The Nuclear power industry has many advocates on the  web that insist that nuclear power is safer, cheaper and well, more powerful than all other power options. They have nice little charts that say that civilian nuclear power programs have never killed anybody. They lie.

The nasty little secret is that there never has been a civilian nuclear power program. Back about the time I was born in the 1960's there were two reactor types designed and tested that produced significantly less nuclear waste than the reactor types in use today. These were thorium reactors (not uranium) and molten-salt reactors. (use wiki to read about them)

Two reactor types were designed and tested. One does not produce the plutonium isotope used for nuclear weapons and one that could safely burn that plutonium along with other nuclear wastes reducing significantly their radio-active half lifes. Without a source of plutonium you can't make thousands of nuclear weapons. Neither reactor types are operating in the US.

Finally everything you use to handle nuclear waste becomes nuclear waste itself. It's a tarbaby you can't put down once picked up.

Reach your own conclusions.

You said:

"Finally everything you use to handle nuclear waste becomes nuclear waste itself. It's a tarbaby you can't put down once picked up"

This is not true.  Nuclear waste is not a virus and will not spread.   The number of radioactive atoms do not increase as they are handled.    

France recycles nuclear waste; my understanding is that the program is very effective.

I (previously) worked on developing techniques for waste treatment and recycling for the Hanford site. The Hanford site is a big mess, lots of leaking waste tanks and so forth resulting from a long history of people not knowing how to treat and store nuclear waste. However -- the plans for nuclear fuel reprocessing are distinct from the existing waste problems at Hanford.

From a practical point of view, Hanford might be a good choice for a reprocessing site -- the added focus on technology development at Hanford (rather than at some other facility) will keep the pressure on the waste treatment program there.

Given the major cost and schedule overruns in the current Hanford waste treatment plant, I fear that the DOE might just "cut & run" at some point -- this is less likely to happen if they have an interest at Hanford outside of cleaning up the existing mess.

One other comment: if you consider nuclear power at all worthwhile, reprocessing is a good idea. It's unfortunate (tragic, maybe) that nuclear waste has been so poorly handled, and that it doesn't receive more attention. I think that ocusing on reprocessing will improve our treatment of the existing waste.

"only one square [of toilet paper] per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."

A little water works much better than all that paper.  

The real scary thing about reprocessing is that it gives the appearance that it's somehow reducing the ammount of high level waste.

When it does nothing of the sort.

It creates just as much high level waste as before, but it allows you to use existing waste as fuel, rather than mining for more.

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In this way, it's much the same as corn ethanol.
Huge cost, almost nonexistant benefit.

But it sounds good at first blush.

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But who cares about reducing the ammount of uranium mining?

What people care about is reducing the threat from the waste.

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What I think a lot of people don't know is that nuclear landfills don't fill up by volume.  They fill up by temperature.

And the temperature difference between the whole pile, versus the 97% of the volume of U238 removed, is neglible in temperature.

But using an analogy like "Recycling" where landfills fill up by volume is a intentionally misrepresenting the facts.

You are confused.  I am always up against the thought that radiation spreads like a virus, something in contact with radiation becomes radioactive.  This is true in a reactor with a neutron flux, but not true with decay elements, which give off alpha, gamma and beta radiation.

Your statement should have said anything in a neutron flux becomes radioactive.  My point is that items used to clean up radioactivity do not become radioactive.  You are correct that items used to clean up radioactivity can become contaminated.  In some cases the contamination can be cleaned in other cases, it is not so easy.