Nuclear power is not the way to go. No way, no how. When man can store it safely for hundreds of thousands of years isn’t reason enough to go nuclear. Two things need to be true, a way to safely store the waste for thousands of years, AND proof that civilization will be in a state where it will even remember that the stuff was stored. Hanford Washington, is storing nuclear materials that have been leaking for 60 years, they can’t even clean this up. Fukushima is leaking and is still so dangerous that they cannot attempt to get near it to make a plan to contain it.
We can store nuclear waste two miles underground using modern oil well drilling equipment.
Sacrificing a few square miles to nuclear waste is well worth it.
That argument can be used against anything. For example, solar cells produce lots Selenium & Cadmium waste and unlike nuclear waste which has a limited dangerous lifespan, Selenium and Cadmium waste will remain toxic forever.
I strongly disagree. New nuclear designs can consume ALL the fuel, leaving a residual that will drop to background radiation levels in less than 100 years. Further, these designs make it physically impossible for a meltdown to occur. Finally thorium based reactors are even safer still and can be made very small (think 2 standard shipping containers) which will allow for a distributed power generation grid of much finer granularity.
Long term storage of nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technological problem.
Example is when Harry Reid dispatched “his guy” to chair the NRC for a few years to get Yucca Mountain de-railed. If it was the technology of isolation and multiple engineered barriers that would have proven failed, Harry wouldn’t have had to use his power of corruption to sack a duly-enacted law and technological approach.
Nuclear isn’t THE ONLY answer, but it is one of the energy sources that should be supported.
And if radiation is so dangerous, why are “you” sleeping next to a mate containing a fraction of a curie of Potassium-40 in a structure containing an unknown amount of Uranium daughter products?
Modern reactors, such as those Gates is supporting, use almost all the nuclear fuel and the remaining waste is only dangerous a few hundred years rather than thousands. There is at least one foolproof way to store any nuclear waste until it's inert, and that's depositing it, suitably packaged, at the mid-Pacific subduction zone to be pulled down into the Earth's mantle.
Even current and legacy reactors have a better safety track record than any other electric generation technology except perhaps solar. Fossil fuel generation is estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of people annually. How many has the radiation from Fukushima killed, exactly?
The propaganda campaign against nuclear power has been effective, all right.
Take the time to educate yourself on the next generation thorium salt reactors. They are not breeder reactors with their associated issues. No waste and they run at high temps. This is proven tech.
The process of incorporating HLW into borosilicate glasses is known as vitrification. Stack up the glass blocks in a remote area and keep the idiots away.