Climate Change: Should we consider the nuclear option?

Last week I wrote that "Part of stopping climate change is allowing for the time needed to create working, safe solutions into how we approach complex problems,"

...like, for instance, how we phase out coal, the fuel that supplies fully half our electricity, when we still lack good solutions to energy storage that would make solar, wind, and other renewables as stable and continuous.

Even in this sphere, where activists and policy makers to seem to grasp some complexity (it seems increasingly common to hear of increasing efficiency, and modernizing and upgrading the power grid, in concert with changing our power sources), there's still narrow thinking -- such as ruling nuclear power as a bridge technology to carbon-free energy.

Natasha Chart answered back thoughtfullyt in the comments that nuclear's potential "really depends on what type of nuclear energy, how much it's going to cost, and what it's being sold as..."

Nuclear power is incredibly expensive, we don't have anywhere to put the waste of conventional plants, it use a lot of water, the plants take about 10 years to build and - this is the kicker, imo - it doesn't seem that the power companies who are interested in allowing the gov't to subsidize their loans have anything in mind but the mammoth conventional plants that have all these problems.

In theory nuclear might be a good bridge technology. In practice, its implementation will probably be authorized by jerks with no *ing imagination, and not some forward thinking, cutting edge physicist with a great plan for small scale pebble bed reactors...I can't consider nuclear a serious, or feasible, solution at this time. Is there something I'm missing here?

I have the same question as Natasha: Is there something I'm missing here, in keeping the nuclear option open? Are the costs totally intractable? Does the lengthy time it takes to build new plants make nuclear unworkable as bridge technology between coal and renewables?

Nuclear waste v. destabilized climate: Is it possible to choose?

Image: "This picture shows the nuclear reactor core of a Triga research reactor. Cherenkov radiation from the fuel rods is clearly visible. The ordinary water between the core and the photographer provides quite enough protection from the radiation of the core." [[Really???]] Source: Department of Energy, via Wikimedia Commons.