Since US nukes are indemnified to a small fraction of the liability, they are able to operate. No private insurance company would ever insure them. The power company also has no liability to dispose of the waist and we have no way of safely disposing of it. Take away these subsidies and Nuclear Power is no longer feasible.

The money being wasted on Nuclear Power were invested into Solar, wind, wave, etc. we would break our addition to oil very quickly.

This all seems like political favors. Just goes to show all politicians are corrupt and self serving.

Dollar for dollar and Kwh for Kwh the DOE would be better to use resouces on Geothermal Guarantee.
If we help finance any energy it should be able to be cheap clean and come on line in the near future.  This is another demonstration of the bias of the current head of the DOE and the wrong direction of the O'bama administration.

Decentralized energy is beter than centralized production and distribution.

Eric

Still, the question has not been answered...Why is the French nuclear program doing so well? What do they know that we don't?...

They get 80% of their power from nuclear sources. And they are the #1 tourist destination in the world, and also one of the biggest food exporters. If there was a radioactive hazard in France, none of these could happen.

Obviously, "clean nuclear" power is possible. The French have already done it.

Why are the French Nuclear Plants "trouble-free",
and how do they differ from US designed plants ?!

The French and other countries, for that matter, are better at the nuclear power game because they don't have a Federal watchdog that learned to manage projects from the people at DoD, no "gold-plated requirement is too much."  Nearly every nuclear power plant built in the US is a custom job.  There is no standardization of design or equipment, hence, no economies of scale.  Fix the problem with the over-zealous watch dogs and then things will change for the better.

I applaud the president's support for nuclear energy, compared to dangerous fossil fuel power plants, fatalities from nuclear power plants accidents are negligible, even when including Chernobyl.

The "waste" problem from current LWR is a political problem.  Reactors such as the Molten Salt Reactor or Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor could reduce non fissile elements to 1/1000th the amount whose decay rates are also considerably faster, 300 years to background radiation level.

This technology isn't new and was thoroughly invested by ORNL up until the 70's.  It's time to dig it up and make it commercially viable in small modular AIR cooled units!

Andrew

As someone who watched the industry begin to grow in the 60's (my father was one of those engineers in the white suits that loaded fuel rods), and then fall prey to politics and overzealous oversight - the required safety manuals and procedures took up many times the bookshelf space of the actual design and operating procedures.  Many of those objecting to nuclear power did not have the slightest idea of how it worked.  Breeder reactors used to re-process spent fuel into new fuel rods (which would minimize the amount of actual radioactive waste by an order of magnitude) were never built in this country largely due to public fears that terrorists might be able to hijack a shipment of enriched fuel.  To my knowledge, there has never been such an event in the history of nuclear power, even though we ship nuclear fuel acrossd oceans by ship. If we can't protect a shipment within our own borders - we can't protect our families at home in bed each night.  As stated before, all "incidents" within the U.S. have been traced to human error - yes, even three mile island would have never happened if the operators had just pushed away from the consoles andlet the computers shut the reactor down in an orderly manner.

We have no choice but to back nuclear power, and now.  The left can't have it both ways.  If we really do have global warmimg upon us, then nuclear power is the only feasible answer to a "clean" source of power that can keep up with our insatiable needs.  Wishing for solar and other types of renewable power doesn't make it so!  We have a very real problem now - so how about a dose of reality - and at least opening up a non-emotional dialogue, with verifiable and repeatable data, that will lead to a compromise and keep the electricity that makes civililzation possible flowing.  Just imagine the consequences of shutting off all of the electricity in this country - really follow it through.  We are talking of nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it.