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I love reading the posts by those opposed to nuclear energy- people you read all the facts already...nuclear is the best bet, hands down, no question. Are there other options? Yes. Are they ready to be implemented on a scale that can contribute SIGNIFICANT amounts of energy into our electric grids? NO! No matter how you slice it, we do not presently have the technology to implement enough solar, wind, hydro-electric or geothermal devices/stations to power our national energy needs. Should all these methods be put into place immediately so less nuclear energy is needed? YES!! We need to use a mix of all of these methods coupled with nuclear energy and transition away from coal and oil powered plants. You read it in the comments above: we have a nuclear Navy (i.e. submarines!)- no accidents; France derives some 80% of it's energy from nuclear energy- no accidents. Chernobyl happened as a result of sub-par engineering and a handful of foolish engineers that pushed a power plant beyond it's capabilities during a systems test and didn't know how to properly fix their mistakes when things starting going south- hence, a meltdown.

We are concerned about waste- reprocess the spent fuel like France does and store all waste beyond reprocessing's capabilities in cooling pools at the plants (for now). Is nuclear a resource that we may run out of in another century or so? Yes. However, with the reprocessing capabilities and improvements in that field, maybe we have more than 100yrs to be concerned with that aspect and we have at least that long to develop new and improved energy delivery methods. Think about how far we've already come in the last 100yrs... are you going to assume that we won't have improvements just as dramatic in the next 100? Seems pretty logical to me.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that nuclear power plants are engineered in such a manner today that even if a terrorist was to drop a bomb on a power plant, the chance of having another Chernobyl (unless the bomb itself was a nuke) are VERY slim. The rest of the world is waking up to nuclear energy and building new nuclear power plants at an astounding rate. Before you know it, America will once again find itself playing catch up with those around us- rushing to keep up and spending billions upon billions of dollars to get it done yesterday.

It takes 10 yrs to build a new nuclear power plant... the time to act is NOW!