It's just a non-issue. All of the world's nuclear waste could fit in one warehouse and isn't that dangerous. You can either put all of it in a building somewhere or keep it in smaller buildings on-site.
When I last checked with a nuclear professional, he said that nuclear waste is not really a problem. We can easily store million times more of it, it doesn't really cost that much in the grand scheme of things.
I always have the feeling many people greatly overestimate the amount of nuclear waste that was actually produced. So far we have produced an estimated 370000 tonnes of nuclear waste globally, which can be stored in about 22.000m³. [1]
This would fit in a 5m high storage facility the size of an American football field (which is even smaller than a European football field). As an additional comparison, the small Amazon fulfillment centers have about 40000m² of area [2] . Assuming the same 5m height, a small fullfillment center is nearly 10 times bigger than necessary to store all globally produced high-level nuclear waste.
Sure, the waste is hard to dispose and dangerous. But it really isn't much.
Nuclear waste is a solved problem [0]. It takes very little space and storage technology is good enough since a long time. It's just a lack of the political will.
But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it.
The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!
The waste storage problem is solved: bury it underground in an area with no groundwater. The reason why no permanent storage has been built in the US (they have been built in Finland and in Asia) is because there's actually so little waste. The entirety of the waste from US nuclear power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high.
Most radioactive waste disposal schemes I've heard of have been shelved because of NIMBYism. But it hasn't even been an issue, because most radioactive waste is so benign that just leaving it in storage containers on-site is fine anyway.
IMHO it would be better to store nuclear waste in well guarded sheds. There isn’t that much of it (less than a million tons; a few football fields worth of sheds), and accessible above-ground storage means you can easily monitor it and maintain its container over time. Who knows what will happen 5km down, out of sight?
Nuclear waste is not that much actually and you simply store it in sealed containers. The waste storage is a political issue rather than a technical issue. How many accidents have we had related to nuclear waste storage? Zero, that's how many.
Nuclear waste is not a problem at all. There's just a very very tiny amount of it produced, so storing and securing it, even with super-high expensive security is very cheap from the general viewpoint.
Is storing nuclear waste even a significant concern? The entirety of US nuclear power generation's waste can fit in a rectangle that is 20 feet high and the width and length of a football field. This is trivial in terms of volume of waste disposal. There's really not much difficulty in disposing this. Bury it in a site without groundwater.
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