State officials offered to store nuclear waste. Then residents found out.

State officials offered to store nuclear waste. Then residents found out.

HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. - The jagged limestone rocks of Old Standard Quarry have weathered many eras of history. The property was the site of a Civil War battle, then a quarry and is now a popular destination for bungee jumping, its dark green water fed by a natural spring.

Recently, the state proposed yet another use for the land: as storage for radioactive nuclear waste from around the country.

"I thought it was a joke," said Pasha Majdi, president of the Jefferson County Commission. "It doesn't make any sense."

It wasn't a joke. Without consulting residents or local officials, Gov. Patrick Morrisey's energy office submitted a detailed pitch to the Trump administration offering the Jefferson County quarry and three other sites for a potential "Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus."

The Trump administration has said such campuses would need to agree to store spent nuclear fuel - one of the nation's most vexing environmental problems - in exchange for federal support for research, development and production facilities that aim to modernize and grow the country's nuclear power infrastructure.

The administration claims the campuses could create 25,000 jobs and generate tens of billions of dollars in private investment and tax revenue. Those economics are alluring to states eager for development.

Twenty-six expressed some manner of interest before the federal government chose Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Idaho and West Virginia as finalists.

"West Virginia is intentionally beginning with nuclear initiatives that are actionable and high‑value, particularly those tied to the spent and partially spent fuel stream and backend services, areas where the state can quickly demonstrate success and build momentum," the state's pitch promised. It assured that "West Virginia recognizes that for any project with potential community impacts, social buy-in and community alignment are foundational."

But the way things played out in West Virginia underscored how community anxiety around nuclear waste is not easily overcome. That anxiety is why there is no comprehensive plan for permanently disposing of the tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel that already exists in the United States, much less for getting rid of the waste that could be generated with the quadrupling of nuclear power capacity President Donald Trump envisions.

As soon as details of the West Virginia proposal were disclosed, thanks to a public records request by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the backlash was intense. Days after dismissing the report as "fake news," Morrisey (R) withdrew the state from consideration altogether.

The Morrisey administration did not respond to requests for comment.

Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich said in an emailed statement that "the program has proven to be a huge success - with more than 25 states applying to participate - much of that success can be attributed [to] allowing states and local communities decide for themselves if an innovation campus is right for them."

The West Virginia episode, though, left communities bewildered, the governor politically wounded and the nuclear waste problem unresolved.

The nuclear life cycle campus competition comes after the federal government tried - and failed - to create a repository for spent fuel for decades. Congress had designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the most suitable place for it. But local opposition derailed that plan.

Now, the focus is on finding a "consent-based" solution that would be developed in coordination with communities interested in developing facilities. Such a model has been successful in parts of Europe. It typically takes many years of deliberation and negotiation by the communities involved.

"I'm personally a bit skeptical that states are going to move as fast as the [Trump] administration wants or is expecting," said Matt Bowen, a nuclear scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy who has been tracking the life cycle campus initiative.

The difficult conversations state officials need to have with the cities and counties that would host nuclear campuses are just getting underway. Nuclear industry officials say states taking a deliberative, democratic approach are getting genuine interest from communities that are viable candidates for a campus.

In West Virginia, though, state officials appear not to have communicated with each other or the towns they were offering up in their pitch. And their experience shows how quickly the process can go sideways.

Far from the fast-growing Harpers Ferry region, in economically struggling Boone County, the state's nuclear pitch called for storing waste at what was once one of the largest mountaintop-removal coal mines in the country - an environmentally damaged site the state and local community have for years been seeking to convert into a redevelopment opportunity. The former coal-mining stronghold has lost nearly one-fifth of its population since 2010, as jobs disappeared.

But the nuclear campus proposal landed with a thud there, too. Local opposition quickly emerged. The area's state representative expressed frustration on social media that the community had not been consulted and relief when the state scrapped the proposal.

The proposal had highlighted the potential benefits of a new state law, written for data center developers, that allows for fast-track approval of permits while bypassing local governments.

"It felt for many of us like: 'Here we go again,'" said Christine Wimer, president of the Jefferson County Foundation, a conservation advocacy group. "This is the same old thing in West Virginia. People come here. They get the good stuff. We get taken advantage of.'"

Wimer said everything about the site the state was proposing near Harpers Ferry was unworkable. The porous limestone is particularly ill-suited for storing toxic materials. Half the property is a federally protected conservation zone, forever honoring its status as a historic battlefield. The other half, she said, is underwater.

"Limestone essentially works like a highway for waste," said Cara Keys, a county commissioner, as she stood over the quarry. "You could put something here, and it could infect someone's well 20 miles away. The fact that they thought this could be a nuclear waste dump is very concerning."

Steve Pearson, editor of Jefferson County's Observer Weekly newspaper, dove deep into the details of the proposal and emerged perplexed how it ever got submitted. "Even if you just wanted to build a warehouse, you could not do it there," he said. "There is no land for it."

Down the road from the quarry in Middleway, a remarkably well-preserved village of 18th- and 19th-century stone, brick and log buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, farmers were already exhausted trying to stop plans for a large water-bottling plant that developers are seeking to build over the vociferous objections of community leaders, who warn it would be an environmental mess. The news that the state hoped to store nuclear waste nearby left them stunned.

"I like to be left alone," said David Liskey, 75, who has been in the area all his life. His ancestors started farming there in the mid-1700s. "People like it here the way it is. We don't want what they are talking about doing."

Gabby Wilson has only been in the area a short time, having recently relocated from North Carolina. But Wilson, the owner of Prismatic Art Studio in downtown Charles Town, was every bit as blunt as Liskey.

"It's just gross," she said of the nuclear campus proposal. "We moved here to get away from things like that."