“Innovation” campuses: Nuclear waste Trojan horses?

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of five initial contenders for building Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. The states that could serve as potential hosts are Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho. But is this proposal a Trojan horse meant to force these states to store existing radioactive waste that no one will currently take?

A leaked document revealed by Politico, calls for scrapping Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s sole site for storing high-level nuclear waste while the White House wants legal changes to allow DOE to choose one or more sites “in willing states” to host so-called nuclear life-cycle innovation campuses for nuclear activities to include fuel production, recycling and waste disposition. More