There's really two kinds of waste: spent fuel (which can be effectively recycled, leaving only a tiny bit of extremely dangerous lanthanides, actinides, and plutonium), and "lower level" waste. The latter includes pretty much every other part of the reactor building after it's decomissioned.
> positive PR campaign
The nuclear industry has been at this for decades; at this stage, the PR is part of the problem.
My view on this is that it's probably too late to start building new nuclear plants, the cost overrun problems are severe, and there are plenty of countries that they should not be built in. But that doesn't mean we should close the existing ones early. If they can be refurbished economically without compromising safety, we should do that.
Switching from nuclear to natural gas indicates that gas is too cheap, and should be subject to carbon pricing and curtailment of new drilling and fracking.
We can build plants with SMRs. These should fix most of the issues of larger plants except maybe decomissioning. It should be easier to decomission 12 x 60 MW modules instead of a single 720 MW utility scale reactor. At least you can transport the smaller modules without dissasembly.
Nuclear power plants got big because operating costs do not scale linearly with reactor size. SMR advocates have not explained why their concepts will not be killed by increased operating cost per kWh.
> positive PR campaign
The nuclear industry has been at this for decades; at this stage, the PR is part of the problem.
My view on this is that it's probably too late to start building new nuclear plants, the cost overrun problems are severe, and there are plenty of countries that they should not be built in. But that doesn't mean we should close the existing ones early. If they can be refurbished economically without compromising safety, we should do that.
Switching from nuclear to natural gas indicates that gas is too cheap, and should be subject to carbon pricing and curtailment of new drilling and fracking.