Rods of highly radioactive fuel sit on concrete pads in casks at the Idaho National Laboratory awaiting final shipment somewhere to meet the state’s nuclear waste agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy.

When the Obama administration decided to cancel the Yucca Mountain deep disposal site in Nevada took away the resting place for the spent fuel taken from government reactors, including those that powered our nuclear Navy. But the INL waste, in the middle of an 890-square mile remote government reservation remains relatively safe for hundreds of years.

This makes the issue less of a crisis here.

But nationally U.S. reactors have generated 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel, of which 75 percent is stored in pools, according to Nuclear Energy Institute data. A spent fuel rod gives off enough radiation to kill people a foot away in a matter of seconds.

With 30 million rods sitting in pools like those that failed at the ill-fated Fukushima Dai-Ichi plants in Japan, this is a problem now and in the future. So the work of the Obama appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future became even more important.

These issues are important here too because any spent fuel shipped around the Northwest will come through Idaho on roads and rails, perhaps right through Boise.

It released a draft report at the end of July. The commission is currently in the middle of a series of public meetings designed to give states, tribes and the public a chance to comment on its conclusions and recommendations.

One of those meetings will be Tuesday in Denver and several Idaho contingents are expected to participate. It proposes an immediate new process to find consolidated interim storage facilities along with a new long term storage siting process.

The commission proposed the search processes be “consent-based” as opposed to the processed developed in the 1970s and 1980s that ended up forcing Yucca Mountain on Nevada. It wants a new organization solely dedicated to waste management with the power and access to the funds to succeed.

It urged the U.S. to continue its leadership in international waste and nonproliferation issues. And it wants to reconsider long term geologic storage options like Yucca Mountain. But it also proposed a stable, long-term program to support research, development and demonstration of advanced reactor and fuel cycle technologies and supporting workforce development, subjects near and dear to people in eastern Idaho around the Idaho National Laboratory.

“INL is the center for reactor and fuel cycle research in the United States, with unique capabilities and infrastructure to support such a research program,” Idaho Falls Mayor Jared Fuhriman said. “There is no reason to duplicate these capabilities somewhere else when it can be done easily at INL.”

Like representatives of areas that have nuclear waste facilities like Carlsbad, N.M. and Savannah River in South Carolina, eastern Idaho folks want to ensure they keep what nuclear jobs they have and expand, perhaps even with a formal interim storage facility.

But no one is saying that yet.

“Eastern Idaho has long been considered one if not the most supportive regions in the nation for nuclear programs, industry, education and workforce development,” Fuhriman said. “These recommendations present potential opportunities that spill beyond the boundaries of the INL to other reaches of our state.”

The commission’s staff director is Idahoan John Kotek, former deputy manager of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations office and now a partner in the Boise-based firm of Gallatin Public Affairs.

"The Commission has worked with the Western Governors' Association and other state regional groups to organize public meetings to solicit feedback on the draft Commission report,” Kotek said. “The feedback received at these meetings will be shared with the full Commission and will be factored into the Commission's final report.”

Once completed, the report will be sent to the Secretary of Energy by early 2012.