Thank you for your comment and questions.

I am largely unimpressed by the French example.

I’ll be brief (at least for the moment). Reprocessing has its own subset of troubling technical problems. And it is not waste-free: the French, like we, have yet to settle on a repository for the “leftovers”.

“Non carbon dioxide emitting”? Mining, and plant construction and maintenance, and transportation, and other functions incidental to nuclear generation, rely on fossil fuels. So too do processing and reprocessing — unless they are running off of a nuclear-powered generator, of course.

I’ll leave security issues, and proliferation and terrorism threats, for another time. (Suffice it to say that I am profoundly concerned by these as well.)

My principal argument against nuclear power, however, is economic. It was once thing fifty years ago for governments to promote and subsidize a nascent technology and industry. But the time is long past for nuclear power to become self-supporting.

Nuclear power is not commercially viable. It remains a “factor” only because of massive public subsidies, both direct and indirect. As a matter of public policy, I think that the subsidies must end.

I believe that it’s time to call out nuclear power worldwide for what it is: a spectacularly failed experiment. It’s time to move on.

Thank you.

Scott Summers