Episode Description
Daniel Dassow, is a journalist who’s covered business, technology, and energy in East Tennessee for years. You may be familiar with Daniel’s bylines in the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
In this behind-the-headlines conversation, we talk about:
- How Daniel got his start as a business and energy reporter
- Chattanooga’s growing nuclear and quantum industries
- Other developing stories Daniel’s following in 2026
Enjoy the episode!
Follow Daniel’s work: https://www.timesfreepress.com/staff/daniel-dassow/
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Episode Transcript
Cortney Piper: Welcome to the show, Daniel.
Daniel Dassow: Well, thanks for having me, Courtney. I’m so used to interviewing you that it’s a little bit weird to be on the other side,, but I’m looking forward to the conversation.
Cortney Piper: Same here. Let’s let’s get to it. Tell our listeners a little bit more about your experience covering business, specifically energy and tech, and what got you interested in those beats.
Daniel Dassow: Well, like a lot of jobs, I did not specifically seek this job out. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I attended UT Knoxville after growing up in Chattanooga. And I actually got degrees in English and religious studies at UT., but I worked at the student newspaper all four years, and I was the editor of the Daily Beacon my senior year. And when I graduated, I landed an internship at the Knoxville News Sentinel. And if you do a good job in that internship and they like you, they try and find a position for you in the newsroom. It just so happened that at that moment in 2023, the job that was open was for a reporter to cover TVA as well as the Department of Energy. Historically, at the News Sentinel, those had been separate beats., the Department of Energy beat had been handled more by a science reporter. The most famous reporter at the News Sentinel to cover that beat was Frank Munger, who was there for many decades.
Cortney Piper: We all remember Frank.
Daniel Dassow: Yeah.
Cortney Piper: The man, the myth, the legend.
Daniel Dassow: Right. The TVA beat was more of a business beat. But when I came in, we actually combined those beats under the tech and energy umbrella, which was really great timing because shortly after I began in that role, which was in late summer of 2023, a lot of stuff started happening across the DOE reservation in Oak Ridge as well as at TVA. And then, I guess I should get to where I am today. I worked at the New Sentinel up until April of 2025 when a position came open at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. And I have five older siblings. Four of those older siblings live in Chattanooga with their spouses, and my parents also live here. And my wife got into grad school in Chattanooga. So everything worked out for us to come to Chattanooga and be closer to family. So when this job opened, I applied for it. And luckily, I get to cover a lot of the same things in Chattanooga that I was covering in Knoxville,, especially TVA.
Cortney Piper: What do you find most interesting about that intersection between energy and business?
Daniel Dassow: Well, you can’t have business without energy on a very simple level. And that’s becoming more and more true. When you talk about economic development, increasingly you’re talking about availability of power. That used to be a given that if you came to the TVA region, you’d have abundant power for your project. But as these mega factories that are using advanced manufacturing techniques and as these data centers locate here, their power demands are of a level that TVA is not accustomed to, and they scale up at a speed that TVA is not accustomed to. It used to be you’d have a factory come in and say, we need 50 megawatts, and that’s what our power use is going to be for the next three to five years. And if and when we scale up, it’ll be in a very orderly and slow way. Now a data center can come in, request 150 megawatts up front, and six months later request another 150 megawatts. Those are loads that historically TVA has not had to handle. And that affects everyone. It’s not just the data centers, it’s everyone across the valley. Because even if you’re trying to bring in a power load that’s than what a data center is using, it still has to fit into that broader puzzle of how to meet power for every kind of business. That’s one side of the energy business crossover. The other side, as you well know, is that energy is good business. It’s a profitable market, it creates a lot of high-paying jobs., and our state and local governments want energy projects located here for those reasons, especially the advanced energy jobs that the TAEBC follows, whether that’s data centers, energy storage, advanced manufacturing, nuclear development, these are high-dollar investments that are also creating high-paying jobs. So the intersection between the is just becoming more important to both sectors.
Cortney Piper: And there are 22,000 advanced energy businesses across the state located in all 95 counties. And what we have learned at the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council is to meet these big audacious goals, whether it’s coming from the state or the federal level as it relates to artificial intelligence and leadership and artificial intelligence, or rebuilding the country’s nuclear supply chain, that all requires power to make the pieces and the parts that go into these new renaissance that we are, that we’re fueling across the country. So let’s talk about TVA, Daniel, because it has been a roller coaster for TVA in just the past 12 months. So the CEO, Don Maul, announced he plans to retire in July after he was just appointed to this role last year in 2025. So, where does the agency seem to be headed under the Trump administration?
