That "waste" is still perfectly usable fuel. You could extract the plutonium and uranium and use that to make more fuel rods. You could burn it in fast breeder reactors, in a hypothetical future where mined uranium becomes expensive enough to warrant the use of fast breeders. Or you could just ship it to Canada, where they have heavy-water-moderated reactors that can use regular nuclear waste directly as fuel, without any chemical reprocessing.
I keep saying that nuclear waste storage shouldn't be thought of as permanent disposal. It should be thought of as keeping a reserve of nuclear fuel for the future.
