The half life of fall-out from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was a couple of decades.

The half life of nuclear waste from powerplants is anywhere from thousands of years to millions of years, depending on the mix of isotopes.

If it hasn't been already said: the issue is public perception. If you ask any American in the street what they relate to nuclear power the majority will tell you: Chorynobyl. Even though anyone that's looked up anything knows that technology is leaps ahead of that disaster, that's the fear mongering that everyone jumps to.

Project PACER:

Don't feed the troll. It won't come back, it's too expensive.

I mean, there's barely any difference between the heating of the earth's mantle, i.e. geothermal, to the heating by fission. We are just kind of doing the process manually on the surface of the planet where a tiny mistake will cover it in contamination.