The Reactor in a Box | Indiana Century S1E14

What if a nuclear reactor could fit in a shipping container? What if it could be built in a factory, shipped by truck or rail, and assembled on site like a giant battery? That is not science fiction. That is the small modular reactor, and it is happening now.

In December 2025, the Department of Energy awarded the Tennessee Valley Authority 400 million dollars to build a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 at the Clinch River site in Tennessee. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the construction permit application in July 2025. Construction is scheduled for 2026 with operation expected by 2033. Indiana Michigan Power is part of the TVA coalition, and the Rockport Plant in Spencer County is a potential deployment site.

In this episode, host Kory breaks down everything you need to know about SMRs. He explains why traditional nuclear power failed. Custom built, site built, one of a kind projects with no learning curve and no economies of scale. He then shows how SMRs fix that problem. Factory fabrication, modular construction, standardized design. The same industrial revolution that made solar panels cheap and cars reliable can make nuclear power affordable.

Kory also covers safety. SMRs use passive safety, meaning the physics of the reactor shuts it down without pumps, generators, or operator action. No meltdown scenario. No evacuation zone. He addresses the global competition. China has 26 reactors under construction and is building SMRs today. Russia has a floating SMR that has been operating since 2019. America is catching up, and Indiana can lead.

The episode also features FANCO's EAGL-1, a lead bismuth cooled fast reactor that can consume spent nuclear fuel as fuel. The company is headquartered in Indianapolis. Kory explains how fast reactors turn a 300,000 year waste problem into a 300 year manageable project.