Daniel Dassow: There’s been a really interesting split screen at TVA over the last year. Here you have the nation’s largest government-owned utility. In the past, it has served as a kind of laboratory for different federal energy projects. The priorities of the present typically find their way into the projects that are going on at TVA, although TVA does have quite a bit of independence from the White House. The split screen we saw this year was that the Trump administration came in with this energy dominance agenda. It was sort of like open the taps on most energy sources. It’s ending a lot of the subsidies for wind and solar, at least phasing them out faster than they were going to be phased out, while really hitting the gas on nuclear power and hitting the gas on a lot of different kinds of fossil generation, because the focus of the Trump administration has been baseload power that can support primarily the artificial intelligence industry, but also advanced manufacturing. And so there’s actually a great alignment between where TVA was even under the Biden administration and what the Trump administration came in wanting to do. Energy dominance, on the one hand, is a political slogan. On the other hand, it’s beneficial to TVA to have an administration that wants it producing as much baseload power as possible because that’s what TVA is really rushing to do right now as its power demands rise. So on the one hand, that that’s one side of the screen. You have this alignment between the Trump administration and TVA. On the other hand, you have Trump coming into office at a time when every member of the TVA board was a holdover from the Biden administration. there were two Trump nominees, Beth Harwell and Brian Noland, who were on the board, and their terms did expire, and Biden actually put them up for renomination, but their nominations expired. So when Trump came into office, there were only Biden nominees. And those Biden nominees did select Don Maul as the CEO expressly because they wanted the smoothest transition possible. Don had been the chief operating officer and he was recruited to TVA really to fill out a bench of possible successors to Jeff Lyash, who had been the CEO since 2019. And the general sense I get from talking to people around the valley is that Don had a target on his back from the beginning because he was selected by a board made up entirely of Biden nominees. It didn’t have so much to do with his personal background, which many people believe was ideal for new nuclear development. It had more to do with the circumstances of him rising to that position. It’s also good to keep in mind that Trump has not liked what TVA pays its CEO for many, many years. He criticized it in his first term when the pay for the CEO was quite a bit higher than it is now. Jeff Laesh retired at a pay package of around $10 million. Don Maul’s target compensation is $6 million. But the pay issue remained a problem for Trump, and he even spoke about that at a White House event in February, at the same time that Trump celebrated the board’s decision to keep TVA’s two largest coal plants open. So that moment really crystallized that split screen. You had Trump criticizing the CEO and what he gets paid while also celebrating TVA for the energy direction it was going under going in under Maul. So I think the question now becomes: is TVA just going to stay on this same course of developing small modular reactors, entering partnerships with private nuclear developers, all of which happened under Maul, but this time under a CEO who is either directly or indirectly trusted by the president? Because with Trump, that’s very important. He wants to feel like he had a role in selecting these people and putting his people in positions of power. The question now becomes who is that person who’s going to become the next CEO?
Cortney Piper: So is how the energy dominance agenda playing out at TVA up in the air until we get a new CEO?
Daniel Dassow: Well, in the utility industry, you work on very long-term projects. A lot of the projects that are coming online in the next couple of years for TVA,, the especially these large natural gas-fired plants, the decisions to build those plants have been building over many years, back when Jeff Lash was CEO. So I think it’s hard for a utility to change course suddenly. And I think the next CEO is not going to be coming in necessarily to turn around the ship or to make TVA head in a different direction. I think under this current board, who’s which is composed primarily of Trump nominees, the general sense is that TVA is heading in a direction that’s that’s friendly to the Trump administration’s energy policies. I don’t think that’s going to change. I just think the political relationship between the CEO and the Trump administration in some ways has to be closer than it’s been because of the way that the president and his administration operates when it comes to personnel.
Cortney Piper: Well, then that leads me to my next question, which is what are you hearing about that potential replacement? If what you’re saying is the relationship between the CEO and the administration needs to be closer, who are some of our options? What have you been hearing?
Daniel Dassow: Well, I wish I could say that I have a list of potential options, you know, like when a football coach retires and every all the sports charters say, here’s who’s going to replace them.
