nuclear is far cleaner than coal, has less impact on the environment than geothermal or hydroelectric, and newer reactor designs (ie: thorium salt) can even use the waste uranium/plutonium of a traditional reactor, but there are a number of issues with nuclear as you have listed.

renewable/sustainable power sources have their own issues though - solar is "clean" but basically useless at night or if there is heavy cloud cover (and the manufacturing process requires a lot of chemicals), wind turbines are also "clean" but do nothing if there is no wind, hydroelectric has the same issue and it also requires a reservoir/lake, ruining hundreds/thousands of acres of habitat (some would say changing the habitat, but it's underwater now), and geothermal is not widely available due to geography - it may have the lowest impact of all of the preceding options.

ANY and ALL energy generation sources are required though - we're only 0.6 on the Kardashev scale, after all.