> I grew up in a place and time where nuclear waste was routinely dumped, records lost, EPA government consultants lied, and people got sick. Nobody was held accountable other than token fines.
Can you provide even one example where nuclear waste from power generation - not nuclear weapons production - got people sick in the United States?
The people here primarily got sick because their machining waste wasn't recognized as dangerous, it wasn't appropriately collected, spread through the site, and hury people that didn't even work in those areas.
The local uranium mills were primarily weapons related -fuel for breeder reactors.
For the power industry we have to drive to the other side of the state, over to Hematite, where each time a former employee comes down with any rare cancer from a long list, it's assumed to from working at the plant.
Yet again, none of the examples you've posted are contamination from nuclear waste from power generation. Pre-burnup radiation exposure is not nuclear waste. This isn't a pedantic distinction, someone getting contaminated while manufacturing fuel rods is a totally different failure mode than what we're discussing about waste buried deep underground.
> What about mining waste causing increased cancer and largely poisoning a river?
What about it? Mining copper and rare earth minerals for magnets is polluting too. Producing aluminum to build transmission lines is also polluting. Mining, in general, is a pretty dirty industry. But surely nobody is suggesting we stop building electric motors or transmission lines? Uranium mining is not an exception in this regard.
You've given 3 examples, none of them are contamination from spent nuclear waste from power generation.
Can you provide even one example where nuclear waste from power generation - not nuclear weapons production - got people sick in the United States?