Cortney Piper: This is the same.
Daniel Dassow: This is our football team over here. This is our Super Bowl in the Tennessee Valley, is who’s going to be the next CEO? There are a few potential people. One of the questions is: is the next person going to be in this role in an interim capacity or in a permanent capacity? Back when the board was choosing the CEO last year, our two senators from Tennessee, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, actually recommended that the board choose an interim CEO. That did not happen. Right. So I think now if TV is going to go in a different direction than they did last time, maybe to try and head off some of this political turmoil, they might choose an interim CEO. That could be someone who has a lot of experience at TVA. Typically, when you bring in an interim, whether it’s at TVA or any other big institution like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, you want to bring in someone who’s very familiar with the institution because they’re not going to be there very long and they don’t have time to familiarize themselves on the front end. You want to bring in someone who can guide the ship while giving the board time to select a more permanent figure who can come in and learn the institution if they’re not already familiar with it. I think what’s likely to happen is the board is likely to select an interim CEO who already has experience at TVA. That could be bringing back an executive who had been there historically, or that could be elevating someone already in the organization. But given the issues the Trump administration seems to have with some of the current leadership, I think what’s more likely for the interim CEO is to see someone make a homecoming to TVA who had been there in the past. I can’t say because I don’t know who that is, but then when it comes to the permanent CEO, the question is: is this going to be someone with close ties to the Trump administration? For instance, could they bring in someone who’s currently at the Department of Energy or someone who’s at the Department of Interior? Could they bring in an executive from the private sector who’s been instrumental in these conversations around AI and nuclear? The number one priority for our state leaders, whether that’s Governor Bill Lee or Senators Blackburn and Haggerty, is finding someone who can fast-track nuclear development. The Trump administration is trying to get nuclear development to happen at the speed of business and not the speed of government. Who can they bring in who has the political acumen to handle a federal agency that needs to answer to the White House while also moving nuclear forward at the speed of private business and actually bringing in private dollars to help support TVA’s nuclear ambitions because TVA is operating under a $30 billion debt ceiling imposed by Congress and is not necessarily approaching that debt limit, but getting closer. They’re going to be at around $26 billion, I believe, by the end of next year, counting toward that $30 billion debt cap. And when you’re talking about nuclear projects that cost four, five, six billion dollars, it doesn’t give you a lot of wiggle room. So they’re going to need to find someone who is familiar with the public and private sectors, and probably specifically someone with nuclear experience.
Cortney Piper: Now, a couple of months ago, you did write a story for the Chattanooga Times Free Press that explored some possibilities for a replacement. You cited some sources in Washington, D.C., specifically our East Tennessee congressman. So what are you hearing from those sources? Has anything changed since you wrote that story?
Daniel Dassow: Nothing’s changed. The story I believe you’re referencing was talking about how there was talk on Capitol Hill that Senator Haggerty might be interested in the CEO role. And at the time and ever since, Hagerty has not addressed that rumor publicly. And I have not heard that from anyone in the Senate. One sort of odd thing about TVA is that even though the Senate and the House have, well, more so the Senate, because the Senate confirms TVA board nominees, but the House would be involved if any major changes were made to the TVA Act. The odd thing is that TVA is a pretty niche regional agency. It’s not like people in Idaho or in New York have a super direct connection or, you know, don’t have an investment in what goes on at TVA,, which is to say the talk about Hagerty was probably limited to a very a fairly small number of senators and members of the House. And when I reached out to his staff to ask questions about that, they didn’t say whether he was interested in that role. And I have not heard much new talk about that. It seems like that has settled down. That could be because Hagerty is no longer exploring that option, or it’s no longer a topic of discussion on Capitol Hill, or because people are just not talking about it publicly. But I’ve not heard any new developments on that front. Certainly, Senator Haggerty is going to be involved one way or another in what goes on as Tennessee’s senator, but it is interesting to note that Senator Blackburn is running for governor and is widely viewed as the frontrunner in that race. And she would be coming into the governorship around the same time, probably, that you’d be getting new leadership at TVA. So we could be seeing more alignment between the state leadership and TVA through Senator Blackburn.
