While germany is getting out of nuclear power altogether... their "Energiewende" plan is very ambitious but i wonder if its not better to invest into nuclear power to make it saver instead of getting rid of it completely. I dont know much about it though, what do experts think?
Nuclear power is just too expensive for an economy. Nuclear power is limited, there is just not endless amount of uranium on the planet. Also globally nuclear power is pointless, IIRC nuclear power has a global market share of 6% for primary energy. Too believe it could solve our energy needs sounds weird to me.
Also nuclear power is inefficient. Efficiency is usually way below 50%, since nuclear power plants are far away from anything you can't usually use the heat an nuclear power plant produce for anything productive, so it's lost.
But of course there are new and better plants in development, they are safer and bigger and produce less waste. But the old plants still exist. You can't replace them within a few years, it takes decades. And the costs for such a programme will be very high.
Since 2005, there is a nuclear power plant being build in Finland, called Olkiluoto III. The reactor was priced at three billion euros, currently the price increased to about six billion. The reactor might go online in 2015, a decade after the construction started.
The reactor will provide 1600 MW of electrical power. For comparison, in 2011 alone wind power plants were build with the combined power of 9600 MW (Europe wide, Germany about 2000 MW, GB about 1300 MW).
I know, this is not directly comparable but it gives you a hint, that you could have easily get the 1600 MW in ten years with renewable sources.
Nuclear power might be an interesting technology, but for me it is just a steam machine, which leaves a huge pile of waste behind. Nobody knows how to handle it, and people got it wrong. Search for Asse II if you want to know more about it. For Germany it will be very hard to find a safe final deposit for all the nuclear waste.