Idaho has every reason to be careful when the federal government starts talking about nuclear waste.

We remember why Gov. Cecil Andrus fought the Department of Energy and why Gov. Phil Batt negotiated the 1995 Settlement Agreement. The federal government had made promises about nuclear material coming into Idaho and had not always kept them. Idaho was right to demand enforceable deadlines, cleanup requirements and protections against becoming the nation’s permanent nuclear waste dump.

But remembering history and being trapped by it are two different things.

America is entering a nuclear renaissance, and much of it is happening right here in Idaho. Idaho National Laboratory is now at the center of advanced reactor development, microreactors, new fuels, recycling technologies and the next generation of American nuclear energy.

That should be an enormous opportunity for Idaho.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy is also becoming a convenient political football.

Terri Pickens, the Democratic candidate for governor, has repeatedly suggested the current discussion could be a pretext for turning Idaho into the nation’s nuclear waste dump. Her campaign has amplified commentary from former Andrus aide Marc Johnson, who has described the proposal as a “cash for trash scheme.”

Those are effective political phrases. They are also a poor substitute for understanding what is actually happening.

INL is the nation’s nuclear energy laboratory. For more than seven decades, Eastern Idaho has lived alongside nuclear research. Generations of scientists, engineers, technicians and construction workers have built communities around that mission.

And the technology has changed.

Research and reprocessing are not the same as permanent disposal. Neither is allowing carefully controlled quantities of spent fuel into Idaho for research. In fact, the existing Settlement Agreement already allows limited research shipments under specific conditions.

That distinction tends to disappear when fear becomes more politically useful than facts.

Marc Johnson is entitled to his opinion, and the concerns Idaho leaders raised decades ago were legitimate. But Idaho’s future should not be decided by relitigating 1988.

Pickens has every right to challenge Idaho’s nuclear policy. But there is a difference between asking hard questions and creating fear and anxiety by suggesting Idaho’s leaders are secretly preparing to turn our state into the nation’s dumping ground. She should also make sure her facts are right. Picking apart her many inaccuracies would be its own column.

Idaho will protect the Snake River Plain Aquifer. We should never accept waste simply because someone waves money in front of us, and any changes to Idaho’s protections should receive serious public scrutiny. At the same time, we should recognize the opportunity in front of us.

The world is moving toward advanced nuclear energy whether Idaho participates or not. Our choice is whether the state that helped pioneer nuclear power will continue helping shape its future, or whether fear from the last century will keep us from leading in the next one.

Those of us living in Eastern Idaho understand what the nuclear presence means to our state. We have lived with it, worked alongside it and helped make INL the nation’s leading nuclear energy laboratory. Perhaps Pickens should spend less time echoing Marc Johnson’s Substack and more time in Eastern Idaho listening to the workers, families and communities who actually live with these issues every day. Visit www.nuclearforidaho.com to learn the truth about Nuclear in Idaho.