Part 6: Louisiana, the World’s Dumping Ground
By Danielle Walker, The State of Freedom
Recently Louisiana advanced as a finalist for the federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus. The state’s proposal pairs the deployment of small modular reactors with a willingness to store high-level nuclear waste in offshore salt domes in the Gulf — an arrangement structured to cleverly and stunningly bypass Louisiana’s own prohibition on radioactive waste disposal in salt domes within state jurisdiction. That development does not stand alone. It lands on top of years of aggressive carbon capture and sequestration promotion that has already positioned Louisiana as the leading destination for industrial CO₂ storage. Together, the two efforts reveal a consistent pattern: the conversion of a high-value energy-producing state into the preferred permanent dumping ground for other people’s waste.
The Dual Dumping Ground
Carbon capture and sequestration is billed as industrial salvation and a climate necessity. In practice, it funnels CO₂ injection projects into states with the right geology, pipeline networks, heavy emitters, and a willingness to accept permanent underground waste. Louisiana sits at the heart of that equation. Our subsurface formations, extensive pipeline infrastructure, and concentrated refining and petrochemical corridor made large-scale injection technically viable, while federal 45Q tax credits and state facilitation turned it into a highly profitable enterprise. The outcome is an expanding network of injection wells steadily turning Louisiana’s land and aquifers into a permanent dump site for industrial waste — while shifting long-term liability onto the state’s taxpayers.
It is political willingness that has edged Louisiana forward to the front of the line for these projects. Other states with similar geology said no, which proves it is not inevitable. Louisiana’s distinguishing feature is not its geology or industrial base. It is the political appetite to absorb permanent liability that other states have refused. That willingness is not destiny. It is a vulnerability that can still be closed off to exploitation. When Louisiana-first communities, landowners, and representatives make the long-term political costs unmistakable and the short-term deals impossible to defend, the runway for these projects disappears. The same pattern that turned the state into a designated dumping ground can be reversed when we the people make the cost of consent higher than the cost of refusal.
The nuclear campus proposal extends the same logic. Louisiana has long prohibited high-level radioactive waste disposal in its salt domes. This proposal sidesteps that ban by placing the waste in offshore Gulf salt domes, just beyond state jurisdiction. Uranium enrichment and research near Baton Rouge, plus SMRs aimed at data centers and a northwest military base, come packaged with this permanent radioactive burden other states — and Louisiana itself — have rejected for decades. If this were truly a good deal for Louisiana, the state would not need to engineer a workaround around its own law to make it happen. Being named a finalist is being sold as an economic-development win. Yet the proposal is deliberately structured to place the waste beyond the reach of Louisiana’s own prohibition — a workaround that treats the state’s legal safeguards as an obstacle to be avoided rather than a protection to be honored.
Louisiana is not opposed to nuclear energy. Firm, dispatchable power can strengthen the grid and support real industrial growth. What is on offer here is different. Governor Landry has pursued a package that pairs limited local benefit with permanent high-level waste liability. The power generated is slated primarily to serve hyperscale data centers that many Louisiana communities are actively opposing. Nuclear development that raises the standard of living and energy security of Louisiana families is worth pursuing. Nuclear development that turns the state into a repository for other people’s radioactive waste while the main customers are heavily tax-exempt, unwelcome data centers is not.
In both cases the state (i.e., taxpayers) absorbs permanent liabilities while conventional oil and gas development continues to face friction. Productive capacity still meets headwinds at home and in Washington, while carbon capture has been aggressively facilitated and the nuclear-campus package — waste component included — is being advanced as a growth opportunity. Conventional development contends with legal uncertainty, coastal permitting delays, and vacillating political priority. The speed and political will are being applied perversely: toxic industrial waste storage is favored over production.
