Trump has a plan to make Idaho home to vast stockpile of nation’s high-level nuclear waste

Idaho selected as potential host site for new DOE Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus 

The plan, in the works for months, was finally publicly revealed this week by the U.S. Department of Energy, innocuously described as a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus.” The “campus” designation is promising billions in pie-in-the-sky economic benefits to states “lucky” enough to be named to the Trump administration’s short list. 

But like all things from this administration the breathless hype conceals an ill-conceived and reckless “science” devoid blackmail scheme, that seeks to entice Idaho to accept one-third of the country’s now homeless nuclear waste cache for a “promise” of a big pay day. 

Yet as audacious as the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus plot is – and it is truly and nakedly risky in its ambitions – it is even more outrageous that Idaho’s governor, its U.S. senators, eastern Idaho congressman and most of the state Legislature have embraced an Idaho nuclear waste disposal scheme masquerading as an economic windfall. 

As the Idaho Statesman’s Mark Dee succulently reported this week: “Idaho is on the shortlist to become the center of America’s nuclear energy industry — and a warehouse for much of its radioactive waste.”

One has to be living in the Trump DOE’s house of mirrors not to understand that creating a permanent waste storehouse is vastly more important to the administration and its political cheerleaders than any vague promise that Idaho, or Tennessee, Utah, Oklahoma or Louisiana will reap some huge financial windfall. 

Becoming the center of a revitalized nuclear energy industry, an industry most clearly defined not by the jobs, energy or cash it generates but rather by the highly radioactive waste it produces carries an enormous caveat for Idaho – you might get some cash, but you must take the trash.  

Idaho’s application for this “windfall,” signed by Gov. Brad Little and warmly endorsed by Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, Congressman Mike Simpson and most state legislators – sadly and astoundingly including most of the Democratic leadership – isn’t bashful about just how willing Idaho leaders are to warehouse the nation’s waste. 

“Once Congress has acted to address and update the existing legal framework,” the Idaho proposal says, “Idaho is poised to engage in discussions about the eventual siting of a permanent national repository. Idaho intends to collaborate closely with the federal government and neighboring states that are interested in serving as long-term repository locations, ensuring the responsible disposition of waste streams.” 

While the Idaho proposal hints that a “permanent” waste repository might be sited in Utah, Idaho’s cheerleaders also say more “temporary” storage in Idaho sounds just fine by them. 

“While Idaho will not consider the establishment of a deep geologic repository below the INL site or above the Snake River Plain Aquifer … Idaho is willing to consider additional long-term monitored storage solutions for the DOE, possibly including deep bore hole storage, in exchange for significant financial consideration in anticipation of development of a recycling and reprocessing (R&R) capability near the INL site.” 

Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember that Idaho has been here before. 

From the early 1970s to the end of the 1990s, Idaho governors of both parties resisted repeated federal efforts to turn Idaho into what former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus called the nation’s “de facto nuclear waste dump.”

When Andrus became governor in 1971, the state had been quietly serving for decades as a convenient “out of sight, out of mind” location for “temporary” waste storage. Andrus famously closed the state’s borders to additional waste in 1988 when he became frustrated by DOE’s lies and incompetence in addressing waste issues, including failure to create a plan to clean up and remove waste already sitting in Idaho.  

Andrus’s successor, Republican Phil Batt, carried the fight forward and secured a landmark agreement sharply restricting movement of new waste into Idaho and proscribing how existing waste would be treated and removed. 

Both Batt and Andrus shamed their critics, including many Republican politicians and deep pocketed industry concerns, into submission because they were right on both the policy and the politics. Survey after survey over decades have shown that the state’s fight to avoid becoming a nuclear waste dump has enjoyed widespread public support. Batt’s agreement was immensely popular in part because the feisty, no-nonsense governor effectively told DOE to clean up its old mess and stop making a bigger mess in the future. 

Now Idaho’s nuclear waste dump application clearly envisions junking Batt’s agreement, saying ‘future modifications will be discussed when relevant and appropriate.”

In other words, Little and the state’s political elite are poised to tear up Batt’s agreement and decades of bipartisan resolve, and for what? A promise to welcome more than 30,000 metric tons of the most dangerous material on the planet for at least “temporary” storage above the Snake River Aquifer in southeastern Idaho?

To make sure the Trump administration understands how completely prepared Idaho is to become a waste disposal site, Little’s proposal underscores that “Idaho is actively reforming its internal codes to consolidate authority and simplify the pathway for complex nuclear and hazardous waste facilities.” 

In other words, we won’t bother with any public process around this wonderful scheme. We’ll short circuit any safeguards and make sure the decision-making is “consolidated.” 

This fantastic scheme, like all things emanating from this administration, is full of bluster, wild promises, scientific and regulatory shortcuts (or abandonment) and utter disregard for basic common sense. If you think all this blue smoke is good for Idaho then you’ll probably making a killing trading Trump crypto currency. 

Here’s the bottom line: American needs safe, reliable nuclear energy, and the industry needs a safe, scientifically sound basis for dealing with the vast waste stockpile that exists and that will only grow in the future.

Instead, the Trump administration has produced a jerry rigged, phantom economic development concept that is really just a plea to states like Idaho to take some garbage “temporarily,” while we kick the waste can down the road to places like Butte County, Idaho. 

If this were a nuclear waste version of “The Apprentice,” the Idaho politicians endorsing this nonsense would be fired since they clearly have no idea what they are doing.

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