The technical problem of disposing of high-level nuclear waste has been substantially solved for several decades: a repository several hundred metres down in stable rock, with engineered barriers around vitrified waste, isolates the material for the periods required, and the geology of such sites is understood well enough to model with reasonable confidence. What has not been solved is the political problem of siting one. Every country that has tried to select a location by technical criteria and then inform the community has failed, sometimes after spending billions. The two that have succeeded, Finland and Sweden, began instead by inviting communities to volunteer and granting them a right to withdraw at any point until the final licence.