[bayesian_horse]

The idea that radioactive waste is safe is at best misleading, if not outright false. You ignore that fossil fuel is not the only alternative to nuclear and vice versa. Then you hand-wave over the amounts of waste and climate gases.

If nuclear waste disposal is so easy to solve: Why has nobody ever solved it? You talk about some hypothetical SMR designs? Yeah, in theory, future nuclear technology is safe. Unfortunately even current technology, nuclear power projects always run over time and over budget on top of an already unwieldy upfront budget. Using radioactive waste as a powersource sounds nice and smart, but turns out to be unfeasible so far and at least one or two decades in the future.

Next, the danger from nuclear power, both during and after the runtime is impossible to calculate. Which is were those "impossible accidents" come from, which happen a bit too often. Yeah, in the theory from the nuclear power lobby, nuclear power is totally safe. But reality has to deal with things unforeseen, and on top of that, with bad intentions. Just that nobody tried (or succeeded) yet in building dirty bombs or destroying another country's nuclear plants doesn't mean that won't ever happen. Very small risks with catastrophic consequences are impossible to calculate and should be approached about as carefully as radioactive material itself.

[Schroedingersat]

Reminder that reprocessing (in addition to being the dirtiest part of the fuel cycle and incredibly expensive) doesn't really produce much energy.

All you are doing is getting the tiny leftover fissile scraps, 95% of the material is irrelevant U238 and 4% is fission products (the really bad waste) which just gets leaked everywhere. It adds 15% to your energy output and quadruples the fuel cost (bringing it close to the total cost of solar).