Because of all the nuclear plants in Illinois, it would be really hard for Obama to be against nuclear energy. But anyway...

Since coal is expensive to transport, especially with these high oil costs, in some areas with no nearby coal mines nuclear energy is cheaper. The main problem is that all the red tape makes it extremely difficult to build plants.

Cost Comparison - Nuclear vs. Coal

Nuclear waste is fairly dangerous, but if you put it through a breeder reactor, the resulting waste from that isn't nearly as long-lived. Shooting it into space would cost way more than would be worth it. Storing it deep underground in a dry area is safe, but since the waste is dangerous for at least a million years, global weather patterns could change before then. Yucca Mountain was held up because congress said it had to be safe for a million years. Still, I think that a facility that can store waste for a thousand years would be plenty. If we don't have the technology to do something about it before then, we have a lot more than a nuclear waste repository to worry about.

One possibility of disposing nuclear waste is actually pretty cool. What they'd to is bury it in a subduction zone, which is where part of the earth's crust is forced under another part. If you bury it there, the waste only needs to stay sealed for a few thousand years, and then it's forced deep inside the earth.

Wind energy costs about twice as much as coal/nuclear, as does natural gas. Solar energy costs about five times what coal/nuclear does. Also, solar and wind energy can't increase production to meet demand, so they at least need something else to supplement them.

Ultimately, I think our goals for power generation should be nuclear fusion and geothermal energy. Massive amounts of energy can be extracted from either one, and both are very safe. The only problem is, nuclear fusion is so hard to get going and keep going. That's actually kind of a good thing though because if there's a plant failure, the reaction just stops. And the end result is just helium, which isn't radioactive at all.