(1) High-level and medium-level waste from fission? Reprocess and glassify/bury what remains. Works fine for the French — they’re not as cowardly as prissy little Dumberican NIMBYs about such things.
(2) Solar panels aren’t the only way to extract energy from the Sun. Solar-thermal plants in the desert combined with pumped-hydro storage are another option. As far as upgrading the grid, that’s a problem. But if we spent half as much on that as we did supporting our military-industrial parasites, we’d get it done inside of a decade.

I’d love to see a Manhattan-project level race to change the energy infrastructure of this country to the BEST and CLEANEST in the world inside of 20 years. And yes, when we do something “good”, the rest of the world tends to follow eventually.