[pps43]

> when something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. That makes more of an emotional reaction

The reaction can be completely rational. It depends on your estimate of the probability of a nuclear accident worse than Chernobyl. Officially it's around 10^-9 per reactor-year, but it's clearly an underestimate, if only because of the unknown unknowns.

Get a more realistic probability estimate, multiply by cost of all real estate in a large metro area, and you can get a pretty large expected loss.

> How do you build a storage facility that keeps it contained for that long?

This is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...