Because of nuclear's high energy density, it's the only energy source that we can account for and store all the waste for the entire lifetime. It is solid ceramic waste that sits in passively cooled steel and concrete containers on parking lots. 3 decades of waste powering a large city fit in a small parking lot. Commercial nuclear waste has never injured anyone. We have consensus technical solutions (deep geologic repository), including one operational repository at WIPP. We just have to get people to stop stonewalling so we can put it in them.

Here's my buddy Jim standing in a parking lot full of decades worth of nuclear waste [1].

The Finns decided to solve their nuclear waste issues and have a repository under construction. [2]

Meanwhile, millions die per year from air pollution and carbon concentration just peaked 415 ppm. I think nuclear waste is honestly a tiny concern compared to those things.

Nuclear operations are not hugely subsidized in the US. They get about 1% of the tax subsidies given to energy sources. They are struggling economically because fracked natural gas pulled the floor out of electricity prices, and nuclear O&M can't just reduce itself with lower fossil prices. In France, where natural gas is more expensive, their nuclear fleet is 20% cheaper than gas.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

You are (purposefully?) confusing spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Many hundreds of thousands or tonnes of HLW are produced each year and also need dealing with.

Long-lived high-level nuclear waste, colloquially known as nuclear waste, as in "but what do you do with the waste" IS spent nuclear fuel. There's also low-level rad waste that goes in special landfills but no one worries too much about that.

This is fission products, actinides, and uranium-238.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#High-level_w...

There are plans for it, use a next generation reactor that uses waste as fuel. That may take a few decades but it seems the most capitalistic way, and thus the most likely way.

And if solar and wind and storage become cheap enough that the next generation reactors are never needed? Then what?

A plan based on tech which either isn't created or not yet deployable is a little too handwavy for me.

Then we'll be worried about the environmental and economic implications of mining for, manufacturing, maintaining, replacing, and recycling that scale of steel, fiberglass, glass, concrete, rare earths, and 10000 skyscrapers of lithium per USA-sized-country.

Recall that in winter there is 4x less sun, and sometimes the wind doesn't blow for 10 days in a row across massive multi-state regions. The storage implications of that are ludicrous. It's far cheaper to decarbonize with a good mix of variable renewables and nuclear, even with nuclear at its current high price.

We literally do not have time for "few decades". This is why we're building out renewables at the rate we are.

(Also, the breeder reactors only use spent fuel - most "waste" by volume is lower level waste of various kinds. Especially from decommissioning.)

Totally this - I've often seen it stated that all the spent nuclear fuel in the world could fit in a lorry. Great - whoop.

But that ignores the huge amount of other radioactive wastes that are generated each day, and have no 'useful' future ahead of them right now - other than landfill in a 'secure' site.

Totally agree that we need to stop polluting our air and needlessly killing 4 million people a year with emissions - but we really need a realistic plan if we are going to go the nuclear route.