In my opinion, water vapor is THE root cause for global warming. Nuclear powerplants release 50% more water vapor than regular powerplants, due to their design. Hence they are THE part of global warming problem , NOT THE SOLUTION.

In the present agriculture, for each 1 molecule of CO2 fixed, 100s of water molecules are released as water vapor. We accumulate more solar energy worldwide solar energy in the form of water vapor.So we have to have rethinking on agriculture (agriculture with water bodies,micro forests etc).

Liquid water handles heat better. We are losing liquid water on land due to Green revolution in agriculture,wrong color for roofs,roads and global warming. We have to restore the balance by accumulating good quality water on land, in order to have some chances of survival.

Dark colored roofs,roads also accumulate more solar energy worldwide solar energy in the form of water vapor,indirectly. So massive whiteroofing,light colors etc can reduce the impact and reverse global warming.
http://green.yahoo.com/ news/ afp/ 20090526/ sc_afp/ climatewarmingusbritainchu.html
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2259127/posts
The above links, indicate that even Nobel laureate, do not think beyond energy saving.

[JR: Never said we "can’t build 700 GW" -- just don't think we will and don't think it makes a lot of sense, if we are trying to adopt a least cost solution and make a transition to cleaner energy sources that don't run out.]

One point I find fascinating about nuclear power is that the nuclear industry itself doesn’t believe it’s own optimistic scenarios. Without the Price-Andersen Act to limit liability, no company in the US would even consider building a nuke.

The liability limit has been raised from a totally laughable $600 million to $9,000 million, but anyone who’s seen the tab for Three Mile Island knows that’s pretty laughable too. There’s a clause in there about the federal government picking up some of the costs beyond that, which means the taxpayer. You.

But even that doesn’t begin to cover the expected expenses of an accident. So who supplies the missing “insurance”? The nuclear companies are not willing to take on that stratospheric level of risk. They expect ordinary citizens to do that. We’re the “insurers” of last resort for the nuclear industry.

Let’s see:

-we’ve been talking about invading and attacking countries (N Korea and Iran) whose “peaceful” nuclear pursuits have proven to be cover for bomb-making. We are rightly worried about the stability of a nuclear-armed Pakistan which used “civilian” reactors to obtain their materials;

AND

-we’ve spent $3 trillion plus, killed 1 million plus, and curtailed civil liberties globally in response to hijacked airplanes damaging massively hardened buildings like the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. What if those planes had been steered into nuclear reactors instead? What other values would we now propose to sacrifice to pursue a nuclear future?

AND

we’ve seen a major bridge collapse on I-35 in Minneapolis. If something as prosaic as a highway bridge can suffer a major failure, how can a complex nuclear construction program not fail to produce more accidents?

Since nuclear is NOT economical compared to the current fossil fueled options for electricity, transportation, and heating, one wonders at the rush for construction.

We know solar, wind, and other renewables work, so we are implicitly judging that the current economic cost of these more benign options is the reason to choose nuclear over them.

We are implicitly saying that money is the reason to inflict cancer and genetic defects on current and future generations as well as the risks of nuclear proliferation, accidents, and terrorism.

Setting aside ANY new supply options, there is also the choice of simply using less energy rather than impose the health costs of nuclear on future generations.

If greater efficiency or outright curtailment of energy use are more economical than ANY new energy supply options, then why the “need” to create nuclear waste that will have to be managed for time spans 100 times longer than human civilization so far? Is it moral to impose these costs on future generations compared to simply reducing our energy use? What gives us the right to impose these costs on those that have no voice?

Does it make sense to infinitely expand energy consumption, like a glutton going from 3 meals a day to 300? At some point, growth will have to stop. It is plain insanity to say we must turn the world into a nuclear trash heap in order to keep on growing population, industry, and personal consumption ad infinitum.

It is crackpot realism to say the world must grow to have a population of 20 billion billionaires in order for us to be happy, secure, and fulfilled. It is nihilistic and vain to say nuclear is the only way forward.

1) Global climate change is real, and we are quickly approaching various thresholds beyond which our ability to reverse, or even to modify, current trends will not be sufficient;

2) The worst things we are doing now (oil, coal) will go on making the problem worse unless better things become available on a global basis as soon as possible;

3) Better things (solar, wind) are happening already and can be expected to get better given adequate research and investment;

4) Things (solar, wind) that everyone agrees are good, or at least very much better than fossil fuels, may not progress and become available on a global basis soon enough to reduce global carbon emissions below critical threshold levels;

5) Therefore, it makes quite a lot of sense to invest in the research needed to figure out how to make nuclear power available safely and affordably, in case it is needed, if the other sources people like more than nuclear prove inadequate to prevent overshooting critical thresholds;

6) It is reasonable to question whether investment in nuclear R&D might deprive or delay the efforts we must make on other alternative energy sources, or give us a false sense of security. Such a question could probably be answered by knowledgeable people.

7) Finally, however, it is simply not reasonable to regard safe, affordable nuclear technology as chimerical, as unmentionable, even as somehow sinful. Safe nuclear options may turn out to be unfeasible. They may turn out to be unnecessary. But we should not regard the very idea of nuclear energy as some kind of intellectual kryptonite to be avoided under any and all circumstances. What’s to be avoided are emotional and dogmatic rejections of any proposals that might get us into the next half-century with better prospects than we have now.

A serious part of the equation that’s missing from your list is the immense amount of energy and waste that results from mining fissionable materials. This is not a minor part of the equation. Take into account the environmental destruction caused by mines and the carbon emissions from the vehicles and machinery needed to process the raw materials, and you end up with a significant addition to the total cost of ownership.

On top of that, nuclear power plants encourage centralized power sources when we should be doing anything and everything in DE-centralization so that no one failure can take out large areas of grid (especially failures that could potentially irradiate the environment and cause yet more destruction).

This is very strongly true.

http://www.ucsusa.org/ assets/ documents/ nuclear_power/ nuclear-power-in-a-warming-world.pdf