Only upside I see out of this huge demand for electricity -- hopefully nuclear will clear the deck on using coal, gas and diesel. If we can build and operate nuclear again we can level our long term cost of power. Combined with renewables its a good combo.
Other than that - power prices will always be derivative to the price of natural gas.
Vogtle is the wake-up call needed to get nuclear manufacturing/talent going again. I hear you but I think you are taking the wrong lesson.
I will add -- if indeed prices stay at Vogtle then yes Nuclear is dead. That said there's no way thats the new pricing going forward.
Nuclear regulatory environment is overly prescriptive. You need nuclear safety but you also can't use regulatory as a mechanism to shutdown all development - which has been the defacto case for the last 40 odd years.
Agree faster timelines are necessary -- we also need to see if this AI thing is real real or if its in over its skis a little bit. At this particular moment it feels like it might be selling more than it is offering - and thereby the energy demand won't materialize in the way that they assume...
Noting -- that the financial backers for energy products aren't all cash cows like tech companies -- they need to see real return on projects before they put up the necessary large amount of money and public-private partnerships given the risk on putting projects together like that.