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Another parable I thought of when thinking about recycling nuclear fuel rods is that what causes them to be endbof life are "poisions" that form which might be more difficult to refine out, and new materials are to refine up. It's like we could recycle and purify the water from the septic tank to drink again but there will always be people not interested in drinking it even if it completely purified. Then also consider that the fuel rods may not be a big expense in the construction and operation of a nuclear power plant. These things are the Ferraris of power plants and it would be like using retread tires on a new Ferrari.
As far as waste, it may actually create more waste as you end up cross contaminating all kinds of other equipment trying to break it all back down where sinking the old into a swimming pool every 20 years on site just makes it nothing to worry about anymore.
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