We need to differentiate between a number of different problems.
One is cleanup of nuclear sites, in that are there is a separation between civilian nuclear reactors and the much, much more problematic site management for nuclear waste from nuclear weapons production. Most problems from civilian sites date back to the early days of nuclear and most states have put in place some live cycle protocols for these sites.
Old nuclear weapons production sites are a whole lot of a bigger issues and its a desperate topic. Its not fair to accuse nuclear power of being problematic based on issues from those sites.
In general, I would argue most of these problems date back to the early days of nuclear technology and should not be used as a argument against new nuclear power.
In terms of waste management from civilian waste there is a very good argument to be made that putting all that waste into a long term storage (1000s of years) is not a smart thing to do. The nuclear waste is so small in overall size and relatively easy to story that it is not really a pressing issue for the next couple decades or even small number of centuries.
The technologies to use the energy from nuclear waste will not happen unless nuclear energy get used and finds larger commercial adoption. If you believe in 200 years nuclear will not exist and solar and wind will be used, then these technology will never exists. However if you assume that humanity has any kind of nuclear future, these technologies will very likely exists and that nuclear waste will be considered a resource.
Technically its pretty clear that we can build such long term facilities for the eventual small amount nuclear waste without much technical difficulty. What bother me is the push to demand that this problem is handled, before any other nuclear innovation can take place. It is used as an argument against nuclear even if the problem is not pressing in the least and compared to the continued exists of coal and utterly disingenuous way to attempted prevent usage of nuclear technology.
Finnland has build a repository called, Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository, and has shown that this is not really that crazy of a thing. Again, for me this is a problem that should be pretty far down on the list of priorites to solve for the world. The reason it doesn't exists in most countries is political, not technical. See the Yucca Maintain political shitshow while at the same time much better sites exists in the US but those can't be considered because of political deadlock.
One is cleanup of nuclear sites, in that are there is a separation between civilian nuclear reactors and the much, much more problematic site management for nuclear waste from nuclear weapons production. Most problems from civilian sites date back to the early days of nuclear and most states have put in place some live cycle protocols for these sites.
Old nuclear weapons production sites are a whole lot of a bigger issues and its a desperate topic. Its not fair to accuse nuclear power of being problematic based on issues from those sites.
In general, I would argue most of these problems date back to the early days of nuclear technology and should not be used as a argument against new nuclear power.
In terms of waste management from civilian waste there is a very good argument to be made that putting all that waste into a long term storage (1000s of years) is not a smart thing to do. The nuclear waste is so small in overall size and relatively easy to story that it is not really a pressing issue for the next couple decades or even small number of centuries.
The technologies to use the energy from nuclear waste will not happen unless nuclear energy get used and finds larger commercial adoption. If you believe in 200 years nuclear will not exist and solar and wind will be used, then these technology will never exists. However if you assume that humanity has any kind of nuclear future, these technologies will very likely exists and that nuclear waste will be considered a resource.
Technically its pretty clear that we can build such long term facilities for the eventual small amount nuclear waste without much technical difficulty. What bother me is the push to demand that this problem is handled, before any other nuclear innovation can take place. It is used as an argument against nuclear even if the problem is not pressing in the least and compared to the continued exists of coal and utterly disingenuous way to attempted prevent usage of nuclear technology.
Finnland has build a repository called, Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository, and has shown that this is not really that crazy of a thing. Again, for me this is a problem that should be pretty far down on the list of priorites to solve for the world. The reason it doesn't exists in most countries is political, not technical. See the Yucca Maintain political shitshow while at the same time much better sites exists in the US but those can't be considered because of political deadlock.