Two and a half decades after the West stopped pouring concrete on civilian fission, a 2.1 million pound basemat went into a Darlington pit on May 3. First foundation for a new nuclear reactor in Ontario in over thirty years. Four small modular units stacked on top will push 1,200 megawatts into the grid once complete, enough for 1.2 million homes that will exist whether the grid is ready for them or not.

The G7 spent a generation pretending baseload was a market problem and not a permission problem. Wind and solar got the talking points, gas got the spreadsheets, fission got the moratorium dressed up as caution. China kept building fleets, Russia kept exporting VVERs, the rest of the OECD discovered, slowly and embarrassed, that AI training campuses, electrified industry, and a population that wants air conditioning in 2040 cannot run on press releases.

Darlington is small. One basemat is not a program. But the ratchet only turns one direction now. Permits issued, lifts executed, supply chain awake.