America can’t duck and cover from Washington’s nuclear waste disposal failure

Nuclear expansion hits roadblock: $50 billion collected for waste disposal sits unused while taxpayers face massive liability from government inaction.

Jack Spencer is a Senior Research Fellow for Energy and Environment in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment and the author of Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation (Optimum Publishing International, 2024).

But a 90,000-ton pot of nuclear waste lies at the end of this rainbow and poses problems not for safety but for a significant nuclear energy expansion. First, the federal government collected fees for nuclear waste disposal but did not dispose of the waste. Second, because Uncle Sam was assigned responsibility, companies had no incentive to develop disposal solutions.