[gradschool]

> Yes, nuclear waste has to be dealt with, but there's very little of it and we already have to deal with it.

A little nuclear waste goes a long way. If you have any concrete, practical suggestions for ways to deal with it, the world needs you. Summarizing them here will make me an advocate.

[throwaway894345]

> A little nuclear waste goes a long way.

I see your point, but it also doesn't go a long way. It's very dense and solid, and tends to stay put as far as wastes go.

> If you have any concrete, practical suggestions for ways to deal with it, the world needs you. Summarizing them here will make me an advocate.

This is wrong for a couple of reasons:

1. We already know how to deal with nuclear waste: [deep geological repository][0].

2. Moreover, we can continue to safely manage nuclear waste above ground for a very long time. Far longer than we can continue fossil fuel pollution. And this worst-case solution is still far, far, far safer than fossil fuels.

If skeptics aren't convinced, I don't think their skepticism is founded in reason.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository

[opo]

>...Summarizing them here will make me an advocate.

In terms of the waste, right now nuclear waste can be recycled (as it is in France) which would reduce the amount of waste:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

Soon it will be possible to use most of the waste as fuel:

"...What is more important today is why fast reactors are fuel-efficient: because fast neutrons can fission or "burn out" all the transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides) many of which last tens of thousands of years or longer and make conventional nuclear waste disposal so problematic. Most of the radioactive fission products (FPs) the reactor produces have much shorter half-lives: they are intensely radioactive in the short term but decay quickly. The IFR extracts and recycles 99.9% of the uranium and Transuranium elements on each cycle and uses them to produce power; so its waste is just the fission products; in 300 years their radioactivity will fall below that of the original uranium "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

While there are issues with nuclear power, the worry some people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown to say the least. The amount of waste is very manageable (the Netherlands actually stores their waste in an art museum!) and in a relatively short amount of time we will likely be able to use most of this "waste" to generate electricity.

(To help put it in perspective, do some web searches about the problems with coal waste - it will be a much harder problem to solve than nuclear waste. The problems with coal waste aren't discussed much since people focus on the air pollution from burning coal as it directly kills so many people.)