Nuclear Energy: Safe, Clean, Cheap ...?

I have three problems with nuclear energy:

1. Waste. This will be incredibly deadly for a period of time longer than the human race's existence. The very idea of burying our nuclear waste and thereby keeping it safe from the curiosity of future humans... or other future life form... or geology... is ludicrous.

2. Safety. Nuclear power plants are designed by, engineered by, built by, regulated by, and operated by humans. Therefore the possiblity of failure is possible at all levels. As Chernobyl proved, failure can be deadly or worse and for a very long time.

3. Expense. Even if we don't include the increasing cost and danger of stored waste (which is monstrous and exponentially increasing with time), even if we don't do that, nuclear power is phenomenally expensive. Add the incredible amount of energy used and environmental destruction wreaked just to create the fuel with the incredible expense of creating this incredibly complex machine and the unmeasurable expense of accidents and waste leaks and it equals "more expensive than is affordable."

It all boils down to not liking it. Burning coal is very bad in the short term, but at our present useage we will run out of coal long before our nuclear fuel will no longer be deadly. For that matter we will probably run out of all combustible materials on this planet before our nuclear waste is no longer toxic.

We must find a way to use the massive forces around us that we can tap as wind, hydro, and tide. We also must constrain the human population as we're pressing the planet to its limits right now, imagine it in 500 years! Everything boils down to too many humans and too small a planet for all of them.