Nuclear waste remains a problem largely for political reasons. The engineers know how to deal with it: You can burn it to make more power. Fully burned nuclear fuel stays dangerously radioactive for a couple hundred years. It’s no harder to deal with than any other moderately obnoxious industrial waste.

One of the ways the anti-nuclear movement really screwed us was by freezing most nuclear technology development in the 1980’s. The so called Gen IV Reactor designs are mostly design ideas that had been proposed by 1990 and some still haven’t even had a demonstration plant built even though most of them largely avoid both the major safety and waste issues that are the major complaints against nuclear.

Sweden tried and failed running 100% renewable energy and ended up threatening blackouts the last few winters, asking people not to hoover and to stop wasting electricity. In the end fossil energy from Germany and Eastern Europe was bought.

At the current rate we’re not leaving our future generations much either, and as it stands Sweden can’t produce 100% renewable energy which is a problem we need to solve before we shut down the Swedish power plants. Nuclear might not be the best alternative, but it’s way better than fossil.