"Why does nuclear fear persist in America? I don't blame my country, I blame my generation."

They're not to blame.

The reasons are two: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

"Though we're the ones who talk endlessly about how cool we are because we once had sex in the mud at Woodstock, we're also the generation whose fear of technology has held the nation back since 1970."

I wasn't at Woodstock and I have no fear of technology. Only concern about its misuse.

"Nuclear, GMO, robotics, high-speed trains: these are all wonders that Asians coluld develop and enjoy because they weren't saddled with Boomers."

No, that's just wrong, and in so many ways.

The leader in high speed trains is France, with their TGV. More important, the reason for so much techno-development in other countries rather than the US goes back to WW2, the Cold War, and Sputnik.

What happened is this:

Allied victory in WW2 was due in part (and only in part) to the industrial might of the USA, which produced all sorts of war materiel out of the reach of Axis destruction. When the war ended, American industry was virtually intact (though maintenance and improvement had been delayed by the Depression and the war) while much of the rest of the industrialized world lay in ruins.

In the USA, that leadership/victory caused both business and government to not invest much in new technology and capital projects for civilian industry. Basic industries like steel and railroads, even though worn out by wartime production demands, found themselves on the back burner. Meanwhile Western Europe and Japan were busy rebuilding, first with Marshall Plan help and then on their own.

The American model was one of unlimited resources, modernism, expansion and continuous growth. So the capital flowed to building suburbs, highways, cars, TV sets and consumer goods. Often the consumer goods were intentionally designed not to last (planned obsolescence) and to be more style than substance. Old was bad, new was good, ending is better than mending...

The European/Japanese model was to rebuild with the latest technology and improve it, and to focus more on simplicity and quality than quantity.

So GM built Chevrolets, Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles that were virtually identical mechanically, while West Germany built VWs and Mercedes-Benzs.

Look up a man named Deming, the father of the whole quality movement. He couldn't get work in the USA, but the Japanese embraced him and his methods. The problem was that any time someone questioned the way America was doing things, the response was "We won the war!" and/or "The USA is the biggest/fastest/richest/most powerful/most advanced country in the world, we don't need to learn from others!"

On top of this came the Cold War/space race competition between the US and USSR. The best and brightest of American science and engineering were increasingly directed to "aerospace" and "defense" industry. "Consumer" industry was left on its own, and its focus was short-term.

All that worked for a while, but eventually the weaknesses of those values came home to roost. By the early 1970s and the first energy crisis it was all too clear where this led. Americans could put men on the moon and rain nuclear devastation on enemies on the other side of the planet, but we couldn't build a good economy car nor keep the transit systems running. We could make space-age materials but much of the steel in the World Trade Center towers came all the way from Japan.

At this point some folks make the old claim about unions, but in fact the USA is and was one of the least-unionized workforces in the developed world, and has been for decades. (Look up how much of the workforce is union in Canada, France, Germany, etc.) Also note how those other countries have strong social safety nets and educational systems that are tax-supported. And much less of their GDP goes to "defense".

Since the 1970s we've been playing catch-up in some ways, but the short-term focus problem is still there. American industry has spent the past couple of decades sending jobs "overseas", which works in the short term but erodes the industrial base upon which the high-tech stuff depends.

Utilities in the USA stopped developing and building nukes because they cost too much and paid back too slowly, compared to other technologies. Particularly when the costs of construction and dealing with the waste are accounted for. It's that simple.

One more point: The French pay more for their electricity - a lot more. Typical French residential electrical rates are as high if not higher than the top US rates. Don't be misled by single numbers that say so many cents per kilowatt-hour. Compare apples to apples by looking at the total bill for a certain number of kWh per month, including all the connection fees, taxes, etc. IOW what a real person actually pays. ConEd starts to look good after that. If the French standardized-nuke-plant idea is so good, why is their juice so expensive?

Note too that electricity rates vary all over the place in the USA. The regional difference is as high as a factor of 3. Imagine if gasoline were $3.50 in some states and a dollar in others....

And they don't want to be seen supporting something the Current Occupant put forth.

The one thing I'd like to see is the Republican leadership, holding hands with their buddies the bankers, standing up on their hind legs and saying "This deregulation thing was a bad idea. We believed in it and pushed it, but we were wrong. This problem proves it. We need better regulations to prevent this from happening again."

The sun will rise in the west on that day, too.