HELENA — Two bills that could open the door for a nuclear energy industry in Montana have passed the legislature and are headed to Gov. Greg Gianforte's desk.
House Bill 623, sponsored by Rep. Gary Parry, R-Colstrip, allows for the creation of nuclear waste storage facilities.
The standards set by the national Nuclear Regulatory Commission require nuclear plants to have a location to store their waste. The bill effectively allows future plants to store their waste on-site.
“We have to keep in mind we’re not going out and building nuclear power plants right today,” said Parry at a Mar. 27 Senate Energy Committee hearing. “We also know that coal is going away a little bit at a time. We could use the contracts at Colstrip as early as the end of this year.”
House Bill 676, also sponsored by Parry, allows for uranium enrichment and processing facilities to be built in the state.
The overwhelming majority of enriched uranium used in the United States is purchased from outside the country.
“This is an issue of making sure that we're not depending on a foreign advisory for our fuel source," said Parry during floor debate on HB 676.
Both bills had bipartisan support and objections.
In 1978, Montana voters passed I-80, a citizen initiative that required voter approval for any proposed nuclear power facility in the state.
In 2021, Montana lawmakers passed House Bill 273, which repealed the voter approval requirement for nuclear facilities. HB 273 passed with broad bipartisan support, and proponents of the 2021 bill noted that modern nuclear energy projects are very different from the plants being built in the 1970s.
