Shorter term (e.g. next century or so) there's also the easy option of just storing it somewhere safe and keeping an eye on it. There's so little of the waste, by volume, that it's not too hard to manage. The advantages of this scheme are:
1. It's easy. It's what we're doing right now.
2. It lets us recycle the slightly used fuel that comes out of our reactors.
Nuclear waste is not useless. Waste from conventional reactors is mostly usable as fuel, but mining it is cheap enough that this recycling isn't economically compelling yet. Our nuclear waste stockpile can be thought of as a strategic nuclear fuel reserve: a valuable resource set aside for the future.
1. It's easy. It's what we're doing right now.
2. It lets us recycle the slightly used fuel that comes out of our reactors.
Nuclear waste is not useless. Waste from conventional reactors is mostly usable as fuel, but mining it is cheap enough that this recycling isn't economically compelling yet. Our nuclear waste stockpile can be thought of as a strategic nuclear fuel reserve: a valuable resource set aside for the future.