On June 22, 2005, President George W. Bush journeyed to the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in southern Maryland, about fifty miles outside Washington, D.C. Speaking there, he proclaimed, “It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again.” The president's endorsement came as no surprise. The press pointed out that he was the first president to come to a nuclear plant since Jimmy Carter had gone to Three Mile Island during the Pennsylvania reactor's 1979 crisis. Few newspapers reported two days later that President Carter himself visited the Cook Nuclear Plant in western Michigan and offered his own support for a revival of nuclear generation. “I think the future holds great opportunities for nuclear power,” Carter stated. Although Carter had served as a nuclear submarine engineer prior to his political career, he had been viewed as generally unsympathetic to nuclear power's growth during his term in office. Yet by 2005 a pro-nuclear political consensus seemed to be emerging.

Even before the two presidents spoke, there were many signs of revived interest in nuclear power. Utilities, reactor vendors, and construction firms had formed three consortia to explore potential projects in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had, as far back as 1989, streamlined licensing procedures. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained several inducements to start a new round of nuclear construction.