The Indiana Century Podcast

The Indiana Century Project proposes SMRs, high-speed rail, fiber networks, agricultural co-ops, and rural health clinics. The engineering is complex, the financing is innovative, and the governance architecture is carefully designed. But none of it gets built without people.

Right now, the average age of a skilled trades worker in Indiana is pushing fifty. Major projects get delayed because there are not enough workers. Small towns cannot find electricians or plumbers or heavy equipment operators. The people who know how to build things are retiring, and there is no one behind them.

The Indiana Century Corps is the proposed answer. A civilian builder-operator corps. Not the National Guard. Not the military. A sovereign workforce, owned and operated by the people of Indiana, trained to build and maintain everything the ICP proposes.

This episode follows a hypothetical ICC member through their training and career. We walk through boot camp at Grissom, A-school at Purdue, and the daily work of all five branches: Energy, Connectivity, Agriculture, Resilience, and Construction. Each branch serves a different pillar, and each offers a distinct career pathway.

The ICC draws from three models. The Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s put millions of young men to work building trails, dams, and fire towers. It combined physical labor with classroom instruction and left its members with skills and purpose. The Navy Nuclear Power Training Command produces the most rigorously trained operators in the world, with a safety culture that is unmatched in industrial history. And the dual vocational systems of Germany and Singapore treat workforce development as a national priority, combining paid apprenticeship with lifelong learning accounts.

The career ladder runs from Crew Member to Journeyman to Master to Leadership. Every step includes training, certification, and demonstrated competence. An ICC member does not just get a job. They get a career.

The Atterbury model extends this opportunity to non-violent cannabis offenders released under legalization. They repair barracks at Atterbury, build the ICC boot camp at Grissom, and then build infrastructure. People who were written off become builders.

Local consent governs everything. Community benefit agreements include local hiring preferences. Host communities receive priority in ICC training programs. The state provides the framework, the training, and the standards. The communities provide the workers, the projects, and the oversight.

This episode features The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, which explains how disciplined process allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things reliably.

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The Indiana Century Project proposes a state-owned fiber backbone running alongside the HSR line. One trench, two assets. The rail project pays for the digging. The fiber rides along. This approach delivers significant cost savings because the infrastructure is shared.

This is not just about streaming video or faster downloads. This is about creating a real-time digital twin of Indiana's infrastructure. A digital twin is a dynamic, data-driven model of physical assets, systems, or processes. By combining operational data and advanced analytics, it improves planning and decision-making. McKinsey estimates that digital twins could improve public sector capital and operational efficiency by 20 to 30 percent.

The fiber backbone will enable real-time monitoring of the HSR system, the SMRs, the power grid, the water systems, and the agricultural networks. The digital twin will make the invisible visible.

We discuss how the fiber backbone enables applications beyond the digital twin. Telemedicine for rural communities. Precision agriculture with fiber-connected sensors. Remote education for rural students. Smart manufacturing with real-time optimization. Transparent government with visible performance data.

We also discuss the ICP's goal of eventual total state coverage of high-speed internet for those who want it. The state-owned backbone provides the middle-mile infrastructure. Private providers connect the last mile. This partnership model ensures universal coverage without duplicating existing private investment.

Indiana already has significant fiber infrastructure through Accord Telecommunications Collaborative, Hoosier Net, and the Indiana Connectivity Program. The federal BEAD program has allocated $868 million to Indiana for broadband expansion. The ICP will extend this work to achieve total state coverage.

This episode features Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows, the definitive primer on systems thinking from the lead author of The Limits to Growth.

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High-speed rail will reshape Indiana. The Innovation Triangle will connect Indianapolis, West Lafayette, and Kokomo with thirty-minute commutes. The trains will carry workers, students, and goods across the region. But none of this works without power.

A high-speed train consumes significant electricity, comparable to a small town during acceleration phases. The proposed HSR line will need a reliable, large-scale power supply. Where that power comes from determines whether the project achieves genuine sovereignty.

The ICP will power the trains with Indiana-generated electricity from a mix of sources. Small modular reactors will provide the baseload power that keeps trains running day and night. Solar panels installed along the tracks will contribute daytime power. Wind turbines near the route can supplement generation. Batteries and regenerative braking will store excess energy for peak demand periods.

