Governor Little and Attorney General Labrador recently responded with zeal to the Department of Energy’s latest nuclear waste proposal—the so-called Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus. We’ll call it as we see it; a dumping ground, dressed up as an innovation.
Here’s the deal: states might be able to negotiate which nuclear activities happen at their hub, but the Department of Energy (DOE) has made one thing clear. The “back end,” which means radioactive waste, is the part you can’t change. If you want a hub, you have to store the waste. No exceptions.
Marla Morales, acting deputy assistant secretary for the DOE’s Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel, put it bluntly in a recent Nuclear Newswire piece: she compared the proposal to a menu, saying “your main course needs to be ultimate disposition.” Thus, the entree isn’t innovation; it’s a nuclear waste dump.
The DOE isn’t even proposing a deep geologic repository at this stage. Instead, they’re punting the problem to the states, likely sweetened with promises of jobs. But what about safe jobs? What about jobs that don’t threaten our water, our health, and the well-being of future generations?
Governor Little has floated the idea of deep borehole storage—a reckless, head-in-the-sand approach that would make waste retrieval dangerous, if not nearly impossible. Let’s be clear: no container in existence can outlast radioactive waste. To pretend otherwise is to invite a leak—and with it, a contamination crisis.
Even the basics remain a mystery. How much of this costly experiment would fall on the backs of taxpayers and ratepayers? Will the hub include an AI data center? What type of nuclear reactor would be installed and how many? What reprocessing techniques would be used? What about safety and security? And perhaps most critically, how much water would this hub consume?
The DOE has failed to manage its own waste for decades. They have no real solution, so now they’re making it a state problem. Idaho deserves better than to be a test site for the fed’s failed policy.
Don’t fall for the new nuclear dump scheme. Our land, our water, and our children are not bargaining chips.