Summary: SF186, as considered in 2025 but not passed, allows nuclear reactor manufacturers in Wyoming to store spent nuclear fuel (SNF) on-site, but only if the fuel is generated as part of the manufacturing process. While the bill attempts to limit what kind of fuel can be stored, the language is vague, allowing the federal Nuclear Regulatory Comm...

In this episode of Eye on the Issues, recorded in mid-May, we sat down with Anna Erickson, a professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at Georgia Tech. As someone who teaches and supports nuclear energy, Prof. Erickson offers an informed perspective—but even she raises concerns about how nuclear projects are being handled, particularly rega...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Sometimes, to understand something locally, you need to look globally. Sometimes, you have to go all the way to Germany. Such is the case for us in Wyoming, as powerful forces continue to push for making the Cowboy State a cradle-to-grave operation for all things nuclear, including storing spent nuclear fuel from reactor ma...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Who can predict what will happen in a thousand years? Or tens of thousands of years? Better yet, what will happen in fifty years? No one, of course, can reliably say what will happen in the future—and yet, that is one of the chief questions that comes up when political and business forces talk about making Wyoming a storage...

In this episode of Eye on the Issues, we sit down with Mary Olson, founder of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project. With decades of experience in nuclear policy and radiation research, Mary offers a practical look at how radiation exposure affects the human body—and why understanding those risks is more important than ever as nuclear energy and ...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Louis Slotin isn't a household name. But maybe he should be, at least in Wyoming. A bit of history. Slotin was a chemist and physicist from Canada. Back in the 1940s, he went to work at the Manhattan Project, the secret project during World War II that developed the first atom bombs. On May 21, 1946, he was working on a nuc...

by Wyoming Liberty Group When it comes to nuclear accidents, there are the big three. Many, if not most of us, have heard about the infamous trio of catastrophes: The Three Mile Island partial core meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979. The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, which led to the release of radioactive material. And the Fukushima acciden...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Here's a paradox to consider: You can't have nuclear energy without fossil fuels. Why does this matter? Well, for one, some folks—and there are a lot of them, including in Wyoming—pushing the expansion of nuclear energy, and not all of them particularly like fossil fuels. That's because fossil fuels are competitors in the b...

Wyoming Liberty Group, working with Always On Energy Research, released a policy report titled "Balancing the Scales: How Wyoming Can Protect Its Energy Revenues," authored by Trevor Lewis and Gabriel Collins, with project oversight by Isaac Orr. For the past several decades, Wyoming has benefited enormously from tax revenues generated from extract...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Recently, state lawmakers said no to the idea of storing other states' nuclear waste in Wyoming. But if history has taught us anything, it's that just because a bill dies in committee doesn't mean the issue is dead. The idea of Wyoming as a repository for spent nuclear fuel has resurfaced repeatedly for decades. With nuclea...