"Such people seem to have no problem with taxes subsidizing and shielding from market forces pretty much every other leftist wet dream they can think of."

Tom, can't you see it? Every one of your posts seems to end (or begin)on the same gratuitous dig at the evil collectivists. It answers every question, ends every argument, discredits every opponent, puts the kabosh on every objection. Just because people cannot accept your world view unquestioningly does not mean they necessarily embrace everything you despise. It's a convoluted variant of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" maneuver. What do collectivists and free market haters have to do with skepticism about the nuclear industry, even from people who are not in principle opposed to nuclear power? But once you identify some hippy-dippy rock and roller who opposes nukes you immediately have the ammunition you need to dismiss anyone who does not accept nuclear power as politically tainted and incapable of independent thought.

It used to infuriate me, because I felt it put me on the defensive and forced me to defend views I didn't particularly agree with myself, or otherwise capitulate to you on every detail. Now I realize you don't even see it. And I'm sure you don't. I rarely ever see you interpret any conflict in the world as anything other than immediately traceable to those who wish to tax your assets and infringe on your ability to own your own business. It's a conspiracy theory, about as believable as the one that states that all the evils of the universe are due to the greed of the bourgeois capitalists and their running dogs.

Conflict arises because people have different opinions and competing interests, "everyone's lookin' out for their woman, and reachin' out for their dollar." And sometimes it's because people are just plain stupid. And if every man and every nation was thoroughly indoctrinated in Ayn Rand libertarianism there would still be war and competition and crime and heroism. Most people, don't care about political economy, they just care about number one. Whatever the prevailing ideology, they will adjust to it and conduct their business in the same fashion they would under some other system.

To get back to the issue of nuclear power in America, or the lack of it,
the reason we're in this mess is not because of the left, or the right, or any ideology. It's because the interests in the debate have not been able to hammmer out an agreement which is mutually acceptable to everyone, and, in my opinion, that is because industry and the government have not developed the political will and economic responsibility to tighten their belts, pay the dues, and do it right. And until they do that, as they have apparently done in France, there will be opposition to nuclear power, even amongst otherwise sympathetic people like myself. Hippy musicians and flower-power moonbeam communards have nothing to do with it.