Storing nuclear waste from nuclear power plants has always been a problem. Thirty years after Yucca Mountain as a bright star or hollow mountain for storing the nation's nuclear waste was supported by a Congressional Act- the Energy Policy Act of 1992, most of the nuclear waste from reactors still remains stored in temporary canisters on sites where they are used. President Obama cut funding to Yucca Mountain in 2009. Indian tribes have, because of legal systems somewhat separate from regular judicial oversight, been tempted to store nuclear waste in exchange for economic prospects of an immediate positive nature.
It seems wrong to expect Indian Reservations to be the sites for storing nuclear waste with all of the potential harm that can cause. No systems design is flawless to such an extent that unforeseeable deleterious changes are precluded from occurring. Though the Trump administration has pursued a consent based program of deposition of nuclear waste that began in 2016, if I remember, economic coercion of the poor offered a poison pill in exchange for cash is not an unfamiliar and less than honorable political ploy. It is wrong to pursue an implicitly immoral policy even if the exploited party consents with sufficient pressure. It is morally comparable to starving someone then offering them an opportunity to sell their blood so they can buy food.
There is a prospect for advanced technology to research and find a way to reprocess spent nuclear fuel such that it can be reconditioned and reused and thereby making it more safe for eventual storage with the most dangerous period lasting just several hundred years rather than several thousand. Indian tribes having already lost much of their original lands and being reduced in numbers should be the last people expected to hoist the nation's affluent waste on their lands to potentially poison their health.
Instead, Indian tribes should be provided with some alternative economic betterment opportunities to nuclear waste storage. Perhaps they could become locations for producing solar cells- the Chinese have already achieved solar cell production at 33% efficiency which is near the theoretical maximum, while U.S. production is lagging behind. For some decades it is probable that most of the global economy will pursue development of solar power and electric cars as immediate practical economic development that allows entire nations to practically live and move 'off grid'. Major power plants of course will remain about and that may include atomic power before fusion plants arise some day. Reliance on centralized infrastructure should be de-emphasized for national security- when there are alternate sources that can provide an equal quantity of electrical power.
