[damienkatz]

> RADIOACTIVE WASTE THAT IS LETHAL FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS

Honest question, isn't the fuel also lethal, and decaying it makes it less lethal? I understand storing the waste might be somewhat problematic, but is it really that hard to put it somewhere safe?

[nacker]

Damien, to be honest, once radioactive fuel is "in the country", as far as I know, feeding it into a reactor produces more radioactive waste than the original material.

But I could be wrong about that. I'm sure some of the nuclear experts, and captains of industry, and Wall Street apologists whose jobs depend on it would be able to give you a more scientific answer ;)

As far as I am aware, the safest policy for "the country", whatever that territory might be, is to get any radioactive material "outside" ASAP.

Also, as far as I am aware, there is no shortage of governments who are willing to be the hosts of such long-term poisons/weapons material, which doesn't really say much for them morally, does it?

[rdl]

Reprocessing some kinds of nuclear waste actually reduces long-term radiation levels. TRUEX, from Argonne National Laboratory, can remove (and then burn up) transuranic alpha emitters, and basically you end up with short-lived high activity isotopes (safely stored above ground for decades in fuel ponds on-site) and long-lived low-activity isotopes (fairly similar to the natural ores, and could be stored underground long-term, or in subduction zones in the mantle). The problem is that doing this has a proliferation risk, but I have zero fear of the Japanese developing a nuclear weapon, and as far as the US, UK, FR, CN, RU doing so, well, that ship sailed in the middle of last century.