Waste: The Unsolved Problem

Nuclear fission produces radioactive waste that remains dangerous for thousands of years. Spent fuel rods contain isotopes like plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,000 years. No civilization in human history has built anything that lasted that long.

Currently, most spent fuel sits in temporary storage pools at reactor sites, which were meant to last decades, not millennia. Deep geological repositories in stable rock formations are the leading long-term solution.