Enhancing the Role of State and Local Governments in America’s Nuclear Future: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

This paper, prepared to aid the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in its
deliberations, includes a discussion of the issues that would be faced in the siting, permitting and
licensing of storage and disposal facilities for the “back end” of the commercial nuclear fuel
cycle and for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) high–level radioactive waste. It discusses the
authority that could be employed by non–federal levels of government in supporting or opposing
efforts led by a federal, or federally–chartered, organization tasked with siting, operation and
closing of both interim storage facilities and permanent disposal repositories for both spent
nuclear fuel and high level radioactive wastes. It advocates for a legal, defined role for potential
host states both to participate in the siting process and to regulate an operating storage or
disposal facility.