Had to look up the writers of this op-ed: they're Lamar Alexander (R-TN)[0] and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)[1]. Not sure if they're in the pocket of the nuclear

Had to look up the writers of this op-ed: they're Lamar Alexander (R-TN)[0] and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)[1]. Not sure if they're in the pocket of the nuclear industry or not, but given the (correct) points by others that nuclear is more expensive than other renewables, it wouldn't surprise me if there is an ulterior motive to this op-ed than stopping climate change. Specifically, I'd have to disagree with this statement: > For one thing, we should extend existing reactor licenses from 60 to 80 years, in cases where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it is safe to do so. In almost no cases should reactors that are 60 years old have their operating licenses extended. These are almost all Generation II reactor designs [2] which have the same safety faults as Fukushima. For example, the Generation III design includes facilities designed to contain a melted core [3]. While these obviously haven't been tested with a real core melt-down, these kind of improvements could have made Fukushima arguably less of an environmental disaster. I really wish the US would look into LFTR again, as they did in the 70's and China is doing now [4]. LFTR have some distinct safety advantages to the PWR/BWR designs favoured by the industry. Unfortunately, all the big money is behind PWR/BWR and no one wants to take the risk and invest in developing LFTR reactors for civilian use in the USA. Costs less to modify the flawed but time tested PWR/BWR designs than to risk investing in designing an LFTR reactor that no utility would every pay money for due to the lack of a proven track record. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Alexander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Alexander [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Whitehouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Whitehouse [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_II_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_II_reactor [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...