You don't have to explain the benefits of nuclear power to me, I support it. The problem here is that there is "more democratic power in America than Europe- citizens affect the laws more easily", and the people have become very suspicious of it. The nuclear government-industrial complex has no one to blame but itself, the people, including the environmental movement, fully supported nuclear power until the nuclear waste issue eventually convinced the electorate that perhaps this was not a good idea.

The waste issue has to be solved now, before any new plants are built, because we already have a colossal amount of waste to dispose of. And we can't just bury it, it has to be processed, the fission products and fissionable isotopes removed, the latter recycled and the former reduced to some non-soluble crystalline form which can be safely buried in a geologically stable site somewhere. The technology exists, but the implementation will be a major national effort. This, and a mechanism to dispose of collateral low-level wastes also has to be set up, and a method to regulate and manage this entire process, from start to finish. It is going to be very, very expensive and it is going to have to be the government that does it because business has already demonstrated it wants no part of financing it. As always, the true costs lie outside the immediate production-consumption paradigm business handles so well. If we want nuclear power, we're going to have to forget all this free market humbug and get ready for major government involvement because that's the only way it's going to happen.