The U.S. is reportedly in talks with Mongolia about the country setting up an international repository for nuclear waste.Via FP Passport, details (fairly speculative) here.
Like a few other Summers statements, the one on toxic waste (which he later asserted was sarcastic) is easily demonized, but upon further examination shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
I find the nuclear waste storage debate in the U.S. intensely frustrating - it is on par with entitlement spending in the political challenges of doing the right thing in the face of short-term incentives that are much stronger and more visible than the long-term ones.
I also liked an idea from Stuart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline: rather than try to prove a storage site will be safe for 10,000 years, use the Iroquois seven generations rule, find somewhere it will be safe for 200 years, and see how far re-processing technology has evolved by then.
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