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I have two problems with nuclear power:

1) A security issue. Nuke plants must have a certain level of armed guards. They are no-fly zones for aircraft. They invite terrorists to either attack or more likely to try to steal fuel rods out of the spent fuel pool to help them to achieve a better reward in the afterlife.

2) Because of the heavy burden of regulation and security, the plant size balloons to make the business side of the plant economically viable. This blows up the capital investment, and thus the cost per KW. It also means that the utility company must be at least a certain size before it can raise the funds in the financial markets, aside from the requirement of the unique management that a nuke facility needs. The total construction cycle is very long, so the cash flow on the project is negative from day one and the first billable kilowatt is almost a decade out. This only means one thing: much higher cost electricity.

These two factors combine to mean that the utility business case for a nuke plant tends to make for big projects with big issues about where the plant site can be.

The present electric distribution system is configured like a big tree. The home is fed by the line running down the street. That line is fed by a sub-station, which is fed by a bigger sub-station and so on. All the demand "rolls up" the line to aggregate in at the source.

When the only way you can build a nuke is by making it a big one, then the business model forces the utility to aggregate a lot of demand in order to use the power the plant generates. This means we have a single point supply point, that when it fails, the supply must be made up from somewhere else. I think we unnecessarily introduce power failure vulnerabilities when we have a few big plants.

Consider the implications of using hybrid vehicles that can not only generate their own power, but can feed power back to the power company. This would turn the power grid into a two way street. The utility would request that your vehicle sell power back into the grid. This reduces the vulnerability and increases the utility's ability to supply power where it is needed. It reduces the need for large plants and large power lines to bring load to them. It would mean that a neighborhood could be self-sufficient in electricity. If we learned anything from the nationwide "Y2K" drill and the disruption we suffered in the wake of 9/11 and the Gulf Hurricanes, that we are better off as a society when we are more self-sufficient. Big nuke plants make us more dependent, not less. They are take us in the wrong direction for civil disaster preparedness.

This change in the use of the power grid can be started right now, with hybrids that are being sold right now. And this would allow the transition to fuel cell hybrids as the technology and economics allow them to be viable.

(I doubt this is of any interest to the enviros, who love centralized command-and-control because they hope to impose their "solutions" on people who do not accept them.)

Let me quickly add there is another factor to "security" for nuke plants: They are a blackmail target because if they are hit with a nuclear weapon, there is far more radioactive material in the plant core than in the bomb- and it all becomes fallout.

There is an example of this: downwind of Chernobyl. Almost 10,000 square miles has been contaminated.

see:
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/4.03/day.after.html

Compare this to the test site where the first US bomb test was conducted. The site is open to the public twice a year and you can stand at the very spot the bomb went off.

"Radiation levels in the fenced, ground zero area are low. On an average the levels are only 10 times greater than the region's natural background radiation. A one-hour visit to the inner fenced area will result in a whole body exposure of one-half to one milliroentgen."

see:
http://www.atomictourist.com/trinity.htm

There are areas near the Chernobyl plant where it is not safe to spend more than a few minutes.