Read article at:

http://www.greenfutures.org.uk/features/default.asp?id=2479

Some excerpts:
 
Nuclear power is often described as a big, fast, and vital energy option ñ the only practical and proven source big and fast enough to do much to abate climate change. In this view, various 'micropower' and 'negawatt' (electricity saving) alternatives may be accepted as necessary and desirable within a balanced low-carbon electricity mix, but are seen as relatively small, slow, immature, uncertain, and futuristic.

A credulous press accepts this supposed new reality and creates an echo-box to amplify it. Some politicians and opinion leaders endorse it. Yet its vision of a vibrant nuclear power industry, poised for rapid growth and with no serious rivals in sight, is the opposite of the actual reality in that nuclear is a once-significant but now dying industry already fading from the marketplace, overtaken and humbled by swifter rivals.

The more concerned you are about climate change, the more vital it is to invest judiciously, not indiscriminately, in cutting carbon emissions. It is essential to buy the fastest and most effective climate solutions. Nuclear power is just the opposite. Claimed broad ëgreení support for nuclear expansion, if real (which itís not), would therefore be unsound and counterproductive. Efforts to ëreviveí this moribund technology only waste time and money.
 
Not such a big shot

Nuclear power worldwide already has less installed capacity and generates less electricity than renewables and CHP (combined heat and power) together. In 2004, these rivals added nearly three times as much output and six times as much capacity as did nuclear power.

On the demand side, end-use efficiency may well have saved even more electricity and carbon. Most countries donít track it, so it canít be rigorously plotted on the same graph, but clearly itís a large and expanding resource.

These competing technologies are not only being deployed an order of magnitude faster than nuclear power; ultimately they can become far bigger.
 
Catastrophic opportunity cost

Fears of a looming energy gap should not stampede us into irrational decisions. There need be no gap if we adopt sensible strategies. But the sweeping claim that ëwe need every energy technologyí ñ as if we had infinite money and no need to choose ñ cannot withstand analysis. We must choose the best buys first, not last.