The featured book is "The New Map" by Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who shows how energy is power and how the map is being redrawn without America while we debate.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Indiana Century Podcast, hosted by Corey Easterday. Episode 14. The Reactor in a Box. Part 1. What if a reactor fit in a shipping container? When most people think of a nuclear reactor, they think of massive domes, gigantic cooling towers, complex, sprawling campuses that take a decade to build and cost billions and billions of dollars? The image in your head is probably from a movie or a news clip from the 1970s. A reactor that looks like a cathedral, a reactor that requires a small city of workers to operate, a reactor that seems impossible to build, impossible to trust, and impossible to afford. What if I told you that a reactor could fit in a shipping container? That it could be built in a factory, shipped by truck or rail, and plugged in like a giant battery? What if I told you it could power a town of 50,000 people, or a still mill or an entire college campus? That it could be installed underground, invisible from the surface, with no cooling towers, no massive domes, no looming silhouette. That is not science fiction. It's actually happening right now. In December 2025, the Department of Energy gave the Tennessee Valley Authority $400 million to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River site in Tennessee. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the construction permit application in July 2025. They plan to complete the safety review by December of this year. TVA expects to start site work early this summer with the reactor online by 2033. This is an actual construction project that is happening right now. They actually broke ground on it in a ceremony about two weeks ago. And Indiana is now in the room. Indiana Michigan Power is part of the TVA coalition. The Rockport plant in Spencer County is a potential site for deployment. The same technology that will power Tennessee could power Indiana. But here's the uncomfortable truth, Daniel Jurgen lays out in The New Map. While America debates, China is already building. While we permit Russia is selling, the map of energy power is being drawn without us. This episode is about the technology. It's also about whether Indiana will be on that map. Today, in episode 14, we talk about small modular reactors, or SMRs. Not the nuclear plants your grandfather worried about, not the sprawling complexes that took 15 years to permit and maybe longer to build. We're talking about something different. Smaller, safer, smarter. Factory built, modular, and scalable. We've been talking about energy sovereignty since episode 5. Now we get into the engineering. How SMRs work, why they're safer, why Indiana is the perfect place to build them, and why the rest of the world is already moving while America has been standing still. I'd also like to showcase my shirt. This is a Navy Nuclear Power Training Command shirt from class 0506 Mike Tango. That was my nuclear A School and Power School back when I was in the Navy. And the cool part is I actually got to design the back of this shirt.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Part two Why Big Nuclear Failed.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Before we talk about the solution, we really need to understand the problem. Why did nuclear power stall in America? We were the leaders. We built the first commercial nuclear plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. We had the Navy's perfect safety record. We had the world's best engineers. So what happened? In the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, utilities built large light water reactors. These were custom designed, site built, one of a kind projects. Each plant was unique. Each plant required its own engineering, its own construction crew, its own supply chain. If you worked on the Diablo Canyon plant in California, you couldn't really take what you learned and apply it to the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire, because every plant was different. They took a decade to permit and another decade to build. Costs ballooned, schedules slipped, then came Three Mile Island in nineteen seventy nine, then Chernobyl in nineteen eighty six. Public confidence cratered after that. Regulations became even more complex. Costs skyrocketed even higher. Utilities simply stopped building. The last nuclear plant to start construction in America was Watts Bar Unit two in Tennessee, which began in 1972 and didn't even come online until 2016, forty-four years from groundbreaking to power. That is not a failure of nuclear technology. That is a failure of the process. But here's what most people don't know. The nuclear industry in America didn't stop because the technology was unsafe. It stopped because the business model was broken. Custom building each plant from scratch is incredibly expensive. There's no learning curve, no economies of scale, no standardization. Each plant is a first of a kind with all of the cost and risk that that entails. Meanwhile, France took a different path. They standardized on a single design. They built the same plant over and over with the same supply chain, the same workforce, the same regulatory approvals. Their costs dropped with each plant. By the 1990s, France was generating 70% of its electricity from nuclear. This ended up making it cheaper than coal, cheaper than gas, and cleaner than both. The lesson here is really simple. Standardization matters. Repeatability matters. Learning by doing matters. You can't learn if every project is a one off. You can't get better if you never do the same thing more than once. That's exactly what small modular reactors offer. Not a new unsolved technology, a new way of building proven technology, factory fabrication, modular construction, standardized design. The same industrial revolution that made solar panels cheap and cars reliable can make nuclear power affordable.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Part three. What is an SMR? Let me define some terms because the words matter.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Small means under three hundred megawatts. Traditional nuclear power plants are anywhere from eight hundred to twelve hundred megawatts. An SMR is one quarter to one third of that size. Small enough to fit in a factory, to ship across the country. It's small enough to scale incrementally. If your town needs fifty megawatts, you can simply buy a smaller unit. If your city needs six hundred megawatts, you can buy a couple of units. You don't have to overbuild. You don't pay for capacity that you don't need. Modular just means factory built. Instead of pouring concrete on site for tens of years, most of the reactor is built in a controlled factory environment. The modules are shipped by truck, train, or barge. They're assembled on site, kind of like Legos. Less weather delay, less labor costs, and faster construction. The factory can build ten reactors at once. The first reactor will take the longest and it will be the most expensive. The tenth rolls off the line faster and cheaper. And reactor means the same physics. The fission reaction is the same. The fuel is similar enriched uranium. The water is the same cooling material. This is not experimental technology. It's proven technology that we've been using for decades, repackaged for modern manufacturing. The same chain reaction that powered the first nuclear plant in 1957 will power the SMRs of today. We've had 70 years of experience. We know how to do this. So, how does a nuclear reactor work? First we have to start with the fuel, which is made in little ceramic uranium pellets. Each pellet is only about a centimeter wide, but it holds about as much energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. Then we take a bunch of these uranium pellets and we stack them inside a fuel rod. Next, several of these rods are bundled together, which forms the reactor core. We then take this core and we set it inside a reactor vessel. The reactor vessel provides shielding, but it also holds the coolant, which in most cases is water. We then pump water into the reactor vessel, which absorbs the heat from the fission. This hot water gets turned into steam, which turns a turbine. This turbine turns a generator, and the generator makes electricity. That's it. The same basic cycle as a coal plant or a natural gas plant. The only difference is the heat source. Instead of using natural gas or burning coal, we're using nuclear fission. The difference between traditional reactors and SMRs is not the physics. The physics is the same. It's the size and the containment. Traditional reactors need massive containment domes to withstand the worst possible accident. They need robust cooling systems to handle decay heat after shutdown. They need backup generators, backup batteries, backup pumps. Each layer adds complexity and cost. SMRs are designed differently. They use what we call passive safety. The physics of the reactor means that if something goes wrong, the reaction slows down on its own and starts getting cooler. No operator action is required, no pumps, no power, just gravity, convection, and the inherent properties of the materials that we've chosen. The reactor will just shut itself down, it'll cool itself down, meaning there is no meltdown scenario and no evacuation zone.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Part four. Why smaller is safer. Let me address the fear head on.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

