I just attended a 2-day symposium on the future of commercial nuclear power in the U.S. It was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh, and featured what might have been the best group of knowledgeable speakers in the world on the various aspects of nuclear power and every other alternative means of generating electrical energy. There was a Senator and former House member, a former Governor, experts on the events at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Dai Ichi, a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission, a representative of the government of Germany, explaining how they intend to wean themselves from nuclear power (mainly with fossil fuels, ironically). There was an economist explaining how no sane operator would even consider building a new nuclear power plant for at least the next 20 years, and three or four executives from electric utilities and industry companies explaining why he was mistaken. In substance, it was an outstanding event.
FWIW:
(1) The economics of nuclear power are that a Nuke plant costs several times more than any other type of generating plant to build, but once it is built, it generates electricity more cheaply and reliably than any other source. The reason for this is that the fuel cost, compared to anything else, is minimal. When these were first conceived, it was commonly said that the incremental cost of generating electricity (after the plant was built) would be so low that it wouldn't warrant metering.
(2) Commercial nuclear power is only possible in states where electric utilities are regulated, as that guarantees the utilities a return on their investment.
(3) The biggest threat to the nuclear power industry now is the ridiculously low cost of natural gas. It is now around 15% of its historical high cost, and the sources that are coming on line now make it (a) likely that we will never run out of cheap natural gas, and (b) unlikely that we will ever experience the cost spikes that have characterized natural gas in the past. The new sources are numerous and vast, and as supply erodes, new sources will be exploited. We will never run out.
(4) The biggest possible boost to Nuclear Power would be a carbon tax.
(5) For a wide variety of reasons, most sane politicians, regulators, and utilities believe that future planning must include several different electricity sources, among which should be nuclear power, even it the economics of building a plant TODAY do not look favorable.
(6) Most view the "problem" of spent fuel storage to be overblown and temporary. Current storage is safe, though inconvenient, and the reasons for NOT reprocessing spent fuel are all political and emotional.
(7) The basic reason why we don't reprocess spent fuel can be summarized as follows: The process that is used to rejuvenate spent fuel COULD BE USED to generate weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. The past several presidential administrations have concluded that we do not want to build a reprocessing plant in the U.S., because there are countries who would also want to build them, and we don't want to be put into the position of saying, "WE can have one, but we don't want YOU to have one." It would make us look bad. But technically speaking, it is insane that we don't do this.
(8) The commonly cited "renewables" will never be productive enough to provide more than a modestly-significant source of backup power. Wind and solar are intermittent and unreliable, and require a base generation source to back them up.
(9) The Germans are talking about wind farms both off-shore and on-shore, but their hoped-for generation capacity is wildly over-estimated. Furthermore, they have no real prospects for solar or hydro. They are building new fossil generation plants (an initiative that started in 2002, not after Fukushima Dai Ichi), and HOPE they will figure out a way to sequester the CO2 and put it "someplace," but it was pointed out that they are using all of their underground storage capacity now to stockpile natural gas they buy from Russia, so they have no place to put this CO2 that they say they are going to sequester. "Maybe in Scandanavia." The German representative on the board implied that their energy plan is stupid and unworkable, but it is what the people want, so they will do their best, as good Germans, to make it happen. I wouldn't bet against them. This is a country that made a rear-engined, air-cooled, boxer-engined sports car successfully. That couldn't be done either.
(10) One year (almost to the day) after the "meltdowns" in Japan, there is still not a single person who can be identified as having died from radiation exposure. Or gotten significantly sick. There is no medical evidence to indicate that anyone who experienced higher-then normal exposures as a result of those incidents will have any negative health ramifications whatsoever, any time in their lives. (The data available from Chernobyl is extensive). However, the Japanese government estimates that the total cost of the evacuations, cleanup, etc., is going to exceed US$250 Billion.
(11) Should a similar "incident" occur in the U.S., between statutory insurance and a cooperative self-insurance program among the American nuclear industry, there is about $12.5Billion available for payouts. For many, many reasons, no knowledgeable people in the industry (including regulatory agencies) believe that anything like what happened in Japan could occur at any U.S. commercial nuclear power plant. The designs are different, the seismic situations are different, etc.
(12) Of the hundreds of thousands of workers who have worked in the American nuclear power industry over the past 60 years, and been exposed to extraordinary levels of radiation on a daily basis throughout their working careers, there is not a single study that finds any medical harm whatsoever. On the contrary, that population is experiencing fewer cancers and greater longevity than an analogous population working in other industries. There are ongoing studies that investigate whether exposure to elevated levels of radiation might be beneficial.
(13) The American public has no clue about (a) the levels of radiation that they experience all the time, (b) the places, activities, and materials that expose us to much greater than normal levels of radiation, and we are not even aware of it (e.g., flying cross-country), and (c) when to be concerned about exposure to radiation.
(14) Building a new nuclear power plant is one of the worst investments one could possibly make, and NO GROUP OF INVESTORS would ever build a new nuclear power plant with their own money. It is only possible with government tort protection and a guarantee of return on investment (as a public utility in a regulated environment).
(15) Even among people whose whole lives revolve around nuclear power, many still cannot pronounce the word, "Nuclear."