Nobody said that nuclear fission is clean, and nobody with even a bit of knowledge about it claims it is. Instead, what it is is CLEANER than fossil fuels and so forth, and this makes a huge difference.
Furthermore, your scenarios for nuclear waste leaking, while not impossible, are absurdly implausible if even a modicum of responsible engineering is applied to containing waste byproducts of nuclear fission. For one thing, this is definitely possible; the world is full of highly vital but very dangerous materials that are stored quite adequately, and it's also full of critical infrastructure whose structural integrity can't be absolutely 100% guaranteed either but which is often used for decades to improve human society in some way with few to no problems. Likewise for nuclear fission. The precautionary principle you take to extremes is absurd. Proper storage can be done and even improved enormously.
Secondly, the combined storage needs of all nuclear waste from every plant operating everywhere in the world for decades to come are minuscule compared to the availability of good, firmly sealable sites for doing this and compared to the sheer amount of waste tonnage created by fossil fuels and even by the repeat manufacture of long lasting batteries for certain renewable energy sources, if we want to get nitpicky. You're talking about one very small real estate/ecological footprint relative to energy output created with nuclear fission.
Thirdly, all of the above can be improved even further with moderate advances in how nuclear fission is produced. Even with today's more modern reactors, over 96% of already-used fissile material is recycled back into uranium-based and MOX fuel. One other immediate possibility is breeder reactors, which can in fact use waste from older fission reactors to create more energy. They can run on U-238 and transuranic elements, which create the absolute majority of waste byproduct in most current reactors. That's one exceptionally plausible solution to a part of the waste storage problem. Other even better solutions are also possible within reasonable development time frames.
In essence, your argument is somewhat similar to saying that nobody should ever use a microwave oven even while starving because there's always the very unlikely but not entirely impossible chance that it might give them a brain tumor, somehow, and let's furthermore ignore all advances in microwave oven technology to make this even less likely than it barely was earlier..
Furthermore, your scenarios for nuclear waste leaking, while not impossible, are absurdly implausible if even a modicum of responsible engineering is applied to containing waste byproducts of nuclear fission. For one thing, this is definitely possible; the world is full of highly vital but very dangerous materials that are stored quite adequately, and it's also full of critical infrastructure whose structural integrity can't be absolutely 100% guaranteed either but which is often used for decades to improve human society in some way with few to no problems. Likewise for nuclear fission. The precautionary principle you take to extremes is absurd. Proper storage can be done and even improved enormously.
Secondly, the combined storage needs of all nuclear waste from every plant operating everywhere in the world for decades to come are minuscule compared to the availability of good, firmly sealable sites for doing this and compared to the sheer amount of waste tonnage created by fossil fuels and even by the repeat manufacture of long lasting batteries for certain renewable energy sources, if we want to get nitpicky. You're talking about one very small real estate/ecological footprint relative to energy output created with nuclear fission.
Thirdly, all of the above can be improved even further with moderate advances in how nuclear fission is produced. Even with today's more modern reactors, over 96% of already-used fissile material is recycled back into uranium-based and MOX fuel. One other immediate possibility is breeder reactors, which can in fact use waste from older fission reactors to create more energy. They can run on U-238 and transuranic elements, which create the absolute majority of waste byproduct in most current reactors. That's one exceptionally plausible solution to a part of the waste storage problem. Other even better solutions are also possible within reasonable development time frames.
In essence, your argument is somewhat similar to saying that nobody should ever use a microwave oven even while starving because there's always the very unlikely but not entirely impossible chance that it might give them a brain tumor, somehow, and let's furthermore ignore all advances in microwave oven technology to make this even less likely than it barely was earlier..