter where I share my new research. I should also say that I do have another book coming out which I'm struggling to try and work out what the link is. But it's a history of the movie Some Like It Hot, the actual making of the movie Some Like It Hot, which does star Jack Lemmon, which China Syndrome did as well. So there's a link there. But also I think primarily it's something Like It Hot was filmed in the late 1950s. It references 1929-Valentine's Day Massacre. So there's this idea of nostalgia for a different time. So it's all surrounding these ideas of late 1950s People being scared of fallout, being scared of the Cold War, being scared of the Russians and looking back to an earlier time when things when all you had to worry about was Al Capone shooting you. So there is a link in my own mind there, but that's what I'm working on at the moment.
- [79:14]
Cole Smead
When you mentioned Jack Lemmon, I think one of his last movies was Grumpy Old Men and grumpy old men 2. And obviously him, he's incredibly funny in that movie. So, Lucy, thank you for your time and your work in this book. Ms. Santos book teaches you the immense progress we've made in science. While we have made very little, as she pointed out, in the human mind, the only thing that limits our future may just be us. But I also want to say just the social history that I think she brings out in this will teach you a lot about how our cultures interact and deal with fear or deal with excitement. Go out and buy a copy whether you're excited on nuclear or not, to understand the trajectory of this technology. Really looking back over the last as much as 500 years. If you enjoyed this this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to a book with legs, give us review, tell others about the books and great authors like Lucy Santos that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through for our tribe. If you have a great book that you'd like to recommend email podcastmeedcap.com that's podcastmeedcap.com you can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is meedcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book with Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management.
- [80:33]
Lucy Jane Santos
The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not.
- [80:37]
Cole Smead
Be construed as investment advice.
- [80:39]
Lucy Jane Santos
You can learn more about Smead Capital.
- [80:41]
Cole Smead
Management and its products@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.