The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has proven its worth as a hedge against the energy shocks of conflicts like the wars in Ukraine and Iran. But what if the United States were sitting on another energy reserve that has been quietly accumulating for decades and that Washington has persistently mismanaged?

The roughly 95,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel stored at reactor sites across more than 30 states represents an extraordinary stockpile of recoverable energy comparable in scale to major global energy reserves. We have been treating it as garbage. It is a strategic asset, and our adversaries know it.