Personally I am all for nuclear energy.
All forms of energy production have a cost associated with them. There is no "perfect" way to produce energy. To me the cost/benefit ratio for nuclear plants is significantly better than almost all other forms of energy production.
Getting rid of nuclear reactors completely is a terrible idea, since for the most part they are replaced with wonderful things like coal power (Germany). Coal power mind you also releases noticeable amounts of radiation from the thorium and uranium contained in the fly ash that is generated.
One of the biggest concerns with nuclear power of course is a nuclear accident. Ironically one of the biggest reasons for the current risk of nuclear accidents, is because people are afraid of nuclear power plants and have done their best to restrict their usage.
Yes, I understand that this statement sounds strange and you might be questioning my sanity. The reason I say this is because it is nearly impossible to build new nuclear power-plants anywhere other than china. So instead of being able to take advantage of up to 60 years of technological innovation. We are stuck stringing along old nuclear power plants that were built 5-10 years after the technology was first developed.
This is similar to modern commercial airlines on aircraft built in the 1930's... (like this plane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_ANT-20 which 2 of 2 crashed)
So because nuclear power development is so difficult to do in both research terms and replacing old power plants, it makes the whole thing more dangerous than it could have been otherwise.
To put nuclear safety in perspective since the start of nuclear power there have been 33 nuclear power-plant accidents since 1952 (year of the first one). These range from a small leak in a coolant pipe, to a workers getting exposed, to Chernobyl. That's ~450 nuclear plants most have been running since the 1960's and only 33 accidents (in the world) have ever happened. I know of no other endeavor by man that has this level of safety and there is even plenty of technology that has been developed that increases this even more.
Flying aircraft is the safest mode of travel available to us. The chances of a fatal accident occurring is about 1 in 4 million. The safety net we use at my work for being hit by a piece of debris if a rocket exploded on the launch pad is 1 in 1 million. Despite this level of safety there were 32 commercial airline accidents just in 2011. Yes there are more aircraft than nuclear powerplants, but not many commercial airliners have been in continuous operation since the 60's either.
For example if we still had a strong nuclear development program perhaps we could have thorium based nuclear power-plants in operation by now. Such benefits include: Radioactive waste produced is safe in ~300 years, It can run on the waste of other older nuclear reactors, It produces much less radiative waste, the whole list is quite long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor300 years sound like a lot? well that plastic bottle you threw away can take up to 3000 years to break down. If your landfill uses balers to compress the trash it can take 100 years+ just for newspaper to break down.
