...which I don't know the answer to.

The French have a formal waste management program, but I have no technical details on it, and I doubt it's as thorough as I'd like to see ours. They also process waste from other countries, for a fee. But this scares me because of the transport issues. There is really no safe way to move this stuff. Sooner or later, a ship will sink or a train will derail, or some terrorist will strike. I suspect the Brits and probably other Europeans have responsible programs, but again, probably not as responsible as I'd like to see. But to be fair, I really don't know.

I know nothing about the Russians, but if they're handling it the way they handle their other industrial wastes, then look out!

The problem is compounded in that there are many different types of waste. Some of it can actually be safely returned to the environment if properly dispersed and diluted. Much of it isn't even dangerous at all, it's just been legislated that way through fear! Others could safely be just poured into a hole in the ground or dumped at sea. Still others are low level and safe to handle, but might be concentrated by biological and geological processes to cause trouble somewhere else years from now. Still others are extremely deadly, but compact and easily stored in guarded facilities. But the question is, can we guarantee they will still be in guarded facilities a century from now, ten centurries from now? In short, there are no easy, one-shot solutions. Very often, these wastes are mixed in together, as in spent fuel elements, and separating them generates wastes of its own. We need a big, expensive, intrusive, bureaucratic government program to handle the stuff, and no one, not even pointy-headed Greens, feel very comfortable about that.

To make the problem even worse, the stuff is suffering from a severe NIMBY effect, and even reasonable and well thought-out solutions are being irrationally resisted by those who live in the neighborhoods which will be affected. Others, through fear or ignorance, are totally opposed to any waste management at all, they don't realize the problem is already here, we have to do something.

This used to be a solvable technical problem. It still is. Now, through neglect, it's become an intractable political one. People who think the government shouldn't be telling them what kind of lightbulbs to buy don't want the government to be sending trainloads of the worst poison on the planet through their town every day. They don't want free enterprise doing it either.