Thanks Jason!...it was said among engineers that Chernobyl was the result of a bunch of operators running around trying to read chart recorders and not reacting fast enough. I worked for a time in the water/wastewater field (beginning in the 70s) and I can tell you that ALL old plants of any kind seem obsolete by todays standards (which include SCADA controls, better materials, more environmental sensitivities, smarter operators). In the minds of engineers, ALL plants seem to have a 50 year lifespan, due to the turnover of technology (see also big dams), and are thus a rather poor investment for that reason alone (in other words, let's say we build Next Generation Nuclear plants now with state of the art tech...might they be superseded by virtually limitless solar from orbiting plants in 50 years? The high permitting/first costs/retiring costs don't look good in any 50 yr timeframe) What looks good by comparison? Smaller, more adaptable tech w lower first cost (ie Reagan admin in 80s was trying to get neighborhoods to build community septic tanks/leaching mounds to avoid government "big plant" costs) . Nuclear power had to have suffered from bad PR/accidents/high permit costs from 70s onward (just watch 1979's "The China Syndrome", which makes nuclear industry if not all engineers look like a bunch of liars...3 Mile Island/Chernobyl just kinda reinforced that?) Perhaps due to the urgency of global warming and the need for transitional clean energy while renewables scale up, the answer might be existing plant retrofits with molten salt/modern controls/modern materials with a kind of renewed marketing approach?