Wall Street Journal (subscription):

In three years of operation, a 1,500 MW coal plant will spew three million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — the prime source of the world’s carbon emissions. An identical nuclear reactor will produce only a few bundles of highly radioactive fuel rods that can be safely stored in a nearby storage pool. Yet coal currently pays for none of these environmental damages. A carbon tax of roughly $10 per ton would level the playing field and make nuclear power far more competitive.

The reason building nuclear plants has been expensive and time-consuming is because of exaggerated popular fears of the technology. The public is now coming around. Seventy percent now consider nuclear plants acceptable, meaning new plants will probably not become bogged down in endless court delays.

The only reasonable scenario for avoiding global warming is to substitute nuclear power for coal as our prime source of base-load electricity, supplementing it with wind and solar electricity for our spinning reserve and peaking-power needs.