Giving Compass' Take:

• Futurity reports on how many tons of highly radioactive spent fuel are in temporary storage in 35 US states, with no permanent solution in the works.

• This post recommends that nuclear waste movie into the hands of an independent nonprofit. How would the waste removal be managed in such a scenario?

• Here's more about the cleanup process after 60 years of nuclear power.

The United States government has worked for decades and spent tens of billions of dollars in search of a permanent resting place for the nation’s nuclear waste. Some 80,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste from defense programs sit in pools, dry casks, and large tanks at more than 75 sites throughout the country.

The new study recommends that the US reset its nuclear waste program by moving responsibility for commercially generated, used nuclear fuel away from the federal government and into the hands of an independent, nonprofit, utility-owned and -funded nuclear waste management organization.

“No single group, institution, or governmental organization is incentivized to find a solution,” says Rod Ewing, co-director of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a professor of geological sciences.

The three-year study, which Ewing led, makes a series of recommendations focused on the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Read the full article about nuclear waste sitting in limbo by Mark Golden at Futurity.