When Barack Obama was just a baby, nuclear energy was touted as the technology that would finally provide pollution-free, limitless electricity for all. In its famous 1962 Port Huron Statement, the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society gushed about how “our monster cities…might now be humanized” thanks to nuclear power. Like so many predictions about the future, that one rather dramatically missed the mark. Surprising as it may seem, the United States still generates around 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. This despite the fact that no new facilities have been built since the notorious Three Mile...