We examine the efficiency comparison between high-speed rail and other transportation modes. The International Union of Railways found that for the same energy use, high-speed rail provides approximately eight times the passenger travel as aircraft and four times that of private cars. The environmental benefit depends on the electricity source. Electric trains produce no tailpipe emissions, but the benefit only counts if the electricity source itself does not produce carbon. Nuclear and renewable sources meet that standard.

Indiana's current electrical system presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The state relies heavily on coal and natural gas for electricity generation. Many of these fossil fuel plants are aging and scheduled for retirement in the coming years. The HSR line will add to electricity demand at exactly the moment when Indiana needs to replace retiring generation capacity. The SMRs and solar installations that power the trains will also serve the broader grid.

We also explore the global innovation of solar panels on railway tracks. Switzerland's Sun-Ways installed the first removable solar panels on an operational rail line in April 2025. The pilot covers 100 meters of track with 48 panels, generating enough electricity for three or four Swiss households. The technology is removable for maintenance and has attracted interest from France, China, and the United States. Indiana offers ideal conditions for this technology with its flat terrain and existing rail corridors.

This episode features Electrify by Saul Griffith, a rigorous plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy by electrifying everything.

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Episode 20: New Main Streets: How HSR Revives Small-Town Indiana

High-speed rail could do more than move people. It could revive small-town Indiana.

This episode explores what HSR would mean for towns along a potential route. We examine the decline of rural Main Streets after the interstate highway system bypassed them, hollowing out downtowns and draining economic life from communities that once thrived around rail stations.

We discuss the opportunity of transit-oriented development and how stations would attract new businesses, housing, and jobs. Cafés, shops, and restaurants would fill vacant storefronts. Apartments above shops and townhouses on side streets would create walkable neighborhoods. The region would become one labor market connecting Indianapolis, West Lafayette, Kokomo, and the towns between them.

We address community fears about rising housing costs, loss of character, and rapid change. The ICP's binding local consent mechanism ensures communities have a say. If a town does not want a station, the project will respect that decision and move to a town that does. The train partners with communities, and partners choose each other.

We also explore the philosophy of beauty as infrastructure. The ICP proposes building stations with Indiana limestone, hardwood, and local art. Local artists would design each station to reflect their community's character. The Rockefeller philosophy of building beauty as public infrastructure guides this approach. Beauty is not a luxury. It is infrastructure that tells people they matter.

The episode covers career pathways in rail operations and station services. Every job from conductor to cleaner would be a respected career with fair pay, training, and dignity. The Swiss Federal Railways provides a model of national pride in rail service.

This episode features The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler, a classic critique of America's built environment and a call for walkable, beautiful, human-scaled places.

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When most people think about high-speed rail, they think about trains. Fast trains that whisk you from city to city in half the time. But the Indiana Century Project's high-speed rail proposal is about something bigger. It is about changing the shape of the state itself.

This episode maps the initial proposed HSR route connecting Indianapolis, West Lafayette, and Kokomo. The Innovation Triangle. A closed loop that turns three cities into one region. Thirty-minute commutes between vertices. A system that reshapes where people live, where they work, and how they connect.

We examine the engineering challenges in detail. Curvature constraints for 200+ mph operation. Grade limitations. River crossings and grade separations. Electrification through overhead catenary. The Indiana advantage: flat terrain, existing rail corridors, and highway rights-of-way that make construction feasible.

But engineering is the easy part. Right-of-way is harder. We explore the options: existing rail corridors, highway rights-of-way, new alignment, and utility corridors. We discuss the proposed constitutional amendment for Critical Infrastructure Corridors, which provides for eminent domain with 125% compensation, community benefit agreements, and transparent processes designed to ensure that communities benefit from the infrastructure built through them.

We also discuss station design as the creation of new Main Streets. Walkable, mixed-use development around transit hubs. Integration with local bus and bike networks. Public spaces that give people a reason to linger. The train is the spine. The stations are the organs. The communities are the lifeblood.

Who builds the rail? The Indiana Century Corps. The Construction Corps will learn by doing, starting with the Atterbury model that trains non-violent cannabis offenders. They will repair barracks, build the ICC Boot Camp, then lay track, build bridges, and electrify the line. This is not just a project. It is a school. It is a career. It is a community.

