I know there are a great many people who tout nuclear energy and wonder why in the world the US doesn't embrace it. I think this article explains it quite well.

Nuclear the Answer to Fossil Fuels?

Snippet:

"Not in decades has the nuclear option looked more attractive. Earlier this year, the government extended funding to build two new reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, likely the first reactors to go online since 1996, and a lot more may be in the works. Oil and coal disasters like Massey and Deepwater Horizon may be some of the best arguments for nuclear power.

"They may also be some of the best arguments against it. Disasters like Deepwater Horizon highlight troubling truths about natural resources. But they also point to some equally troubling truths about accidents and worst-case scenarios."

Snippet:

"But for all the attractions of nuclear, there remains the looming question of what happens if things go wrong. Nuclear power suffers from what you can think of as a paradox of catastrophe: The worst-case scenario is so terrible that we are actually less able to quantify it and consider its ramifications than we are with other potential disasters. We implicitly recognize this in the laws governing the nuclear industry, which cap the industry's liability for an accident at $10 billion.

"Everybody understands that in the event of a real nuclear catastrophe, that would be a drop in the bucket. The truth is that the costs of that would be so great that we simply put it in the category of those near-inconceivables we don't want to consider. Which is all the more reason to consider it."