True, as are the other point's I have listed which are as, if not more, likely to influence what actually happens than the politics. It simply doesn't stack up for Australia because of our geography, population and the abundance of other energy sources, but mostly because it's freakin' expensive!
Compare our situation with Switzerland, who have direct democracy and collectively vote for what generation they have. Occasionally there are some murmurings against nuclear. In general the population don't really like it & given the choice would have something else but, given the lack of any natural energy resources of their own and the fact that their population is relatively concentrated, they have collectively decided to stick with it for reasons of cost and energy security that are unique to their own situation. It works for them.
Japan is another case with a democratic government and no natural energy resources. Nuclear was working very well for quite a long time, but it has proved to be somewhat incompatible with the inevitable earthquakes and tsunamis. They have certainly had some issues and are beginning to move away from nuclear. That will take a few decades.
I don't know if the social and economic cost of the Fukushima plants spread over their lifespan would be more or less than it would have been with the equivalent coal or gas capacity - it's far too complicated to work out & any analysis is likely to be skewed one way or another by the terms of reference & methodology having been designed to weight the results one way or another. Nevertheless, the options available to Japan today are very different to when these reactors were commissioned, so looking back over it and wondering if it should have been done differently then doesn't really serve any meaningful purpose now.
Bottom line, energy economics is an incredibly complex area when, on top of the technological challenges, there are all of the indirect costs to consider on so many different levels, the value we might place on various public goods (and bads), the discount rates used, etc, etc. It makes it very difficult to navigate especially while some of us are still arguing over whether the anthropogenic contribution to the composition of the atmosphere is significant. Hard to attribute a cost to something if we can't accept the evidence about what it does, eh?
