I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades.

Will it actually get encased successfully, will it be stored onsite in environmentally sensitive areas because it’s too much trouble to move, will your children’s children uphold the commitments you foisted on them through the political and economic turbulence in their lifetimes, and if not what happens comparatively when those coal ash heaps and nuclear fuel dumps are left to rot…

The externalities of concentrated radioactive material are not something that our socio-economic institutions are capable of handling at scale. Tragedies of the commons are the rule and eventually all of that waste will be go through periods of mishandling at one time or another.

> I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades.

Nuclear power plants have been extremely safe for many decades! Fuck, even the worst disasters related to nuclear power plants have killed less people than coal or oil disasters, even including Chernobyl which was a fuck up beyond comparison.

> Will it actually get encased successfully

Yes, this is literally done and has been done for many decades.

> will it be stored onsite in environmentally sensitive areas because it’s too much trouble to move

What does that mean? You can live 1 feet away from a cask and receive less radiation than you do from the sun.

> will your children’s children uphold the commitments you foisted on them through the political and economic turbulence in their lifetimes, and if not what happens comparatively when those coal ash heaps and nuclear fuel dumps are left to rot…

This is a bad argument because all of society relies on our grandchildren upholding present commitments. What happens if our grandchildren stop upholding the electricity grid? They die. What happens if they stop large scale agriculture? They die. And on and on and on.

> The externalities of concentrated radioactive material are not something that our socio-economic institutions are capable of handling at scale.

It's quite literally something society has been doing very successfully for 50+ years.