By Dustin Bleizeffer
WyoFile.com

Lawmakers will consider draft legislation this week that would allow manufacturers of “advanced nuclear reactors” to store high-level radioactive waste at their Wyoming facilities. It would be the second exception to a decades-long ban on nuclear fuel waste storage in Wyoming — removing a barrier to what nuclear energy proponents here say could become a lucrative new manufacturing and power production sector that also reinvigorates the state’s uranium mining industry.

The measure faces significant public opposition, however, particularly in Natrona County, where Radiant Industries proposes to build a nuclear microreactor manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Bar Nunn. The company notes the location is “actually over a mile away from any home,” and meets the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s distance requirements. Many residents object to Radiant’s plan to house spent nuclear fuel waste on site — a location they say 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 on Thursday evening in Bar Nunn, citing his own polling of constituents in House District 58. “We want manufacturing. We would love for Radiant to come here and manufacture and put the waste somewhere else.”

Such declarations earned raucous cheers and applause, lending credibility to Allemand’s claims that about 70% of respondents are against storing the waste.

Allemand organized the town hall, he said, because he believes state and local officials — along with Radiant — are rushing too quickly to change Wyoming law to accommodate the company’s plans. Bar Nunn residents, along with all Wyoming residents, deserve a longer conversation and an opportunity to learn about a complex and high-stakes industry before they can decide if it’s a good fit. How to impose limitations such as siting and whether to allow the industry’s radioactive waste warrant further examination, he said.

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

Neither Allemand nor Campbell serves on the Minerals Committee.

A similar piece of legislation, Senate File 186, “​​Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage,” was defeated during this year’s legislative session.

But not everyone in Bar Nunn has made up their minds about Radiant and its plans for the community. A smattering of attendees at Thursday’s event raised their hands in support of the project. Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer, urged to the lectern by Allemand, gave a solemn and terse response to an apparent rumor in the community that his tentative support of the project is because he’s been bribed by Radiant.

“I’ve never taken money,” Boyer said. “I wouldn’t ever take money. I didn’t go to Iraq, serve my country for eight years, bleed, watch my friends die so I can be accused of bribery. That’s bullshit. And I’m pissed, and I’m tired of this. Everybody has been at everyone else’s throat, and that is unacceptable.”

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

“People were mad [including those] I spoke with that left early,” Sabrosky wrote. “They are tired of controlled Townhalls and being fed false information to try [to] scare them. People are educating themselves about this industry and realizing that reality tells them it’s the safest energy industry in the Country.”

 

Radiant and Wyoming’s nuclear waste ban

Bar Nunn, like most Natrona County communities, is well acquainted with industrial, manufacturing and tech companies. But nuclear energy is new to the entire state, where a ban on storing spent nuclear fuel has been in place for decades — despite repeated efforts to open Wyoming to commercial storage of the industry’s radioactive waste.

Without a permanent repository in the U.S. — or an apparent path to one — critics of waste storage have long argued that if Wyoming were to allow “temporary” storage, the state would likely become 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 longtime proponents of nuclear energy projects in the state, Campbell said: Namely, to open Wyoming’s doors for commercial nuclear waste facilities. House Bill 16, “Used nuclear fuel storage-amendments,” a measure to do just that, was also considered and defeated in 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 hasn’t even submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project. Radiant plans to file an application as soon as “we’ve finalized our location,” the company told WyoFile.

 

Political divides emerge

Wyoming’s congressional delegation, along with Gov. Mark Gordon and top energy officials in the state, staunchly support welcoming nuclear energy endeavors to the state while chastising an inept federal bureaucracy for not building a permanent, national repository for spent nuclear fuel waste.

But political lines are being drawn on the waste issue.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus posted a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday declaring the group’s opposition to nuclear waste storage: “Wyoming must continue to be a leader in proven energy production, not settle as a dumping ground for nuclear waste from other states. California billionaires insist on saddling our landscapes with their windmills, their solar panels, and now their radioactive casks.”

The group’s statement also criticizes efforts to secure a $25 million grant from the Wyoming Business Council to support the buildout of water, sewer and other infrastructure to help support Radiant’s manufacturing campus, calling it a subsidy.

“Fantastical promises of huge revenues to the State, overt gaslighting, and outright lies aren’t what we use to craft policy,” the group stated.

Meantime, Natrona County resident and Natrona County School Board Trustee Kyla Alvey has launched a change.org petition to “Support Radiant and bring new energy jobs to Natrona County.”

The Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee will meet Tuesday and Wednesday at the Thyra Thomson State Office Building in Casper. It is scheduled to discuss the “Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage” draft bill on Wednesday morning. The meeting will also be live streamed.

 

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.