This episode also features Robert Caro's The Power Broker, the definitive study of infrastructure and power. Robert Moses built New York's highways, bridges, and parks with vision and determination. He also destroyed neighborhoods and exercised power without accountability. We can do better. Indiana will build with communities, not against them. That is the Indiana Century way.

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What if the thing everyone is afraid of—spent nuclear fuel—is actually Indiana's greatest economic opportunity?

The United States has approximately 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting at 76 sites across 34 states. No permanent repository. The federal government promised to take it in 1998. They broke that promise. They have been paying billions in damages ever since. Total liability by 2030 is projected to exceed $30 billion. The Department of Energy pays $600-800 million every single year just for failing to do what they said they would do.

Indiana can solve this problem and get paid for it.

A Consolidated Interim Storage Facility at Crane Naval Base—a 64,000-acre secure military installation in rural Martin County—could accept spent fuel from across the country. Federal storage fees could exceed $1 billion per year. That money goes to property tax relief, schools, rural health clinics, and animal welfare.

But Indiana is not just storing the waste. We are consuming it.

Fast reactors like FANCO's EAGL-1 and the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) can burn spent fuel as fuel. Most reactors today use about one percent of the energy in uranium. The rest becomes "waste." Fast reactors can burn that "waste." What remains has a half-life of 300 years, not 300,000 years. Waste volume is reduced by 90-95%.

The IFR is a burner, not a breeder. It consumes more actinides than it creates. It is designed to reduce waste, not create more.

And there is more. Fast reactors produce high-temperature heat—about 500°C. That heat can power supercritical CO₂ turbines (50% efficient vs. 33% for steam) and drive synthetic fuel production. The U.S. military consumes 4 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. Indiana can produce domestic, carbon-negative synthetic jet fuel at Crane. This is not environmentalism. This is national security.

The ICP's waste-to-wealth pipeline: SMRs generate power → spent fuel goes to CISF at Crane → federal storage fees flow to Indiana → pyroprocessing extracts usable material → IFR burns that material → waste half-life drops from 300,000 years to 300 years → waste heat powers DAC, electrolysis, and Fischer-Tropsch → synthetic jet fuel for the U.S. military.

Total revenue at full scale: $5-8 billion per year. The Indiana Future Fund targets $100 billion by 2050. Permanent tax relief. $5,000 birth grant per Hoosier child.

The waste problem is not technical. It is political. Indiana can be the solution.

Show Notes

Topics: Spent nuclear fuel, Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF), Crane Naval Base, Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), pyroprocessing, synthetic jet fuel (SAF), national security, energy independence, federal liability, Nuclear Waste Fund, Host Community Fee, Indiana Future Fund

Indiana Century link: IndianaCentury.carrd.co

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The United States is dependent on foreign sources for nuclear fuel. We import most of our uranium. We depend on foreign enrichment. Russia is currently the only commercial supplier of HALEU, the fuel needed for most advanced reactors. That is a national security vulnerability.

Indiana can fix it.

In this episode, host Kory walks through the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to enrichment to fabrication. He explains what HALEU is, why it matters, and how the Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus in the Fishers-Noblesville corridor could break the Russian monopoly and restore American sovereignty over its own fuel supply.

But the episode goes further. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 1980s and 1990s, is a fast reactor that can burn spent nuclear fuel as fuel. Most reactors today use about one percent of the energy in uranium. The rest becomes "waste." The IFR can burn that "waste." What remains has a half-life of 300 years, not 300,000 years.

The IFR is a burner, not a breeder. Its conversion ratio is about 0.5 to 0.8, meaning it consumes more actinides than it creates. It is designed to reduce waste, not create more.

The IFR was canceled in 1994 for political reasons, not technical ones. The Clinton administration feared reprocessing could lead to weapons proliferation. But the IFR's electrorefining process kept plutonium mixed with fission products. It was never weapons usable. The science was sound. Politics killed it.

Today, FANCO (First American Nuclear Company) is headquartered in Indianapolis. Their EAGL-1 is a lead bismuth cooled fast reactor with a closed fuel cycle. They want to build an energy park in Indiana. If they succeed, Indiana will have the first commercial fast reactor in the United States.

