Did the US recently build new reactors?

Yes — and it's a milestone worth celebrating. Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, the first newly built US reactors in over three decades, came online in 2023 and 2024 using the modern, passively safe AP1000. America proved it can still build large reactors.

They ran late and over budget as first-of-a-kind projects, and people reasonably debate the lessons (hence contested). But the optimistic signal is strong: the second unit was built faster and cheaper than the first — exactly the learning curve a sustained build program would ride down. Vogtle is less a cautionary tale than a restart. (Older archive posts calling it 'unfinished' are now out of date.)