Unless you are speaking of spent fuel storage (which is minimally subsidized and can be sharply reduced with fuel rod reprocessing), you are mistaken. Taking into account the reduction in fuel costs, nuclear power is VERY cost-effective. Government subsidy is close to non-existent (excluding NRC and DoE costs).

Subtracting the exorbitant costs of licensing, re-planning – to meet changing demands on the builder and legal fees will, in itself, offset many decision makers’ “negative column” balance. Life cycle costs of a nuclear power plant are only balanced with those of coal, natural gas and petroleum when the initial up-front costs are a major factor. When the nuclear power plant up-front costs are reduced, the life cycle costs of the plant are overwhelmingly in favor of nuclear power.

To estimate costs, there are many factors to consider. For example – not only do you have to generate the power, you have to deliver it to the grid. NIMBY plays a role here also. Do you want a 500KV high-tension line running through your back yard?

Fighting the political will of a population that falters at any hint of ecological “disaster” just isn’t/wasn’t worth the time, expense or political capital it would take to ram them through. If I’m correct, the Duke Power Catawba plant (near Rock Hill, S.C.) was the last licensed U.S. nuc plant. I believe it received its construction permit somewhere around 1979(?)…

Three Mile Island?

Chernobyl?

In any case, my energy policy is: Yes to Everything; No to Nothing.

Take that, hippie.

Since most of the world oil production is beyond the reach of the U.S.–and Democrats want to de-emphasize the part that *is* under U.S. control–they focus on something they *can* get at, the refineries, even though there’s no evidence that there’s anything wrong with refinery operations.

Why not just move a step or two further downstream and nationalize the pipelines, the delivery trucks, or the bas stations themselves?

Running a gas station just *might* be within the conceptual understanding of a typical Democratic Congressman (as long as they didn’t have to do any auto maintenance work) but these people could no more understand refinery operations than they could design intergalactic starships.

House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling… the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

How in the world does it escape them that most of the worlds (let me say that again) MOST OF THE WORLD’S oil supply is controlled by governments already. Talk about going backwards.

It’s like trying to cure post head injury amnesia with another head injury.

Where do these people come from?

I strongly suspect that the movie “China Syndrome” has personally cost me at least $20,000! It is amazing how much destruction resulted from this Jane Fonda film. The Democrats are literally the enemy of poorer Americans. Their policies have economically weakened the nation. They allowed the radical environmentalists to do as they wished.

BTW, James Lovelock, originator of the “Gaia Hypothesis”, is a member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy. Their website is ecolo.org

As to other dangers involved with nuclear energy let me pre-empt the, “What About three Mile Island!!” argument. TMI (and The China Syndrome) happened in 1979 – the same year IBM brought out the IBM PC based on the 8088 chipset. Since nuclear plants then took 10 years or more to build and the designing started many years before that, TMI was put together before the advent of the computer. Insisting that we just can’t make nuclear safe is like insisting that you won’t buy an Xbox because your experiene with Pong was just too unsatisfactory.

On the other hand, nuclear is a fantastic way to get out of the fossil fuel business for power generation. It also is the first meaningful step towards controlling CO2 (as opposed to the purely symbolic steps we’ve seen so far). I’m stunned that this is one of the few measures likely to be effective, and it’s opposed by the democrats on largely religious grounds.

By the way: Can we adopt the French policy towards eco-terrorism while we’re at it?