Jonathan Webb, The Nuclear Company

“America built over 100 nuclear reactors between 1960 and 1990. We’ve built just two since then.

Nuclear construction didn't just slow. It nearly died. The nation that first split the atom and put men on the moon somehow forgot how to pour concrete and weld steel at scale. Projects that should have taken five years stretched to fifteen. Budgets exploded from billions to tens of billions. The belief that we could build anything, anywhere, at any speed, the faith that defined American industry, evaporated.

We built The Nuclear Company to reverse this decline. We’re building an AI-powered deployment platform with technology-enabled systems that will allow our frontline teams to deliver America’s next hundred reactors. The result will be low-cost, resilient, plentiful energy. And we’re doing it by empowering the people who build them.

Consider what passes for normal in nuclear construction today. At the Vogtle plant in Georgia, the two reactors built over the last 30 years, more than 10,000 people worked at peak plant construction. Those workers often sat idle. Waiting on parts and materials. Waiting on engineering changes. Waiting on documentation. Just waiting. When documents did arrive (sometimes by wagons or wheelbarrows), the volumes of paperwork lacked specifics. Metal joints misaligned went undetected for weeks, forcing costly and lengthy rework. Workers knew problems were mounting. They could feel it, but they lacked the tools to see patterns fast enough to intervene. One told me: "We knew things were going wrong. We just couldn't see it fast enough to stop it." Our frontline workers are brilliant, but the tools they’ve had can't keep pace.

We’re building AI-enabled software that allows workers to command the build, not just survive it. We’re building it for the foreman on site at 4am, not just executives in boardrooms. AI agents trained on tens of thousands of pages of project documents identify problems in hours instead of months. Drones scan construction sites and catch misalignments within a millimeter, alerting workers through earpieces: "Please check that weld." That's giving American workers capabilities they've never had before.

This isn't automation replacing workers. It's augmentation elevating them. Kids with high school diplomas, people with two-year degrees. AI will help bring out their irreplaceable talents.

We run our company from Middle America. Not New York City or San Francisco. As we build these facilities, we’ll create some of the highest-paying construction jobs in the country and generate tax revenue for communities that need it most. Not for a few years, but for a century.

What we need is to make sure that our teammates can do their jobs. That's why we're giving them the tools they deserve, so building America's energy future doesn't break the people building it.”