Arco calls itself the Atomic City for a reason. In 1951, our community was the site where Experimental Breeder Reactor I generated the first usable electricity from a nuclear reactor anywhere in the world. In 1955, we became the first town on the planet lit entirely by nuclear power. For nearly three decades after that, EBR-II operated just outside our city, pioneering research into fuel recycling that scientists were still refining when the program was shut down in 1994. This isn't a community encountering nuclear energy for the first time. It's the community where nuclear energy, as the world knows it, largely began.
That history is why I think Butte County deserves a serious look as this state and this country consider where the next chapter of nuclear energy research happens. We have exactly what a project like the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus would need, and we have it in ways few other places in the country can match.
Start with the workforce. Our residents have spent generations working at Idaho National Laboratory, in skilled trades, engineering, operations and safety, and that expertise runs deep in Butte County families. We're not asking anyone to build a workforce from scratch. We're offering one that already exists and already understands nuclear operations.
Then there's the land. Butte County covers more than 2,200 square miles, most of it open high desert, with a total population under 3,000. The same remoteness and terrain that made this area attractive to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1949 — seclusion, geologic stability and distance from dense population centers — still applies today. If NLIC requires additional secure land for research or manufacturing facilities, Butte County has it, adjacent to infrastructure INL has already built out over 75 years.
And frankly, Butte County needs the opportunity. Arco's population has declined for decades, from over 1,200 residents in the late 1970s to under 900 today. Main Street has fewer businesses than it once did. We've watched younger families move toward Idaho Falls and Blackfoot in search of more opportunity, even as many of them continue to work at INL. A new mission at the lab, one that draws directly on the fuel-cycle expertise this region pioneered decades ago, is exactly the kind of investment that could reverse that trend: construction jobs, permanent technical positions and renewed reasons for young families to put down roots here instead of driving an hour each way to do it.
I understand this is a significant decision for the state, and I don't take lightly the questions being raised about water, safety and long-term agreements with the federal government. Those deserve real answers. But I'd ask that as this process moves forward, decision-makers remember that Butte County isn't a footnote in this conversation. We're where this all started; we have the workforce and the land this mission needs, and we're ready to be part of writing its next chapter.