But at current in the US it is stored in holding pools all over the country. None of those are getting any larger, although they are frequently reworked to allow better use of the volume available.
Very little of it is 'weapons grade' and not many people have access to the equipment to weaponize it into a nuclear weapon. But turning any of it into a dirty bomb is trivial if you can steal it.
There is also the problem of accidents, why by definition are unavoidable.
So, you really do want to get rid of the fuel. Launching it into space is impractical. But it should be stored in a difficult to access facility where the chance of it escaping is minimal. The US federal government collected billions for the construction of such a facility, but it was never completed. So as a result, we have fuel scattered all over the US.
Yes, but unfortunately logic and reason don't factor into the decision making around nuclear energy policy.
People love to point scream and shout about the dangers of nuclear energy. In conversation I've noticed that people think of nuclear energy as interchangeable with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are incredibly difficult to build compared to a nuclear fission reactor. The experimental data you need to build one either requires numerous tests or stealing it from a government. Nuclear reactors on the other hand, can be very simple. The simplest reactors are just lumps of radioactive material carefully bonded to thermoelectric devices! The biggest risk from a conventional nuclear reactor is a steam explosion and the dispersal of radioactive material. I reckon the second biggest risk is having tons (quite literally) of spent fuel laying around the country for no good reason. The storage ponds aren't 100%, accidents will happen. For most of the ponds if the cooling systems went offline the water would boil away and then the fuel would self-heat till it started to oxidize. At that point you've basically got hundreds of miniature fallout generators going. You better hope the structure above the pond is airtight because no one is going to be entering it again in this century.
The same group of people that scream and shout about nuclear energy being unsafe seem to actively ignore the dangers of conventional energy generation. For example, steam explosions are still a risk to the employees operating the plant. But I guess their lives don't matter? The pollution from coal isn't exactly helping the environment. Then there is this matter of what to do with all of the coal dust after it is burnt. You know, the same coal ash that over 1 billion gallons recently flooded an area of Tennessee. This contaminated a river, people's land, and destroyed their homes.
Even if we ceased 100% of nuclear energy generation today, we still need Yucca Mountain to deal with the spent fuel we already have. It seems that some groups in the US believe that if they scream loudly enough, the problems of the world will simply go away.
Also there is this issue of the fact that the energy consumers and the taxpayers already paid for the fucking thing but aren't getting any of the benefits. At this point it is basically just a boondoggle.
But at current in the US it is stored in holding pools all over the country. None of those are getting any larger, although they are frequently reworked to allow better use of the volume available.
Very little of it is 'weapons grade' and not many people have access to the equipment to weaponize it into a nuclear weapon. But turning any of it into a dirty bomb is trivial if you can steal it.
There is also the problem of accidents, why by definition are unavoidable.
So, you really do want to get rid of the fuel. Launching it into space is impractical. But it should be stored in a difficult to access facility where the chance of it escaping is minimal. The US federal government collected billions for the construction of such a facility, but it was never completed. So as a result, we have fuel scattered all over the US.