Louisiana Officials Bypass Their Own Laws in Bid for Federal Nuclear Dump

The Pelican State wants to host a new nuclear development and Louisiana officials aren’t going to let state law get in the way. Louisiana beat out 21 other states to join Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Idaho, which also advanced to the final round as the U.S. Department of Energy evaluates possible locations for Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. The planned facilities aim to centralize nuclear fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing and waste disposal within individual states.But to get closer to Governor Jeff Landry’s dream of hosting a nuclear waste repository, officials within Louisiana’s Department of Conservation & Energy had to navigate a state law that prohibits nuclear waste storage in the state’s underground salt domes, as the Louisiana Illuminator first reported. Salt domes are underground geological formations largely responsible for the Gulf’s sizeable deposits of natural gas and crude oil. The Department of Energy uses hollowed out chambers in the structures to store part of the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves. The state used that as a selling point in its proposal, citing “existing 3D seismic mapping, electrical logs, and well data from decades of oil and gas exploration,” which the state could leverage to “rapidly screen OCS salt domes and other strata for overall suitability.”Despite the state’s long history with the energy industry, state law RS 30:2117 holds that “no salt dome within the jurisdiction of the state of Louisiana shall be utilized as a temporary or permanent disposal site for radioactive waste or other radioactive material of any nature by any person.” But salt domes exist farther off the state’s shores, so Louisiana proposed basing operations at Port Fourchon, the state’s most southerly port, and finding a salt dome farther out to sea to store high-level radioactive waste, or HLW.“Importantly, because operations beyond the three-mile limit fall entirely within Federal waters, this strategy bypasses state prohibitions on the disposition of HLW,” the proposal states. The bid also suggested splitting the waste disposal burden with Mississippi, and minimized the potential role of Texas, the state’s longtime oil and gas rival.The workaround was key to Louisiana advancing in the Department of Energy’s review process, according to the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Edwin Lyman. “It really is all about finding another place to be the nation’s radioactive dumping ground,” Lyman told The Times-Picayune regarding the nuclear lifecycle program. Gov. Landry tied his state’s progress in the Department of Energy’s search for a new nuclear venue to the president in a statement this week. “This invitation for Louisiana to advance our nation’s energy security and dominance is a clear sign that our state is well aligned with President Trump’s vision for powering America’s future,” he said.

Louisiana Officials Bypass Their Own Laws in Bid for Federal Nuclear Dump

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