I'll avoid the usual arguments here but does anyone have insight into what this waste actually is? Italy doesn't have any nuclear power plants. They closed them all about 20 years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, all the nuclear material is already gone.

Is this actually medical, industrial and research waste? Would that make a difference to those who are opposed to this miniscule importation of low level material?

Maybe Ken and Steve, and other nuclear afficianados, could use it to heat their trailers?  Just bury it under the "skirt" area?  It would give off some nice free heat, after all it is perfectly safe, right Ken?  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

...they already have trash piled high in the streets there.

I'd be glad to take my share of low level waste. It would amount to about 8 cubic inches per year (only one cubic inch is from reactors) and, unfortunately won't do much toward heating my "trailer" since the heat (and radiation) is hardly detectable above natural background.

Granted it's a spokesperson for an industry, but...

As pointed out, even without nuclear power reactors the world is still dependent on nuclear technology, such as widespread use in medicine, food safety, research, etc.

What is the better solution to deal with this waste...

1) Aggregate the waste from around the world to a few countries where facilities can be built as safe as possible and permanently staffed (or until such time as governments collapse and we forget where the site is).

or

2)Have waste collect all around the world in small quantities, either stored permanently in temporary storage or disappear through unmonitored means likely ending up in the environment.

It often seems to me as if some anti-nuke folks accept (promote) the very unsafe storage of existing waste because they believe (hope) that by preventing dealing with it, future waste will not be generated.  In my opinion this ignores two factors.

We already have lots of waste that really should be dealt with.

Even without civilian power reactors (which will likely be built overseas even if not here), we have military nuclear waste and we have industrial nuclear waste.