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He also ignores the vulnerability of nuclear plants to sabotage and terrorism, makes no mention of the unsolved nuclear waste dilemma, and blithely declares that “the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power” is its “high cost.”

While Mr. Thiel, a venture capitalist, says he stands ready to invest in a next generation of unproven nuclear plants, he sweeps aside the wind and solar industries’ remarkable gains of the last decade. He claims that they are not “growing anywhere near fast enough to replace fossil fuels.”

Is he aware that wind power accounted for 28 percent of all new United States electric generating capacity from 2010 to 2014? Does he know that 40 percent of all new installed power capacity during the first half of 2015 came from utility-scale solar plants?

Notably, that doesn’t even include rooftop solar, which is growing by leaps and bounds and could supply a fifth of our total power needs using technology that is already in widespread use.

What we need is a vigorous, sustained commitment to developing our most promising renewable energy technologies. The last thing we need is a new atomic age.