Neoliberal

Nuclear waste is an issue we've had solved for decades, the public perception of it however is not at all accurate. And that's not helped ny a lot of popular media incorrectly depicting it like leaking glowing barrels.

Most nuclear waste (~95%) is low-level waste that becomes entirely safe within a couple years. The high-level waste people are scared is stored in containers that are insanely robust and have neer has an issue in storage or transfer, even cross-country. Long-term storage is only an issue because NIMBYs won't allow proper research and development, so the majority of long-term storage instead of being put into a more permanent location is jsut stored on site at the plant out in the open. Never once being an issue, but I bet those same NIMBYs have no idea that's happening because it's not an issue in reality, they're complaining because they don't understand it and are scare of it because of how terrible the media portrays nuclear and the media's complete inability to provide accurate information, instead going for sensationalism because that beings in the advertising revenue. 95% of nuclear "waste" is low-level waste. The remaining 5% of all nuclear waste ever produced on the planet would fit within the area of a football field. It is melted into what is effectiverly nuclear glass encased inside stable concrete and lead containers, no liquids in old oil barrels that can "leak". But the media loves to talk about it like there's all this highly radioactive waste that we have no chance of ever containing properly that can leak everywhere.

Modern reactor designs are much more focused on fail-safe containment and additional safety than the existing plant designs and can operate using less material. Some designs don't even use highly radioactive elements like uranium at all, instead using other materials that are much more abundant on the planet, like thorium which utilize fail-safe designs where power is not needed to maintain cooled temperatures like in a uranium-based reactor after the reactor shuts down, instead needing power to maintain a higher temperature to operate. So scenarios like flooding causing a generator to die and loss of power to the cooling infrastructure like happened at Fukushima aren't a thing that can happen since a loss of power means the system would effectively contain itself as power is needed to actively prevent that from happening.

The actual nuclear danger now is from things like nuclear medical devices being abandoned, creating an "orphan" nuclear device, like in Goiânia, Brazil in 1987. Kyle Hill has a good 22 minute video explaining this incident on Youtube for those that don't want to read about it. Every day an estimated 20 devices are orphaned in the world. But no one talks about those because they don't have "scary" cooling towers. A small orphan device combined with a conventional explosive would create a dirty bomb without needing any knowledge of nuclear weaponry or how a nuclear weapon works. Most people wouldn't think anything of a report of a terrorist cell stealing a medical device though.