{"id":553797,"date":"2026-03-30T07:36:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/553797\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T07:36:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:36:35","slug":"utah-republicans-see-storing-nuclear-waste-as-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/553797\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Republicans see storing nuclear waste as a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and\u00a0The Salt Lake Tribune<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom in Utah.<\/p>\n

The Republicans who dominate Utah\u2019s politics \u2014 from the legislature to the governor\u2019s mansion \u2014 are aggressively pursuing nuclear power, but a problem that had confounded fission supporters over the last century lingers: what to do with all the dangerous waste. Now the state is exploring whether to become a solution \u2014 by storing nuclear waste in the massive salt deposit in Millard County, a rural part of the state with a long history of meeting the West\u2019s energy needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Caverns carved into that salt deposit already hold natural gas liquids, gasoline, and other fuels. Separate storage of hydrogen began there this year to support the massive Intermountain Power Plant\u2019s shift from coal generation to carbon-free energy.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration recently announced that it wants states to volunteer as hosts for \u201cnuclear lifecycle innovation campuses\u201d \u2014 sites that will take spent radioactive material for a variety of uses, such as storage, recycling, enrichment, fabrication, or powering manufacturing and data centers.<\/p>\n

The same day in late January that the U.S. Department of Energy began soliciting states<\/a> to host campuses, state Senator Derrin Owens, a Republican, contacted several other lawmakers, lobbyists, private equity investors, and Millard County officials, in an email obtained by the Millard County Chronicle Progress and shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends,\u201d Owens wrote on January 28, \u201cHERE IT IS \u2013 this is Utah\u2019s once in a lifetime opportunity to host one of these sites.\u201d (Owens declined to comment for this story.)<\/p>\n

Owens, who represents half of Millard County, noted that the group had \u201ctried to lay the groundwork\u201d for opportunities to store and repurpose nuclear waste with Curio<\/a>, a startup headquartered in Washington D.C. that\u2019s developing a process to recycle spent fuel.<\/p>\n

Millard County\u2019s salt dome \u2014 a remnant of an ancient ocean from the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth \u2014 apparently makes Utah a particularly attractive candidate. The only other state interested in becoming a nuclear waste campus that has such a formation is Mississippi, according to Owens. \u201cLet\u2019s lead the West,\u201d the state senator wrote.<\/p>\n

Owens further referenced concerns among many in Utah about more liberal states on the West Coast, which historically bought coal and fossil-fuel generated electricity from Utah and other interior states, but have since pivoted toward energy sources that don\u2019t contribute to climate change. Becoming a lab for nuclear material storage reuse could keep rural interior economies humming, while meeting the new carbon-free demands of growing population centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will need Utah once again,\u201d Owens wrote, \u201cif we land this fuel cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"StateState Senator Derrin Owens, a Republican from Fountain Green, at the Utah Capitol in February.
Francisco Kjolseth \/ The Salt Lake Tribune<\/p>\n

Owens called on the email recipients to pressure Governor Spencer Cox\u2019s office and the Utah Office of Energy Development to \u201cget on the phone\u201d with the federal Department of Energy and \u201cadvocate for Utah.\u201d The next day, Cox issued a statement to E&E News<\/a> that said the state is evaluating whether it\u2019s something Utah would be interested in working on with the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s office told The Tribune that the state has not yet committed to a specific project or partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica needs more reliable, affordable, and abundant energy,\u201d Cox wrote in a statement last week, \u201cand nuclear will be part of that future. As we evaluate the entire lifecycle, including advanced recycling, we will focus on Utah priorities, including safety, environmental stewardship, workforce development, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox has made \u201cOperation Gigawatt\u201d a primary focus of his second term, seeking to more than double Utah\u2019s energy output over the next decade. While Cox calls it an \u201call-of-the-above\u201d strategy that embraces all forms of energy, from solar panels to coal plants, his initiatives have focused heavily on nuclear development.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s Office of Energy Development declined to comment for this story. It also declined to provide any records associated with Utah\u2019s interest in hosting a nuclear lifecycle campus, calling them classified and protected due to negotiations over real estate, without providing any more detail.<\/p>\n

In Millard County, some see the prospect of storing nuclear waste in the salt caverns as a chance to bolster the area\u2019s struggling job market. Others find the idea hard to stomach. \u201cI don\u2019t want it anywhere close to us,\u201d said Vicki Lyman, a Millard County commissioner.<\/p>\n

In September 2024, Owens invited Curio\u2019s CEO, Edward McGinnis, to Utah\u2019s Capitol Hill to discuss Curio\u2019s approach to nuclear waste<\/a> with lawmakers. Interview requests sent to Curio for this story did not receive a response.<\/p>\n

