I don´t know how it is handled in other countries, but here in germany nuclear power is not cheap. It seems to, when looking at the bill. But when you take into account all the money that has to be paid via taxes, then it´s not cheap at all. And until now they still don´t know where to put the radiating waste. I mean, thats almost like building a plane without possibility to land and then say, well, somewhere up in the air we will for sure have a great idea how to land.
I personally think that in theory it should be possible to build safe nuclear plants. But here are two reasons, why this won´t happen:
1) people that plan, build and work at those plants
2) companies that want to maximize their wins
Because of those two points you will never get a safe nuclear plant.
I just hope that they can stopp the catastrophe in Japan. They had enough to suffer from the earthquake.