Utilities Voted: "Nuclear Energy Best Investment to Meet Environmental Requirements"

That's according to Black & Veatch's latest annual survey to electric utilities (pdf). Here are the highlights:

Continuing the survey trend from past years, utility personnel believe strongly that nuclear energy is the best investment to meet environmental requirements. Nuclear demonstrated not only the highest level of support this year (77% of all respondents and 80% of all IOUs), but also a sustained increase in the level of support over the three years of the survey. While nuclear remains the preferred technology within the industry, it continues to meet considerable resistance among environmental and political groups making such investments difficult for utilities.

Wind and solar rank second and third as preferred technologies: 56% and 54%, respectively. Wind has retained its relative ranking over the 2006 to 2008 period, while interest in solar has accelerated rapidly. While not at significant levels, interest in tidal resources has also increased substantially over the last three years. Interest in coal gasification has lost ground, dropping from 22% in 2006 to approximately 10% in 2008. - p. 59

Now if we could only convince the public...