This started off as a reply to a recent comment in another diary, but it became so long, that I thought that it was better served as its own diary entry.  The answer is after the fold.

And you must have been a good little state, because you have received something much better than a lump of coal.

Santa came a month early this year in the form of an Early Site Permit (ESP) for the North Anna Power Station. Proponents of clean energy and opponents of coal and mountain-top removal should be celebrating this announcement. This is the first step in bringing more clean energy (Virginia gets approximately 38% of it's electricity from nuclear, compared with about 47% from coal) to the state.

An article this week in the Boston Globe answers this question with a definite yes, or at least, a definite oui.

Just say 'oui' to nuclear power

While global warming is positioned to be a hot issue in the 2008 presidential election, the candidates must face directly the one large-scale means of providing carbon-free electric power: nuclear energy. Candidates in both parties should swallow hard and confess that the United States must take steps that they find difficult. For Democrats, that means acknowledging that we need more nuclear power and that we must do something with the waste. ...

So why do we need more nuclear power?

Dr. John W. Gofman passed away this month.

Dr. John W. Gofman, a nuclear chemist and doctor who in the 1960s heightened public concerns about exposure to low-level radiation and became a leading voice against commercial nuclear power, died on Aug. 15 at his home in San Francisco. He was 88.

And so, another footnote of history passes into oblivion.

Sigh ...