If only people weren't so scared of nuclear.
We already have more nuclear waste than is currently able to be stored.. and we're talking about stuff that is going to remain deadly for tens of thousands of years.
There's nowhere to put the stuff unless we start blasting it out into outer space or develop ways to use it for more energy.
Don't you mean, "If only we had a place to externalize the waste storage problem." All the nuclear waste obviously has a place to store it, I mean it's somewhere right now isn't it?
Compare if we dare: one person lifetime of nuclear power generates about 350ml (one coke can) of waste, which you can keep in dry cask storage and monitor. One person lifetime of coal power produces 77 tons of carbon, and 68 tons of solid waste, plus ash containing lead, mercury, arsenic, uranium, and thorium. The solid waste we can monitor, though it poses a much bigger dumping problem than our coke can of dry storage did. The rest goes into our atmosphere and lungs. Not to mention, that thorium and uranium in the ash is radioactive. Coal ash gives off up to 100 times more radiation than the waste from equivalent nuclear power generation. And this is released into the air.
Don't be a sucker for the persuasion tricj of rejecting methods because they aren't perfect in the abstract. Always compare against the real alternatives. Nuclear does produce some waste, it is not a perfect world solution. But it's vastly better than any real world alternative we have, particularly on the waste front.
Put it in Antarctica.
I think we could take a vast majority of the nuclear waste we have today and turn it into fuel. But it would make plutonium as part of the process, which makes some lawmakers uncomfortable since it's easier to make small nuclear bombs from plutonium.
Why can't we build a breeder reactor near Yucca mountain, have a reactor core that's completely closed off from human interaction, and breed react current nuclear waste into energy? Design it to need refueling every 10 years or so, and have local national guard present during each refueling session. Considering it should need much less interaction than a non-breeding reactor, I think the plutonium threat could be mitigated.
Fission isn't a perfect solution, but it's vastly better than the current one. Having to figure out what to do with the waste is a desirable quality.
I only remember the data from university over 18 years ago, when both nuclear and hydro came out very poorly on emissions (due to the concrete involved, storage/reprocessing, and biological matter decomposing in the lagoon for hydro).
EDIT: mostly talking here from a German perspective, where several scandals of corruption, bribing inspectors, and drilling holes into the containment vessel under operation have become public in the past years.