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It amusing that you mention being nervous about living near a nuke plant. We took our kids on a field trip up to Seabrook Nuke plant in NH with a group of homeschoolers. One of the questions asked was were people worried about living nearby. The man showed us aerial photos of the beach area where the inflow-outflow pipes of the plants were located. When the plant was built, about 20 years ago, the beach was almost empty. Now there are a scad of high end homes within a few blocks of the pipes. Obviously, those folks are not worried. Having seen how the plants are constructed, I'd have no worries about living near one.

Chernobyl was nothing like anything in this country in its style of contruction, so there are no concerns about that type of accident. Seabrook was phenomenal in the level of construction for security purposes. The reinforcing steel within the concrete walls and dome are 4" thick! There's no way a plane crashed into it would do any damage to the structure; the plane would simply disentegrate. Even with the accidents that have happened, there hasn't been any danger to the general public. Three Mile Island didn't release any real levels of radiation outside the plant, regardless of breathless reporting to the contrary. As a bumper sticker reads: "More people have died in Teddy Kenndey's car than in any nuclear power plant accident in the US."

The biggest reason nuclear hasn't gone further than it has is because folks just don't understand the process, and were easily manipulated and frightened by the rhetoric of the anti-nuke crowd.

From what I've read there is space to store the spent nuke fuels safely, again it's just an education process.

Terrorists could target them. They would become targets in an all out war, and as safe as they are there is always the possibility of something unexpected going wrong, whether caused by an accident or some natural disaster like an earthquake, or an intentional act. I feel like my family is safer living far away from any nuclear power plants. Odds are high that no one currently living near a nuclear plant will ever be affected by a nuclear disaster, but the risk for them is certainly greater than it is for those who don't live anywhere near one. Those living near nuclear power plants have one additional risk my family does not have.

Like I said though I probably wouldn't live in a big city like New York City either. That place is a major target for terrorists and it would be a major target in an all out war. I probably wouldn't live in a place like San Francisco either because aside from being a target, that area is prone to major earthquakes. Others are free to live in those places if they want, and if they want nuclear power plants there or anywhere else that's fine by me too, just as long as it's not near where I live. I'd be opposed to one going up anywhere near my hometown. Maybe I'm being overly cautious on this, but that's the way it's going to be for me.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, just leery of it. The more plants that are built around the world the greater the likelihood there will be accidents, or natural disasters, or man made events at nuclear plants that lead to disastrous consequences. The more nuclear waste generated around the world and shipped here and there for storage, the greater the likelihood of major contaminations that could negatively affect us in a major way. And of course there is the problem of nuclear weapons. The more nuclear plants there out there the easier it will be for bad guys to enrich nuclear materials to weapons grade quality, or at least for bad guys to gain access to that material enriched by those who were more or less the good guys. I do not believe that we or the international community at large are capable of 100% effectiveness in policing nuclear activity throughout the world. Irresponsible zealots of some sort are going to get ahold of nuclear weapons at some point and cause a lot of problems with them. Sooner or later that's going to happen, and the more nuclear power plants there are throughout the world the sooner it will be.