Nuclear Power’s Revival Is Here. What Do You Do With All the Radioactive Waste?
By Eric Niiler
March 5, 2025
A nuclear power renaissance—driven in part by power-hungry AI data centers—has revived a thorny problem: what to do with the radioactive waste left behind.
Already, more than 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is being stored at sites in 39 states. These include 73 commercial nuclear power plants and more than three dozen university and government facilities, according to a 2024 report by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