People are still afraid of nuclear. That's understandable. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Those names carry weight, as they should. Those were serious accidents, and they caused real harm. Here's what those accidents have in common. All three happened at large, custom built, first generation reactors. All three involved cooling system failures. All three required active operator intervention to prevent disaster. And in two of the three cases, the operators made mistakes that actually made things worse. SMRs are completely different. This is where that passive safety comes in. Traditional reactors needed active cooling. If the power goes out, you need backup generators to keep the cooling going. If the backup generators fail, you need backup batteries. Each layer adds complexity, it adds more failure points, and it adds more cost. The Fukushima accident happened because a tsunami flooded the backup generators. The reactor kept operating, the cooling kept failing. The operators couldn't fix it in time. SMRs use passive safety. The laws of physics do the cooling. It has natural convection, which uses gravity and evaporation. Just normal physics processes. No pumps, no generators, no operators needed. If the reactor overheats, the neutron population actually decreases. The reactor slows down, and the heat production lowers. It's self-regulating. You can't override it, you can't screw it up, it's built into the fundamentals. This also means a smaller core has less decay heat. A large reactor has a massive core with enormous thermal inertia. Even after it shuts down, the radioactive decay continues to produce heat. You have to keep cooling the reactor for days or weeks. If the cooling fails, even with the reactor in a shutdown state, the core could still melt. That's what happened at Three Mile Island. A small modular reactor has a smaller cool core with less decay heat. Passive cooling is enough to cool this small core. The air around the reactor vessel can remove the residual heat without pumps or backup power. You don't need days of backup or emergency procedures. The reactor just cools itself by sitting there. Next, I want to talk about underground siding. This is one of the most important parts or features of a small modular reactor. Because it's smaller, it's very easy to just dig a big hole and put the whole reactor plant underground. This brings us several advantages. First off, it provides more shielding. Not only would we build concrete shielding around the reactor, we would also have just a bunch of earth that would provide additional shielding. But more importantly, I believe, is the safety in an emergency situation. If there's a tornado and your reactor is underground, the tornado can just blow on by. It's not going to affect the reactor core underground. Same thing with flooding. We can engineer it so the floodwaters simply go around it. If there is a plane crash or a missile strike on top of the reactor plant, it's going to have to go through a bunch of earth and concrete before it even gets near the reactor core. This is objectively the safest way to build a modern reactor. I want to elaborate on the idea of a small modular reactor not being able to melt down. The combination of passive safety, a smaller core, and underground siding, as well as self-regulating physics, means that the classic meltdown scenario is physically impossible. Engineers have been running these models for decades. The numbers work, and other countries have already proven this. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews the designs, they certify them as safe. I was a Navy nuclear operator. I spent years watching dials, checking systems, running drills. Nuclear safety is not a slogan, it is a discipline. The Naval Reactors Program has operated reactors for 70 years without a single accident. No meltdowns, no releases, no casualties, thousands of reactor years of operation across hundreds of submarines and aircraft carriers. That is the gold standard. That's the safety culture that we must bring to Indiana. And that's the safety culture SMRs are built to exceed. If you don't know Daniel Jurgen, he's the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize, the Definitive History of the Oil Industry. He's been writing about energy geopolitics for decades. The world is being shaken by the collision of energy, climate change, and the clashing power of nations in a time of global crisis. Out of this tumult is emerging a new map of energy and geopolitics. Climate change is challenging the global economy and way of life, accelerating a new energy revolution in the quest for net zero carbon. The shale revolution in oil and gas has transformed the American economy, ending the area of shortage, but introducing a turbulent new era. Almost overnight, the United States has become energy independent and the world's number one energy powerhouse, changing its position in the world. All of this has been made starker and more urgent by the growing tension between the United States and China and the uncertainties of the world coming out of the coronavirus virus pandemic. A master storyteller and global energy expert, Daniel Jurgen takes the reader on an utterly riveting and timely journey across the world's new map. He illuminates the great energy and geopolitical questions in an era of rising political turmoil and points to the profound challenges that lie ahead. Daniel is not a nuclear cheerleader, he's not a climate activist. He is a modern map maker. He shows you who controls what, who's winning, and who's falling behind. The new map was published in 2020, but its argument has only become more urgent. Jurgen's core thesis is simple. Energy is not just about electricity. Energy is about power. It determines which countries have leverage, which economies grow, and which nations get left behind. The map of energy is constantly being redrawn, and right now China and Russia are drawing it without us. Let me read you something from the book. Jurgen writes about China's nuclear strategy. China is building nuclear reactors not just for its own grid, but as an export industry. They see nuclear as a strategic technology like high speed rail and 5G. They're building standardized designs, factory production, and financing packages that make it easy for developing countries to say yes. The United States, by contrast, can barely build one reactor on its own soil without a decade of litigation and cost overruns. That's Jurgen. Direct, uncomfortable, true. Here's what Jurgen teaches us that applies directly to small modular reactors. First, the United States invented the nuclear industry, then abandoned it. We led the world in the 1950s and 1960s. We built the first commercial plants, we proved the technology worked, and then we just stopped. The last wave of construction ended in the 1970s. We've spent forty years watching other countries pass us. France, Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia. They kept building while we kept debating. Second, energy sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a strategic necessity. Jurgen documents how Germany's turn away from nuclear after Fukushima made them dependent on Russian natural gas. That decision looked smart in 2011, but by 2022, Germany was funding Putin's war machine while begging for permission to keep their remaining plants online. That's what happens when you make energy decisions based on fear instead of strategy. You don't eliminate risk, you just trade one risk for another, usually worse one. Third, the countries that win the energy transition are not the ones with the best technology. They're the ones with the best industrial policy. China didn't beat the world in solar because they invented better panels. They beat the world because they built factories, standardized designs, subsidized deployment, and kept building until costs dropped below everyone else's. The same playbook is now being applied to nuclear. China's ACP 100 small modular reactor is already under construction. Their supply chain is being built, their workforce is being trained, while we're still arguing about whether to build one or not. Fourth, the United States still has advantages, but we are wasting them. Jurgen points out that America has the world's most innovative energy industry. We have the best universities, we have the Navy's nuclear safety culture, we have the world's deepest capital markets. But none of that matters if we can't deploy a single reactor. We need big construction projects now. This is where Indiana comes in. Jurgen's book is about the global map, but maps are made of local decisions. The global race is won by countries that have regions willing to say yes. Indiana can be that region. We have the coal plants retiring, we have the Purdue Nuclear Program, we have Navy veterans all across the state. We are a manufacturing hub. We have the TVA coalition already forming at Rockport. What we need is the will. Jurgen ends the new map with a warning. He says that countries succeed in the twenty first century will be those that can balance three things energy security, economic growth, and climate action. You can't sacrifice any of them. You have to do all three. Nuclear is the only technology that delivers all three at once. But nuclear requires something else. It requires a decision, a choice to begin building, and a willingness to lead. The new map is not a technical book, it won't teach you the difference between a boiling water reactor and a fast reactor. It is a book about power. Who has it, who's losing it, and what happens when you let fear and paralysis cede the map to your competitors. The map is being redrawn right now. The question is whether Indiana will even be on it.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Part six Who Else is building SMRs?