Cortney Piper: Well, things are gonna get really interesting in the Tennessee Valley this summer, and Daniel, you will have to keep us posted through your reporting. So we look forward to that. Now let’s let’s shift to Chattanooga, something a little bit more local to you. You’ve reported on how Chattanooga is contributing to statewide efforts to lead on nuclear energy, but now we’re also seeing a leadership role with quantum as well. So can you tell us a little bit about that? And if you would please define quantum for our listeners.
Daniel Dassow: Defining quantum, it’s sort of the $10,000 question. I hear electric officials talk about quantum all the time in Chattanooga, whether that’s our mayor, whether that’s former Senator Bob Corker, or you know, on up to the state and federal level. I will define quantum technology,, which is more on the application side, because I’m not as familiar with the fundamental science. That’s where things get pretty complicated. But quantum tech, generally speaking, is a range of applications, whether that’s quantum computing or networking or quantum sensing,, that take advantage of some pretty odd behaviors of atomic and subatomic particles, and those behaviors allow quantum computers or quantum networks to move and process information not only faster but more securely. And at the local level here in Chattanooga, the leading institution on these issues is EPB, our local power company. I sit through EPB board meetings every month, and I doubt that there’s another local utility in the US that talks about quantum as much as EPB. Here you have a distributor of power. These are companies that are typically concerned with keeping the lights on, keeping their grid reliable, and EPB is focused on those things, certainly. But EPB has also been known for innovation for many years. About 15 years ago, EPB launched the first community-wide gig internet, leading Chad and UGAT to become known for having the world’s fastest internet at the time that was available to you, and your home. And now, since for the last, I guess, five or so years, TV or EPB, rather, has taken the lead on quantum. So back in 2022, EPB partnered with a company called Cubitech, which has since been acquired by IO. IonQ is really the main partner with EPB, but EPB and Cubitech partnered to launch the first commercial quantum network. So here was sort of a quantum internet, if you will, that could communicate and move information securely. And it’s really a test bed for this technology. These are all early stage technologies., quantum computing is a little easier for people to latch on to because we’re just more used to talking about computers than we are networks or sensing in our daily lives. We all use computers., EPB right now is putting together a quantum computer., the hardware comes from IonQ. So this computer is called the IO Enterprise Forte. And EPB is installing it right now at its downtown quantum center in Chattanooga. That’s supposed to come online at the end of May. And both the network and the computer will be commercially available. And that’s important because these are technologies that exist in many labs in the US, like Oak Ridge National Lab, which works on a lot of quantum research. But in order to get time using that computer or that network at Oak Ridge National Lab, you have to go through a lot of federal bureaucracy with the Department of Energy. Oftentimes, you are a research team that’s using that technology, and you’re going to publish that research in an open science journal. EPB is a little different because companies will be able to pay to use this infrastructure. And so that actually makes this a good economic development tool. And last year, EPB announced that it’s partnering with Vanderbilt University to open the Institute of Quantum Innovation here in Chattanooga. And Vanderbilt actually said it could base up to 260 faculty, staff, and graduate students working on quantum here in Chattanooga, which is a big deal for the city because it’s bringing in an R1 research institution from outside the city to come form a research center here. So, and and IONQ actually just opened a local office here in Chattanooga and has some open jobs which are paying very well if you look at those job openings. So this is an important economic development tool. And our local leaders have even compared quantum and the opportunity here for Chattanooga to Volkswagen, the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, which was such a huge economic development project in a job creation project. Our local leaders think quantum could be even bigger over the long term when it comes to job creation and really making Chattanooga a leading city on this technology, which will be more widely adopted in the next 10 or 15 years. But they want Chattanooga to be a leader and an early mover in that space.
Cortney Piper: EPB has always been a utility leader. They are one of the most innovative local power companies in the Tennessee Valley, if not the entire country. So do you think what EPB is doing with quantum can be scaled and duplicated throughout the valley, throughout the country?
