The U.S. Has No Permanent Nuclear Waste Repository After 40+ Years and $15 Billion Spent, Stranding 95,000+ Metric Tons of Spent Fuel at 79 Temporary Sites

Despite being designated by Congress in 1987, the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada has been politically blocked since 2011 when federal funding was zeroed out, leaving more than 95,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored in cooling pools and dry casks at 79 sites across 39 states — including sites where reactors have already been decommissioned, meaning communities host radioactive waste with no economic benefit from power generation. Why it matters: the absence of a disposal pathway forces every operating reactor to expand on-site storage indefinitely, so decommissioned plant sites like Vermont Yankee and San Onofre cannot be fully remediated and returned to productive use, so the DOE's breach of its legal obligation to accept spent fuel has cost taxpayers $11.1 billion in court-ordered damages to utilities since 1998 (growing by approximately $800 million per year), so future liability could reach $44.5 billion, so anti-nuclear groups use the unresolved waste issue as their single most effective argument against new reactor construction. The structural root cause is that the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act forced a single site (Yucca Mountain) on Nevada without state consent, creating bipartisan Nevada political opposition that has survived every administration, while Congress has refused to authorize a consent-based siting process as recommended by the 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission.