Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention the small nuclear waste issue. Managing waste for a period far, far, far longer than any state has historically lasted continuously (or even since the dawn of human civilization) seems really optimistic. Very few states have lasted continuously more than a few centuries without some kind of partial or total collapse (military defeat, revolution, bankruptcy of government, etc), ant these waste will need…
The consensus solution to nuclear waste is to put it in geologic repositories where it will be safely out of the biosphere until well after it decays to stability. This issue of a toxic but carefully handled substance is very small compared to the looming threat of climate change. As far as I'm aware, commercial nuclear waste in storage has never injured a single person.
You'd be surprised:
By October several thousand shipments were illegally dumped at the landfill in north St. Louis County, in violation of federal standards; they contained an estimated 43,000 tons of radioactive uranium processing wastes and contaminated soil. (...) No strangers to advanced statistical tools, within two years, Wright, an accountant, and Schanzenbach, an economics professor at Northwestern University, documented 700 cases of cancers and immune system diseases within a four-square-mile area. Some of these cancers have a one-in-a-million chance of occurring. (...) Wright and Schanzenbach updated their survey and reported in August 2015 that the number of diseases, including rare cancers, had increased to 2,725 cases.
Or how about:
A few days before I visited the rather scruffy Hospital of Saint Anna and Saint Sebastian in Caserta, southern Italy, a boy aged 11 arrived complaining of headaches. Doctors feared the worst – and sure enough, he was rapidly diagnosed as another child with brain cancer. Some of these young patients arrive in agonising pain, others mystified by falling over all the time; they do not know that lethal tumours are swelling up inside their heads. Yet more turn up with cancer in their blood, their bones, their bladders. There are so many cases that not all can be treated in the hospitals of Campania, a largely rural region. (...) Tosti explained that the Mafia dumped huge quantities of contaminated industrial waste there, then obtained backdated permission for their actions. (...) A criminal investigation was launched 18 months ago, but local people do not expect convictions. This was far from an isolated incident. (...) There are thousands of similar dumps all over this once-paradisiacal slice of Italy: in canals and caves, in quarries and wells, under fields and hills, beneath roads and properties.
Or worse:
Fonti said he had been involved in sinking three vessels, and that the 'Ndrangheta made millions of pounds illegally dumping radioactive and other toxic waste from businesses in Italy and other parts of Europe. A regional prosecutor, Bruno Giordano, said that if the exploration of the wreck does produce evidence of toxic waste, authorities will start a hunt for more sunken vessels. They believe there could be up to 32 in Italian waters. The introduction of more stringent environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for organised crime groups in Italy. "The problem of ships loaded with radioactive waste and sunk deliberately is an Italian mystery that should have been resolved years ago," said Ermete Realacci, an opposition MP.