this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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You can reprocess then and run them through breeder reactors, but no one has proven you can make money doing it.
That biggest reason no one has permanent storage sites is political. There will always be loud protests at any proposed site.
I think the nice thing about breeder reactors isn't so much that they produce additional energy or are economically profitable on their own, but that they have the potential to eliminate nuclear waste that has accumulated in the last few decades, therefore effectively eliminating the storage problem.
Consider this: Storing nuclear waste costs something. A country might pay $1bn to store its nuclear waste for a hundred years. Instead, it could give that money to breeder reactors so they get rid of the nuclear waste permanently.
Breeder reactors don't have to be profitable only by producing electricity. They have another selling-point, and that is that they eliminate the nuclear waste for good. That's also worth something, and politics might be willing to pay for it at some point.
The current situation in the US is that private industry builds and runs the reactors, but the federal government has promised to take care of the waste. So either the breeder reactor needs to be commercially viable, or the government needs to run the reactor and push in on private sector businesses. I'm not sure which would be more difficult to achieve, honestly.