Nuclear power - Are people waking up???

Great article in the New York City City Journal:

Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power
Your typical city dweller doesn�t know just how much coal and uranium he burns each year. On Lake Shore Drive in Chicago�where the numbers are fairly representative of urban America as a whole�the answer is (roughly): four tons and a few ounces. In round numbers, tons of coal generate about half of the typical city�s electric power; ounces of uranium, about 17 percent; natural gas and hydro take care of the rest. New York is a bit different: an apartment dweller on the Upper West Side substitutes two tons of oil (or the equivalent in natural gas) for Chicago�s four tons of coal. The oil-tons get burned at plants like the huge oil/gas unit in Astoria, Queens. The uranium ounces get split at Indian Point in Westchester, 35 miles north of the city, as well as at the Ginna, Fitzpatrick, and Nine Mile Point units upstate, and at additional plants in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New Hampshire.

The authors (Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills) then go on to notice something very curious about Nuclear Energy:

That�s the stunning thing about nuclear power: tiny quantities of raw material can do so much. A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel-rods that could fit into a two-bedroom apartment in Hell�s Kitchen would power the city for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, everything�even our cars and taxis, if we could conveniently plug them into the grid. True, you don�t want to stack fuel rods in midtown Manhattan; you don�t in fact want to stack them casually on top of one another anywhere. But in suitable reactors, situated, say, 50 miles from the city on a few hundred acres of suitably fortified and well-guarded real estate, two rooms� worth of fuel could electrify it all.

And don't forget that the waste, although it needs care for a long time, is equally small. The waste from powering one large city would fill 1,500 Cu. Ft. or so -- maybe as high as 3,000 but still, a lot less than the square miles of slag and fly-ash dumps that surround coal plants and pollute the groundwater. The article also goes into the economic factors:

Once you�ve got the wheels themselves running on electricity, the basic economics strongly favor getting that electricity from the grid if you can. Burning $2-a-gallon gasoline, the power generated by current hybrid-car engines costs about 35 cents per kilowatt-hour. Many utilities, though, sell off-peak power for much less: 2 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. The nationwide residential price is still only 8.5 cents or so. (Peak rates in Manhattan are higher because of the city�s heavy dependence on oil and gas, but not enough to change the basic arithmetic.) Grid kilowatts are cheaper because cheaper fuels generate them and because utility power plants run a lot more efficiently than car engines.

DUUUHHHH??? And did I forget to mention that Nuke Plants emit no CO2?