Like all things that could be done, my bet is that cost is the mitigating factor to sending nuclear waste to the sun. Better yet stop using nuclear energy for profits among the International bankers and other associated money pigs who just as soon feed it to us as a laxative 🙂 or a tooth protecting tooth paste additive..:) hey..wait a minute :0) or a water additive to protect out teeth and rot our guts..population control and profits..mm..keep mum on that..:) oh thank goodness, at least my city is no longer using Floridation..??..an alleged nuclear waste product fed to the always willing to ingest any poison set before them :). An new technology is growing which offers a good potential for taking energy right from the earth. Haven't had a chance to do the simple experiments yet but once on my place I will play with all the good old and new innovations that I can use.:)
The price of progress as it is understood and implemented...profitable mass extinctions 🙂

omg, this subject is close to my heart. I spent a year of my life fighting uranium prospectors, so any thing nuclear just pisses me right off. and Fluoridation, nice industrial wast into our systems. NOT GOOD.

The power of the nuclear industry is totally corrupt . They have to much money and power. And Canada plays a very big roll in all thinga nuclear and uranium, including depleted uranium in all the war torn country of the world. How can we sleep at night knowing our Canadian uranium is killing babies all over the world, very sad. Get the book Canada's Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System Jim Harding

http://www.amazon.ca/Canadas-Deadly-Secret-Saskatchewan-Uranium/dp/1552662268

It is is February and the spent fuel rods being in the proximity of the melted down reactor cores still make this the most dangerous nuclear situation ever. The japanese have been incinerating their garbage for decades but now they incinerate the radioactive waste materials in their 'clean up' which I fear is dispersing radiated particulate into the air stream. It is bad enough the environmental degardation to our lakes and forests with acidified rain and now this . I live in BC where uranium exploration and mining are banned and it is a betrayal that our government whores out sale of high grade uranium ore out of Saskatchewan, in partnership no less with Tepco via the Comenco corporation , absolutely abhorent. Recently announced deals with China will see 52 million pounds of uranium sold with no accountability contracts so it can be put into weapons manufacture. Is Canada is no longer a nation with any integrity?

How come nobody talks about sending all those spent fuel rods to the sun?

It could be a great global industry for the first country that does it.

I suppose there is always the chance of missing the sun, and annoying some other alien lifeform when it lands in their backyard. 😯

i actually thought about this, so (sadly) did the calculations some time ago.....take the US......its not spent fuel rods, its the nuclear waste thats produced along with them....29,000 tonnes in the US alone in 2010. space delivery is charged by the pound at $10,000 a pound for a space shuttle ($20,000 for rockets) . 2000 pounds in a tonne, so thats 58,000,000 pounds of waste material produced yearly....58,000,000 times 10,000...thats 580,000,000,000....now you can double the cost because your talking about using a disposable projectile/ rocket that you will not be recovering/ reusing so lets call it a cool trillion $ yearly to get your waste into space and fire it into the sun...125,000,000 homes in the US all with hydro bills...(you have to pass the cost on to someone)....paying roughly $0.10 a kwh for hydro .....extra $4640 each household yearly....

now theres something called negative energy....can't remember who wrote the paper on it but it has to do with using more energy to produce energy (ethanol is the massive elephant in that room) it would take more energy...rocket fuel, hydro to power control centers etc than would actually be produce by the nuclear power plants in the first place.

Swap over to Thorium. It's becoming the rage. Unbelievable safety benefits with Thorium reactors. And you can't use the spent fuel for weapons. Which is why it won't be done.

The other problem with sending it to the sun is if you have an accident. Mother of all dirty bombs. I have to agree the only sensible long term solution is to send it to the sun.
Just piling it up is absolute madness. Even pigs don't sh#t where they eat.

Maybe if they get the space elevator sorted out we could get it in orbit cheaply. Wouldn't take much at all to send it the rest of the way.

Maybe the only sensible long term solution is NOT TO PRODUCE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!