Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters.
Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem like a massive problem.
This is just hyperbole though. All the other arguments aside, it's perfectly possible for humans to plan, and make risk estimates, beyond a human life span.
I think a small pile of hot rubbish well hidden is the least of our problems
Just keep the waste on site and then, if a plant is decommissioned, add it to another reactor's pile.
It's not a permanent solution for millions of years, but it's also likely fine for the next 100 years and that's a reasonable tradeoff (imo).
My point is that we already deal with many substances that are toxic forever. Something about the danger reducing over the course of thousands of years seems to make people more concerned about the future than when the danger is permanent.
But I'm not comparing Nuclear to perfection; I'm comparing it to existing alternatives. Climate change is real, the stakes are high, and nuclear brings a lot to the table.
Nuclear can provide base load energy. To provide base load with renewables requires battery storage that doesn't exist. I'm sure the technology exists but whether because expense or other issues, energy grids around the world don't use grid level storage. And consumers are not interested in trading a little reliability for greener grids; they consistently insist that dirty alternatives close the gap.
And very rough estimate here (it is going to vary considerably based on the solar panels and plant in question, but the principle is unchanged): 1 nuclear plant is roughly 4,000 sq km of solar panels. So like 80 Manhattans ever inch of it a solar panel array. The environmental destruction caused by solar panel array and wind farms is real. The amount of mining required to create the materials needed for 4k solar panels also has a very high environmental cost. Nuclear is compact and requires less materials.
We deal with all kinds of waste that we know would be damaging if it was released in the environment. Radioactivity is dangerous, but I would argue far better understood than many other phenomenon (like micro plastics). It is a challenge, but there is no avoiding challenges. The tradeoffs feel well worth it to me.
And all those extra 5k cubic meters per year of nuclear waste needs to be stored for around a million years until they are again safe.
This take is absurd. Humanity barely exists for a few thousand years and you somehow assume that it's feasible and economically justifiable to create a health and security hazard that will exist until the end of times.
And all for what? Because you want to shave off a few cents from an energy bill?
How about your backyard?
From what I know of deep geological storage, I wouldn't mind living in a house on top of one of these sites. Since they're usually in the middle of nowhere, it would probably be even safer than living in a polluted city.
How convenient
What's your point??
The only problems I would have with it being in my hypothetical back yard would be other people thinking it was dangerous, leading to an urban decay cycle (this also applies to property with unlucky numbers, like 13 in the anglosphere), and/or lots of protesters and/or would-be terrorists not realising how deep the stuff is buried nor now hard it is to shift a multi-ton concrete-filled steel barrel.
In the literal backyard of my house? No. Of course, I also support windmills, water reservoirs, lithium mining, and electric car factories and don't want any of those in my literal backyard either. The idea that it is hypocritical to advocate anything you wouldn’t want on your own residential property seems like such an obviously ridiculous idea, I'm not sure it makes sense to rebut. There are countless things society wants (factories, mines, landfills, warehouses, etc…) that don’t make sense to do in residential areas.
In my figurative backyard, like the state I live in? Sure, I would definitely support California creating a nuclear waste storage facility.
This isn't really anything groundbreaking. We already have millions of acres of landfills in the US. Like radioactive waste, trash is basically permanent and will be decomposing for at least hundreds of years. And no one wants a landfill "in their backyard," but somehow we still managed to create the thousands of landfills we have today. We can spare a few dozen acres to build a nuclear waste facility.
Ok, so storage is a problem.