While Idaho Democrats spend their summer scaring constituents about the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, China and Russia are busy doing something far more consequential: locking up the global nuclear energy market for the next 50 years.

Last year, Russia and China accounted for roughly 90% of all new nuclear reactor construction started worldwide. Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear conglomerate, now holds an order book worth over $200 billion, with projects underway in Turkey, Bangladesh, India, China, Hungary and beyond, financed through deals that lock host nations into decades of Russian involvement in their energy systems. That is not a coincidence. It is a strategy, and it is working.

This is the real context Idaho Democrats leave out when they call the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus a “cash for trash scheme” or compare it to a dump nobody wants. While Marc Johnson, Rep. Monica Church and gubernatorial candidate Terri Pickens spend their energy stoking fear about used nuclear fuel sitting safely at INL, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are exporting reactors and building generational influence over energy-hungry nations from Central Asia to Africa to Southeast Asia. Every year America fails to rebuild its domestic fuel cycle is a year Moscow and Beijing further entrench themselves as the world’s nuclear suppliers of choice, with all the strategic leverage that comes with it.

Idaho, and specifically Idaho National Laboratory, is one of the only places in America positioned to help reverse that trend. INL holds seven decades of expertise in reactor testing, advanced fuel research and reprocessing science that this country badly needs if it wants to compete. The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus isn’t a threat to Idaho’s safety. It’s a chance for Idaho to be central to restoring America’s nuclear leadership at the exact moment our adversaries are moving fastest.

That’s what makes the rhetoric from Oregon and Boise Democrats so frustrating. Fear sells in an op-ed page or a campaign press release, but it carries real costs. Every time a politician conflates valuable used fuel with dangerous waste, or suggests Idaho is being tricked into becoming a dumping ground, it makes the eventual work of rebuilding America’s fuel cycle harder, slower and more expensive; work that has direct implications for our national security and our standing in the world. Ask yourself who benefits when Idaho leaders spend their time undermining public confidence in the very laboratory tasked with helping this country catch up. It isn’t Idaho. It isn’t America. It’s Moscow and Beijing, who face no similar domestic opposition and are only too happy to watch us tie ourselves in knots.

Idahoans should expect their leaders to ask hard, specific questions about this proposal. What they shouldn’t tolerate is having a serious national security opportunity reduced to campaign-season scare tactics. China and Russia are not waiting for Idaho Democrats to finish demagoguing. Neither should we.