Nuclear Waste (Union of Concerned Scientists)

It's a long way from nuclear raw material to nuclear waste, and it's expected a lot of valuable energy would be extracted along the way. This is the part that would benefit shareholders.

There's also a lot of transportation involved, this can mean undue risk to the environment.

Who knows, maybe unforseen externalities could be larger-than-life. Maybe even in the literal sense.

Similar to petroleum when you think about it where the crude oil has quite a lifecycle where it is eventually burned into waste CO2 and widely dispersed into the environment. Regardless of how bad it turned out to be, it took a long time to fully recognize the problem, and by that time it was really out of control.

Now the nuclear material straight from the earth is naturally toxic in a different way than the crude oil, even when no further processing into fuels has been done. But either energy source begins its journey toward its own kind of dispersal in ways that can not happen if it were to be left within the earth like it was to begin with.

Some things are a lot more difficult to un-disperse than others, but it looks like an uphill battle across-the-board, not just physically but especially long after the money has been spent.

> UCS opposes reprocessing because it increases proliferation and terrorism risks while actually adding to the waste problem rather than reducing it.

But countries are making nuclear weapons anyway. And it's just plain false that reprocessing is adding to the waste problem rather than reducing it.