[smegger001]

We planed to do that originally but unfortunely the NIMBY crowd near yucca mountain got upset about it. fortunatly we have tech now to build reactors that turn refine used fuel into new fuel and low radiation byproduct but thanks to decades of the fossil fuel industry funding groups like the siera club and greenpeace we now have a national irrational phobia of atomic energy of any-sort

[monocasa]

We've had that tech for decades, it's what France's infrastructure is built on.

The US doesn't like it because you end up with plutonium doing that. It's contrary to their geopolitical/non-proliferation goals if we start using it because we simultaneously want fairly arbitrary foreign states to use nuclear power (so they don't feel as compelled to start wars over energy), and we don't want arbitrary states having the ability to create nuclear weapons. So pretending that reprocessing fuel isn't the best way to approach long term nuclear power generation is what the DoE/DoD/DoS are stuck on, even domestically.