Daniel Dassow: Yeah, I think it could as the technology develops. And I actually think that that is something the state would like to see. I think this is one of those technologies that’s kind of like nuclear in Oak Ridge. The state under Governor Bill Lee has moved to make Tennessee a leader in nuclear technology. And while that is centered in Oak Ridge, it’s bigger than Oak Ridge because not every nuclear company is in Oak Ridge. There are companies that work in the nuclear supply chain. There’s a company here in Chattanooga called Master Machine, which is a tool and machine shop for the nuclear industry, and they’re actually getting ready to expand. So with any sector like this that’s growing, you want to have your hub. I think it is helpful to have that one area that really brings together a cluster of experts and a cluster of investments. But eventually this is going to become there there will be spokes coming out of this hub. And I think there’s going to be room for other utilities to utilize this technology because for EPB, quantum is fundamentally about doing a better job at its core business, which is distributing power reliably and securely. It’s exploring options for using the EPB quantum network and computer to actually make its power grid more resilient from cybersecurity attacks and make it a smarter, more automated grid. It actually has fellows through NIST that are working at EPB now on some of these applications. So once the technology develops and you have some of these groups like EPB that are willing to go out and be the first to make this investment, I think the case will be made to other utilities in the Tennessee Valley that these are good investments for them to make as well.
Cortney Piper: And that’s why a Department of Energy official came to Chattanooga to announce this partnership, because quantum and energy are very much linked, as you just explained.
Daniel Dassow: Yes. Katie Jariza, who is the assistant secretary in the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, was in Chattanooga to celebrate a partnership between EPB and Oak Ridge National Lab around microgrids. So through this partnership, EPB says it’s actually brought 58 megawatt hours of energy storage to Chattanooga across five different microgrids. These allow the grid to become more stable to prevent outages. EPB is already using batteries, grid-level batteries, to prevent power outages. And this is work that the DOE is really interested in, and it’s work that quantum overlaps with. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I mentioned a bit earlier that the Trump administration is wanting nuclear projects to move faster. And we saw last month that Japan and the US,, this would have been in March,, formally entered into this trade deal that’s supposed to set aside around or up to $40 billion in investment for small modular reactor projects in the valley. I have not seen yet that sites have been selected for those projects, but it doesn’t take if you know TVA and you know the valley, you know that there are some sites that are ripe for nuclear development. TVA is already working on small modular reactors at it at its Clinch River site in Oak Ridge. There’s also the Bellafont site in northern Alabama. This nuclear deal with Japan is focused on Tennessee and Alabama. And a lot of people I talk to think Bellafont is one of the premier sites across the entire country for nuclear development because TVA invested billions of dollars to build a gigawatt-scale plant there and ultimately halted that construction before it was completed in the 1980s. But a lot of the infrastructure is there, a lot of the grid infrastructure is there. And I think you should watch that site this year. You should watch for announcements around Bellafont. You should watch for the NRC giving TVA permission to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River site, which could happen by the end of 2026. And if that happens, TVA would become the first utility company to get that kind of approval. There are nuclear reactor developers like Kairos or TerraPower that are working in that space, but they’re not utility companies. And that sets TVA apart in the new nuclear space., but apart from nuclear, I think we should watch for data center development. TVA expects data center demand to double by 2030 in its grid., we should watch for local reaction to those data center projects. We’ve seen a lot of communities rally against those projects, either because they feel that they are going to be a drain on electricity and water use, or they aren’t going to create enough jobs, or whatever the case may be. But I think the TVA board is going to look at taking action around data centers that could look like putting them in their own rate class to take the financial burden off of ratepayers, and we’re also looking at the TVA board finally approving the long-term power plan, the integrated resource plan, in May. I believe that’s going to come before the board. You’ve worked on that project. I think you’re probably ready to be done.
Cortney Piper: I have. I am.
Daniel Dassow: Group meetings, but it’ll be really interesting to see the direction TVA takes and to see how its relationship to local power companies evolves, and to see more announcements coming from these advanced energy companies, especially working in the nuclear and AI space., I think the Tennessee Valley is only gonna become a bigger target for those investments, but really seeing how TVA balances the economic development side with keeping its power reliable as demand increases. That’s gonna be, I believe, the story of 2026.
Cortney Piper: Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show. Tell our listeners where they can find your work.
Daniel Dassow: Pretty easily, they can go to timesfreepress.com, and if they want to find specific TVA news, you can add a slash TVA onto that URL, and you’ll find the TVA content that we publish. And you can also find us on social media, Facebook, X, Instagram, all those good things. We’re trying to lean into video content, so you might even find some videos that have to do with energy projects.
Cortney Piper: I have really enjoyed the videos that you all have made at the Times Free Press, so keep those up. Thank you. Thanks for joining us.
Daniel Dassow: Thanks for having me.