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Looks like those prayers have been answered by the increasing likelyhood of a peak or plateau in world oil production. Finally, emissions will begin to subside by geologic necessity, and alternatives will begin to kick in. Here is the DOE's strategy for replacing the automobile fleet with hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles by the year 2020. The hydrogen will come from very high temperature helium-gas cooled fast spectrum reactors. These reactors utilize uranium over 100 times as efficiently as current reactors, and will be fueled by nuclear waste from current LWR reactors. Uranium is an abundent, abiotic mineral in the earth's crust, and exists in abundance even in seawater.
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/genIvFastReactorRptToCongressDec2006.pdf
Look, I don't want to upset any of the doomers here, but this is supposed to be a "discussions about energy and our future" site, not dieoff.com
It's far, far, cheaper to build fast reactors using enriched uranium. The accidental pollution cost of attempting to use old, radioactive, PWR fuel rods is horrendous. The financial cost is almost as bad as the security issues.
Specify helium and you run into availability issues. Argon is a byproduct of nitrogen fixation plants. We aren't going to run out of argon. Helium leaks into and out of everything. And if you are running a fast neutron reactor, thermal absorbtion is not a significant factor for gas coolant. Helium gas does have a lower viscosity and that reduces pumping power.
The good news is that the Chinese government will build sensible systems. They don't care what the political types in America and France will back. If we want to do something dumb, that's our decision.
Do you have any stats to back up these dubious claims?