Last I knew, at least four nuclear plants have obtained certification to be built, perhaps more. Two in Georgia and two in Florida. Construction to begin around 2010-2012 As much as I would like to see a lot of jobs created,not so sure nuclear is the way.

Just for info, look up Leuren Moret, a lot of her work was related to the use of DU by the militery but she also has done research on contaminated sites in the U.S. about thirty states I believe.

Many reactors are getting old all around the world and the governments can not even keep up with bridge infrastructure let alone a lot of other things. Storage of waste is not all that easy to just say it can be safely tucked away and contained.There is much more to the story.

Sorry, I have to disagree with it being “safe”

Heres just a quick link for some light reading.
http://www.radiation.org/

John McCain said he wanted to build 40+ nuclear plants when he was on the campaign trail.Where is he now? Can’t be that he has something more urgent!

IGNORING NUCLEAR IS THE REAL MELTDOWN!

Most objections to nuclear power are based on old and outdated arguments and fears:

Outdated argument #1 – It is unsafe in operation, resulting in nuclear accidents

Many cite Chernobyl as a prime example of the danger of a nuclear meltdown. However, Chernobyl did not have a nuclear meltdown. The Chernobyl plant was of a very old and rudimentary RBMK graphite / steam design. It had no containment in its design. When graphite and steam reach a high temperature, they become explosive. That’s what happened at Chernobyl. The cheap RBMK design should have never made it off the design board because it was so poorly designed and unsafe to operate that a meltdown wasn’t a question of if but when. Most nuclear plants today are of a very safe AGR (Advanced Gas Reactor) or PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) design which are naturally fission stable and will automatically counter thermal runaway.

Outdated argument #2: The spent nuclear fuel cannot be safely stored

This excerpt of an article explains a French solution:

“And so at last we find ourselves standing in that one room in La Hague, the place where the French keep all the nuclear waste from 25 years of producing 80 percent of their electricity beneath the floor. I have thought about this room for months. Now I am standing in it.

It is a bit larger than I imagined. Somehow I had seen it as about the size of a small visitors center. Instead it is more like a large basketball gymnasium. Still, it’s one large room. In the floor there are about 40 manhole covers stenciled with Areva’s triangular logo. All are so tightly sealed with no visible handles it seems impossible they could ever be removed.

They’re magnetized, Naugnot explains. He points to the ceiling. See this large how do you say it in English.

Gantry?

Yes, gantry. There’s a magnetized crane that removes them. Inside the plug there’s another cap with handles. The crane can grasp them as well. The canisters are very small. There’s room for six in each ring. They’re stacked six-deep beneath the floor. The total material stored here for each French citizen is ten grams about the weight of a two-Euro coin.

And that’s it, the sum total of what the French call les dechets their nuclear waste. Even this storage is only temporary. The material can be retrieved any time the French Parliament decides that recycling of more radioactive isotopes is economical. The entire environmental footprint of 25 years of producing the France’s electricity, the equivalent of all those sulfur sludge piles and billions of tons of carbon dioxide hurled into the atmosphere is right here beneath my feet. The French have proved in practice what we can only say in theory – there is no such thing as nuclear waste.”

Finally, nuclear reactor design has come a long way since those placed into operation in the United States back in the 60’s and 70’s. The Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear plant has 10 times the efficiency of plants in operation today.

If we really believed tnat nuclear energy was bad, we wouldn’t be sponsoring its use in the United Arab Emirates, now would we?