[Porsche-O-Phile]

I have serious reservations about it. Short-to-intermediate term, it would help. Longer term, I'm not so sure. I have recurring nightmares about the health, safety and welfare of the populace at large being placed not in the responsible hands of builders and designers and scientists and engineers, but in those of bean counters down the road. I can easily envision a scenario down the line 50 or 60 years from commissioning where a bean counter makes a decision to forego an inspection or not replace a 49-cent o-ring or fire a few maintenance guys and in so doing kills half a million people. Inadvertent or not, the people would be just as dead.

That said, I think nuclear power should be on the table, but I don't have any easy suggestions or answers about how to ensure it is done safely - for the longer term future.

I also think that the people who think it's a "silver bullet" are completely delusional. A huge percentage of our nation's energy demand is from transporation-related expenditures, which are overwhelmingly petroleum-based. Unless you're going to invent the 1950s "atomic car", you won't make much of a dent in transportation-related energy demand or reduce dependence on (mostly foreign) oil for it. Hydrogen is a potential long-term solution, particularly powered by nuclear energy. Same with GOOD mass-transit, trains, etc. like they have in Europe and Japan - these can be powered by electricity rather than oil. But such things are a long way off - this will NOT be a band-aid and for the foreseeable future, we need to all get used to the idea of $5 or $10 gasoline, with no alternatives for personal transportation.

Just another shining example of how the ROW is DECADES ahead of us in our hubris.

Short answer, yes we should have nuclear power on the table and focus on methods for long-term safety as a #1 priority. And it won't fix much short-term. Those expecting immediate results will be sorely disappointed.