Yes, I call it a knee jerk reaction, as it is based on fear.

I live almost immediately down wind of one of the oldest operating reactos in the US, Vermont Yankee, and I have the pamphlet on evacuation and the pills and all the other stuff. Yankee also is noticable for having misinventoried spent fuel in thier pool last year, and that material was "lost" until a full accounting was conducted.

It is medically accepted (and common sense supports) that several thousand people die every year from cancer and respritory illnesses brought about by burning coal, nat gas and oil for electricity. Add in the people who's lives are handicapped by extreme asthma, and those who's cancer goes into remission.

Contrast that to the few tens of thousands who are killed or sickened when a reactor has a major release. How often has that happened? Chernobyl is the only major accident that was not contained that I know of. Three Mile Island, the Fermi plant outside of detroit, the British one about 10-15 years ago, those were mostly contained. Was there a release of gas? Yes. Was the quantity and intensity of radioactive materials about the same as what a coal-fired plant spews out yearly? Yep.

Nuclear fission isn't THE ANSWER (tm). There is no THE ANSWER (tm). The waste is a major concern. No argueement. The feds need to get thier thumbs out and activate the Yucca Mountain facility. Will it be dangerous material a couple of mellenia from now? Yes. And by then, we will either all be dead of some plague or we will have fussion worked out. Maybe we'll even figure out how to use the old fuel for the fussion reactors. At the same time, they will be mining what was once landfills for metals.

But I can also comment on solar cells- unless you live in the desert, there aren't too many ways of making them reliable in the near future. Thier efficency is lousy, but hey, it is free energy; you get what pay for. Of course, if you don't live in the desert, and you are used to going a week, 10 days, without seeing a half clear sky, then you aren't going to be a big fan of solar.

As for wind, you said it yourself: the viewcologists don't like them, to niffliehm with the ecology. My ala matter has one (1) windmill that was designed and built by students and keeps and expansion to the farm powered 24-7. You can't see it a mile away. But someone with a lot of money who moved up to Vermont from the city and lives about 4 miles away, at the other end of the valley, tried to keep the rig from being built. :P