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Originally called \u201cCurio Solutions,\u201d the company was founded in 2021. McGinnis became Curio\u2019s CEO the next year after spending more than 30 years working for the Energy Department. Curio secured $15 million in seed funding in April 2024 to develop technology for building reactors and recycling their spent fuel, as reported by Forbes<\/a>. This February, the Energy Department announced that Curio was among the recipients of a $19 million grant<\/a> to further research and develop nuclear fuel recycling.<\/p>\n

Curio\u2019s crown jewel is its patented<\/a> NuCycle process, which has been demonstrated in labs but is not yet in commercial use. The company says that by recycling spent uranium and zirconium from nuclear plants, it can extract valuable materials like critical minerals and isotopes used in cancer treatments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and commodities\u201d embedded in the spent radioactive fuel currently stored in more than 80 locations across the U.S., McGinnis told lawmakers. \u201cWe\u2019re a mining business.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a typical plant uses nuclear fuel, the spent radioactive rods still contain about 96 percent of their \u201cenergy value,\u201d according to McGinnis. \u201cCurio is focused on bringing to market, for the first time, state-of-the-art advanced recycling,\u201d he said, \u201cdone in a way that doesn\u2019t force those who want to access nuclear to really swallow that poison pill, that elephant in the room \u2026 what are you going to do with the so-called waste?\u201d<\/p>\n

What was supposed to become the country\u2019s repository for radioactive waste, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has been stalled for decades as a result of immense pushback from Nevadans and politicians, as well as lawsuits. But McGinnis called the current moment unique, with bipartisan support for more nuclear development. Both the Biden and Trump administrations adopted policies to support fission power.<\/p>\n

The shift to electric vehicles, along with the proliferation of data centers to support the spread of artificial intelligence, has made global demand for energy spike. Utah leaders have called the need to control AI and build more electricity generation the \u201carms race\u201d of the contemporary era and an issue of national security.<\/p>\n

Recycling nuclear fuel doesn\u2019t just produce valuable materials for manufacturing, medical, and national defense industries, McGinnis said. It can mean the radioactivity of the country\u2019s waste stream takes only a few hundred years to decay instead of thousands of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd (we) do it in an environmentally friendly way,\u201d McGinnis said, that \u201cavoids passing this waste down to generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curio partnered with the Idaho, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia national laboratories late last year to demonstrate its technology. \u201cMultiple states\u201d have expressed interest in welcoming the company into their communities, McGinnis said, and he\u2019s looking to deploy at least two or three facilities in the U.S. by the early 2030s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facility will become a tech backbone,\u201d the CEO said, creating high-paying jobs that don\u2019t necessarily require advanced degrees.<\/p>\n

The project could bring a windfall to Owens\u2019 district, which has seen a hemorrhaging of jobs due to the closure of coal units at power plants, a slowdown in mining, and the shuttering of a Smithfield meat processing plant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to Utah,\u201d Owens told McGinnis during the 2024 hearing with lawmakers. \u201cIn our mining communities, we know we have to bridge having baseload power from our coal industries. This is the dream to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, a series of state reports explored strategies for nuclear power in Utah; one that focused on waste fuels<\/a> lauded Curio by name. It estimated that the company could create 3,000 jobs in the state, generate more than $400 million each year in tax revenue, and supercharge the state\u2019s economy with $1.5 billion annually.<\/p>\n

U.S. scientists developed the first technologies to recycle radioactive waste. But the country largely abandoned the practice amid fears that recycled waste could be used to create bombs or that it could leak and poison communities.<\/p>\n

Nuclear power, however, is \u201cone of the cleanest and safest of all energy sources,\u201d according to the report from Utah\u2019s Office of Energy Development. Numerous startups are now eyeing radioactive waste as a lucrative product, the report says, and \u201cUtah should and can be primed to take advantage of this change, even leading the nation forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The salt caverns in Millard County, the report added, would be \u201cideal\u201d for storing nuclear material. Salt caves and mines have been used for radioactive repositories in New Mexico<\/a> and Germany<\/a>, with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n

Bill Wright, a Millard County commissioner, told the Chronicle Progress that the county is not in a position to pick winners and losers and is open to talking to people about all proposals that spur economic development.<\/p>\n

Other local officials in Millard County were more hesitant. Millard County Commissioner Trevor Johnson said he didn\u2019t think spent nuclear rods could be stored inside salt caverns without a method to deliver them safely deep below ground. A more secluded area, such as the county\u2019s west desert, would be a more appropriate place to bury radioactive waste.<\/p>\n

KC Bogue, the mayor of Delta City, the county\u2019s largest community and gateway to the west desert region, said he supports new ways to develop energy, and that it needs to be efficient. Storing spent radioactive fuel in the county, though, is a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be the dumping grounds for nuclear waste,\u201d Bogue said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s all we\u2019d ever be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and\u00a0The Salt Lake Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1872,192,6382,79,3324],"class_list":["post-553797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-news-analysis","tag-science","tag-utah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}