There is a lot of back and forth here about the efficacy of nuclear power because of the problems in Japan. For those of you who are leaning toward the proliferation of nukes in the US know this.
The nuclear industry was one of the first to be completely corrupted by the disease that has affected virtually all regulatory agencies in the last 30 years. First, the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) which was supposed to regulate the industry instead became one of the primary boosters of nuclear power in the 1960's. The revolving door was rampant with industry people moving into the AEC and the regulators becoming employees. I worked in the industry for a while and can honestly say at least as much effort was being expended to hide problems as to prevent them. Since 1975 it has become the NRC (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) that has had the responsibility to regulate the industry. To believe that the NRC is anymore effective than the AEC is naive. In fact, with the obvious corruption of the entire energy industry (think BP and Massey Energy) and their regulators one would be stupid to think that safety is really more important than money in the nuclear industry. If anything, GE and others in the industry are more profit driven than ever and that will always trump safety until there is real massive reform in all of the agencies that are supposed to protect us against irresponsible and/or criminal behavior by corporations. Hell, if we can't even get reform in the coal business or the oil industry which in the recent past have shown how negligent they are, what would you expect from the nuclear industry which needs to be failsafe. Just think BP and Secretary Salazar and you can imagine the same sorts of outcomes if and when we resume the building of nuclear powerplants. It isn't the technology that is the problem, it's the unregulated implementation. In fact, I think that nuclear energy could very well be a reasonably safe energy source if it was properly engineered and regulated. But it isn't. Remember the alarms that were deactivated on "deep horizon". If you need a reminder you need to watch the movie "China Syndrome" again, and remember that the technical advisors to that movie were engineers that had worked in the industry and left it after blowing the whistle.
Get ready for the PR campaign by the energy lobby and their captive politicians about how safe nuclear power is. There are some really big companies who want a chunk of that action and they pay their legislators well. Think GE, Stone and Webster, Babcock and Wilcox, etc. McConnell, Shumer, and Alexander who, of course, are US senators are already warning against drawing any conclusions from the Japan debacle because, by gosh, we are different and it couldn't happen here--WTF . But remember while some of our more corrupt politicians are making excuses or minimizing the damage in Japan, that no insurance company in the US will touch the industry and ask yourself why.