According to this report, the federal government is still going forward with their plan to store US high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But the people of Nevada apparently don't want such a thing to happen. You can read about it here:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/08/14/nuclear-regulators-to-post-draft-study-on-proposed-national-radioactive-waste/
Years ago I worked at the Defense Waste Processing Facility in South Carolina, which was constructed to process high level waste from the Savannah River plutonium / tritium factory. That waste was to be put into borosilicate glass logs clad with stainless steel, and the logs were to be sent to a high level repository (which at the time was assumed to be Yucca Mountain).
Boys and girls, no matter how carefully the waste is encapsulated, transported, and stored there is a non-zero probability it will escape into the environment. Nothing lasts forever (with the exception of the radioactive material itself), and yes the storage containers will break down, and yes the repository will leak.
We're kind of stuck. Once the decision was made to construct nuclear bombs, we were put on a path which anyone easily could have predicted would lead to the very mess we're in today. And STILL we've not come up with a viable solution over 70 years later.
We never will - that's the nature of the beast we unleashed. The best we can hope for is to keep it bottled up for decades, and then it will have to be repackaged and restored again ... and the process will be repeated over and over for the life of the human race.
Now ... you do remember that the people who unleashed this beast were the smartest scientists on the planet? Nobel Laureates and such, right? How could they have done such a stupid thing?
Update: Here's another nuclear waste disposal plant and site which are in real trouble:
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/08/13/424594/Hanford-Nuclear-Waste-Walter-Tamosaitis-
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