Nuclear power presupposes a competent and responsible society continuously from now until the distant future. Now look at Japan: no other society was better prepared for disaster, and still they came very close to a catastrophic nuclear disaster. Then look at all the other countries in the world w/ nuclear power, and project their histories forward 100 years. How many will experience a civil war? An external war? regulatory incompetence? etc. The chance of a catastrophic disaster somewhere, sometime, is 100%.
You can apply that same logic to any potentially dangerous industrial technology. And yet, for some reason, I don't see people fretting too terribly much about, say, oil drilling technology in irresponsible hands.
