this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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No worries.
And we already have the tech to do it. Thats how we get the fuel in the first place.
Because it decays naturally, you'll never have "pure" nuclear material out in the wild. A certain amount is going to naturally decay. And the more pure it is, the faster it decays naturally.
It's just when fuel is used to the point it's less pure than available ore for cheaper than it costs to refine the used fuel...
We chuck it under a mountain.
To get real specific, the remaining issue would be the stuff around the reactor (primarily the primary coolant loop) building up stuff like cobalt 60.
We can keep refining the fuel forever, but it's going to make non-fuel stuff also radioactive, and we can't refine that stuff into fuel. That stuff tho, yeah, throwing it under a mountain, burying it in the desert, it's not going to cause an issue any bigger than burying non radioactive steel in the same place.