In actuallity, it is an engineering problem which has already been solved by recycling- a process efficiently & safely used for decades by other countries. Thanks to a muddle-headed Executive Order by Jimmy Carter which still stands, it is blocked here.
We have a nuclear power plant- Plant Hatch- about 60 miles west of here, and for 30 years, all it has produced is clean, cheap electricity. The local paper mill is far more dangerous in terms of pollution, worker injuries, and deaths. Far as I recall, Hatch has never had a fatality, but the pulp mill averages about one a year- falls, burns, crushing. Frankly, I would rather have Hatch nearby, and the paper mill farther away.
Up north in New Hampshire, there's a mill that periodically envelops its neighboring towns in a disgusting rotten-egg smell, I gather from the sulfuric compounds they use to process the wood pulp.
Not quite. It was ONE GreenPiece study funded by the Ford Foundation that deemed nuclear fuel reprocessing as a proliferation threat. Carter (a trained nuclear engineer and Rockefeller's stooge) wrote the EO that banned fuel reprocessing. That created the waste crisis that shut the industry down.
Needless to say, every president since, including Reagan, has had the option of rescinding that EO.
Actually, the reason America doesn't recycle nuclear wsaste is a matter of economics, not stupidity. Recycling is EXPENSIVE. since we have los of deset land that is safe to use for long-term storage, we figure that it's cheaper to store it in Tucca Mountain now, then wait another hundred years or more for recycling technology to get cheap. The US also produces uranium, so it's cheap here
France and Japan are the two countries that recycle now. They have no deserts, no place to store the stuff, so the path of least political resistance is to spend the yen to recycle. These countries also have no uranium of their own. France buys it from Arizona.
The dithering by the Energy Department in this case was scandalous, as was Bill Clinton's use of Nevadans as political pawns for his reelection campaign.