Similarly the thorium fuel cycle is a lot clearer, ie. assuming that you can recycle actinide wastes, there is very little radioactivity after the first few hundred years: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/documen...
Finally, if you have waste of any sort that you want to keep away from humans (A large amount of chemical waste would also seem to fit this bill), where else would you put it, aside from the centre of the most geologically stable continent on earth? Thousands of kms from habitation, far from any groundwater, and most likely on a large sheet of granite given the geology of the outback. Assuming it was properly built underground, I can't think of a better place to put it.
Solar power is interesting, but it has two properties which make it less useful then it would first seem.
* First you need to find a place that is very hot and very dry. That generally requires that you move far inland and far north and away from the coastline. This then means that you somehow need to transfer the power to the major cities, which are built almost entirely on the coastline, causing massive amounts of energy loss.
* Secondly on any non-equitorial latitude you have the problem of seasons affecting your baseload capacity. This then means that trying to manage any power grid that derives a substantial amount of its power from solar thermal plants is going to be, well, an interesting problem.
* Finally you will always have the problem of trying to manage these types of power plants, ie. you can't simply "turn up" a solar thermal or photovoltaic plant like you can a gas fired or coal fired plant. This then causes issues when you have a sudden need for power.
Overall though, it is a very interesting source of renewable energy.