We really do. Nuclear waste is less toxic than plenty of trash we just bury. And calling it "waste" is a bit reductive, given it almost certainly becomes valuable to reprocess within another century or two.
Long term storage is still up in the air in the US. Yucca mountain was the plan but didn't happen
Correct me if I'm with m wrong
We also know that we could re-cycle nuclear waste with other nuclear plant designs, but the US chooses not to.
The crazy part is that people want to insist that the sites need to be absolutely safe even if they aren't maintained for 1,000 years, but by that point the radioactivity would be no more than the base ore anyway so demanding these extended timelines doesn't make anybody safer. They're just red tape.
It's peculiar that it's a political problem in pretty much every country though? I know Finland is well on its way for long term storage but that's the only example I know of.
There's also quite a few cases where it is a technical problem. Gorleben in Germany for example.
It's a political problem in every country that shares its nuclear heritage from the ashes of WWII.
Point to the nuclear waste.
If there’s so much of it somebody must be able to point it out to me.
Waste from modern nuclear power plants seems to be a giant nothingburger. And yes, I came from the other side but flipped as I learned more about the technicalities, how Finland has solved it and how near you need to get hurt.
Dr Barry Brook. Reading his stuff 15 years ago flipped me.