The way I nuderstand it, each value is emitted by a sequence only ONCE. If you retrieve a number (say 12) from a sequence using nextval(), the sequence will advance and subsequent calls to nextval() will return further numbers (after 12) in the sequence.
This means that if you use nextval() to retrieve a value to use as a primary key, you can be guaranteed that no other calls to nextval() on that sequence will return the same value. No race conditions, no transactions required.
That's what sequences are *for* afaik :^)
