Can someone with more knowledge explain to me why it's so hard to reuse waste? Like if it is emitting enough energy to contaminate entire swaths of land, why can't you just build something to absorb all the radiation? I can't imagine it is that much less efficient than a solar cell if you just stick it in a box.
It's not, and many other countries do. However, there are still big concerns about the overall economic payback of reprocessing, and also concerns about nuclear proliferation:
Makes sense all the other power source industries would try to lobby nuclear into the ground - if it was used to its potential without political shenanigans and scaremongering in the way we'd have all the cheap green energy we needed with all the other sources out of business.
You mean, something like a RTG (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_...)? I vaguely recall some suggestion to use fission products from reprocessing as RTG fuel, or just as a low grade heat source. I'd guess the hazards of FP's would make it very expensive indeed.
The solid nuclear fuel business is structured like the multi-color printer cartridge business: once a specific uranium isotope is depleted, you have to throw the whole thing away. FWIW, there are several projects, including one funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, trying to solve the issue, but are running into significant political pushback.
"erraPower notes that the US hosts 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium and that 8 metric tons could power 2.5 million homes for a year.[9] Some reports claim that the high fuel efficiency of TWRs, combined with the ability to use uranium recovered from river or sea water, means enough fuel is available to generate electricity for 10 billion people at US per capita consumption levels for million-year time-scales."
Besides whatever regulatory hurdles I imagine you would run into, you can basically leave it in a dry stable underground place for much longer than any of us will live. Old salt mines.