The episode also covers the national security case. Fast reactors produce high-temperature heat that can power synthetic jet fuel production. The U.S. military consumes 4 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. Domestic, carbon-negative fuel production is a strategic imperative. This is not environmentalism. It is national security.

The featured book is "Plentiful Energy" by Charles Till and Yoon Chang, the definitive account of the IFR program by the two men who led it.

Show Notes

Featured Book: Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Charles E. Till and Yoon I. Chang

Topics: Nuclear fuel cycle, uranium mining, enrichment, HALEU, Russian monopoly, Integral Fast Reactor, IFR burner, closed fuel cycle, pyroprocessing, FANCO EAGL-1, Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus, synthetic jet fuel, national security

Indiana Century link: IndianaCentury.carrd.co

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What if the solution to America's nuclear waste problem has been sitting under our feet for millions of years?

The United States has 95,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting in dry casks at 79 reactor sites across the country. No permanent repository. The federal government has paid billions in damages for failing to take the fuel, with total liability expected to reach $62 billion by 2030.

Indiana has the answer. Stable sedimentary rock. Low seismic risk. No volcanoes. The Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center in southern Indiana is already a secure federal facility with the infrastructure to handle sensitive materials. It is the perfect location for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility that could generate over one billion dollars per year in federal storage fees.

In this episode, host Kory walks through Indiana's geology from basement rock to glacial till. He explains why boring geology is exactly what you want for nuclear waste. He covers the Onkalo repository in Finland, the model for deep geological disposal. He addresses the groundwater concerns with multiple barriers: cladding, canister, bentonite clay, and hundreds of feet of low permeability rock.

Kory also covers fast reactors like FANCO's EAGL-1, which can consume spent nuclear fuel as fuel. What remains has a half-life of 300 years, not 300,000. He introduces the national security case: synthetic jet fuel production at Crane using nuclear power and captured CO₂. The U.S. military is the world's largest consumer of jet fuel. Domestic, carbon-negative fuel production is a strategic imperative.

The featured book is "Too Hot to Touch" by William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley, the definitive history of America's failed nuclear waste policy.

Show Notes

Featured Book: Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste by William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley

Topics: Onkalo repository, spent nuclear fuel, dry cask storage, federal liability, Indiana geology, seismic stability, Crane Naval Base, CISF, Host Community Fee, fast reactors, FANCO EAGL-1, synthetic jet fuel, national security, ICC Energy Corps

Indiana Century link: IndianaCentury.carrd.co

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The United States Navy has operated nuclear reactors for 70 years. Hundreds of submarines and aircraft carriers. Thousands of reactor years of operation. Zero reactor accidents. Zero meltdowns. Zero releases of radioactive material that caused harm to the public.

That record is not luck. It is the result of a safety culture built from scratch by Admiral Hyman Rickover, a culture so powerful that every Navy nuclear veteran carries it for life.

In this episode, host Kory sits down with Ken Hull, a fellow Navy nuclear veteran from the USS New Mexico. Ken served as a shutdown reactor operator and qualified Engineering Watch Supervisor. Today, he works as an instrumentation and controls technician at the Crane Clean Energy Center, the former Three Mile Island plant that is being restarted.

They discuss what makes Navy nuclear safety culture different. The three pillars: conservative design, relentless training, and questioning attitude. The Swiss cheese model where enough small failures lead to disaster, and why the Navy treats small things like big things so big things never happen. The containment system that protected the public even during the Three Mile Island partial meltdown. The difference between Navy and commercial nuclear. And why small modular reactors that are factory built and standardized like Navy reactors are the future.

Ken also shares his perspective on data centers, state ownership versus corporate control, and why he would love to see a nuclear reactor back in his home state of Indiana.

The featured book is "Admiral Rickover and the Nuclear Navy" by Francis Duncan, the definitive history of the man who invented the gold standard.

Show Notes

Featured Book: Admiral Rickover and the Nuclear Navy by Francis Duncan

Guest: Ken Hull, former Navy nuclear operator, USS New Mexico; Reactor I&C Tech at Crane Clean Energy Center.

Topics: Navy nuclear safety culture, small modular reactors, Three Mile Island restart, spent fuel storage, containment systems, fast reactors, state owned infrastructure, Host Community Fee, ICC Energy Corps

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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

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