Air Quality Trade‑Offs, Birth‑Weight Impacts, and Regulatory Ripples

In the 17th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, co‑hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous unpack a 2017 Nature Energy study by Edson Severnini that tracks what happened when two TVA nuclear reactors went offline in the 1980s. They walk through how each megawatt‑hour lost to nuclear was replaced one‑for‑one by coal, sending particulate pollution soaring by roughly 10 µg/m³—enough to erase two years of Clean Air Act gains—and why the most exposed counties saw newborns lose an average of ~137 g at birth. Along the way they debate the wisdom of ultra‑strict NRC oversight, the hard choices regulators face when trading catastrophic‑risk mitigation against everyday public‑health outcomes, and why natural gas or renewables didn’t bridge the gap back then. Tune in for a deep dive on air‑quality trade‑offs, regulatory incentives, and what this forgotten corner of energy history tells us about our present challenges.