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Notes -
Why not just store the concrete casks outside like they are now?
Well they still need to be guarded since they could be used as radiological weapons. One central storage facility is better than 120 small facilities next to reactors, all needing guards. Concrete or lead doesn't really matter.
In fairness there's no extra overhead to storing them at active reactors because they're all required to be ridiculously well guarded anyway. It's the ones that shut down and force you to move the fuel that cause trouble, but so far they seem to just be foisting it off on still-active plants.
(Tangent, but that's something that always annoyed me about the Small Modular Reactor hype this guy was involved in. Are they going to reduce security requirements down to "if the alarm goes off my cousin Bob will drive round with his shotgun" to make them cost-effective for, like, heating steam in paper mills? Good luck pushing that one through.)
Well the USG was paying enormous sums to nuclear power plants because they breached a contract saying that they'd have the permanent waste dump ready decades ago. Apparently they charged a fee on nuclear electricity to pay for a waste dump, then didn't make it, so they have to compensate the power companies...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act
I suppose they have to pump up those nuclear costs, can't risk nuclear energy being too affordable!
As for small modular reactors, I don't see any reason for them aside from mobility. Let's just grow up as a civilization and make large nuclear reactors properly.
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