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Originally Posted by ken0042
Yes, you need to track it. For how long? Isn't it centuries, if not over 1000 years?
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That depends on what it is and what one does with it. We could stop mining uranium today and with the right kind of reactor the existing "waste" could power the planet for 400 years leaving us with waste that's no more radioactive than what we dug out of the ground in the first place.
Even if some you might need to track for centuries, having an industrialized society has a cost.
Better to have to watch your waste for centuries than spew it into the atmosphere where it stays there for centuries.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
Our energy use today will because the responsibility for generations to come.
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Everything we do will become the responsibility of generations to come. Dumping CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere impacts future generations worse because they'll have to suffer the consequences rather than us passing down a responsibility. Taking responsibility rather than shrugging and dumping it into the atmosphere sounds like a better plan.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
Even if it's sealed in tanks below ground, will people from the 24th century trust our technology? Would you trust toxic waste from the 19th century under your property?
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Why does it have to be under someone's property? If future generations don't trust the technology they'll replace it with their technology.
And as mentioned, even current technology can have that waste be a resource rather than waste.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
At least with CO2 it can be dealt with by the planet to a certain extent.
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That's the problem, it can't. We've already outstripped the planet's ability to act as a carbon sink for the CO2 we produce now resulting in warming and other effects (acidification of the ocean being a big one if we expect the ocean to absorb more CO2). And the CO2 we dump now will be there for centuries.
With China and India becoming more industrialized, it'll just get worse.
Solar, wind, nuclear all need to be part of powering our planet now.
Hundreds of millions of tonnes of toxic waste are produced every year by industry around the world (much of which doesn't degrade and become safe by itself over time so has to be stored forever or dumped), nuclear is a tiny portion of that. All of Canada's nuclear waste amounts to a few Olympic swimming pools worth.
Nuclear waste isn't a trivial problem, but it's also not a reason not to expand nuclear generation.