NCSU, MfN, and Native Nuclear Partnership for Collaboration-Based Siting

DOE Awards $26 Million to Support Collaboration-Based Siting for Spent Nuclear Fuel – You can read our blog post about the award announcement here.

Collaboration-based siting is an approach to siting facilities that focuses on the needs and concerns of people and communities. Communities participate in the siting process by working carefully through a series of phases and steps. Each helps a community determine whether and how hosting a facility is aligned with that community’s goals. By its nature, a collaboration-based siting process must be flexible, adaptive, and responsive to community concerns. Thus, the phases and steps are intended to serve as a guide, not a prescriptive set of instructions.

Twelve project teams are each receiving about $2 million. They represent diverse organizations, a makeup the DOE hopes will enable a wide range of perspectives and approaches. One of these teams includes Mothers for Nuclear in partnership with North Carolina State University and Native Nuclear of San Luis Obispo. We specifically hope to help find the best ways to ensure that everyone who should be included in this conversation IS included.

Yucca Mountain was a failure for many reasons, but largely because the proposal assumed that communities already impacted by nuclear issues wouldn’t have further concerns when faced with more nuclear issues. Consent was not pursued, and it turned out that the local communities and government were not on board with the idea. We must be conscious of these past failures when determining a better path for the future.

We are excited for this opportunity to facilitate further discussions with respect to the question: “What about the waste!?” This is almost always one of the first things community members ask us about nuclear energy. We are at Stage 1 in terms of planning for an interim facility to host used fuel.

We also hope to talk about nuclear for climate, a just clean energy transition, and community involvement in all aspects of an energy source that can provide us all hope for the future of humanity on this planet.

Here are links to our posts about the workshops we’ve hosted thus far, on our “Past Activities” blog:

January 27, 2024: Raleigh, NC

June 15, 2024: Salt Lake City, UT

Aug 24, 2024: Chicago, IL

May 10, 2025: Oklahoma City

And here are links to workshops we’ll be holding later this summer:

July 12, 2025: Washington, D.C.

July 26, 2025: Las Vegas

August 2, 2025: San Diego

August 22, 23, 24, 2025: Blanding, Utah

See all Upcoming Events

Find more information and register for any upcoming Community Workshops here.

Here’s a copy of the most recent version of our presentation.

* Native Nuclear was previously organized under the name Tribal Consent-Based Coalition (TC-BC).