The Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee took a full-day dive into all things nuclear at a recent interim session meeting in Casper.
The discussion comes after two bills related to the storage of spent nuclear fuel failed last legislative session.
During the May 22 meeting, the group of lawmakers decided to re-draft an abbreviated version of one of those bills, Senate File 186 - Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage. It would widen the state’s existing statute to allow nuclear reactor manufacturers to temporarily store used nuclear fuel in Wyoming.
Brian Fuller with the Legislative Service Office gave an overview on the current legal landscape around nuclear on the state and federal level.
“ In certain instances, really one primary instance, Mr. Chairman, the Legislature has in essence pre-approved a storage facility,” he said. “That is in the instance where there would be storage on the site of an electrical generation facility that uses nuclear energy as its fuel.”
The resurrected bill is specifically geared towards companies like Radiant, a California-based business that wants to build nuclear microreactors at a proposed construction site outside of Bar Nunn in Natrona County.
“ Our goal is to build the largest reactor you can that fits in a single shipping container,” said Matt Wilson, senior director of operations at Radiant.
The company would ship the microreactors to customers for operation elsewhere, but that technology – and its associated spent fuel – would return to Wyoming and be stored in the state after use. But Wilson emphasized there’s still a lot of work to do to get all of the licenses needed for the project.
“ Do we have a fully licensed container that we can move spent fuel around the U.S. with? The answer is, no,” he said.
Radiant had hosted one town hall in Bar Nunn earlier in March and hosted another in Bar Nunn after the committee meeting.
Wilson said the company plans to test its microreactor design at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho next year and hopes to have it licensed before 2030.
On May 23, Pres. Trump signed a series of executive orders that direct the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to approve or deny applications for new nuclear reactor designs in less than 18 months. During the interim committee meeting in Wyoming the day before, an NRC representative said that process takes “roughly 36 months” for a high-quality application.
Is “temporary” temporary?
The ins and outs of that licensing process, and questions around the timeline of the storage of spent nuclear fuel more generally, were front and center during the day’s discussion.
Legislators were especially curious about the status of Yucca Mountain. Congress designated the site in Nevada as a proposed permanent repository site for the country’s nuclear waste in 1987 and it remains the only location officially considered for long-term storage.
But plans to move forward with the long-contested site still remain suspended amid a decades-long back-and-forth about the project, despite a recent increase in interest from Trump-appointed officials like Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Ryan Alexander is the regional state liaison officer with the NRC, an independent agency that regulates the use of radioactive material in the country. He said the Department of Energy “pulled and, if you will, abated” the Yucca Mountain application.
“ All fuel that has ever been used in the United States’ commercial plants are all either being used currently in the reactors, in their spent fuel pools or in dry cask storage at the facilities in which they're either operated or [at] formally decommissioned locations,” he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case about whether the NRC has the authority to give commercial companies licenses to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel away from reactor sites. The ruling is expected in June and could pave the way for storage sites in Texas and New Mexico.
As he went through his presentation slides, Alexander said the transportation of different types of radioactive material occurs “every day” in the U.S. and around the world, but that the process is largely misunderstood by the general public.
“As the potential radiological risk of a material that's being transported increases, so do the safety and security requirements,” said Alexander.
“There has never been a failure or release of radioactive material from an NRC-approved transportation package, or serious injury or death from [the] radioactive contents of a package, either during routine transportation or a transportation accident,” he continued.
Nuclear security
TerraPower’s in-process nuclear power plant was also a main topic of conversation at the interim committee meeting. The company broke ground in Lincoln County last summer, and construction for an on-site training center is set to begin in the next few weeks.
Construction of the nuclear part of the project, called the Natrium Reactor, is set to be complete by 2030, according to TerraPower Vice President of Government Affairs Andrew Richards.
“ TerraPower submitted its construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March of 2024, which was formally accepted in May of 2024,” he said. “We anticipate receiving the construction permit for the nuclear island in late 2026.”
During the legislative meeting, representatives from TerraPower brought a “Wyoming Security” bill draft to the lawmakers that the company said would help to legally protect its future security guards.
The NRC requires the company to have a complex set of security measures in place. But there’s a gap, said TerraPower Nuclear Security Manager Melissa Darlington.
“ Federal law provides no legal protection for security personnel when they act in defense of a commercial nuclear power plant or for public safety,” she said.
Wyoming is currently in the same boat. Darlington said that of the 28 states that have NRC-licensed commercial nuclear power plants, nine have enacted similar legislation to protect security personnel.
“These protections are not unlimited,” she said. “They only apply to security personnel at commercial nuclear facility sites who are acting with reasonable belief and within the scope of their employment.”
The bill draft would also authorize guards to detain people who have committed crimes while waiting for local law enforcement.
Committee member Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) said it is “a very important objective to accomplish, to protect the health and safety of the public,” but wanted to know more about how other states have navigated this situation and how the nuclear security guards would interact with local law enforcement.
“We don’t typically grant civilians the right to lethal force, and particularly when they’re not representing the state or the community, [but] they’re representing a corporation,” he said.
Darlington explained the NRC requires nuclear facilities to sit down with local law enforcement and create MOUs to outline how the different agencies would interact.
Lawmakers will work on a draft bill based on TerraPower’s “Wyoming Security” template, as well as a new abbreviated version of Senate File 186 - Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage, when the group meets again in Casper on July 29 and 30.