SPEAKER_01 24:52

America is no longer the leader in nuclear deployment. We used to be. We invented the technology, we proved it could work, and now we're playing catch up. China has twenty six reactors under construction, more than any other country in the world. They're building small modular reactors at scale. Their ACP one hundred is a one hundred and twenty five megawatt design. The first unit is already under construction. They're not waiting for some long regulatory approval, they're not debating the technology, they are simply building. By 2030, they will have commercial SMRs operating. Russia took a different approach. They have a floating nuclear power plant. The academic Lomonosov is a 70 megawatt SMR mounted on a barge. It's been operating since 2019. They're building more. They're also exporting this technology to developing countries. Russian floating reactors will soon be powering remote ports and mining operations across the Arctic. Canada is developing SMRs for remote communities and mining operations. The provinces are collaborating on regulatory standards. The federal government is investing. They are moving faster than we are. Their first commercial SMR is expected online in the early 2030s. So what about the United States? We have designs, we have a regulatory process, we have the Navy's safety culture. What we don't have is projects. The first SMR in America is still years away. NewScale had a project in Idaho. It was canceled in 2023 due to cost overruns. The company pivoted to smaller designs. They're still in the game, but they've lost their first mover advantage. But that's changing. In December 2025, the Department of Energy gave TVA $400 million to build a BWRX 300 at Clinch River in Tennessee. The NRC is reviewing the application. Construction is scheduled to actually commence this year, and operation by 2033. Indiana Michigan Power is in this coalition. The Rockport plant in Spencer County, Indiana is a potential site for deployment. We are not starting from zero, but we are catching up. And we have advantages that China and Russia don't. We have the world's best safety culture. We have an independent regulatory system. We have public accountability, and just simply we can build better. We just need to start. This is what Jurgen means when he talks about the paradox of American energy. We have all the advantages except the will to deploy. Indiana can break that paradox. One state saying yes, building the first project, proving it works. That is how the map changes.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

