I really think it is a tragedy that nuclear power got such bad PR.  In the U.S., outside of military applications, we really only got 20 or so years of refinements on the technology, before the greens and Three-Mile Island made nuclear power, well, nuclear.  Imagine how much safer and more efficient the technology could have been with forty years more of large-scale investment and attention.<p>20 odd years in aviation only brought us from the Wright Flyer to the Spirit of Saint Louis.  20 odd years of automobiles brought us from the original Benz to the Model T.  20 odd years of computing only brought us from the ENIAC to the Intel 4004.