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Originally Posted by kscherer
Too much can be as bad as too little. Should it be decreased?
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That's a rhetorical question, right?
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Well, when was the last time a nuclear power plant came online in the U.S.? A search tells me Tennessee brought one online in 2016. Before that, also in Tennessee, was in 1996. They're too expensive compared to every other viable solution!
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Because they're the only energy production system that has its pollution treated seriously.
Every other energy production system should *ALSO* be required to pre-invest in capture and cleanup. This isn't rocket science. This is basic science.
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You, yourself said, "if only they were allowed on US soil." So, why aren't they? Americans are scared of them? or too much regulation? I'm curious, because I have no idea, but I suspect it's either the latter or *conspiracies*. 
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I already answered that. Slow uranium reactors were picked in the 50s as the technology of choice because they could also produce weapons.
Period.
End of story.
That's the whole of it.
Now as to why it *continues*? There's been a concerted PR campaign against alternate techs every time one pops on the radar. Fast breeders are used elsewhere in the world, but in the US they were subject to a media push claiming that terrorists would storm them for dirty bomb fuel. (Newsflash: our regular reactor waste, that crap we barely secure or contain, is dirtier.) Thorium reactors? Could be made so small that a terrorist would turn one into a *bomb*! (It is literally impossible to force a thorium reactor to supercriticality.) Etc. etc. etc. It's not a conspiracy, just the regular bureaucratic antibodies that come to bear anytime a decades-long standard policy is questioned, coupled with bog standard marketplace self-preservation.
We have an entrenched policy system in this country that is going to be absolutely antagonistic to any nuclear power technology that is not based in 1950s weapons making philosophy.
If you're interested in the basics, I can recommend David Bodansky's
Nuclear Energy. I had the pleasure of studying under him for a year at the Univ of Washington for my Physics degree, in a three class series on Nuclear Processes, Nuclear Power, and Radiological Risks. (Or, as he put it, what happens in a reactor, how to build a reactor, and how it can kill you.) He was already in his mid 70s at that point, and had been in the thick of that discussion in the 50s, and was an advisor to both the NRC and the IAEA.
http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Energy...urearthling-20
If you're interested in the safe and *comparatively* inexpensive use of nuclear power, concentrate on leveling the playing field by requiring all energy producers to clean up after themselves, like adults. They won't do it voluntarily.