| Some people ignore nuclear waste, but then some other people ignore nuclear waste solutions. Here's the scale of the nuclear waste problem, from wikipedia [1] "High-level radioactive waste is stored for 10 or 20 years in spent fuel pools, and then can be put in dry cask storage facilities. In 1997, in the 20 countries which account for most of the world's nuclear power generation, spent fuel storage capacity at the reactors was 148,000 tonnes, with 59% of this utilized. Away-from-reactor storage capacity was 78,000 tonnes, with 44% utilized. With annual additions of about 12,000 tonnes, issues for final disposal are not urgent." Urgent or not, what final disposal options are there? Reprocessing is one. The "La Hague" plant in France [2] reprocesses about 1000t of spent nuclear fuel per year, and a capacity of 1700t. If only the US had the political will to restart nuclear fuel reprocessing... Commercial reprocessing was suspended in 1976, then banned in 1977 (for fears of nuclear proliferation), then the ban was lifted in 1981, but it never took off. [3] Another solution is to use breader-reactors, which have a much higher efficiency that regular nuclear reactors, and so produce much less waste. Russia already has some, such as the BN-800 [4]. The design that Bill Gates invested in, Terra Power [5] is an advanced design of this type. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste#Disposal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower |