Nuclear waste isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the problem

Nuclear energy is enjoying a rare moment of bipartisan love in the US. Tech companies desperate to power their data centers are throwing money at it. New reactors are being proposed. Even the regulatory gears are starting to turn.

But here’s the thing nobody wants to talk about at the party: the waste.

Every year, US reactors produce about 2,000 metric tons of high-level waste. And we still have nowhere permanent to put it. That’s not a new problem — it’s been festering for nearly seven decades, since the first permanent nuclear facility went online. But with all this new interest and investment, it’s the perfect time to actually deal with it.

Right now, spent fuel sits at reactor sites in steel-and-concrete casks or cooling pools. Experts say these are safe enough for now, but they were never meant to be permanent. They’re a temporary fix that’s been stretched into a decades-long default.

The global gold standard for long-term storage is a deep geological repository. Dig a hole hundreds of meters underground, put the waste in, seal it with concrete. Simple in concept, brutally hard in practice.

Finland is the closest to making it work. They’ve been testing their facility since 2026, and final approvals could come this year. Operations might start before 2027 is out. That’s after starting the planning process in the 1980s. Yes, decades.

France isn’t far behind. They already reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium and uranium for mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, but that’s not a perfect loop — there’s still leftover waste. They store it at the La Hague plant for now, but a repository is in the works. Initial approvals could come later this decade, with pilot operations by 2035.

The US technically has a designated site: Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Congress picked it back in 1987. But political opposition killed it. Funding stopped in 2011, and there’s been zero progress since. Meanwhile, the waste keeps piling up.

And the nuclear industry is accelerating globally. China has the fastest-growing program. Bangladesh and Turkey are building their first reactors. Even in the US, where the program is well-established, Big Tech money is fueling a new wave of next-generation reactors with different coolants, fuels, and designs.

All of this means new types of waste are coming. It’s not just the same old spent fuel anymore. And if we don’t have a permanent solution for the current stuff, what makes anyone think we’ll handle the new stuff better?

I think the nuclear industry and its powerful new customers — the tech giants — should be pushing for geological storage. The US is the richest country on the planet and hosts a huge chunk of next-gen reactor activity. We should be leading, not lagging.

Some experts are calling for a new organization to manage nuclear waste, separate from the Department of Energy. Something like what Finland, Canada, and France have. It makes sense. The DOE has too many competing priorities, and waste management gets lost.

Even a small fraction of the recent funding surge could make a real difference. But it requires political will, which has been in short supply.

The truth is, planning and building a permanent repository takes decades. Finland started in the 1980s and is only now almost ready. For countries without a solution, the best time to start was decades ago. The second-best time is now.

Let’s see if anyone actually takes that advice this time around.