Deploying Nuclear at Software Speed to Achieve Energy Abundance

How can nuclear energy be deployed at software speed to meet the urgency of climate change? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Everstar Founder & CEO Kevin Kong to discuss deploying nuclear at software speed to achieve energy abundance.

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Show Notes

1. Nuclear power is the only clean energy source that can scale fast enough to support global electrification, AI infrastructure growth, and rising living standards worldwide.
2. The main bottleneck in nuclear deployment is not safety or physics—it is regulatory complexity, documentation burden, and slow approval processes.
3. Nuclear has one of the strongest safety records among major energy sources despite persistent public misconceptions shaped by historical accidents.
4. AI workloads are dramatically increasing electricity demand, creating urgent pressure on energy infrastructure.
5. Renewable energy alone cannot provide consistent 24/7 baseload power needed for data centers and large-scale electrification.
6. The United States previously built nuclear reactors in just a few years, showing that today’s long timelines are institutional rather than technical constraints.
7. Nuclear licensing processes can involve millions of pages of documentation, slowing projects by years or decades.
8. AI platforms like Gordian can compress licensing timelines by automating regulatory preparation and compliance workflows.
9. Automating documentation allows engineers to spend more time on engineering judgment and safety-critical decisions.
10. Compliance complexity can increase nuclear component costs by several multiples compared to commercial-grade equivalents.
11. Expanding nuclear supply chains requires enabling more non-nuclear vendors to qualify their components efficiently.
12. Nuclear energy is entering a rare window of opportunity where policy support, market demand, and technology readiness are aligning.
13. Pre-licensed large reactors may deliver faster near-term deployment than small modular reactors still moving toward commercialization.
14. Cultural resistance and outdated perceptions about nuclear safety remain major barriers to adoption.
15. Scaling nuclear deployment will require training tens of thousands of additional engineers, operators, and skilled workers.
16. Building exceptional teams depends on hiring people with complementary strengths rather than similar backgrounds.
17. Experienced founders prioritize distribution strategy and customer alignment earlier in the company-building process.
18. Strong product leaders combine empathy with persistence to help customers transition from legacy workflows to future-ready systems.
19. High-performing teams benefit from diversity of perspectives and capabilities that strengthen decision-making and execution.
20. Energy abundance acts as a multiplier across industries by lowering costs and accelerating progress in AI, transportation, agriculture, and global economic resilience.