Even without fusion energy, there are several options that are not now being considered or applied.
The Plasma Arc Waste Destruction System’s (PAWDS) is used to destroy waste on board ships. The Plasma Resource Recovery System (PRRS) is used to recover energy and produce a vitrified rock from waste on land.
It takes a considerable amount of energy to ignite a plasma arc, but once in operation, the main fire is in the 5,000 degrees Centigrade range, enough to essentially strip off all the electrons in the outer shell of every molecule of any element that is fed into that plasma arc. This sets up a number of reactions, but ALL carbon compounds, with the presence of water vapor, are essentially turned into diatomic hydrogen and carbon monoxide, both of which are excellent fuels for burning in the presence of oxygen. These fuels are then used to fire a conventional power generation system, which is then used in part to maintain the plasma arc. A properly set up system returns about six units of generated electricity power for each unit consumed to maintain the plasma arc. The feedstock, which can be taken from ANY trash which has been ground into small enough fragments, is destroyed when it passes through the plasma arc. The products are the syngas and a vitreous slag, which drops to the bottom of the retort. The vitreous slag, which is molten, can be drained on a continuous basis from the bottom of the plasma chamber, and either used as is for a building material, or as an ore from which the recovery of various metals may also be accomplished. All the sulfides, halides (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine), phosphides, and other non-metals are bound up with either metallic elements, and are in a silicate rock, or with the silicon oxide itself. The carbon monoxide and hydrogen mixture is used to drive a conventional steam power generator, leaving no fly ash or residual carbon monoxide, the only products being water as vapor and carbon dioxide, an important constituent of our atmosphere.
An alternative would be to go to thorium-fueled molten salt reactors, which use thorium rather than uranium as its “fuel”. Thorium, when its purpose as a fuel is exhausted, does not produce plutonium in its wake, and the “ash” from spent thorium fuel degrades in its radioactivity rather quickly, unlike uranium, which can take 10,000 years to be safe to approach. Thorium-based atomic reactors need a small amount of “spent” uranium fuel rod material to initiate the fission reaction in thorium, which does not spontaneously initiate fission, but does continue once the chain reaction is started.
Both of these systems use technology we have available right now, but there is little will to put them into practice. Both are green, in the sense they do not affect the presence of airborne or waterborne pollutants, and once in operation, the cost per unit of electricity produced is much lower than even most “fossil-fuel” power plants.
And a WAY lot less than solar or wind power, which are only marginal at best, and not at all reliable.
I saw a lot about the thorium cycle. Apparently the Indians have worked a lot on it. Australia, India and the US have the largest reserves.