A nuclear waste dump would be a weird full-circle moment for Louisiana

Lessons from Yucca Mountain

As I was preparing to leave D.C. to become a general-assignment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1999, I stopped in to see an old acquaintance in Sen. Harry Reid’s office. I wanted to get the lay of the land about the politics - and politicians - that ran Nevada.

I ended up getting a long earful about Yucca Mountain, the deserted outpost about 90 miles northwest of the Strip, in the middle of nowhere, where the federal government had proposed to bury all America’s high-level nuclear waste. By then the state was about a dozen years into a massive, decades-long fight against the nuclear waste dump. It was a fight that it would eventually win in 2010 when the Obama administration, with no small assist from Reid, decided to mothball the project after more than $14 billion had been spent.

What stood out to me then - and now - was the virtually unanimous, all-out opposition to the project from anyone in Nevada who had any measure of power or influence. Democrats and Republicans, urban and rural, from the north and south - none of them wanted the Silver State to be a nuclear waste dump. It was an issue in every single race, from constable to U.S. Senator - and there was only one acceptable position you could take and hope to get elected.

This memory comes up, of course, because this week Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry proudly announced that the Trump administration has selected the state to be one of five states to host a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus”. There’s a lot we still need to learn about this plan, but the Louisiana Illuminator reports that a key element involves the storage of nuclear waste.

The third hub is Port Fourchon, which would handle disposal options such as storing nuclear waste in offshore salt domes under the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana’s application pointed out that storing the spent fuel in federal waters would allow companies to bypass state restrictions on nuclear waste disposal, including a state law that generally prohibits storing radioactive waste in salt domes within state territory.

If Louisiana is indeed picked to be a nuclear “campus” (I’m picturing lush courtyards, ivy-covered buildings, but with a gentle green glow) it would be a full-circle moment for the state. Because Louisiana is the main reason Nevada was selected to host the dump in the first place.

The “Screw Nevada” bill

In 1982 Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which put the federal government in charge of disposing nuclear waste, directed the Department of Energy to study potential sites for burying the waste deep underground, and made the nuclear industry responsible for paying the tab.

By 1987 there were five sites that were being studied as a potential dump site. Louisiana was a prime contender, as the Vacherie Salt Dome near the Webster-Bienville Parish line was considered geologically stable and largely impenetrable to water (the other contenders were in Texas, Mississippi, Nevada and Washington state).

But the Senate Energy Committee was chaired by Louisiana Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, who thought it was a waste of time and money to study five different sites - and who did not want America’s nuclear waste dumped in his home state. So Bennett authored what became known as the “Screw Nevada Bill”, an amendment to the nuclear policy act that ordered the Energy Department to focus on just one site - Yucca Mountain.

Let that sit for a moment: Thirty nine years ago, Louisiana was in the midst of the oil bust and a fiscal crisis. The state’s economy was cratering from the decline of the oil and gas industry. The Legislature was issuing “revenue anticipation notes” to keep the state government afloat. Yet the state’s most powerful senator did not want his state to become the nation’s nuclear waste dump site - despite the federal dollars, and jobs, that such a project could bring. In fact, he used the power of his office to make sure it went somewhere else.

It would truly be a full-circle moment if, two generations later, the state’s most powerful politician used his clout to finally make Louisiana the nation’s nuclear waste dump - even if the waste is stored offshore.

What’s next

The federal government would eventually spend more than $14 billion to study, engineer and build the Yucca Mountain facility before finally pulling up stakes. I’ve lost touch with Nevada politics, but I have to assume that any attempt to re-start the project and recoup some of those losses would be a political non-starter.

Meanwhile, the politics around nuclear energy have changed. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, news events of my childhood that shaped our views of nuclear energy, are ancient history. The earth is warming rapidly, and nuclear energy remains a low-carbon source of energy that will almost certainly be part of a long-term energy solution (alongside wind and solar) if America ever gets serious again about addressing the problem. I’m no expert on the issue, but my guess is that it’s a lot safer than it was in 1979.

And there is still the question of where to permanently bury all that waste - around 95,000 metric tons of it, spread across 79 reactors in 30 states.

The relentless rise of AI will only add to that figure. Louisiana is scrambling to build enough new power plants to power the data centers that are central to the AI.

But here is the rub. If you’ve read this far you probably know about the recent Gallup poll that found 70% of Americans don’t want an AI data center built near their home. I haven’t seen any polls about nuclear waste, but the guess here is that most Louisianans would feel even stronger about their state becoming the country’s nuclear waste dump.

None of this seems to be bothering Landry and his allies, who seem blissfully unable or unwilling to read the room. From AI to nukes, the state’s policy seems to be, ‘come hither’: We’ll waive your taxes, buy your land, and rush through the regulatory process if you’ll come to Louisiana, we’ll keep it all secret, and we won’t hold you to your promises about jobs.

But Landry, it’s worth remembering, ran for office primarily on a plan to put more people in prison. That, unfortunately, remains a popular position in Louisiana. When he’s ventured outside of that safe place - such as his push to overhaul the constitution and supersize the state’s voucher program - the voters (and Legislature) have often rejected his advances.

For a state that struggles to create and attract high-paying jobs, Louisiana probably shouldn’t shut the door on nuclear energy and the potential federal investment. But there’s a big difference between encouraging the development of next-generation microreactors to inviting 95,000 metric tons of nuclear waste into the salt domes off Port Fourchon.

Lessons learned

It took a couple of years of living in Nevada for me to realize that the Yucca Mountain debate was about a lot more than energy policy, or the endless studies and environmental reviews that filled up page after page of our newspaper. It was about state pride, and the indignity of a powerful Senator telling a small Western state that it’s going to be a dumping ground.

J. Bennett Johnston understood the same point. Even as Louisiana was at its economic nadir, fighting for solvency, he realized that a nuclear waste dump was not the answer; that whatever short-term economic gains and temporary construction jobs would come into the state would not be worth the long-term damage to the state’s environment and reputation.

Now the ball is in Landry’s court

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