I'd hope to. Sure we have 200 years o deposits left, but I prefer something that isn' so polluting and has the potential for underground fires.

Solar is an attractive match for the typical daytime load increase of about 50% above the overnight constant load. My hunch is that most of that increased daytime load is currently handled by gas and hydro, since those are easier to turn up and down, rather than coal. I know France (back to that!) uses their nuclear power to load-follow.

"The US has forgotten how to build [nuclear reactors]."
This looks like a job for France!

France uses Canadian nuclear reactors.

Solar is less effective in winter and doesn't work at all at night.... You need something else to pick up the slack.

Exactly, pick up the slack! The idea isn't to completely replace coal. The idea is to reduce consumption of it, make it a secondary power source. While solar cells suck, one of the biggest uses of electricity is heating water (and homes). If we improve capture of solar energy and convert it into heating, there really aren't inefficiencies anymore; it's a 1:1 reduction in our electricity* consumption, which primarily comes from burning coal. Combine this with a concentrated effort to reduce energy use, and the effects from coal will be drastically cut back.

*Natural gas is used for this purpose too, but giving up natural gas for solar is still a good trade.

Actually, why should we be forced to wear seatbelts? I don't think this is a very good analogy -- If I am unable to wear a seat-belt, am I safer in a crash if the other driver is wearing one?

Actually you are. In a crash the seatbelt will keep them in one place rather than throwing them around the vehicle where they will increase the likelyhood that you are hurt. In particular a backseat passenger with out a seatbelt can be thrown into the back of your head, killing both of you.

What the... smokers are more likely to work at a nuclear plant?

Heh, Samuel, I dunno, it's this paragraph on the third page (p78):

Indirect analyses of the possible confounding effect of smoking yielded excess relative risks that ranged between 0.59 per Sv ( −0.29 to 1.70) for all cancers excluding leukaemia and lung and pleural cancer, and 0.91 per Sv ( −0.11 to 2.21) for smoking related cancers

Because the confidence intervals include zero, the effect is not statistically significant. Maybe it's those darned Canucks, smoking like crazy to keep the cold out. The study period reaches back into the fifties so anything is possible.

I think that is more a testament to shitty high school education.

"The US has forgotten how to build them."

This looks like a job for France!

"Of course, we could always just use less, and use it more efficiently (de-suburbanization, better public transit, etc), which would mean less baseline and less coal/gas/nuke/whatever. Naw. That's ridiculous. UnAmerican, frankly."

We actually are reducing energy usage per person. Note that the solutions you propose don't affect electricity usage- they are gasoline only.

"Are there any engineers out there to explain how an intelligent designer would solve this problem?"

Just tell me what you are willing to give up and I can tell you what you can get. NIMBY? Clean Air? Cheapness?

"And that's if there's any effect at all: once smoking is corrected for, the effects are no longer statistically significant."

What the... smokers are more likely to work at a nuclear plant?

"Why don't you think solar, wind and tide power are viable alternatives?"

Modusoperandi

As complementary power, yes, but they're too unreliable for baseline (the power that you need all the time). Solar is less effective in winter and doesn't work at all at night, wind power varies with both weather and seasons, alternate fuels tend to grow best in the same places that your food does, tidal doesn't work in Kansas, etc. You need something else to pick up the slack, hydro-electric is pretty much played out (most of the big rivers already got 'em) and hydro-thermal only works if you're willing to put up with Bjork.
Nuclear, while its waste is very bad, has compact waste vs coal's "everywhere" waste. Good luck with nukes, though. The US has forgotten how to build them.

Are there any engineers out there to explain how an intelligent designer would solve this problem?

I found a publicly available article on the 15-country study here (pdf). One rather unprofessional aspect is the willingness to draw conclusions based on non-significant trends, so I will return the favor by noting that the non-significant trend for US nuclear power-plant workers is towards less cancers, not more. The Canadian contribution is what takes the overall result into actual significance overall, which suggests to me that something different is happening either in the processes or the definitions in that country.

The typical result of studies on workers exposed to low-dose radiation is that there is no effect. A study of Navy shipyard workers (pdf) who were allocated to work on nuclear or non-nuclear boats even showed a low-dose benefit, with strong statistical significance.