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When the subject comes up we talk about the two LWR systems. Usually those kinds of questions are asked by persons who have some knowledge of the subject.

The mass-energy conversion per fission is about 220 MeV, a fraction of the rest mass energy of a single nucleon. A rule of thumb is about 1 gram of 235U burnup per megawatt day, but that is not lost mass, simply conversion of 235U to fission products plus some mass to energy conversion.

Yes, key issues in waste management are: how much waste do you have (volume), and where is the waste located? With CO2 emission from coal-fired units, you have millions of tons of gaseous waste going who knows where in the biosphere, a gaseous, mobile material blown about by the four winds. With fission products, you have small quantities and you know exactly where they are (in the fuel pellets). Yes, they are radioactive for a time so you have to manage them, but a little shielding and decay time go a long way towards reducing the hazards.

If you want a book suggestion for your audience 'The Grid' by Phillip F. Schewe can be kind of fun for the more serious reader but the book 'Infrastructure: The Book of Everything for the Industrial Landscape' by Brian Hayes is actually quite fun; it explains what all that 'stuff' we see and use daily does. After reading it I can remember shaving one morning and seeing the lights start to pulse and knowing a circuit was about to blow...then hearing the far off boom as it did. Shaving by flashlight is not cool though.

But by and large, I find people don't know or care where their power comes from....until it goes off...and then they cease to care once it comes on again.

Usually those kinds of questions are asked by persons who have some knowledge of the subject.

I hope you keep one or two of those in the audience...because when people think of nuclear waste they usually think of barrel after barrel of the stuff. I know it is a much smaller amount but not cheap to store...but not the end of the world either.