Since the first nuclear power plant went online in the US in December of 1957, administrators have been scrambling for a solution to the inevitable and decidedly nasty waste that comes out at the end of the process. Almost seven decades have gone by, but an elegant solution has remained elusive — due to the inconvenient fact that the waste is horrendously toxic, a potential target for terrorists, and needs to be stored securely for thousands of years.
New reporting by Reuters reveals the Trump administration’s latest attempt to solve the nuclear waste dilemma. A fresh directive by the Department of Energy is asking individual US states to volunteer to host a new “permanent geological repository” for spent fuel rods.
States wouldn’t be taking on the burden without any reward. The upside would be potential economic growth in the form of vast investments and “thousands of jobs,” in an era when layoffs and austerity are taking a heavy toll.
For interested states, the nuclear waste storage would come as part of a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, production sites planned around new reactor buildouts and uranium enrichment facilities. In other words, while having to store the country’s nuclear waste forever might be a drag, it could come with a boost to energy production, jobs, and exports.
“By combining this all together in a package, it’s a matter of big carrots being placed alongside a waste facility which is less desirable,” Lake Barrett, a former official from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Reuters.
Per Barrett, states including Utah and Tennessee already expressed an interest. Any other state which hopes to hop on has 60 days to answer the call.
It comes as Trump hopes to quadruple US nuclear power capacity by 2050, primarily by boosting small, low-footprint nuclear reactors known as small modular reactors. Though countries like China and Russia have experimented with SMRs with success, the technology remains untested in the US.
Trump has also pushed for the development of “microreactors,” which are nuclear reactors small enough to be transported on the back of a truck. Microreactors remain a military interest for the most part, with the US Army planning to bring at least one online by summer of 2026.
As for the waste, it remains to be seen whether the administration can overcome decades of opposition to finally find the country’s nuclear waste a home. Time will tell.
More on nuclear energy: Experts Warn That AI Is Getting Control of Nuclear Weapons