I see plenty of self-inflicted damage. Inability to meet cost estimates for new nuclear plants, for example. If nuclear had been as great as the salesmen had told us, the opposition would have been much less, and would likely have been steamrolled. As it stands, utilities largely don't want to build new nuclear plants. They even shit talk it in public. They aren't doing this because they are secret radical ecoterrorists; they are doing it because they are hard nosed business people with no time for failures.

This is nothing new. As the Forbes cover story on Feb. 11, 1985 said: “The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale… only the blind or the biased can now think that the money has been well spent.”

In recent years, they gave nuclear another chance. And it failed again. You are unlikely to get a third chance anytime soon.