"Plus, there are thorny issues like how to dispose of radioactive waste and how to decommission old plants."

The fact is, we're creating tremendous amounts of potentially dangerous waste and we have no long-term plan, much less the technology to pull it off. We don't know what the political situation will be in a country 500 years from now. If we put 1/100th of the money that we put into dangerous technologies and subsidizing fossil fuels and put them into renewables, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Germany is on track to be 100% renewable by 2020. Including solar. And they are not exactly known for their excess of sun.