And as Trump looks to quadruple domestic nuclear energy capacity by 2050, the question of permanent nuclear waste storage somewhere other than Yucca Mountain has become more pressing.

Where is Yucca Mountain? 

Yucca Mountain is located roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas and just over 20 miles from the California border.

The mountain, known for its long ridgeline, is composed primarily of tuff, a rock made of volcanic ash.

Just over 1,400 people live in the Amargosa Valley, about 18 miles south of Yucca Mountain. 

Why was it picked?

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required the Department of Energy to select a deep underground repository to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.

Five years later, Yucca Mountain was selected.

The combination of its remote location, dry climate, deep water table, and stable volcanic rock made many scientists believe that Yucca Mountain had the best technical and scientific characteristics to serve as a nuclear waste repository.

Is nuclear waste stored there? 

No high-level atomic waste, meaning material with intense radioactivity, has ever been stored at Yucca Mountain.

Under the law, the Department of Energy was supposed to begin accepting atomic waste at the site by early 1998. Initial plans aimed to have the waste repository open by 2010.

In 1987, Yucca Mountain was selected as the sole site the Department of Energy would study further to determine whether it would be a suitable repository for nuclear waste. Fifteen years later, after extensive research from the government, national labs, and several universities, Congress finally gave its approval for the site.

In 2008, the Department of Energy submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requesting to construct the repository.

Very little physical work was done to construct the repository in the years prior, with just one 5-mile exploratory tunnel bored through the volcanic rock in the late 1990s.

And in 2011, the Government Accountability Office estimated that more than $15 billion was spent on research surrounding the site.

By 2010, the Obama administration reversed course and moved to withdraw the license application.

Why was it abandoned? 

Since Yucca Mountain was selected as the sole storage site in the 1980s, the decision faced significant opposition from the state of Nevada.

The state views Yucca Mountain as a bad site for atomic waste storage for a number of reasons, including that the site’s aquifer drains into the Amargosa Valley, a highly productive agricultural region in the state, as well as the site’s porous and volcanic geology.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has also pointed out that the facility would not be large enough to store all of the nation’s nuclear waste, as Yucca Mountain’s statutory design capacity was only 77,000 metric tons.

“By the time Yucca would be filled to capacity in 2036, there will still be at least the same amount of spent fuel still stored at the reaction sites, even if no new plants are built,” Ford’s office has said.

Plus, officials have pointed to concerns about the transportation of spent nuclear fuel to the site, as an accident or attack along routes from existing plants could put millions of people at risk. The state has also said that being a singular storage site would make Yucca Mountain more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Over several decades, the construction of Yucca Mountain was mired in lawsuits filed by the state of Nevada and other critics, contesting guidelines, environmental reviews, and radiation exposure standards set by the federal government.

Most of these cases were consolidated into just a handful heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2004. At the time, the appeals court ruled in favor of the opponents to the project, striking down the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10,000-year radiation safety standard for the waste repository. The court ruled that the EPA’s standards did not align with recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, which the Energy Policy Act of 1992 required. The NAS had requested standards be set for the next 1 million years.

The growing political pushback against Yucca Mountain, combined with concerns about the project’s financing, led the Department of Energy under former President Barack Obama to declare the site no longer a viable option.

Initially, the NRC denied the Obama administration’s request to withdraw the agency’s license application related to Yucca Mountain, but later moved to end all of its activities related to the project. 

By 2012, however, the funding for Yucca Mountain was pulled, and the project was essentially canceled.

In 2013, though, an appeals court ruled that the NRC acted against federal law by halting its review of the license. Federal regulators did resume some aspects of the licensing process from 2014 to 2016, but did not complete the full review because they lacked funding.

Under his first administration, Trump attempted to fund Yucca Mountain through three separate budget requests for the Department of Energy. Congress never moved forward with the funding because of safety and radiation exposure concerns.

By 2020, Trump signaled he would abandon the site in a tweet that read, “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you! Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions – my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches – I’m confident we can get it done!”

Where else is nuclear waste stored? 

Over 95,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from existing commercial reactors have been piling up across the country.

This contaminated radioactive waste material — from nuclear power plants, test reactors, and similar projects — has been primarily stored on-site as a temporary storage solution.

At the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia — the last nuclear power plant built in the U.S. — spent nuclear fuel is stored in large, steel-lined concrete pools filled with water. The water and concrete act as a radiation shield, keeping the waste cool as it decays and becomes less radioactive. Eventually, the atomic waste is transferred to dry cast storage units on site.

But since the Trump administration estimates that waste could nearly double in the coming years amid the rapid development of advanced nuclear technologies, there is a renewed call for the federal government to establish a permanent storage solution for atomic waste.

What is the Trump administration’s proposal to store atomic waste? 

More than a decade after the funding for Yucca Mountain was pulled, Congress has not passed any legislation supporting long-term storage of nuclear waste at any other facilities.

By not having a permanent solution for nuclear waste in place, some nuclear proponents say the government is inadvertently blocking nuclear development in several states, such as California, which has a moratorium on nuclear plants until a federal permanent waste plan is established.

Earlier this year, the administration announced it would fund the development of Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses in several states, which would house waste storage and disposal.

These proposed campuses would also support other activities across the nuclear lifecycle, including fuel fabrication, enrichment, and reprocessing for future use. Some states involved could even support reactor development, power generation, and advanced manufacturing.

In late July, the Department of Energy selected five initial states as potential host locations for these campuses: Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SELECTS FIVE STATES AS CANDIDATES FOR RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE 

As part of its broader plan, the administration is reportedly looking to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reimpose a fee on nuclear generation for waste disposal and to change how waste is classified to give states more flexibility in storage.

The administration is also reportedly considering completely scrapping Yucca Mountain as the sole storage facility for high-level nuclear waste.