“The private sector making excuses about the regulator is just unconscionable. We have the safest nuclear in the world. No one in this country has ever been negatively impacted by nuclear power. Three Mile Island is our biggest incident, where no casualties. The technology failed exactly the way it should.”
Heatmap News · Climate & Energy · September 2026
Context
Webb runs The Nuclear Company, which is restarting the abandoned VC Summer site in South Carolina. Robinson Meyer asked what Washington still needs to do to get reactors built at 1970s scale, and Webb's answer was that the levers already exist and the industry should stop blaming the NRC. Earlier in the episode he called the decision not to keep building nuclear possibly the worst policy decision in the country's history.
Transcript
…reliable, low-cost power enables civilizations since the dawn of fire. And I would argue this will be the singularly most critical issue that this country's had that has allowed China to now beat us and potentially become the largest economy and certainly the largest energy producer in the world.
…organize and back the creation of 10 new reactors across the country. How is that effort going to the degree you can speak about it? And kind of what needs to happen from on the government side to build nuclear at, let's just say, the scale that the country was doing it in the 1980s and late 1970s.
Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, a popular opinion. I have no idea. Try not to pay attention too much, just do my job. But I would say I have no idea what else Washington, D.C. can do for this community. The private sector needs to get a backbone and deliver. There are more than enough levers on the left side, on the right side, with this administration, with the last administration. To me, the private sector making excuses about the regulator is just unconscionable. We have the safest nuclear in the world. No one in this country has ever been negatively impacted by nuclear power. Three Mile Island is our biggest incident where no casualties. The technology failed exactly the way it should. We have a great regulator. We have great operators. So, I mean, where we do need to turn our attention is what we do do right here, which is we have the absolute best nuclear operators in the world, the safest nuclear operators in the world. But my goodness, when it comes to getting out in the field and building, we have to empower workforce. We have to organize teams of people. We have to utilize…
Let's talk about delivery then. So I think you guys are working with Brookfield in South Carolina on this old plant, VC Summer. The local utility spent billions of dollars about a decade ago to get a plant up and running in this site in South Carolina and didn't get it done. In fact, I think it…
Well, I don't take lightly the privilege yet obligation that the state of South Carolina and the people of South Carolina and candidly every stakeholder involved that have given us the right and opportunity to be there. We have about 40, 50 people on site at VC Summer right now and every day we're…
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