The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved, no matter how much government officials like to claim that it has. You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice.
That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. The risk is low, the impact is very very high.
>The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved
Yes it has. You just store it. It takes up minuscule amount of land. The argument I hear is: "You can't store waste safely".. why? "Because you just can't".
>That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will.
Inevitably? I'm not sure about that. Right now that's not an issue and it hasn't been an issue for the the 60 years we've had nuclear power.
>You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice.
Sure. How many times did you hear about nuclear waste from commercial reactors leaking and causing damage to the environment?
>Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment.
No. That's not true. That's not how radioactivity works. The longer the half-life of a radioactive substance, the less potent it is, and as you spread it over a larger area the potency goes down EXPONENTIALLY. Waste from commercial reactor is tiny - if you spread it, you dilute it to the point where it is engulfed in background radiation. There is no chance that waste from a commercial nuclear reactor will ruin a 'large swathe of environment'.
That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. The risk is low, the impact is very very high.