How about they build those fuel reprocessing plants that they were talking about building a few years back? Would be a lot better than just stuffing it in a mountain and forgetting about it.
I can see having a place to store non-recoverable elements and contaminated materials, but storing spent fuel is just a waste of money and resources.
Reprocessing spent rods was made illegal by Carter. That would have to be overturned by Congress, I believe. In the meantime, waste continues to build up in surface storage because Carter and other presidents have cut deals with foreign government to have their spent waste shipped here. Every person, or household, in the USA who pays a utility bill has contributed to the $15 billion dollars that has been spent on Yucca Mountain which Harry Reid shuttered =- sealing up millions of dollars of machinery in the bottom of a mountain. It’s a fraud and a disgrace!
Both Yucca and processing plants succumbed to the same politics (green), which states that no nuclear power technology is acceptable....only solar and wind power are suitable.
Designing and running a nuclear waste reprocessing plant requires top-notch engineers, managers, and operators, who can easily find more stable (and probably more lucrative) employment elsewhere. Given the instability of the whole process due to politics, those sorts of techies will look elsewhere.
Finishing and operating the Savannah River Site would do America far more good than opening Yucca Mountain ... although both should be done.
We had a fuel reprocessing plant. Jimmy Carter shut it down about day 1 and it was sold for pennies on the dollar to Japan.
Might have a hard time getting money to try that again.
They surely can come up with a way to recycle this stuff at a reasonable cost if not profit.