The Political Enabler
None of this advances without political consent. Louisiana’s long history of political corruption and self-dealing is a structural vulnerability. A political culture that has repeatedly tolerated opacity, insider advantage, and the transfer of public risk in exchange for short-term political or commercial benefit makes the state a more exploitable target. Honest representatives whose first duty is to the long-term health, prosperity, and sovereignty of Louisiana families would not volunteer the state as a national repository for industrial CO₂ and high-level nuclear waste while the development of its own high-value energy resources remains constrained. The pattern of NDAs shielding major deals, eminent domain for private compressed CO₂ storage, and a nuclear-campus plan designed to sidestep Louisiana’s own ban on radioactive waste in salt domes tells its own story. Leadership that treats the state’s productive capacity and its people as expendable and ignorable, rather than strengths to be defended, is driving the conversion from production to dumpsite now underway.
Louisiana’s record offers little grounds for confidence. Communities such as Grand Bois have spent decades living with the fallout from oilfield waste facilities that residents tied to serious health damage, including elevated cancer concerns the political system never meaningfully resolved. At the same time, the state carries a large and growing inventory of orphaned and uncapped wells — thousands of them, many in the bayous and coastal zone — whose plugging costs fall on the public. The same political and regulatory culture now promoting Louisiana as a preferred destination for industrial CO₂ and high-level nuclear waste has already demonstrated a pattern of loading environmental risk onto local communities and shifting long-term liability onto taxpayers. Multi-generational storage of toxins is not a modest extension of past practice; it is a dramatic escalation of it.
The Path Forward — and the Indictment
Louisiana does not have to accept the role of preferred national dumping ground. The same assets that make the state a target — geology, infrastructure, industrial capacity, and energy expertise — can still be redirected toward genuine strength.
Actionable steps remain clear:
For Louisiana State Officials
- Reject permanent liability for others’ waste. Oppose imported CO₂ and high-level nuclear waste storage that converts productive capacity into multi-generational burden.
- Require that any storage serve only limited, accountable, in-state industrial needs under strict and permanent operator liability. Prohibit any transfer of long-term monitoring, cleanup, or residual risk to the state or its taxpayers.
- Mandate full public disclosure of environmental and fiscal risk assessments before any carbon-storage or nuclear-waste agreement advances — no NDAs, no sealed side deals.
- Restore primacy to real production. Establish clear executive and legislative priority for mineral development over industrial carbon storage.
- Accelerate conventional oil and gas permitting, close infrastructure gaps in gas takeaway and light-crude refining, and measure success by royalties, severance taxes, high-wage jobs, and lower energy costs for Louisiana families.
- Require that new conventional production deals include full and timely plugging and abandonment obligations bonded by the operator, transparent royalty and severance accounting, and no transfer of long-term environmental liability to the state or taxpayers.
- Protect property rights and transparency. End the use of NDAs that shield major energy and storage deals from public scrutiny. Prohibit eminent domain and unitization for private commercial storage of compressed CO₂.
- Pursue nuclear power that actually serves Louisiana. Prioritize small modular and advanced reactors that deliver firm, dispatchable power for Louisiana industry, military installations, and families — not primarily for out-of-state data centers. Any nuclear development must keep spent fuel under strict operator liability. Louisiana will not accept high-level radioactive waste generated elsewhere. States that choose to expand nuclear generation own the full back end of that decision; they do not get to ship the permanent liability here.
For Louisiana Citizens
- Elevate representatives whose first loyalty is to the long-term strength of Louisiana families rather than short-term deals that transfer risk onto the public.
- Expose and primary those who vote against the interests and will of their constituents and against the long-term well-being of the state.
- Make the political cost of enabling the dumping-ground model higher than the reward.
The choice is simple — Louisiana can keep burning its own house down for federal credits and corporate favors, or it can remember what it actually is: an energy powerhouse that belongs to its people, not a dumping ground for the rest of the country.
Louisiana’s strength is its energy. Its weakness is its politics. The first can still be saved. The second must be confronted.
(The series continues with Part 7: Surge Capacity at Risk: Louisiana’s Degradation into a Toxic Waste Storage Zone — Softwar Against Louisiana Production Capacity.)
