Reader S.C. writes in regarding this post and the Pollowitz Plan to put nuclear power plants on military bases:

My major objection to your Pollowitz Plan is one of principle. Energy production should be in private hands. In a free society, government should not have a strangle hold on the energy supply, which is the life blood of the country. Perhaps it would be allowable if private companies were allowed to lease land on military bases, but to make it mandatory, or to have the government own the plants on those bases, would be intolerable. Mandating locations of the plants on military bases would mean the private corporations would be little more than indentured servants or “sharecroppers” of the government, who as the landowner and lessor would wield extraordinary power over the owners of the plants.
Privately-owned and controlled energy production is essential to a free society.
A much better solution would be to make it much more difficult for opposing interests to block construction of qualified nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is among the safest, cleanest sources of mass on-demand power we have. The objections to it are almost wholly alarmist and ill-informed.

All good criticisms, but, politics aside, we need the additional power supply — and this is the only way I see the things get built. It’s really no different than an aircraft carrier or nuclear sub generating its own power — just on a larger scale. Is it intolerable for those Navy craft to generate their own power? They don’t purchase their power from the private sector. And yet every American benefits from their capacity to produce such power, relatively free from interference from the trial bar and environmental activists.

I’m in total agreement that opposition to nuclear power is ill-informed. But anti-nuke NIMBYism (unfortunately) rules the day. It’s not a question of “mandating” power generation on military bases; such additional supply, in our current political environment, amounts to a last resort.