> One of the reasons is that we can make nuclear bombs out of it. Are you talking about a dirty bomb? Spent nuclear fuel from PWR/BWR do not contain the right

> One of the reasons is that we can make nuclear bombs out of it. Are you talking about a dirty bomb? Spent nuclear fuel from PWR/BWR do not contain the right isotopes of Plutonium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor-grade_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor-grade_plutonium > People currently value not getting nuked more than clean and unlimited fission energy This looks like a false-choice. A choice between the presence of nuclear weapons vs unlimited fission energy might be slightly fairer, but many countries have a civil nuclear program without nuclear weapons. > With renewable energy power plants, you can use normal security Non-"normal security" is not a great cost for a nuclear power station (1+ GW). 50 extra staff might be 5M USD a year extra, so 0.60 USD/MWh more. Scaling to more reactors per site would give economies of scale. > You need to provide accountability to IAEA to prove that you don't smuggle those plutonium away to make nukes. Accountability is good; tracking where each fuel bundle is and goes is fairly standard practice (at least nowadays), no? Audits don't have to be a pain if their requirements mesh with the business processes. > This is really sad as they're throwing all the good fuel away from the waste. The Plutonium is good stuff for breeder reactors. The depleted Uranium bulk is less useful, as we have thousands of tonnes already sitting around. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of reprocessing is the extraction and vitrification of fission products. Less bulk, splitting the higher activity products out of the bulk, reducing the storage requirements. > there's no way we can remove those expensive safeguards Rules can be changed. De-escalation is possible!