Because of nuclear non-proloferation treaties. You can’t run a “recycling” program without also being able to make plutonium for bombs.
Just let the government do it then. All nuclear waste should/must be handled and recycled by the state.
It’s not like they don’t have nuclear bomb or plutonium already.
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You can’t run a “recycling” program without also being able to make plutonium for bombs.
But you need far more enrichment for weapons grade plutonium than you do for commercial fuel plutonium. In fact, the more we use plutonium for fuel, the less nuclear waste there will be available to potentially be recycled into weapons grade plutonium in the future. There would also be less potent waste to be stored long term which is why Japan reprocesses.
And other countries are reprocessing, including Russia and China, so I don’t see how US holding back is helping non-proliferation anyway.
Because the technology does not exist and would be prohibitively expensive to develop even if we got it to work at all.
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Because money.
…and plutonium
Its not taking up much space, we don’t really need to reuse it at the moment.
