This is the one item my wife [Secretary of my Treasury] will not compromise on losing her NG stove!
I think at our current level of use, it's the NIMBY situation (not in my back yard) with new reactor siting and the waste.**** Fusion is making big strides and generates a lot less radioactive waste, most of it relatively short-lived compared to fission waste, so I'd hope that fusion works for us sooner rather than later (it always seems to be three decades away, requiring gobs more money to perfect). Another thing is the world's known reserves of mineable uranium, if used in our existing conventional fission reactors, would only last 80 to 90 years. If uranium were extracted from seawater, the world would have a 5,700-year supply, and if breeder reactors were used (too easy to make plutonium for bombs!), there would be a 300,000-year supply (with less nuclear waste overall in the end). However, there's a great 2011 article in phy.org as to why nuclear power is not scalable to meet much of the whole world's current and future energy needs Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs
Imagine if we actually recycled it like France.
You can't lump nuclear reactor waste together in one big glob - there would be too much heat and the possibility of a chain reaction.
Straight from the NRC: https://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2015/03/12/dry-cask-storage-the-basics
France is using the breeder reactor cycle to further process its waste. As I mentioned before about the bomb-making capability of breeder reactors, the U.S. put forth and signed a world nuclear-nonproliferation treaty to discourage the development of nuclear weapons and in return, allow countries to receive technological assistance from the U.S. to develop only conventional U.S-type nuclear reactors that fission only U-235. Using breeder reactors at home and trying to discourage other countries from doing so would be overweening hypocrisy. France is just France.
Two further compelling reasons from the article. It would require 15,000 reactors vs. the 440 in service worldwide today to supply all the world's current energy usage (15 TW). In the 14,000 reactor years of operation so far, there have been 11 major accidents involving full or partial core meltdown. With that accident rate and 15,000 reactors in use worldwide, there would be an average of one major reactor accident a month worldwide. Each reactor requires about 20 km2 (8 mi2) for siting and lots of cooling water. It would be extremely difficult to find suitable safe sites for 15,000 nuclear reactors worldwide while avoiding dense population areas and natural disaster zones.
The 3 Mile Island story and environmentalist killed that idea.
