Modern concerns about global warming have revived ideas about nuclear energy in the United States, but one concern remains: what to do with the waste? Currently, most spent nuclear fuel is stored in large drums at the plants where it was used, and plans are underway for a common location to store the waste for long periods of time. Long-term storage is not the only option; technology exists to recover this spent nuclear fuel and remove unused plutonium and uranium from the waste to create more fuel. The remaining waste would be stored in a long-term facility as noted above. This process is highly controversial due to economic and safety concerns, but could increase the capacity of a storage facility in the long term. Clinton Bastin, a retired chemical engineer who worked for the United States Department of Energy, is a proponent of reprocessing spent fuel in his country. article “We need to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and can do it safely and at a reasonable cost”; emphasizing that nuclear reprocessing is both economically feasible and safe thanks to modern technology, attributing past failures to mismanagement and misinformation. Frank von Hippel is a nuclear physicist and professor at Princeton University; In his article “Rethinking Nuclear Fuel Recycling,” von Hippel speaks out against nuclear fuel reprocessing, citing the costs and dangers of potential terrorism. One of the main controversies surrounding spent fuel reprocessing is safety. In his article, von Hippel discusses the dangers of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. When nuclear fuel is processed to extract plutonium and uranium, the plutonium could fall into the wrong hands and be used to create a nuclear bomb, as India did in 1974 with...... middle of paper..... .f recycling of spent fuel. The idea of ​​nuclear fuel reprocessing is worth exploring, as von Hippel and Bastin said, but it is not economically feasible at the moment. If energy companies take the initiative to study this technology, I think some of the burden could be lifted from the shoulders of government and the public and reprocessing could become a reality. Works Cited Bastin, Clinton. “We need to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and can do it safely and at a reasonable cost.” 21st century science and technology. Summer 2008. Web. March 7, 2010. .von Hippel, Frank N. “Rethinking Nuclear Fuel Recycling.” Scientific American 298.5 (2008). EBSCO host. Internet. March 10. 2010. .