Nuclear Waste is a Secret 'Gold' Vault

According to a Reuters article I recently read, there were 270,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel waste globally as of 2015. This is a terrible burden on future generations, which is destined to grow exponentially as we continue to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels despite the growing movement towards renewables. There is a little known fact associated with this mountain of radioactive poison and that is:

"there is gold platinoids in them there hills"

To be more accurate, there are Platinum Group metals that have been synthesized from nuclear fission in the spent fuel. According to [^2] a typical commercial light water reactor will produce about 4kg per tonne of platinum group metals. Fast Breeder reactors can produce as much as 19kg per tonne! Light water reactors produce approximately 33% palladium, 11% rhodium and 56% ruthenium. If we ignore the additional amounts obtained from fast breeder reactors and assume that the used fuel rod waste is completely from light water reactors we can get a conservative estimate of the 2015 value of these metals:

Palladium (Pd) 356,400kgs ($22187/kg) : $7.9B
Rhodium (Rh) 118,800kgs ($29982/kg) : $3.56B
Ruthenium (Ru) 604,800kgs ($1587/kg) : $0.960B

Total: $12.5B USD in precious metals currently stored in Radioactive Waste.

There may be a time in future that processes will exist to economically extract these precious metals from nuclear waste. When this happens it may literally considered to be a gold mine. However any such return will be a drop in the ocean compared to the damage nuclear waste causes. Perhaps one day a million years in the future a denizen of this planet will emerge to once again value precious metals. They may dig the bones of our irradiated civilization and discover to their pleasant surprise our only legacy to them - precious metals mines that still feel warm to the touch.