There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
The way I see it, we either get cleaner energy with some safer nuclear energy, or it’s still catastrophic and we all just die faster anyway. I’m down for nuclear lol
As it stands. Nuclear (fission) is the cleanest and safest form of energy available at the moment. When we get to fusion it’ll get even cheaper without even the miniscule amount of (stored)waste fission produces.
It is not the “cleanest” it is the most “climate friendly”. Commitment to nuclear waste is a thousand year long process of monitoring and processing waste products and our record on a short term commitment of like 50 years to climate change is not a good record. Its not clean and in the long term not likely cheap.
However its certainly not as destructive to the world as gas is right now so relieving climate change before some other catastrophic milestone occurs is probably a good idea. Folks saying “its too late” misunderstand climate change; there’s always another level bad we can hit and nuclear provides stable, reliable power.
Aren’t you able to recycle spent fuel for additional fuel and a lower amount of waste?
It really isn’t a thousand year long process though. The containers they have for them are very long lasting. Bury it in a large containment facility deep in the mountains (Norway is making a large underground system specifically for this iirc) and just seal it up. Maintenance will be minimal.