That's a pretty strange statement. Lots of industrial facilities meet very high standards of safety, say for instance battery and electric vehicle factories, yet we still place them out in the desert? Nobody is campaigning to build those in their neighbourhoods?
That was a semi-sarcastic reference to NIMBY. Specifically, I believe that the same people who state that nuclear waste sites are Perfectly Safe™ would actually reject that idea if the potential problems would affect them personally (figuratively, if the site was in their neighbourhood).
