Since the beginning of the nuclear age, the nuclear establishment has tried to find a solution to the problem of long-lived high-level nuclear waste.  The waste is the deadly byproduct of nuclear weapons development and nuclear power plants.  High-level waste is highly toxic and radioactive and will remain so for many hundreds of thousands of years.  Early on, there were ideas to dump it on a remote desert island, sink it to the bottom of the ocean, or even ship the waste into Sun.  These ideas were quickly dismissed as too costly and highly dangerous.  Since at least the late 1950s, there has been a consensus within the scientific community that the best option or, really, the "least-worst" option is to build a geologically based repository to isolate the waste for as long as possible.  It wasn't until 1982 when the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed that the United States decided to make this the official policy of the United States.