The old story is fuel needs to be safely stored for thousands of years. This myth is embedded in society globally more deeply than religion.
Science in the last 50 years has shown how to deal with this. First France has successfully recycled fuel since the 1950s. There was a small amount of long-term isotopes in the spent fuel that could not be recycled.
Next the use of nuclear medicine developed. To make the needed very short-lived isotopes, scientists figured out how to turn the long-term isotopes into what was required for cancer treatment with the existing CANDU reactors in Canada. This is done routinely to support medical needs using MOX as the starting point in the process.
Today the recycling it is not 100%. But the learnings from creating these cycles have taught the reactor designers to create new isotopes and use up existing unwanted isotopes.
Some of the micro-reactors use the most toxic isotopes as fuel, burning the high-level waste in a decade or so of operation. When they are done operating the remains of the core are safe for a landfill or metal recycling.
With the right mix of reactor designs the US can use the roughly 90,000 tons of spent fuel. Most of it can be recycled multiple times. Some reactors can enhance the fuel, and some can remove the longest lasting isotopes.
I wrote this to try to be accessible, to people who are new to the concept. I have not used the industry jargon. If you are deeper into this set of issues than I have gone, send me a private message and we can take this a lot deeper. (there are also words that LinkedIn would not let me post).
For everyone else, please realize that even though the US has not built many new reactor designs in the last 40 years, the science has advanced. What we knew about management of isotopes even 15 years ago has changed.
Properly managed, most of the issues with nuclear fuel can be managed. The casks of spent fuel can be removed and recycled. Spent fuel is a 50-year problem, not 10,000-years.
SMR I - Announcement of Small Modular Reactor Series
SMR II - Major types of reactors
SMR III -Â Why is 300 megawatts the dividing line for SMR?
SMR IV -Â Foundation independent designs &Â Power Conversion
NEXT: SMR VII- Throttling, Black Start & Inertia