I am all for nuclear power, but I have to correct you.

Yucca Mountain is for disposal of high level nuclear waste (fuel rods) which can have a half-life of thousands of years. The vast bulk of nuclear waste is medium and low level waste which has a typical half life of 50 years.

Sorry, no. High-level waste is the one with short half-lives. Exactly because it decays rapidly it radiates very intensely, and thus is more dangerous. Spent fuel rods are a mix of both high- and low-level waste. After 50 years or so they should be classified as a low-level waste, since the really dangerous stuff will have burned off by then. (The REALLY dangerous stuff, like Iodine-131, has half-life measured in days. Those can actually kill you if you so much as approach an unshielded rod. But within a year thay are gone.)

I would argue that low and medium level nuclear waste is no more dangerous than chemical industrial waste, i.e. methyl chloride, organic heavy metal (mercury, lead) compounds, etc. Chemical industrial waste can be dangerous for centuries.

I agree. Just make sure you understand the definition of "low level nuclear waste", and the fact that exactly because it is low level, it remains (moderately) harmful for millenia.

IMHO, spent fuel rods as high level nuclear waste should have the transuranics processed out thus transforming the high level waste into medium level waste. The transuranics should be burned up in nuclear reactors as reprocessed fuel. The plutonium from old power plant rods has Pu-240(?) in it which significantly degrades it for weapon use (the rods are "over cooked"). The argument that fuel reprocessing would cause weapons proliferation is nonsense. Loose ex-Soviet nukes constitute the real threat of nuclear proliferation

Agree completely. I just love the anti-nukes' claim that reprocessing plutonium "sends the wrong message" (actual quote from someone prominent, don't remember who, though). I think whenever fanatics run out of arguments to defend their position, "sends the wrong message" is their fallback. I also heard many times that givinging cancer patients access to marijuana "sends the wrong message".