R. Scott Kemp, teaching MIT's course 22.04 Social Problems of Nuclear Energy, covers how the United States has tried to manage spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. He traces the policy history from early disposal plans through the stalled Yucca Mountain repository, then briefly surveys how other countries such as France and Finland have handled the same problem. The second half weighs recycling and reprocessing as alternatives to direct disposal, examining the technical tradeoffs, costs, and proliferation risks involved in separating plutonium and uranium from spent fuel. Kemp treats waste management as a political and institutional failure as much as a technical one, asking why a problem identified decades ago remains unsolved. The lecture runs seventy five minutes and is part of MIT's OpenCourseWare series on the social and policy dimensions of nuclear energy, aimed at students examining the gap between engineering solutions and the regulatory and public trust problems that block their implementation.