It was a close call: there were exactly
0 major injuries from TMI despite a nearly perfect storm that included a
series of both human and mechanical failures. Even still the safety
systems worked and prevented a disaster.

That aside there are still TMI-style reactors still in service but no one
is advocating building any more and the ones still in use are much more
heavily regulated and monitored than they were back then. Modern units,
such as pebble bed reactors, are designed so that even a complete loss of
cooling causes the chain reaction to shut down, not melt down. Even a
cascade of catastrophic failures will not cause a melt-down. Look at all
of the reactors running in Europe and Japan, whose regulations are as
tight as ours (as opposed to the XSSR) and the safety record is nearly
perfect. When was the last melt-down or even injury-causing accident?

Over the last seven years "terrorism" has become a massive scare tactic in
the US. (And this is coming from someone who lived in DC in 2001 and
lives in NYC now) Every analysis has shown that there is nothing a
terrorist can do to damage a reactor enough to cause a containment leak
especially in a newer design. The older reactors are not going away as
much as some may want them to so building new facilities won't further
increase our risk. As for theft of material it would be a hell of a lot
easier in Pakistan, Iran, Russia, etc than here so - again - additional
reactors here do not increase our risk.

And Chernobyl isn't a reasonable comparison. The design and regulation of
the facility were so far removed from anything in the West that using it
as an example against nuclear power here is just silly. It's like saying
that because the Wright Brothers plane crashed and killed one of them we
shouldn't allow 777s to fly. (Yes, I know that 777s can crash and kill
people - it's an analogy but not a perfect one and they're vastly safer
than cars. :-))

Don't get me wrong, nuclear isn't the only answer, but solar, hydro and
wind can't supply all of the power the US needs unless the population cuts
consumption on the order of 50% (never-mind growth) which we all know isn't
realistic.

As with everything else it's a trade-off.