Clive Strong was the Division Chief of the Natural Resources Division of the Office of the Idaho Attorney General from 1983 to 2017 and was involved in drafting and implementing the 1995 Settlement Agreement. Darrell Early was an Idaho Deputy Attorney General from 1999 to 2017 and served as Division Chief of the Natural Resources Division until 2022. He was the lead attorney for Idaho on interpretation and implementation of the 1995 Agreement. Here is their warning about rushing into a deal that might result in Idaho being a final resting place for a third of the nation’s nuclear waste.
DOE and the Governor’s Office are discussing whether to designate INL as a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus. According to the Governor’s Office, that designation could include “additional long-term monitored storage solutions for the DOE, possibly including deep bore hole storage,” in exchange for financial consideration tied to recycling and reprocessing capability near INL. Put plainly: Idaho is being asked to consider taking more nuclear waste in return for promises. That bargain would strike at the heart of the 1995 Settlement Agreement, which was designed to keep Idaho from becoming a permanent nuclear waste repository.
This is not a debate over whether Idaho supports nuclear research. INL already does, and Idaho should be proud of that role. The real question is whether DOE should be allowed to dress up long-term commercial spent fuel storage as “innovation” while offering no enforceable removal obligations. Idaho has learned the hard way that when DOE says “interim,” Idaho must ask: interim until when, and enforceable by whom? The 1995 Settlement Agreement grew out of DOE’s decades-long practice of shipping nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel from DOE facilities and the Navy to Idaho while assuring the state it was only there temporarily. When it became clear that “interim” meant indefinite, Governor Phil Batt sued to stop additional shipments. The resulting agreement prohibited DOE from shipping commercial spent nuclear fuel to Idaho, capped DOE and Navy shipments, required removal of transuranic waste by 2018, required DOE and Navy spent fuel to leave Idaho by 2035, and required high-level waste to be solidified for shipment by 2035. It preserved INL’s research mission while giving Idaho enforceable assurance that waste stored over the Snake River Plain Aquifer would not remain forever. The Agreement also incentivized national action. By requiring DOE to remove spent fuel from INL within 50 years, it helped push the search for a permanent repository.
By requiring transuranic waste to leave Idaho, it hastened use of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The Agreement did more than protect Idaho; it kept DOE from using indefinite storage as a substitute for solving the national waste problem. Since 1995, DOE has repeatedly tried to litigate or renegotiate the Agreement. Idaho has negotiated waivers and addenda, but it has not compromised the Agreement’s core purpose: preventing Idaho from becoming a de facto repository and securing more cleanup and greater certainty before allowing exceptions.
Now DOE is back with a new label and an old proposition. Its latest initiative asks states to host a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus.” Although the final host agreement is being negotiated in secret, Idaho’s RFI response and the July 31, 2026 MOU indicate that the only assured result is interim storage at INL for at least one-third of the nation’s commercial spent nuclear fuel, with no enforceable assurance that the material will ever leave. That is not innovation. It is repository policy by another name, and it conflicts with the 1995 Settlement Agreement. And what would Idaho get in return? So far, not enough. The MOU offers unenforceable hopes of private investment in enrichment, recycling, reprocessing, fuel fabrication, reactor research, and fuels research. It does not require DOE to fund or build those capabilities. It merely says DOE will encourage private investment. Much of what is being dangled before Idaho already exists at INL, which is DOE’s lead laboratory for spent fuel research and already supports advanced fuels, reprocessing, fuel fabrication, and reactor demonstrations. Idaho should not trade enforceable protections for aspirations and press releases.
Idaho should be especially skeptical because DOE has not yet earned more trust. DOE promised for decades to remove waste from Idaho and failed until the state secured a court-enforceable agreement. Even now, DOE has not fully met its obligations: transuranic waste still awaits shipment to WIPP after the 2018 deadline, high-level waste remains in liquid form over the aquifer, and Navy spent fuel continues to accumulate while no repository is available. With 2035 approaching, DOE should be proving it can comply with existing commitments, not asking Idaho to accept more nuclear waste under a new slogan. The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus proposal is contrary to the 1995 Agreement, and Governor’s RFI response risks turning back the clock by opening the Idaho to becoming a de facto repository. If Idaho accepts long-term commercial spent fuel storage without hard removal deadlines, the nation will once again kick the nuclear-waste can down the road, and Idaho would be left holding the bag.
Before the Governor agrees to any new storage mission at INL, state leaders should demand what Governor Batt demanded in 1995: enforceable limits, enforceable removal deadlines, and enforceable consequences if DOE fails. Nothing less should be acceptable. Idahoans also deserve the right to see and give their input on any proposed agreement before such a profound policy change is made. INL can remain a national leader in nuclear research without turning Idaho into the nation’s long-term nuclear waste parking lot.
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