The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste
America’s worst NIMBY problem comes to the Supreme Court.
by Ian Millhiser
Feb 26, 2025, 4:00 PM GMT+5
A warning sign hangs on a fence on the outside the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, California. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may involve one of the most toxic examples of NIMBYism in American history. The issue at the heart of Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas arises out of a predictable problem: Absolutely no one wants radioactive waste anywhere near where they live or work, but that waste has to go somewhere.
Texas, as the case name suggests, involves an effort by the federal government to store nuclear waste in Texas, and at the same time, solve a problem it’s struggled with for nearly 40 years.
To fully understand what’s before the Supreme Court in Texas, we need to go back to 1982, when Congress passed a law that was supposed to establish a permanent repository for all of the radioactive waste produced by America’s nuclear power plants. This waste remains dangerous for thousands or even tens of thousands of years after it is produced, so it made sense to find a spot far from human civilization where it can be buried.
But then NIMBY — that’s “not in my backyard” — politics set in.
The US Department of Energy identified several possible sites for the waste, and eventually culled those sites down to three — one in Texas, one in Washington state, and Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But, in 1987, before these officials could complete the selection process, Congress stepped in and chose the Nevada site for them.
According to a Slate article on the eventual collapse of the Yucca Mountain plan, this choice is easy to explain when you look at who ran Congress at the time. The House speaker was Jim Wright, a representative from Texas. The House majority leader was Tom Foley, from Washington. So Nevada, which had the weakest congressional delegation at the time, lost out.
Indeed, according to Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, “the 1987 Amendment is now commonly referred to as the ‘screw Nevada’ bill.”
