On: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

[Manuel_D]

Or, bury it underground in impermeable rock. Short of a meteor strike right on top of the repository, it will not make its way out to the surface.

[euroderf → Manuel_D]

And if you bury it a kilometer or two down, then if a meteor strike is big enough to dislodge it, the nuclear waste is the least of your problems.

[webmaven → Manuel_D]

The best impermeable rock (ie. granite) formations for this purpose are in the eastern US. Congress excluded them from consideration as sites when they mandated the selection of Yucca Mountain as the sole site in 1987.

[Manuel_D → webmaven]

Exactly: the waste problem is a political one, not an engineering problem.

But it's moot anyway, because the US doesn't reprocess it's waste. So today's nuclear waste is a source of fuel later and it's be a waste to bury it before reprocessing anyway.

[webmaven → Manuel_D]

There is supposed to be a second facility for retrievable waste, but the planning process for it can't begin until the first facility is commissioned.