Nuclear should be part of energy planning

"Drill, baby, drill” is a fun slogan for those of us who can’t imagine a world without gasoline, and the protests over the Line 3 project cutting through Carlton County show that plenty of people would like to do away with petroleum altogether, as soon as possible. Both extreme positions are wrong, but they each have a point. Our reliance on oil won’t disappear any time soon, but if we don’t start planning for a world without petroleum, we’ll suffer at the unpredictable whims of future oil supply fluctuations.

I compare the problem to the recent avian flu crisis. We eat a lot of eggs for break...