Don't worry too much. The belief that nuclear energy will turn us into masters of the universe is an index fossil of the 1950s. This FAQ won't outlive the baby boomers who came up with it, all of whom were presumably raised on too many My Friend the Atom filmstrips and not enough Mad magazines.

When I was a kid I had a sort of Popular Science-y book from the early sixties that talked excitedly about the plans to dig the second Panama Canal by using underground nuclear blasts. Even as an eight-year-old I knew that this was a hilarious anachronism.