Electricity affects nearly every aspect of modern life, from the food supply to health, transportation, housing and emergency services. Lives depend on reliable access to electrical power and nuclear power plants generate a fifth of all U.S. electricity. It would take decades to make up their loss… //

And in 2010, after spending $15 billion, the Yucca Mountain project was stopped over still-debatable concerns of possible radiation leakage into groundwater.

This occurred despite a nonpartisan, 1999 US Geological Survey analysis that concluded continuous monitoring would provide “enough confidence for [the] safety and stability” of the facility. An additional, independent safety evaluation of the site, sponsored by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2015 concluded, "DOE’s proposed [Yucca mountain] repository as designed will be capable of safely isolating used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste for the one-million-year period.”

If the goal is finding the perfect site — a completely risk-free facility, good for millions of years — then no site is viable, not even the already-built Yucca Mountain. It’s the classic example of “better is the enemy of the good enough.” As a result, nuclear waste is still scattered at 60 different locations instead of stored safely at one.

The problem is unique to the U.S., as the vast majority of countries dispose their nuclear waste in deep geological repositories; a small minority reprocesses their waste, but this raises proliferation concerns.

The time to dispose of nuclear waste is now, and stop kicking that can down the road — either by reopening Yucca Mountain or by building other sites. Because when something does happen that compromises our current dispersed system of storing waste, then by past experience our nation will overreact and seek out a quick, ill-thought out solution. That's when a really disastrous scenario may occur. ///

Not disposing of it means it's still available for reuse. There is still a lot of energy in that "waste", which is really only partially used fuel, not waste.

Standard PWR and BWR are almost the most inefficient method of extracting the potential energy or of uranium -- they only use about 1%, as opposed to about 30% for MSR (molten salt reactor) like Thorcon.