MIT's Haruko Wainwright argues in Nature for nuclear expansion before the US demonstrates disposal

The comparison at the center of the essay is one of sequence. Radiation hazards were recognized early in the 20th century, before nuclear technologies were in wide use, so protection standards covering waste management existed by the time there was an industry to regulate ^[4]. PFAS went the other way. They have been in industrial and consumer products since the 1940s, and the first federal drinking water standards were adopted in 2024 ^[8], roughly 84 years of use before a national tap water limit ^[17].

The second argument is about the material. Spent fuel is highly radioactive but solid and compact, and Wainwright says that makes it relatively easy to contain and isolate from the environment ^[5]. Long-lived radionuclides are weakly radioactive and emit little or no penetrating radiation; their health risks come through ingestion or inhalation, the same route as chemical carcinogens ^[15]. Most radionuclides, plutonium included, dissolve poorly and bind strongly to soil ^[16]. "It took time to develop a disposal solution because people were pursuing a perfect one," she said ^[6].

The regulatory asymmetry is the sharper claim. Chemical hazardous wastes, including substances that degrade very slowly or not at all, go into the shallow subsurface with no requirement for long-term predictive assessment ^[10]. For hexavalent chromium and PFAS, Wainwright says the risks were identified only after the substances had spread through the environment, food chains and human bodies ^[9]. Her argument is that the perception gap moves money: attention to often hypothetical nuclear hazards diverts funding, taxpayer dollars included, from contaminants whose consequences are already occurring ^[11].

Two claims are stacked here and they are not the same size. That radioactive waste has been managed better than chemical waste is a statement about two regulatory histories ^[11]. That expanding US nuclear power will benefit the environment is a claim about future net effects ^[3], and the phys.org interview reports her conclusions without reproducing the figures the Nature essay uses ^[18].

Wainwright also points to Finland, which is about to open the world's first deep geological repository for spent fuel, and says several countries are now demonstrating that isolation over geological timescales is feasible ^[7]. In my view that thins the standard American objection considerably: the isolation problem will have been solved somewhere, and what remains in the United States is siting and schedule.

On the near-term practice, she says some companies now build spent fuel storage capacity into plant designs with plans covering the entire operating period, and that research on waste streams from advanced and even fusion reactors is growing ^[12]. She calls the approach "design from the wastes up" ^[13]. She puts communication in the same category as the engineering: "Transparent monitoring programs and effective communications have been shown to build public confidence and provide assurance," she said ^[14].