Did you know the video game industry is worth more than $300 billion dollars a year, bigger than movies and music combined?

Marketplace Morning Reports skin in the game series explores what this booming industry can teach us about the economy and jobs,

listen to skin in the game, and more from Marketplace Morning Report, wherever you get your podcasts.

On the program today, we're talking clean energy, college admissions, and why companies will not stop texting us.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Portland, Oregon, I'm Rima Fase, and for Chi-Ristall, it is Monday, July 31st. Good to have you with us.

It has been one very hot summer. In many parts of the country, the extreme heat has not just been unbearable, but relentless.

With these higher temperatures, also comes demand for electricity. Gotta keep those AC units, fans, dehumidifiers running throughout the day.

But all of that is putting a strain on the power plants and the electric grid, which further heats up the planet.

All of this to set up our first story today. Nuclear power is totally free of carbon emissions.

And over in Georgia, a new reactor at a nuclear power plant came online today, it's the first new one to be built from scratch in the US in decades.

Marketplace's Kimberly Adams reports on what this project can tell us about America's energy future.

The nuclear reactor at Plant Vogel in Georgia is the first of two new reactors at the plant, ultimately capable of powering half a million homes in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

But the project is seven years behind and more than double the projected cost to the tune of almost $35 billion.

The challenge is this is really a first of a kind project. And I know that sounds weird because the US does have so much nuclear. It's 20% of our electricity.

Jessica Lovering is the executive director of Good Energy Collective, which advocates for nuclear energy.

But the US industry really kind of closed down or was in a cold shutdown for 30 years. We weren't building new projects.

Partly because of incidents like the Fukushima disaster in Japan, which scared people, but also because building these plants is really expensive.

So even when fossil fuel prices went up, nuclear often wasn't an attractive option, says Isabella Alcanese, who teaches government and politics at the University of Maryland.

Now climate change, global warming seemed to offer another window of opportunity, but again, the big issues of safety and cost keep being an obstacle.

And who bears those costs will be the big issue moving forward, says Tim Eccles of Georgia's Public Service Commission.

Plant Vogel has been a passion project of his, and Eccles says he's glad it's up and running. But...

...