Help, please, from the scientists here. About the problem of nuclear waste [View all]

I have been generally against nuclear power, both because of the danger of nuclear accidents and because of the problem of storage of contaminated material and spent rods.

I remember the results of Reagan‘s commission studying how to make nuclear waste storage safe for the ages that proposed we create basically a generational priesthood that would carry the information of the danger into the thousands of years of the future to warn people off. Crazy, right? Absurd.

It was suggested to me recently that we only needed to worry about the next hundred years because we would find a way to use the radioactive waste to generate new energy and in passing make it safe.

I would like to believe this, particularly in the light of the horrific dangers of climate change and with the current push to build a new generation of small reactors, as New York’s governor is currently proposing.

So, for my scientific friends here, what do you think? Is there any realistic basis for that idea or is such recycling a fantasy?

It seems to me that once the waste is buried to our current specification for eternal entombment, it is unrealistic to expect it could be “mined.“. If recycling is ever to become feasible, then our storage systems should be designed accordingly for prospective retrieval of materials that could potentially be reused. Right?