I wish people would get off corn. Cellulosic ethanol is much more promising. Also it's a fallacy to say researching any alternative power source is a waste of time if it cannot replace ALL of our needs, rather than just a portion.
That said, it WOULD be nice if we could follow the lead of countries like FRANCE and build more reactors. If you think that environmentalists are the sole problem, however, you'd be wrong, the biggest problem is capital costs. The only reason France is able to do it is because the state is eating the enormous capital costs which private companies don't see the point in when they could build a coal, oil, or natural gas plant and charge less per kWh. Despite the fact that the raw materials and waste disposal costs for fossil fuel plants are MORE than a comparable nuclear plant, the capital costs of making the nuclear plant cannot be paid back over its projected lifetime without charging significantly more per kWh. It's not a coincidence that the only US nuclear plant being built is being done by the TVA.
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