Hansen goes nuclear and I agree

"clean air, water, and soil are essential to life"

I agree completely, and further that they (vexingly) become more essential with population increases. The vexing part is that they become more difficult to provide/maintain with population increases.

I do no agree that they are generally regarded as worthless. However they are severely and irrationally undervalued.

 

I should have been more specific.

It's our economic system that considers them worthless - they're generally not included as part of cost/benefit analyses. Your "severely and irrationally undervalued" covers it, too.

 

Have microreactors been brought up yet in the thread?

Micro nuclear reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Toshiba's seems to be the most along in development.
Toshiba 4S - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

IIRC, one can't typically build nuke weapons, if one doesn't have spent nuke fuel?
.

 

It can be done with an uranium isotope. So you don't need spent fuel. Plutonium just has a bigger bang, and it might be easier to extract from a spent fuel rod than getting the uranium isotope concentrated.