--- title: "Please Don’t Store Nuclear Waste in Our Precious Oil Field, Says Fossil Fuel Industry" description: "## Spent Fuel" date: "2024-02-18" modified: "2024-02-18" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nuclear-waste-oil-field" categories: - "Energy" - "Nuclear Fusion" - "Renewable Energy" - "Science & Energy" tags: - "energy" - "Fossil Fuels" - "nuclear waste" - "the digest" --- # Please Don’t Store Nuclear Waste in Our Precious Oil Field, Says Fossil Fuel Industry ![A plan to store nuclear waste in America's busiest oil field is a fascinating collision between fossil fuels and nuclear.]() *19 December 2023, Lower Saxony, Salzgitter: A barrel with a nuclear sign painted on it stands as a protest action at the site of the Konrad mine. In May 2021, the environmental organizations Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) and Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) submitted an application to withdraw or revoke the planning approval decision for the planned nuclear waste repository Schacht Konrad. The responsible Lower Saxony Minister Meyer (Greens) intends to present the result of the review of the application on December 19. Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images) \Image: Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images\* ## Spent Fuel In many ways, nuclear power remains a perfectly reasonable stopgap as the world attempts to wean itself off environmentally harmful fossil fuels: it's pretty safe overall, it generates a steady supply of power around the clock, and it's well understood. Of course, there are also those pesky disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, which are rare but horrifying. And maybe even messier are the constant debates over where to store the spent fuel that's left over after nuclear plants use it to generate electricity. To see just how convoluted that issue can become, look no further than this [fascinating *Wall Street Journal* story]() about a much-resisted plan to store nuclear waste in America's most active oil field — a fascinating collision between fossil and post-fossil energy that underscores an undeniable truth at the heart of the nuclear debate: nobody wants this stuff in their backyard. ## Wasted Youth The plan, in which Florida energy company Holtec International intends to store up to 170,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in the Permian Basin oil field in Texas, would make the location the largest spent fuel facility in the world. Unfortunately, the people who are already there are none too pleased. "I’m not antinuclear," Fasken Oil and Ranch assistant general manager Tommy Taylor told the *WSJ*. "We just don’t feel like siting all the nuclear waste in the middle of our biggest oil and gas resource is a good idea." Taylor told the newspaper that he's worried about threats ranging from terrorism to nuclear contamination. But advocates say the waste has to go *somewhere*, since plans to centralize storage for the horrible stuff at locations like Yucca Mountain keep falling through. Instead, the waste tends to pile up at the site of reactors, leaving it vulnerable to spillage, theft by terrorists, or other grim eventualities. "The U.S. has to gird its loins and actually deal with the problem of what they’re going to do with this material in the long run," former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Allison Macfarlane told the WSJ*.* **More on nuclear power:** [*AI Data Centers Need So Much Power They May Need Built-In Nuclear Reactors*]() ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()