Nah, those (if legitimate) aren’t tarpits. We’ve had, at various times, approved locations for waste, and we actually still approve the storage of waste on site - indefinite storage of ‘temporary waste’. Paying into an insurance fund in case of a nuclear disaster would be far cheaper than what has been happening.

What happens instead is 1) a set of requirements is made, 2) someone spends years figuring it out. 3) it gets approved, 4) before it finishes getting built (or started to be built in some case), someone files a lawsuit causing it to stop or changes the rules, 5) rinse and repeat, or;

Someone gets the bright idea to try something new and unproven, and then they pay all the R&D time, and then the first thing starts happening, and then you’re tarpitted again.

In California it even appears to be part of the plan for high speed rail; as the engineering firms get paid every time the plan needs to get redrawn, and they can keep juking between plans forever until the funds are gone. This happened with Caltrain electrification for a decade. Billions spent for literally a 45 miles’ish stretch of track to electrify it, with zero progress over that time.

If folks are being paid to make plans instead of make a project, that’s usually what they are going to do.

Also a situation I got reminded of near where my parents live - hydrogen plant being built in the middle of the desert. Developers get courted by city A who has cheap land available. City A has a city manager that works out a sweet heart deal that basically funds some of the planning costs (and cuts city revenue by a couple million/yr for a few years doing so), but in exchange for approval and at the last minute, requires they hook to the recycled water source he stupidly had run several miles away instead of the normal way to cover his ass for that bad decision. City B, literally borders on the other side of the street, has a recycled water pipe literally on the other side of the street.

After years of planning and millions spent on their side, the numbers don’t pencil out anymore because of this, so the developers go ‘wtf’, and buy a plot on the other side of the street that is in City B (more expensive, but still cheaper than running 5 miles of large diameter water pipe), cut and paste the plans, and are going to build next year after 3+ years of wasted time and millions in cash wasted.

And this is for a private, for profit project that they want to actually happen ASAP. When the taxpayers are footing the bill, the shenanigans get way worse. When no one seems to notice when the schedule keeps sleeping year after year? Even worse.

Fun fact: all the nuclear waste that the US has ever produced fits in football field at a height of 30 feet.

Currently, spent fuel just stays at the nuclear plants because there is so little of it and it's not a problem. You just put them in sealed casks and they sit there. You don't really want to lose access to the spent fuel either because if you develop breeder reactors that spent fuel is now just 'fuel'.