Over at the Center for American Progress, Daniel Weiss makes a fair point that McCain's plan to build 100 new nuclear plants would not only be hugely expensive, but could keep us in hock to countries that, as the man says, "don't like us very much." We already import more than 90 percent of our uranium, and while a great deal of that comes from Canada, almost one-third comes from Russia. By some estimates, if this much-anticipated global nuclear renaissance does end up happening, then Russia will supply 45 percent of the world's uranium by 2030.
Anyway, this hardly strikes me as a decisive argument against going on a nuclear binge (the fact that there are cheaper ways to get off fossil fuels seems much, much more relevant), but it does underscore the notion that "energy independence" can be a fuzzier goal than it seems at first blush.
--Bradford Plumer