Christina,

The problem with friends of the earth and their ilk is that essentially what they peddle are half truths and vast exaggerations.

There are two levels of waste dump being sought, the first is for a place to store low level waste (which makes up the vast majority of waste) which is generally the clothing and protective equipment used for handling radioactive materials, nearly all of which will have no measurable contamination. Quite contrary to the claim that this material remains "hazardous for hundreds and thousands of years" the reality is that if you buried yourself neck deep in this waste for a day you would suffer less radiation exposure than walking 20 mins in the sun.

Secondly the desire to get complete and unanimous consent from every single aboriginal group in the area is a clear attempt at sabotage, as this has never occurred for any reason. A majority representing > 60% is more than democratic.

Shock! Horror! An industrial process has dangerous waste by products!? Wow. This is somehow news?

Solar PV uses the "heavy metal cadmium, which is both a carcinogen and a genotoxin, meaning that it can cause inheritable mutations."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think

Also:
"Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands.

The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents. Other polysilicon factories in the country have similar problems, either because they have not installed effective pollution control equipment or they are not operating these systems to full capacity."
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5650

But FOE LOVE Solar PV! Surely, following the same logic, we should ban Solar PV the way they've banned nuclear because there are some waste products?

The bottom line? I'd rather LIVE in a low, no, let's make that high level radioactive waste bunker than live in a quaint Chinese village next to a Solar PV farm. Why? Because the high level waste bunker would be over-engineered to the nth degree for safety because everyone is so utterly paranoid about the word 'radiation', (newsflash: people are radioactive!), while the Chinese solar manufacturers are just dumping cadmium in the river or neighbour's farm.

The project of civilisation has wastes. We know how to deal with it. Let's build the fastest way to wean off fossil fuels, which is nuclear, and get over the fact that there will be a tiny amount of waste. (Approximately 1 golf ball per human lifespan, cradle to grave!)

PS: There was a typo.

I accidentally said 'solar farm' when I meant 'solar factory. Everyone knows Solar PV farms or rooftops are relatively clean. It's their manufacture that hides the ugly truth. I'll try again. To be absolutely clear:

I'd rather live in a high-level nuclear waste dump than next to a solar *factory* because of all the toxic junk and cadmium that factory would likely be dumping on me if I were a Chinese farmer.

Two things. The aboriginals never "Managed" their land. They were mostly hunter gatherers and just lived alongside the fauna and flora. Put anything up and two clans tribes, whatever you like will have a fight about it. The yes no interlude I call it. You can try and glorify their stone age existence but they were living marginal lives.
Being an Atheist I also cannot go along with any "Spiritual" claptrap either. That is my opinion, for what it is worth.

The following countries either already recycle spent fuel or are experimenting with a recycling process or both:
France, Japan Russia, China, India, South Korea. Spent fuel is worth trillions of dollars eventually. That is why it is illegal to dump it in the ocean for 50 years.
The US recycled spent fuel in the 1960s.  We don't recycle nuclear fuel now for two reasons:

1. It is valuable and people steal it. The place it went that it wasn't supposed to go to was Israel. This happened in a small town near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in the business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. [I almost took a job there in 1968, designing a nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker.]

2. Virgin uranium is so cheap that it is cheaper than recycling.

Please read this Book: "Plentiful Energy, The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor" by Charles E. Till and Yoon Il Chang, 2011. You can download this book free from: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf.

Charles E. Till and Yoon Il Chang, are former directors of the nuclear power research lab at Argonne National Lab near Chicago.
Get another free book from: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet.html

Per Till & Chang: The Integral Fast Reactor [IFR] uses "nuclear waste" as fuel and gets many times as much energy out of a pound of uranium as the Generation 2 reactors we are using now. The IFR is safer than the Generation 2 reactors, which are safer by far than coal. The IFR is commercially available from GEHitachiPRISM.com

Coal kills 3 million people per year.

Stayin’ alive in the gene pool – Part I  
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/11/01/stayin-alive-gene-pool-p1/

Stayin’ alive in the gene pool – Part II
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/11/08/stayin-alive-gene-pool-p2/

Stayin’ alive in the gene pool – Part III
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/11/15/stayin-alive-gene-pool-p3/

Natural Background Radiation has always been everywhere.

Where did natural background radiation come from? The universe started out with only 3 elements: hydrogen, helium and lithium. All other elements were made in stars or by supernova explosions. Our star is a seventh generation star. The previous 6 generations were necessary for the elements heavier than lithium to be built up. Since heavier elements were built by radiation processes, they were very radioactive when first made.

Our planet was made of the debris of a supernova explosion that happened about 5 billion years ago. The Earth has been decreasing in radioactivity ever since. All elements heavier than iron were necessarily made by accretion of mostly neutrons but sometimes protons onto lighter nuclei. Radioactive decays were necessary to bring these new nuclei into the realm of nuclear stability. That is why all rocks are still radioactive.

Radiation also comes from outer space in the form of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays come from supernovas that are very far away. There will always be cosmic rays.