As Japan takes the final steps toward restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, the world’s largest nuclear facility, familiar debates are resurfacing: reactor safety, seismic risk, and public trust. These problems certainly matter, especially in light of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, but they are no longer the primary constraint on nuclear energy’s future.
Criticality is not the constraint. Waste is. In the United States, this is not an unsolved technical challenge. It is a failure of governance and institutional design that our nation has not resolved over the course of decades.
France, China, and Russia all recycle nuclear fuel as part of their national operating systems. Russia and China treat waste management as essential to their nuclear export strategies and resource utilization. France treats recycling as both a strategic capability and a commercial business. In each case, the back end of the fuel cycle is inseparable from the front end. The U.S. has taken a different path, and it has not worked.
In Japan, the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant remains politically contentious despite the country’s technical competence. In the U.S., Yucca Mountain stands as a symbol of paralysis: billions of dollars spent with no resolution and no durable alternative. Across allied democracies, spent fuel remains stranded at reactor sites, turning temporary storage into a permanent liability for future generations to handle.
This is not because democratic societies cannot manage nuclear waste. It is because governments are poorly suited to operate long-lived, capital-intensive industrial systems whose timelines extend far beyond election cycles. That reality is now being acknowledged at the highest levels.
President Donald Trump has taken a consequential step by issuing an executive order to advance nuclear fuel recycling and reprocessing. Whatever one’s politics, the significance is clear: The status quo is no longer acceptable, and the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle must be fixed.
But executive action alone is not the solution. The real opportunity lies in applying the liquefied natural gas export playbook to nuclear waste. Two decades ago, LNG faced entrenched opposition, regulatory uncertainty, and skepticism about its strategic value. The breakthrough came when the government stopped trying to do everything itself.
Instead, it set clear rules, enabled private infrastructure, standardized contracts, and aligned permitting and finance. The result reshaped global energy markets and strengthened U.S. alliances. The nuclear sector, particularly the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, now sits at the same inflection point.
If the U.S. enables its private sector, under rigorous oversight, to take title to spent fuel, recycle it, reduce its volume and toxicity, and manage it responsibly over the long term, our so-called nuclear waste will cease to be a liability. It will become a strategic asset and highly valuable resource.
Advanced recycling and waste-reduction technologies already exist and continue to mature. They do not eliminate waste, but they fundamentally change its scale, risk profile, and political footprint. What they lack is not physics; it is a policy framework that allows governments to stop blocking the private sector by continuously developing failed government-owned and -operated systems. This is not deregulation. It is bringing competence into the system.
Russia and China understand that countries do not want to buy reactors without a credible solution to the waste problem. France understood that waste sovereignty underpins domestic nuclear confidence and export credibility. The U.S. and its allies can no longer afford to treat waste as an unresolved afterthought while competitors convert it into market power and geostrategic advantage.
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The future of nuclear energy will not be decided in reactor cores alone, but rather by those who bring forth the full suite of nuclear fuel cycle technologies and services. Governments should regulate and set guardrails. The private sector should build and operate. And alliances should be strengthened by systems that work, not by unresolved debates that never end.
Handled correctly, the nuclear waste problem can move from political liability to one of the strongest enablers of long-term American energy success and leadership. The playbook already exists. What remains is the will to apply it.
Edward McGinnis is the president and CEO of Curio, an advanced nuclear infrastructure company with a core business in nuclear fuel recycling, and a former acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the Department of Energy.