One dot at a time. Part seven, the technology choice.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

There are multiple small modular reactor designs in development. The Indiana Sentry project has focused on one, the GE Hitachi BWRX 300. But there are others worth considering. So why do we choose the BWRX 300? It's a boiling water reactor. Very simple design, the same basic technology as many existing plants. That means existing supply chains, existing workforce skills, existing regulatory pathways. You don't need to invent new fuel, you don't need to train operators from scratch. You don't need to write new regulations. It is a 300 megawatt reactor. In my opinion, that is the sweet spot for replacing coal plants. Indiana has dozens of retiring coal plant units in that size range. The Rockport plant is 2,600 megawatts total across four units. You could replace one coal unit with one SMR, or you could cluster several SMRs on the same site, using the same grid connections, the same cooling water, and the same workforce. This reactor uses what's called LEU fuel, low enriched uranium, the same fuel that existing reactors use. No new fuel supply chain is required, no new enrichment technology, and no proliferation concerns. The fuel is available today from existing suppliers. But there are other options. First America Nuclear Company, or FANCO's Eagle One Reactor, is a lead bismuth cooled fast reactor, 240 megawatts. It has what's called a closed fuel cycle. It can actually consume spent nuclear fuel as fuel. That way we can take this long-lived waste and actually use it for fuel. It can reprocess its own waste. The company has submitted its regulatory engagement plan to the NRC. They want to build an energy park in Indiana. There's also New Scales Voyager design, 77 megawatts per module, scalable up to 12 modules per site. They've already been through the NRC design certification process. They are ready to build. They just need a customer. Kairos Power is developing a fluoride salt-cooled reactor. TVA has signed an agreement to purchase power from their Hermes 2 plant. That's another option. In my opinion, we should not pick winners. We should build a regulatory environment that allows competition. The Indiana Energy and Resilience Authority should evaluate proposals. It should select the technology that offers the best combination of cost, safety, fuel security, and Indiana supply chain benefits. The point is not to choose a favorite. The point is to build. Any reactor is better than no reactor. Waiting for the perfect technology is just a recipe for waiting forever.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Part eight Why Indiana is the perfect place.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Let me make the case for Indiana as the small modular reactor capital of the world. Coal plant retirements is probably the biggest reason. Indiana has dozens of coal plants scheduled to retire over the next decade. These sites already have grid connections, they already have cooling water, they already have transmission lines. They are zoned for heavy industrial use. There's a workforce that already lives nearby. Putting an SMR on a retired coal site is the fastest path to deployment. You don't need to find new land, you just need to build new transmissions. You just replace the boiler from the old plant with a reactor. Purdue University would be an excellent place to put an SMR. Purdue has one of the strongest nuclear engineering programs in the country. They have a research reactor. They have faculty who trained at the Naval Academy, at MIT, at all the top programs. They are ready to train the next generation of SMR operators. They are ready to partner on research, and I believe they're ready to lead. Navy Nuclear Pipeline is another obvious partner. Indiana has thousands of Navy nuclear veterans. We have the training infrastructure, the safety culture. We have people who already know how to operate reactors. This isn't a hypothetical workforce we're talking about. These are proven sailors who have worked on nuclear reactors in their naval career, that are living in your community, working other jobs, waiting for the opportunity to serve again. Indiana has a massive manufacturing base. Indiana builds things. We have steel, we have fabrication, we have skilled trades. The same factories that make auto parts could be converted to make reactor components. The same welders who build pipelines can build reactor vessels. And the same electricians who wire factories can wire control systems. We can't ignore the Indiana Michigan power connection. Rockport Plant in Spencer County is already in the TVA Coalition. They are talking about the same technology TVA is building at Clinch River eventually coming to Rockport. The regulatory work is already underway, the supply chain is already being developed, the workforce is already being trained. I also want to mention here our idea of the host community fee. This is how counties get paid. $10 to $12 million a year per reactor. This is mandated to go to property tax relief, school funding, rural health clinics, and animal welfare. That's the difference between NIMBY, not in my backyard, and welcome neighbor. That's the difference between fighting every project and competing to host them. The world is coming to Indiana. We just need to say yes. Jurgen writes that the next decade will determine the energy map for the rest of the century. The countries that build now will own the infrastructure that powers the global economy. The countries that wait will buy access from those who build. That's the choice. Be a builder or a buyer, an owner or a renter. This is the difference between being sovereign or being dependent. Indiana can be the heart of the American comeback. Not because we're special, but because we're willing. Because we have the sites, the workforce, the university, the veterans, and the coalition already forming at Rockport. The only thing missing is the decision to build.