West Virginia Signs MOU With DOE, Becomes 6th State In Nuclear Waste Campus Competition

West Virginia is now in the running to host a piece of the federal government's plan to rebuild America's nuclear fuel supply chain, and it got there by raising its hand for the part nobody else wanted to talk about: the waste.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced September 9 that West Virginia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy, making it the sixth state in the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus (NLIC) program, according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting and the West Virginia Press Association. The state joins Idaho, Tennessee, Utah, Oklahoma and Louisiana, all of which were named finalists back in July.

West Virginia wasn't on that original list. Morrisey said his team started "working the phones" after being left off, according to reporting from Steven Allen Adams of the West Virginia Press Association. "Thanks to that work and the support of many people, I'm proud to announce that today, West Virginia has finalized a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Energy to become the sixth state to participate in this initiative," Morrisey said.

The Money On The Table

DOE says a single NLIC campus could attract up to $50 billion in capital investment, generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenue, and create nearly 25,000 jobs, according to West Virginia Daily News, which cited Energy Secretary Chris Wright directly. Wright called the campuses "massive engines of economic growth" and framed the effort as central to rebuilding the nuclear industrial base.

Those are DOE's own projected figures for a hypothetical completed campus. No campus has been sited, and the MOU itself guarantees nothing. "Today isn't about a guarantee for a campus or a specific number or a specific promise for future investment," Morrisey said, according to the Press Association. Nuclear Newswire, in coverage from the American Nuclear Society, likewise noted the MOU "does not represent firm commitments from either party," a caveat that also applied to the five states signed in July.

Why West Virginia, And Why Now

DOE opened the NLIC request for information on January 28, 2026, with an April 1 deadline. Twenty-six states submitted 28 applications, and DOE picked five finalists at the end of July, according to Nuclear Newswire. West Virginia's late entry is unusual. An August webinar cited by Nuclear Newswire had DOE's Marla Morales, acting deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and high-level waste disposition, telling the American Nuclear Society that the department would likely downselect further from the five original finalists, not add a sixth.

Morales has been blunt about what the program is really built around. At the NECX conference, she said DOE deliberately started the public conversation with waste rather than reactors. "You can want all the fancy reactors you want; you're going to have waste at the end of this. It has to go somewhere," she said, according to ZeroHedge's account of the conference remarks.

ZeroHedge argues that willingness to accept spent nuclear fuel is "likely all it took" for DOE to reopen the door for West Virginia, and speculates that Texas and New Mexico were left off the original list because they balked at hosting waste. That is ZeroHedge's inference, not a claim DOE, Morales, or Morrisey has made on the record. No source in this reporting has DOE confirming waste-hosting as the deciding factor for any specific state's inclusion or exclusion.

What's Left Unaddressed

The West Virginia Press Association's reporting notes that "environmental advocates have concerns" about the state's push, though the specifics of those concerns weren't detailed in available coverage. Broadly, opponents of co-locating spent fuel storage with manufacturing and reactor operations have raised long-standing worries nationally about transport risk, groundwater contamination, and long-term site security for high-level radioactive waste. Whether those concerns apply specifically to any West Virginia site can't be evaluated yet, because DOE hasn't identified potential locations within the state and the MOU doesn't commit to one.

Morrisey ties the nuclear push to the state's broader industrial pitch, pointing to the legislature's 2022 repeal of its nuclear moratorium and a separate announcement of more than $81 billion in new private investment, bringing the state's total claimed investment since October 2025 to roughly $96 billion and over 19,000 projected jobs, according to West Virginia Daily News. Those investment totals come from the governor's office and have not been independently verified in this reporting.

The open question now is which of the six states DOE actually keeps. Nuclear Newswire reported DOE has signaled it may cut states from its list rather than add to it, meaning West Virginia's MOU could be an entry ticket to a race the department is simultaneously trying to shrink.