Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Gains Momentum in the U.S.

Economics of Reprocessing and MOX

• Several comments note that plutonium recycling into MOX fuel has been consistently uneconomic: uranium is cheap, waste-disposal savings are small, and the US MOX facility was cancelled after severe cost and schedule overruns.
• Some argue economics could be changed by subsidies, as with wind/solar; others counter that simply storing spent fuel is cheaper and simpler than building a reprocessing industry, especially given extra low‑level waste from reprocessing.

Scale and Toxicity of Nuclear Waste

• Pro‑nuclear commenters emphasize that spent fuel volume is tiny compared to industrial wastes (e.g., steel, chemicals), and that most radiological danger drops off sharply after a few hundred years.
• There’s extended debate comparing plutonium toxicity to mercury and other heavy metals; one side argues plutonium’s chemical toxicity and long half‑life make it uniquely concerning, others say its poor absorption and known dose–response make it less concerning than some non‑radioactive heavy metals.
• Some note that after decay, spent fuel still contains toxic metals, but vitrification (glassification) can render them chemically inert.

Timescales and Long-Term Storage

• 10,000 years is described as “effectively forever” for human civilization; others call it a “rounding error” compared with persistent toxic elements like lead.
• Deep geological repositories with multiple barriers (rock, clay, engineered casks) are presented as a robust solution, though critics highlight uncertainties: water ingress, tectonics, inadvertent human intrusion, and political failures (e.g., Yucca Mountain, Asse II).
• There’s disagreement over how difficult and risky long‑term storage really is: some see it as essentially solved engineering; others see unresolved, multi‑millennial risk.

Using Waste Heat and Transmutation

• Ideas surface about using decay heat for district heating or greenhouses, but commenters raise proliferation and security issues (dirty bomb risk, orphan sources) and argue the economics are poor compared with conventional geothermal.
• The thread distinguishes “reprocessing” (recovering usable fuel) from “transmutation” (using neutrons to shorten half‑lives); some call the article unclear on this distinction.

Nuclear vs Renewables and Storage

• One camp: nuclear is mature, dispatchable baseload with small land footprint; overbuilt solar/wind plus storage still face cost, land, and grid challenges.
• The other camp: current nuclear builds are extremely costly and slow (Vogtle, EPR projects), while solar+storage, wind, and emerging geothermal are already cheaper at the system level and scaling rapidly.
• There’s consensus that no single technology suffices; contention is over whether nuclear is an essential complement or an expensive distraction.

Advanced Concepts and Fuel Cycles

• Discussion touches on:
  • Laser enrichment (SILEX) to re‑enrich depleted uranium tails.
  • Thorium/LFTR concepts that burn plutonium and breed U‑233, potentially reducing long‑lived waste.
  • SMRs and specific designs (AP1000, EPR, BWRX, CANDU), with disagreement over whether new generations will lower costs or repeat past overruns.