As tensions over the proposed microreactor plant increase, Wyoming lawmakers are considering nuclear waste storage

This week, lawmakers will consider a draft bill that would allow manufacturers of “advanced nuclear reactors” to store high-level radioactive waste at Wyoming facilities.

It would be the second exception to Wyoming’s decades-long ban on nuclear fuel waste storage, removing a barrier to what nuclear energy supporters say could become a profitable new manufacturing and power production sector while also revitalizing the state’s uranium mining industry.

The measure, however, faces strong public opposition, particularly in Natrona County, where Radiant Industries plans to build a nuclear microreactor manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Bar Nunn.

The location is “actually over a mile away from any home,” according to the company, and it meets the distance requirements set by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Many residents are opposed to Radiant’s plan to store spent nuclear fuel waste on site, which they believe is too close to homes, schools, and businesses.

“Bar Nunn does not want nuclear waste,” Midwest Republican Rep. Bill Allemand told a crowd of about 200 people on Thursday evening in Bar Nunn, citing his own constituent polling in House District 58. “We want to manufacture. We’d love Radiant to come here and manufacture, then dispose of the waste elsewhere.”

Such declarations elicited raucous cheers and applause, lending credence to Allemand’s claims that approximately 70% of respondents oppose storing the waste.

Allemand said he organized the town hall because he believes state and local officials, as well as Radiant, are moving too quickly to change Wyoming law to accommodate the company’s plans. Bar Nunn residents, like all Wyoming residents, deserve a longer conversation and the opportunity to learn about a complex and high-risk industry before deciding if it’s a good fit. He stated that further consideration should be given to how to impose limitations such as siting and whether to allow the industry’s radioactive waste.

Allemand and Glenrock Republican Rep. Kevin Campbell urged the audience to attend and speak out at the Joint Minerals, Business, and Economic Development Committee hearing on Wednesday in Casper, where the panel will consider the “Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage” draft bill.

Neither Allemand nor Campbell serve on the Minerals Committee.

Senate File 186, titled “Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage,” was defeated in the current legislative session.

However, not everyone in Bar Nunn is convinced about Radiant and its plans for the community. A few attendees at Thursday’s event raised their hands in support of the project.

Allemand urged Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer to the podium, and he responded solemnly and tersely to an apparent rumor in the community that his tentative support for the project stems from a bribe from Radiant.

“I’ve never taken money,” Boyer explained. “I would never accept money. I did not go to Iraq, serve my country for eight years, bleed, and watch my friends die just to be accused of bribery. That is ridiculous. And I’m angry, and I’m tired of this. “Everybody has been at each other’s throats, which is unacceptable.”

Bar Nunn town council member Dan Sabrosky commented on a Facebook post about Thursday’s event:

“People were mad [including those] I spoke with that left early,” Sabrosky said in an email. “They are tired of controlled town halls and being fed false information to scare them. People are learning more about this industry and realizing that it is the safest energy industry in the country.”

Radiant and Wyoming’s Nuclear Waste Ban

Bar Nunn, like most Natrona County communities, is well-connected to industrial, manufacturing, and technology companies. However, nuclear energy is new to the entire state, which has had a ban on storing spent nuclear fuel for decades, despite repeated efforts to allow Wyoming to store the industry’s radioactive waste commercially.

Without a permanent repository in the United States, or an apparent path to one, critics of waste storage have long argued that allowing “temporary” storage in Wyoming would likely result in the state becoming a de facto permanent repository.

But lawmakers managed to carve out an exception in 2022: “Temporary” storage is allowed, but only if the radioactive waste is associated with a nuclear power plant operating in the state. Wyoming still won’t accept even a pound of the estimated 86,000 metric tons that reside at dozens of nuclear power plants across the country.

The 2022 exemption, enshrined in House Bill 131, “Nuclear power generation and storage-amendments,” was made to accommodate TerraPower’s Natrium nuclear plant being built near Kemmerer.

Similarly, the “Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage” draft bill on the Minerals Committee’s schedule for Wednesday appears to have been drafted to accommodate another company’s ambitions.

California-based Radiant Industries, launched in 2019, proposes to build a microreactor manufacturing plant just outside Bar Nunn’s border. The town of 3,000 residents is located just a few miles north of Casper, home to 59,000.

Radiant plans to build a 100-plus-acre campus where it will “mass produce” and fuel 1-megawatt Kaleidos microreactors, which are “designed for deployment anywhere it’s needed without the need to refuel for years,” according to the company.

Although Radiant may sell the microreactor units, it also plans to lease them, according to the company. When the units need refueling, the mobile reactors will be shipped back to Radiant’s Wyoming facility — from all over the world — and the spent fuel will be stored at the Bar Nunn campus, where it will remain until there’s a permanent federal repository to send it.

“Our microreactors will come back to our factory to have the spent fuel — which is about the volume of two Walmart gas grill propane tanks — removed and temporarily stored on site in dry casks until they can be shipped to a national repository as soon as it’s been selected,” Radiant Vice President of Communications and Marketing Ray Wert told WyoFile via email. “We’re very hopeful that the [Trump] administration will be standing up a national repository site shortly.”

Radiant also needs Wyoming lawmakers to make another exception to the state’s waste storage ban for its business plan to work here. The draft bill up for consideration this week would add “advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers” to the state’s short list of exceptions.

But critics say that’s no small departure from the 2022 exemption to the waste storage ban.

Under the proposed legislation, Wyoming would accept radioactive fuel waste for the benefit of Radiant’s customers from across the nation and the world, giving the state’s residents an unequal portion of the burdens and risks that come with the industry, Rep. Campbell told WyoFile.

“If we do this with Radiant, we set a precedent to store nuclear waste from anywhere on the globe,” Campbell said, adding that several other companies have floated proposals to manufacture microreactors in the state.

The piecemeal additions of exceptions serve the end goal for many long-time proponents of nuclear energy projects in the state, Campbell said. The goal is to allow commercial nuclear waste facilities to operate in Wyoming. House Bill 16, titled “Used nuclear fuel storage-amendments,” was also considered and defeated during this year’s legislative session.

“The next step is to go right back to where we were at with House Bill 16: ‘Oh, why don’t we just become the nuclear repository?'” Campbell said.

It doesn’t make sense, Campbell added, to change state laws for Radiant when the company has yet to file an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project. Radiant intends to submit an application as soon as “we’ve finalized our location,” the company informed WyoFile.

Political divides emerge

Wyoming’s congressional delegation, along with Gov. Mark Gordon and top state energy officials, strongly support bringing nuclear energy to the state while criticizing an inept federal bureaucracy for failing to build a permanent, national repository for spent nuclear fuel waste.

However, political lines are being drawn over the waste issue.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus issued a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday expressing its opposition to nuclear waste storage: “Wyoming must remain a leader in proven energy production rather than becoming a dumping ground for other states’ nuclear waste.” California billionaires insist on saddling our landscapes with windmills, solar panels, and now radioactive casks.

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