Existing nuclear plants are the 'hottest thing in power right now', says Radiant's Mark Nelson

All right, for more on Americans push for clean energy, let's bring in Mark Nelson, managing director for Radiant Energy Group, A nuclear specialist. Obviously, Mark, not everybody loves nuclear. The Diablo Canyon power plant in California, their last one, produces about 9% of all the state's daily electricity, carbon free. People still want to shut that that down. They're in a big fight. But you've got to find a little optimism from what Emily just reported. No doubt, Brian. Everywhere I go in the world, people are asking me, so what's up in America? And I have the good news and I have the bad news. The good news is the Democrats and the Republicans both love nuclear. In fact, it may be just about the only thing in Washington they can both agree on. The bad news is the world is waiting for US leadership after we promised to triple nuclear power by 2050. We signed the pledge along with twenty other countries at COP 28 last year in Dubai. And at the moment, we are not ready to deliver overseas because we have not yet delivered right here at home. Well, the critics will say, and they have said, and they can, by the way, they've got some evidence, critics of nuclear power will say way too expensive, always over budget, takes too long. I'm looking at you, Votel in Germany or in Georgia, if you know what I'm talking about, and that it's too risky, that if something goes wrong, it's so epically bad that it's not worth it no matter how good the power production is. Well, fortunately, Brian, the type of power plants we're building today in America have never hurt anyone. That goes all the way back to Three Mile Island. That is about as safe as you can get and certainly better than the commercial airline industry, which I assume we all rely on. So nuclear is having its day in part because of its extraordinary record, not just safety but also performance. So that leaves us this problem you mentioned, Vogel, in Georgia, it took too long. We started that without the blueprints done. And what we've learned is you shouldn't start nuclear plants without the blueprints done. So what I think we're looking at is we need a fleet build approach where we design once and build many across the US. We have a big team that's gonna need everybody. We don't have those mammoth vertically integrated firms like Rosa Tom in Russia or in China that are just dominating both global and total nuclear projects, The Russians dominating global, the Chinese dominating total. We can't do that and we should probably shouldn't do it in capitalist America. And by the way, and you're exactly right, I mean, I think Henry Ford thought of that technique like 120 years ago when doing cars. Mark, I know it's more complicated. Tug and cheek comment, you get it. Here's the thing, I meet a lot of really smart people that are like, well, we'll just put up a solar panel or, or a wind turbine farm near data centers. Not going to work long term unless you build the data center in the middle of the desert where it's always hot, right? Because data centers need literally always on power, and even battery backup I don't think is going to be enough because you've also got to then get the power to the data center. Exactly. These data centers in the last year or two have finally started to be as big as nuclear reactors in their power demand. And much like a nuclear reactor sitting in one space, the data centers need that power in that one place all the time. That's why the gold rushes on the existing nuclear plants are the hottest thing in power right now. They're going to be able to nearly name their price to build out to data centers that are parked right at their gate. That is a strange and wonderful issue if you're a nuclear plant owner. It's going to be really rough for the rest of us to have enough power once those nuclear plants find their biggest clients. Yeah.