Legis1 quoted Nick Loris in their reporting on the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Innovation and Safety’s nuclear hearing.
What They’re Saying
The hearing was notably collegial, with both the Republican chair and Democratic ranking member co-sponsoring the materials bill. But the most substantive tension emerged from the witnesses themselves.
- Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ): “This is not an engineering problem. It’s a regulatory problem.”
- Nick Loris, President, C3 Solutions: “Nuclear energy companies are in many respects captive customers, paying stadium and airport level prices when suitable suppliers can offer grocery store level prices.”
- Patrick White, Group Leader for Fusion Safety and Regulation, Clean Air Task Force: “We don’t necessarily want to create nuclear technologies that communities are scared of, that they’re skeptical of, or that they don’t feel that they had a voice in.”
Loris argued that nuclear-grade concrete can cost 50 percent more than commercial-grade equivalents, with some components running 50 times more expensive, not because of meaningful safety differences but because of supplier scarcity and documentation burdens. He pointed to TerraPower’s Natrium Reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, which received its construction permit nine months ahead of schedule and 11 percent under budget, as evidence that regulatory reform is already working.
