Looming behind the earthquake in Japan and turmoil in the Middle East is the persistent question of US energy policy, or (as Thomas Friedman so eloquently reminds us) the lack thereof.

There are many ways to wade into this issue: national security, balance of payments, economic stability and of course climate change and environmental impact. But for the moment, let me just offer three questions for the CEO of the United States and three more for the CEO of your company.

You see, like many, I was startled (though in truth, not surprised) to see that one of President Obama's responses the Japanese nuclear crisis was to reaffirm his commitment to US nuclear policy in his budget request for an additional $36 billion of loan guarantees (on top of $18.5 billion previously authorized under the Energy Policy Act of 2005) to finance new nuclear power plants. Contrast that to $12.2b in subsidies for "traditional renewables".

Hence, these questions:

1. Why invest so much money in nuclear generating capacity when energy efficiency and renewables are much better investments, in terms of both effective energy yield and net financial yield?

2. Why continue to subsidize a 60+ year old industry?

Public investment is usually justified as a risk-sharing kick-start of new technologies or new industries that the public interest requires but that private markets are not yet prepared to support.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that "legacy subsidies [to the nuclear indusry] are estimated to exceed seven cents per kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh)-an amount equal to about 140 percent of the average wholesale price of power from 1960 to 2008, making the subsidies more valuable than the power produced by nuclear plants over that period. Without these subsidies, the industry would have faced a very different market reality-one in which many reactors would never have been built, and utilities that did build reactors would have been forced to charge consumers even higher rates."