Waste management is certainly a problem. The pebble bed reactor produces waste that, while more voluminous than traditional reactors, contains the same radioact

Waste management is certainly a problem. The pebble bed reactor produces waste that, while more voluminous than traditional reactors, contains the same radioactivity, but this does mean the waste is less hazardous and simpler to handle. It's also much more difficult to re-use pebble bed reactor waste for nuclear weapons as compared to other reactors. And there are other reactors that have a closed fuel cycle, meaning their waste can be reprocessed, though the reprocessing does itself end up with some amount of nuclear waste that has to be disposed of. All that said, it's not like the waste from fossil fuel power plants is particularly safe either, it just has a different effect than nuclear waste, such as causing global warming.