America250 at the Office of Environmental Management

What really excites me is we're back to building big things in America again. We are innovative, we're creative, we're entrepreneurial, we're industrious, we're used to building things, we're used to figuring things out. All these communities are rich with talent that know how to build things and know how to get things done. And as America celebrates this historic America 250 moment, the exciting thing is we're entering a nuclear renaissance, or maybe it's a nuclear rebirth, or whatever you want to tag it. We've been talking about this for a long time, but because of the re-industrialization of America, we need power. We need power of every kind. And we need firm, reliable, and secure power that nuclear power provides for us. I mean, we invented nuclear power here in America at some of our sites that we manage, and we're going to be restoring that. But you can't have nuclear power without a nuclear fuel cycle. So we need to restore our uranium enrichment here to provide the fuel. We're doing that at places like Portsmouth and Paducah. There's private companies that are standing up uranium enrichment like Orano and Oak Ridge. They're going to be making a $5 billion investment. And then, you know, once we have these new reactors deployed on our sites, the next thing we need to solve is what do we do with the used nuclear fuel? Well, it's used because it can be recycled into new fuel, and that's exactly what we're doing. And we can take a lot of our defense nuclear materials and used fuel that we used in test reactors and also reprocess that. And that's exactly what we're doing in Savannah River. So we're standing up H-Canyon and taking that used nuclear fuel and creating HALU, high-assay, low-enriched uranium, which is used for advanced reactors. So these are the American energy hubs where we're restoring power to these sites that are enabling all kinds of economic development and prosperity and lifting up the middle class with good, high-paying jobs. So all of this amounts to, you know, let's take these things that we once considered liabilities and turn them into assets for the American people. I love America. I'm a history buff. I went to West Point, and I can tell you that I grew up overseas too. And every time we came back to America, I could see what a blessing it is to live in this country. I feel unbelievably blessed to be serving America again in this historic moment. I started my career during the Reagan administration when we were finishing the Cold War, and I saw a historic moment as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed under that leadership. I'm seeing the same thing right now under President Trump's leadership, where America is restoring its greatness and really allowing people to be proud of being part of America again.