To get our bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering at NCSU a bunch of us looked at a continuous pyroprocess involving molten salt, molten cadmnium, EM pumps, a

To get our bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering at NCSU a bunch of us looked at a continuous pyroprocess involving molten salt, molten cadmnium, EM pumps, and electroplating. The idea is to plate out the Uranium -- and only the uranium, satisfying nonproliferation concerns -- and precipitate out the minor actinides and plutonium together for HLW long term storage, or a different further recycling process. This would close the loop and recycle uranium while still keeping the weapons grade plutonium out of people's hands. It doesn't transmute so it wouldn't solve the waste problem. It only solves the Uranium recycling problem. The US Government is far more concerned about non-proliferation than it is about waste. Hence the lack of political will in fixing the long-known uranium recycling problem with methods like UREX/PUREX, which is not proliferation-resistant. Was really fun, the tech looked promising, the maintenance looks awful, and the political will isn't there. Edit to add: once we are able to recycle the Uranium, the theory is that the rest of the HLW can be used in a different kind of reactor (not a light water one) that would burn the waste as fuel, fully dealing with the waste problem. So there's multiple degrees with which we could recycle spent nuclear fuel.