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Wright on CNBC: Poland AP1000 Deal Binds U.S. and Poland for the Century, Tens of Billions and Tens of Thousands of Jobs, Apr. 28, 2025

April 28, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:04:06

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC, after flying to Warsaw to sign a nuclear deal with Poland’s president, that nuclear deals are large in scale and long in time frame and will bind the United States and Poland together through the rest of this century, according to Wright.

Wright said the deal is worth tens of billions of dollars, with many tens of thousands of jobs in the United States spread across a multi-state supply chain, tens of thousands of jobs in Poland, and long-term affordable, reliable, secure energy for Polish citizens, according to the interview. He said it likely launches a partnership to build other such reactors throughout central Europe, according to Wright.

Discussing the massive power outage in Spain and Portugal that day, Wright said hitching a grid to the weather is risky and has driven European energy prices up; he said 15 years ago Europe’s economy was roughly the U.S.’s size at 25 percent of global GDP, while today the U.S. is at 28 percent and Europe has shrunk to 18 percent, a divergence he attributed mainly to getting energy wrong, according to the interview. On the AP1000 reactors — three to be built in Poland, with a follow-on three likely — Wright acknowledged Georgia’s Vogtle units were slow and over budget but said Vogtle 4 was built much faster and cheaper than Vogtle 3, and that costs and schedules will improve as the supply chain stands up, according to his remarks.

Why it matters

The interview is the secretary’s sales case for American nuclear exports made at the signing moment: the Poland deal’s scale, the European price divergence he cited, and his answer to the Vogtle cost objection.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins CNBC - April 28, 2025”, 2025-04-28 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-04-28). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.