Well first off, I would just like to state that there will probably be 5 other COL applications before the end of the year. So its not like this is just a one time event, Calvert Cliffs already submitted part of their COL weeks ago, and TVA voted today to submit theirs, so well have at least 3 by the end of next month, and 5 by the end of the year, probably 10 at least by the end of next year.
As for the nuclear waste issue, this is again an example of anything with the world "nuclear" in it getting treated completely differently than anything else. First off nuclear "waste" can still be used for fuel for breeder reactors and throwing it away at all is an idiotic idea since you are throwing away 95% of the energy. However even if you are keen on getting rid of it, the waste could literally be vitrified in glass and throw in the bottom of the ocean and nobody would ever know the difference. You could just run a ship out to a deep ocean trench carrying all the nuclear waste in the USA, release it all into the trench and drive away and if you came back 10,000 years later 99.999% of it would still be there. If you want to do the land based geological storage, thats good too, again the containers will be able to last at least 10,000 years without incident, and even when they start leaking the amounts which manage to leach through 1000m of rock will be almost negligible. Personally I think in 100 years we will have a way to completely neutralize nuclear waste, and surely in 1000 years we will have one, WELL before any leakage could occur in even the most pessimistic of models. Nuclear waste is no more deadly than a hundred other chemical poisons in this world, there is really no reason it should be treated as such, but even if you do want to treat it as such you still have to be a complete loon to think that a place like Yucca mountain could not contain it. As was already stated, there were natural reactors and the Oklo site which produced nuclear waste which has moved only a few meter in the last BILLION years. The sun will literally have ceased to exist before nuclear waste could make its way from a deep underground mine out to the surface.