The suggestion doesn't seem so obviously ridiculous that it should be dismissed that easily. Bear in mind that the total quantity of material we're talking about is relatively small: a few thousand tons a year, which is far less than the capacity of a single typical container ship.
The economic value of nuclear waste is basically zero, so you only really have to worry about theft for purposes like terrorism. And even if somebody does break into your secure facility, it's hard to imagine an easy way for them to get significant amounts of material out. Seems to me that you wouldn't have to try very hard to make a storage facility more secure than the nuclear plants themselves. Probably the biggest obstacles would be political, not technical.
> ...so you only really have to worry about theft for purposes like terrorism.
That's a pretty big worry. This stuff is super dirty and in the wrong hands could cause a lot of problems. Unlike a pressure cooker bomb which either kills you, maims you, or doesn't do anything to you, a radioactive bomb might kill you anywhere from now to twenty years from now and everyone exposed to it will be left wondering when their number comes up.
The smarter thing is to come up with better ways of reburning the fuel and storing it long-term on-site at the reactor which is already a secure facility. The total amount is small. They don't need tons of space to deal with it. The less you move this stuff around the better.
The risks there are more Fukishima in nature where if they lose power (at a power plant!) then they need some mechanism to circulate water in the cooling tanks to prevent a boil-off.
> a radioactive bomb might kill you anywhere from now to twenty years from now and everyone exposed to it will be left wondering when their number comes up.
I feel obligated to point out that this also applies to things like lead paint, mercury (got any CFL bulbs?), red meat, burnt toast, gasoline vapors, asbestos, new car smell, and sunlight.
Nuclear waste is dangerous, but not outrageously so. It's treated with a deference far beyond what's given to other stuff that kills us regularly.
The economic value of nuclear waste is basically zero, so you only really have to worry about theft for purposes like terrorism. And even if somebody does break into your secure facility, it's hard to imagine an easy way for them to get significant amounts of material out. Seems to me that you wouldn't have to try very hard to make a storage facility more secure than the nuclear plants themselves. Probably the biggest obstacles would be political, not technical.