waste problem

And we have a lot of empty land here in the US. I'm in Utah, and people here push back against nuclear, but we literally live next to a massive desert. Nobody cares if we dig a big hole in W. Utah or E. Nevada, we can bury it however deep we need and it's not going to impact the water table at all (we don't really have a water table here anyway...). Likewise in California. E. US is a bit more difficult, but there are plenty of trains that go through very unpopulated areas that we could use to transport hazardous material for burying.

Processing it is obviously better, but we really shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of better here. Yeah, nuclear isn't perfect, but it works really well at providing a base level of energy and can help us phase out coal and natural gas that much sooner. Utah already sells electricity to California, so it's not like we need a power plant right next to major population centers, we can move electricity relatively effectively over long distances. So stick the plants in the middle of nowhere so nobody has to be worried about nuclear fallout (which isn't going to happen anyway).

Even if battery storage gets way cheaper, nuclear will still help us phase out fossil fuels as storage ramps up. And for costs, my understanding is that most of the issues are due to delays, so surely there's something we can do about that.