@hightor,
I happen to have a lot of knowledge and experience with Nuclear powerplants, both in design and in their operation, and, as well, with high level radioactive waste disposal.
Most of the issues with respect to nuclear power involve far more psychological and fear mongering content than actual risk. The psychological problem arises from extremely low probabilities of large scale damages and risks that are unseen and little understood.
Consider the following;
1. About 15,ooo Japanese people were killed in the tsunami that brought about the Fukushima reactor failures. However there were zero fatalities associated with the reactor accident there - even though the name has come to refer to the nuclear accident exclusively. Based on Japanese government data, the most exposed worker at Fukushima got an external radiation dose of about 2 REM (or 20 Sieverts in the new units). That's about what one would get in a single CAT scan of his torso, or about what everyone gets from natural radiation every five years ( half that if you live in Aspen CO.)
Oddly Japan has a rather poor record of nuclear safety compared to the U.S. and major European users. They've had a couple of criticality events in their fuel reprocessing center and the Fukushima event was a consequence of the lack of vertical elevation for their Emergency diesel generator and coolant supply ( both required in U.S. regulations), and, in addition there was twice the design limit of radioactive spent fuel stored above the two reactors that failed - a fact that contributed significantly to the subsequent failure. I doubt that any utility could get away with anything approaching that here.
2. The public health impact of our Three Mile Island Reactor accident has been determined to have been zero - zero deaths or injuries in the accident and zero detectable impact on public health after thirty years.
3. Chernobyl was a unique event. It was a carbon moderated reactor, designed for the production of plutonium and used collaterally for the production of electrical power. No Western nation has ever allowed the use of such reactors for power generation, because of some vulnerabilities in the physics of their operation. In addition unlike all U.S. French, German, British and even Chinese reactor plants, Chernobyl had no containment structure around the reactor. The Three Mile Island and Fukushima reactor failures involved no fatalities and no long term radiation doses precisely because their required containment structures did the job they were designed for.
4. The capital cost of new reactors here has indeed risen to new heights, but that's largely because the current NRC is run by Nuclear power opponents who have knowingly created a regulatory burden designed expressly to prevent the construction of any new plants. Despite this there were six new plants in the licensing process when the Fukushima disaster made these investments too risky. Interestingly the operating costs for existing reactor plants in this country are a good deal lower than those for equivalent coal plants. As a result, through 2010 at least (Last time I checked), the then 95 plants operating here have a long-term average capacity factor (= actual power output over a year's time as a % of their theoretical output on a continuous 24/7 operating basis) of over 90%, including shutdowns for refueling or maintenance. In comparison our coal plants averaged less than 60%. partly because they were preferentially throttled back or shut down during periods of low demand because of their relatively higher fuel costs. Wind and Solar plants are limited to about 34% because the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine all the time. Interestingly the propaganda about their output ignores this altogether, citing only the maximum installed capacity for these sources.
5.Our nuclear power generating industry has the best long-term OSHA record for worker and public safety of any large industrial establishment in the nation.
6. The spent fuel issue is a solvable problem from both economic and safety perspectives. All the high level nuclear waste generated for nuclear power generation in this country since 1950 would fill a football field (including end zones) about 5 Ft deep - hardly an intractable problem. My company recently completed a large scale asbestos-impacted soil removal action at a site in Oregon. We removed enough soil in that one to fill the same football field to 180 Ft. (then times 2 for backfill). Additionally the amount of high level waste is proportional to the mass of fuel in the reactor - higher concentrations of U-235 mean less total mass of fuel and less high level waste. Natural uranium is about 0.56% U 235. Our commercial reactors use fuel enriched to between 6% and 9% U-235, and have several tons of reactor fuel. U.S. Naval reactors use fuel with nearly 100% U-235 and require a much reduced fuel mass as a result. The reactors in the GHW Bush, our newest aircraft carrier, are fueled by about 600Kg of U-235, and are good for the entire 50 year service life of the ship, without refueling ! They generate very little radioactive waste. The point here is that by using more highly enriched fuel we can eliminate most of the high level waste issue entirely. Unfortunately 35 years ago Jimmy Carter got us out of the industrial scale Uranium enrichment business due to his obsessive fears about proliferation. We exited the market and the UK, France, Japan and Russia immediately replaced us - an idiotic situation that continues today.
7. The Yucca Mountain waste repository was killed by Sen. Harry Reid after meeting all design requirements and just before its scheduled opening ( with Obama's willing consent). Interestingly Sen Reid had been a strong proponent of Yucca Mtn. ( which is located in the middle of the former Nuclear Weapons Test Site in Nevada) for 20 years during its development and construction. I had personal encounters with him in the mid 1990s in which he forcefully expressed his strong support for the Project and threatened any who would oppose the several billion annual budget expenditure for the project, which employed many people in Nevada. In response the Nuclear utilities, which had paid for the project in special taxes. sued and got their $50 billion back. A very interesting story.
8. New, in hand, advanced modular reactor designs, permitting off site assembly, and with advanced safety features (Fukushima and TMI type failures would be eliminated entirely) promise significantly reduced capital costs and the further reduction of already very low operating costs (only dams and compound cycle gas turbine plants are cheaper to operate on a per unit of energy produced basis. In contract wind and solar are very expensive, requiring Federal subsidies to compete even with coal.
9. Finally we have enough stored fuel to meet the country's power needs for a century and uranium is an abundant ubiquitous mineral world wide.