It's laughable to hear the party of Freedom Fries and other sneers and smears cite France as a paragon, but that is, of course, what happens in the realm of nuclear energy. With both candidates saying they support nuclear-plant development, it's a fair question to ask: What is France's experience?

They have almost 60 plants nationwide. Only the US has more: 104.

All the plants are owned by Electricité de France, the state-owned utility. (Source.) France decided to go big on nuclear after the '73 oil shock, and the plants were backed by the financial guarantees of the French government.

They get upwards of 75 percent of their energy from nuclear.

They are the largest net exporter of electricity.

To me, the issue with nuclear has always been the waste. So what does France do with its nuclear waste? So far, same as we do: Store it onsite at the plants while working out some hole-in-the-ground solution. But, they're farther ahead: "The Nuclear Materials and Waste Management Program Act" passed in June 2006 "formally declares deep geological disposal as the reference solution for high-level and long-lived radioactive wastes, and sets 2015 as the target date for licensing a repository and 2025 for opening it." (Source.) In the US, Yucca Mountain in Nevada is the only identified site, but it is long past its scheduled opening date and, as of Tuesday at least four years from receiving government approval.

They make mistakes, just like anyone, such as the July spill of liquid uranium from the Tricastin plant in Bollene that led the government to suspend drinking from wells, eating fish from the local rivers, etc. An apparently more minor spill came a couple weeks later.