Vox reports that The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste. On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may involve one of the most toxic examples of NIMBYism in American history, Vox says. And goes on to report, “The issue at the heart of Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas arises out of a predictable problem: Absolutely no one wants radioactive waste anywhere near where they live or work, but that waste has to go somewhere.
Another case however, Â James Russell Baird v. the United States, filed November 5, 2001 was a NAFTA, Chapter 11 investor-state dispute claim seeking $13.58 billion dollars in damages that challenges U.S. measures banning the disposal of radioactive waste at sea or below the seabed, belies the notion that no one wants radioactive waste anywhere near where they live or work.
The issue in this case was the Subductive Waste Disposal Method (SWD)for which the writer was granted U.S. patent number 5,022,788 June 11, 1991, Canadian patent 2,005,376 November 19, 1996, and New Zealand patent number 232248 on January 25, 1990, which came under assault by the U.S. government in 1996 in the form of a House bill HR 1020, bolstered by the London Dumping Convention (LDC), that prohibited the funding of research related to the sub-seabed disposal of radioactive waste on the erroneous grounds outlined in the Atlantic article, The Sub-Seabed Solution. As the articles notes, “Far from being embraced, a promising solution to the radioactive-waste problem faces stiff opposition from the federal government, the nuclear industry, and environmental interests.” Furthermore, SWD never was prohibited by the LDC because it was a plan to emplace nuclear waste beneath the seabed by means of an access from the land. Which is plan that can be implemented in the U.S. and Canada at the terminuses of the Cascadia Subduction zone where the subduction zone can be reached by a tunnel of a similar length to the 50.46-kilometer long English Channel Tunnel, (Chunnel) which cost about USD 13.58 billion. The same amount as the NAFTA claim.
SWD mimics Natures method of recycling detritus into the Earth’s mantle in subduction zones where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another into the Earth's mantle. Nevertheless, the NAFTA claim and SWD foundered for lack of support in Canada which brings us to President Trumps notion of Canada as the United States 51st state.
“Canada can’t make it without us” Trump claims, which along with an impending “trade war” fueled by punishing tariffs, has engendered the notion of a pro-growth agenda in Canada. But since the Global Innovation Index ranks Canada 14th globally in innovation, the lowest of the G7 countries perhaps President Trump has a point.
SWD isn’t the only Canadian nuclear waste disposal solution option that has been spurned in both  the U.S. and Canada. The other is the Nuclear-Assisted Hydrocarbon Production (NAHP) for which US20100105975A1 patent applications was filed October 12, 2008, and a Canadian Patent application was pending the result of the U.S. filing. This invention is for the extraction of oil from bitumen and kerogen formations using the heat of nuclear waste emplaced in horizontally drilled drill stems to mobilize highly viscous bitumen to move towards a collection source or to help move the kerogen through the oil window from whence it becomes oil. The benefits of this invention are it precludes the need for burning natural gas or high-temperature  small modular reactors for producing steam for the Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) for processing the bitumen. And it also ionizes water within the formation to produce hydrogen for upgrading bitumen or kerogen to higher hydrocarbon fractions. As well as reduces the production of CO₂  emissions by up to 50% and provides a stable, long-term energy source and cost stability compared to natural gas.
As another blot on Canada’s productivity record, Canadian patent application 3065953 for a method of “Storing Hazardous Material in a Subterranean Formation was issued to the U.S. team of Elizabeth and Richard Muller and the company Deep Isolation Inc. on March 3, 2023.
This innovation uses exactly the same method of storing hazardous material (nuclear waste) absent the benefits of mobilizing bitumen and kerogen or producing hydrogen for upgrading long-chain hydrocarbon molecules. And though two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Steven Chu and Arno Penzias, an Emmy award winner, David Hoffman, and professionals from both sides of the aisle like Ed Fuelner of the Heritage Foundation and Daniel Metlay from the Carter Administration, sit on the Board of Deep Isolation, NAHP has been eschewed in both countries.
Even as Alberta advances the notion of producing even more high-level waste using small nuclear reactors to produce its oil. Even as its estimated cleanup liability for orphaned oil and gas wells is estimated to be about $33 billion. And in British Columbia, which had an opportunity to host SWD, the estimated liability for its orphaned wells is estimated to be $1.1 billion. Â
And it should be noted here, the Alberta government’s projected budget deficit for 2025/26 is $5.2 billion and British Columbia's projected deficit for the fiscal year 2024/25 is $9.4 billion.
Nobody wants to live near nuclear waste, but it has to go somewhere, and the solution to this problem is a tremendous economic opportunity. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy's estimated liability for failing to dispose of commercial spent nuclear fuel is currently about $44.5 billion.
A SWD repository at  $13.58 billion therefore was a bargain and the profit from that effort could have helped finance the solution to global warming in the form of the Thermodynamic Geoengineering, which has instead been languished for two decades .Â
The U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on the market for the best thinkers on the energy and the climate despite the conventional wisdom. Which might in part be reason why problems like nuclear waste and global warming have festered for ages.