Some serious studies need to be done on what it will take to keep existing plants running safely, and what the best procedure would be for building new plants.

My idea is that new power plants should be located on military-style "reserves," which would use the same security and other procedures used at military bases where atom bombs are already stored. Reprocessing plants and high-level waste storage would be located on the same reserves. Radioactive materials transport would be from one side of the base to the other.

Storing waste at civilian nuclear sites sucks. So does taking unprocessed waste and burying in a mountain.

One downside of the "nuclear base" idea is that the almost mandatory remote locations would lead to considerable losses in getting the power to cities. Don't know if moving the energy as hydrogen in pipelines would help much since hydrogen is leaky. Now, if you cracked hydrogen from water with the nuclear power (dang--so much for many desert sites), maybe you could combine that with C02 from the air to create simple hydrocarbons (artificial natural gas?) that would transport more easily. Burning this "non-fossil fuel" would simply dump ambient CO2 back into the atmosphere, not add new carbon to the cycle. And as long as there's power, there's an infinite supply. Don't know enough chemistry to know if this is workable.

These ideas are completely off the cuff. Need work, of course.

This may sound freakish coming from me, but nuclear power would be one area where I would not mind a government-controlled standardized power plant system, for much the same reason as my belief in the right for individuals to own weapons leaves off when someone wants to own a handheld anti-aircraft missile. You could also make a case that our energy sources are rapidly becoming a serious national security issue.

It's embarrassing to have France showing us up on this.

None of this, of course, would exclude other alternative energy sources, although I think things like solar and wind will develop best under market forces.