Why wouldn't every state that uses Nuclear have to dispose of it withing their own borders?
because not all states are blessed with geologically stable areas….
If it's stable enough to house a reactor then why not the waste it produces?
ah….California??
It should be known certain components of spent fuel (like uranium and plutonium) can be recovered and reused in new fuel, reducing the volume of waste that needs disposal.
Also, some of the next-generation reactors can burn nuclear waste as fuel, reducing the amount of long-lived waste.
I would recommend to the great State of Louisiana to look into these ideas as well as ways to try to find a way to dispose of nuclear waste safely and efficiently.
next-generation reactors is interesting. Evidently there must be problems , maybe costs. Nuclear plants cost billions each.( Maybe Somalians can empty their sock drawers.) Concerted funding to build them would be a nightmare for political parties to agree. The DSA Democrats have their own priorities.
It's been proven for years that the DSA folks are only interested in Graft, supporting illegals, and F'ing up our environment. A more worthless group of individuals with Malicious intent would be very difficult to find other than Mooselims.
Put it at the Nevada Test Site
They are projecting the Nevada Repository will fill up plus the state doesn’t want to expand its capacity for understandable concerns by state residents.
Who is projecting that when nothing has been put there……..??
There are a few hundred hot hole in that place and if one of thos “glass jars” decideds to break open, which is nearly impossible, then the residents have a real problem. Don’t know why they are complaining, they used to bring tourism in every time they had an above ground test back in the 60’s
Yes…..and actually the mine where it was all intended go…..once upon a time (as the fairy tale says).
"EXCLUSIVE: Louisiana, the World’s Dumping Ground."
The good people from the great state of Louisiana deserve better than this.
What's sad is that I can tell the difference between the two states when I cross over from Texas. I-10, I-20, US-84… you can just tell (even from Orange). You'd think with all that gambling and booze money (you can buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's and go gamble at all gas stations on a highway) the infrastructure would be better.
Thanks to the filthy democrats, the US could have had an endless supply of nuclear energy with low waste thanks to reprocessing but they killed it.
The hippie boomers (nota bene: I'm a boomer) still screech that we'll have another China Syndrome if we build new reactors. They get mad when I tell them it was a movie and then pick apart what they got wrong.
(Then they try with Chernobyl, and get mad when I shut them down again…)
Yeah, that Three Mile Island "disaster" killed sooooo many /sarc
Yes, also the Japanese plant that went down was due to a tsunami and there is plenty of facts to defend that as well.
Well they are changing their toon now that their billionaire masters have decided they need to power their data center’s.
Like every thing they touch .
Yep, they would rather make China rich by forcing the US to buy their solar panels and wind turbines.
They cried, "Breeder reactors! BREEE-EE-EDERS!" Which was STUPID but it worked for them. }>:-|
Ignorant career politicians are EASY to frighten, turns out. And Nuclear Energy Production is SO EASY to hyper-mystify! So that was – and is to this day – mountingly burgeoningly waste-pooledly intensively (and STILL VERY STUPIDLY) but readily and easily correctably all. 0{>:-|o[
China has working molten salt thorium reactors now, tech we developed back in the 60s at Oakridge National labs but was abandoned as it didn't produce nuclear warhead materials. Thorium is everywhere, they cannot melt down, they are literally perfect for what we need
YEP! And Yours Truly WANTS to OWN ONE, so that settles it. Because thorium tech is extendedly thermally thus off-gridly electrically productively even when non-popularly all. 0{>;-)o[
Interesting…….thank you.
The Earth is radioactive. Life evolved with this. The Uranium we use for energy comes out of the ground. A simple solution would be to encase the waste byproducts in cement and bury it deep underground. From where it came. Problem solved.
Or put it deep in a hole and blow it up in a nuclear explosion. It will vaporize and be encapsulated in a glass bubble
Very imaginative. Rube Goldberg would be proud.
