Democracy’s Short‑Termism Traps Nuclear Waste

U.S. political and judicial volatility has prevented a centralized long‑term repository (Yucca Mountain), leaving spent fuel stranded at 100+ sites in 39 states and shifting risk onto many communities. The mismatch between the millennial time horizons of radioactive materials and decade‑scale democratic cycles produces costly, consent‑starved, redundant storage and erodes public trust in both energy policy and institutions. — This reframes nuclear policy as a governance and institutional design problem: solving energy or waste issues requires durable, depoliticized mechanisms for intergenerational commitments, not only technical fixes.