Uranium and Cesium are only two of many potentially hazardous radioactive contaminants in the thousands of tons of spent fuel scattered all over the country, and radio isotopes are chemically identical to their non-radioactive counterparts, so there is no chemical means of separating them.

You have to dissolve the entire fuel assemblies in acid and go through a long series of chemical reactions to separate the different atoms, all done in a facility that resembles a chemical refinery in complexity and size and run by remote control because it is so dangerous. The process of isolating the highly toxic high level wastes also generates enormous amounts of low-level radioactive wastes.

This is not impossible, the tech has been around for decades, but it is dangerous and it is expensive. That is why the industry has done nothing to reprocess spent fuel. They want the profits of nuclear power, but not the expense of cleaning up, or the legal responsibility if something goes wrong.

It’s good to see nuclear power return. If we handle it with caution and care unlike the irresponsibles of the past, then we can benefit greatly.

On the matter of nuclear waste disposal, recently a way to not only dispose of it but to recycle it as fuel has also been discovered. A similar molecule for Cesium has also been discovered, but I am unsure of it’s potential. Goodbye, Yucca Mountain!

Like you, I am tired of the overzealous fear of the “glowing green goop”. Mass media has exaggerated many aspects of nuclear power; and truth be told, while nuclear power is dangerous,, the people who handle it are very much aware of these dangers and usually do their best to keep the worst from happening.