A #Chicago activist Michael McLean demonstrating 30 years of spent fuel in a LaSalle County #nuclear power plant. That’s it, these containers represent over quarter of century of low-carbon generation.

And it’s incorrect to call it “waste” - the fuel in these containers still contains 90%+ usable uranium which is just unsuitable for generation as it has been “polluted” by fission byproducts. But it can be reprocessed back into new fuel - the only reason why it’s not being done today is that it’s cheaper to use newly mined uranium for that purpose. This may change in future and then these containers will be opened and reused.

On average, only 4% of each container is actual “nuclear waste” that needs to be stored somewhere long-term. But even that doesn’t means “millenia”, because the very point of radioactive decay is that this waste loses activity pretty quickly. The more active it is, the faster it decays - and the byproducts separated from spent fuel will drop down to 7% of their original activity in only 100 years.