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France's program is effectively government run, and heavily in debt. I cannot find indication that reprocessing is profitable in the short term, but obviously it has advantages in the long term by reducing waste. That said it does not eliminate the waste issue, nor is France buying up spent waste from neighbors to cash in, nor are they dumping it in the ocean or children's playgrounds (it is still extremely harmful).

I think it would take the deep pockets and standardization of a government-run program to truly see nuclear be done properly, but I doubt there is appetite for a similarly run program in the USA.




A nuclear waste reprocessing program should be 100% government run, or at least government controlled, because part of the process involves refining the plutonium that could then be used to make nuclear weapons. This is why most countries don't reprocess their spent fuel, it's considered a nuclear weapon proliferation risk to reprocess, and the downside of accumulating spent fuel waste is considered minor in comparison to the risk. Buying spent waste from neighbors would be unexpected, because (a) waste reprocessing is more than self-sufficient, and (b) there's not much in the way of transportation infrastructure because countries are extremely cautious not to lose track of spent reactor fuel due to proliferation concerns.

The reason for not dumping it in the ocean is exactly as stated above. It's extremely valuable, in large part because of the plutonium content, and it's senseless to throw away something so valuable that the nation may eventually have a need for.


There are reprocessing methods that are less sensitive to proliferation, such as pyroprocessing where you never have pure plutonium.

Still, there are risks, and I agree it makes sense for reprocessing facilities to be government controlled.

That being said, without also deploying breeder reactors at scale there's not a lot of benefit from reprocessing.




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