Why not hey
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2005/February/Thenuclearsolution.asp
This article briefly summarises the problem with our current energy situation and the potential solutions that are already available to us. My opinion is that electricity should be readily available in whatever quantity is required. Conserving electricity is a flawed plan that is neccessary to minimise the side effects of electricity generation. If you minimise or even eliminate the side effects, then electricity generation can be scaled up to whatever level is required to meet demand. This in turn will present excellent solutions to many other resource problems the world is facing. For example, as has been stated earlier in this thread, the water shortage can be solved with desalination plants, which an abundant electricity supply would easily allow. The dependence on fossil fuels for powering vehicles could be eliminated through the use of hydrogen as an energy vector. Hydrogen is an energy vector because it requires more energy to produce it than is gained through its combustion. An abundant electricity supply would allow electrolysis of water on a large scale to produce hydrogen on a scale that could supply a percentage of fuel for the automotive market, and potentially in the long term, completely eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels.
For all these things to occur, a source of electricity is required which is clean, cost effective, and safe. Events in history that have occured as a result of experimentation and implementation of nuclear energy have left people worldwide with a bitter taste in their mouths, and as a result, nuclear power has an extremely powerful negative reputation.
The first and possibly most obvious reason for this stigma is that the scientific principles that allow for the creation of nuclear weapons, the destructiveness of which was seen during the second world war, are also used in nuclear power.
Individually, people are very intelligent, but as a society, reputation and opinion, no matter how well proven to be false, are almost always going to dictate the outcome of any decisions that affect the general public. People automatically assosciate the massive destruction caused by the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan with every nuclear power plant around the world, and often even the word 'nuclear' itself.
Reinforcing the negative stigma that nuclear power has endured are the two largest nuclear accidents in history. On April 26th 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukraine suffered from a power surge which resulted in a catastrophic explosion in one of the four reactors. The explosion damaged the reactor building to such an extent that the highly radioactive core of the reactor was exposed to the atmosphere and highly radioactive debris from the explosion was scattered over the landscape. The official death toll from this disaster is 56, but thousands have died since as a result of the radiation that covered the area for miles. Chernobyl to this day is uninhabitable, and will be for hundreds and possibly thousands of years.
Although the massive catastrophe surrounding the event has stuck in the minds of people worldwide, they usually forget, or do not know, that the Chernobyl accident was caused by a series of problems. Firstly, the design of the reactor involved highly radioactive graphite tips on the control rods that are inserted into the reactor to slow down the reaction. When the rods are inserted into the reactor, the graphite tips actually cause a brief power surge.
This fundamental flaw was hidden from all but the top echelon of government, for fear at the time (during the cold war) that this information could be used against the Ukraine. The chain of events that caused the explosion began with a routine test of the reactor in the middle of the night. The staff on duty violated procedure and performed the test with far too few control rods inserted into the reactor. When the power output climbed to a dangerous level, a master shut down switch was pushed. All control rods were supposed to then drop fully into the reactor, completely shutting it down. Due to there being too few control rods in the reactor, as the rods dropped, the graphite tips actually accelerated the nuclear reaction, causing a massive power surge and then the explosion that destroyed the reactor building.
You can read more about the accident at Chernobyl here:
http://www.chernobyl.co.uk/
The second major nuclear accident occured at Three Mile Island in the USA. A major loss off coolant incident resulted in core meltdown, but due to the large concrete containment structure surrounding the reactor, no fatalities occured and no radiation was released into the atmosphere.
You can read about it here:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html
Modern nuclear reactors are designed to entirely eliminate the possibility of human error and even mechanical failure. They rely on the very laws of physics, such as gravity and the moderating effect that water has on the reactor, to ensure that even if a deliberate attempt was made to destroy the reactor, it could never occur. As an added measure of security, all reactors are housed in a thick concrete containment building, preventing any radioactive material from leaving the plant.
Few people realise that the coal industry records hundreds of fatalities each year as miners die when coal mines collapse. Nuclear power, when the facts are carefully examined, is far safer than most other forms of electricity generation. There is a fantastic article about it here:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip14.htm