In recent years, a number of fully operational nuclear power plants with years and sometimes decades remaining in their permitted operating lives have been prematurely shuttered in the United States. Many of these closures have been politically motivated, coming on the heels of drawn out litigation from state governments and environmental groups who are not motivated by specific concerns, but by an overarching distrust of nuclear technology. Closures have also come as the result of shifting energy economics caused in no small part by high subsidies for wind and solar technologies, coupled with the refusal to treat nuclear power as
