This highlights the foolishness of relying on magical government solutions. Nuclear power has plenty of promise, if the waste is magically taken care of by an as yet to be implemented solution from the government. Since this solution never arrived, the waste gets stored at each nuclear plant, where it needs to be actively cooled for some period of time.
It would need to stay at the plant for a few years in any case to be cooled. Once it's cool enough for passive dry cask storage, it's also cool enough yo be shipped.
There's nothing in principle preventing private companies from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and storing what remains in long-term underground storage. It's just illegal for them to do the reprocessing and too politically unpopular for any local government to consent to having a storage facility built on land it manages.
It's misleading to refer to a 'magic government solution' as though the nuclear industry is expecting the government to invent a magic wand that will disappear spent fuel with a flourish of the hand.