The Energy department did that on one of their “eevents” at the NTS
Louisiana will surely have a radiant future!
Inflation reduction!!
The sun isn't the cause of global warming?
of course it is but CO2 is not so much…
I was being sarcastic!!
So WHY do those in authority STILL not realize that CO2 is 100% PLANT FOOD? It's just another GRIFT, innit? }>:-
Poundin'; on this item because once that fundamental reality of Life On Earth is finally accepted, the "Industrial CO23 Disposal" problem just melts away like dew in the morning sun. And that is simply as well as gracefully naturally all. 0{>:-)o[
Scientists, real scientists, not the quacks who are cheerleaders for the fraud of "climate change," will tell you sunspot activity and volcanoes are the the culprits who can change the earth's climate, weather, etc., not human activity.
Of course. I agree five thousand percent!!!
Yes.
And huge pieces of space debris hitting our planet at high speed
I feel so much better, that last batch of flatulence I had was a real winner. A complete do it yourself global warming event.
Cuz we aren’t warming!!!
Hmmmmm . . . Actually Earth is warming but it's very slow and is not caused by humans.
True, but not as fast as the “Goracle” and Kerry say we are. We’re still coming out of our last ice age
Exactly!
They said Chernobyl would have no life for hundreds of years. But now it is a thriving jungle of animals. These ideas of them knowing how long radioactivity lasts in the soil and air have been fake science once again. Yes, it's very dangerous. But they never proved their studies of how long nuclear waste lasts. All of it was based on laboratory results. NO GOOD
It’s still a hot zone but yes life prevails!!!
If it was a hot zone, all the animals would die. Not even close bud
It may not be a hot zone to them, but inside the structure still is real dangerous to enter if you’re a human. The radiation out side still has a time limit on it for humans, but its a few hours I think
Caveat. Scientists were finding animals were mutated by the radiation. No Godzilla but not natural. Will take decades to observe the effects.
I didn’t say they had no side effects. What I clearly said was they lied when they said it would take over 200 years before any person could live there. Go look at the japan meltdown, you will see my point is very strong.
Why sequester Co2? Plants do a great job converting it to food and O2 and it’s needed in our environment.
For "carbon credits"
You mean money……..a scam.
Because the climate change scam fooled enough people to make it all viable. Our schools have been teaching students that the climate crisis is real for about 30 years now. The media also uncritically pushed it. They have built it into many tv shows. Letting the Left have control over education for 3+ generations was the greatest mistake this country has ever made. It is one we may never recover from.
almost 50 years. My biology teacher brought it up in 1975 and I pisseed him off when I told him to prove it
Why sequester Co2?
Plants do do a great job converting it to food. L
But the enviowackos decided plants contribute to the (fake) globull crisis and therefore trees and plants need to go.
Check into who the CEO’s and stock holders are on these phony CO2 sequester plants and that will tell us all we need to know.
You answered your own question. They sequester it because plants need it. The end.
good point
Plant more trees!
Starting with you own backyard……but California fires and the beetle in Colorado would be good places to start…..
I think Michigan has a leg up on this title. Ontario dumps all of its it's household trash in Michigan landfills. Canadian Muslims and Indians truck that stuff into the state landfills non stop from sun up to sundown 6 days a week. No wonder they need another bridge.
Carbon capture doesn't work. At all.
Carbon Capture operations STARVE OUR CROPS. And that is fundamentally foundationally 'n' basically simply-put all. 0{>:-|o[
Government should find Scientists who could find ways to deactivate dangerous nuclear waste. Relying on decaying nuclear lifecycles is impractical. The problem is experienced by all nuclear powered countries. There must be an undiscovered process. This research could be easily funded by worldwide sources who are producing the waste.. I remember scientists were working to sanitize food but it unfortunately degraded the food. However, innovated thinking may be useful.
Scientists = mad psychopaths
The "need" for CO2 sequestration is based on fake science narratives generated originally by globalist interests. It's a costly environmental negative.
typical politicians. sell out their own people.
