Why we can't leave a marker for future generations to know, "Don't Dig Here!"
If you put one of the most disturbing, hideous, and repellent images I can come up with, on a monolith, there is still a good chance that over fifty percent of your community will say, "Let's dig further."
If an ancient civilization placed a large orange monolith with that horrible square mouth expression on it, all of us here would pause for a moment, and decide that the ancient people had issues and this was the ugliest thing we had ever seen. Even with that, we might not see it a warning and keep digging. But the conservatives at the dig site would be digging even faster.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time
My issue with nuclear waste is that we have not shown that we can manage it. Or will put the money towards managing it if we can.
As an analogy, we can't really solve Krasnov till after the midterms assuming the midterms happen. If he is impeached, we got a line of people ready to fill his shoes and try to be as bad or worse with a few more brain cells rattling around than our current president has.
In other words, we have a "Hole in the Bucket, dear Liza," situation. Nuclear power is a lot like it. You can't go close, things are going to corrode or break, and everything connected becomes poisonous in the process of dealing with the issues.
Nuclear energy from fission requires management and government, rich people, corporations and the like, in other words everyone with power. Historical evidence shows that it is a rare thing when they will do what it takes to deal with real issues. They may build a fake wall that won't work, but they won't build a better containment vault. Folk with power didn't get there by spending money on things that didn't give them a return. That isn't how the rich get richer. That isn't how the Trumps and Epsteins do things.
It's a lot like drug enforcement. We can't freaking keep them out of prisons. If you can't manage an issue by force in a prison, then you certainly can't manage it in the suburbs of Florida.
In none of the cases where nuclear problems have occurred, have I seen where the majority of the money extracted by the negligent rich folk that caused the issue, was spent to deal with the issue. No, well before that the issue gets solved it gets swept into the corner where only radicals notice that we have an issue. These things are not paid off by insurance agencies. Insurance agencies won't touch nuclear power plants. These things get insured by tax payer money and then, when things go pear shaped, and the real cost to deal with the problems is exposed, towns get evacuated.
The real, very real, problem is that eventually a person like Trump will be involved. Long, long term management assures us of that.
As far as putting the waste in a desert goes, climate change happens. Till someone can argue that we cleaned up everything and all the issues are all gone now, my vote will be against fission based power just like my vote will be against Krasnov and his ilk. Arguing that we can manage issues is not the same as demonstrating that we can or will manage issues. The Republican party has had a long tradition of claiming to be responsible with money and government. They also have a long term tradition of not being responsible with money or government.
Until I can be assured that the type of people who fill Republican chairs in the Supreme Court, House, Senate and White House won't be doing so under any party name, I will remain opposed to nuclear fission as a power source. No matter what icon, image or words you put on the monolith over the nuclear waste.