As a former systems engineer for a now-defunct photovoltaics house, my bias is certainly toward renewables. But I can also do a cost-benefit analysis, and I know that the only way right now to generate enough power to keep our world going without strangling ourselves on burning petroleum is nuclear fission.

Of course waste storage and storage is a difficulty with nuclear power, but it pales in comparison to the damage caused to Earth by drilling, transporting, storing, and burning fossil fuels. Engineers know that there is no perfect answer to any engineering problem; our job is to take the "least worst" and run with it until something better comes along.

I'd like to point out, not what nuclear power will do, but what it WON'T do:

It WON'T release megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change;

It WON'T damage old-growth forest vegetation with acid rain;

It WON'T destroy a major marine ecosystem if a ship carrying uranium ore goes aground; and most importantly...

It WON'T force us to choose between destroying our own northland by drilling -- and buying oil from people who don't like us very much, pushing our balance of trade deficit sky-high, and being the underpinning of our unfortunate and dangerous foreign policies and military adventures in the Mideasst and elsewhere.

Nuclear energy has its problems, but most of them can be met and overcome with sound engineering and careful planning. The same cannot be said of our continued addiction to petroleum.