Reply #35: Good questions

[wtmusic]

and very difficult to answer.

"The Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have established standards for the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes. There is a general consensus in the scientific community that these standards are adequate to protect the public and the environment from the long-term hazards of nuclear waste. Under these standards, the risks to the public posed by the disposal of nuclear waste would be relatively small compared to many of the risks we face on a daily basis. Others believe, however, that our current scientific understanding is insufficient to be able to predict with any certainty that disposal systems will be able to last over the extremely long periods of time (many centuries) for which this waste will remain dangerously radioactive."

(From 1996, but AFAIK not much has changed since then).
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/november96/nuclear_waste9.html

So by the precautionary principle, intuitively, it would seem to make more sense to forego nuclear altogether. But we do so by ignoring the long-term effects of fossil fuel production and the uncertainty of whether wind and solar can make a significant contribution to our energy needs in time to make a difference.