Senator James Risch on How Nuclear Energy and Critical Minerals Can Strengthen America

Jim Risch (0:01)

It is really going to change the delivery of electricity in the entire world. There's been a real renaissance over the last few years in nuclear, and most of nuclear was done by the government. But recently, it's the private sector.

Bless the free market system. I mean, here you have this reliable and really has all these attributes of it that has sat there for years and years. And now the private sector has sat up, taken notice. I get people for years, I would have people come in occasionally and talk about it. Over the last few years, there isn't a month goes by where I don't have an investor group that's new to the play, saying, hey, we want to play in nuclear.

And so, surprise, there's competition. And surprise, this competition is moving the thing a whole lot faster.

SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential.

David From (1:10)

I think most people know Idaho Fruits Potatoes, but did you know it's leading in nuclear energy research and it's positioning itself to lead the country when it comes to critical minerals? We'll talk about that as well as today with Idaho Senator Jim Risch, but also why he decided to run for office.

Senator, thanks so much for being on.

Jim Risch (1:31)

Thank you so much for having me. Enjoy doing this.

David From (1:34)

Great.

So we've been doing talking all years. As part of the America 250th birthday, we've been talking about what we call the one small step. Like why did people get involved throughout history in running for public office or getting taken action in their community? So I kind of wanted to start off, you've held a few different offices. So like what made you get involved in community service, public policy to begin with and then run for office?

Jim Risch (2:04)

Well, I think I'm a little different than a lot of the people here in Idaho that I've known over the years that have run for public office. That is, I really didn't have any interest in it until I graduated from law school, went to work in the prosecuting attorney's office here, and really enjoyed the job prosecuting. As I went along, my boss decided to retire. So if I wanted to keep my job, I had to run for it. So that's what got me started. That was quite a while ago.

But like I said, I know a number of people. I was the governor of the state, and people who were predecessors of mine there, and predecessors now in the US Senate, a lot of them were active way back in college when they were at the university. I was not, and really wasn't thinking along those lines. My undergraduate degree was in forestry before I went to law school, so I really had no thoughts about it when I was in forestry. When I was in law school again, I just really never gave it a thought. But then went to work in the Prosecution Attorney's Office, really enjoyed that, and it is public service. It's for real public service, keeping the bad guys off the streets, and loved doing that, best job I ever had.

David From (3:21)

That's great. I'm actually interested in that you studied forestry. I want to talk about energy predominantly. In the next few minutes. But I'm interested in forestry.

That's an important issue for representing a state like Idaho. Has that been something that's come full circle, that you've been working on forestry issues?

Jim Risch (3:41)

Well, believe it or not, when I became governor, it was just fortuitous that George W. Bush at that time asked all the governors to take a look at the roadless rule that we have in America that had been the subject of hundreds if not thousands of cases. The roadless areas were areas that were leftover. In the 60s and 70s, when they argued over wilderness and designated wilderness pieces, they had some leftover that was essentially road. They called it roadless, although some of them are roaded, some of them roaded fairly heavily. But they just set them there and they were not general forest and they weren't wilderness. The result of that was, is with every administration that came in, they'd write a rule for that ground. If it was the Republicans, people would be able to use the ground more, would be able to harvest from it, do kinds of things you do on more towards general forest. When the Democrats came in, they'd reverse that and lock it all up. And so every time that happened, there were lawsuits all over the place on them and lots and lots of them.