The old line “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is most frequently attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to Mark Twain. The provenance of the quote is less important than its continuing relevance. Right now Idaho is having one of those rhyming moments.

Cheerleaders among the state’s Republican elites are championing a vast scheme to make Idaho a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus complete with vague promises of billions of dollars in economic benefits, the creation of new technology and even a position for Idaho as a bulwark against Russian and Chinese dominance of nuclear technology. Quite a plan.

What the cheerleaders aren’t addressing can be found in the fine print of Idaho Governor Brad Little’s commitment to enter into a “Host Agreement” with the Department of Energy (DOE). The unspoken words in the fine print are “commercial spent nuclear fuel,” and the promise that Idaho willingly accepts a big share of the nation’s current stockpile of this material, which totals more than 90,000 metric tons. The commercial spent fuel is now stored in 35 states at commercial nuclear reactors. If Idaho agrees to a “Host Agreement” with DOE, there is a good chance this highly radioactive material is coming to the Idaho National Laboratory in Butte County, right above the vast Snake River Aquifer.

Just how wrong those of us who have questioned the logic and implications of this plan were discussed in a recent op-ed by two Republican legislators who discounted any threat that INL would become a “dump.” Yet, nowhere in Sen. David Lent and Rep. Ted Hill’s opinion piece is there a word about Idaho’s share of all those thousands of metric tons of commercial nuclear waste. They also don’t address junking Republican Gov. Phil Batt’s one-of-a-kind court-enforced 1995 settlement agreement that established specific limits on the kind of nuclear waste Idaho now seems ready to welcome. Batt’s deal established a timeline and penalties to hold DOE accountable for removing waste from Idaho. All that is now at risk.

Here is where Idaho’s history rhymes. Batt’s agreement built on decades of work by former Gov. Cecil Andrus, who I had the honor of working for in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Andrus first started raising real concerns about federal agency nuclear waste management — and waste being stored in Idaho — even before there was a DOE. He consistently received the same assurances that we’re hearing today. Don’t worry about Idaho becoming a waste dump; it’s all about the technology we can apply. And certainly don’t imagine what storing waste above the aquifer might mean for Idaho agriculture or, say, a fish farm in the Magic Valley.

Andrus grew weary — read: got damn mad — at a federal government that repeatedly broke its promises and consistently missed its own deadlines. Andrus’s determination to force DOE to retrieve and remove from Idaho buried plutonium-contaminated waste ultimately helped force DOE action that opened a permanent geological repository for this material in New Mexico. DOE’s predecessor agency promised Andrus in 1973 that this waste would be out of the state “by the end of decade.” The waste finally started leaving in 1999.

Andrus went to court in 1991 to stop a DOE plan to bring commercial nuclear waste — the same type of material envisioned in the current Nuclear Campus scheme — to Idaho from a reactor in Colorado, and he won. Andrus correctly understood the DOE had no plan for permanent storage of

the waste, meaning it would stay in Idaho forever, and he became convinced that DOE had approached the entire matter in a slipshod way that violated federal law.

Federal Judge Hal Ryan, a Reagan appointee, said in a ruling for the state against DOE that he “was dismayed by DOE’s apparent bad faith in its representations to the court,” and Ryan said the agency had displayed “a callous disregard for the legitimate concerns raised on behalf of the citizens of Idaho.” The judge stopped the Colorado shipments and ordered DOE to follow the law.

Now Idahoans are being asked to accept what former Idaho attorney general and Supreme Court justice Jim Jones recently termed a “nuclear waste pig in a poke” based on big promises from an agency that has often misled Idahoans. So when Misters Lent and Hill assure us not to worry because of INL’s decades of expertise, that is also history that rhymes.

When Idahoans, including the Farm Bureau, Food Producers and Water Users, raised legitimate concerns in the 1970’s about the prospect of high-level waste being “temporarily” stored above the aquifer the feds said not to worry, even though there were numerous example of waste mismanagement and accidents at INL.

Before DOE was created, the nation’s nuclear safety, research and waste management were handled by a successor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). One Idahoan who didn’t buy the don’t worry assurances from the AEC was Robert Erkins, a pioneer in the state’s fish farming industry.

“As usual, AEC assurances were extravagant,” Erkins said in 1974. William F. Ginkel, then manager of the AEC’s Idaho Operations Office, had told Erkins, “We have substantial technical experience. There is no real harm or potential basis for alarm — ever” in placing high-level waste over the aquifer.

“It’s asinine,” Erkins said, “to consider the atomic waste storage program here. Even a farmer or a youngster would tell you they wouldn’t put an outhouse over a well … even the youngest child in a health program would tell you it wasn’t logic or good sense.”

Yet Idaho’s political leadership is about to welcome this pig in a poke, and they are doing so without a bit of genuine public discussion, debate or exploration of the tradeoffs. DOE has offered vague promises of a big economic payday, while seeking concrete assurances from Idaho that it will take a huge chunk of the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.

If this is such a marvelous deal, why aren’t Gov. Little or Senators Crapo and Risch or Congressman Simpson going door-to-door to tout it? The reason is obvious, and here the history also rhymes. Idahoans over many decades have consistently supported Republican and Democratic governors who resisted DOE plans to make the state a disposal site for high-level nuclear waste.

The Republican elites know this scheme can’t survive if sunlight is cast upon it. So they’re implementing their plan very quietly, very quickly and with maximum disingenuousness. If Idahoans don’t like the smell of all this, they’d better let these guys know — quickly.

Brad Little has committed to agreeing to a “Host Agreement” with DOE by the end of September. And then it may be too late to stop what the state has tried to prevent for decades.