As nuclear waste piles up, Congress is at a standoff over where to store it

Lawyers were arguing earlier this month before the Supreme Court over permitting facilities to handle temporary nuclear waste storage when Justice Neil M. Gorsuch pointed to the skunk in the room.

That would be the lack of a single permanent facility where the government could dump radioactive waste by burying it deep in the earth and, with any luck, out of mind for generations to come.