Interesting that the responders, all with wide-ranging views on the topic, take issue with Dr. Green's overamping her premise at the expense of supporting facts.

Not that Dr. Green's concerns about nuclear energy are not well-founded: it is VERY important that we insist on the absolute best science and engineering in considering to use nuclear technology.

While I applaud and support all efforts to hold the nuclear industry accountable to strict science and safety, Dr. Green gets herself tripped up on some poorly thought-out assumptions, chief of which appears to be that she believes that there is no possible role for nuclear energy to generate electrical power in the future of our civilization.

Despite underlying concerns which she has about nuclear safety, her hypotheses about the economics and trade-offs of the energy sector input/output matrix are sloppy, as all of the previous responders have pointed out in one way or another.

There are certainly hidden costs in any undertaking, such as owning a home, but Dr. Green appears to be the tail wagging the dog in suggesting that either (1) a free market economy with appropriate government leadership and protections is incapable of solving that equation, or alternatively that (2) capitalism is an inherently flawed vehicle of providing long-term social well being, supported perhaps by the claim that the nuclear industry is some form of corrupt racket, propped up by the vested interests of a small number of political and corporate leaders who have managed to pull the wool over all of our eyes and are selling us a load of deadly bricks so that they may prosper in the short-term.

Nuclear energy is not a panacea by any means, but it will sure look more attractive when the planet starts to run out of oil and gas. We should not wait to develop the proper methods to harness and control that source of energy until we are forced to do it in a rushed and hurried fashion under global economic duress, for then we would certainly be inclined to make more errors than with a well-planned approach over time.

Nuclear power belongs to fields of technologies where not speechifying English of inherited skills but sharp to the point engineering knowledge and abilities are required.

For sure, both local graduates of “arts and law or something” and the privileged to upon generations spend taxpayer money on their breeds’ international calls mostly oppose introducing really modern intellect-consuming technologies in British semi-colonies.

One thing that amazes me about most critics of nuclear power is their total lack of differentiating between fission and fusion! This is amplified by people like Donna Green who state that "Nuclear power was not, and never will be, an acceptable technological fix for our energy crisis."

What type of attitude is this? Can Donna honestly stand up and say without shame that in the event of us discovering a useable form of nuclear fusion, that she would never condone its use? And in the horror event that she can not differentiate between the two, how can she even think she has an opinion of any worth.

Although I don't want to get ahead of our current technology I feel very deeply that any and all negative attitude towards "Nuclear Energy" (And of course this really means Nuclear fission) only stifles future R&D towards Nuclear Fusion unless these negative attitudes are directed against the correct form of Nuclear energy they are intended for.

Nuclear lobby groups and so forth should also take greater steps to differentiate between these two technologies in the hope of one day educating the general public that there is a difference, a very BIG difference, and a difference that hopefully one day will carry us through to clean, abundant energy supplies in the future.

P.S. (More noise should also be made about advancements in Laser technology used to speed up radioactive decay. Its these types of things that would make even Nuclear Fission acceptable to the masses)