Hi,
your concerns arent new and we discussed it already in the nuke-newsgroup.
go visit nuke.throb.net for a closer look and be sure that you will join the newsgroup if you are interested in more.
I asked about the Furnace-plugins because of a degraining tool and the official reply i quote hereafter:
[D2 Software and The Foundry are currently testing the Furnace, Tinder and Keylight plug-ins with the latest versions of NUKE. Things are going quite well and we are hoping to have a new release of NUKE with the OFX plug-in capability released around NAB timeframe]
Bob Kilduff
D2 Software / Digital Domain
About the change of the keyer i don’t know either but an unofficial source was talking about an [internal keyer as good as Primatte].
Again, this is just rumortalking but i am sure that when NAB comes there will be some exciting news about nuke… hopefully.