I'm not necessarily pro-nuke. I just hear a lot of irrational arguments against it, more outside this forum than inside it. I just don't think we should rule it out because there are difficult problems to solve. I'm not for just building a whole bunch more plants just like the ones we have.

First we should do the easy stuff, tax or tariff the h*ll out of petroleum and create some motivation to conserve and to do research into alternatives. I also wish they'd stop trumpeting biofuels. It's just corporate welfare for Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, etc. It will compete with food production and we don't have enough land for it. Wind and solar are much bigger projects to scale up to our needs. Nukes are fairly well understood and I think I read that the scale of the waste problem is not as large as many believe. It's a practical solution that could possibly get us over the hump. Although I probably don't know much more about it than Homer Simpson. oooh, shiny button...

Hear hear. I think that biofuels have their place, namely in recycling waste material that would otherwise not be used, but I don't agree with the big push towards growing fields of crops specifically for biofuel production. Various studies have produced various results as to the energy gains (i.e. 1 unit of energy yields 1.5 units out), and the margins are slim. Also, while sulphur emissions are eliminated, NOx emissions are actually slightly higher than regular diesel. Finally, there just isn't enough available cropland and resources to completely replace petroleum products with biofuels; for example, this article says that if all the corn produced in the US were dedicated towards ethanol production it would produce enough ethanol to replace 20% of the petroleum used in the US. I just don't think that biofuels are the big savior that the government says they are.

nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) is suppose to be cleaner than the petro, and are a lot safer than fission reactors. There is one being built in France... still fairly experimental.

ITER - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I live in North Carolina, somewhat near a Nuclear power plant. She told us all the benefits of nuclear fusion. Although not as clean and safe as wind and solar power, it seems like a good alternative to coal.

I would guess that many more people are likely to die or become ill from coal plants than from (fission) nukes. Fusion's a loooonnnng way off, as far as I know. If not, it would be a wonderful way to go.