Am I the only one who thinks we SHOULD store nuclear waste in dry casks above ground precisely because 90% of the potential energy is still in it, and within ~100 yrs we’ll probably figure out how to use the rest of it? Feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface of reusing it.
We call things “waste” only for as long as we don’t have a way to economically recycle it. As soon as that’s figured out, waste instantly changes to a valuable asset.
Remove the fear aspect, and a rock that will emit energetic particles for hundreds or thousands of years inherently sounds like something very valuable to us that we just haven’t learned to harness yet.
Barring the difficult regulatory issues (very non-trivial), one way for a highly stable small country to secure a long-term economic resource would be to create a super secure vault and offer to store all the world's nuclear waste today. I could see e.g. Switzerland doing this.
Then fund all the research into fuel reprocessing and boom, 50-100 years now, they outright OWN an enormous stockpile of one of the world's most valuable materials.
Well, now that I've said it out loud, that doesn't sound like a great situation, so I guess it's probably for the best that everyone's storing their own "waste" for now.
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