Listen to “Why Would DOE Want to Go Forward?” on Spreaker.
As time passes, thoughts crystallize. Here’s my conclusion: There is now very little chance of a Nuclear Innovation Lifecycle Campus coming to fruition in West Virginia.
The Department of Energy has vast experience deploying government capital through grants, research programs and other innovation initiatives. Its processes are structured, applicants are scrutinized, and federal officials are naturally looking for projects that can actually move from proposal to reality.
Successful projects matter. Agencies don’t want to spend years advancing opportunities that ultimately collapse because the host community or state government will not accept them.
West Virginia, deliberately or not, sent a message to DOE over the last several days: getting a project like this accepted here could be extraordinarily difficult.
Who is at fault?
Depends on whom you ask.
Putnam County Senator Eric Tarr joined Talkline Tuesday and argued that the Morrisey administration mishandled the opportunity.
Tarr also criticized the Charleston Gazette-Mail for its reporting. Did the headline fairly reflect the underlying story? That’s not for me to decide here. The Gazette-Mail stands by its reporting and can answer those criticisms directly.
NEWS from Brad McElhinny: West Virginia would do anything for federal nuclear program, but it won’t do that
Right now, assigning blame doesn’t solve the larger problem.
Remember, West Virginia was not initially under consideration. DOE allowed the state into the process later after appeals for further consideration. And somebody — perhaps several people — likely had to expense valuable political capital to make that happen.
The end result? An opportunity potentially blown.
When the governor, through his spokesman, says there is no circumstance under which nuclear waste will come to West Virginia, DOE surely heard that message.
Combine that with immediate public resistance, and it becomes difficult to imagine federal officials continuing to invest significant time and effort evaluating West Virginia as a potential host, even if the state continues in the application process.
And the people who used their political capital to get us in the mix in the first place… why would they spend more given the initial results? You don’t throw good money after bad.
This isn’t a a pro-nuclear versus anti-nuclear argument at the core.
It’s about whether West Virginians take enough time to understand an opportunity before completely rejecting it.
In this case, that means understanding the distinction between a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and the image many people understandably have when they hear the words “nuclear waste dump.”
Those are serious issues. They deserve scrutiny. Communities should have a voice. Questions about safety, transportation, long-term storage and local acceptance should be answered before anyone says yes.
But they should also be answered before everyone says no.
Because if West Virginia develops a habit of rejecting major opportunities before fully understanding them, we will continue to bind our own hands.
No to transmission lines.
No to data centers.
No to nuclear.
At some point, we have to ask a more fundamental question: What can West Virginia say yes to? Can we say yes to anything?
If “no” becomes our default answer, our economic future may not look anything like the one we say we want.