3 ms·

and then where does it go?

• pfdietz 4y ago
  It just sits there. Later maybe something gets done with it, but by the magic of non-zero interest rates that's cheaper than doing anything with it now. In the meantime, its heat production steadily declines, which makes that future processing (or burial, or shooting off into space, or whatever) easier and easier. The only real downside of dry casks is that after about 300 years the waste is so decayed that it's no longer self-protecting from "amateur" diversion of the contained plutonium. So something needs to be done by then.