Yet the rate of growth continues and order books are full. You can find people that complain about trees and puppies if you look hard enough.
Yeah, but they don't derail billion-dollar projects and put the nation's energy security as risk. These other wackos do.
Look, here's the deal. You've got an energy source, wind, which in 2005 had an average capacity factor of 26.8% (which was better than solar at 18.8%). You're looking at an average capacity for nuclear plants at 89.3%, over three times more. You've got coal-fired steam turbine plants at 72.6% average capacity factor. Combined-cycle gas-fired capacity came in at 37.7%. Now, compared with the nuclear-coal capacity factors, for wind capacity you have to build around three times as much infrastructure (generating capacity plus transmission) to get an equivalent amount of energy production. You're talking about huge differences in land use. Even with the advantage of zero-cost "fuel", that is a striking difference.
Just the added transmission infrastructure alone makes it a dicey proposition. In my state a local utility consortium just gave up after trying for seven years to site a high voltage transmission line that would run from the southern part of the state to the north, where it would tie into the regional grid. That was just for the transmission line, mind you, not anything to do with a generating plant. I can imagine the ruckus that would cause.