Wine and Cheese Fine - French Nuclear Plants on US Soil Scary

Sure, the French get most of their energy from nuclear power. Sure, they have built these plants for years. Sure, their 35 hour work week and their shoddy workmanship cause one to wait for the next big explosion. Anyone who has lived and worked in France, as I have, knows that the French make great wine and cheese, but to trust their technology or workmanship -- where it counts -- is a fool's mission. We may need to build nuclear plants, but to do it with the French is to put our country at risk. I would find any other partner than the French and I wouldn't want to invest in this venture.

According to the New York Times today, an American company, Constellation Energy, has signed a pact with the French national electric utility to build nuclear plants in the United States -- thus making this French (governmentally owned) company the first foreign company to build such plants in the United States. And, they are going to build the first plant just outside of Washington -- how smart!We do need to give serious thought to building new nuclear plants. The last one we built was in the 1970s. And, there is no question that the French have the most and the best experience in this industry. But they, in typical French fashion, are just not that good or that careful, and we enter into partnership with them at the country's peril. French workmanship is terrible. French attentiveness to detail is terrible. Send us your wine and cheese, but please stay out of our nuclear development.