Until (if) fusion comes on line and/or we get cheap lift to orbit (at which point power supply and industry cease to be a problem or something close to a room-temerature superconductor is developed (Not the liquid-Nitrogen stuff that is just becoming commercially viable right now.
Or something really off-the-wall like “antigravity” – though it is more likely to be a discovery/development that uses the laws of physics to cheat grevity.
But that could be next year, or 500 years hence, so don’t bet on it.

Given that the speed at which a tectonic plate moves is of the order of 10-15 cm a year, and the distance a package of waste would have to travel to get below the crust is about 100km, you’re talking about exposing the package to astronomically high pressures in a highly corrosive environment for a very, very long time. If the risks involved in permanent land burial are unquantifiable, then those involved with subduction burial are currently even more so.

And that’s before the legal issues surrounding sea dumping have even been mentioned.

Need? That’s quite an assertion. Want, maybe.

For the next 50 years or so, we NEED, WE REALLY NEED nuclear power.

And actually, if you really don’t want to get at the “waste” ever again, just penetrate-dump it into the bottom of a subduction trench.

Although all acts have consequences, there is a big difference between acting in such a way as to maximise present benefits and future costs, and acting with due care in the face of your power to create future costs. This implicitly assumes that future persons are intrinsicially of less worth than those alive now – a proposition which, if it were made in reference to spatial distance rather than temporal, would immediately be seen as outrageous.

Alternatives. One option might be temporary negotiated monitored retrievable storage facilities (as suggested by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, amongst others). As we cannot deep-bury waste, given the levels of uncertainty we then open ourselves up to, the waste must be secure and monitored; as we need to be able to access it to deal with any containment problems etc, it needs to be retrievable (another problem with deep burial); as we are dealing here with the imposition of costs on the present (assuming that some kind of trust fund is set up for covering the costs of storage etc into the future, funded by beneficiaries of nuclear electricity), negotiated, because there needs to be a fully transparent decision making process for the choice of temporary sites. This is obviously the most difficult bit. But as Alex points out, the waste has to be dealt with, and we have all benefited from its production to some degree. To minimise the costs to future generations in this or some similar way, rather than continuing to abuse our ability to profit at their expense, seems the least worst option.

The point about the deep burial idea is that it (a) makes questionable assumptions about how our responsibility to the future is best dealt with (flytipping) and (b) is used to justify continuing to profit at future generations’ expense by building more nuclear power stations. If we deep-bury, we have not ‘dealt with’ the waste, particularly if we continue creating it in the meantime.

There is indeed a vicious circle in all this, and here is where it rests, between (a) and (b) – literally going around and around, endlessly producing more waste while the old stuff slowly decays.

The fact that a problem exists does not necessarily imply that there are any good solutions to it. Or indeed, any viable solutions at all.

Tom Paine wrote:Every age and generation must be free to act for itself, in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.

I don’t think this is at all as wise as you think. Any action has consequences. Taking Paine’s reading, building a house is an egregious incursion on the liberty of the future, as is having the outrageous presumption to think you can suggest ideas to people 200 years in the future by picking up your pen and writing Every age and generation..

But whether he is right or wrong, we haven’t got any less nuclear waste. What, after all, does it mean to “face this power gap with a sense of responsibility?” I strongly suspect it means nothing, as any form of disposal appears to be ruled out a priori.

Perhaps your alternative plan is to keep going around the circular argument until the stuff decays?

I get the feeling your post needs a sarcasmectomy to free your point.