It’s a toughie. Many countries have mastered reprocessing, but fabricating fuel is another thing, only France and Russia have been successful at that.<p>The U.S. has been hung up a problem that was encountered at the place Karen Silkwood worked at which is (1) people have to handle plutonium pellets with their fingers, (2) the high energy ball mill used to alloy plutonium and uranium oxide makes carcinogenic plutonium nano particles, and (3) you can’t completely control the plutonium dust such that workers can work without respirators.<p>France says “just wear respirators all the time”, the US says “that is not a safe workplace”. After decades it came out that plutonium workers really do get lung cancer at an elevated rate in France.<p>Despite that, the Kerr-McGee factory that Silkwood worked at was successful at making fuel for a fast reactor, the UKs attempt to fabricate fuel from plutonium powder made at Sellafield failed to attain the required quality.<p>There are other ways you could make fuel, particularly as a metal instead of an oxide or dissolving it in a chloride salt but those are much less developed than oxide fuels. The LWR is a bird in the hand and can consume plutonium to some extent, fast reactors can consume it much more thoroughly but are not so developed.