The high-order bit is that nuclear waste isn't very much, is solid and is manageable. Your average US nuclear plant will produce 3 cubic meters of solid waste e

The high-order bit is that nuclear waste isn't very much, is solid and is manageable. Your average US nuclear plant will produce 3 cubic meters of solid waste each year. That's about the size of a refrigerator. In the US, the vast majority of such waste is sitting inert in cooling ponds doing no harm at all, where it has been sitting for decades with no real incidents. Compare that with a coal-fired power plant where the waste is gaseous, toxic, and enormous. Thousands and millions of tons. And fly ash is radioactive. Far more radiation is produced by coal plants than nuclear plants because of the radioactive isotopes of carbon and other trace elements. And that's just blasted right into the air. Not to mention the CO2!