[reedjosh]

> nuclear waste for hundreds or thousands of generations to deal with

Solar and wind don't generate waste?

And while batteries are getting better, they're still not to the point that solar and wind can just replace the kind of power nuclear produces.

Further, lithium batteries don't produce waste?

[foepys]

Nuclear waste is a lot worse than any other type of waste. It's dangerous for tens of thousands of years and we don't know if we will be able to tell a civilization 10,000 years in the future that the stuff we buried deep in a cave is dangerous.

[kergonath]

> Nuclear waste is a lot worse than any other type of waste.

It's really not. It is compact, contained, and isolated. It takes a tiny amount of space compared to any other solution.

> It's dangerous for tens of thousands of years

Some of it is. Most of it isn't. By definition, long-lasting isotopes are the least dangerous.

> we don't know if we will be able to tell a civilization 10,000 years in the future that the stuff we buried deep in a cave is dangerous.

We won't have a civilisation in the next century if we keep fucking it up. It is patently absurd, considering the state of the world, to keep saying that nuclear is the absolute worst. Non-nuclear is what put us in this very situation in the first place.

[Macha]

Per unit volume, sure: A cave full of nuclear waste is worse than a cave full of CO2.

Per energy generated, it's not clear at all to me that the nuclear waste from a country running off nuclear power is worse than the CO2 emissions of running that same country off fossil fuels.

That cave full of nuclear waste has something like "all the waste generated by the UK to date". Enough CO2 to fill a cave is one coal plant running for a few days.

[Pokepokalypse]

you keep comparing nuclear to fossil.

You should compare it to solar/wind/(etc) which produce neither CO2, nor radioactive plutonium, cesium, xenon, (etc)