There's a little bit too much of "I heard", and "someone told me" in this thread, and generally when people are discussing nuclear power.. so here's my thoughts..
I am pro nuclear energy..
As others have mentioned, it is easily the cleanest and most environmentally friendly major energy source (note solar, hydro, geothermal, etc are not major energy sources) in day to day running. Yes the possibility of meltdown does also make it the most dangerous in extreme cricumstances, but tbh the amount of safety involved in these plants is insane. Look at France, they've been using nuclear power as their primary source of electricity for a good 20-30 years now, and there has not been a single incident on the scale of a meltdown. If you factor in the danger of mining coal and the pollution of the surrounding area, I doubt there is much difference in the damage to human life between it and a nuclear plant. And I've ignored the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere there.
That's another thing which annoys me actually, all this "Carbon footprint" bollox.. it's not just carbon dioxide which causes problems for the planet, there's plenty of others which help in the reflecting of heat back towards the earth, for example methane, water vapour, nitric oxide, etc, which are released by coal power plants. Ok water vapour would be released into the air on a large scale by a nuclear plant too.
So that leaves the radioactive waste, which from energy production, has a relatively high half-life. The storage of this material is the biggest problem, but if done correctly, can have almost no impact on the surrounding area, but obviously people fear "the terrorists" etc.. So why not just blast large amounts of nuclear waste in a rocket.. straight into the sun!! the sun then gets free fuel \o/.
K that last bit was a joke, it would probably lessen the sun's lifetime by a tiny fraction of a second
. Also, I doubt anyone would want to put the waste into a rocket in case of a malfunction resulting in a giant radioactive raincloud overhead...
Fusion is an awesome idea, but getting it to work as a viable commercial energy means is another 25-50 years away imo. I've been to JET as well mym, interesting place if you care about the mechanics of particle acceleration.. not very interesting otherwise