Right now the economics favor terrestrial mining and once-through fuel use. But higher demand may make reprocessing and seawater extraction economically viable. Jimmy Carter implemented a national policy discouraging reprocessing. Supposedly Reagan issued an EO cancelling Carter's EO-based ban on reprocessing, but I cannot find a copy of it that has words to that effect in it. Still, it doesn't matter, the die was cast. Nobody will build a reprocessing plant worth billions of dollars if some political hack can shut down your business with the stroke of a pen.
George W. Completely rescinded Carter’s none sense. Seawater uranium extraction has come down to nearly $100 a lb and is dropping. The once through is only possible because the NRC has allowed the temporary storage of wastes in dry casks and unshielded fuel ponds it’s simply unsustainable yucca mtn will only hold 70,000 tons of HLW we have no.choice but to partition out high heat load fission products for decay and vitify the long lived trans uranium elements or chose some form of transmutation be it deep burn in epithermal spectrum, fast burn in fast spectrum or using particle beams and accelerator driven sub critical systems. UT Austin has a fusion fisson hybrid design that incinerates 10 lwr worth of transuranium worth for each hybrid. It not a matter of if but when we have to manage the spent fuel there already is too much to store without partitioning in yucca mtn. The better alternative is to partition into LLW of spent uranium and HLW with two streams a short half life fisson product stream put in air cooled casks for a few hundred years and a long lived transuranium plus the long lived fisson products into a boron silica glass waste form then into deep bore holes in geologically stable continental.shield rocks. There is no alternate to at minimum partitioning. Fortunately GWB told that moron Carter to piss up wind. The NRC stalling is the reason we don’t they are letting the stake holders kick the can down the road for at least 20 years more thats when the fuel ponds and dry cask storage space fills up. Read the second links PDF they have an economic break down of the deep burn partition deep burn and direct burial it is.already competitive with LWR even without breeding which the gas cooled helium reactors can also do with full reprocessing in a closed fuel cycle.