But of course we can't look into the future. But we do know safe storage for such durations is not yet figured out. It's externalising the problem to the future. Just like CO2, but on a much longer timeframe. Still not very ethical though IMO.
isn't that a common misconception though? Relatively the waste amount by volume is incredibly miniscule. I'm sure by 3022 we can figure out how to shoot it into space or something - that's a very very long time.
And really we're already too late to prevent most of climate change. Especially because we won't replace fossil with nuclear in 10 years time.
That's how anything works, though. You replace the giant bleeding wound with a bandaid, and then you take it off and there's a scab, and then the scab goes away and you have a scar. It's always about replacing something with a lesser problem. For the past few years people have been trying to replace fossils with imaginary clean power, and it hasn't exactly gone great.
There's nothing interesting (e.g. terrorism, bombs) you can do with nuclear waste, and it's not especially poisonous.
If you just loaded it up in barrels and dropped it at the bottom of the ocean, what's the worst that could happen?
Sure, some fish would die, but where are the millions of deaths?
LOL. Nuclear materials, including waste, are extremely dangerous in evil hands. It regularly kills people by accident or due to negligence. Chornobyl was an accident. Just imagine what a team of motivated people with evil intent can do with a nuclear station or nuclear waste. Last attempt to use nuclear waste in war was in 2015: Russia-backed terrorist planed to use radioactive waste (Kyshtym) to throw a dirty bomb at Kyiv.
There's an inverse relationship here with the half-life. The most dangerous waste is stuff that burns up in a few decades, the type that lasts for millions will emit very little radiation per unit time.
Most waste is processed so its for example sealed into some kind of material prior to burial. So recovery of the radioactive portion, concentrating and refining it etc would be a pretty major undertaking.
You may also be confusing the long radiation stuff with high radiation stuff.
Risks and long term effects of nuclear is few order of magnitude larger than solar.
Also, the problem with radioactive materials is that they damage the containers they're stored in over time. It's called radiation embrittlement.
When you see volcanoes, earthquakes, and hot springs in action, that's the power of radiation. All of it.
The earth's core is just still hot from when it was formed. It's not being heated by an internal nuclear reaction.