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Part nine. Objections and responses. Let me walk you through the objections I hear the most often.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Objection one. Nuclear waste is still a problem. We need to face the fact that this nuclear waste already exists. 95,000 tons of spent fuel sitting at reactor sites across the country, including at plants that have already closed. The fuel is not going away. It's sitting there in dry casks, waiting for a solution. Small modular reactors can be designed to consume that waste as fuel. We mentioned FANCOS Eagle One reactor, which is called a fast reactor, which is designed for a closed fuel cycle. They turn waste, whether it's their own waste or from other sites sitting around the country, into fuel. The 300,000 year waste problem becomes a 300-year manageable project. This isn't a fantasy. France recycles 96% of its spent fuel. They've been doing it for decades. Objection two. Small modular reactors are unproven. The first SMRs are under construction in China and Russia. The TVA project is under NRC review right now. The technology is proven. The manufacturing approach is the only new part. The physics is the same as every reactor that's powered the Navy for 70 years. The question is not whether the technology works, the question is whether we can build it affordably. That's a business problem, not a physics problem. Objection three, they'll never be cost competitive. Solar used to cost $100,000 per kilowatt. Now it's under two thousand. The learning curve for small modular reactors is real. The South Korea model proves it. They use the same design, same sites, same workforce, and just repeated it over and over again. Factory manufacturing, modular construction, standardized regulatory approval. Costs follow volume. The first reactor will be the most expensive. The fiftieth will be cheaper than coal. Objection four. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will take forever. The NRC actually has a new regulatory pathway for advanced reactors. They're required to complete safety reviews within a set time frame. The TVA application is on schedule, and the agency is learning. The first few projects will be the hardest. The tenth will be routine. We can't let past delays determine future possibilities. Objection five. Solar and wind are great, they're cheap, but they are intermittent. You need dispatchable power for the hours when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. That's either nuclear, some kind of storage like batteries, or geothermal. Nuclear is the only proven, scalable 24 7 carbon free option. The grid needs baseload. Renewables can't provide it alone, at least not for several more decades.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Part ten. Alright, let's take a look at where we are.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Small modular reactors are not science fiction. They're being built in China, in Russia, and soon in Tennessee. They are much safer than old reactors. Smaller, cheaper, factory built, modular, and scalable. Indiana is the perfect place to lead the SMR revolution. We have retiring coal plants with grid connections. We have Purdue, we have Navy nuclear veterans. We are a manufacturing hub. We have the TVA coalition already at Rockport. The Indiana Century Project's goal is fifty reactors over twenty five years. The first one will be the hardest. The fiftieth will be routine. The learning curve works. South Korea has proven that. The new map teaches us that the countries winning the energy transition are not waiting for perfect solutions. They are building with what we have. Standardized designs, factory production, continuous deployment, learning by doing. That is the new model. That is how China beat us in solar. That's how they're trying to beat us in nuclear. The only answer is for us to start building. Next week in Episode 15, Navy Nuclear Safety Culture, we talk to a Navy nuclear colleague about what makes the Naval Reactors program the gold standard, how they've operated reactors for 70 years without a single accident, and how we bring that culture to Indiana. Daniel Jurgen spent 600 pages documenting how the energy map is being drawn without the United States. He did not write a happy ending. He wrote a warning. The ending is up to us. The first commercial SMR in America will break ground somewhere. Why not in Indiana? Why not Rockport? Why not now? Every day we wait, China builds another reactor. Every day we debate, Russia sells another floating plant. The world is not waiting on us. Indiana can be that dot on the map where the American comeback starts. Not because we're perfect, but because we decided to build.