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,........

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