Oh, really? Care to explain? Seems pretty toxic from everything I have seen.
I also don't find paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs efficient. Usually not even factored into the costs of this "clean" energy.
We don't have a totally nontoxic power source. We do have ones which offer better options for containment. Coal ash is radioactive and toxic [1]. Solar panels are also toxic [2]. But we don't grind them into a fine powder before sprinkling them over communities. On this scale, nuclear is toxic, but in small, contained and manageable masses.
> paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs
Your link fingers "the United States' failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage" as the cause for the "half-a-billion dollars a year [paid] to the utilities for their simply keeping the fuel" [3]. The current solution passably inefficient. The efficient solutions are blocked by activists.
Seal it in metal and concrete -> done. You can now store it in any old warehouse. If you're really paranoid, put a sign "Warning: Dangerous Alligator!" on the door.
Half a billion per year is nothing compared to the damage we're preventing with climate change, is it?
They tend to bury the waste extremely far underground, and even than that isn't very expensive. It's a hell of a lot cheaper the the real world impacts we're seeing from carbon emissions today (over a million deaths a year).
There is literally zero risk of this for the sites that are chosen for storage, and the method of storage, even if it was directly below your home, is also at zero risk of causing this to happen. It isn't stored in leaking metal drums with green ooze falling down the side, and Jimbo doesn't occasionally knock one over when he sits on one for a lunch break.
