Golf Cutbacks, Tabletop Therapy, and Dominion’s Offshore Wind Math

In the 29th installment of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Goran Calic and Michael Tadrous start with Goran's recent “less golf, more miniatures” lifestyle change, trading four-hour rounds for meditative tabletop painting and a quick riff on career phases and moderation. Then they dig into Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project: 2.6 GW across 176 turbines with a $10.7B headline that feels like “almost three gigawatts” until you factor capacity (about 42% on average, weaker in summer), a 30-year life, and the firming needed when wind drops. Goran walks through the real planner math, including financing and why firming can add roughly $40 per MWh now and rise as renewables grow. They compare CVOW to Vogtle 3 & 4, noting the $32B “nuclear cost” hides interest on an overnight cost near $12.5B, and that faster builds and realistic risk pricing can bring firm nuclear to about $150 per MWh, under wind once firming and financing are counted. They also hit incentives and politics, regulated-utility pass-throughs, AI data centers that can’t curtail, and the unglamorous risks of offshore hardware, from corrosion to cut cables, in a country with just one new jack-up vessel. A candid, numbers-first episode on speed to grid versus longevity, and why Dominion’s short-run choice may still leave a long-run gap that nuclear can fill.