“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.”

Okay, you touched on the environmental thing. I'm going to say it. I grew up in Kentucky, but I love nature. I walk around in creeks. I grew up this way. The worst thing we did as a country, and I don't know why we got here, I don't know if it was fossil fuel lobbies. I don't know if it was just voodoo fear and panic of celebrities who were scared of nuclear, but had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know if it was environmental, but my goodness, maybe the worst industrial policy that's ever happened in this country. I might argue it could end up being one of the worst policy decisions in the history of this country was not continuing to build nuclear. The fact that we have a 20% of our grid comes from nuclear power, and the fact that we've only built two reactors in 30 years, we're living off of our grandparents who built one-fifth of our grid. And we shut that down. My goodness, had we kept building and the amount of abundant power we would have and how low cost it would have been, I would argue probably the worst. I'm very biased. I live my life every day, so I see it through one lens of the world. But abundant, 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.

So I think one of the interesting things about this moment is that there's bipartisan interest in nuclear. I mean, I think there was interest from the Biden administration, and I think there's been programs from the Trump administration. And one of those big programs has been this effort from the Energy Department to subsidize, help 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.

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 went bankrupt trying to get it done. Ultimately, that site has kind of sat fallow as this extremely over budget project in Georgia ultimately did reach completion. That was Vogel. You've now gone back into VC Summer with, I think, Brookfield. How is that going? And what's going to be different about it this time?

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 there. People ask me, when does construction start? I mean, for me, I'm the type of person that construction starts the moment you put your feet on soil and you're planning way in advance. So there's a Gantt chart with a schedule and all these milestones and, you know, when officially FID to COD. But I can tell you our team is taking it very seriously. And I mean, you had $9 billion spent. It's been sitting there since 2018. It was hard enough to finish in the first place. And now we're stepping back in midstream to go finish it. And we owe it to the state of South Carolina and the community there to get these units up and running. It's not that we have a Westinghouse company or an AP1000 company. It's that we just believe that if the country is going to go deliver on this promise of gigawatts, micro, small, large, whatever it may be, we got something to finish. And it's to prove to not only the U.S. and the industry, but around the world that if we start something, we're going to get it done. And so I think we've developed a unique approach that we're bringing to this project, but it's going to be results driven. We're going to have to deliver a budget and a schedule, and everyone in the world's going to see that.

This episode of ShiftKey is sponsored by RE Plus26, the largest and most comprehensive clean energy event in North America, bringing together 37,000 clean energy professionals and more than 1,100 exhibitors from November 16th through 19th at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Experience a complete agenda spanning solar, storage, microgrids, EVs, grid edge technologies, and beyond, with tracks built around policy drivers, tech trends, land use, grid integration, finance, and business strategy. At RE Plus26, you can network with the companies and experts advancing projects, improving supply chains, developing resilient solutions, and more, plus the tools to find them. Whether you're sourcing new technology, scouting your next partner, or just trying to keep up with where this industry is moving, you'll find it here, all in one place, all in one week. It's RE Plus26. This is where today's energy is being built to meet tomorrow's demand. Register at replus.com and use code ShiftKey20, that's ShiftKey20, to save 20% off a full conference pass. Can you give me an example of what better execution would look like on this project? I realize it's tens of thousands of engineering decisions that go one way and not another way. But can you give me an example of an execution decision that maybe went wrong in VC Summer the first time around, or that often goes wrong with AP1000s or that went wrong early on with Vogel that you're focused on getting right this time?