> The same can't be done with nuclear waste.

Why not? Just bury it a bit deeper.

But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it.

The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!

Why don't they do that then? Why do I keep seeing news of waste languishing in temporary storage, being "secretly" moved to different temporary storage, drifting in dust form over entire communities, leaking out into groundwater, etc.?

Maybe DOE should hire some HN experts so they'll learn how the job ought to be done? As much money as the nuclear industry has stolen from taxpayers, I think they can afford you.

Because every time they try a bunch of people go 'OMG nuclear waste aaaaah' and object. We could be storing all the waste in a super-secure facility under yucca Mountain in Nevada, but is in limbo because of a few thousand people in Nevada. So we have it stored unsecurely at 131 different sites instead.

http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/depts/comprehensive_planning/nu...

They tried to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

But "environmentalists" stepped in and ended funding. Now we are stuck with the current situation of pretty much every power plant for themselves and storage all over the country.

The main problems with Yucca Mountain were that the site wasn't really suitable (permeable geology, nearby water table, seismic activity). Unfortunately, the best sites for such a long term storage facility would be in the northeast under a geologically stable mountain made of impermeable granite, but those sites were removed from consideration by congressional fiat a while back.

This is what I mean. With nuclear, the rabbit hole always goes deeper. We've been working on this for seventy years now, and however much the government subsidizes it, however many disasters we have, however many "new designs" are tried, however many "impermeable" storage depots are built, nuclear power always comes up with more ways to fail.