That spent fuel is viable fuel for a different type of reactor. If I'm not mistaken, those reactors are forbidden in the US. They could be used elsewhere though.
Reprocessing or storing 100 or better yet 1,000 year old fuel is way more cost effective, so it may be a net benefit to keeping it above ground to decay.
Risk doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Current levels of risk mitigation makes nuclear uncompetitive without large subsidies. Arguing to make nuclear less safe is difficult.
Self driving has a similar issue where the value shrinks the more supervision it requires. Tesla is a new benefit in terms of effort but it can’t operate safely while the driver is asleep.
I think that's by broad policy and not by individual risk mitigation. Isn't it something like "if nuclear is cheaper than the average then it has to spend the difference on risk mitigation"?
Not really what I’m talking about. There’s quite a lot spent to avoid known failures and little way to know what the minimum they can get away with.
3 mile island wasn’t a public health hazard but lack of maintenance cost billions by destroying the reactor. Thus prompting the industry to spend significantly more money on maintaining reactors. The problem is it’s really difficult to determine what’s overkill here.
There’s something like 600,000 US bridges and sometimes people look a failure and say it’s rare enough not to be worth doing anything about.
Except, in both cases the risk, statistically, is clearly worth it.
It is the optics that suck.
But humans are easily influenced by perception and narrative, rather than rationality.