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Originally Posted by photon
And as you say annually dumping gigatonnes of waste into the atmosphere will definitely result in severe consequences, at least with nuclear waste we know exactly where it is and what we can do with it.
And the waste still retains a huge portion of its potential energy, there are reactor types that can use the waste as fuel. Or other types of reactors that have a fuel cycle that produce waste that is only more radioactive than in-the-ground uranium for 100's of years.
Nuclear doesn't have to be the only solution for sure, solar is the best, but we need to replace coal and the sooner we can the better.
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What about Thorium-based reactors? My brother the geologist was telling me the other day about the cleanliness of Thorium vs Uranium, the little waste it produces comparatively and how plentiful Thorium is on Earth compared to Uranium. Uranium was chosen as the fuel during the first research into nuclear power because of it's weaponization capabilities, wher Thorium doesn't have enough energy to produce a bomb close to the magnitude of Uranium.
I also remember having a conversation with him about Canadian scientists discovering a way to use Uranium in it's unenriched form and thus essentially producing no waste as the waste is produced during the enrichment process, which is again only needed for bombs.
Maybe someone else can shed a little more light on that, but seems like something than can and should be implemented rather quickly.