CO2 Injection Wells and pipelines are just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. CO2 gas has no odor, the gas is heavier than air, and walking into a cloud of leaked CO2 can kill you. Not to mention birds and animals.
Look I love in louisiana our politicians agree to every program and take the money and scrap it that's it
It's all over unless we start living like the Amish.
The waste isn't that bad*, but a swamp is almost the stupidest possible place to put it.
If I say the stupidest place, some bureaucrat will be sure to put it there.
*And the waste could be made better.
"This proposal sidesteps that ban by placing the waste in offshore Gulf salt domes, just beyond state jurisdiction."
Who is the genius that thinks putting nuclear waste in salt domes offshore, in a hurricane play zone, is a good idea? This is why we really shouldn't leave any decisions up to lifetime bureaucrats, or even elected officials. I understand that's how our system work but, over the past 50 years, our elected officials have shown they are incapable of making good decisions for our country and citizens.
I thought that is what the Yucca Mountain, NV site was for? The desert seems more logical than a hurricane magnet.
Harry Reid killed that apparently…..after it was built. Now we have nuclear materials all over the country instead of one location…..another Trump issue to fix. Thanks in advance Mr. President.
Any offspring of Harry Reid should be forcibly removed from their domiciles and relocated to these offshore Salt Domes. That way the rest of us can reap the benefit of fewer Libs in our Environment!
Follow the money. check for off shore bank accounts for the people involved.!!!
Loved visiting Louisiana in 2005, fantastic scenery and wild life, food and gracious people.
BUT a dump is a dump. Time to stand up people.
Hey Joe, you need to name names. Most of Louisiana, especially us close to the Lakes, are against Carbon Capture. We would be happy to primary these folks, who tell us one thing, but do the opposite. With garbage media, it's difficult to know who some of these folks are, for the average voter.
Name them, we will do the rest.
Never believe the ( Experts ), Typically they are paid, political hacks.
Why cant we just dump it in Mexico? Believe me, they won't notice……
Sounds like Mary Landrieu is in the waste business now…..
Why isn't nuclear waste going the THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR WASTE SITE in Nevada, which taxpayers spent $2 Billion to build? And stupid Nevadans don't realize that the real prize is the money reprocessing it for resale.
Carbon capture is a scam and the taxpayers are the ones flipping the bill.
(Remember my fellow Americans…when Obama was running for President..we were told ……It would bring up the American Standards..)
I said then the opposite would happen.
Example..I do not care what anyone says…”Advertisements teach younger Children..”
children live by example..
Every & ALL …..The adds That come on my tv are of lower class poverty Blacks !
I grew up in La and it's always been a corrupt hell hole no matter who was the Governor! but it's
worse under Democrats who are nothing but corrupt grifting racist welfare pushers! Look at the
DNC hell hole of New Orleans! They have destroyed that once great city! it's no longer great or
unique! why isn't the current GOP Gov pushing DRILL BABY DRILL? bring gas prices back under
$2 a gallon and lower prices! Only good thing La use to be affordable to live! IT ISN'T ANYMORE!
I left the state in my 20's and lived all over and it was really dumb to come back to this hell hole!
To burry nuclear waste near people is dangerous! Even more so if it's in the water!
seems like it would severely contaminate the Gulf of America…..
Send it to the moon.
CO₂ is not an environmental problem. It was significantly higher in prehistoric times. Plants need it, and the planet needs plants. Graphs:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f7ea09fb8911e8b0dc8eec791f14c7fabd253fbe19486d501ca632640bfbbb5.png
Well….alright. Dump it on James Carville.
If you have seen him lately or heard him speak, It appears that he has spent far too much time living in a Toxic environment!! But then many of us know that HE is a toxic environment himself! (Akin to the Clintons, the Barry O's, and any politicians from New York or Kali)
so wrong and so dangerous for the people of LA……